15
IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON BEFORE Arlen had the opportunity to get Rebecca Cady alone for a few minutes. Paul was immersed in work on the porch, the rest of the world vanishing from his mind the way it always seemed to when he was on a job, and when Arlen heard Rebecca moving around inside the barroom, he told Paul he needed a drink of water and then went inside.
She was cleaning the bar with a wet rag and merely glanced at him. Only after he’d stood and watched her for a few minutes did she look back up.
“Can I help you?”
“I hope so. We’ve been helping you, so I figured you might do the same.”
“Well, what is it?”
“Why did the judge come out here?” Arlen asked.
Her face darkened, and she looked back down at the glossy bar top.
“You heard him. He’s going to rent the place on Monday night.”
“I heard that he was sending people down here Monday night,” Arlen said. “I didn’t hear a word about renting, though. Which brings to mind another question: where in the hell is your business? You know, customers?”
“There was a hurricane.”
“So you’re telling me that a few days from now, when people have settled from the storm, this place will be busy?”
She didn’t answer.
“That’s what I figured,” he said. “Now tell me about Solomon Wade.”
“I’ve got nothing to tell. You’ve met him and you’ve met the sheriff. You should be able to gather plenty from that.”
“I’ve gathered that they’re crooked as snake tracks, sure. I’d like to know what in the hell it is they’re up to, though, and where Sorenson figured in.”
“I’d have no way of knowing.”
“I don’t believe that. As soon as the poor bastard blew up, you suggested we leave and let you handle the sheriff. Just as if you knew what might happen.”
“I knew there was a chance you’d be treated unfairly.”
“Treated unfairly,” Arlen echoed, nodding. “You mean locked up, beaten, robbed? That’s what you knew there was a chance of?”
She held his eyes.
“Sorenson was a bootlegger,” he said. “But this isn’t a dry county. What was his business here?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“That’s a damned lie and you know it.”
She looked away, then back to him, and said, “What did Wade tell you when you were talking at his car?”
“That he might have a way of finding our money if we told him what he wants to know about Sorenson. Trouble is, we don’t know anything.”
“Really?”
“Really. You do, though. You probably know a hell of a lot. Care to tell me what a man from Cleveland’s doing as sheriff of a place where visitors from the north are about as common as penguins? Care to tell me what it is brings men like those two to a backwater like this, what brought your father to it, what put your brother in—”
“Don’t you speak of my family,” she said, and her voice was so low and cold that she seemed truly dangerous.
He studied her, then nodded and said, “I’ll keep such questions to myself. They’re of no concern to me. Solomon Wade and his thug sheriff are.”
She dropped her gaze, and when she spoke again her voice was soft and measured. “You should be careful with Solomon Wade. Whether you’re here or somewhere else, you should be careful with Solomon Wade.”
It was a different version of the same speech Wade himself had given.
“I’m wondering,” Arlen said, “why all of these boys seem to spend so much time at your place? What are you doing here?”
She picked up the rag and began to scrub again, rubbing so hard that the muscles in her arm stood out.
“As you already said, my private affairs are of no concern to you.”
He watched her for a long time, waiting for more, but she didn’t look up again. At length he turned and went back outside.
They finished the porch roof by noon on Sunday, and as they stood in the sand surveying their work, Arlen was unable to avoid feeling a small tug of satisfaction at the way the job looked. For what they’d had to work with, it was damn fine construction.
“Could leave,” he suggested. “Most everything’s done now.”
“We’re not even close to done,” Paul said, smearing sweat around his face with a rag. He looked older, with his skin burned dark brown and his hair a few weeks past cutting. “Haven’t even started on the widow’s walk or the generator.”
Arlen stopped with a cigarette halfway to his mouth. “The generator? Have you lost your senses?”