A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose #2)(46)

Eli and I went out to the closest café, the one where we’d seen the Iron Hand people with Rogelio. We were led to a booth, and he slid in beside me, not across as I’d expected. We were both facing the door that way.

The menu offered a choice between two meats and a long list of vegetables. I got speckled butter beans and squash and chicken-fried steak, and Eli ordered corn and snap beans and fried chicken. Our orders came with a basket of corn bread and a lot of butter, which the waitress brought before the food. It was great. Hard to eat corn bread neatly, but I tried.

Eli’s eyes closed in happiness as he chewed. “Can you make this?”

“I can.”

“This good?”

“Yes.”

He got ready to say something else, but then he didn’t.

I didn’t coax Eli to speak, but I did wonder what he was thinking.

Then Harriet Ritter and Travis Seeley came in and headed right for our booth, though the restaurant was only scattered with diners. Were they going to interrupt every meal we had?

The answer was yes. Without asking, the two Iron Hand employees scooted opposite us. “You seen Rogelio anywhere?” Harriet asked.

“No, not in a while.” The red-haired waitress slid my plate over to me and put Eli’s in front of him, moving real quick and light. I looked up at her to say thanks. She gave me a stiff nod back, but when Eli thanked her also, the waitress hurried away as fast as she could scoot.

“Did you need Rogelio for something?” I asked, cutting up my chicken-fried steak. I hardly needed a knife, it was so tender. Yum. Though a lot of things in Dixie disgusted me, the food was just this side of divine.

“He hinted he had some things to tell us,” Travis said. He sure had a level voice. You couldn’t tell how he was feeling. I kind of liked that.

“Like what?” Eli said, after he’d had his first bite of fried chicken with gravy.

“Like why the chest got stolen and who might have it.”

I could have told them he didn’t know, or only suspected—but that information was for us, because we’d done the work to get it.

“We have a meeting tonight with an unknown subject,” Eli told them.

If I was surprised, and I was—a little warning would have been welcome—Harriet and Travis were just about dumb with shock. “Why are you telling us this?” Harriet said. “Do you want us to do something about it?”

“Might be good to have someone hiding out in the woods to see that this isn’t an ambush,” Eli said. “Whoever left the note in our room, they’re expecting Lizbeth and me. But not reinforcements.”

“Why would we do this?” Travis asked. “We hide out in the dark woods, bit by mosquitoes, chiggers under our skin, for what?”

“To save our lives?” I said.

Harriet snorted.

As though I need your help, I thought. I wished Eli had not said a word to them.

“A stranger couldn’t walk into the hotel and up to your room and enter. If it wasn’t one of the blacks, it was someone who bribed one of the blacks,” Travis said.

I couldn’t argue with him.

“You don’t know who asked you to this meeting, how many will be there, and whether they want to help you or kill you.” Harriet was just as good at summaries as Travis was at picking apart situations.

“That’s right,” Eli said, just as calm and level as they were.

“No, thanks, we have other plans,” Travis said in a final kind of way. “Tonight is catfish night at the Livingston.”

I took a deep breath. None of this sat well with me. But there was something I had to mention. “Thanks for paying Maddy’s bill,” I said. “That’s a load off my mind.”

“You were going to pay it?” Travis said, staring at me.

“Sure. She is my crew.”

Harriet shook her head as if my ways were strange. “Taken care of,” she said, dismissing me and my gratitude.

“All right then,” I said. “We’ll keep whatever we learn tonight to ourselves. You just stay safe in your little hotel. We’ll be fine and dandy.”

There was a long silence, during which I finished my butter beans. They’d been cooked with a ham hock, as butter beans ought to be. Couple of dashes of salt. “You should have ordered these,” I said to Eli. “Yum.”

His chicken was only bones now. “What makes these snap beans so good?” he said. “Try one.” I reached over with my fork and stabbed a bean, tasted it.

“Bacon grease,” I said. “Just the right amount.”

“Mmmm,” he said, his lips closed over his chewing. He agreed, apparently.

Harriet and Travis were trading looks. Finally Harriet said, “All right. If you tell us when and where, we’ll watch for you.”

“After dark behind the Mount Olive Church on Lee Street,” I said.

We’d made our deal with the devils.

Harriet and Travis left when it became clear we had no more to say. We had a fine time finishing our food. I was used to a lot more exercise and a lot less eating, and I felt porky.

Eli suggested a nap and maybe a few other ways to exercise, and I was not against that, since we had nothing else to do. But on our way to the hotel we ran into a snag.

A short man stepped into our path, seemingly out of nowhere. He’d been waiting in an alley, of course. And he was also a grigori: long dark hair, tattoos, vest.