The Last House on the Street(94)

He shut the door before I finished my sentence and walked around the front of the truck to get in. Reed still stood at his front door, trying to look innocent.

“Something ain’t right,” Buddy said, putting the truck in gear and backing out of the driveway.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I went back to the shop on my way to Jenny Ann’s,” he said, looking in his rearview mirror. “Had to be at least seven thirty. Eight, maybe. Reed’s truck wasn’t there.”

I pounded the dashboard. “I hate him!” I said. “Hate him! Buddy, we have to find Win. Please help me. He’s in a ditch somewhere. He’s still alive. I can feel it!” I couldn’t bear the thought of him lying alone somewhere, bleeding and helpless.

Buddy was heading into town but he missed the turn for the sheriff’s office. “Where are you going?” I reached for the steering wheel, but he batted my hand away.

“My shop,” he said. “I need to see where Reed put the truck. Maybe it was in the back lot and I didn’t see it when I stopped in earlier.” He wanted Reed to be innocent, I could tell. He wanted the truck to be there in the back lot and we could then imagine there was someone, some Klansman from the next county over, with a blue and white Ford pickup and a reason to hate Winston Madison.

We were a block away from the shop and we could already see it: Reed’s truck, parked just about as close to the shop’s front door as it could be. There was no way Buddy could have missed it earlier. Buddy pulled up to the curb and we both stared at the rear of the truck. My heart pounded in my throat.

There was no dented bumper.

Reed’s truck had no bumper at all.





Chapter 46





Buddy and I drove all over Round Hill. I got the flashlight from behind his seat and shined it in the roads and the woods and the fields. I kept saying, “He’s still alive; I’m sure of it.” Buddy said nothing at all except to tell me it couldn’t have been Reed and the truth would come out eventually. We drove up and down every street in town. I made him take me back to his car shop to check the bed of Reed’s truck, just in case the maggots had left Win in there. It took me so long to come up with that possibility that once I had it, I felt certain I’d hit on the answer, and I was angry at myself for not checking sooner. Maybe he’d been alive when we first saw the truck, but now it was too late. That was the way I was thinking, every horrid possibility running through my mind. But the bed of the truck was empty except for a nondescript cigarette lighter and an empty beer bottle.

I hobbled back into the truck. Buddy looked over at me. Touched my shoulder. “Honey,” he said, “wherever they left him, we ain’t gonna find him tonight.”



* * *



I turned on my radio the second I woke up the following morning, but there was no mention of the nighttime work of the Klan on the local station. There never was. I dressed and went downstairs, hoping I could use either Daddy’s car or Buddy’s truck to go to the police station, but my father and brother were both gone. Mama took one look at me when I limped into the room, then dropped her gaze to my swollen ankle. “What on earth happened to you?”

“I tripped on the back steps last night.”

I could tell she didn’t believe me. “You’re a right royal mess,” she said. “I’ll make some eggs while you go clean yourself up and put on a dress. You can’t work in the pharmacy looking like that. Your hair looks like a raccoon got at it.”

“I don’t have time to work in the pharmacy,” I said. I planned to ride my old bicycle to the police station. Then I’d get one of the policemen to drive me all over Round Hill in the daylight, looking for Win.

“Sit down,” Mama said. It sounded like a command.

“I’m not hungry. I—”

“Sit.” I noticed that her eyes were red, and I sank onto one of the kitchen chairs. “You need to help your father today,” she said. “He had a rough night. And I have some very bad news.” She looked away from me. “I don’t even know how to tell you.”

I was instantly alert. “What?”

“Last night, Garner was trying to repair the ceiling in the room they’re turning into a nursery and he lost his balance. Fell off the ladder and knocked himself out.” She looked back at me. “Brenda called Byron, and Daddy was playing cards with him, so they both went over and drove Garner and Brenda to the hospital, but Garner was gone by the time they got there.”

“Gone?” I said, like I’d never heard the word before. My mind was on fire, my thoughts so scattered. I was thinking of Win and how all the while we were driving around looking for him, Garner was dying. My eyes filled with tears as I thought of what Brenda was going through. Did we both lose the men we loved last night?

“And that’s not all,” Mama said. “Brenda was so beside herself that she lost the baby. She’s still in the hospital.”

Oh no. I stood up, wincing at the pain in my ankle. “I have to go to her,” I said. Brenda and I had had a falling-out, yes, but I would always be her friend. And I would go to her … after I went to see Uncle Byron at the sheriff’s office. If he was playing cards with my father the night before, then I was mistaken about hearing his voice in the clearing, and that was a relief. Maybe he could help me find Win.