“Turbo.”
“Diamond black bezel or halogen headlight?”
“Diamond.”
Peckety-peck a bit more.
Davis lets loose a long whistle when she quotes him a price. “That is way out of my client’s budget.” Davis stretches his neck as if he’s trying to get a look-see at the parts cars parked out back. He leans in closer to her. “Come on, you don’t have a little something in the back I can get for cheaper?”
She bites her lip and dashes a look over to the garage, then leans in conspiratorially.
“You didn’t hear this from me...”
Hope flares inside me.
Davis zippers his lips dramatically.
“But Billy Jr. got called to pick up a brand-new Pontiac Firebird some spoiled silver spoon wrecked, hit a deer last month. Busted fender, heavy damage to the undercarriage.”
I lightly gasp. Davis gives my hand a squeeze below the counter. His eyes stay focused on Candy. Intently listening. Holding on to that charming smile like he didn’t miss a beat.
“We wasn’t supposed to say nothing because she paid us to keep quiet so her daddy didn’t find out.” Candy exaggerates her eye roll. “But everything gets hauled to DeRoy’s place,” she whispers, then scribbles an address and a phone number down on the back of their business card. “Go see DeRoy, he’ll take care of you.”
“You’re a lifesaver.” Davis grips the top of her hand in thanks, and I’m sure she’s about to pop.
My knee joints feel like Jell-O as we walk away.
“Well,” Davis says from the side of his mouth, as we walk out and a younger rat version of Billy Gunther Sr. walks in. “Guess we’re going to DeRoy’s place.”
“Shit, man.” DeRoy’s teeth are a brilliant white. Charm and swagger ooze off his handsome face. “We’ve got junkers that pick up and drop off cars anywhere from Ohio down to Gulf Shores.” He rolls a lone truck tire over to an existing pile of equally exhausted tires. “Everybody wants this part or the other. But if we’re talking about a vehicle as new as you’re saying...” He picks up a fresh tire to haul back over. “Then some individual might have bought it. Owners sign the titles over, not us. Find the title to that car, you’ll have the VIN number. Then you might be able to track it down.”
I brandish a big grin over to Davis with this bit of great news.
“That is, if it was done all legal-like,” DeRoy adds, deflating our hope. Chances of that are definitely slim.
It’s a quiet ride back, as neither of us want to talk about hunting down the car that killed something so precious.
We’re almost home when Davis speaks up. “We’re gonna get that VIN number,” he says like a promise.
I tilt my palm back and forth in the sunlight and watch as the rays play on the blue glass.
“Wanda up at the courthouse owes me a favor for changing her car battery. I’ll see if she knows anyone over at the motor vehicles office.”
I simply nod.
“Hey.” There’s something about the gravity in his tone that implores me to look at him. “I want to show you something before I take you home.”
“Yeah?” I say to him, pulling down the car’s visor as the late-day sun tries to blind me. “Show me what?”
“Something that’s been bugging me.” He flicks on his blinker to turn left at the end of the road, and I tense up.
I’ve done pretty good these last few weeks avoiding Highway 19. Hell, I take the two-mile loop on Shaw’s Chapel Road just to avoid it. I haven’t driven on it since Wyatt and Aunt Violet dragged me out there to stick one of those white memorial crosses on the side of the road where Adaire died. Raelean said it’s really pretty, like Easter in the middle of summer, with all those fake spring flowers you can buy from Walmart.
For me, it feels like they decorated a crime scene. I’ve got plenty of ways to honor Adaire, and I sure as hell don’t want to memorialize where she was slain.
Aunt Violet also said it’s a place she can go to feel close to Adaire. Like her ghost is stuck out there on the side of the road, cars whizzing by, all alone, just waiting for someone to remember she once existed. I want to tell Aunt Violet that Adaire is right here next to me, next to her, next to all of us. But that doesn’t make her feel as good as a cemetery of plastic bouquets.
My body clenches up as we get closer. It’s a quiet stretch of highway through the back woods of a small town, but this road is so much more. Dead Man’s Curve it was named back in the ’50s, when a teenager took the tight turn too fast and flipped his car and killed himself. Since then, lots of young kids over the decades have dared each other to drive fast around the curve for kicks. Sure, there have been a few car accidents here and there, but only two deaths. First that teenager and now Adaire.
“Why you doing this?” There’s no hiding the tension in my voice.
“’Cause I need you to see something?”
“I don’t need to see anything out here.” My foot presses the imaginary brake on my side of the floorboard.
“It’s fine, Weatherly. Trust me.”
“Davis,” I say, my tone tight as the straight part of the highway disappears into a sharp right farther ahead.
“Davis,” I say a little more urgent as the front of his truck gobbles up the highway.
“We don’t have to stay long, I swear. I just want you to see—”
“Davis! Stop!” The terror in my voice has him slamming on the brakes. We fishtail lightly as the road peeks around the corner. That artificial patch of vibrant color that marks her death sticks out like a sore thumb stuck in the middle of nature.
Crawling from the ditches and up the embankment are tufts and tufts of black ferns. A cancer suffocating the landscape. Their thick presence here only adds to the fear this stretch of road holds.
Davis eases the truck over to the side of the road in case someone comes along. He waits for me to calm myself; I didn’t realize how heavy I was breathing until the silence of the truck highlighted it.
