Solitude Creek (Kathryn Dance 4)

Still, you did what you could.

Three of the homes were dark and Dance left a card in the doorframes of each.

Two women, however, were home. Both white, large and toting infants, they reported they hadn't seen anyone and, as Dance had surmised, "anybody parking here, well, we would've noticed and at night, Ernie would've been out to talk to him in a hare-lick."

Dance moved on to the last place, the trailer, which was the only residence actually overlooking Solitude Creek.

Hmm. Had he used a boat to cruise up to the roadhouse and jobbing company?

She knocked on the doorframe. A curtain shifted and Dance held up her ID for the woman to peruse. Three locks or dead bolts snapped. She lives alone, Dance thought. Or the household's particularly concerned about visitors. As meth cookers often are.

Dance's hand dipped to where her gun used to be. She grimaced and tugged her jacket closed.

The woman who opened the door was slimmer than the others, about forty-five, long gray-brown hair. A thin braid, purple, ended in a feather at her shoul

der. From what she wore and what was scattered around the cluttered living area, Dance saw that the woman's fashion choices favored macrame, tie-dye and fringe. She immediately thought of her associate TJ Scanlon, at the CBI, whose one regret in life was that he wasn't living in the late sixties.

"Help you?"

Dance identified herself and extended her ID once more--for closer examination. The woman, Annette, didn't seem uneasy to be talking to a law enforcer. Dance detected only cigarette smoke and its residue, bitter and stale. Nothing illegal.

"Have you heard about the incident at Solitude Creek roadhouse?"

"Terrible. Are you here about that?"

"Just a couple of questions, you don't mind."

"Not at all. You want to come in?"

"Thanks." Dance joined her, noting thousands of CDs and vinyl records on the shelves and stacked against the walls. A lapsed musician and cofounder of a website devoted to music, Dance was impressed. "You go to the roadhouse often?"

"Sometimes. Little pricey for me. Sam's got a pretty dear cover."

"So you weren't there last night?"

"No, I'm talking once a year I go and only if it's somebody I really, really like."

"Now, Annette, I'm wondering if people boat down Solitude Creek."

"Boat? You can. I've seen a few kayakers and canoes. Some powerboats. Real small. It gets pretty shallow you go farther east." Her fingers, quite ruddy, played with her feathered rope of purple hair.

"Is there a place where anyone could park and kayak down to the club?"

A nod toward the road. "No, this is the only place anybody could leave a car and Ernie--"

"Across the street?"

"Yeah, that Ernie. He's not going to let anybody park here he doesn't know."

"Ernie's a big guy?"

"Not big. Just, you know."

Hare-lick. Whatever that meant.

Dance noticed state government envelopes, ripped open like picked-over roadkill. Welfare. The woman lit a cigarette and blew the smoke away from Dance.

"So, last night, you didn't see anybody on the creek in a boat?"