The Girl in the Mist (Misted Pines 1)

Celeste thwarted this endeavor.

“No, I have money.” She turned to Shelly. “You good?”

“For sure,” Shelly replied.

She turned to Kimmy. “Good?”

Kimmy didn’t answer except to lift her paper cup and avocado straw an inch away from Celeste’s face.

Not that she could, but still, Celeste didn’t miss the communication.

“I’ll be right back.” She began to take off.

“Wait! I’ll come with. I need a brownie for Ray,” Shelly called after her, then whirled on me. “So nice to meet you, Ms. Larue.”

“Delphine,” I corrected.

She hopped, clapped, and instead of shouting, “Rah, rah, sis kum bah!” she cried, “Ohmigod! I…love you.”

Then she took off.

I winced, because Kimmy had latched onto a heavy wrought iron, French bistro-inspired chair with a wooden seat and was scraping it across the cement floor.

Everybody else in the shop winced too.

She set it beside my chair and plopped down in it, before sucking back some coffee, pounding her chest, and focusing on me.

“So, what the boys got on this psycho?” she asked.

“I don’t really…they don’t talk about the case.”

She bent forward, elbow to knee, in order to commit fully to conspiracy mode.

“I reckon you heard your fill about Audrey,” she said low.

“Ummmmm…”

“Yeah, well, I mean, even karma isn’t that big of a bitch.”

I could agree with that.

So I hummed, “Mm.”

“Now, guess who stumbled out of Sarah Pulaski’s back door in the wee hours of the morning yesterday.”

I tried to stop her. “Kimmy—”

I failed to stop her.

“You guessed it. Dale.”

“I really don’t—”

“Now, obviously, this isn’t the best timing. And as a modern woman, I would not advocate Sarah taking him back. But, I mean, if you’re gonna stick it to the woman who destroyed your life…”

She let that hang, and she was right to do so, because indeed, that was some intense vengeance.

“I feel like we should—”

“And you know who’s, like, cackling over her brew?”

Something about that question made me pause and listen.

“Lana,” she said, like gotcha.

“I haven’t been in town that long, I don’t know—”

“Right.” She scooched her chair closer, it made another, thankfully much shorter shriek, then she launched in. “Lana of Lana and Bobby. Audrey’s first target, ’cause, see, Bobby’s got more money than God, which is what Audrey was after, and why Lana didn’t kick him to the curb when he stepped out on her.”

This must be other couple that Celeste was talking about at the grocery store.

“She had to go way down the line, you get me, ’cause then there was Annie and Jay, and after that Wendy and Dwayne. And she ended with Dale, who does all right, but he’s no Bobby, Jay or Dwayne. To be honest, I think the only one she didn’t put the screws to, and that pun was intended, or tried to and got shot down, was your Cade when he was with Grace.”

Okay, maybe the high school kids weren’t very well informed, because that was a much longer pattern.

Kimmy patted my hand.

I didn’t take my eyes off her.

“He’s a good one, that one. Be a waste of her time. Cade Bohannan is a one-woman man, like his daddy was, and his and so on.”

I was beginning not to regret this gossip sesh.

She wagged a finger at me. “So you best let it be known that’s your property, gurl.”

“I don’t mean to cause offense, but humans can’t be property, Kimmy.”

“I was younger, prettier and less weird, I’d stamp that boy all over.”

I couldn’t stop my giggle.

She turned her head slightly, keeping her gaze on me, and slowly nodded.

Even though I didn’t offer my one-cent piece, in for a penny…

“Do you have an idea of who might have hurt Alice?”

Kimmy sat back, sipped her drink, and considered this somberly.

Her straw left her lip, and she told some point in the air above us. “Well, there’s that old whackjob, Paddy Tremayne. But I reckon everyone thought of him first, except Leland, who probably had a brain freeze for the first seventy-two hours she was missing, thinkin’ only about how he’d stop himself from shittin’ his pants.”

She looked to me.

And declared, “He failed at that. Figuratively.”

I sucked in my lips.

She sucked back more of her drink.

And concluded, “But other than that, I can’t say. Been thinkin’ on it. But nothin’s comin’ to me.”

“That’s a shame,” I murmured.

“If I get any bright ideas, I’ll look for you or one of your boys.”

One of your boys.

This time, I couldn’t stop my smile.

She studied me.

Then she said, “You know, didn’t think there was a woman alive who was good enough for that man. Guess I was wrong. Wasn’t thinkin’ big enough. Still, you do him wrong, you best leave MP behind. Because not a soul in this town will be okay with that, I don’t care how great that book is you wrote. And I’ll tell you somethin’ for nothin’, I don’t know what went down with them, but the minute she left, you better believe Grace Bohannan knew that too. And I’d bet you a thousand dollars, that’s why that woman never came back.”