Midnight Crossroad (Midnight, Texas #1) by Charlaine Harris Page B

forth on his heels. “Manfred, let me ask you something personal. And no offense, for real. Are you truly psychic?”
    “Sometimes,” Manfred answered honestly. “Mostly it’s guesswork or psychology, but I have times when I get true readings.”
    “Then I wonder if you’d come by someday, maybe check out some of Aubrey’s stuff? Maybe you could get an idea of what happened to her?”
    Manfred felt he’d stepped off a cliff. Finally he said, “Sure, Bobo. I’ll try. I wish I could guarantee a result . . .”
    “No, man, I understand. Just do your best. That’s all I can ask. Ah, maybe I could knock something off next month’s rent . . .”
    “No. Absolutely not. I’ll be glad to help,” Manfred said, looking up into his landlord’s face. He was a little surprised to find that he meant it—he actually wanted to help Bobo. “Though let me warn you, touch psychometry is not my strength.” Bobo looked blank. “That’s holding inanimate objects to get a reading on them,” Manfred explained. “So, I’ll come over tomorrow. Ah . . . by the way. There was a detective by yesterday.”
    “Teacher told me she came by his place, too. I didn’t talk to her. She came to the shop door, but I figured since I didn’t know her and it was my day off, I didn’t have to answer the door.”
    Manfred was dying to ask Bobo if he’d seen what had happened to the detective, but he didn’t think it would be right. Maybe Bobo had stayed at his window to watch Shoshanna’s progress, maybe he hadn’t. It seemed like tattling, to bring up what Fiji had done.
    “Just call me when you’re ready,” Manfred said, after an awkward pause. “I’ll do my best for you.” That having been settled, the two men drifted apart as quickly as they could, as if something about the conversation had been embarrassing. Manfred figured it had probably made Bobo uneasy to reveal the depth of his sorrow at Aubrey’s departure, and Manfred knew it had made
him
uneasy to recognize Bobo’s grief and need.
    Figuring it was time to get over his trepidation, Manfred had a casual conversation with Fiji, who seemed as artless and pleasant as ever. Manfred wondered if he’d had some kind of strange delusion the day before, but he decided it was impossible. Fiji had really frozen Shoshanna Whitlock. And Manfred couldn’t forget the detective—the self-proclaimed detective—running from the wedding chapel as if the minions of hell were behind her. He glanced over at the Rev, who stood a little apart, dressed exactly as usual in a threadbare black suit and bolo tie.
There’s kind of an invisible cocoon around the old man,
he thought. The only people who approached him were Connor and Creek, who talked to him with apparent ease. The Rev answered them with a few words, but to Manfred’s eyes his affection for the two seemed obvious.
    Madonna drove Teacher’s truck into the little parking lot, and everyone cheered. She waved through the windshield. She didn’t look particularly excited or enthusiastic, but Manfred was learning that was not the Madonna way. The only time she smiled with any predictability was when she looked at the baby. This morning Grady was in his car seat next to her, and the truck bed was loosely packed with picnic things. Manfred added a few boxes of cookies from the Davy Kroger. Some of the other walkers added their contributions.
    Bobo called, “All right! Let’s go! Next stop, the Cold Rock.” He slapped the hood of the truck, made a “forward ho” motion, and off they set.
    Manfred expected Madonna to go back out the parking lot to the left, to get on the Davy highway and go north. He assumed there was a track that ran parallel to the river, and she could access it off the highway. But Madonna simply drove out of the parking area, veered right past the abandoned building to the rear of the pawnshop, and then bumped across the landscape: mostly bare dirt, dotted with patches of grass, cactus, clumps of