Sacrifice of Buntings by Christine Goff

Sunday? We’ll talk before then. But it would be best if you didn’t talk to anyone about any of this. We don’t need you muddying up the waters.”
    Speaking of talking with someone .
    “Can you tell me where my friend is?” she asked.
    “The older lady?”
    Rachel nodded.
    “Check with the sentry.”
    Rachel stepped out into the hall and blinked. A bank of windows let in the sunlight. The conference room was gloomy by comparison. So much for the famous bright lights of the interrogation room.
    She found the guard outside the doorway, but he couldn’t tell her a thing.
    Stay on task, Wilder . She had to find Dorothy. Surely they weren’t still asking her questions.
    Rachel walked the hallway of the conference center without a clear plan. Out of nowhere, the Geechee woman’s prediction rang again in her head. “ Oona mus tek cyear .” Take care.
    Find Dorothy . If the police were through talking with her, she might have headed back to the hotel. Or maybe not. She might have waited for Rachel. Even really upset, Dorothy was tough.
    Coffee—maybe that would help her think . Rachel looked for an Exit sign, getting a vision of herself walking through the corridors of the conference center forever. She turned the corner, and her stomach growled. She hadn’t had any breakfast or lunch. Glancing at her watch, she was stunned to find out it was only 10:45 a.m.
     
    Rachel hadn’t paid much attention as the policeman had guided her through the conference center, but it soon became clear that the room where she’d been interrogated was in the Lucy Bell wing. In her search for an exit, she passed groups of stylishly dressed conferees who gave her brief, pitying looks. Apparently she was in need of a makeover, or maybe at this point it was hopeless.
    She turned another corner and, to her amazement, there stood Dorothy and a tall man.
    “Dorothy!” she said, then realized who she was standing beside. “Guy Saxby!”
    “In the flesh,” he said.
    “I’m okay, dear,” Dorothy said. “But Guy is being taken downtown.” She gestured haphazardly with her hands. “Wherever that is.”
    “It’s nothing,” Saxby said.
    “Then who…?”
    “Becker,” Dorothy answered grimly.
    Saxby nodded just as the wiry black deputy who had interrogated Rachel came out of a doorway carrying a hot cup. “Ready to roll?” he asked Saxby.
    Guy shrugged in Dorothy’s direction. “I’ll see you later,” he said. “This shouldn’t take long, really.”
    Dorothy grabbed Rachel’s arm as the three men walked away. “You looked like you’d seen a ghost!”
    “Well, I thought it was Guy lying in there,” Rachel said. “Didn’t you?”
    “At first. Only because I was meeting him,” Dorothy said. “When I knelt beside the body, I saw it was Becker, but by then the security guard had arrived and separated us.”
    “The cops didn’t tell me anything,” Rachel said. “That’s why, when I saw him—”
    “It was obvious what you thought.”
    “How did he find you?”
    “Once he heard I was being questioned, he insisted on seeing me. The guard allowed it. I mean, he isn’t a suspect or anything.”
    “We’re all suspects, Dorothy.”
    “Rubbish. I don’t believe that.”
    Something didn’t make sense. Realizing they were drawing attention standing in the middle of the hallway, Rachel grabbed Dorothy’s arm and steered her toward the Hyde Island Birding and Nature Festival side. “Let’s go back to the hotel.”
    At the entrance to the Nest, Rachel was surprised to find the festival in full swing. Both double doors were propped open, and the crowd perused the booths like nothing had happened. Peeking inside, Rachel could see that the crime scene had been cordoned off with makeshift walls, but nearly half of the vendors were open for business.
    Rachel scribbled a note for Lark, thumbtacked it to the message board, and then hailed a cab. She and Dorothy didn’t talk on the way to the hotel, and neither of them