Teresa Watson by Death Stalks the Law Page A

become.”
    I felt goose bumps pop up on my arms. “I’ll be fine,” I assured him.
    Weren’t those the last words of Custer before he went to Little Big Horn?
     
    Two hours and five farms later, I was tired, hungry and frustrated. The other groups weren’t having much luck, either. “Now I know why they call off searches when it gets dark,” I groused.
    “Quit complaining. What’s the next place?”
    I looked at the map. “Looks like the old Fitzsimmons place.”
    Five minutes later, we came to the turn off. “Are those skidmarks?” Trixie said.
    As she stopped, I got out and looked at the road in front of her headlights. Sure enough, there were some black tire marks. Someone must have missed the turn, slammed it in reverse, and turned down the road. But I had no clue whether they were fresh or not.
    “What do you think we should do?” I said as I got back in the car.
    “We keep going. For all we know, those have been here for years.”
    “Those look like fresh marks in the dirt, though.”
    “It doesn’t mean it’s her,” Trixie said as she headed down the dirt road.
    At this point, I was trying to convince myself that this was a good idea. But something told me to run the other way. Unfortunately, I wasn’t driving, so I couldn’t listen to that little voice.
    Trixie turned the headlights off and drove the last quarter mile in the dark, pulling off two hundred yards from the driveway. “You still want to do this?” she asked.
    “T.J. may be a jerk, but we can’t let Debra kill him, if that is what she has planned.”
    “You don’t know that for sure.”
    I shook my head. “No, I don’t, but we can’t let her hurt him, now can we?”
    “Definitely not.”
    We got out of the car. Trixie popped the trunk, rummaged around, and pulled out a crowbar and a baseball bat. “Do I even want to know why you are carrying these things around in your car?”
    “I had a date with a minor leaguer a few days ago. We went to the batting cage to work on his swing.”
    “Uh-huh,” I replied, not believing her for a minute. “Give me the crowbar. I can manage with one hand.”
    I slipped my cell phone out of my purse, which I put in the trunk. Turning the phone on silent mode, I slipped it into my pocket and gave Trixie the walkie talkie. At that moment, I was happy about having a broken arm, because it meant that I was dressed in comfortable clothes: jeans, t-shirt, and tennis shoes. Trixie, who hadn’t bothered to go home and change even after I told her she should, was dressed in a skirt, blouse and heels. “How are you going to walk around in those shoes?”
    She pulled out a pair of tennis shoes from the trunk. “I’m prepared for anything.”
    At this point, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had a mini-fridge back there. “You take the house, I’ll take the barn.”
    “Are you sure you want to split up?”
     “This is a long shot,” I said. “I don’t see any lights on and there aren’t any vehicles in sight.”
    “That doesn’t mean she isn’t here,” Trixie pointed out. “Those tire tracks could be a month old, for all we know.”
    “I know. If one of us gets caught, the other one can go for help.”
    “How are you going to drive a stick shift with a broken arm?”
    “I don’t know,” I snapped. “I’ll figure it out. Let’s just get this over with, okay?”
    Trixie headed left toward the house, and I went right toward the barn. When we were kids, Mr. Fitzsimmons used to have dances in the old barn during the summer, and hay rides in the winter. His wife had died early in their marriage during childbirth, and he had never remarried. The kids in town, in a way, became his foster kids. His door was always open to us if we needed to talk, or if we just wanted to hang out. When he died about ten years ago, the Methodist church in town was packed, inside and out, with adults who had spent time at his place as kids. The procession to the cemetery took forty-five minutes. I