Bitch Factor Read Online Free PDF Page B

house neat and clean. A few hangers swung empty inthe closet, but that didn’t mean much. A couple of empty suitcases were stacked behind the suits. His shaving gear remained in the bathroom cabinet, but not his toothbrush or toothpaste. The most permanent personal item in the house was a well-stocked bookcase. Dixie thumbed through a volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Either Dann bought it used or he had spent many hours reading it. Nothing told her specifically Dann had skipped, yet she knew he had. The house felt like its owner wouldn’t be returning.
    Calling in a few favors, Dixie had set up watch posts at the nearest border towns, Brownsville and Laredo, and at the Louisiana state line. Then she’d phoned McGrue. When he agreed to meet, she’d had to fight off her usual case of the shivers. Watching him now through the diner window as he unfolded from his patrol car, Dixie was reminded of a praying mantis. How many lawbreakers had watched that sight in their rearview mirrors and soiled their car seats?
    Six-foot-eight and thin as a shadow, the Highway Patrolman moved through the diner with a loose-jointed, sticklike grace. People stared. He didn’t seem to notice. Once, in apprehending a criminal, Dixie had seen McGrue stretch his long legs to cover the length of a football field in an eye blink, as if time itself had folded a stitch. Scary. With his deepset eyes, the iridescent green of pond algae, finely chiseled nose, and sensuous mouth, McGrue was admittedly handsome, but as spooky as a walking cadaver.
    He nodded a greeting and slid into the booth. Dixie recalled Amy’s comment that the men Dixie worked around were all creeps—meaning the criminal element, of course. What would she think of McGrue?
    When the waitress arrived, Dixie ordered an unwanted cup of coffee for herself. The patrolman ordered grapefruit juice.
    “Tell me this, Counselor,” he said, after swallowing half the juice in one gulp. “With six major highways leaving Houston, not counting the Gulf Freeway to the coast, why would your friend choose to go through Oklahoma?” McGrue’s voice reminded Dixie of dead leaves scudding along a sidewalk.
    “Habit, mostly. Dann travels all over the state on sales calls, but his favorite route is 1-45 north. He’ll know the speed traps and the stretches where he can make the best time. He’ll know 1-59 is currently rerouted for construction. Forty-five is flat, multilane, easy traveling.”
    “Could head south.”
    “Could.” While she told him about Dann’s former residences in Montana and Calgary, and her lookouts along the Mexico border, McGrue took some time over the menu, finally settling on steak, four eggs, hash-brown potatoes, biscuits with gravy, a side of ham, and double apple pie à la mode for dessert. Dixie regarded the skin stretched tight over his rangy frame. Maybe it was true that grapefruit juice burned fat.
    “Dann was here in town as late as seven o’clock,” she said. “A neighbor saw him come home, stay a few minutes, then leave, carrying a couple of plastic grocery bags. I cruised his favorite hangouts. No sign of him or his car.” Dann’s Cadillac had been impounded after Betsy’s death. Now he drove a four-year-old Chevy sedan with a patched fender.
    “Might ditch the car,” McGrue drawled in his raspy voice.
    “Probably would, if he knew we were looking for him.”
    “Now it’s we , is it?” McGrue took a handful of Jolly Rancher candies out of his pocket and laid them on the table, lemon, sour apple, and one peach. He slid the peach across to Dixie with a bony finger, the nail glossy and perfectly trimmed. Then he thumbed the cellophane off a lemon candy and crunched rather than sucked it. The sound made Dixie’s teeth hurt.
    “I was hoping you’d put out a ‘suspicious vehicle’ watch,” she said, “along with a ‘do not attempt to apprehend,’ of course.” Asking the highway Patrol to watch for Dann’s car was her best bet for picking the