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her temple gently. She closed her
eyes, but she held it together. “I’ll stop by the office tomorrow morning,” he
said, directing the statement at Buddy. “I’ve got plenty of experience dodging
Sheriff Jennings. No reason I can’t do it one more time.”
    Mae
took a deep, steadying breath, and stood with a shaky smile. “Thank you. That’s
all I’m askin’. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna round up the kids and head
to bed myself.” She looked at me. “I made up the guest room for you and that
pup of yours, Erin. Diggs, you mind bunking with the boys? Wyatt never did like
folks sharing a room without a ring—you understand. I hope that’ll be all
right.”
    We
both nodded quickly. “That’ll be fine,” Diggs said.
    “Rick
snores,” Mae continued. “And Danny—well, I don’t think that boy goes to bed
before three most nights, and we’re lucky if we can haul him up by noon.”
    “Takes
after his uncle,” George said, eyeing Diggs. “Wouldn’t know he had any Durham blood in him at all.”
    Mae
laughed. “He’s right. Rick’s already got everything figured out—he did a
project last year over to Smithfield, ended up gettin’ in early. He starts this
summer. And he did a project over to city hall for their plannin’ office,
mapping out the Underground Railroad here in Kentucky. Folks said he found
stuff under Justice that nobody even knew was there.
    “But
Danny,” she continued. “Wy says it all the time: ‘If I didn’t know any better,
Maisie, I’d think Diggs slipped it to you one day while I was out of town.’ ”
She stopped. Realization dawned in that cruel, cutting way it does in the days
after you lose someone. “He said , I mean,” she finished. “Wyatt said it
all the time.”
    “I
know what you meant,” Diggs said. He kissed her forehead. “Go get some sleep.
And let Uncle Diggs here take care of Danny for you—I’ll get him straightened
out in no time.”
    She
looked doubtful, but she didn’t argue.
    After
she left, George poured drinks all around and raised a toast to Wyatt.
    The
night’s kind of a blur after that.

Chapter Four
DIGGS
     
    “So,
next thing I hear on the police scanner,” George said, in fine form between
half a jug of his best moonshine and the captive audience of me, Buddy
Holloway, and especially Solomon, “Sheriff Jennings has Diggs’ motel room
surrounded, and the police are ordering him out of there with his hands up…”
    “Which
he does.” Buddy picked up the story while Solomon followed along, rapt. I
grimaced, knowing all too well what came next. “But when he comes out, it’s
without so much as a stitch on—naked as the day he come into this world. And of
course we all know the sheriff’s wife’s in there, too, but there ain’t no way
old Harvey Jennings is gonna be humiliated by risking Mrs. Jennings comin’ out
in her altogethers, too.”
    We’d
been through a few of these stories by now. Bringing Solomon along for this
trip down amnesia alley didn’t seem nearly as good an idea as it had when it
first occurred to me.
     She
shook her head at me. “I can’t believe you slept with the sheriff’s wife.
You’re such a tool.”
    “In
my defense,” I said, “my marriage had just broken up, I’d finished off two
pints of Jameson’s on my own that morning, and—while I don’t have a clear
picture of exactly what happened in that motel room—I’m pretty sure it didn’t
involve much sleeping.”
    “Besides
that,” George interrupted, “if anybody deserved it, it was the sheriff. Harvey
Jennings is a bully, and an ass to boot.”
    Buddy
nodded. “You got a point there. If I remember right, Sarah Jennings paid
through the nose for that night.”
    “The
sheriff went after her?” Solomon asked, no longer so amused.
    “’Bout
near killed her,” George said. I remained quiet, my gaze on the floor, thinking
back to days I’d been trying to put behind me for awhile now.
    “’Course,
that meant Diggs here