Day Shift

“Could you be here tomorrow at four, Mr. Bernardo?” Van Zandt asked, in the abstracted tone of someone looking at a schedule book and a computer screen. “She should be out of court by then.”

“Phil, here’s my situation. I live in Midnight, and I’ve got reporters camped outside my door. I can’t get out of my house without running the gauntlet. If I have to, I have to, but I really don’t want to do that. Is there any way Ms. Powell can come to my place?”

“I can just catch her. Hold on.” There was an electronic buzz. Then some music kicked on. It didn’t suck.

Phil was back in less than two minutes. “She can come to you on Monday at eleven,” he said. “Before you get all excited, let me tell you her fee.”

After a very practical discussion, finally Manfred understood his compulsion to work hard and save money, a compulsion that had driven him for the past few months.

It was so he could pay Magdalena Orta Powell.

7

Olivia needed to get groceries. She didn’t do a lot of cooking in her little apartment — microwaving was more her speed — but she was out of Windex and close to being out of toilet paper, and she’d gotten up with a hankering for a sliced apple and vanilla fruit dip. With no idea that anything odd was going on, she stepped out the side door of the pawnshop to get in her car, only to see a small crowd hovering outside Manfred’s place. The sheriff’s car was there, too.

She ducked right back inside. She stood fuming for a moment. Then she swiveled on her heel and went through the pawnshop door. Bobo was reading in his favorite chair, a veritable poor man’s throne upholstered in velvet. He was using his e-reader today, so she knew he was following his current program of reading one hundred great mystery and suspense novels. Olivia did not know who had created the list and how the selections had been picked, but she did admire Bobo’s faithfulness to his agenda.

“What’s going on out there?” she asked, jerking her thumb toward the rental house.

“Good morning to you,” Bobo said, putting his e-reader down reluctantly. “I’m on number twenty-seven, which happens to be Dorothy L. Sayers’s The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club.”

Olivia was not in the mood for Bobo’s cleverness. “What. Is. Going. On?” she demanded.

“Yes,” said Joe, coming in the front door just in time to hear her question. “What?”

“I stood out there and listened for a minute. Manfred’s been accused of being a jewel thief, and it’s been hinted that he killed the old lady,” Bobo said. “You should know more about it than I do, since I hear you were on the spot.” He gave Olivia a very level look.

“I had nothing to do with Manfred’s situation,” she said immediately. “Who’s accused him? Of stealing what?”

Bobo said, “I only know what I overheard the reporters saying when I put my trash can out at the curb. And I’ve told you that.”

Joe said, “I don’t believe it for a second. Manfred? Nahhh.”

Olivia fumed, though she kept it under a tight lid. She was smart enough about herself to know that she felt strongest and most effective in situations in which she could take control and take action. Not always the same thing… but often enough. “He didn’t do it,” she said.

“I agree with both of you,” Bobo said. “He’s an honest man in a charlatan’s job. I don’t think he had any more to do with that than he did the murder/suicide the same weekend. In the same hotel.”

There was a substantial silence.

Olivia scowled. She did not exactly feel guilty. But she didn’t feel happy, either. And she hated the proximity of the newspeople. The new proprietors of the hotel were bad enough. One reason she’d settled in Midnight was to avoid scrutiny… and because the place felt right. “I want this to go away,” she said, and she thought, I miss Lem.

Bobo nodded. “Sure,” he said. “I do, too.”

Olivia threw herself into a chair, a violently flowered padded rocker. Furniture that landed in the pawnshop tended to stay there. “So you’re seriously worried that he might be arrested?”

“Yeah, I am,” he said. “I don’t think he’s guilty of anything, but the appearance of… well, being a psychic, that looks fraudulent. No matter what the truth is about that, it’s not right for him to be accused by the son of this woman he was trying to help. For another thing, the reporters are going to be coming in and out of town as long as there’s a story, and now they even have a place to stay right here in town, if the story gains traction. And they’ll be dragging up Aubrey’s murder and the Lovells’ disappearance.” The Lovell family had run Gas N Go prior to their sudden departure from Midnight. Aubrey Hamilton, Bobo’s former girlfriend, had been found dead in a riverbed north of town.