Free Midnight Crossroad (Midnight, Texas #1) by Charlaine Harris Page B

of clothes and shoes. Her grandmother’s sewing machine was still upstairs in the apartment, because he couldn’t box it. He’d intended to carry it down and put it in the closet, but somehow he never had.
    And no one had ever come to claim her things, so there in the storage room the taped boxes remained. He was sure that someday she’d want her stuff, and she’d tell him where to send it.
    It had been an awful long time, though. His faith that he’d hear from her was beginning to fade.
    On his optimistic days, Bobo reverted to his first theory: Aubrey had had to rush away in response to a sudden message, and while she was on this mysterious errand, something happened to her, something that prevented her return. She would walk in the door tomorrow, perhaps with a bandage on her head, or in a wheelchair, and explain everything. Though Bobo knew it was foolish to cling to this fantasy, especially as time went by, he did so nonetheless.
    On his worst days, Bobo was convinced that some trait of his own had deeply repulsed Aubrey, repulsed her to the point where she’d not even wanted to speak to him again, to the point where leaving all her clothes and jewelry and her grandmother’s sewing machine had been preferable to dealing with him one more time.
    He couldn’t see a mirror while he was thinking about this, and that was a good thing. Bobo looked ten years older when he thought about Aubrey.
    Bobo knew both his theories were bullshit.
    Luckily, the shop bell rang, bringing him out of this valley of conjecture. He stepped out of the storage room, relocking it as he went, and hurried to the front of the pawnshop. A woman in her fifties was at the door, and ignoring the C LOSED sign. She was carrying a stuffed parrot.
    Bobo let her in and gave her thirty dollars for the bird. He was fairly certain, from her haste to be rid of it, that the parrot was going to be his for keeps. It would join the others. To Olivia’s amusement, Bobo had accumulated quite a menagerie of deceased creatures. He’d arranged them all tastefully in one corner of the pawnshop, so they had their own little area. Olivia had suggested he rig a tape recorder behind a raccoon, which had been posed rearing on its hind legs with a book in its hand (
The Wind in the Willows
). She’d had a number of suggestions for remarks the raccoon could make when shoppers were standing in front of it.
    Bobo hadn’t gotten that bored yet.

7
    M anfred was hunched at his computer, telling a woman in Reno that her husband was uncertain about the location of a wristwatch she’d given him the year before he died—and why the hell was a bereaved widow fixated on finding a damn wristwatch?—when there was a knock on the door.
    This was unusual, especially in the morning. Manfred assumed his caller would be Fiji, either bringing him something she’d baked or asking him to attend another wedding—though since the first time she’d visited, Fiji had been careful to call in advance. When he opened the door, he was looking at a woman he’d never seen before. She was in her forties, stout, wearing what Manfred characterized vaguely as an office pantsuit. She had a business card in her fingers.
    “Yes?” Manfred said, in a none-too-friendly voice.
    “Hi, I’m Shoshanna Whitlock,” the woman said, smiling in a professional way. “Here’s my card.” She thrust it at Manfred, who took it and stared at it.
    “A private detective?” he said. “What do you need from me?”
Nothing good,
he concluded.
    “May I come in?” Her chin, which was definitely on the aggressive side, led the way forward, but Manfred didn’t move. She stopped, thwarted in her progress.
    “I don’t think so,” Manfred said. “I work at home, and I don’t like to be interrupted.”
    “I’ll only take a moment of your time,” she said, her eyes crinkling at the corners with the force of her sincerity. “I just want to ask you a few questions on behalf of my clients. Would it help if I