Free Where the Bones are Buried by Jeanne Matthews

lessons. But designated lanes and paper targets hadn’t prepared her for a real-life encounter.
    They stepped aboard a flat-bottomed, open-air foot ferry with rows of benches occupied mostly by young couples taking advantage of what would probably be one of the last mild evenings before winter set in. They cuddled and necked in the gathering dusk. Lohendorf made his way toward the stern and she followed. They sat down together on a vacant bench and he reached inside his jacket. “Care for a cigarette?”
    â€œNo, thanks. I’m trying to quit.”
    He lit one for himself. “Smoking is banned on public transport, but in the open air, I don’t think it will offend.” He had a clean-cut, angular face with a sharp nose and a Dick Tracy chin. His physiognomy telegraphed his occupation in spite of his plain, but obviously expensive, clothes. He exhaled a brume of smoke across the slate-colored water. “How long have you known the woman who is traveling with your mother?”
    â€œMargaret?” She’d been so wrought up about her mother that she’d almost forgotten about Margaret. “I’ve known her since I was a child. She and my mother were married to the same man, at different times, of course. Cleon Dobbs. He left Margaret to marry my mother and a few years later, my mother left Cleon to marry my father.”
    â€œLike an American soap opera.”
    â€œYou’ve got that right. Lots of intersecting storylines, bare-fisted discord, and sexual dramas.”
    He laughed. “Not a boring family.”
    â€œI used to pray for boring. We all lived in the same small town, shopped at the same stores, went to the same beaches, attended the same football games, socialized on holidays.” She was babbling. If she didn’t shut up, she’d start running on about the pet rabbit she got when she was ten, the same year Cleon murdered her father hoping to get Swan back. Shit, and she shouldn’t have mentioned Cleon by name, although he obviously knew. He probably had a dossier on the old devil. She said, “I’ve changed my mind about that cigarette.”
    He reached into his pocket, shook out a Lucky Strike, and lit it with his B ic .
    She took a drag and quieted down.
    â€œMr. Dobbs must have been a remarkable man.”
    â€œYou could say that.”
    â€œMargaret Dobbs killed him in two thousand and ten in Australia. Do have any concern that she might also wish to harm your mother?”
    Dinah flinched. He really did have a dossier. “Margaret was tried and acquitted. She poses no danger to my mother or anyone else.”
    â€œI mean no disrespect. As I’m sure Thor has told you, the police have a duty to be aware of persons with reckless pasts.”
    She offered no reply.
    The ferry lurched away from the dock and she braced one hand against the rail. Somebody at the other end turned on a boom box and a pulsating electro beat drowned out conversation. She was glad for the interruption. All she could think about was her mother, who could broaden Lohendorf’s definition of recklessness by an order of magnitude. That she would try to blackmail a man like Hess defied all reason. Dinah prayed that she could latch onto her at the powwow before Hess found her. She ground out her cigarette and focused on the fringe of trees in the distance.
    Lohendorf pulled a photograph out of his pocket. “Do you recognize this man?”
    It was a bland, middle-aged face, nothing unusual or out of proportion except for a rather narrow, ridge-like nose. His mouth was set in a grim line—the mouth of a man who didn’t laugh much. “No. Who is he?”
    â€œA person of interest. I thought you might have seen him in your neighborhood.”
    Perhaps he was a known racist and Lohendorf suspected him of planting the doll. She was up to her eyeballs in “persons of interest.” She couldn’t worry about another just now.
    The wind