Free Last Light by C. J. Lyons Page B

County.”

 
     

 
 
 
Chapter 10
     
     
    LUCY WANTED A chance to absorb the mountain of information from the case files and she did her best thinking alone, so, after their initial session exploring the case, she ordered a steak and potato to go, and left TK and David at the Sweetbriar.
    It would still be light for a few hours and she couldn’t face being trapped inside her hotel room, so she found a cool corner beneath the shade of an umbrella at the pool behind the motel to eat her dinner while reading twenty-nine-year-old police reports on her laptop. The pool was empty except for two boys, both preschool-aged, splashing in the shallow section and a mother who watched them from a deck chair.
    “Are you trapped here as well?” asked the mother, a pretty woman in her twenties with Asian features. She moved to join Lucy. Lucy suppressed a sigh. So much for some alone time.
    “It’s been almost a week for us.” She eyed Lucy’s laptop. “The police let you keep that?” Her tone was colored with suspicion. “How’d you work that out?”
    Lucy chewed on her bite of steak as she pieced together what the woman was asking. The boys weren’t in swimming trunks, just regular shorts, and the woman’s capris and blouse appeared rumpled as if she’d worn them for more than a day. But it was the abject despair rimming her eyes that said it all.
    Forfeiture.
    “Lucky,” Lucy answered. “What did they take from you?”
    “Everything. The station wagon, all our stuff, traveler’s checks, phones, even the kids’ Gameboys. I don’t care what their damn radar said, we weren’t speeding. And they lied, no one resisted arrest. All Paul did was ask why we were pulled over. How’s that resisting?”
    “Is he in jail?”
    She nodded, glancing at the boys and dropping her voice. “Until my folks can bring us the money to get him out. The police said they’d drop the charges once we pay the fine, but I don’t know what we’re going to do without a car. We were on our way to Dallas to start his new job, but now they’ll probably fire him and get someone else.” Her voice broke and she covered her face.
    Lucy left her dinner and closed her laptop, then moved to sit beside the woman on the chaise lounge. She positioned herself between the mother and her sons, hoping the boys wouldn’t see their mother’s breakdown. She wrapped an arm around the woman’s shoulders and let her sob it out. Finally, the woman looked up, wiping her face on the sleeve of her blouse. “I’m sorry. I don’t even know your name.”
    “Lucy.”
    “Hi. I’m Augusta. Those are my boys, Henry and Philip.” Augusta beamed proudly at her sons.
    “Nice to meet you, Augusta. A week is a long time to be cooped up here, no one to talk to, worrying.”
    “Nothing like this has ever happened to us before. Paul is so ashamed—I can only visit him once a day and he won’t let me bring the boys, says he doesn’t want them to see their father like that, behind bars. I don’t know how he’ll ever face my parents. He hates owing money to anyone. But without a job—”
    “When was he supposed to start?”
    “Next week.”
    “You’ll be there by then. You said your parents are coming to get you?”
    She nodded. “My father. He should be here tomorrow—had to drive all the way from Florida.”
    Lucy hugged her. “See? It will work out. When’s the last time you and the boys had a decent meal?”
    Augusta flushed and looked away. “They get breakfast here and I take them to the place down the street for lunch—kids eat free for lunch—then I bring home a doggie bag for their dinner.”
    Translation: she was feeding her sons but not herself.
    “No leftovers tonight,” Lucy declared. “How about if you do me a favor and finish my steak—it’s way overcooked for my taste—while I go get us all a pizza? I hate to see food go to waste and I’m starving. Would you do me the favor of keeping me company? It’s hard being so far from