Show Me (Thomas Prescott 4), Nick Pirog [classic children's novels .TXT] 📗

had touched me in nearly seven months. She stood behind me, caressing my scalp with her fingernails.

Ahhhhh.

“What was his name?” she asked.

I was two-thirds to an orgasm, but somehow managed, “H-H-Harold H-H-H-Humphries.”

“He was your grandpa?”

She retook her seat, and I gave her a clipped version of the story. When I was finished, she said, “That’s amazing he found you.”

I nodded.

“And he was the last relative you had?”

“Yep, now it’s just me and my sister.”

She was silent a moment, then she dropped her fork. “I don’t know why it didn’t dawn on me earlier.”

“What?”

“Jerry.”

“Who?”

“Jerry Humphries!” she shouted. “I think you have a cousin here.”

“Bye, Harold. Bye, May.”

The piglets oinked their goodbyes.

I helped Caroline down the porch steps and asked, “You sure you’re okay to drive?”

“Oh yeah. I’m fine.”

She’d drank half the bottle of wine herself, but she appeared to have all her wits about her.

“I’m sorry again for letting your piglets out,” she said.

“It’s okay. I didn’t even know how attached I’d become until they were gone.”

“Well, they are cute, and far less beastly than I thought.”

“I’ll pass that on to them.”

We walked around to the back of the farmhouse where she’d parked in the dirt. Even at 10:00 p.m. the air was still heavy. Still hot. There was something about the sticky air that made it hard to focus. Made it easy to have a lapse in judgment. I bet teen pregnancy was higher in places with high humidity.

At her car, Caroline turned. “Let me know how it goes with Jerry. Like I said, he should be at the bank most days.”

“I will. And thanks for dinner. It was delicious. And you were right, you do make the best apple pie on the planet.”

She beamed and her fingers brushed against my forearm.

I never wanted to kiss and not kiss someone so badly in my life.

She took the decision out of my hands. She leaned forward and pushed her lips to mine. She raked her fingernails across my neck, then she slowly moved her mouth across my cheek.

“The things,” she whispered in my ear. “The things I will do.”

Chapter Twelve

“Is Jerry Humphries in?” I asked.

The bank was First Missouri National. Red brick. Two businesses down from the hardware store.

The prospect of having a relative living in Tarrin had been itching at me since Caroline mentioned it the previous night. It was a big fat mosquito bite in the middle of my kneecap.

The clerk, the first Asian person I was yet to encounter in Tarrin, shook his head and said, “He’s out for lunch.”

“Do you, by chance, know where he went?” I was planning on stopping to get a bite after the bank anyhow.

My mind was still in city mode—cynical, jaded, suspicious—and I was surprised when he answered candidly, “They usually hit the deli, but I heard he and Jim, that’s the manager, talking about going to Mexico. There is a great Thai place there.”

I still had a hard time not thinking of Mexico, as in south of the border, instead of the town of fifteen thousand, twenty minutes west on Highway 36.

I asked, “If I leave my number, could you have him give me a call?”

“Sure.”

I wrote my number and name on the back of a deposit slip, and he promised to deliver it to Jerry when he returned.

I left and walked down to Dina’s Dine-In. I looked for the pregnant waitress who let me use her phone, but she must have had the day off. Ten minutes later, I walked out with two club sandwiches and a bag of fries.

I had planned on eating both sandwiches, but I didn’t feel like eating alone—and technically it had been three days. So I decided to check in on Mike Zernan.

I made a couple wrong turns trying to find the place from memory, but when I did find it, his truck was parked out front.

It was closing in on 11:30 a.m. There was cloud cover, and it was ten degrees cooler than the previous day. Somehow the air felt stickier; perhaps the moisture was trapped by the clouds above. Still, it was pleasant enough, and I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t answer the door. He was probably out back, working on his hot rod.

I walked around the house.

The hot rod was sitting in the grass. The busted headlights had been swapped out for pristine halogens and they reflected a couple errant rays of sun shining through a break in the clouds.

Mike was nowhere to be seen.

I made my way to his back door and knocked.

Nothing.

I set the bag of food on a beach chair and moved to one of the windows. I screened my eyes and peered inside.

“Shit!”

Mike was on the floor in the kitchen. He must have passed out or had a heart attack.

I tried the back door, but it was locked. I threw my shoulder into the door, my adrenaline giving me the extra muscle to knock the door from its hinges.

“Mike!” I shouted, falling to my knees. He was on his right side, his left arm draped over his body.

I checked for a pulse more out of ingrained automation than checking for life. He was dead. And he didn’t die from a heart attack.

There were deep purple ligature marks on his neck.

He had been strangled.

“Did you touch anything?” Miller asked.

It was hard for me to look at him and not see the poor schmuck whom Wheeler had given her engagement ring back to not once but twice.

He was the first officer to respond, though I predicted the entire police force and half the town was en route.

Due to Officer Miller’s poor genetic makeup, the brim of his Tarrin Police Department issue baseball cap was hovering two inches from my chin.

“Do you really have to be so close?” I asked.

He reluctantly took a small step backward and repeated the question. “Did you touch anything?”

“I touched a lot of stuff.”

I don’t think he was expecting this. “What?”

“After I found him, I decided to whip up some risotto.”

His