EIGHT

EIGHT

DARLENE FARRADAY BURSTS INTO a laugh, liking Tommy's wisecrack, though her amusement is probably fueled more by alcohol than by Tommy's sense of humor.

"I haven't done this since … wow, since college," she says. "Getting food after the bars."

Tommy and Darlene are at a truck-stop diner just off the interstate, only a few blocks away from Hemingway's Pub. Darlene's Jeep and Tommy's rental sedan are the only vehicles in the lot that don't have at least eight wheels.

"I'm not keeping you up, I hope?"

"The salon opens late on Tuesdays," she says. "So a Monday night is like a Saturday night to me."

"A salon? You do hair?"

Darlene Farraday is the co-owner of A Hair Out of Place, a salon she opened fourteen years ago. But Tommy's not supposed to know that.

"Sure do. I could give you a free haircut before you leave town if you'd like. I'd offer to color it, too, but I wouldn't dream of changing that hair of yours."

"Ah, yes, the carrot top. A curse more than a blessing."

"Do you have any idea how many of my clients would kill to have red hair? It's distinctive. Especially on a man."

Flirting with me, Darlene? Tommy can't tell. She's divorced, another thing he isn't supposed to know. He wouldn't mind going a round or two with her, especially if it would loosen her tongue.

"Well, I lucked out tonight," he says. "I can't find much for background on Marcie Bowers or David Bowers. And here I run into a sorority sister of Marcie's."

"I think I'm the one who lucked out," she says. "I wouldn't have the first idea how to change a tire."

"Oh, that was nothing."

"It wasn't nothing to me. Not at one in the morning. But I'm not sure I've been much help about Marcie. We aren't in touch as much as we used to be. All I can tell you is what I already said. She was super smart and serious, and she wanted out of HG."

Right, but the way Darlene's saying it — same way she said it earlier, when they first discussed Marcie — suggests resentment. Like Marcie thought she was too good for the town or something.

"But she got out," he says. "And then she came back."

"She came back because her mother was dying and her father was already gone. Basically, hospice care for her mother."

"Right, but then she stayed. That's what I find interesting. She didn't go back to Chicago. She stayed in Hemingway Grove."

Darlene shrugs. "Lot of people end up back here after exploring the world for a while. It's a good place to raise kids."

Tommy sits back in his chair. "Unfortunately, that's not interesting."

"It's not … interesting?"

"I mean, my editors want a human-interest piece, right? Everybody knows David rescued that man from the river. Everyone's seen that video. For my profile to have any legs, I need something personal."

"You mean, like … scandalous?" she asks. She looks away, a mischievous curl to her lips.

Now we're getting somewhere . Darlene has a thought. He can tell. And he can tell she wants to tell him.

"Was there something that happened at her law firm in Chicago, maybe?" he asks. "She represented a lot of white-collar criminals …"

Darlene shakes her head. She seems to have lost touch with Marcie around that time, after college. She stares into her coffee cup. She's thinking. Considering.

The best thing Tommy can do is stay quiet.

Finally, Darlene looks up at him. "Would this be off the record or whatever?"

"Whatever you want."

She nods, eager, he thinks, to spill. "Well, some people thought she came back for Kyle."

She means Kyle Janowski, Marcie's old flame, her high school sweetheart, currently a cop in Hemingway Grove. But Tommy plays dumb.

"But some of us," says Darlene, "we thought it had something to do with her job at the fancy law firm. She said it was time for a change, but isn't that what you say when something went wrong? I mean, Marcie was so ambitious, and she was in this big-time law firm doing big-time things, and suddenly she drops everything. But she wouldn't talk about it."

Tommy nods.

I'll bet she wouldn't, he thinks.