Riding the Thunder - Deborah MacGillivray [79]
“Yeah, Old Edgar was a bootlegger. Not that I know much about him, mind. A bit before my time. Delbert has talked about him once or twice. He and his wife lived in the house. He built it himself on the corner of her mother’s land. Mommy dearest owned a big antebellum house on top of the hill, and when she died, Edgar and the missus moved up there. Long gone now. Burned down. After they moved up to the manor, they decided to turn the old house into a moneymaking venture. He built that old pavilion on the back side for a skating rink. He would haul in a trunk-load of beer and bourbon on the weekends. Was a big thing around here. Casey’s was miles outside of the city limits, so there wasn’t much they could do about it. No one cared. They kept it respectable. Why would that upset Asha?”
“Not sure. Know anyone with a black pickup—good condition, but not too new? I don’t know trucks well enough to know the year or model.”
“Dozens. A lot of farms have them. A lot of older people still have them—original owners. Oo-it drives one. Why?”
“Colin came to mind. You think Colin might want to harm Asha?”
“Enough with these questions. Oo-it wouldn’t harm a fly, let alone Asha. He might kill for her, might die for her, but he wouldn’t touch a hair on her head in malice.”
“I thought of Colin first thing, and asked Asha. He loves her, you know. I wondered if he might be upset about me in her life.”
“Gor.” Liam paused several heartbeats to half drain the glass of lemonade. “You’ve seen too many movies. You can rule out Oo-it.”
Jago sighed. “She said the same thing, that he wouldn’t harm her. Sorry to be so vague. We were on the bike and I noticed—at least I thought—someone might be following us. The afternoon sun tends to throw long shadows where the trees are heaviest. In a helmet, it was hard to spot at first. Something kept catching my eye, just out of sight of my rearview mirror. Then as I took one turn, I finally got a look. Black Ford pickup. ’60s, maybe early ’70s. I couldn’t see it well enough. Then suddenly it roared up, bearing down on us. I was doing the speed limit, trying to take it easy on Asha since it was her first time, but I kept having to speed up. Then it seemed as if he was pushing us. It got rather dicey, so when I spotted a small lane I zoomed into that.”
“Okay, I concede that a hair-raising ride from being chased by some jerk would account for Asha coming back to the farm scared.”
“She wasn’t the only one. I got the sense this guy was out for trouble. Of course, that was just my impression. I might be wrong.” Jago shrugged. “I couldn’t see anything the way the afternoon sun kept bouncing off his windshield. Then he sped on past. That’s when we found the old house and rink. The damned place is so overgrown with briars you can’t really see it from the road. Yet, Asha went straight to it.”
“I’m not sure she ever knew about it. As I said, that was a bit before her time.”
The pie he was eating suddenly turned bitter in Jago’s mouth. “Yes . . . and no.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Liam reached for the pitcher, pouring more lemonade.
“Asha went to the house as if she knew precisely where she was heading. For a moment, she paused at the front, but then her interest was pulled to the rear. She circled to the back and found it partially opened. Almost in a trance, she went into the rink area. Very spooky. She began telling me about the rink, how it had been decorated with Christmas lights strung around the railing. I didn’t see any still up, though I did find rusty bent nails as if someone had tacked something to the old handrail. She talked about them playing music, the girls skating, the males watching . . . couples sat on the hoods of their cars taking the night air. The way she talked about it—well, it was as if she had been to the rink back then. No, that’s not right. In that breath, it was as though she could see it—as though a part of her was there.”
“She’s never been there,