“T.J., why would Coach Johnson pay out that kind of money to Rita?” We’re walking away from the barn so fast that I’m straining to catch my breath. Our footsteps and my heavy breathing sound out of place in the stillness around us.
T.J. sticks out his arm like a school-patrol fifth grader and stops me cold. “Wait,” he whispers, looking both ways before letting us cross the open barnyard. “Okay. Now!”
We tiptoe-trot, zigzagging like we’re dodging gunfire again. When we slow down, camouflaged by the tree-branch shadows, I ask him again. “Tell me! Why would Coach give Rita so much money?”
“I don’t know, Hope. You said Jeremy was a great stable hand.”
“Not that great! Nobody’s that great.” A dozen possible reasons for those checks fly through my head, none of them good. Was Rita having an affair with Coach Johnson? Her Jay Jay? She’d been staying out all night. Even the night before Coach’s murder, Rita hadn’t come home until after dawn.
T.J. takes my hand. “Don’t turn around, but we’re being watched.”
Immediately, I imagine that white pickup truck. I glance over my shoulder, expecting to see it, but I don’t see anything.
“I said, don’t look.” His grip tightens. It hurts a little, but I’m too scared to care.
“Is it the stalker?” I whisper, making my eyes focus straight ahead.
“It’s Caroline Johnson,” he whispers back. “We should have gotten out of there before she spotted us.”
I whirl around before he can stop me. In a lighted window of the old farmhouse, I make out the shadow of a woman in a dress, or maybe a nightgown. “She’s standing up! T.J., did you see-?”
He yanks me back around, jerks me up beside him, and keeps me there, one arm around my waist. He’s about ten times stronger than he looks. “Don’t let her see your face.”
I fall into step and do what T.J. says, but I know it’s too late. She’s seen us, and she’s seen us seeing her. She knows that we know. Everybody else believes poor Mrs. Johnson is bedridden, that she needs help getting in and out of her wheelchair. But we’ve seen her. “She can walk. Coach’s wife could have walked to the barn, T.J. She could have murdered her husband.”
“Yeah, but who’s going to believe we saw her?” he says, speeding up. His dad’s car is in sight now. “And who are we going to tell?”
“We can tell Chase. And he can tell his dad.”
“I can see that,” T.J. says, his voice filled with a sarcasm I didn’t know he had. “ ‘Dad, when Hope and T.J. were breaking into Coach’s office after ransacking the crime scene, they happened to see Caroline Johnson standing on her own two feet. So that proves she murdered her husband, right?’ I’m sure the sheriff will run straight over and arrest her-after patting us on the back for breaking and entering.”
I hate sarcasm. But I have to agree we’d be in a lot more trouble than Caroline Johnson if we told what we saw. And she knows it.
We reach the car and get in fast. T.J. starts the engine, then turns to me. “We’ll figure something out.” He backs up and wheels the car around without turning on the headlights. “Hope, what if Caroline knew about the money Coach was giving Rita?”
My brain hasn’t even gotten that far. “Do you think she did? Of course she did. She had to know, didn’t she? I mean, with him not making all that much money, and her not making any, and a thousand dollars going out each month? You can’t hide a thing like that. She would have known.”
“Uh-huh. And that would give her motive. I don’t know if she knew about her husband and Rita, or the money, but it’s got to be good enough for reasonable doubt.” The car hits a rut, and I remember to fasten my seat belt. T.J. still hasn’t turned on his headlights. I know he’s trying to get out without anybody seeing us.
“Plus,” I say, gripping the dash, “we’ve got those rejected loans. They give her a motive for killing her husband-money.”
“And the canceled checks,” T.J. adds. “All great stuff for giving her motive.”
“Motive, which is something Jeremy never had. Raymond has to get Caroline back on the stand and ask her about the money. Just asking her about it should give the jury reasonable doubt.”
T.J. is quiet for a minute. Then he glances over at me. “Only… only that means everybody will know about the money he paid to Rita. They’ll say things about Coach and Rita, whether they’re true or not, Hope.”
“Do you think I care if the world discovers Rita and Coach were having an affair, or worse? The only thing I care about is getting my brother out of jail.”
T.J. still hasn’t turned on the headlights. He quits talking and keeps taking peeks in the rearview mirror. I turn around and stare out the back window. Far behind us, about the length of a football field, I see two headlights, white eyes watching us through the darkness.
“T.J.!” Panic rises like bile in my throat.
“I know.” He touches my knee, then puts his hand back on the steering wheel. I don’t understand how he’s staying on this road without headlights. He must really be familiar with this part of Grain. The road winds one way, then the other, with no warning. He takes a turn, and for an instant there are no lights behind us. Then they pop up again. “Who’d be following us this time of night? If Mrs. Johnson called the police, they’d just arrest us and get it over with.”
“It’s the white pickup truck,” I mutter. When he frowns at me, I explain as fast as I can.
“Why didn’t you tell me somebody was following you?”
Because I told Chase. “I should have. What can we do now?”
He rolls down his window. A rush of humid air floods the car, bringing in clover and dust and a faint scent of skunk. “I’m pretty sure there’s a path up on the left,” he shouts above the wind. “I think we can lose him if I can find-There it is!”
He brakes, and we swerve left. Weeds slap the sides of the car. There’s a blur of fence, barbed wire. The car skids at a ditch and stops.
I look behind us in time to see a pickup speed by our turnoff. “He’s gone. You did it! You lost him.”
T.J. leans his forehead on the steering wheel. “I think I’m turning in my license.” He looks over at me. “Was it the pickup?”
“You didn’t see it?” My heart is clawing to get out of my chest. “It was definitely a pickup. I couldn’t tell the color, but it had to be the same one. Why would anybody do that?”
In almost a whisper, he says what I’ve already figured out. “Because somebody doesn’t want us investigating Coach’s murder.”
Rita’s car is gone when T.J. pulls up in front of my house. He insists on walking me to the door and checking inside before he leaves. We’re both so tired we can barely stand up. “See you in court,” he says, glancing at his watch. “In a couple of hours.” He starts down the sidewalk but turns back, hands in his pockets. “My dad needs the car again today. I asked Chase to give us a ride to court.”
“Okay.” I try to pretend like it doesn’t matter one way or the other. Then I race inside, and the first thing I do is text Chase. I can’t text everything I want to, but I get in the general outline of the night, knowing he won’t get the message for a couple of hours anyway.
Two minutes later, my cell rings. “Chase?”
“Hope, what did you do? Tell me I didn’t read your text right.”
I tell him about the loans, the checks, seeing Coach’s wife standing up, and about the white pickup truck. When I stop, he doesn’t say anything. “Chase? Don’t be mad. I had to do it. I needed to see the crime scene for myself.”
The silence is too long. Finally, he says, “I thought… I was going to tell you I couldn’t help you, that we shouldn’t see each other anymore.”
Something burns a hole in my chest. I don’t want it to matter. I don’t want him to matter.
“But I can’t,” he says.
“Can’t see me anymore?” I ask.
“Can’t stop seeing you.”
Neither of us says anything, and I picture our breaths traveling from cell tower to cell tower and back.
“Start over, Hope. At the beginning. Tell me everything.”
I do. I go into more detail this time.
When I’m done, he says, “Those checks? Hope, what do you think they mean?”
That’s what it comes back to-the checks made out to Rita. “I don’t know,” I tell him. “But as soon as Rita steps in the door, you can bet I’m going to find out.”