Crooked Little Lies by Barbara Taylor Sissel Page B

could find. “Is it possible JT saw Bo later in the week than you, that he could confirm what Bo was wearing?”
    Annie said she doubted it. “I don’t think he pays much attention to Bo’s clothes.”
    Until JT married her mom, he pretty much dressed Bo in whatever he could find at the Goodwill store. Bo was thrilled when Annie’s mom took him to JCPenney. Brand-new clothes , he kept saying. Shirts and pants no one else had worn. Annie remembered the care he’d shown afterward, folding them carefully when he took them off. Sometimes he’d slept in his favorites. Annie had rolled her eyes. She’d made fun of him and called him a dork. Why?
    Cooper said, “I’m pretty sure when I saw Bo on Friday he was wearing what Annie described.”
    “Gray pants, blue-plaid shirt.” The sheriff leaned back. “You say the car he got into was a Lincoln?”
    “Yeah. Town Car, maybe 2010, 2011. Black. I didn’t pay attention to the license plate, but the woman driving it was older. At least her hair was really white. I didn’t get any sense it was a dangerous situation, though. Bo got into the front passenger seat under his own power. He was talking a blue streak. You know how he goes on.”
    Sheriff Audi nodded.
    Annie’s cheeks warmed. The understanding of Bo that Cooper and the sheriff seemed to share seemed almost intimate. It made her want to defend Bo, to say You don’t know anything about him , even though it was clear there was nothing to defend, that they were only sorting through the facts, trying to find a direction, a way to help.
    “He and the woman were laughing,” Cooper said, “as if Bo was telling her jokes.”
    “Bo doesn’t joke,” Annie said.
    Both men looked at her.
    She thought of what JT had said, that as soon as you worked out Bo’s rules, he changed them. But Bo didn’t laugh easily or show much emotion, except when an animal or a person was hurt. When that happened, he felt it, too. She remembered the time Freckles was sick with some virus. Bo stayed up all night, holding him. She remembered when she had tonsillitis, he walked nearly a mile each way to the Baskin-Robbins because she loved their French-vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup the best. By the time he got home, the ice cream had softened, but that only made it better; all that melty, chocolate-swirled ice cream had felt so soothing and cool against her raw throat. She could still taste it, could still see how Bo sat on her bed beside her, how he cared that she hurt. It brought her to tears, remembering these things about him. She pressed her fingertips to her eyes.
    “What about a cell phone?” the sheriff asked. “Does Bo have one?”
    Annie lowered her hands and said he did, giving the sheriff the number. “Can you find him that way?” Her heart seized on this possibility, relating it to movies and shows she’d watched on television.
    “It’s possible, if the phone is on, or even if it isn’t, as long as—” The sheriff broke off.
    “As long as—” Annie prompted.
    “I think the battery has to be good, right?” Cooper asked.
    “Yeah. That’s why the sooner we get going, the better.”
    But that wasn’t the only reason. Annie could see by Sheriff Audi’s and Cooper’s expressions that it wasn’t. “You think someone might have done something to Bo; they might have taken his phone—” she began.
    The sheriff interrupted her. “We don’t know anything at this point, Annie.”
    “Do you have someone in mind?”
    “Can you think of anyone who might want to hurt him?”
    “You’re thinking of the drugs, aren’t you? That someone hurt him over drugs.”
    “I’m asking if you know of anyone who might have had a problem with Bo.” The sheriff’s gaze was gentle, so gentle and kind, Annie felt she might break beneath it.
    She looked into her lap. He knew as well as she did there were folks in town who had a problem with Bo. They didn’t like him walking in their neighborhoods or talking to their kids.