No Way Home by Patricia MacDonald

on you. Ronnie Lee Partin is a desperate criminal, and it is my best estimate that your daughter crossed his path at a very bad moment and became his victim. I believe that when we are able to apprehend Mr. Partin, we will have our killer.”
    “Well, go ahead and apprehend him then,” Lillie said, thrusting the piece of paper at him on which Debbie had printed a Kentucky address. “This is where you’ll find him.”
    Wallace took the paper from her and looked at it suspiciously. “Where’d you get this?”
    “I told you. I can’t say. I got it from someone who knows that Ronnie Lee did not kill Michele and only wants to prove it.”
    Wallace studied the address with a sour expression on his face.
    “As I understand it, the sheriff never has believed that Ronnie Lee was the one,” said Lillie.
    Wallace shrugged. “With all due respect, ma’am, the sheriff is preoccupied with his own problems, he’s overworked, and he ain’t getting any younger. He may not be the ideal one to decide.”
    “He’s just saying what makes sense,” Lillie insisted. “Ronnie Lee Partin had no reason to kill my daughter.”
    “Miz Burdette,” Wallace said, shaking his head. “You have to be around these people to comprehend what they are like. They don’t need a reason for what they do. The best reason any of them need in this world is that they have consumed a bottle of whiskey and they just feel like it. Do you know,” he continued, warming to his subject, “that not three weeks ago we arrested the Boynton brothers, and do you know why? Because they shared a bottle of moonshine and then they went out in Buddy Boynton’s boat with shotguns and they went speeding across Crystal Lake, shooting at anything that moved on the shoreline. They thought that was a real good time.”
    “So maybe Buddy Boynton killed my daughter,” said Lillie. “Don’t you see what you’re saying? It could have been anybody with the price of a bottle of bourbon.”
    “Now don’t get all upset,” Wallace said stiffly.
    Lillie sighed in exasperation as the waitress, a chubby girl with bleached blond curls piled up on her head, came by. “Y’all want anything else?”
    “Check,” said Wallace. He peered at the piece of paper and then at Lillie. “If we do find Partin at this address, you’re going to have to tell us where you got this.”
    “And you’re going to have to come up with a killer,” Lillie snapped back at him.
    Wallace stood up from the counter stool. “I’ll be in touch with Mr. Burdette or yourself on this.”
    “Good,” Lillie said coolly. She knew the deputy was offended and she didn’t care. She wished she could have spoken to Royce, but there was no time to waste. She didn’t care what Wallace Reynolds thought. Royce would be grateful for the information, and he would be relieved to have Ronnie Lee Partin locked up again. But it was no wonder, she thought, that Debbie was afraid to talk to them. You could be treated like a criminal just for trying to help.
    And, of course, it was no wonder Wallace resisted this new wrinkle. It put them all back where they started from. They had no killer and no information. If only someone would come forward, she thought, as Debbie had. And then she realized, as she thought about it, that perhaps there was something more she could do.
    Lillie heard the anxious note in Pink’s voice as he called out, “Lillie, I’m back. Where are you?”
    “I’m in here,” she called out. “In the den.”
    Pink came to the door and looked in warily, as if reluctant to see what condition she might be in.
    “Come on in,” she said. She was seated cross-legged in the middle of the floor of the den on a hooked rug she had made one winter when Michele was in the hospital with pneumonia and she was sitting up with her. On the floor around Lillie were photo albums, and all of the recent photos of Michele were out of their sleeves and piled up on her lap.
    “What are you doing there, honey?”