The Taking of Libbie, SD (Mac McKenzie #7)

“It’s your town, honey. I’m just following your lead.”

“Must you call me honey?”

The question jolted me, serving notice that I had been behaving like a jerk ever since the chief removed the cuffs. Maybe I had cause. My head continued to throb; I was still naked except for my spoiled shorts and apparently a figure of some curiosity and amusement according to the expressions of the people who walked or drove by. Plus, I wasn’t altogether sure where I was or how I was going to get home. Yet I could hear the old man admonishing me when I was a kid playing ball and I had a bad day at the plate. “That’s no excuse for poor manners,” he’d say.

“I apologize,” I said. “I won’t do it again.”

Tracie blinked hard. I don’t know if it was because of the sun or because she was startled by my response.

“You mentioned a hotel,” I said.

“Just up the street.”

“Here, let me carry those.”

I took the two shopping bags filled with my purchases from her hands. Tracie blinked again.

“Something else?” I said.

“I keep comparing you to Rush. He was very polite, very considerate—he seemed like a nice man. Looking back, I realize now that it was all for show. You, on the other hand—you don’t seem like a nice man at all, and yet you were angry when Mr. Miller hit his daughter, and what you said about Chuck … Who are you, McKenzie?”

“Well, I’ll tell you. I don’t know if I let a week go by when I don’t ask myself that same question.”

Sharren Nuffer grinned when we went through the front doors of the Pioneer Hotel, and she kept grinning as Tracie and I approached the registration desk. Her tumbled-down, chemically enhanced hair resembled raw blue-black silk, and her rich tan reached all the way to the valley between her breasts, which she displayed beneath a black sleeveless shirt. Apparently she didn’t like buttons, because she used only a couple of them and they were straining to keep her shirt closed.

“How many times do I have to tell you, Tracie,” she said. “We don’t rent by the hour.”

“You’re hysterical, Sharren,” Tracie said.

Sharren must have agreed, because she laughed long and hard. When she finished, she waved a slender hand at me and said, “Seriously, what is this all about?”

“I need a room for McKenzie here,” Tracie said.

“McKenzie? Rushmore McKenzie? You’re not Rushmore McKenzie.”

“Actually, I am,” I said. Sharren looked like she didn’t believe me. “It’s a long story.”

“Tell me,” she said.

I didn’t, but Tracie did. Only the way she told it, what had happened to me since four forty-five that morning didn’t seem like anything to get excited about.

“I knew Rush,” Sharren said.

“Did you know him well?” I said.

Sharren hesitated before she answered. “As well as I could.”

She’s the first person you should talk to, my inner voice told me. I literally shook the thought from my head. Who said I’m staying? I asked myself.

It took some wrangling, yet Tracie managed to book a room using Miller’s credit card—eighty-nine dollars a night. Sharren procured my key from a row of boxes behind the desk, a real key, not a plastic card. While they went at it, I looked around. From the outside, the Pioneer seemed almost quaint, a dignified redbrick Victorian with three floors and no elevator. Yet the inside had an air of quiet dissipation. The reception area was crammed with faded couches, armchairs, and marble-top tables with ceramic figurines, ashtrays, fake Roman busts, and lamps with shades fringed with tassels. It didn’t seem old-fashioned as much as it seemed merely old.

After checking in, I carried the key and my shopping bags to the worn-carpeted staircase. Tracie tried to follow. I stopped her at the base of the stairs.

“This is where I draw the line,” I said.

“But—” Tracie said.

“No buts.”

“Ahh,” said Sharren. “Too bad, so sad.”

She said it with a smile, yet it was obvious that the two women did not like each other. It was equally obvious that they were very much alike.

Tracie frowned. “Dinner? Say in an hour?”

“Make it an hour and a half. I have calls to make.”

Tracie was looking at Sharren when she said, “There’s a diner down the street.”

“We serve a very nice filet if you want real food,” Sharren said. “Perhaps you’d care for room service.”

Sharren batted her long, fake eyelashes at me, but I assumed that was for Tracie’s benefit. The way I looked—seriously, not even an aging divorcée in Libbie, South Dakota, could be that hard up.

“Where is the diner?” I asked.

“Café Rossini,” Tracie said. “Out the door and to the left.”

“I’ll meet you there.”

“Ninety minutes.” Tracie turned and left the hotel, but not before throwing Sharren a triumphant smirk.

Sharren smirked back.