Divine Evil

Bud rubbed his hands over his hair. “She wouldn't just leave, Cam. Not without letting me know.”
    “Okay, we'll check things out. Why don't you take the bathroom?”
    Cam opened the rest of the drawers, took them out, looked behind and beneath. He tried not to think of Sarah as a person, not to remember her the way she had been all those years ago. Or the way she had looked the last time he'd seen her. Odds were she'd gotten fed up and taken off. When she ran out of money, she'd be back.
    But as he looked through the empty drawers of the vanity, he kept remembering the phone call on Sunday night.
    They're killing her.
    Taped to the back of the bottom vanity drawer, he found a wad of bills folded into a Baggie. The sickness in his stomach increased as he counted them out.
    “She left half a bottle of face cream and some—” Bud paused in the bathroom doorway. “What's that?”
    “I found it taped to the drawer. Bud, there's four hundred and thirty-seven dollars here.”
    “Four hundred?” Wide and helpless, Bud's eyes focused on the bills. “She's been saving. Saving so she could move. Cam, she'd never have gone away without that money.” His gaze lifted to Cam's even as he lowered himself to the edge of the bed. “Oh, Christ. What are we going to do?”
    “We're going to call the State boys and put out an APB. And we're going to talk to your mother.” He slipped the plastic bag of money into his pocket. “Bud, did Sarah have something going with Parker before he left town?”
    “Parker?” Bud looked up blankly, then flushed. “I guess maybe she did. Jesus, Cam, you can't think she went down to Florida to be with Parker. She used to make fun of him. It wasn't like she had a thing for him. It was just that he … She was saving,” he murmured.
    “Did she ever tell you anything about him? Like that he belonged to a club?”
    “A club? You mean like the Moose or something?”
    “Or something.”
    “He used to hang out at the Legion. You know that. I'm telling you, she wouldn't have gone to Parker. She could barely stand him. She wouldn't have left here, left her money and her family and gone to Parker.”
    “No, I know that.” He put a hand on Bud's shoulder. “Bud, who else did she sleep with?”
    “Jesus, Cam.”
    “I'm sorry. We have to start somewhere. Was there anyone who gave her a hard time, kept after her?”
    “Davey Reeder kept asking her to marry him. She laughed about that. Oscar Roody used to pretend a lot, but he never came up here that I know. Sarah said he was scared of his wife. Lots of others, I guess. She said that most of the upstanding citizens of Emmitsboro and thetri-state area had been upstanding in here. She talks like that, but it doesn't mean anything.”
    “Okay. Why don't we go make those calls?”
    “Cam, you think something's happened to her? Something bad?”
    Sometimes a lie was best. “I think she probably got riled and headed out. Sarah always acts first and thinks later.”
    “Yeah.” Because he had nothing else, Bud clung to that. “She'll come back when she's cooled off and sweet-talk Clyde into giving her her job back.”
    But when they left the tiny room behind, neither of them believed it.
    Joleen Butts sat at her kitchen table busily making lists. It was the first time in weeks she'd taken an afternoon off. But then, midweek afternoons were slow, and she figured Will could spare her.
    It wasn't every day your son graduated from high school.
    She was concerned by the fact that Ernie showed no interest in college. But she tried not to make too much of it. After all, she hadn't gone to college either, and things had turned out just fine. Will had pictured Ernie with an MBA and was bitterly disappointed. But then, he'd never really gotten over the fact that Ernie refused to work in the pizza parlor after school.
    Both she and Will had built themselves up for that fall, she decided. They'd worked so hard trying to make a success out of the place so that they could bring Ernie into a thriving business. And he preferred to pump gas.
    Well, the boy was nearly eighteen. By his age, she'd certainly dished out plenty of disappointment to her parents.She just wished … Joleen set her pen aside. She just wished her son would smile more.
    She heard him come in the front and brightened instantly. It had been so long since they had sat and talked in the kitchen. Like the old days, when he'd come home from school and they'd had cookies and worked on long