Naked Prey

window—somebody looking to see who’d pulled in—and when he got none, climbed out of the car and walked over to the shop and tried the door. The door was locked, as it should be after dark on Saturday.
    Still, the lights. He walked around the side of the building and peeked through a window, and found a meeting: Gene Calb, Ruth and Katina Lewis, and a black man that Singleton had never seen before. Both women had taken their coats off, as if they’d been there a while. The black man was leaning back in an office chair, idly swiveling a few inches from left to right.
    Singleton watched for a while, but couldn’t hear anything. Why had they left him out? Were they suspicious?
    He eventually crunched back around to the Caddy, climbed inside, rolled back to get square with the overhead door, and punched the garage-door opener. As the door went up, he eased the Caddy inside, punched the remote again, and as the door started back down, got out of the car.
    Calb and Katina were standing by the corner of the bay, Calb with a cup of coffee in his hand. “Hey, come on back. We’re having an argument.”
    “Who’s we?” Singleton asked.
    “Me and Shawn Davis and Ruth and Katina,” Calb said. “Shawn came up from KC. You heard about the Sorrell thing?”
    “On the radio, a while ago,” Singleton said. “What do you think?”
    “That’s what we’re arguing about,” Katina said. “I tried calling you but didn’t get an answer.”
    “Been running around,” Singleton said. He looked at the bridge of her nose, rather than in her eyes, so she wouldn’tsee the lie in his eyes. And he thought: Okay. They tried to call him, so they weren’t cutting him out.
    He started past her, but she caught his arm and stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek and asked, “You busy tonight?”
    “I sure got some time if you do,” he said. She stepped ahead of him and he touched her on the butt.
    Inside the office, Calb introduced him to Davis: Davis was a tough-looking forty-five, not impressed by much. He lifted a hand and nodded, and Singleton gave him his best grim cowboy look. “You got any special insight into this mess?” Davis asked him in a twangy Missouri drawl. “Gene said you knew Deon and Jane and Joe as well as anyone up here.”
    Singleton hurried to deflect that idea. “I have no idea what’s going on. I used to stop by and talk to Deon, but that was just part of my deal, you know. Keep an eye out. I keep thinking it’s Joe, that maybe they had a fight or something.”
    “Joe’s dead,” Davis said bluntly. “He never went more than five miles from his mama in his life, until he come up here. Called her every day, then he talked to her one night and the next day he was gone. She hasn’t heard a word since. He’s dead.”
    “Goddamn,” Calb said. He stood up and wandered in a tight circle, his hands jammed in the back pockets of his jeans. “This kidnapping . . . if they think it’s outa here, they could be all over me. You too, Shawn. If they really started pounding my books, looking at how many people I employ and how much commercial rehab we do . . . they could give me some trouble.”
    “Might be time for a fire,” Singleton said.
    They all looked at him for a moment, and then Calb said, “You’re not serious.”
    “Take care of the book problem,” Singleton said.
    Calb’s eyes rolled heavenward, as in prayer, and he said, “It wouldn’t take care of shit, Loren. You’ve never been a businessman—there’re records all over the goddamn place. Payroll tax receipts, workman’s comp, insurance, income tax. The only thing that would happen if I burned down the shop is that I’d have a burned-down shop. Then they’d really get interested. If they get really interested, they’re gonna get to all of us, including you, Loren, and the women too.”
    “Which gets us away from the question I want answered, and I want to know that I’m being told the truth,” Ruth said, squaring off against Calb and Davis. She had her wintery fighting smile fixed on her face. “This kidnapping thing. This Sorrell girl. You didn’t know about it, you didn’t have any part of it, either of you. This wasn’t some kind of money-making deal that went wrong.”
    “My God, Ruth. No. Never. I’m not nuts,” Calb said. The way he said it made her believe him.
    Davis was quieter, but just as convincing: “The thing is, Ruth, if these news stories are right, the kidnappers wanted a million