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  It was time for Wes to leave.

  But he didn’t. He found himself following them from lawn to lawn, kind of like a stalker. He watched kids buy talking dolls that didn’t talk anymore, electric cars you had to push now, and video games made to play on out-of-date machines. Men competed with Michael for the rusty tools, and women bought knickknacks that Wes suspected would end up in their attics, or at another garage sale once those women really looked at what they’d bought. When Michael stopped because the ukulele band had stayed and was playing “Over the Rainbow,” Wes stopped to listen too. He was behind a couple with kids who kept demanding more of the candy they’d collected at the parade. It was their candy, they’d picked it up. Their parents were trying to ration it. This altercation made it hard to hear the sad song about dreams that hardly ever came true, but the ukuleles were still out of synch and not exactly in tune to each other either.

  Michael accumulated several tools along with an orange bowl that he said matched a set of his mother’s. Annie just seemed to be tagging along, a lot like Wes. But every once in a while she looked over at him, like what part of out of my life don’t you understand?

  At one sale, he saw the US Fish and Wildlife kid. Michael was intently going through kitchenware. Hoping for more orange bowls? Annie was trying on a flimsy white shirt, over her T-shirt and yet it seemed to show her curves even more than when they weren’t covered by the shirt.

  In an attempt to quit looking quite so pathetic, Wes went over to the agent from FWS. “You’re letting the house get away,” he said.

  The kid laughed. He wasn’t a bad guy even if he had taken a shot at Wes and also caused a major hassle by reporting his truck stolen. “No, I’m just another tourist today. There was a coup in Africa, and everything changed.”

  Since Wes was still curious about FWS’s role in this mess, he said, “Just what does a coup in Africa have to do with what you’ve been doing here?”

  The guy shrugged. “The Lacey Act. Dobbins there, your friend Michael, he’s been buying wood that was illegally exported from Africa.”

  “On eBay,” said Wes. “I doubt he knew anything about the original source. What about the eBay seller?”

  “Not in this country. Not our problem. But Dobbins was buying a lot of guitar quality wood and then not selling guitars, so we suspected he was reselling the wood. I was watching for buyers.” Another shrug. “When the FBI came with their van for the second time, I thought they must be the buyers. Then you ran . . .” This time his shrug was a little sheepish.

  “At least you didn’t hit me,” said Wes. “But now you’re not watching for wood buyers? Because of a coup?”

  “Right. I mean, we still could’ve prosecuted Dobbins. The stuff was illegal when he bought it, and that’s the way the Lacey Act works. We enforce other country’s export laws even when they don’t. But my superiors, they decided that wouldn’t play well in the press. He’s disabled, you know.”

  “That’s what I’ve been told.”

  “But hey, was he the one who made that float with the Ferris Wheels? I gotta tell him what a great float that was.” The kid sauntered over to where Michael was still joyfully perusing junk. And Wes watched Annie buy the sexy shirt, thinking the intricacies of law enforcement were looking more and more like Iraq.

  So what was real? He’d joined the army, and then the DEA, because he’d wanted to do something worthwhile. Now he wasn’t sure about anything he’d done.

  But wherever his life took him now, it wouldn’t be with Annie. He knew this, and yet he kept tagging after her, all through that tiny town of people who had collected a remarkable amount of junk. He assumed he would get over her. He just needed to start the process. He almost envied Michael the flatness of his emotions.

  They were circling back toward the car. When they reached it, he would leave. Wes made that promise to himself. Otherwise, he was likely to make a total ass of himself trying to talk Annie into letting him drive her home.

  Then at one of the “garage” sales, which were never in garages, spread on a table were some CD’s. Annie immediately perked up and started shuffling through them. He courageously moved in closer to see if any were interesting. His foot hit something under the table. He looked down and found it was a box of LP’s. He pulled it out and immediately spotted a Link Wray.

  He grabbed it, but on second thought held it out to Annie. “It’s yours. I shouldn’t even be here.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t see that box.”

  “You would have.” He kept holding the album out to her. It was the least he could do.

  “No,” she said. “Link Wray’s more you than me.” And of course she wouldn’t accept anything from him.

  He stepped back so she could look through the box.

  “Okay, I guess I get next pick,” she said and bent over the box, which meant he had to step further back to keep himself from imagining his hand cupping the curve of her ass, because there had been a time when he could have done that—not here, of course, but later, at her home.

  And she would have purred with pleasure. Back then.

  He had that knowledge of her that was so hard to forget.

  She straightened with Iris DeMent’s new album, which was an amazing find. He wouldn’t have expected any of these records to be less than forty years old. Plus it didn’t seem Annie’s kind of thing any more than the Link Wray. It wasn’t rock, it wasn’t blues, it wasn’t old but also not so new that only a musician would have heard of it. It showed an interest in spirituality, a depth and thoughtfulness, that made him realize that for all the time he’d spent with her, when he really had been fascinated and enthralled, he still barely knew her.

  Now he never would.

  But then Michael said, “Wes, I can’t carry all this stuff. Can I put it in your car? Then there’s one more sale down that gravel drive I want to check out.”

  So Wes left Annie with the box of vinyl and walked with Michael to the car so Michael could put his bowl and armful of tools in it. This meant he wouldn’t get any more LP’s, and he probably would make a total ass of himself, but he was going to get to drive Annie home.

  Chapter 38

  Annie was in the backseat of the BMW again, along with the LP’s she’d bought and Michael’s finds. Because Michael had piled his stuff in here. Because he seemed to want her back together with Wes. He’d tried to get her to sit in the front seat again too.

  She never would have guessed Michael had this romantic side to him since he didn’t even like to be touched. It was awkward and embarrassing. As soon as they got home, she would make it clear that he should quit imagining there was anything left between her and Wes—although obviously there was still something there messing with her head and her heart every now and then. Like when she’d thought he might have been shot, or when he’d driven what they’d both believed to be a bomb out across that bouncy field . . .

  She’d turned out to be a total bust at “love lite.”

  But she’d thought this through. Had she ever thought this through. What he’d claimed to be his feelings for her, and then the way he’d clammed up, become totally cool and coplike, ever since they’d found Michael in Buzzard’s trunk. At first she’d been confused by the way he’d stayed with her after that, but maybe he’d truly come to care about Michael. When the FBI had been trying to arrest Michael, Wes’s concern for him had seemed real. But also, now she realized he must have guessed Russ and Char had cleaned up the lab. That was why he hadn’t gone after them that night. He’d known he would have to wait and get them some other way.

  Which had to be the reason he was still following her around.

  He pulled up in front of her house. She grabbed Michael’s stuff, as much as she could carry, and swung out of the car. Then she saw she should have handed all that to Michael so she could have gotten what was left. Now Michael had nothing in his hands, and Wes had opened the other rear door and was pulling out the rest.

  Still, Michael could
have taken those things from Wes, but he didn’t. He headed for the house empty-handed.

  “Thank you for all your help,” she said to Wes, which was what she’d planned to say here—regardless of who was carrying what—a polite lead-in to good-bye.

  “I don’t think I was much help,” he said and followed Michael into the house.

  “We better take this stuff downstairs,” Michael said once they were inside. “Annie doesn’t like rusty things on the kitchen table. But you’d be surprised how these old tools will clean up.” Then he took the ones she was carrying, so Wes still had his hands full, and the two of them went downstairs to the basement.

  Leaving her in the living room with her records, Michael’s bowl, and a mixture of fury and frustration that, as soon as she was alone, felt a lot like sadness.

  Which made no sense at all.

  Michael really was finally safe. She should be delighted. And she was!

  She put down the stuff she was carrying and went to the bathroom to get her unruly feelings under control. Once there, she decided it was a good place to stay until Wes left. Surely that would happen, eventually. Even someone as cocky as he should in time get it through his head that no matter how much he’d done for Michael—or what foolish feelings he’d managed to provoke in her—there was no way she was going to help him bust her oldest friends.

  But the sadness wasn’t going away. She braced her arms against the bathroom counter with a hollowness opening in her chest and, most annoyingly, tears stinging her eyes.

  From the living room she heard Iris DeMent.

  Michael must have seen the album and put it on. He liked Iris too. But now she couldn’t stay hidden behind this closed door. She wiped her face on a towel, looked at the mess that was her hair, tried to brush it into something more attractive, then realized how silly that was. She put down the brush and did her best to hold closed the emptiness in her, to keep it from pulling all of her into it like some kind of black hole. She went out to hear what Iris had recorded after a gap of sixteen years.

  But Wes, of course, was still here. Sitting with Michael on the couch. So she went into the kitchen. There she decided she needed coffee. Then it seemed it would be rude to make it for only herself. Michael didn’t drink it, but Wes did. So she made enough for him too, staring at it until it appeared to be dripping in slow motion—while Iris’s soulful voice squeezed out a few more tears.

  Because she was losing a guy who had never said a true word to her?

  But no matter how hard she tried, she kept remembering the way she used to lie in his arms, how beautiful he’d made her feel, and that magical night when he’d danced the Freddie, when he’d even inspired Michael to dance. Could someone dance a lie?

  When the coffee was ready, she had to peer at herself in the toaster, the only mirror-like surface in the kitchen, to make sure her cheeks were dry and her eyes were clear before she went into the living room and said in a perfectly cool voice, “Would you like some coffee, Wes?”

  “Sure, if it’s made.” He halfway stood up. “But really, I ought to leave. I just wanted to hear this.”

  “Then go ahead. Listen to it. It’s a long drive back to Seattle.”

  He got kind of a pained look while settling back onto the couch. Because he wasn’t going back to Seattle, of course.

  “You’re right, it’ll be a long drive,” he said.

  She brought him coffee, and then what? Drink hers in the kitchen? Where the sound wasn’t nearly as good.

  She took her cup to one of the overstuffed chairs.

  Immediately Michael stood up. “I’m kind of tired,” he said. “Think I’ll go lie down.”

  What the hell?

  She bent over her coffee and listened to Iris.

  Who was singing about her folks as she so often did. It made Annie think about her folks, and how if she wrote a song about them it would be completely different since she would never watch them grow old, she hadn’t been with them when they died, and even before that, once the commune collapsed and they got the airplane, they were so often gone.

  So she had some kind of “trust issue” the way Russ and Char thought?

  Okay, maybe if your parents were smugglers and it was next to impossible to explain to other kids that what they were doing wasn’t illegal by US laws, you would become kind of a loner. Maybe if the people who often took care of you had to be reminded when you were supposed to go to school, and then your parents died while you were still young, you would be fairly self-sufficient. And maybe if those people who had taken care of you came up with a clever job that paid astoundingly well but happened to require more secrecy, self-sufficiency, and also the risk of going to prison, you would become a totally fucked-up mess.

  As soon as that side of the record came to an end, Annie got up to take it off. She could rethink her life some other time—when she met some other man.

  But when she started to slip the record into its sleeve, Wes said, “Aren’t you going to play the other side?”

  “You know, you can buy this thing at a record store,” she said. “It’s not out of print.”

  “You’re right. I’ll just pour out the rest of this coffee.” He stood up.

  “You don’t have to do that. Finish your coffee. I’ll play the other side.”

  “No, you don’t want to hear it right now. I just thought it was . . . I don’t know . . . helping.”

  “Really? It was helping you figure out how to bust the lab?”

  He looked as if she’d slapped him. “I’m not doing that.”

  “Because of that screw-up where your partner shot Smith? Or Agent whatever that goon was called. I’m sure you can keep your job if you get the lab.”

  He looked down into the cup in his hand. “I don’t think I’m cut out to be a cop,” and he went into the kitchen. She heard his coffee running down the drain.

  She stood there a moment, the record in one hand and the sleeve in the other, kind of like Lady Justice with her scales. She put them both down and headed for the kitchen. She was blocking the doorway when he turned to come out.

  “You’re not really quitting your job. That’s just another lie to protect your cover.”

  He did a half-laugh, one of those laughs with no joy in it at all. “I wish. Or maybe I don’t. I wish I wasn’t so confused.”

  “You’re confused?” She crossed her arms, pretty sure she shouldn’t believe him. And what difference would it make anyway? It wouldn’t change anything he’d done.

  Still . . .

  “Look, I’m sorry for all the lies,” he said. “And trying to use you the way I did. There’s no way I can make that up to you.”

  Which was more what she’d expected, a stock apology.

  “But at least now I know what I want to do. Being around you and your music . . . except.” He frowned and shook his head. “You don’t want to hear this.”

  “Sure I do, run it by me, any lie you’ve come up with. I’ll tell you if it flies.” She said this while wondering . . . would it make a difference if he was no longer a cop?

  He was backing away from her, all the way into the refrigerator, and lately he’d become so businesslike . . . so cool to her . . . so distant . . .

  “Well, what I’m thinking is music gives people pleasure,” he said. “That has to be good. But I just like to listen to it. I can’t make it, and there’s hardly any money in it even if you can. So . . . I don’t have this figured out.”

  He shuffled even further back, bumping into the refrigerator, making things rattle in there . . . while she tried to sort through what if any of this might be true.

  “But there are a lot of musicians who are doing great stuff,” he said. “And yet hardly anyone ever gets to hear it. If I could help those musicians reach more people . . . and someday you might want a booker . . . and I might actually be one then. Then maybe we could . . . try this again.”

  By the end of that speech, he was looking down at his feet almost exactly the way Mich
ael did. While she was still wondering . . .

  “Try what again?” she said.

  When he looked back up at her, his eyebrows were pulled together, those feathery eyebrows that made him appear so much softer than she’d thought he was. Now she wasn’t so sure. His tousled hair, his barely beard, all of him was looking more vulnerable than she’d ever imagined he could be. He looked almost afraid but also sad and resigned.

  A lot like how she’d been feeling . . . only a few moments ago.

  “I already told you,” he said.

  “Told me what?” Could it possibly be what she was thinking? Because she was beginning to have some pretty wild thoughts. Maybe he wasn’t jammed against the refrigerator in order to get as far away from her as he could.

  Maybe he needed it for support.

  “I told you.” Big pause while he swallowed and looked even more sad and resigned. “I told you . . . I love you.”

  Then a huge pause from her while she asked herself if she should believe him now.

  He’d told her so many lies, and for too long she’d believed every one of them—except maybe the one about the Drive-By Truckers tour—how could she ever know what about him was true? But he had been telling the truth about the trouble Michael was in. In fact, he’d trashed his job by telling her that. Then he’d stayed with her through that whole mess even when she’d been screaming at him to go away. And he did seem to feel truly bad—as he should—for the way he’d tried to use her.

  Was it possible that lately he’d been acting so cool for the same reason she’d acted cool when she’d offered him coffee? Because she’d said she wanted him out of her life.

  Okay, she had said that, several times, but clearly, that wasn’t what she wanted at all, because the hollowness in her, she wasn’t having to hold it closed anymore. It was filling up all on its own . . . with a wonderful Reggae beat.