“Have you told Leo yet?”

“Actually, she came down to the morgue late yesterday and I went over everything with her.”

“Good. I’ll be down later today to get started.”

I got dressed and went down to my son’s office. When I walked into the Homicide Division I was greeted warmly by many old friends. I either knew them because of Jack, or I knew them because of Mike. Either way, they all knew me.

Mike and Tommy were engrossed in some discussion over an open file on Tommy’s desk. They both looked up as I approached.

“Hey, Mom. What’s up?”

“There’s something I want to do, but I don’t want to just haul off and do it without clearing it with you two first.”

Tommy and Mike looked at each other. They had that “Oh, no” look on their faces.

“I would like to go and talk to Dody Waldrep myself, and I may want to visit with Jimmy Hughes again.”

“Mom.”

“I’ll take Leo with me-unofficially, of course-but I feel the need to talk to Dody in person and to see Jimmy again.”

“Mom, you are not investigating this case. You’re doing the forensic sculptures, but we are the detectives, and-”

Tommy interrupted. “Why?”

“What?” Mike asked.

“Not you, her-why? Why do you feel you have to talk to him?”

“I want to meet Dody and get a feel for him myself. Then I may want to meet the girl, Lori, too. I want to revisit Jimmy because I feel I could make more progress than I did last time.”

“You already made more progress with him than we have,” Tommy said. “But here’s a news flash for you.”

“What?”

“We’ve had surveillance on him since the second set of bones popped up.”

“And?”

“Lori Webster came to his house yesterday, Mom, and she stayed over,” Mike added.

Tommy sighed. “We were going to go talk to him, but the truth is, I’m willing to let you try first. He’s not going to tell us anything anyway.”

“Tommy…” Mike started.

Tommy held up his hand. “Like it or not, Junior, Toni gets more out of this guy.”

“What about Dody and Lori?” I asked.

Tommy waved his hand. “Why not? That old drunk seems pretty harmless to me, and the girl is just whacked.”

Mike sighed and put his hands on his hips.

“Tommy, you cannot be real. This guy may be drunk, but who knows what he could do, and you’re actually going to let my mom go and talk to him?”

“Technically, I can’t stop a private citizen from having a conversation with another private citizen. More to the point is the fact that they all might talk more to her than any of them did to you and me, simply because she’s a woman and she’s not a cop.”

“And the risk?” Mike asked.

“Mike, you need to get real. Toni’s a black belt in aikido, and if I remember right, she outranks you, pal.”

Mike shook his head in frustration.

“Besides, my girlfriend is going with her, and she is a cop. She also knows a lot about behavior. I’d like to hear what she thinks about all of them.”

“It’s our case, Tommy.”

“That’s ego, man. I’m interested in information. Leo will go with her-off duty.” He glared at me.

“Absolutely, off duty,” I agreed.

“Leo’s a trained law enforcement officer.” He picked up his cell phone and dialed. “You’ll be fine with her along.” He spoke into the cell phone now, “Hi, talking to Toni here about the two of you going to see Jimmy Hughes again, this Waldrep character, and maybe even the Webster woman…” He paused, so I knew Leo must be talking. “Well, if you’ll keep your shirt on five seconds and let me finish, okay? All I was going to say is, they might do more talking to the two of you than they did to us, but you go off duty only, Leo, and wear that ankle holster I gave you like before. No arguments…” He paused again, and then he said goodbye and hung up.

“I’m sure she agreed to those terms,” I said.

“She did.” He smiled. “Finesse them, Toni. Get me some new information, would you? Right now all I’ve got is bupkes and two skeletons dug out of the mud.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Leo drove into town from her houseboat on the lake and parked her Jeep in front of my house. I came outside just as she drove up. She got out of the Jeep wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a windbreaker. She pulled up her trouser leg and smiled.

“As ordered,” she said.

“I see,” I said. “Let’s go in my Mustang.”

“Cool! I haven’t ridden in this hot rod in a while, it’ll be fun.”

“I think we should visit Jimmy Hughes again first. I want to ask him about Lori Webster and his brother. Let’s see if we can get him to tell us anything.”

“Works for me. Tommy says he’s not talking to them. Just stalls them.”

I cranked up the Fastback and we backed out of the driveway and took off in a blue streak.

When we got to Jimmy’s, he was outside working on his truck in his carport. He pulled his head out from under the hood as we pulled up. He wiped his hands on an old red rag as we walked up the gravel driveway.

“Y’all back again?”

“Hi, Jimmy, how are you?” I asked.

“All right, I guess. Got too many people asking a lot of questions, but other than that, I’m all right.”

“I want to ask questions, too, Jimmy. I want to ask questions because I have to know what happened to Addie. Don’t you want to know what happened to her?”

He shrugged. “I guess so, although she’s gone now and there ain’t nothin’ I can do about it. Already figured she was gone a long time ago.”

“I know you care, Jimmy, because you came forward and identified her.”

“Way I look at it, I just did what I was supposed to. So, what is it you want to know now?”

He was direct. He definitely did not want us there any longer than necessary. He stood behind the truck and made no move toward the house at all.

“We’ve been told by your mother that Doug had a girlfriend. A girl named Lori Webster. Do you know her?”

He shrugged again. “I know her. So what?”

“I was wondering if you could tell us anything about their relationship-how involved they might have been. It could make a difference as far as his relationship with Addie.”

“He dated Lori, and I already told you that I know he and Addie didn’t have a thing. What else?”

“I was hoping you could give us more details than that, Jimmy.”

“Like what?”

“How involved he might have really been with Lori, and anything you know about her now.”

“Can’t help you.”

That was it. He shifted from one foot to the other, and rolled some of the gravel from the driveway under his right boot.

“That all?” he asked.

I sighed. He wasn’t giving, and we knew from Mike and Tommy that Lori had just been here the day before. He was a tough case. He had seen too many things in the war, and he just wanted to be left alone. I knew too many men from my generation who were just like him.

“I got to finish working on my truck.”

I could see he wasn’t going to talk today, so we said our goodbyes and left Jimmy Hughes to finish his truck maintenance.

We drove out to Manor. It was an icky day weatherwise. It wasn’t really overcast, but it wasn’t sunny either. It was one of those depressing low-light days where the sun comes and goes and you wish it would just do one or the other and stay that way. We talked about the case on the way to Manor.

“What did you think about Jimmy?” I asked.

“He does a great imitation of a clam.”

I nodded. “The problem is, I can’t tell if he’s really hiding something, or he’s just being him.”

“I watched his eye movements while you were talking to him. His eyes shift to the left a lot, and he looks down. He also exhibits other minute body-language cues, especially the way he blinks and his eyebrow movements-all these cues that I noticed are cues for evasion and lying.”