Page 47 of Brimstone Hollow

Blood rushes to my face and I bite my bottom lip before I lean closer to Scarlett.

“Do you mind if I use your restroom?”

Her face scrunches up like I’m a feral raccoon scratching at her door for food. “What? Hell no. Go in the bushes.”

I lean even closer, pitch my voice low and conspiratorial.

“It’s—damn it, I just got my period. And I don’thaveanything.”

I meet her eyes, grimacing, embarrassed.

Scarlett puffs her cheeks up and then lets the air out, unable to refuse a fellow woman in need. She moves to the side and says, “Follow me.”

The trailer is obsessively tidy. The whole place smells like lemon Pledge and Pine-Sol. Big wooden bowls of decorative rattan balls sit on the coffee and end tables without a speck of dust. A nook off the kitchen features a landline phone on the wall, a notepad, and a sign that saysBISTRO!in big looping letters.

There’s a narrow hallway with two doors on the right and one on the left. She goes into the one on the left, where another sign informs me that I’m in the powder room. Then, opening a narrow cabinet, she asks, “Pador tampon? I’ve got both but only the big-ass tampons because my period’s a real son of a bitch.”

“I’ll take a pad,” I say. “Thanks.”

She grabs a pad and thrusts it into my hand, then shuts the door behind her. I sit on the toilet seat and get out my phone, bring up Dishman’s number, and text him.

Call her landline. You’re a telemarketer.

I wait, staring at the cottagey decor—the white-painted mason jar soap dispenser and the thick ceramic vase full of fake lavender—unsure whether or not Dishman will play along. Seconds pass.

RIIIING!

I smile to myself. You almost never hear landlines these days. The sudden, jarring, metallic clanging always takes me back.

Scarlett thumps across the floor and answers. I hear her voice through the door.

“Hello? Well… no. Listen, now is not…”

I rip the pad out of the wrapper and toss the plastic and paper backing in the pink trash can beside the toilet, doing my due diligence to prove I really needed what I asked for. Then, I reverse-roll the pad and cram it into my jacket pocket. I ease toward the door and silently turn the knob.

I hear Scarlett in the kitchen. “No, I never have. But…”

I look at the two doors across the hall and pick the one on the left first. Silently, I move into the room, apparently Scarlett and Nathaniel’s bedroom. Painted baby blue with framed black-and-white photos and a shabby-chic sign that saysYOU & ME, it’s as tidy as the rest of the house. No dirty socks or underwear littering the floor. No half-empty water glasses sitting on the nightstand. There’s a gun cabinet, unlocked, but as far as I can tell, nothing looks out of order. There’s a dresser with a big mirror, and a closet which I open and find full of Scarlett’s and Nathaniel’s duds but nothing else. I look under the bed, just to be sure, but there’s nothing. Not even dust bunnies.

I ease back out and listen for Scarlett, who’s all nice and polite now,and I wonder just what the hell Chief Dishman is saying to her. She laughs, lightly, and I turn the knob for the second room.

This one is much the same except with a nautical theme, complete with a cutesy hand-painted sign listingBEACH RULES. There’s a computer on a desk, an older tower PC, powered down, along with a printer. There’s a smaller bed with a red-and-white quilt, which I look under. Nothing but storage boxes full of linens and winter sweaters. The closet features more boxes and an assortment of hanging cubes holding Scarlett’s handbag collection. There’s no husband hiding behind the curtains or under the desk.

“Listen,” Scarlett says from the kitchen, “I really have to go.”

I scoot back across the hall into the bathroom, and ease the door shut behind me. As I’m washing my hands, there’s a quick rapping on the door.

“You about done in there?”

“Yep,” I say, swinging the door open. “I really appreciate it.”

“Whatever,” she says, and leads me back out of the trailer and onto the porch. Dishman approaches from the gravel driveway, his phone already back in his pocket, and says, “You’ll tell Nathaniel we’re looking for him, won’t you, Scarlett?”

“Sure,” Scarlett says. Then shuts the door with a slam.

As we walk back toward the cruiser and the Bronco, Dishman says, “You knew I was about to ask to look around inside the house.”

“Yeah,” I say. “And I knew she’d just tell you to go piss up a rope unless you had a warrant.”