Page 17 of Race With The Devil

Tanner didn’t seem amused. Stuffing animals probably offended him, too. “Stress, seclusion, and boredom create self-harm. Joining groups almost always snuffs out the tendency. Backyard gardening gives satisfaction.”

“Dog grooming.”

“Dog grooming, sure. Anything that connects you on a primal level is a tool that fixes an evolutionary disconnect.”

“Joining groups. Like the Bare Bones MC.”

“Why not? A sense of brotherhood is what we all need,” he said, distracted now as his phone buzzed. I liked how he looked to see who it was before answering. I hated when people stopped conversations to answer junk calls, calls from their mothers. “Tutti,” he acknowledged, looking significantly at me.

I wiggled my eyebrows, chowing my sandwich as I listened to Tanner’s conversation.

“And you’ve never heard of this Barbara? Where exactly did she say Lavinia fell?”

Fell? As in fell down?

“Uh-huh. Listen, Tutti, let me put my partner on speakerphone.”

Then, although the somewhat crowded restaurant blanketed his words in fog, I heard the voice of a complete liar.

I said, “Hi, Tutti. I don’t know any Barbara either. What did Barbara say?”

“Can you repeat yourself?” Tanner asked him.

“Sure,” said the stressed “Walter White of Flagstaff.” “I received an email from a gal named Sideshow Barbara. You heard of her, Unity?”

“Never.”

“She said the day Lavinia stormed out of here, they went walking somewhere. She didn’t say where. The email just said ‘Lavinia came for a ride in the woods with us. She got out to hike and we are sure she fell.’”

“Who is ‘we’?” I asked.

“Who knows? Then she said to cancel the missing person report and call off Tanner. Well, she didn’t say Tanner directly, of course, not knowing who he is. She just said call off the search because Lavinia is gone for sure. She fell off a cliff.”

“Oh, right!” I exploded. “We’re just supposed to stop looking and believe this bitch? Tutti, can you forward that email to us?”

“Uh, sure,” he said uncertainly. “But this person really seemed convinced that Lavinia is gone forever.”

Tanner said, “Without telling you where she fell off a cliff? Sounds like someone is playing a cruel joke on you, my friend.”

“Well, of course I emailed her back asking where she fell. No answer yet. This was just half an hour ago.”

“Wanting you to call off the search is suspicious too,” I said.

But we couldn’t convince Tutti this Sideshow Barbara person was phony. Tutti promised to let us know the second Barbara answered him, but he sounded doubtful she would. In our mind, that made her even more suspicious. We hung up.

We had no more interest in our food. We just gulped our lemonade. I said, “If Barbara is so convinced Lavinia is dead, why won’t she help us find the body? Why do I get the feeling Tutti is a complete liar?”

“Hmph,” said Tanner, looking me directly in the eye. “I get the feeling Tutti is a totally random weird wolf.”