Page 42 of The Summer Guests

Jo walked out of the detention area, and Maggie heard the door thud shut. With two locked doors to get through, she and Luther were certainly not going to be breaking out anytime soon. She looked around the cell for a chair, saw none, and sat down on the cot beside Luther.

“Callie’s fine,” Maggie said. “I’ll keep an eye on her.”

He released a shuddering sigh. “Thank you.”

“You need to call a lawyer. Ingrid and Lloyd know a good one in Portland.”

“But I didn’tdoanything.”

“They found blood in your truck, Luther. On the passenger seat. It’s a match for Zoe Conover’s.”

“I don’t know how it got there.”

“You didn’t notice any blood?”

“You know what my truck’s like. It’s a goddamn mess! Chicken feathers, farm tools. And the upholstery’s black. How would I see any blood?”

He was certainly right about the state of his truck. It was, after all, a farm vehicle, and the last time Maggie rode with him, she’d ended up with straw and animal dander clinging to her clothes.

“Tell me what happened after you dropped off Zoe,” Maggie said.

“I left town.”

“You told the police you went to Augusta.”

“Yeah.”

“Why Augusta?”

“It’s not relevant.”

“It is to the police.” Maggie paused. “Luther, they tracked your cell phone. They know you didn’t stop in Augusta. You kept going, all the way to Lewiston.”

He said nothing.

“If it goes to trial, it’s all going to come out anyway. So you might as well tell me what you were doing there.”

He sighed. “I don’t want you to think badly of me, Maggie.”

“I need the truth. Good or bad.”

“It’s not good.”

“What did you do in Lewiston?”

“Nothing. I didn’t do anything.”

“Then why are you so secretive about this?”

“Because of what I wasplanningto do. What Iwouldhave done, if I’d had the nerve to go through with it.”

“And what was that?”

At last he met her gaze. “Kill a man.”

For a moment, Maggie thought he couldn’t possibly be serious. That his answer was merely flippant, in the vein of:If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you.But looking into his eyes, she realized he meant what he’d said. And she actually believed him. He might be a peaceable man, but if the situation called for it, Luther Yount would not hesitate to pull a trigger.

“Who were you going to kill?” she asked.