I crossed the threshold into the diner into a permeating chill. Warmth and coziness had been swapped with cool mistrust. Aromas of fried food made the air thick with an odor of cruelty. Vacant stools and booths were devoid of the cackle and mirth that typically crowded the room. A dark cloud had settled over the bustling café, casting the interior in a dour and uncongenial light. 

The perpetual effervescence and glow of Lucy-look-alike, Faye Jenkins, leaned in stooped fashion over the counter.  

“Do ya’ for, detective?” Her voice lacked its previous energy.

Trouble with Hugh must have found this place.

I took light steps to the counter where I rested a palm. 

“Coffee if it’s hot,” I said.

She straightened, though a defeatist slope remained in her shoulders. It was hard to tell if her eyes contained animation. They weren’t dead, exactly. More like eyes waiting for death to arrive. 

“I don’t know why they’re accusing my husband,” she said. “He has nothing to do with Aidan Peale.” A flicker of wrath shown behind the flat gaze. “Our relationship with the Peale family ended… years ago.” 

A cryptic phrase, pregnant with a secret no one was permitted to mention.

“You were friends?” I asked.

“Long time ago. Aidan lost his mind. It’s wearisome staying friendly with a lunatic who spends half their time tossing slanders at you, badmouthing you or your loved ones for supposed hurt on their family.” She spit the last word with some force. “Now they’re spouting things like human trafficking? It’s hateful.” Outrage momentarily brightened her irises.

“I heard they had a deal for a piece of land.” I kept my tone indifferent, watching her reaction. “Aidan and Hugh, I mean. Did your husband mention anything like that to you?”

She bristled. “I’d know about something that big, don’t you think?”

An interesting question. It did seem unreasonable that she wouldn’t know. Why wouldn’t she? She clearly possessed the brains of the duo. 

I barreled ahead. “If it were true, what would happen if Aidan reneged on payment?”

Her shoulders snapped level. “Ridiculous! You think Hugh felt he was being cheated? That he’s the one killed Aidan?” She twisted toward an invisible customer. “Nonsense. We’ve a good life with Hugh’s business and my diner.” She began flitting about with a dish rag, swiping the countertop and condiment containers at random. “When they turn on you it’s all in. Townspeople. Crazy. Every one. Hugh’s involved in a land deal with Aidan and selling people across the border? Insanity. Like the spirit of Aidan Peale has captured every mind in town.”

It sounded preposterous coming out of her mouth. Had I gotten it wrong about Hugh Jenkins? I shook my head. No way. Evidence was strong. A hard copy of the deed, Hugh’s hidden ledger, and the forged birth certificate. Hugh was involved, I was certain. How could Faye not know?

Skepticism must have shown on my face. 

Faye tightened her lips. “Hugh’s no murderer.” A hardened control shown in her eyes in a way I hadn’t noticed before. “He’s no master planner. And he’s not smart enough to pull off a deal like that.” She softened.“He’s my Hugh. Eccentric and paranoid, maybe. But he listens to me.” Her hand scrubbed a spot on the counter with excessive vigor. “How’s that child doing, anyways? I haven’t heard much since you found her.”

My solar plexus tingled with suspicion. I softened my voice. “Little Kayla is doing well. She made it through the ordeal. I figured you’d heard.” 

Faye knew everything that went on in this town. She wouldn’t need to ask about Kayla. She was once the town’s most trusted caretaker. Now she held the keys to comfort food and local gossip. She would have been aware of Kayla being kept at her own homestead. 

“It must have been difficult relying on your husband to watch over the girl while you ran the diner.”

Her stony glare caught the phrase and bounced it right back without comment.

“Word is, you liked kids. All the folks around town talk about how you looked after their babies. How the kids loved you.” It was a manufactured narrative, but I expected she would have no trouble accepting it as truth.

The pungent smell of aging coffee clung to every phrase. The muscles around her eyes and mouth tightened.

My mind spun on the theory and I pumped it full of hot air. “What happened? When’d it turn, Faye? Kayla suffered a hell of a lot during her time with Hugh.”

Muscles twitched in her jawline. There might have been a flicker of humanity in those sockets. Or it may have come from the bluish bulbs overhead.

“How was it that Hugh wore you down, Faye? I saw the look of him. A harsh, cold heart, that one.”

She flinched.

“Hugh’s the real culprit. He’s hit the road and left you behind, all alone.”

Her head turned slightly, looking past me out the window.

“You didn’t have a chance in a world built for men like Hugh. Any sane judge will see a woman trapped by circumstance. No way to break out, make it on your own. You did what you had to in order to survive.”

She clenched the rag in her hand. A tremble escaped the hard outer crust.

I pressed on. “He seemed strong in the early days. A protector of the weak. Turns out, he was the weak one. It’s easy to inflict pain, create a false reality, when you hold all the cards. But you were stronger. You endured.”

I waited a heartbeat, hoping for some bit of truth I might have hit upon to crack the shell. Nothing. Faye remained stuck in Stockholm. Time to pack my bag of tricks. I was tapped out. If she wanted to protect the lunatic, go to prison for life to save his sorry hide, there was nothing I had in my medicine pouch to free her from that.

“You’ve no reason to protect him any longer, Faye. He left you to rot in this place.”

Faye’s eyes lit on fire. She shouted, “Stop talking!” Her arms tightened the knot of her body. “You don’t know him. You don’t know what we’ve been through. They ruined him,” she said in a hiss. “With their talk. Ruined my business. It turned him. He wasn’t the same man anymore. Always spouting violence and retaliation and nobody should never cross him.”

“So you’re saying he set this whole thing up to prove himself?”

She scoffed. “That was talk is all. Why you want to go after Hugh, anyway? He’s small time.”

“My sister’s in jail. For something your husband did.”

“Hugh didn’t kill nobody. His type don’t kill, they maim the soul. Hugh saw an opportunity to make money and took it.”

The confession had me spinning. “I need to get my sister out of jail for murdering Aidan Peale. Give me something, Faye. Did he kill Deputy Spiesz?”

“Lordy, Lordy.” She picked at the stone wall. “You really are confused. Hugh’d maybe discount the value of a child. He might beat his woman. But he don’t have the balls to take on a crazy bastard like Stan Spiesz. That guy’s as mobbed up as John Gotti.”

“Maybe he didn’t have a choice. Maybe he got lucky, got the drop on Spiesz. Ran over him in a moment of feral terror.”

She shook her head with vigor. “Once the girl was free, he high tailed it without a by-your-leave. He’s got nothing you need.”

“You’re telling me he ran off without his money? I don’t believe it.”

“Believe what you want,” she muttered. “Scared rabbit don’t stick around for tidbits that’d get ‘em kilt.”

A thought I’d already had, myself, as a matter of fact. “No, Faye, they run for the nearest burrow.”

She flinched.

“Where’s Hugh hiding out, Faye?” I asked. “We know he made a trade with Aidan for the land.”

“You’re a damned fool,” she muttered. “You and the law. Aidan was over the top crazy. His head was all wrapped around that cock-eyed glass castle fairytale. He couldn’t be trusted with anything as tangled as selling a child.”

It was my turn to flinch. The calculated assessment of human trafficking shifted her persona from comedic idol to deranged nutball. Only more dangerous. “If not Aidan, who? ”

She stared at me, incredulous. “You really are clueless.” She shook her head at the ground. “Think like a man and get a man’s answer to everything.”

I was stumped. “Surely not her mother?”

She scoffed again. “Not even Lorna Peale is that cold hearted. She’s all about true love if you hadn’t noticed.”

I rested my elbows on the counter. Each nugget of investigative information confounded the problem further.

The frazzled woman uncoiled from the defeatist lean she’d taken, and hissed, “Idiot!”

Its power stunned me silent.

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You’ll never solve this. She dropped the kid off. We were all waiting for the final payment. Then the girl would go.”

“Who dropped her off?”

Faye’s eyes narrowed, her gaze burning into me. “Think, detective,” she said in a vehement whisper. “Who is it that’s left?” Her posture radiated tension, bent forward with one hand gripping the counter until her knuckles turned white. She held the other hand at her side, trembling as she spoke, fingernails dug into her palm with visible force.  She clearly and unequivocally loathed my lawful judgment.

Fear coated the inside of my lips as I witnessed this metamorphosis from kindly gossip to seething misanthrope. The transformation stank of sadistic disregard for human life, and rankled with the permutations of depravity that human trafficking engendered. I held the threatening ideas at bay, isolated from my body language, remaining at ease on the outside.

I churned through the list of suspects, townspeople I’d met who might benefit in some way. It had to be a huge win, more than money alone, to motivate a move so immoral and risky. And the method of abduction had never seemed violent, which is why I’d suspected a parent. Someone who could lure Kayla from the house without a fuss.

The obvious choice bobbed to the surface of my mind.

“Vicky,” I whispered. Her angry insistence at her father’s guilt percolated to the top. Emotions I’d attributed to disappointment and betrayal at perceived abandonment. The kind of bitterness I understood.

Embarrassment coalesced into self-recrimination. Heat covered my face.

“Amazing! The detective detects.” Her words were sharp, venomous arrows, laced with malice and a chilling disregard for human life. And yet, behind them I detected a strange sense of resignation. 

“Vicky brought that child to us. Hugh was only a pawn in the bigger game, so you can just let him be.”

The news stunned me. Could I trust it? Or was Faye putting me off of her husband, the man who had scared her into eternal loyalty? Had I been so easily fooled by Vicky, just because we held the grudge against our parents in common?

My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Eyes locked on Faye, waiting for her to disappear in a puff of smoke.

She returned to her taciturn hunker behind the counter. An easy smile replaced the fervent hatred. 

“You can be assured, Connor, my friend,” she said in a gentle, kindly voice, “there won’t be a tittle-tattle of remembrance about this conversation from sweet little ol’ me. My generosity is legendary in these parts.” Her countenance radiated this statement with utter sincerity. 

The transfiguration was so absolute, it nearly wiped all memory of the past ten minutes. It carried a scent of burning ozone, like a lightning strike had hit too close to home.

I stumbled out of there, mental wheels spinning. If Vicky was the one who handed Kayla over, and the Jenkins were involved in human trafficking, I had to conclude that Vicky willingly turned her baby sister over for an illegal adoption trade. It was too heinous to consider.

Somewhere above me the entrance bell tinkled, indicating an angel had just received new wings. What kind of angel? I wondered, as I shuffled through the door like a specter.