The Vines by Christopher Rice Read Free Book Online

his teenage years alone, raised by vague memories of a mother who died when he was only four years old, a father who never managed to crawl out of the scotch bottle after losing his wife, and a passel of high-strung aunts from Dallas who popped in on a regular basis to make sure their brother hadn’t made a complete mess of things. Meanwhile, Blake spent most of the major holidays with Caitlin and her family, and that had been just fine. More than fine, actually.
    But he’d put himself through nursing school and paid his own rent while he did it. So he didn’t owe Caitlin money or the kind of soft-glove treatment she was accustomed to receiving from her cousins and her late father’s employees. He owed her the truth.
    They allow Blake a moment to sip his coffee, then Baldy says, “Must not have been easy.”
    “Which part?”
    “Making that kind of allegation against the cop who found your friend’s killers.”
    For a while, nobody speaks. Blake watches the hummingbirds dancing in the branches on the other side of the plate-glass window. A few tables away an older woman cries into a man’s shoulder, one hand still absently wrapped around her cup of tea in much the same way Blake is holding his cup of coffee. Blake recognizes them; their son was the overdose he treated sometime around 3:00 a.m. No telling how long that coma’s going to last.
    “John Fuller wasn’t my friend ,Detective.”
    Both detectives look startled for the first time since they all sat down together. Not by the information itself, but by the bristling anger with which Blake delivers it.

10
    Willie Thomas lives in a tiny clapboard house hemmed in by a small forest of banana trees sitting just on the other side of Spring House’s back property line. It is accessible by its own long private road, which means Blake can drop in on Nova without risking a run-in with Caitlin.
    He’s not quite ready for that.
    After five hours of fitful sleep, every nerve in his body is still demanding that he reach out to his old friend. But he’s known the woman for almost his entire life. Six months haven’t changed her, he’s sure. Any contact from him will be seen as an attempt to rub her nose in the sad truth about her husband, and that’s the last thing Blake wants, especially if something terrible has happened to Troy.
    So he vows to give her time. And space. Whatever that means. He doubts she’s still at Spring House anyway. Unless the police have some strange reason to keep her there, and nothing about the detectives’ questions that morning suggest they suspect Caitlin of anything other than having bad taste in men, he’s pretty sure she’s gone back to New Orleans.
    While not quite confirmation, there’s no sign of her on the drive out, no glimpse of her tiny gold BMW X5 whizzing past him along the levee’s gentle bends, and when he turns onto the mud-laced road that leads to Willie’s house, the only person he sees is Nova, hurriedly stomping out a cigarette and tossing it over the side of the front porch.
    “Really?” Blake asks her as soon as he steps from his Ford Escape.
    “It’s a clove cigarette,” she says with the condescension of someone who has just enough college under her belt to think she knows everything.
    “So what? Those are worse. And they don’t even have nicotine, so you won’t get a buzz.”
    She ignores this. “Caitlin went back to New Orleans.”
    “I figured. How’s your dad?”
    “Stitched up right. You want to check?”
    “Did he go to a hospital . . . or did you do it?”
    “You got me,” she says, hands up in mock surrender. “I fixed him up with some alcohol and a little blowtorch.”
    “That’s a really good school you’re going to up in Baton Rouge.”
    Her smile is weak. Instead of inviting him inside, she holds the screen door open behind her just long enough for him to keep it from snapping shut in his face.
    The tiny house is immaculate inside. He figures this is Nova’s doing. Blake is