Her guilt routine was on autopilot, and when she was caught out and corrected, she merely sucked her teeth and said, “What do you want, Darren?”

“Where is it?”

“Safe.”

“Where?”

“It’s probably best if you don’t know, don’t you think? Plausible something or other,” she said, rooting around in her brain for the word. “Deniability, that’s it. I saw that on Investigation Discovery.” On the cable box that Darren was also paying for. “I don’t want my baby to have to lie.”

“I’d only have to lie if someone was asking about the gun,” he said. “Which no one will if you don’t say a word about what you found.”

“I’ve kept your secret so far.”

“It’s not just me. It’s Mack’s life on the line too. They could try to put either one of us in jail for the murder or the cover-up.”

“Mack ain’t kin to me, so that’s not my concern.” She put her hand over the phone and asked someone in Lake Charles to pass her a crawdad and some corn, then took her hand away and made Darren a promise: “It’s you I’m gon’ protect. I’m your mama, not gon’ let no one come for you.”

He heard something in her voice that made him want to believe her. It was, strangely, one of the most warmly maternal moments he’d ever felt with her. He allowed himself the fanciful thought that he’d read this situation wrong from the beginning. Maybe the reason his mother had removed the murder weapon from the property where he’d been living really was to protect her son. Maybe all the times he’d been by her house these two months, all the meals they’d shared, had truly been her way of trying to get closer to him. She’d taken his money simply because he’d offered it. But had she ever outright blackmailed him over the .38 pistol? He had to admit the answer was no. Maybe he was wrong to judge his mother by her past misdeeds, many though they were. “So you haven’t talked to the DA?”

Bell let out a rough, throat-clearing laugh. “Do you want me to?”

“No.”

“Then stop worrying, son.”

“Where is it, Mama?” he said, laying bare his desperation. “I’d just feel better if I knew where it was, if I could get hold of it and secure it some—”

“And get your fingerprints all over it? That’s the last thing you need.” He heard the top popped off a bottle. Bell took a sip and let out a tiny exhale followed by a soft, ladylike belch. “I told you, son, I got you. We got each other.”