“Why?” Fiji asked, surprised and a bit indignant. “I could have done this by myself. She came clean right away, she was hardly threatening . . . she’s just a baby expecting a baby.”

“Feej, she was lying,” he said. “I don’t know if it was her being poor or her being pregnant or her crying that threw you off, but nothing she told us was the truth.”

Fiji felt like someone had let the air out of her tires. “Seriously?”

He paid more attention to the road ahead than it probably needed. “Yeah, seriously.”

“Why are you so sure?” She tried to keep the incredulity out of her voice.

“I don’t always know when women are lying,” he said painfully. “Like Aubrey. But this girl was just like my sister when she was trying to put one over on my mom and dad. She played the ‘pitiful’ card, she left out a lot of information, and any newlywed would surely have told this ‘Mr. Eggleston picked on me’ story to her husband.”

“Unless her husband worked for Mr. Eggleston,” Fiji said defensively.

“Could be,” Bobo said, shrugging.

“But you believe she planted the bug because . . .”

“Because she’s as right-wing as he is? Because he gave her a lot of money and she didn’t think she’d get caught? Because her husband belongs to Eggleston’s group? Take your pick.” Bobo almost shrugged again. “Any or all.”

Fiji looked straight ahead. “I’m just mad at myself now for being so gullible. I thought she was so young and remorseful,” she said.

“I’m sure she is. But she’s other stuff, too.”

Fiji was silent for a while. When they were well east of Marthasville, she said, “I don’t know you as well as I thought I did, Bobo.”

He found himself smiling. “Maybe that’s a good thing,” he said. “Have you heard any more about the fire that took out Eggleston’s alleged hunting lodge?”

“Are we going to stop there? I know where it is. It’ll be coming up here on the right; the iron sign over the gate says ‘MOL.’”

She’d surprised him again. “How do you know that?” he asked.

“Well . . . Olivia and Manfred and I spent a night over at the Cartoon Saloon,” she said. “We needed some background.”

Bobo gave her a long look.

She said hastily, “Yesterday, a customer of mine from Marthasville e-mailed me to see if her order had come in. She’d been working overtime on an arson investigation and hadn’t had time to come to the store. I asked her how the investigation was going, because I knew whose place had burned, I heard it on the news. She told me it was Price Eggleston’s ‘hunting lodge.’ She put that in quotes. Anyway, she said they’d found evidence that two people had set the fire.” She looked at Bobo expectantly.