“I’m glad you wanted to ride with me,” Fiji said, too abruptly. “I guess I didn’t realize that you and Aubrey were close.” That was as close as she could come to saying, Why the hell are you volunteering to go to this funeral?

“Aubrey didn’t have much to do after she moved in with Bobo,” Creek said. “She cut back on her shifts at the restaurant so she could spend more time with him in the evening, when he was off work. So she’d come over to Gas N Go, buy some Corn Nuts, hang around. She’d talk to me and Connor.”

“I didn’t realize that. I’m sorry.” For the first time, Fiji realized that Creek was lonely for female companionship, and Fiji knew instantly that she should have thought about that and done a little dropping by herself.

“She tried to be nice,” Creek said.

That was damning with faint praise, if Fiji had ever heard it. She said cautiously, “But . . . ?”

“Well . . . she bragged about Bobo.” Creek shrugged. “Like all the women in Midnight had been after him, but she was the one who’d gotten him—you know?”

Two spots of color began to burn in Fiji’s cheeks. “Right. As if we were all panting after him,” Fiji said, in a slightly choked voice.

“Yeah. Come on! He’s a little old for me,” Creek said with the sublime pride of youth. “He’s got to be in his thirties, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So that was silly. Madonna is married to Teacher. Olivia, well, she and Lemuel . . .” She did look over at Fiji then, and Fiji nodded.

“And you, well, you and Bobo are like best friends, right?”

“Yeah. We’re buddies.” Fiji was proud of how evenly her words came out.

“It bothered me that she couldn’t help but flirt with every guy she saw. But she was nuts about Bobo.”

“I believe that, too,” Fiji said. “But she had some other reasons for going after him like she did.”

Creek looked surprised. “I’m sure she did. Living in Midnight isn’t every girl’s dream. I mean, I understand that she was put into position to meet him and . . . and seduce him. But I know the love came later. She was basically a good person.”

Fiji said, “She was a right-wing nut.”

Creek said, “You think she couldn’t love Bobo because of her politics?”

“I don’t know how much you heard when the sheriff was telling us that she had a whole backstory she hadn’t told Bobo? Creek, the only possible reason she could have for not telling Bobo the truth about her background when she decided she loved him is that she still planned on doing whatever it was they set her up in Midnight to do. And to me that’s just nasty.”