I was getting frustrated now, unsure whether he actually knew anything or if he was screwing with me. “Which one was it, if you know so much?”

“I’m not saying I know anything,” Jimmy Ray said. “I’m saying you may be going down the wrong path, is all.” Which sounded at least partly self-serving to me. Jimmy Ray wanted me out of his business and away from his compound. Matt was out of the picture, and now I needed to follow his lead.

“Maybe you blew up Matt yourself to keep me from talking to him.”

Jimmy Ray laughed. “Girl, you’ve been watching too many movies. I’m gonna go to all the trouble of setting up an explosion when I can walk up to the man and shoot him? A gun’s a lot quieter and doesn’t bring a bunch of cops down on my head.” He opened my front door. “Besides, what do I give a shit if Matt talks to you? I already told you I had nothing to do with your girl dying.” He paused in the half-open doorway. “From what I hear, there wasn’t any sex involved in the killings. And it doesn’t sound like rage, either. Not the way they were laid out all nice and neat. What’s that leave?” He looked at me over his shoulder as he closed the door, the pity in his eyes so completely foreign I wondered if even he knew it was there. “Follow the money, Eve. Follow the money.”

NINETEEN

Follow the money? What the fuck was that supposed to mean? We didn’t have any money. Not me, not Junie, not Cal or my mama, either. No one in my family had ever had two nickels to rub together. That left Izzy. Her family definitely had more money, but they weren’t anywhere close to loaded. Hell, somewhere else they’d probably barely be considered middle class. And I somehow couldn’t picture Izzy involved in some grand scheme involving loads of dough. She was twelve, for God’s sake. More interested in nail polish, and texting, and nursing inappropriate crushes on idiots like Matt. But maybe there was something I couldn’t see because I wasn’t close enough. Something hidden within a family I only knew from the outside edges.

I’d managed to throw on some clothes and put my hair in a ponytail when Cal showed up, sweaty and smelling of smoke, his uniform torn at the sleeve and his shoes covered in ash. He wasn’t quite as furious as Jimmy Ray had been earlier, but he was close.

“What the hell, Eve,” he said, pacing my living room floor. Every step left tiny black soot marks on the worn-out carpet. “What were you doing out there? You could have gotten beat to hell or killed! And that’s before Matt’s place blew all to shit.” He raked a hand through his hair, leaving the dirty strands standing on end.

“I already told you on the phone,” I said. “The guy messing around with Izzy. It was Matt.”