I may have been overreacting, but with all the crazy shit going on around town I needed to go check on Mabel. She had seemed fine the night before. Maybe the double shift had caught up with her and she had just missed her alarm.

The double-wide trailer she had lived in with her mother, before her mother died of a brain aneurysm two years ago, was only a few blocks from the diner, at the end of a gravel drive behind the post office on Orange Street.

Every one of the fourteen trailers in the tiny park was well kept, and Mabel’s had a few pieces of flair that told you a younger person lived inside. A little hand-painted street sign pointing south that said KEY WEST 2230 MILES, the doormat that read BRING JOY OR BEER INTO THIS HOUSE. I knocked on the door and got no answer. I thought about walking back to my car and grabbing my pistol. Instead, I slipped my hand into my pocket and felt my knife for security.

I tried the knob and found the door unlocked, then called out in a loud voice, “Mabel, it’s Mitchum.” Nothing. I eased into the front room, quickly scanning in all directions, then called out again. The heat was on, and Mabel’s beat-up Chevy was in the carport.

I crept down the cramped hallway toward the bedroom, calling her name again. I paused to knock gently on the bedroom door, then pushed the door open.

I froze. Sprawled on the floor next to her bed was Mabel’s pale body. Dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, she had a hypodermic needle stuck in her ankle. I knew she’d overdosed. I knew she was dead and, most important, I knew she didn’t normally use drugs.

My brother would’ve told me if she’d had this kind of problem. After all, he was the local drug dealer.

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

I was lost. At least for a while. I still had hope of finding Bailey Mae, but Mabel was gone. Gone forever. I just sat in my car, shocked, while the cops and the coroner examined the trailer. I wanted to leave. To be productive. But I couldn’t. It was as if I’d been hit in the stomach. I was shattered.

I didn’t have time to grieve. People were counting on me. Alice and Bailey Mae needed me. Through some deep sixth sense, I felt like Bailey Mae’s disappearance and Mabel’s death were somehow connected. I had to swallow my grief and find Bailey Mae. I had to get some goddamn answers.