Lenora’s gaze moved to the pseudo-cop. “If you’ve got this, Hank, I’m going inside.” She was already turning away.

“You do that, Ms. Travers. We’re cool here.” Hank’s breath clouded in the air and smelled of his last cigarette mixed with some kind of mint flavoring. Ugh!

Charity called after Lenora, “Wait! I just want to ask you some questions about your daughter. Come on, Ms. Travers. Don’t you want to find out what happened to her?”

Lenora stiffened, then looked over her shoulder. “I’m sure the police are doing everything they can.”

“But maybe I can help. The power of the press and all,” Charity insisted, frantic. She’d come all this way and didn’t intend to be tossed aside.

“Oh, I seriously doubt that.” Lenora walked into her house and pulled the door shut with a soft but definitive thud while Hank practically pushed Charity off the porch.

“Damn it,” Charity grumbled and only then noticed the other people, curious neighbors who had come out to stand on their small covered porches and watch the show. A seventy-ish woman in a long coat holding a tiny dog under one arm stood on one stoop, and a couple in their sixties, the wife clinging nervously onto the husband’s arm, watched from another. The little dog—a miniature dachshund—was growling and yapping its head off, while they all stared at her as if she were some kind of lowlife criminal.

“I’m a reporter, okay?” she yelled at them.

“Come on. You’re outta here.” The guard pointed her back to her van.

“I’m doing my job!”

“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave. If you don’t, it’s my duty to call the local PD, as I said before.” He glanced at the house, where Lenora was peeking through the blinds. “Or Ms. Travers will do the honors herself. Trust me, she’s done it in the past when that little neighbor dog over there”—he hitched a thumb toward the crazed barker—“took to using Ms. Travers’s azalea garden as his own personal bathroom. It doesn’t take a whole lot to set her off.”

“I’m only trying to help.”

“Tell that to the officers.”

“Shit, shit, shit.”

He moved toward her, and she edged closer to her van.

“You’ve got two minutes to drive outta here,” he warned her, and after she reluctantly climbed into the driver’s seat, he stepped forward, slammed her door shut, and then all too obviously checked his watch. “Now a minute and fifty-two seconds.”

Oh, ha, ha! He was gonna count backward! Very funny.

Asshole.