The Lining

You don't steal things.

You've never stolen anything in your life, not a lipstick, not a pack of gum. When you were nine you walked back into a drugstore to pay for a pencil eraser you'd forgotten in your pocket. So all afternoon, while you sort invoices, the word sits in your stomach like a stone. Stole.

"He's just saying it to make you look bad," Goldie tells you at five, closing the bay doors. "That's what men like Colter do when they lose. They write a story where they didn't."

"I didn't take anything of his. I didn't even take my blender."

"Then you've got nothing to worry about." She tosses her rag in a bin. "Pizza tonight. Socket's buying. He doesn't know that yet."

You go upstairs to unpack.

It's the first time you've really looked at Ancel's bag.

It's older than you thought. Army surplus, canvas gone soft as flannel at the corners, leather handles dark with sweat from somebody's hands. Somebody stenciled A.Q. near the zipper a long time ago and it's almost faded out.

You take everything out and lay it on the bed. Jeans. Earrings. Textbook. Coffee-can money. It's a sad little pile for twenty-seven years.

You go to fold the empty bag and stop.

The bottom is stiff. You noticed that last night, the extra weight, and thought it was a board for shape. But your fingers find an edge along one side where the stitching is different. Newer. Tighter. Brown thread on green canvas, small, careful stitches, the kind a woman makes when she's done a lot of hems.

You sit very still on the bed.

I want it to go somewhere, Glenna said. Her hands on the handles a second too long.

You get the paring knife from the kitchenette. Your hands aren't steady. You slit the brown thread, one stitch, then ten, and peel the lining back.

There's a board in there, all right. Thin plywood, cut to fit. And taped flat to the board, wrapped in a gallon freezer bag, is a book.

It's small, the size of your hand. Black leather cover, the cheap kind from a drugstore. A rubber band around it gone sticky with age.

You open it.

Columns. Dates down the left, two years old and older. Then letters and numbers in a hand you know, because for your first year at the Den you used to watch Ancel Quintrell do the club books at the end of the bar every Sunday, with this same slanted script and his reading glasses down on his nose. He used to let you check his math. He said you had the best eyes for a column he'd ever seen.

ST 14,500 in. CS 9,000 out. K.H. 2,000.

Page after page of it. Dozens of pages. Weeks and months and years.

You don't need long to understand what you're looking at. ST is Starkweather Towing, Hoyt's company. CS has to be the chop shop behind it, the one everybody at the Den pretends doesn't exist. Money goes in, comes out, comes back clean. Every month the same initials get the same round number. K.H. 2,000.

These are the Kings' real books. Not the bar tab you kept for six years, the pretty one, the one with the beer and the pool-table money. The real ones.

The ones that would put Hoyt Starkweather in prison.

Ancel kept them. Ancel went off the Grapevine road in the fog two years ago. And Glenna kept this book for two years and sewed it into a bag and put the bag in your arms and said walk to the junction.

You stole from the Kings, Colter's been saying all day. Something big.

Your phone rings, and you drop the ledger on the quilt.

It's Glenna. You almost cry when you see her name.

"Glenna, what did you..."

"Don't say it." Her voice is a whisper, fast and rough. Behind her you hear crashing, a man shouting, something heavy hitting a floor. "Don't say it on the phone. You found it?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Okay." She breathes out. "Listen to me, Ava. They're tearing the Den apart. They tore up my kitchen, they've got the floorboards up in the double-wide. Hoyt just figured out it was gone this morning. He doesn't know where it went yet, but Colter's been running his mouth about you all day and Hoyt isn't stupid."

"Glenna, why did you give it to me?"

"Because you were leaving and nobody was watching you." Her voice cracks. "Because you're the only one I trust who could read it. And because I knew where you'd end up." Someone shouts her name in the background. "I have to go. Don't tell them you have it. Don't tell anyone. Not even..."

The line goes dead.

You sit there with the phone in your hand, staring at the little black book on the white quilt like it might grow teeth.

The phone rings again almost immediately. A number you don't know.

You shouldn't answer it. You answer it.

"Hello, Ava." The voice is soft and warm and a little hoarse, like an old radio DJ. You'd know it anywhere. You've heard it say grace at six Thanksgivings. "It's Hoyt."

You can't breathe.

"I hear you've had a hard couple of days," Hoyt Starkweather says. "My nephew's a fool. I've told him so. I want you to know nobody's angry with you for leaving him. That's your business."

"Thank you," you hear yourself say.

"But I think something of Ancel's went with you by accident. A notebook. Little black thing. It's sentimental. Glenna's taking it hard." He pauses. You can hear him smiling. "I'd like it back. I'll pay you for your trouble. I'll even send a car. You don't have to see Colter."

Your eyes go to the window. The yard. The gate. Waylon's bike parked outside the clubhouse.

"I don't know what you mean," you say.

There's a long, comfortable silence. Hoyt has never in his life been in a hurry.

"Think about it, sweetheart," he says. "Think hard. I'm a patient man. The people around me aren't."

He hangs up.

You don't hear the boots on the stairs. You only hear the knock, two soft raps, and Waylon's voice.

"Ava? Books? Goldie said you didn't come down for pizza. You okay?"

You open the door before you can think about it.

He's standing there with a paper plate and two slices. His eyes go to your face, and then past your shoulder to the bed, to the cut-open bag and the plywood board and the little black book lying on the quilt.

He doesn't say anything. He doesn't move.

But somebody behind him does.

Shiloh Gentry is on the stairs, two steps down, holding his own plate. He's tall enough to see over Waylon's shoulder, and he goes still, and you watch the understanding hit him like a truck.

"Is that Ancel Quintrell's book?" Shiloh says. His voice has gone very quiet. "The Kings' book? The one the whole county says doesn't exist?"

"Shiloh," Waylon says.

"Way. Do you know what that is?" Shiloh comes up one step. His eyes are bright. "That's the Kings' whole kingdom in one hand. That's Hoyt Starkweather in a cell. That's worth more than this garage. That's worth more than every garage..."

Waylon moves. Not fast. He just takes one step sideways so he's standing square in the doorway, between Shiloh and you, between Shiloh and the bed. His back is to you. It's a very broad back.

"It's hers," Waylon says.

"Way, come on."

"It came in her bag. It's in her room. It's hers." His voice doesn't rise. It doesn't have to. "What happens to it is her call. Not yours. Not mine. Not the club's."

Shiloh stares at him. Then at you, over his shoulder, and his face says it plainly: every club in the county is going to want this, and you've just brought it into our house.

And somewhere out on Highway 58, a long way off and coming closer, you hear the ragged, cut-pipe rumble of Kings bikes.