The question came while we were standing near the workbench.
Odom had been quiet for several minutes.
He looked at the Shovelhead, then at Reed.
"Do you think the man was looking for something?"
Reed didn't answer immediately.
I felt myself waiting.
It was the question we had all been circling without asking directly.
The diner man had wanted to know what Brix had seen on the motorcycle.
He had asked whether Brix had been inside the shop and whether Reed had spoken to him.
Then there was the argument behind the diner.
Something was supposed to be found before Saturday.
It was difficult not to connect those details.
But a connection was not the same as an explanation.
Reed rested his hands on the workbench.
"I think he wanted to know something."
Odom frowned slightly.
"That's not quite the same thing."
"No," Reed said. "It isn't."
I appreciated that he didn't pretend otherwise.
Odom looked down at his phone.
"Then what do we do with that?"
Reed glanced toward the motorcycle.
"We remember what Brix told us, and we don't make up the rest."
The answer was simple.
It was also the only answer we could defend.
I had been hoping Reed might say something more definite.
Maybe he would suggest a reason for the questions.
Maybe he would remember a detail that made the whole situation clearer.
Instead, he gave us the same truth we had been trying to avoid.
We didn't know.
I looked at the workbench.
The phone sat beside the tools.
Nothing about it had changed since the morning.
Still, I remembered how Odom had set it down when Brix first mentioned the argument.
That small movement had marked the moment when the conversation stopped being ordinary.
Before then, we had been listening to a boy explain that a man had hurt him.
Afterward, we were listening to someone explain that the same man had been asking questions about our shop.
The difference had been difficult to ignore.
I wondered whether Brix had understood the significance of the questions when they were first asked.
Perhaps he had thought the man was simply being nosy.
Perhaps he had assumed the questions were connected to the trouble at the diner.
Perhaps he hadn't known what to think until he overheard the argument.
I couldn't answer any of that.
I only knew how he had appeared when he told us.
He had looked worried.
He had looked uncertain.
And he had been careful not to claim that he knew more than he did.
I respected that.
Odom finally put his phone in his pocket.
"I just don't like the timing."
"Neither do I," Reed said.
The memorial ride was close.
The argument had included Saturday.
The diner man had asked about the motorcycle.
Those facts were enough to make us uncomfortable.
They weren't enough to tell us what would happen next.
I could see Odom struggling with that distinction.
He wanted to do something.
I did too.
There was a certain helplessness in knowing that a person might be concerned about something connected to you while having no clear way to find out why.
I had always preferred problems that gave you a place to start.
This one gave us several possible starting points and no reason to choose one.
We could focus on the diner man.
We could focus on the other person in the argument.
We could focus on the motorcycle.
We could focus on the approaching Saturday.
But each choice depended on a guess about which detail mattered most.
Reed seemed unwilling to make that guess.
He returned his attention to the machine.
I watched him for a moment before joining him.
We had work to finish.
The practical tasks gave us something definite to concentrate on.
I tried to keep my thoughts there.
When I noticed myself wondering whether the diner man had seen the motorcycle before, I returned to what I was doing.
When I wondered whether the other man knew Reed, I reminded myself that Brix hadn't identified him.
When I thought about what might happen before Saturday, I stopped before inventing an outcome.
It wasn't easy.
But it was better than letting every possibility become a certainty in my mind.
A little later, Odom spoke again.
"What if the man thought Brix had seen something he wasn't supposed to see?"
Reed looked at him.
"That's possible."
Odom waited.
Reed continued.
"It's also possible he was wrong about what Brix knew."
I felt those words settle over the conversation.
They were important.
The diner man might have been asking questions because he believed Brix had seen something.
That did not mean Brix had seen anything significant.
It did not mean there was anything hidden on the motorcycle.
And it did not explain what the two men had been arguing about.
The possibility was worth remembering.
It was not a conclusion.
I nodded.
"That's what we have to keep straight."
Odom looked at me.
"I know."
He sounded tired.
I was tired too.
The repeated questions had begun to wear us down, partly because we kept expecting them to lead somewhere.
Every time we thought about them, we returned to the same place.
The man had asked.
Brix had heard.
We didn't know why.
I wanted the repetition to stop.
But I knew that ignoring the questions would not make them disappear.
We had to leave room for new information without creating it ourselves.
Reed finished what he was doing and stepped back.
He examined the motorcycle for a moment.
Then he nodded to himself.
I couldn't tell whether he was satisfied with the work or simply ready to move on to the next task.
Either way, he seemed more settled than he had been earlier.
That helped me.
His calm didn't mean he had found an answer.
It meant he was willing to continue without one.
I needed to do the same.
Odom returned to the bench.
He picked up his phone, checked it, and put it down again.
I noticed the movement but didn't ask what he was doing.
There was no point in making every ordinary action part of the mystery.
I had to remind myself of that, too.
The shop was still our shop.
The workbench was still our workbench.
The Shovelhead was still the motorcycle we had been trying to prepare for the memorial ride.
Those facts had not changed.
What had changed was our awareness that somebody else had been asking questions about them.
We couldn't undo that.
We could only decide how to respond.
Reed had made his position clear.
We would not ignore Brix.
We would not claim to know what the diner man wanted.
And we would continue preparing the motorcycle.
I found comfort in the clarity of that decision.
It wasn't a solution to the larger problem.
But it gave us a way to keep moving without lying to ourselves.
As the day continued, I thought less about what the diner man might have intended and more about what we actually knew.
It wasn't much.
Still, it was enough to keep the warning in mind.
Enough to make us cautious.
Enough to remind us that the approaching Saturday might matter for reasons we had not yet understood.
I looked at the Shovelhead one more time.
The machine offered no explanation.
It didn't need to.
Our job was to prepare it for the ride.
Our other responsibility was to remember what Brix had told us and wait for facts that could clarify the rest.
I had spent too long trying to force the two responsibilities into one problem.
They were separate.
For now, I could handle that.
Click here to continue reading: PART 11: I Began to See Why Brix Had Hesitated Before Speaking, Because Even We Were Struggling to Understand What His Warning Meant
I Thought Getting One Old Motorcycle Running Would Solve Everything, Until a Hurt Boy Told Us What He Heard
Part 10 of 20
