“I didn’t.” David scowled at Addison.
“Then how did you know that Gracie was going to need one?”
David froze with one hand halfway into the engine. He put the wrench he was holding on the side of the engine block. “Don’t worry about it, Addy.”
“I have to worry about it. She’s my kid sister.”
“I took care of it, okay?”
“Jesus Christ, you really did kill that guy, didn’t you?” Addison stared at him in horror. “Eddie was right.”
“No. I didn’t. Eddie is an idiot.” David shook his head at Addison. “I definitely did not kill that guy.”
“Then why did Gracie need an alibi?”
“As far as I know, she didn’t.” David lied again. “Maybe someone is stealing things out of the dorm or something. State University doesn’t have real cops, you know. They’re rent-a-cops. Maybe they just needed to make sure Gracie wasn’t in the dorm this weekend.”
“You could be right.” Addison didn’t look as if he entirely believed David.
“Look, remember when you accused me of setting up a plan to get Gracie and Cal back together?” David decided to distract Addison.
“Yeah.” Addison nodded.
“You were right. I was hoping he’d snap out of it and drop Jo Beth if he thought he was really losing Gracie or good.”
“Oh.” Addison blinked in surprise and then nodded. “It worked then.”
“Did it?” It was David’s turn to look surprised. “Cal still isn’t speaking to me.”
“He’s trading in that ring for a new set of mud tires,” Addison smirked. “He and Jo Beth are history.”
“Nice.” David meant it.
“Very,” Addison replied. “He went up to State to get Gracie this morning.”
“Wait,” David frowned, suddenly confused. “Cal went after Gracie?”
“Yup.” Addison looked positively proud of himself. “I may have helped that one along just a little bit. Once I realized what you were up to it was pretty easy to prod Cal along in the right direction.”
“What did you do?” he asked. He was almost afraid of what the reply was going to be. Addison may have been at the front of the line when God passed out sex appeal, but he had spent too much time staring at himself in the mirror and had wound up at the end of the line when the brains got distributed.
“I sent him on a mission,” Addison was grinning now.
“A mission?” David was dumbfounded.
“Yeah. I told him to go up to State and get Gracie to tell him what y’all were up to.”
“And he went?”
“He never has been able to stay away from her.”
“Yeah. I know. But he was pissed.”
“I may have also told him that I thought your relationship with her was total bullshit.”
“I see.” David did see. Kind of. Maybe. If he were Addison, he was sure it would all have made sense. On the bright side, maybe Addison had gotten something right for once. Maybe Cal and Gracie could sort out their own messy relationship without his help. God knew, David was horrible at guy-girl stuff. That was why he dated his truck. “Good job,” he told Addison. He meant it.
*
“Please tell me y’all have clothes on,” David leaned against the frame of the front door and considered whether or not turnabout was fair play when it came to kicking Cal’s ass.
Cal was sitting on the right side of the couch with Gracie’s head in his lap. He was stroking her golden blonde hair with one hand and flipping through channels with the remote in his other. A fluffy pink quilt that David recognized from Gracie’s dorm room was pulled over them.
Cal pulled up the corner of the blanket and made a show of peeking underneath before Gracie swatted his hand, and he dropped the cover back over her. “For the most part,” Cal smirked at David. “I know how much you enjoy the sight of me in my boxers.”
“I don’t. Not at all. You’re fat and hairy,” David was exhausted, but he couldn’t stop himself from grinning back at his best friend. He’d been surprised to see Cal’s truck parked in the driveway when he’d finally gotten enough done at the shop that he felt he could go home for the night. David hoped Cal’s reappearance on his property was a sign that he’d been forgiven. He needed to clear the air between them, and he felt nothing but relief when he saw Gracie curled up against Cal’s side. “When I saw your truck outside I was afraid I was in for a couple more broken bones,” he admitted out loud as he closed the front door behind him.
“Uh, yeah. About that. Sorry.” Cal had the decency to appear genuinely chagrined. “Um, I guess I need to work on my listening skills,” he offered with a shrug.
“Be awful nice if you would,” David smirked at the two of them.
“I told him everything,” Gracie informed David as she shifted so that she was sitting up, tucked neatly into the crook of Cal’s arm. David noted that she kept the blanket pulled damn near to her chin.
“Thank God. I’m not sure how much longer I was going to be able to keep our little charade up.” David said as he crossed the room and collapsed down into the beat up old recliner that sat off to the side of the couch.
“If you ask me, the bastard got lucky when he dropped dead. If I had ever found out that someone had tried to rape Gracie,” Cal had murder in his eyes. Gracie put her hand over his and stroked his fingers. David saw her mouth the words ‘it’s okay’ to Cal. He shook his head no and took a deep breath as he turned back to David. “She told me she went running for Addison, wound up with you instead.” Cal made a face. “I’m not mad anymore. Not at y’all anyway.”
“That’s a relief.” David eyed the pizza box on his coffee table thoughtfully. The Sheriff had given them money to eat on, but by the time he’d been done at the shop he hadn’t even wanted to attempt to go have dinner anywhere. Addison had wanted to bring some girl along with them, and David just hadn’t been in the mood to stomach watching Addison play his games. “I’m too damn tired to fight with you right now. Not to mention I told Gracie I’d fix shit with you for her.”
Cal snorted. “That would have been an interesting conversation.”
“I was just trying to hide her boyfriend’s body, and it seemed like a reasonable alibi.”
“Yeah. I’m not impressed.” Cal shook his head and opened a warm bottle of Mountain Dew that he had left on the table after they had eaten dinner earlier. He drank the rest of it in a single swallow, cringing slightly at the flavor. “What I don’t understand is why you didn’t tell me?”
“Same reason I didn’t tell Addison. If you didn’t know about the body, you weren’t committing a crime. David shook his head. “That way, when the shit hit the fan, you would be innocent of all charges. No need for all of us to go down for murder if we don’t have to.”
“You may have a point,” Cal admitted. He protectively ran his hand down Gracie’s side.
With one hand David opened the pizza box that was sitting on the coffee table and extracted a slice of not-quite-cold-yet pineapple and ham pizza.
“That has mushrooms on it,” Gracie warned him.
“Yelch,” David made a face and bit into the pizza anyway. “I’m so hungry, I don’t even care.”
“I heard your warrant got thrown out,” Cal said.
“Who told you that?”
“Alex.”
David nodded. “Y’all aren’t going to believe it, but Twitchy Eddie found-”
“The wrong body,” Cal cut him off mid-sentence. “Yeah, actually, we did figure that out. Nothing Addison said about the guy who had been murdered matched anything Gracie told me about her date from hell.”
“Does Addison know what’s going on yet?” Gracie asked.
“No.” David frowned. “He knows a little bit, but I shut him down on the details. He thinks that Gracie and I planned this mess so that you would get jealous enough of our non-relationship to break up with Jo Beth and make up with Gracie.”
“Nice, but extremely
illogical.” Cal frowned. “I can’t ever follow Addison’s logic.”
“Me neither. It’s like playing connect the dots without a picture underneath,” David said with a shrug. “But he’s going to tell you he was right because, well, to some extent it apparently worked.” He gestured at the way Gracie and Cal were cuddled up together.
“You have a point,” Cal shrugged as Gracie put her head on his shoulder. “Is everything settled down at the Sheriff’s Office?” he asked.
“More or less,” David said devouring the slice of pizza so quickly he barely tasted the disgusting mushrooms. He narrowed his eyes at Gracie. “But I do have a question. If y’all knew that, then why are you here and not at college where I left you?”
“Because I want to be,” she said without apology. “When I heard you’d been arrested I freaked out.”
“When I heard I was being arrested, I freaked out.” David hadn’t admitted to himself, or anyone else, how nervous he’d been today when he’d walked into the CCSD building to face off with Twitchy Eddie. “I thought my ass was toast. Eddie is out to get me, and I was afraid he’d managed to do it.”
“Me too,” Cal scowled. “We need to do something about Eddie.”
“Let’s just kill him and hide the body.” David was only half kidding as he closed his eyes and leaned back against the recliner, too tired to move. “We’re starting to get good at this shit,” he told Cal.
“No, we’re not. I’m going to have a heart attack before I’m 30 if--” He looked over at Gracie, as if suddenly remembering that there was one last secret between them. David took their distraction as an opportunity to snag Gracie’s Cherry Coke away from her and took a long swallow of it.
She was watching him intently, but she didn’t look surprised. “Is this the part where y’all finally tell me what you did to Josie?” She asked the question reluctantly.
David choked on the soda.
Cal raised one eyebrow at David questioningly. David scowled. “You don’t need to know what happened to Josie.”
“But you do know?” Gracie tilted her head at him, shooting him a questioning look. Cal pulled her tighter against his side and ran his fingers through her long hair.
“We know,” Cal admitted.
“Josie is why Twitchy Eddie wants me dead,” David explained, a fresh wave of resigned exhaustion washing over him. “I figured that out today while I was loitering around in Wally Hall’s office waiting on my attorney to show up. You can overhear a lot of gossip from that corner of the Sheriff’s Department.”
“Addison said something about Josie the other night when he came and talked to me at the diner,” Cal recalled.
“Apparently she was his only friend in Shiner’s Bayou,” David made a gagging gesture.
“Josie was a sweet girl,” Gracie interrupted him. “She was shy, but she was nice. It always surprised me that more people didn’t miss her when she disappeared.”
“I keep forgetting the two of you were the same age,” David muttered. “Eddie misses Josie, evidently. He says his life was forever changed when she went missing. Call it my really shitty karma, but Eddie claims the injustice surrounding Josie’s disappearance is what spurred him to join the law enforcement community.”
“Josie really is dead?” Gracie spoke like she knew the answer.
Cal stiffened involuntarily then nodded. Gracie wrapped her fingers through his and squeezed reassuringly. David wondered what it would be like to have a relationship where you didn’t ever have to hide anything from the person. He figured his laundry list of sins would be enough to send most girls running the other direction.
“She’s dead,” David confirmed.
“What happened?” Gracie asked, looking directly at David. “I’ve always heard that you killed her. I heard you were the boyfriend she had been sneaking out to go meet up with when she disappeared.”
“I wasn’t her boyfriend,” David took a deep breath before continuing, “but I’m the reason she’s dead.”
Cal frowned at him. “You can’t keep blaming-.”
“It was my fault,” David cut him off. “I take full responsibility for what happened to Josie. It was an accident, but she’s not any less dead just because I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“You didn’t do it at all,” Cal pointed out.
“She wouldn’t be dead if it weren’t for the decisions I made,” David crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Cal. It wasn’t the first time they’d had this argument. “You and I both knew better.”
“We all knew better. You have to stop blaming yourself.”
“You were involved?” Gracie looked up at Cal with obvious surprise.
“Just as much as he was,” Cal gestured at David. He swallowed a visible lump in his throat. “Gracie, I agree with David. You don’t need to know what happened to Josie. Not when we’ve got Twitchy Eddie crawling around in the bushes behind us, watching every step we take.”
“Cal, I just want to know the truth.”
“You know the truth. I killed Josie. It was an accident.” David dared her to challenge him, knowing she wouldn’t. “Gracie, if you don’t know the truth then you can’t be held responsible for it. Don’t take on nightmares you didn’t earn. You have enough problems without adding old mistakes to your list of sins.”
Gracie slumped back against Cal and buried her face in his chest. “It was an accident, right?”
“I promise you, it was an accident.” Cal opened his mouth as if he was going to say more, but David made a slashing gesture in the air and shook his head. Cal stopped talking, choosing instead to stroke Gracie’s hair as she snuggled into him.
“Killing Austin was an accident,” Gracie whispered into Cal’s shoulder.
“I know,” he said, shifting positions so that Gracie was between his knees. He crossed his arms around her waist and cast a sideways glance over at David. “We’re going straight now. Just so you know. No more bodies. No more chopped up stolen cars. Hell, I think I’m going to start filing your tax returns for you. From now on, we’re good law-abiding citizens. I’m too old and out of shape to be running around trying to hide bodies and cover up murders.”
David nearly laughed. “Sounds like a plan to me. However, that also means we’ve got to stop accidentally killing people.”
“I’m not expecting that to be a problem.”
“And yet, we just hid corpse No. 2. Obviously, we’ve got a problem.”
“We didn’t have much of a choice with Josie,” Cal spoke softly. “At least, I didn’t think I had much of a choice at the time.”
Gracie looked up from his shoulder to meet his eyes. “You regret it?”
“Josie’s death keeps coming back around to bite us in the collective ass,” Cal confessed as he held her close. “Shiner’s Bayou is too small of a town for this big of a secret. It’s like this whole mess with Eddie – the only reason he’s looking at David as a murderer is because of Josie. If there’s one thing I’ve figured out over the last eight years, it’s that it’s better to deal with the consequences when things happen than worry about it for the rest of your life.”
“Do you think I did the wrong thing when I ran with Austin’s body instead of calling the cops?” she asked him, tears filling her eyes.
“I don’t know,” he looked at David for help.
“Everything has its price, Gracie.” David frowned at her and rubbed his eyes. He wasn’t in the mood for being philosophical right now. “Someone, somewhere, is going to be devastated when Austin doesn’t come home. It may just be his grandma, but she has feelings too. Her feelings just aren’t my priority.”
“Your priority?” she repeated his words questioningly.
“My priority is protecting my friends. You. Cal. Addison.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I’d rather act first and ask moral questions later than watch you rot in jail while wondering why I left the important decisions to someone else.”
She didn’t say anything to that; instead sh
e cuddled even closer to Cal. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. David stood up. “I’m fucking exhausted. I’m going to bed,” he told them. “Y’all behave. Or whatever it is y’all do.”
“What happens next?” Cal asked. “I mean, what do we need to take care of?”
“Tomorrow morning I’m going to go get my truck back from the Baker County impound lot. Addison is off work, so I stuck him with running my shop until I get back. You going to work?” he asked Cal.
“I need to,” Cal replied. “April Lynne keeps trying to turn Walker Hardware into a pet store. She’s selling bunnies right now. If I stay away for too long I’ll probably come back to discover we’re selling live hogs.”
Gracie giggled and David smirked. “April Lynne should have stuck with her goal of being a veterinarian,” he said.
“Agreed,” Cal said. “But yeah, I guess I’m going to work.”
“Eddie is going to keep trying to prove I murdered that guy he found in Johnson’s pasture.”
“You think?”
“I heard him say it. Like I said, Wally’s office is a convenient place to eavesdrop from.” David shrugged. “I guess we either need to find the real killer or get rid of Twitchy Eddie.”
Cal let out a low whistle. “Sounds like a plan.”
*
“I feel like I’m missing something,” Cal told Gracie as she settled down in the bed beside him with her head on his shoulder.
“Just one thing?” she countered, a wry smile on her face. “I’ve got so much discombobulated crap running through my mind right now I’m not sure I remember my own name.”
“It’s Gracie,” He hesitated for a moment and then decided to go for it. “Gracie Walker.”
She stopped stroking his chest and rolled up onto his chest so that she was looking his eyes, her face only inches from his. She gave him a slow smile. “Is it?”
“If you want it to be.” Cal heard the hesitation in his own voice. He hadn’t exactly forgotten his last disastrous proposal, but he had to know where they stood.
Feeding Gators: Book 1 in the Shiner's Bayou Series Page 32
