We were well into the dinner shift when a family walked in with three kids. I was about to send them to Ruth’s section, but the little boy ran up to me and stared up at me with large brown eyes. “Are you the lady who’s good at math?”
It took me a second to figure out what he meant. “Oh. Are you friends with Zelda?”
The mother gave me an apologetic look. “I’m Annette. Annette Searcy. I heard you helped a girl in Eric’s class and her parents understand how to do yesterday’s math problems.” She gave me a helpless look. “I really don’t understand it.” Then she quickly added, “Don’t worry. We’re here for dinner too.”
I cast a glance at the busy dining room and then smiled at the mother. “I’m Carly, and I’ll be happy to look at your son’s homework and explain it to you when I get a chance. In the meantime, how about y’all find a table in this area, and I’ll be over to take your orders.”
I grabbed several menus and set them on the table they picked, then checked on my other customers. Molly seemed to be holding her own, so I headed over to Annette and her family. They ordered drinks and three of the special, and I told them I’d be back in a few minutes to look over Eric’s homework.
After I hung up their food ticket in the back, I headed over to the bar to get their drinks.
Wyatt was behind the bar, and he nodded toward Molly. “I see Max took my advice.”
“Molly was your suggestion?” I asked in surprise.
He frowned. “Don’t tell me you’re about to protest hiring her because I recommended her.”
I snorted. “Good help is good help, and so far she seems to be holding her own. I don’t care if she showed up on the recommendation of the Grinch, but at least that would explain why Ruth has her britches in a bunch that she’s workin’ here.” The look on Wyatt’s face suggested that he might understand the situation better than I did. “Spit it out. Why doesn’t Ruth like her?”
“That’s between Molly and Ruth.”
His words set a fire in my blood. “Don’t you dare pull that lame bullshit again,” I snapped. “Don’t you dare.”
He gaped at me in surprise, then said, “Molly is the younger sister of Ruth’s former best friend, May.”
“Why is that a bad thing?”
“The hell if I know.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Try again. Why does Ruth hate her?”
His gaze lifted to mine. “Ruth and May had a falling-out, but I don’t know many of the details. I’ll leave it up to Ruth to tell you.”
It seemed like another cop-out, yet I could see it being true. Men were often oblivious to the intricacies of women’s friendships, not to mention Wyatt and Ruth hadn’t been friendly for years.
I placed the family’s drinks on a tray, then slid it off the bar top. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it?” I asked in a brisk tone.
He just grunted as I walked away.
I headed over to the Searcys’ table and passed out their drinks. “Why don’t you get your homework out, and I’ll take a quick look?”
Eric was in Zelda’s class, and his homework assignment was similar to the problems I’d worked on with Zelda. I squatted next to the table and showed him and Annette how to separate the ones and the tens before multiplying.
It took a few tries before they both got it, and I told them to try the next few problems and I’d be back to check on them.
A few more people had settled in at the bar, but Molly seemed to be doing okay. Jerry walked in and gave me a nod. I noticed he’d been coming in later than usual and not staying as long as he normally would, but he didn’t care much for strangers, and the tavern was full of them lately.
I checked on Eric and his family again, looking over the next math problem they’d finished, and corrected their missteps. We’d gotten busier, though, and I couldn’t stay for long.
“I’m so sorry, Annette,” I said. “We’re really slammed tonight.”
“I should be the one apologizing,” she said. “Helping us with Eric’s math is above and beyond.”
“I actually really enjoy doing it.” I paused, wondering if it was a mistake to delve into this part of my old life, but I couldn’t deny it felt good. “We’re usually slow in the late afternoon before the dinner crowd shows up. If you come back tomorrow, I’ll probably be able to actually sit with you guys and help you work through the problems.”
“Thank you so much,” the mother said. “We’ll be here.”
They left soon after and the dinner crowd began to thin. It hit me that Marco still hadn’t shown up for his bouncer job.
Molly was starting to look frazzled, and Ruth and I had been so busy, we’d barely had a moment to talk except for momentarily running into each other at the order counter, but once I had time to catch my breath, I headed over to Ruth to test the waters.
“It looks like Molly’s working out,” I said.
She gave me a look through narrowed eyes. “Please. She doesn’t even have a full section. You took several of her tables.”
“I thought we should ease her into it.”
Snorting, she said, “No one eased you in. You took half the room on a football night.”
“Yeah, but—”
She held up a hand. “Stop. No excuses.”
I released a huge sigh. “We need the help, Ruth. I realize you must have some kind of issue with her, but she did pretty well with the section she had, so let’s give her a chance, okay?”
She gave me a long look and her face softened. “Okay. Sorry. I’ll give her a chance, but I don’t trust her, Carly.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “You obviously know her and have your own perceptions of her, so I appreciate you putting them aside and giving her a chance.” I suspected her problem with Molly stemmed from her falling-out with May, but that wasn’t the kind of thing we should be discussing right now. It was likely more of a beer or wine conversation.
“I don’t know about putting ’em aside,” she grumped, “but I’m lettin’ her stay.” Then she added, “For now.”
I cast a glance toward the bar, where Wyatt and Max were working. “Do you know why Marco hasn’t shown up?”
“You’d know better than I would.” Our conversation was cut short when she headed over to a table of boisterous construction workers to take orders for refills.
My customers looked content for the moment, so I decided to head over to the bar and check on Molly. “How’s it goin’?”
“It’s obvious I haven’t waited tables in a few years,” she said with a wry grin, “but it’s comin’ back to me.”
“You seem to be holding your own,” I said. “How’s Tiny treating you?”
She shot me a surprised glance. “Okay, I guess.”
“He’s not very talkative when we’re busy, but if he’s upset with you, he doesn’t hide it. So that’s a good thing,” I said with a reassuring smile.
“Okay,” she said, looking relieved. “Good.”
“Don’t worry. It’ll all come back. And besides, as you already know, we’re not a formal kind of place. The main thing is to try to keep the customers happy, but don’t take any crap from the guys sittin’ around drinkin’.”
She got an uneasy look on her face, so I reached out and touched her arm.
“Don’t you worry,” I said. “If anyone gets out of hand, Max, Wyatt, or Tiny will be on them faster than a tick on a coon dog.” I cast a worried look toward the front door. “And Marco Roland when he shows up.”
“Wyatt Drummond…” she said with a playful grin. “Rumor has it you two dated.”
“Briefly,” I said. “When I first got to town. But we’ve been over for three times longer than we were together, so there won’t be any drama.” Hopefully.
She nodded. “Okay.”
Thinking about Marco had me worried, so I left her and headed behind the bar with my drink tickets, cornering Max while he filled a soft drink order.
Wyatt was a few feet down the bar filling a beer mug.
“Have you heard from Marco?” I asked, my worry seeping into my voice.
“No,” Max said with a frown. “Last I heard he was one of the deputies workin’ at the construction site.”
“Any word on that situation? Will they be able to start construction back up soon?” While the additional business was great, we couldn’t keep up at this pace, and a third of the guys in the room had been there all day, getting drunker by the minute. It was bound to turn ugly.
“I heard they took the bones to the state crime lab. They think it’s a woman.”
“Not a child?” I asked. When he gave me a horrified look, I quickly added, “I wondered if it was Floyd Bingham’s son. Or one of his wives.”
His brow furrowed. “What do you know about Rodney Bingham?” He released a loud groan. “Let me guess. Marco.”
Wyatt gave us an inquisitive look, but a customer waved at him from further down the bar, capturing his attention.
“He told me about it when we were looking for Lula. And then your father told me that he’d won a court battle over some disputed land on the Bingham-Drummond property line. I just presumed the body had been left by Bingham Senior.”
Max’s eyes brightened. “Hey. You’re right.”
I raised my brows. “You thought your father was responsible, didn’t you?”
He didn’t say anything for several seconds. “We both know that Carson Purdy was a murderer.”
The story went that Carson Purdy, Max’s father’s right-hand man, had gone rogue and attempted to start up his own drug empire under Todd Bingham’s nose by hauling in drugs from Atlanta in caskets delivered to a funeral home in Ewing. Carson’s gang had killed Hank’s teenage grandson for trying to get proof to implicate them, and I had witnessed his murder, which had set me in Purdy’s crosshairs. Purdy had shot Marco while trying to get to me, but Jerry had ultimately saved us all.
Bart Drummond had denied all culpability, but I sure wasn’t taking his word for it.
The look on Max’s face shifted to concern. “When did you speak to my father?”
Wyatt glanced toward us with a blank expression.
I hesitated. “Back in December. When Marco and I were looking for Lula.”
“Marco never mentioned it. And neither did you.”
I shrugged. “He wasn’t with me when I saw your parents, and I didn’t think it was worth mentioning.”
“You saw both of them? Together?” Max asked. “Where?”
“Does it really matter, Max? It happened four months ago.”
He gave me a dark look. “Humor me.”
“I was at Walgreens in Ewing, picking up a blood pressure cuff for Marco. Your parents were there picking up a medication for your mother. She saw me and said hello.”
“And my father just happened to mention that he’d won a court case?” Max asked in disbelief.
I shrugged again. “He was in a sharing kind of mood.” Without knowing more about his situation with his father, I couldn’t risk telling him about his father’s threat to Hank, let alone that Bart knew my secret. Besides, Max didn’t know my story—he’d only guessed there was one.
“So,” I said, eager to change the subject, “since they’re done digging up the bones, do you think they’ll start construction back up again?”
Max lifted his worry-filled eyes to mine. “I sure as hell hope so.”
Was he eager to bring more jobs and money to Drum, or was he worried about his father’s investment? Probably both.
Wyatt walked past us. “I’m goin’ to get more ice,” he said. Then he headed to the back.
I cast a glance out to the dining area, and I could see the drinks were getting low at a table of construction workers. “Will you let me know if you hear anything from Marco?”
“You’re worried about him?” Max asked in surprise. “He’s literally watching a hole in the ground. There’s no danger involved. If anything, he’s more likely to die of boredom.”
While I knew Max was right, I couldn’t help worrying. Marco had almost died on the job, trying to protect me, no less. He’d gone back to work in January, and ever since, I’d lived in constant terror that he’d be shot again. It didn’t ease my mind any to know he’d made me one of his emergency contacts.
I was about to head back to my tables when two sheriff’s deputies I didn’t recognize walked through the door, both wearing serious expressions. They were here for a purpose, and it wasn’t a good one.
My heart lodged in my throat, and I pressed my hand to my chest. “Oh, God. Marco.”
I felt like I was going to pass out.
Max shot me a horrified look, then turned to the deputies as they approached the counter. The taller deputy stepped up to the bar between Jerry and another of the local customers, his gaze on Max’s face.
“We’re looking for Wyatt Drummond,” the deputy said with a blank expression.
Relief swept through me, making my knees weak, but it didn’t last long before a new concern reared its head.
Max froze, then sidestepped to stand in front of them. “And may I ask why?”
“Are you Wyatt Drummond?” the deputy asked.
I didn’t hide my surprise. The Drummonds were well-known in these parts, and while Wyatt and Max had similar eyes, Max was blond and Wyatt had dark hair.
“No, I’m Max Drummond, the owner of this establishment.” Max leaned his arm on the bar. “Wyatt’s not here at the moment.”
“Have any idea where he could be?”
Max’s face scrunched up as he leaned to the side. “Well…”
Wyatt walked out of the back, carrying a bucket of ice, and paused in the doorway when he saw the deputies. But he only stopped for a second before continuing toward us.
Max shot him a quick glance, then turned back to the deputies. “What’s this all about, anyway?”
“We’re not at liberty to discuss the matter with you,” said the deputy taking the lead.
Wyatt walked behind the counter, keeping an eye on the deputies as he dumped the ice in the bin.
“Wyatt Drummond?” the deputy asked.
Wyatt stood straight, resting the bucket on his hip. “That’s me.” He shot his brother a warning look. “What can I do for you?”
“We need you to come to the sheriff’s station to answer a few questions.”
Wyatt’s face gave nothing away. “And what would those questions be about?”
“Heather Stone.”
Chapter Six
Max looked on in confusion. “What’s there for him to answer? Heather left town nine years ago.”
The deputy’s mouth twitched. “We’d like to discuss this down at the station.”
“Is he under arrest?” Max asked.
“No,” the deputy said. “We simply want to ask him some questions.”
“Then why not ask them here?” Max asked.
“We’d like to do this someplace quiet.”
“You can go back to my office,” Max said.
“It’s okay,” Wyatt said, setting the bucket on the floor. “I’ll go to the station.”
He started to walk around the bar, but I blocked his path. “Not without an attorney you’re not.”
“That’s not necessary, Carly,” Wyatt said. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”
Lowering my voice, I said, “You served time, Wyatt. You’ve already got a strike against you. Call your attorney.”
His jaw clenched. “And make myself look guilty? Like I said, I’ve got nothing to hide.” He shifted his gaze to the deputies. “I’ll come.”
He pushed past me and walked around the counter.
“Max, stop him,” I said as he headed out the door with the deputies.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked, sounding frustrated. “Tackle him?”
“We have to find him an attorney!”
“They’re just askin’ him questions, Carly.”
“Don’t you think it’s a coincidence that they’re here asking questio
ns about Heather the day after they found bones buried on your father’s property?”
His eyes widened. “Oh Jesus. Do you think…?”
“I don’t know what to think,” I said, putting my hand on his arm. “But we need to get him an attorney. Given his history, he shouldn’t be answering any questions without one present. Do you have anyone you can call? Or know who he used before?”
“I only know my father’s attorney, and Wyatt would never agree to use him.” He gave me a smile, but his eyes showed his concern. “As you know well, Wyatt’s a stubborn man. If he doesn’t want an attorney, any calls we make will be wasted time and effort.”
Unless they arrested him for something.
“Do you think that’s why Marco hasn’t shown up yet?” I asked. “Because he knew and he didn’t want to tip us off?”
Max inhaled deep, then released his breath. “Four months ago, I would have said no, but after Lula…” He cleared his throat. “Things haven’t been the same.” He nodded. “Looks like that family you were talkin’ to is ready for their check.”
I swallowed my anxiety and hurried over to Annette and her family to hand them their check. Several other tables needed my attention, but Ruth stopped me and asked, “Why were the sheriff’s deputies here, and why did Wyatt leave with them?”
“They said they wanted to ask him some questions.”
“About what?” she asked with a suspicious glare.
“Carly, are you gonna get those drinks or not?” one of my customers shouted.
“I’ll tell you what I know later,” I said before I hurried over to take care of their refills, keeping an eye on Molly, who was busy trying to keep up. If the deputies coming in to ask Wyatt to their headquarters had her concerned, she didn’t let on.
A half hour later, Marco walked in wearing his uniform and carrying a duffel bag. He shot a tortured glance at Max, and then they both headed straight for his office. I dashed over to intercept Marco before he disappeared into the back.
“Hey,” I said, stopping him by placing a hand on his chest. “What’s going on? Why did two deputies show up and take Wyatt to the sheriff’s station for questioning about Heather?”
One Foot in the Grave Page 5
