“Did she tell you that she and Eddie broke up?” Her fake sad face wasn’t fooling anyone.
Yes, Scarlett did tell me that she broke things off with Eddie. It came up in conversation, but it was just two friends talking about our lives. She and the boring cheese aficionado just didn’t hit it off. Who knew? Did my heart rate kick up when she said something? Yes. But I wasn’t about to tell Claire that or the rest of these vultures called my family.
“It may have come up. Why?”
“Oh, just making conversation.” She shrugged.
“Speaking of, how’s the divorce coming along anyway?” Reid asked.
So much for staying away from my failed marriage as dinner conversation. And speaking of what? We were talking about Scarlett, and he pivoted to my divorce. Those two topics weren’t related.
“Uncontested. Just waiting for the court date. Should be in a few weeks as long as nothing gets pushed back,” I said. Grasping for any other topic of conversation that wasn’t a deep dive into my love life, I turned to Wes. “How’s your investigation coming along? Dig anything up yet?”
Wes barely moved his head, just the slightest turn, but he paired it with a mean side-eye.
“The investigation is slow going. The Calla Bay Police Department doesn’t seem to want to cooperate.”
“Yeah, surprising,” I replied, my brow hitched. My tone was sober as I asked, “Do you still think you have something real?”
“I do,” Wes said.
I trusted Wes. I trusted him a hell of a lot more than I did my own partner. Wes and I didn’t always get along. He had a habit of inserting himself in police business when, as a civilian, he needed to stay the hell out of it. But truthfully, he would have made a damn good cop if he wanted to be. For some reason, he chose to go private instead. No security, no retirement, hustling for jobs, extracting payment from deadbeats. Then again, as a cop, he would have to work with other people, occasionally even talking to them, which was clearly not his strong suit.
“What are your thoughts?” I asked him.
“No work talk at the table,” my dad grumbled.
I caught Wes’s eye and gave him a nod, eliciting a nod back in response.
This time, I did manage to stay out of the topic of conversation for the rest of dinner. After dinner, I hung around for a while, playing with Jane. Wyatt’s family packed it up first, wanting to get home to get Jane to bed and settle Veda in for the night. Wes took off when they left too.
“Sheila, thank you as always for dinner. I don’t know how we survived before you,” I told her.
“Hey.” My father bristled with a good-natured chuckle. “I kept you alive, didn’t I?”
I flicked my glance back to Sheila, fake whispering from the side of my mouth. “Barely.”
Sheila grinned. “It’s my pleasure, hon. Have a good night.”
I said bye to everyone else and got in my car. Where I should have turned left to get to my house, I turned right. A few minutes later, gravel spit from my tires as I made my way up the long dirt driveway to Wes’s house. He stepped out onto the front porch before I had even put my car in park. I didn’t think it was a coincidence or lack of funds that kept Wes’s driveway made of gravel. It was impossible to sneak up on him without alerting him to your arrival.
He unlocked the garage where he hung out, and I met him at the door.
“You want a drink?” he asked, opening the garage and flicking the lights on.
“No. I’m not staying,” I told him.
He crossed his arms in front of his chest, his legs apart, and his head bent to look down at me. That last part was probably just a necessity. Maybe. He looked ready for a fight, but I’d had enough of those this week. Honestly, Wes always lookedready for a fight. He had since the day he came into our house at eight years old.
I leaned back against his workbench, crossing one ankle over the other. “What do you need from the police?” I asked.
“The case file. Evidence log. Notes. Interviews. Reports.” He listed off the series of everything we’d put together during our investigation.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.
His brows rose as he stared at me. “You would be putting yourself at risk. I can’t guarantee I’ll find anything, but if there is something in there… there may be consequences.”
“If there is something to find, there will most definitely be consequences for someone.” I scratched at my jaw before asking him, “Do you have a running theory? Anything I should be on the lookout for specifically?”
