She was still grateful when they reached the bar and she could drop her hand without appearing too anxious. “Okay, here’s the deal,” she said. “I can’t stand the smoke in this place, and I’m having an air purification system put in to suck it out of the air.”
“And you didn’t think that, as manager, I might be interested in knowing this?” His tone was neutral, and his expression gave nothing away. But his body language as he loomed over her with his arms folded across his chest said, Explain yourself, missy. “You haven’t even gone over the books yet. What makes you assume the bar can afford it?”
She felt her temper rise, but slapped a lid on it. “You’re absolutely correct,” she said with hard-won mildness. “I should have told you what I planned to do this morning, and I apologize for my failure to do so. But I’m telling you now. And if the bar can’t afford it, then I guess I’ll just have to pay for it myself.” She almost smiled when he blinked warily, then narrowed his gaze as if trying to ferret out the catch. “I should probably tell you, too, that I’m going over to Franklin’s Realty today to put the bar on the market, and I frankly hope the new air system will increase its value. But even if it doesn’t, I can’t stand the way everything from my hair to my underwear stinks to high heaven when I leave here. And I don’t like the idea of Lizzy smelling it on me. It seems hypocritical to try to teach her not to smoke herself, then come home every night smelling like the bottom of an ashtray.”
Coop examined her statement from every conceivable angle, but couldn’t find fault with it. Which was not to say he trusted her any farther than he could lob her. He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Gonna take the money and run, sugarplum?”
“No, stud-biscuit, I’m going to take the money and stick it in a trust account for my niece. But you’ve got the second part right. The instant this place sells, I’m packing up Lizzy and making a break for it. And I’m not looking back until we hit the city limits. Not that that’ll take more than five minutes.”
He wasn’t crazy about the idea of her uprooting Lizzy, since his niece would simply have to turn right around and come back once Eddie was exonerated. But since he was hardly in a position to say so, he gave her a clipped nod. “Fair enough. So long as you don’t shirk your obligation to the Tonk in the mean-time.”
“Actually, that brings up another point.” She stood ramrod straight in front of him, her shoulders back and the elegant curve of her chin elevated. “It occurs to me that I never got around to setting up a work schedule with you last night. Now, I’m perfectly willing to have you dictate my days off, but don’t plan on me starting work any night before nine o’clock.”
Christ Almighty. He’d had drill instructors who weren’t half the control freak this woman was, and gazing down at her determined little jaw and cool green eyes, he had the strongest urge to muss her up a little, if only to drive that bossy look from her face. She was so friggin’ tidy. Her glossy black hair was obviously the product of a pricey cut, for it fell sleekly into place without so much as a strand out of order. He got a quick image of the way it had been this morning, though—all rumpled from sleep and looking as if she’d just rolled out of bed after a hot bout of down-and-dirty sex.
Well, give him twenty minutes and he could make her look like that for real.
That straightened him up in a hurry. Damn, where had that come from? It was probably just one of those guy responses to a woman trying to dictate terms. If you can’t beat ’em, roll ’em around under the covers until they understand who’s boss.
He didn’t need to establish his jurisdiction through sex, though, tempting as the notion might be. He was the manager of this joint, and that was all the authority he needed.
“You’re a regular little four-star general, aren’t you?” Reaching out, he pulled a tendril of her hair out of place and rearranged it against her cheek, his lips curving upward in amusement when she smacked his hand aside and impatiently brushed the strand back in place. Shoving his hands deep into his pockets in an attempt to ignore the way his fingertips seemed to retain the feel of that sleek, satiny texture, he fixed his best don’t-screw-with-me expression on his face. “But I make the schedule around here, sugar, not you. And if I need you at the Tonk before nine, you’ll damn well make yourself available.”
“You think so?” Facing off with him, she drew herself up. “Well, I’ve got news for you, Blackstock. You can beat your hairy chest until the dogs come home—”
“Cows,” Coop corrected. When Veronica gave him a blank look, he elucidated, “The expression is ‘until the cows come home.’”
“Dogs, cows—whatever. Unless it’s an emergency, I still don’t plan on being there before nine.” Then she surprised him by sagging slightly and shoving her fingers through her hair. The action revealed a pucker of worry between her slender black eyebrows. “More than anything else right now,” she said, “Lizzy needs stability in her life. With Crystal d-dead and her dad a fugitive, I’m all the family she’s got left. Well, except for a stepbrother or half-brother, or some such shirttail relation of Eddie’s. But I don’t even know the man’s name, let alone how to get hold of him, and he’s obviously not all that worried about Lizzy’s welfare, or he’d have called to see how she’s doing.”
Coop winced, but Veronica waved the statement aside as if it were of no consequence. “The point is: I admit I don’t know beans about parenting, but it seems to me that the most important thing I can do is be there for her as much as possible during her waking hours. I wanted to find a professional to help her deal with the fact that her father’s been accused of murdering her mother, but Fossil isn’t exactly a hotbed for child psychologists. So I’m not leaving for work until she’s tucked in and settled for the night.” Her chin racheted up in determination as she gave him a level look. “Work around it, Cooper. The bar rarely gets busy before nine, anyhow.”
“All right.”
Veronica blinked, then narrowed her eyes. “That was almost too easy. So why does it make me suspicious as all get-out?”
“Beats the hell outta me, sweetpea. But if it makes you feel better, I agreed because you made a valid argument. As long as it’s for the kid, you’ll get no argument from me. Start tossing your weight around just because you can, though, and you’ll find yourself looking for a new bartender faster than you can say Sex On The Beach.”
“Why would I want to say that? Oh! That’s a drink, right?”
Coop merely gave her a heavy-lidded look, a smile of satisfaction tugging up the corners of his mouth when he saw her immediately bristle.
Then she brandished a smile so sweet it raised all sorts of warning flags. “And as long as you’re being such a reasonable guy, I should probably also inform you that I plan to run a background check on you.”
He’d actually been thinking he might have misjudged her, but her little bombshell exploded that fantasy in a hurry. “As in a police check?” he demanded. “The hell you say!” He stepped forward, looming over her.
She tilted her head back and looked him straight in the eye. “I’ll tell you the truth, Cooper: I don’t honestly believe you’d ever harm Lizzy. But you’re a strange man living in the same house with a six-year-old girl, and I’ll be damned if I’ll risk her safety on a gut feeling. My gut’s been wrong before. So I’m telling you straight out, I’m going to make certain you don’t have an arrest record. And if I find out you do, you’re going to find yourself out on the street so fast your head will spin—and the lease be damned.”
He couldn’t fault her reasoning, but that didn’t stop him from feeling insulted right down to the bone. He was an honest man. Hell, he was an ex-Marine—he’d spent thirteen years of his life keeping this country safe for people like her. He didn’t take kindly to her thinking he might be some pervert who’d prey on little girls.
With a sound of disgust, he turned on his heel and headed for the door.
Veronica’s heart tried to climb into her throat as she watched him go. It was her obligation to
protect Lizzy, and running a background check on Coop was just good sense.
“Veronica?”
She turned to see Kody walking up with his clipboard.
“I’ve got your estimate ready,” he said. “You have a minute to sit down with me and go over it?”
She thought of the offended anger she’d seen in Coop’s eyes and—more unnerving yet—a glimpse of something that had almost looked like…hurt.
Then she shook her head and turned her attention back to Kody. Don’t be an idiot. A Sherman tank couldn’t hurt that guy. “Yes, sure,” she said. “Let’s grab a seat over here and you can tell me what the damage is going to be.”
A red mist hazed Coop’s usual cool and logical reasoning process while he stalked down the street, and he all but ripped the driver’s door off its hinges getting into his car. He slammed it shut behind him, started the car, then peeled away from the curb. Heading out of town, he picked up the interstate just beyond the Big K, stomping the accelerator to the floor the instant his car’s back wheels cleared the freeway on-ramp. He punched on the CD player, cranked up the volume, and blasted down the highway, speakers wailing and engine screaming.
The car roared through dun-colored, snow-dusted hills and brown flatlands, past apple orchards that hosted row after row of skeletal trees. He blew past nondescript little burgs of cinder-block buildings, and didn’t slow down until the skies suddenly opened up about fifteen miles out of town. Then, turning the windshield wipers onto their highest setting and the defroster to full blast to dissipate the rapidly fogging glass, he took the next exit, got back on the freeway heading north, and put the pedal to the metal once again.
The rain poured down in sheets, and a few miles south of Fossil the car hit a patch of standing water and hydroplaned along its surface. The back end fish-tailed as Coop fought to gain purchase on the road beneath, and easing up on the gas, he wrested back control of the car and immediately slowed down. No sense killing himself because Veronica Davis had a suspicious mind.
He didn’t know why it bugged him so much—in a faraway corner of his mind, he actually applauded her caution. She seemed to be doing whatever she could to protect Lizzy, and who could argue with that? Except…
He’d worked damn hard to command a measure of respect in his life. God knew his own mother had never thought he’d amount to anything, and he’d worked his ass off to prove her wrong and become the type of man he could be proud of. He sure as hell didn’t appreciate being lumped in with pedophiles and who the hell knew what else.
But there was no sense brooding over it. It was high time, in fact, that he quit thinking about little Miz Davis entirely. During his brief sojourn at the Tonk, he’d gleaned bits and pieces of information on Crystal’s murder. He’d also heard some of the popularly believed reasons why Eddie fit the bill as prime suspect. But he hadn’t learned nearly as much as he’d hoped to, and he sure hadn’t learned anything that would clear Eddie’s name. It was time to step up his efforts.
Coop drove to Fossil’s small downtown business section and pulled into a neatly paved lot. Then he simply sat for a moment, listening to the rain bounce with a tinny patter against the car roof as he stared up at the cantilevered angles of a fifties-style redwood structure. A discreet sign above the entrance read FOSSIL PROFESSIONAL BUILDING.
Exhaling vigorously to settle the sudden tension that twanged warnings along the nerve endings down his spine, he collected his checkbook from the glove compartment and climbed out of the car. He quickly locked up and dashed through the pounding rain. Damn, it was cold! He should have worn a coat.
A moment later he stopped in front of a door that read NEIL PEAVY, ATTORNEY AT LAW, and shook himself off like a wet dog. He dried his hand against a protected section of the black T-shirt he wore under his plaid shirt, then reached for the handle.
A soft bell pinged overhead when he pushed the door open, and a young woman looked up from behind the counter. She gave him a practiced smile. “Good morning, sir. May I help you?”
Coop crossed plush charcoal carpeting to the curved mauve and gray reception counter. “My name is Cooper Blackstock,” he said. “I’d like to see Mr. Peavy.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No. But if he doesn’t have time to see me today, perhaps I could make one.”
She picked up a telephone receiver and paused with her finger poised over the intercom button. “May I tell him what this is in regards to, Mr. Blackstock?”
“I’d rather take that up with him, if you don’t mind.”
Her professional smile didn’t falter and, giving him a nod, she depressed the button beneath her finger. “Mr. Peavy,” she said a moment later. “There’s a Mr. Blackstock here to see you. Yes, sir, Cooper Blackstock.” She listened for a moment, then said, “No, sir. He doesn’t have an ap—Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Very good, sir.”
She reseated the receiver and looked up at Coop. “He has a conference call scheduled with a client in a moment, but if you don’t mind waiting, he said he could give you part of his lunch hour.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it.” Coop flopped down on an uncomfortable gray upholstered Eames-style chair and picked up the first magazine that came to hand. He flipped through its pages without absorbing much more than a vague impression that half its content seem to feature rich recipes while the other half was devoted to dieting tips.
“Mr. Blackstock?”
He looked up to see the receptionist extending a clipboard over the counter.
“I need to get some billing information, please.”
He got up and filled out the form. Taking a seat once again, he picked up another periodical.
This one turned out to be an older issue of Time magazine, and he found an article that sparked an idea in his mind. It kept him absorbed until a door to the side of the counter opened and the receptionist stuck her head out. “Mr. Peavy will see you now.”
Coop made a note of the magazine’s date and issue number and rose to follow her into the heart of the office suite.
She stopped in front of a closed door down the hall a moment later and gave it a quiet tap. They were invited in by a male voice. The receptionist opened the door, then stood back for Coop to enter. She pulled it closed as soon as he’d passed through, and a man who looked to be in his early forties rose from behind an oak desk to greet him.
“Mr. Blackstock, I’m Neil Peavy.” His brown hair was receding, but he looked fit beneath his expensively cut suit and had the subtly pampered sheen of a man who takes care of himself. Leaning across the desk, he extended an immaculately manicured hand. They shook, then Peavy waved a hand at the chair that faced his desk. “Please. Sit down.” He resumed his own seat. “Tell me what I can do for you.”
Coop took the seat indicated and met the lawyer’s gaze. “You can give me some information about Eddie Chapman’s case.”
The man’s face closed down. “What are you, a reporter? If so, you should know better than to ask me to divulge privileged communications.” He rose to his feet. “Now, if that’s all…”
Coop stretched his feet out in front of him, casually crossed one ankle over the other, and settled more firmly in his seat. “I’m not a reporter, Mr. Peavy. I’m—” Nothing I’m about to just blurt out without a few safeguards in place. He fished his checkbook out of the back pocket of his jeans. “Look. Let me write you a retainer.”
Peavy’s eyebrows drew together. “Why would you want to do that?”
“Because I’m looking for the same confidentiality you claim for Chapman. I need the assurance that what we discuss here will be privileged.”
Coop could see the lawyer was torn, but as he’d hoped, Peavy’s curiosity won out. He gave a clipped nod. “All right.”
“Will five hundred cover it?”
When the attorney agreed it would, Coop wrote out the check, ripped it out of the checkbook, and offered it to Peavy.
Neil Peavy set it down on the gleaming desk in front of him, then le
aned his weight on his hands and looked at Coop. “Okay, what’s this all about?”
“Eddie Chapman is my brother.”
Anger sparked in the lawyer’s eyes. “I don’t know what your game is, Mr. Blackstock, but I think you’d better leave. Eddie Chapman is an only child.”
“My half-brother, I should have said.” Coop shrugged without apology for the miscommunication. He and Eddie might have had only sporadic contact over the course of their lives, but they’d always considered themselves brothers—and never mind the legal qualifications. “Eddie’s the only child of Thomas Chapman, but before Chapman came into her life our mother was married to Dave Blackstock.”
Neil slowly resumed his seat. “All right. I’ll accept that. But I’m still not certain what it is you want from me. The lawyer-client confidentiality still applies—I can’t discuss what he said to me.”
“I already know Eddie’s innocent,” Coop said. “So I have no need to ask if he admitted any wrongdoing to you. I’m merely trying to figure out what caused him to take off.”
“I wish I knew.” Neil spread his fingers against his desktop and studied his buffed nails. Then he looked up at Coop. “The case against him wasn’t all that compelling. He was pursuing custody of his daughter through the legal system and had a very decent shot at attaining it, so in spite of what the DA’s office implied, that particular battle was no motive. Eddie and Crystal had a public fight at the Tonk the night of her murder, but they’d had arguments before. The only trace evidence in this case came from his leather jacket, not from him, and he had a habit of forgetting it everywhere he went, so anyone could have been wearing it. Hell, he even left it here once. There wasn’t a lick of DNA to tie him to the crime, and no one witnessed him with the deceased after they left the bar, let alone saw him wrap his hands around her throat and strangle her.” A vein began to thump in Neil’s temple and a flush suffused his face, and shooting Coop an apologetic look, he waved a dismissive hand.
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