‘Nope. If you’ve got two sisters, what are their husbands to each other? Does that make them brothers-in-law?’
Evan shook his head. He had no idea, but he knew where this was going now.
‘Whatever it is, that’s what we were. Because that son-of-a-bitch there,’—he jabbed the phone hard with his finger—‘Valentine Waits, was Kristina’s first husband until she left him for Jake Kincade.’
Chapter 35
EVAN GOT BACK from the bar with another two bottles of beer as Arturo returned from the restroom. From the bar he’d seen him get up and head in the direction of the door, walking like a man with saddle sores. He’d panicked for a second, thought about running after him, until Arturo veered off to the left at the last minute, following the sign to the men’s room.
‘What kind of a man breaks somebody’s finger and rips off their fingernail for putting a hand on his chest,’ Evan asked.
‘I’d have thought it was obvious. And this is where you need to pay attention if it isn’t—the kind of man you don’t mess with. I’ve only just met you, but I get the impression you’re a very slow learner that way.’
Evan was tempted to ask him if he knew anybody in the police department, maybe one of the detectives, last name Guillory.
‘Why does everybody deny knowing him?’ he said instead.
‘Maybe they’re trying to save you a lot of pain.’ He held up his little finger to emphasize the point. ‘And you’re not family.’
‘Okay, point taken. What’s the real reason for the collective amnesia?’
Something cloaked itself in the darkness of Arturo’s eyes before he answered.
‘A lot of people got hurt. Lives ruined sort of hurt. They don’t like it when a stranger rakes it up after all this time. A lot of people would say no good will ever come of it. Only more pain. It’s a good point. Why are you digging all this up now, anyway?’
‘I do what my client pays me to do.’
He mustn’t have sounded very convincing. Arturo kept looking at him, waiting for a better answer. He was wasting his time.
‘You got a business card?’
Evan got one out of his wallet and handed it over. Arturo read it, his brow creasing again. He shook his head.
‘It says private investigator.’
‘Uh-huh.’
Arturo turned the card over. Nothing on that side. Evan had often been tempted to get a rude picture printed on the back to surprise everybody who turned it over.
‘Where’s it say weasel words lawyer?’
‘The printer charges by the word. I was trying to save money.’
They stared at each other a couple seconds, then Arturo held out the card.
‘Keep it,’ Evan said. ‘You never know when you might need my services.’
Arturo dropped it in his top pocket. Evan picked the phone up again, the photo still on show.
‘When was this taken?’
Arturo took a swallow of beer to lubricate the mental faculties, his forehead creasing in concentration.
‘I’d say around 1986. Kristina left Waits for Jake in 1988 and it was before that.’
‘So Jake and Kristina weren’t together when this was taken.’
Arturo held his hand flat, rocked it from side to side. He stopped short of winking in a man-to-man way.
‘Depends what you mean by together. They weren’t married.’
‘Sounds like a dangerous game to play if Waits is as bad as you say.’
Arturo didn’t reply at first. Maybe because the answer was so obvious. Evan didn’t think that was it. Despite the candor, there was a line that would not be crossed, however much he loosened his tongue with alcohol. He got the impression that Waits or his men could cuff Arturo to the rail in the back of the van and do their worst, and he still wouldn’t say a thing he didn’t want to.
‘Maybe you’re not the only one won’t listen to good advice.’
Evan didn’t acknowledge the remark. He’d heard it all before. From Guillory mainly.
‘Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Kristina left Waits in 1988, the same year Lauren was born. Lauren was born in September, so unless Kristina left Waits on January first . . .’
The implication was clear and didn’t need spelling out. It was odds-on Lauren was conceived while Kristina was still married to Waits. It seemed like Jake and Kristina really liked to live dangerously.
‘Then ten years later Kristina is killed in a car accident and you took in Lauren.’
Arturo nodded vaguely, his eyes looking straight through Evan. Whether it was back to happier or not so happy times was impossible to tell from his face.
‘They didn’t have any other kids apart from Lauren?’
Arturo’s eyes came back into focus, into the present. He hesitated.
‘Not of their own. Kristina had a son with Waits.’
Evan’s mind stopped and rewound what he’d just heard. He felt as if he was being pulled in so many different directions, but they all led back to the same place, to the same name.
‘He was only a baby when Kristina left Waits. She took him with her. His name was Spencer.’
‘But you didn’t take him in when Kristina died?’
Arturo stared at the table top a long time. His voice was heavy with regret when he spoke, his eyes down.
‘No. Eva wouldn’t hear of it. She said no son of Valentine Waits was welcome in her house. Her house. Not our house. You see how right you were earlier when you accused me of doing everything Eva says. I always have. Until now, when it’s too late to matter.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He went to live with his father.’
Arturo looked up then. His eyes were two deep wells of hurt and pride and remembered mistakes. But there was something else in there, behind the pain. Not exactly amusement, more a sad acceptance of the sick jokes fate loves to play on us all.
‘Or did he?’
He held out his hand, made a give-it-here gesture with his fingers. Evan gave him the phone.
‘Remember what I told you. This photograph was taken in 1986. Kristina left in 1988 with Spencer some time before his second birthday. She’s probably pregnant with him in this photo. See the way Waits has his arm around her. What’s that say to you, given what I’ve told you?’
It didn’t take much thinking about.
‘This is my property. Hands off.’
‘Exactly. And I wouldn’t like to say’—he pointed to Jake Kincade and Valentine Waits in turn—‘which of these two men is the father.’
Evan didn’t want to think what life must have been like for Spencer Waits, forced to return to live with a man who probably had the exact same doubts about the boy’s parentage as Arturo had just voiced. And that was before taking into account the sort of man everybody said Valentine Waits was.
He leaned across and swiped backwards through the photos on his phone, still in Arturo’s hand, until he got to the one Levi had given him of Lauren sheltering under an umbrella, a man beside her, his arm around her protectively.
‘Is that Spencer?’
Arturo nodded.
‘That’s him. No doubt about it.’
His face compacted, his brows knitting in concentration.
‘What?’ Evan said. ‘You’re not sure?’
‘It’s not that.’ He held the phone at arm’s length. ‘Maybe he is Valentine’s son after all. He looks like the other two.’
‘What other two?’
Arturo cocked his head at him as if he didn’t understand the question, then realized he was making assumptions.
‘Sorry, you wouldn’t know. Kristina was Valentine Waits’ second wife. He had two sons by the first marriage. Ira and Garrett.’
For the second time that evening Evan was transported back in time. Two men and a van with a set of handcuffs and a pair of bloody pliers. His eyes went to Arturo’s finger. The fact that the man who did it to him had two sons was too much of a coincidence.
&n
bsp; ‘Where are they now?’
Arturo’s mouth turned down. He looked like he was going to spit.
‘Garrett’s dead and Ira’s in prison. With any luck he’ll be stabbed in the shower block before he’s let out.’
‘You don’t like them.’
‘Like father, like son. Spencer is different. Then again, he was brought up for ten years by Jake and Kristina. He had a shot at a normal life before he got sent back to a life of hell.’
Arturo looked as if he was about to lapse back into a pit of regret and self-pity for not standing up to his wife.
‘What you said about the shower block—was Garrett killed in prison?’
‘No. But he didn’t last long on the outside. Someone with a grudge got to him. Seems there’s some justice in the world.’
Evan’s theory about the Waits boys being the two men in the van had just gone up in smoke. He didn’t know what to make of any of it. The only thing he knew for sure was that he understood why Lauren hadn’t wanted to talk about her family to Levi. If he had a family like hers, he’d fake his own death too.
It was only going to get worse, of course.
Chapter 36
EVAN LEANED BACK in his chair, laced his fingers behind his head and glanced around the room. The way things had gone so far, he wouldn’t have been surprised to see Spencer Waits walk into the bar with Lauren on his arm. On the other side of the room the door opened as his gaze moved across it. Without knowing how, he knew who was about to walk through the door.
‘You okay?’ Arturo said.
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ Evan replied as he watched Kate Guillory step into the room. He held his breath as he watched to see who followed her in. His heart sank as an awful thought crossed his mind. Not Ryder, please. He really couldn’t deal with that now, not with his head spinning from Arturo’s revelations.
Then his heart sank a little further.
It wasn’t Ryder, not unless he’d grown six inches, lost fifty pounds and was spending an extra two thousand dollars on his suits. The guy had his hand on Guillory’s elbow, gently leading her forward. Evan knew he’d get a slap around the head if he tried shit like that. The guy was handsome although Evan reckoned a better word was pretty. He had dark hair with a perfect just-so look to it that Evan knew didn’t take more than fifteen, twenty minutes to get that way. Evan ran a hand through his own hair without thinking. Job done. The guy hadn’t smiled yet but Evan already knew what his teeth looked like. He wished he’d brought his sunnies along for when the guy decided it was time to bring a ray of sunshine into everyone in the bar’s lives. And that chiseled chin. It looked just the right fit for Evan’s fist.
Guillory hadn’t seen him yet. His table was in a direct line between the door and the bar. Mr Smarm didn’t look like the sort of guy who liked to sit up at the bar in case he got the sleeve of his nice suit wet. Besides, Guillory always sat at the bar with him. She’d feel disloyal doing it with Mr Perfectly-Coiffed.
Seemed like she was in a disloyal mood tonight. Evan turned back to face Arturo, his back to the door as Guillory and her friend made their way towards the bar. Maybe she’d be so enthralled by the guy’s witty conversation as she stared into those baby blues, the ones with so much feeling in them, she wouldn’t notice him sitting there.
The sudden smack on the back of his head told him otherwise.
‘Buckley! What are you doing here?’
He thought it was a stupid question. She needed to up her game, say something a lot more intelligent if she wanted to impress her new boyfriend. The boyfriend was looking at Evan in a what have I got on my shoe? way.
Evan stood up, pleased to see he was the same height as Mr Something-Unpleasant-Under-My-Nose.
‘This is Justin,’ Guillory said. ‘Justin, this is Evan.’
They shook hands, their faces pleasantly neutral as they tried to break small bones in the other man’s hand.
‘Justin’s with the D.A.’s office.’
Evan remembered his manners and didn’t say, the duck’s what? office.
‘He’s got a brand-new Porsche outside.’
She didn’t say that, of course.
‘He’s a prosecutor with them.’
Looks like a filing clerk to me.
Justin’s face said he was looking forward to meeting Evan in a professional capacity in the near future.
‘And what do you do, Evan?’ Justin said, making it sound like which streets are you responsible for sweeping?
Evan said he was a private investigator. He might as well have said he was a soothsayer. He sure as hell knew what was coming next.
‘A private dick. How fascinating.’
Evan had to give it to the guy, he was good. The emphasis on the word dick was just on the safe side of keeping Evan’s fist out of his mouth while still being offensive. And the word fascinating was delivered as it would be when describing what you’d seen on the nature channel about the sexual habits of a cockroach. He glanced at Guillory. He didn’t think he’d ever seen those denim-blue eyes so full of mischief. It made him wonder if she’d hidden a tracker on his car and had come here deliberately. And to think what he’d suffered to spare her from an evening at his sister’s house.
‘I like the color of the lipstick.’
She gave him a shy heartbreaker of a smile.
‘Thank you.’
‘Dress looks good too.’
Her smile got wider and she acknowledged the compliment with a small nod of the head. But he didn’t miss what her eyes said as she glanced at Justin.
Listen up now, this is called a suit and that’s a freshly-ironed shirt under it, and the thing around his neck is called a tie.
Evan had noticed the tie. It was pink and didn’t go with the suit. It would be fun to see how tight you had to pull it before Justin’s face turned the same color.
Justin wasn’t an idiot. He picked up on the undercurrent that flowed like a live thing between Evan and Guillory. He would have to be dead not to. He put his hand in the curve of her back. Evan made a note of which one it was so as he’d be sure to chop off the correct one.
‘Let’s get a drink,’ Justin said to her, applying a light pressure on her back. A small flash of irritation crossed his face when she didn’t move immediately.
‘I’ll give you a call,’ she said to Evan and allowed herself to be led away.
As soon as their backs were turned Evan waved to catch the bartender’s eye. He pointed at Guillory and her slimeball and then at himself. Then he rubbed his fingers together in the universal sign for cash, mouthed I’ll pay. The bartender gave a quick thumbs-up back.
A minute later he was rewarded with a scowl disguised as a thank you from Justin and a what shall we do with you? headshake from Guillory. But the smile that accompanied it made him wish he’d already asked her to go to Baltimore with him. Now it would look as if he was trying to play catch-up. She’d taken a seat at the end of the bar, next to the wall. Just-so was standing beside her, one hand on the back of her seat, the other on the bar, boxing her in. The message was as clear as in the photograph of Valentine Waits and his wife Kristina.
This is my property, hands off.
‘Good looking woman,’ Arturo said with an appreciative glance at the bar. ‘Friend of yours?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Arturo mimicked. ‘Could’ve saved on the electricity bill if they’d plugged into what was crackling between you two. I’m assuming that wasn’t your ex-wife and her new man.’
‘You got that right.’
Despite the conviction in his voice, he didn’t know how much of it Arturo got right. Guillory wasn’t his ex-wife, but as for the other part, the new man part, he really couldn’t say.
‘Don’t worry about a prick like him,’ Arturo said. ‘Anyone with eyes in their head can see she’s just waiting for you to ask. Your wife didn’t chop it off’—he pointed at his lap—‘when she left did she?’
He threw back his head and howle
d with laughter. It turned into a coughing fit. He was looking as if he was about to spit on the floor. Evan was acutely aware of Guillory and Just-so concentrating hard on not looking their way, despite the noise Arturo was making. He could see the stiffness in their necks from half way across the room.
He thought about asking Arturo to swap places so he didn’t have to face the bar, didn’t have to be reminded of Guillory and her friend. If he had, he might have seen that not everybody in the room was looking the other way, might have had a chance of preventing the events that came later.
Chapter 37
‘LET’S DO BREAKFAST TODAY, instead of Thursday,’ Guillory said when Evan finally got hold of his phone off the nightstand. He glanced at his alarm clock and groaned. She sounded far too bright and breezy for this time in the morning.
‘I don’t do threesomes.’
‘Not funny, Evan.’
The phone went dead in his ear.
She was already sitting at the counter when he arrived. He didn’t sit down. Instead, he stood next to her and put his left hand on the back of her chair, the right one on the counter, boxing her in. Then he lifted the right one and ran it through his hair a couple times.
‘Why are all men so childish?’
Despite the words, she was having trouble keeping her face straight.
‘Is this seat taken?’ a voice said from behind him.
Evan quickly slid his butt onto it before the guy pushed his way in. For a moment it looked as if the guy was going to say something. There must have been something in the way Guillory looked at him because he settled on giving them a dirty look. He moved away to sit at one of the tables, muttering under his breath.
‘See, you nearly lost your seat. And we all know how much you sulk if you don’t get your special spot.’
‘Lucky you scared him off.’
‘Yep, I can look pretty scary in the mornings.’
He wasn’t sure if that was an invitation to find out first-hand or his cue to say he couldn’t believe it. As it happened, she didn’t give him a chance to say anything.
‘So, what’s with the old guy in the bar last night?’
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