“He’s got Nash’s office bugged, as of yesterday. You know Nash and his goody-two-shoes reputation. If he happens to get wind of us, no telling what he might do.”
“You think Taylor will find out anything we don’t want her to know?”
“Unlikely. I don’t think she’s aware anything out of the ordinary is going on.”
Delmont snorted. “Please. Her expert turns up dead the night before a summary judgment hearing, and you don’t think she thinks anything out of the ordinary is going on? Get real. She’s a big city lawyer. She ain’t stupid. And you’ve got piss poor timing. You should have called me first.”
“It wasn’t your call to make.”
“Maybe not, but just FYI, Taylor ain’t playing by the rules anymore, either.”
“What do you mean?” the voice on the other end of the phone asked.
“If I don’t grant her motion for continuance tomorrow morning, I’m gonna lose my wife—that’s what I mean.”
The person on the other end of the line grunted. “Huh. Well, is that altogether a bad thing? Thought you were getting tired of her anyway.”
“Yeah, but I’d just as soon the local tongues not go a waggin’.”
“I’ll cut you a deal.”
“A deal! You’ve been hanging out with Dick Richardson too much lately. I’m sick of you guys and your deals.”
“A deal,” the voice said. “Here’s how it is. You get somebody to man all the roads back into town, and I’ll get somebody to go through her car and her house. There’s gotta be something there you can use to get her to back off. Nobody’s perfect. When you see Nash’s vehicle, call me and warn me to get out. Things go my way, and you can deny that motion for continuance come tomorrow morning.”
“Fine. I’ll call you,” Delmont said. “But I don’t like it. Frankly, I think you and your guys are getting careless.”
“I don’t care what you think, and even if I did, you’re not in a position to judge here. Just remember who put you where you are.”
“I was elected fair and square.”
“Sure, on my campaign money.”
Delmont held his tongue. He’d always thought it was stupid that Texas elected their judges instead of appointing them. On the other hand, the system did offer certain advantages for people like him.
But now he was starting to feel a little out of control of the situation. “Listen here,” he said. “I want you to keep me in the loop on all this. I don’t want to get caught by surprise on this case, understand?”
“I understand.”
“All right. Just so we’re straight. Otherwise you may find you start disliking some of my more important rulings.”
“That would be inconvenient,” said the gruff voice.
“Darn straight.” Delmont hung up the phone.
CHAPTER 4
Nash drove me to the nearby town of Rosethorn, which was slightly larger than Kettle and had a better variety of restaurants. We needed to leave town for dinner, seeing as how the exhaustive list of places to eat in Kettle included Dairy Queen, McDonald’s, Grandma’s Fried Chicken, and a place called Caliente, where the only flavor of food is jalapeno. I love jalapenos, but I haven’t eaten at Caliente, mainly because I haven’t been able to afford it lately. I’ve heard they serve jalapeno-flavored goat, and you can even get jalapeno-flavored rattlesnake there if you want to. (Apparently, some people actually like to eat rattlesnake—a fact I find hard to comprehend.)
When we got to the restaurant, Nash pulled out my chair and unfolded my napkin. I was just on the verge of thinking some nice things about him when he sat down and pulled a pen and small notebook out of his pocket.
An interrogation. Not a dinner date. Wow, how naïve was I? This guy was a real pro. He had gone out of his way to put me off balance so that he could ask me questions. Not the other way around.
Of course he would want to question me. I had been working with Dr. Schaeffer the day he was killed. As stupid as I had felt earlier, I felt infinitely more moronic now.
“Really?” I eyed his notepad pointedly. “You could have just taken my appointment request and asked me what you wanted to know down at the station.”
“Frankly,” he said, “I really didn’t have time to see you today. I had just gotten back from the crime scene when your office called, and there were more important people to talk to.”
“Like who?”
“Like people who actually had a motive to kill Dr. Schaeffer.”
“Such as?”
“The details of the investigation are confidential.”