Buried in Secrets (Carly Moore #4) - Denise Grover Swank Page 0,86

I said, “Don’t you think that’s odd?”

“Everyone’s exploring their family history these days.”

“Bingham doesn’t seem to be the sentimental type.”

“True…”

It was pointless to push the topic. It felt important somehow, but it wasn’t pertinent to what we were investigating. “Greta invited me to a girl’s afternoon with Lula.”

“Oh?” he said, looking pleased. “Are you going to go?”

“I wanted to, but she was thinking we’d do it this afternoon. She didn’t know Max would find a way to keep the tavern open.”

“That’s too bad,” he said, taking another bite of his lunch. “I know you like hanging out with them.”

I narrowed my eyes. I still found it hard to believe he encouraged me to hang out with Lula. Marco was a deputy sheriff, and Lula and Bingham had gotten married after their daughter was born. I’d told him so on several occasions, but he’d countered that to the best of his knowledge Lula wasn’t up to anything illegal, and I crossed Bingham’s path often enough that it wasn’t a bad idea for me to stay on his wife’s good side.

“I’d like to talk to the parents of Thad’s friend, the one who was in the accident with him,” I said, “but I don’t know how to approach them.”

“I wonder if they attend the same church,” Marco said. “We could always attend a church service.”

I gave him a wicked grin. “Such deviousness in church, Officer Roland?”

He lifted his shoulder into a shrug. “Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s done something devious, and it definitely won’t be the last.”

“I still haven’t called Karl Lister, but there’s no subtle way to go about that conversation either.”

Marco pressed his lips together. “I put in a request for the paperwork on the civil lawsuit. I haven’t gotten it yet, so maybe hold off until I do.”

“What if someone finds out you’re digging into it?” I asked.

“Don’t worry. My source at the courthouse won’t tell.”

“Rosemarie?”

He looked surprised. “How’d you know?”

I raised my brow. “That’s who Miss Thelma told me to go see about the case paperwork. Obviously, she comes highly recommended.”

“I guess Thelma Tureen knows something about just about everyone.”

“Unfortunately, not everyone.”

We finished our lunch fairly quickly, then headed back to the car to drive by Jonathon Whitmore’s house.

It was a twenty-minute drive up to Hogan’s Pass. The road turned to gravel and became steeper, but my car’s GPS finally steered me toward a pale blue house on the left side of the road.

“The guy lives here?” Marco asked, leaning forward and squinting as we drove closer. “It looks like it needs to be condemned.”

“Chuck said it was about to fall down on them, and he said he hoped it did.”

“Nice guy.”

“He was upset and angry,” I said, not quite sure why I was defending him. Chuck Holston might have been wronged by Ashlynn, assuming he’d told the truth, but he was still an asshole.

“I see a car next to the house. Let’s see if anyone’s home.”

I shot a glance at him as I drove down the road at a crawl, letting my gaze drop to his chest for a second before looking back out the window.

A slow grin spread across his face. “Were you checkin’ me out?”

My face flushed. That hadn’t been my intention, but there was no denying I’d appreciated the view. “I was looking at your uniform. Do you think it’s a good idea for you to come to the door?”

“In this case, yes. I’ll make sure they know I’m there on unofficial business. You can just tell them we had lunch together and you decided to drop by to check on Ashlynn.”

“Okay,” I said, not totally convinced by his rationale. It didn’t seem like a good idea for him to involve himself so openly, whether off the clock or not. For one thing, I doubted Jonathon and Ashlynn, if she was there, would talk to a uniformed officer, and for another, I didn’t want him to risk his job, his life. But I wasn’t about to tell him I didn’t want him there. “That means I take the lead.”

I drove into the mostly dirt driveway and parked behind the small rusted red pickup truck. Marco pulled a notebook out of his pocket and jotted down the license plate number from the truck. “Just in case,” he said as he put it back in his pocket.

We got out of the car and headed toward the dilapidated porch. Marco wrapped an arm around my back, catching me off guard, and when I glanced up at