The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,170

do again. “Dad would’ve been happy you were here.”

“Yeah. Well.” He seemed overcome by the physical contact. He took his time lighting his cigarette, restoring his sense of macho toughery. “Sorry about the old shit. I expected him to go down in a blaze of bullets.”

“I’m glad he didn’t,” Charlie said, because her father had been stabbed two days ago. Being shot to death was too close a possibility for her to joke about.

“This Adam Humphrey punk.” Jimmy Jack picked some tobacco off his lip. “Not sure I got a bead on him. Could be he was buttering her biscuit, but kids today, girls and boys, they can be friends without the boom-chicka-wow-wow.” He shrugged away the inexplicableness the way he would shrug off self-driving cars and Tivo. “Now, Frank Alexander, him I know from a couple years back. Guy had a DUI that Rusty helped disappear.”

“Dad worked with the Alexander family?” Charlie realized her voice was too loud. She whispered, “What happened?”

“Pay-as-you-go as far as ol’ Russ was concerned. Nothing unusual about their interaction. What happened was, Frank was burping his worm in the wrong mole hole. Got a little sauced with the gal at the no-tell motel, then came home to the wifey stinking of another chick’s perfume. Or tried to go home. Cops slapped him with a DUI Less Safe.”

Charlie knew this meant Frank Alexander’s breathalyzer had been below the legal limit, but he was still charged with the DUI because the officer deemed his driving was impaired.

She asked, “The girlfriend, was she a student?”

“A real estate agent, a lot older than the wife, which doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, because why? I mean, she’s got money, sure, but chicks ain’t classics, like cars. You want the soap at the end of your rope to be fresh, am I right?”

Charlie did not want to open up a discussion on the finer points of cheating. “So, what happened to Frank Alexander?”

“He did some community service, went to DUI school. The judge rolled the charge off his record so he could keep his teaching license. I’ve got some sources saying that the real problems were back home. Wife wasn’t too happy about the old girlfriend. I mean, shit, why go older?”

Charlie asked, “Was there talk of divorce?”

Jimmy Jack shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t have a choice. DUIs are a rich man’s game. The legal bills. The cash money for the drunk classes. The fines. The fees. You know that shit sets you back eight, nine grand easy.”

Charlie knew that was a lot of money for anybody, but the Alexanders were both schoolteachers with a young child. She doubted they had that kind of cash lying around.

Jimmy Jack said, “Nothing says ‘I love you’ like realizing you’re gonna be eating ramen noodles for the rest of your life.”

“Or maybe they love each other and they wanted to work it out because they had a kid?”

“That’s real pretty talk coming from you, doll.” He’d smoked his cigarette down to the filter. He tossed it into a planter by the door. “Guess it don’t matter now. Rusty’s not gonna pay me to track down this shit from the grave.”

“Whoever takes over the case will need someone on the ground.”

He winced, as if the thought caused him injury. “Dunno if I got it in me to work for a lawyer who’s not your dad. Present company excluded. But shit, lawyers don’t pay their bills and they just basically suck as human beings.”

Charlie did not disagree.

He winked at her. “All right, dolly, go back to listening to these dirtbags. Those dickholes inside didn’t know your dad. Not good enough to hold a cup of his piss if you ask me.”

Charlie smiled. “Thank you.”

Jimmy Jack clicked his tongue as he gave her a wink. Charlie watched him work his way through the crowd. He slapped a few backs, did a few fist bumps as he made his way toward the doors and, presumably, the open bar. He tipped his fedora to the woman who had gotten her kids back. She put her hand on her hip, and Charlie got the impression that neither of them were going to be alone tonight.

A car horn beeped.

They all looked out at the parking lot.

Ben was behind the wheel of his truck. Sam sat beside him.

The last time a boy had beeped a car horn at Charlie, Rusty had put her on restriction for crawling out her bedroom window in the middle of the night.

Ben beeped