A Good Day for Chardonnay (Sunshine Vicram #2) - Darynda Jones Page 0,76
was after him.”
“He knew there was a hit out on him,” Quincy said.
Sun chewed her lower lip. “If that’s true, why wasn’t he carrying that night?”
“No firearms inside of any business that serves alcohol,” Levi said, eyeing her like she’d lost her mind. “No exceptions. I thought you knew the law.”
“I am well aware of the law, but then why go into the bar in the first place? If he couldn’t carry a weapon inside?”
Levi dropped his gaze and cursed under his breath. “He needed to talk to me. Son of a bitch. If I’d known … I was outside …talking to another patron.”
“Ah, yes. Crystal.” Only according to Crystal, there wasn’t a lot of talking going on.
He cast her a curious glance. “Yes. She was talking about her boyfriend. And she asked me for a job.”
“Classic. So, you’re a counselor, too?”
“All bartenders are counselors.”
“In all the years your family has owned that bar, I have never once seen you tend bar.”
“Because you’ve been in there so often,” he said, his words dripping with sarcasm.
Quincy lifted a serrated hunting knife. “You said Seabright headed back to his truck before he got to talk to you?”
“Yes,” Levi said. “He probably knew he’d been drugged.”
She turned to her team. “I need to get to Santa Fe and talk to Elliot’s mother personally.” She looked at Levi. “Can you give them a lift and I’ll take your cruiser, Quince?”
“I’ll take you,” Levi said.
Quince looked at her askance. She nodded in agreement, so he asked, “Should we call in a team to process this place?”
“Not just yet. Let’s try to get Eli to come to us first.” She sat at his desk, ripped a page out of his notebook, and began a letter. “But just to be safe, try to get some fingerprints and a DNA sample.”
Zee hopped to it. “You got it, boss.”
Once Sun had cell service again, she checked in with Anita. “How’s it going with Mrs. Fairborn?”
“That woman has a very active imagination.”
“Yeah?”
“Can we publish her confessions and make money off of them?”
“No.”
“Boss,” she said, pleading, “this one has aliens.”
“No way.” She cupped her hand over her phone. “Send it to me as soon as she’s finished.” Reading Mrs. Fairborn’s confessions had become the highlight of their day. She’d once confessed to stealing a pool noodle and using it in a bank robbery that led to a night of debauchery with a male stripper named Chad. The problem was she never explained how the pool noodle played into the bank robbery.
Either way, the woman had missed her calling.
“You got it, boss,” Anita said with a giggle. “Also, Las Vegas PD called. They found the truck and the owner. It was reported stolen from a hotel in Trinidad on Friday. The owner was traveling and slept through the whole thing.”
“Surveillance?”
“All the hotel got was a black-clad male, medium build, who could steal a truck in under sixty seconds.”
“They targeted it for the Texas plates to throw us off.” She looked over at Levi. “Well, most of us.”
He winked at her. Winked! She could only take so much of that man.
“Are you worried about him?” she asked Levi after she hung up.
“Which one?”
“Either, I guess. Both.”
“Then yes.”
They’d made it back to the main road, so his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel eased a little.
“How are you to drive?”
“Fine.”
“Are you certain?”
“Don’t I look fine?”
He did indeed. “It’s just, if you need to take something for the pain, I can take over.”
“I don’t need to take anything for the pain.”
“I could’ve sworn I smelled whiskey earlier.”
He smirked. “I could’ve sworn I smelled wine.”
“Damn. Really? I’ve had a lot of coffee since last night.” Her experiment with Quincy was the gift that kept on giving.
“Unless your coffee was made with fermented grapes, I’d say the wine is still in your system.”
That was disturbing.
Just like she had with Hailey, Sun considered not telling Levi about her visit with Wynn, but part of her really wanted to see his reaction. To gauge it. She steeled herself and said, “I wasn’t going to tell you this until I had more information, but I went to see your uncle Wynn yesterday.”
He was so much better at the poker thing than she was. Instead of reacting at all, he stilled and kept his gaze laser-locked on the road. The only indication he even heard her was when the muscle in his jaw jumped under the pressure of his bite.