More Bitter Than Death: An Emma Fielding Mystery - By Dana Cameron Page 0,56

took out his phone, eyes glued to the match, and made a quick call.

Another archaeologist in a name badge accosted him. When his order came, Jay and his friend both looked over at me, briefly. Jay shrugged, came back with the round of drinks, but even before I got my bourbon to my mouth, I saw his friend go over to his own party, all of whom immediately swiveled their heads my way before leaning into each other to talk.

I picked up my drink and thought: that’s how rumors start. God only knew where they would take me from here.

Chapter 8

IT WAS STILL SNOWING WHEN I LOOKED OUT THE WINDOW the next morning, Friday. After a round of shower combat, followed by coffee and a muffin wolfed down in the lobby—the restaurants were just too crowded this late in the morning—I pulled out my phone. I was really not looking forward to telling Brian what was going on here, afraid of his reaction to what was a perfectly normal situation. Well, if not normal, then not unusual. For us. For me, anyway. But after we said good morning and I told him about the events of the previous evening, explaining that, so far, the cops were telling people that the gunshots were probably from hunters and that, so far, despite the fact that Garrison was found outside, they had no reason to suspect that he hadn’t died of natural causes. I had, however, omitted the note that Church had showed me. No need to get him excited over nothing, yet.

Brian was uncharacteristically inattentive. “Well, let me know when you hear anything definite, okay? And look after yourself, whatever the case” was all he said.

And then I was aware of another pause, a hesitation that was hanging particularly awkwardly on the other end of the line. It was the kind of hesitation that every person in a long-term relationship learns to recognize, the one where you can practically hear the nervousness on the other side, the sort where you just somehow know that the next words that come are not going to be good news.

For once it was Brian who was hesitating with the impending doom-laden silence. If it had been anything truly awful, he would have said it up front, so it was a second-tier disaster or less. I found myself almost eager to hear his story even as I felt the apprehension building.

“Brian, what is it?”

Brian’s words came out in a rush. “So. If you talk to Marty, don’t believe her. She’s got all those hormones and everything, and it makes her exaggerate and you know how she’s given to dramatics anyway—”

“What’s Marty going to tell me? And what shouldn’t I believe?” Marty’s hormones weren’t part of the issue; Sophia was nearly a year old and Marty’d pretty much evened out after the first few weeks. Dramatics, on the other hand, were another story.

“I’m perfectly fine. It’s not nearly as bad as she says and you can ask Kam too, he’ll tell you—”

“What happened, Brian? Tell me right now.”

“My nose isn’t even broken, and there wasn’t that much blood.”

“Holy crow, Brian! Will you tell me!”

“Okay, so you know how things haven’t exactly gone to plan? Well, the last straw was Titanic. Marty wanted to watch it, and Kam had seen more of it than he liked already. He wasn’t going to watch it again, no way was he going to sit through it again. He even hid it from Marty, said that he’d let someone at work borrow it, which was a crock because you know how he is about his media, right?”

“Never mind how Kam is about his ‘media.’ What happened?”

“Marty was really reaching a new state. She’s been cooped up here for too long and she really did want to see her parents and her sisters and show off the baby and go into the city and maybe get a break from everything, right? So she’s been moping and there’s nothing that will get Kam broken down faster than watching his wife want something she can’t have.”

He made it sound like he kept me on a shorter, stricter leash and that this was a forgivable failing in his too-soft friend. “Ha! Go on.”

“Finally, Kam decides that he’s going to ‘find’ the copy of Titanic downstairs, like he left it in the car or something. But we’re also going to see whether we can get the car out of the garage and try getting her out somewhere, anywhere,