by eleven tomorrow,” he said as if both of them wouldn’t know. “I don’t expect I’ll be more than an hour in court.”
“Regardless, your first appointment’s at one-thirty.” Maureen pulled her purse out of her bottom drawer. “You should grab lunch first.”
“How about if I bring lunch back and we have ourselves a picnic on the back patio?”
“I’m in. Not pizza.”
“You’re a hard woman, Maureen. Say, I bet I know something you don’t.”
She gave him a smug, sidelong look. “Prepare to lose.”
“We’ve got a budding Hemingway penning his literary classic in one of the Walker bungalows.”
Maureen flicked her fingers in the air. “As if that’s news to me. College professor from up north, spending a chunk of his summer here for the quiet and inspiration. About your age, I expect. Single since he’s here alone and doesn’t wear a ring.”
“Oh, I met him.” Gretchen shut down her computer, pulled out her own purse. “Mr. Bingley—or I guess it’s Professor Bingley.”
“John Bingley?”
“Ah.” Gretchen paused, brow furrowed as she thought. “No, it was … Blake, Drake, Deke? Something like that. Not John. Why?”
“Not somebody I know then,” Zane said easily. “How’d you meet him?”
“Oh, it was just in passing on the street a few days ago, really. He was looking at the building—like everybody before we had it painted again. I said something, he said something. He wanted to know where he could find a good steak and wine. I told him Grandy’s.”
“Good choice.”
He locked up behind them, considered going down to Grandy’s and poking there. But decided to start with the Blake, Drake, or Deke.
He texted Darby as he walked to his car.
Salt mines are closed. Heading home.
Me, too! I’m right now in line to order pulled pork sans, coleslaw, sweet potato fries. We will feast.
I’ll have a cold beer waiting for you.
Twenty minutes.
Good deal, he thought. Damn good deal.
He drove toward home, top down, looking forward to sharing Brody’s story with Darby—as Brody hadn’t included her in the no-tell. Plus, he wanted her take on it.
Because what was it with a guy driving a Prius who doesn’t use a clearly marked recycle bin? Or an English prof who wouldn’t enjoy talking Steinbeck with a teenage boy?
A puzzle, he thought, a mystery—and one he realized he wanted to get his teeth into. Takes me back, he realized, to working with investigators, to, yeah, puzzling out how to nail down the bad guys.
He turned up his road, wound around a curve. Hit the brakes hard.
The truck sat crosswise, blocking his way. Jed Draper already stood beside it.
And Zane sincerely hoped he wasn’t about to be shot down a quarter of a damn mile from his own home.
He didn’t see a gun as he got out—but it didn’t mean Jed didn’t have one handy.
Still, he had Jed by a couple of inches in height, and while Jed had that tough Draper look about him, Zane figured he could handle himself if Jed stuck with fists.
“You’re blocking the road, Jed.”
“My brother’s in the ground.”
“I know it. I didn’t put him there.”
Jed stepped closer, fists bunched, wiry body at the ready. “My ma thinks you did.”
“I’m sorry your mother lost her son. I don’t think there’s anything harder than that. I didn’t kill him.”
“If you did, they’d cover for you. The whole fucking town would cover for you over a Draper.” He spat in disgust. “So we’re gonna settle it, right here.”
“What’s this going to change? You punch me, I punch you? Clint’s still going to be dead, I still won’t have killed him.”
“He wouldn’t be dead you hadn’t took his wife from him. Whether you threw him in the lake or not, he’d be alive if not for you.”
The hell with it, Zane thought. They weren’t walking away from this without spilled blood and pain. “He’d be alive if he hadn’t come on my land and shot out my doors.”
“Got what you deserved there, less’n you deserved, for putting your nose in our family business. Think you’re better’n him? Better’n me?”
Zane redistributed his weight, because it was coming. “Yeah. I know I am.”
He blocked the first swing by pivoting into it, letting it bounce off his shoulder. Then, shifting his weight again, sent a roundhouse into Jed’s solar plexus. It knocked Jed back, but didn’t stop him. Zane felt the pain of bare knuckles glancing off his chin, used it to fuel his own blows. The fist he connected to Jed’s face slit his lip.
Jed bared bloody teeth, charged like a bull.
Mistake, Zane thought,