Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Everyone Was Acting Suspicious
Gideon
I caught Roy first, which wasn’t difficult because Roy was the winner, which made him a very popular guy. People were orbiting him. I waited until the orbit thinned, then stepped in.
“Congratulations again,” I said.
He turned, and the smile that came up was genuine in the way his earlier ones hadn’t been. Whatever complicated thing was running under the surface, he actually liked me. That was useful. “Gideon. Good to see you. How’s my ale selling?”
“Really well, Roy. I’ll need another keg soon.” I accepted his handshake. He had the grip of a man who’d spent forty years lifting things. “Your red came out beautifully. The malt balance was exactly right.”
He looked both pleased and surprised. “You tried it?”
“I try everything that I serve in my pub,” I said easily. “Occupational habit. I’ve been meaning to ask, did anything strike you as unusual over the past few days? Leading up to the judging?”
I looked over his shoulder at the wall to see Eugene creeping along the baseboard’s shadow, magnifying glass at the ready.
He blinked. “Unusual how?”
“Anything with your entry. Storage, transport. Anyone handling your growler who shouldn’t have.”
The calculation that moved behind his eyes was brief but real. He covered it smoothly. “No, nothing like that. Why?”
“We had a small issue with one of the other entries,” I said. Vague. True enough. “I’m just making sure no one else was affected.”
“Which entry?”
“I’d rather not say until I know more.” I watched him. “Is there anything you want to tell me, Roy?”
Something shifted in his face—not guilt exactly, but the weight of a decision being made in real time.
“No,” he said. “Nothing comes to mind.”
He held my gaze when he said it, which meant he was either telling the truth or he’d had a lot of practice. Too bad I didn’t have Az here to tell me.
“All right.” I stepped back. “Enjoy the rest of the festival.”
Tessa was easier. She had none of Roy’s layers, or if she did, she hid them somewhere I couldn’t immediately access.
She answered my questions with the same directness she’d shown on the panel.
No, there hadn’t been anything unusual other than the judges saying her brew was flat, but she was a novice, so she figured she’d done something to cause that.
She’d transported the growler herself and hadn’t let it out of her sight until the drop-off.
She paused at the end, though. “Is everything all right? With the festival, I mean.”
“Everything is fine,” I said. “Just being thorough.”
She looked at me for a moment with the assessing gaze of a woman who was used to checking whether things were true before committing to them. Then she nodded, apparently satisfied.
Sandy found me on the way out of the room.
“Kettlebrook is here,” he said, falling into step beside me. “They have a table set up near the main entrance. Corporate banner, very shiny. Their PR guy has Donny cornered up there taking pictures and asking him all kinds of questions. His name is—” he checked his phone. “Josh Barry.”
I stopped walking.
Sandy went another two steps before he realized and turned around. “Gideon?”
I knew that name. I remembered Declan’s voice, careful and even as he explained what had happened, the apartment, the bed, the reason he’d packed his bags and ended up in Ravenstone.
Josh the Jackass, he’d called him. Josh the Jerk. He’d been making jokes about it by then, which was how I knew it still bothered him.
I ran the information through in the calm, methodical way I handled things I couldn’t immediately fix. Josh Barry was doing PR work for Kettlebrook. He was here. In Ravenstone. So it wasn’t bad enough that he kept texting Declan, he had to show up here, too.
Declan was at Elwood’s shop right now, a short walk away, studying hexed growlers with his grandfather, and he had no idea his ex-boyfriend was standing at the library’s main entrance.
I needed to know how long Josh had been here.
Whether he’d seen Declan yet. Whether he knew Declan was here at all.
Whether this was a coincidence or not. I wasn’t worried about Declan cheating on me.
He just wasn’t the type, but just because he wouldn’t cheat didn’t mean seeing Josh wouldn’t affect him.
He still held a lot of anger about how things had ended between them.
“Is he still at the table?” I asked.
Sandy had gone unusually still, which meant he’d picked up on something in my voice. He was young but not oblivious. “I think so? He was when I left.”
“Good.” I started walking again, this time toward the main entrance. “Give me a minute.”
“Should I be worried?” Sandy asked, matching my pace.
“Not yet,” I said.
Sandy glanced at me sidelong. “Your ‘not yet’ sounds a lot like other people’s ‘yes.’”
I didn’t answer that, mostly because he wasn’t wrong.
The Kettlebrook Regional table was exactly where Sandy had described.
It had a corporate banner that was very shiny.
Siobhan stood behind the table answering people’s questions about Kettlebrook.
She'd come to The Den to introduce herself earlier in the day, so I recognized her.
There were brochures fanned out in a neat arc and a standing display showing distribution routes across the region.
In addition to the banners, the table was covered in free swag that people would be excited about for five minutes and then toss in the garbage.
The swag alone probably cost more than the total setup for most of the vendors at the festival.
A man, who I assumed was Josh, stood off to the side of the booth, talking with Donny.
He was good-looking in the polished way that came from effort and budget.
His dark hair, the kind of clothes that were casual without being cheap, and a smile that went up quickly when he noticed someone approaching.
I could tell he was comfortable with being looked at.
At ease in professional settings. And without a doubt, completely full of malarkey.
I held back until Donny walked away, then I stepped up to him.
“Gideon Blackwood,” I said. “I own The Den, just up the street.”
“Josh Barry.” He extended his hand across the table. His grip was practiced. “I’m with Kettlebrook. This is a great festival. Is this the town's first time running one like this?”
“It is,” I said. “We’re learning as we go.”
I kept my expression easy and my voice even while I filed away every detail—the way he carried himself, the particular quality of his smile, the slight distraction in his eyes that said his attention was partly elsewhere. Looking for something. Or someone.
I wondered what Declan had told him about where he’d ended up.
I wondered if that was why he was here.
“We’re very excited about the distribution partnership,” Josh said. “Roy Pruitt seems like a great story. Local guy, decades of experience. That’s exactly the kind of narrative we like to build around.”
“He is a good story,” I agreed. “How long are you in town?”
“Through the end of the festival. Possibly a few extra days, depending on how the contract conversations go.” He smiled again. Smooth. But I caught the stink of deceit beneath the surface. “It’s a beautiful town. I can see why people want to stay.”
“It has that effect,” I said.
The two older men, who’d asked most of the actual brewing-related questions during the panel, walked up behind us, and I heard one of them say he believed that Beckett boy and that Roy owed him.
I took a brochure from the display and was about to thank Josh for his time so I could make a clean getaway when he gave me a fake smile and said, “Sorry, I need to talk to one of the other brewers real quick.”
I stepped to the side far enough to see inside the room and watched as Josh headed straight for Beckett. Hmm, very interesting.
I was contemplating that when Sandy spoke up, catching me off guard because I had completely forgotten he’d followed me out here.
“Do you know him?” Sandy asked quietly.
“No,” I said, which was true. But Declan did.
Almost like he knew I was thinking about him, my phone chimed at that very moment with a text from Declan.
Declan: Hey, Elwood and I are finished. Found a bunch of hexes. I’ll tell you all about it. Just need to clean up and I’ll be there.
Declan was going to need to know before he bumped into Josh completely unaware. The only question was how to tell him. But over text for sure wasn’t the best way.
Me: Okay, I’ll meet you in front of the library entrance.
Declan: See you soon.
“I’m going to meet Declan out front.” I glanced over at the wall where Eugene was lurking. “You and Eugene go back inside and keep your ears open for anything useful. Declan and I will join you in a minute.” Eugene’s detective morphed into a soldier who gave me a salute and then disappeared.
“He’s really getting into that, isn’t he? Wonder where he got the idea,” Sandy said.
“I have no idea, but he’s definitely coming out of his shell.”
As soon as Sandy made it into the meeting room, I turned and headed back out. Declan would be here pretty quickly, but first, I needed to call Grady. If someone had hexed multiple competition entries that was a problem for the sheriff as much as it was a problem for the supernatural community.