Chapter Two
Hell House Client Brief: The reflection in the hall mirror always tells the truth, but it's very hurtful.
The pretzels were stale.
Free, though, and the salt was still crunchy and sharp enough to make Kel’s tongue itch. He popped another in his mouth. It gave him something to do with his hands between the occasional sips of the beer he’d been nursing the last couple of hours.
In his experience, fifteen minutes was the sweet spot. Drink any slower, and the bartender would try and pull a ‘let me get that out of your way.’ Any faster, and he’d need another beer.
And two beers in was when the words ‘whiskey chaser’ started to float through his mind.
The jury might still be out on whether or not Kel Laker was a drunk—he would argue he had the fucking right to be—but he wasn’t here to get drunk. Not today, at least.
Today he was here to eavesdrop on Jodie Tiller’s once-a-week Zoom call with her bestie back in Santa Barbara. It had been the talk of the town when Harry Tiller had come back from Bermuda with a buzz-cut and a stylish new wife. Of course, it didn’t take much to be the talk of Marble Falls.
Six months in and it had hit home for Jodie that good sex and island cocktails made a lot of things seem like a good idea. Like, for example, chucking in your career, condo, and Cali lifestyle to be a small-town banker’s wife.
That wasn’t speculation on Kel’s part; that was 80% of Jodie’s side of the conversation with her bestie.
With the other 20% being what some (not Kel) might call the dissemination of privileged financial information.
Apparently, Harry liked to talk about his day.
In fact, he insisted on it. Even though Jodie didn’t care about whose mortgage was in arrears or whose dead husband’s estate had finally gone through probate.
That was OK, though. Kel could care for her.
Hell. Kel meditatively ate another pretzel as he thought about it. If he’d known this was the sort of information that Harry gave out for the low, low price of the occasional hand-job, Kel would have married the guy and saved him the cost of that Bermuda all-inclusive.
Cut out the middleman, or woman, in this case, entirely.
Maybe after the divorce.
Until then, he’d just have to mine the nuggets of financial misconduct from the background soap opera of From Cali to Connecticut: Who Could Have Guessed it Would Suck?
As Jodie grudgingly rolled the credits on today’s episode with her signature sign-off, “...but enough about me…” Kel finally drained his beer. It tasted of two hours in a warm room, with an after-bite of too many stale pretzels. Not bad, but not as piquant as the day a fly had drowned in it.
He finished and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. The sour taste lingered in the back of his throat as self-loathing squeezed up out of his chest like a yeasty burp.
At least she did something. At least she took a risk. She didn’t just sit around eating stale pretzels and looking down on people.
Kel snorted at that as he put the glass down on the bar. Seriously? That was the best he could do? OK, so it was only one beer in, but still. That was the sort of thing he knew about himself stone-cold sober.
What next? That he spent so much time avoiding an honest day’s work so he could keep the dream that somewhere out there was a coach willing to take a chance on a nearly-thirty-year-old wide receiver with a bum knee? If that’s the best he could come up with, it wasn’t even worth the whiskey.
He pulled out his wallet to pay his tab. As he thumbed through the notes, he heard the door to the bar open.
“Hey, Kel,” someone yelled.
The voice was vaguely familiar, but it was a small town and, like his self-hatred had tried to point out, Kel had been here his whole life. Everyone sounded a bit familiar. He tossed a ten onto the counter and turned around as he tucked his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans.
He matched the voice to the face and the face to a name.
“Reggie,” he said. “You need something?”
It was a safe bet. Kel had been the town’s favorite cautionary tale for a while. When people didn’t want something, they mostly avoided him for fear his bad luck would rub off.
Reggie, who’d dated Kel’s cousin once—it hadn’t ended well, and no one had expected it to—took his cap off and raked his fingers through hair that wasn’t long enough to make the gesture worth his time.
“Not me,” he said. “Cops are looking for you.”
Well, shit. Kel paused with his hand still in his back pocket as he ran through how far he could get with roughly $300 in cash and a sparkling personality.
It wasn't far, but Marble Falls’s police force wasn’t known for going out of their way to solve crimes.
A couple of counties over might do the job.
“Something about Dio Madden,” Reggie finished his sentence before Kel had committed himself to the plan. “What you done this time?”
Huh.
“Nothing,” Kel said.
Reggie scoffed.
To be fair, that was what Kel would have said either way. This time, though, he was telling the truth. The fallout from the roofing swindle had been a bit more intense than he’d expected, so he’d planned to lay low for a bit.
“Well, that ain’t what the cops think,” Reggie said. He came over to lean against the bar and raised a finger at the barman to indicate he wanted to be served. “They’re over at your garage now.”
That was…Kel was going to be honest, he was a little bit annoyed at the idea someone else was making Dio Madden’s life difficult. People had no loyalty these days.
“I guess I better go and see what they want,” he drawled as he put his plans to run aside. “But whatever happened to Dio, it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving fella.”
Dio Madden’s dead,” Marble Falls chief of police, John Doncaster, said bluntly.
Oh.
Well, shit.
That news made Kel feel something about saying the guy deserved it. He wasn’t sure what the feeling was, but it was something.
“I didn’t do it,” he said.
That made Patrol Officer Annie Warwick—she’d also dated Kel’s cousin (the same one) and it hadn’t ended well either—give him a dirty look.
“No one said you did,” she pointed out. “It’s interesting your mind went there, though.”
Kel snorted as he crossed his arms and shifted his weight from one leg to the other.
“Let’s not play that game,” he said. “I’ve had bad blood with Madden. I know it, and so do you. If something’s happened to him—”
“He’s dead,” Warwick pointed out tartly. “Most people think that’s a lot of something.”
Kel ignored that as he went on. “…happened to him, then my name is going to come up. So, for the record, it wasn’t me.”
“Sounds like what someone guilty would say.”
“Or someone innocent,” Kel countered.
The association of Kel and ‘innocent’ made Warwick snort. That was…OK, it was understandable. Still rude, though. She apparently didn’t care about his opinion because she pressed on.
“You know what innocent people do?” she said. “They don’t keep shifting their weight like they’re about to book it for the exit.”
She said that just as Kel shifted again. It didn’t make her right, but it did feel like it did. Kel glared at her.
“I guess innocent people don’t have two bum knees,” he said.
She gave him a customer-service smile with teeth and absolutely no warmth in it. “Not bum knees they got fleeing arrest after they vandalised a rival high school, anyway.”
The fact that statement was entirely accurate was what stung. One drunk, stupid impulse after another, and not only had his future gone up in flames, so had his bike and his ability to squat.
“...it wasn’t like that…”
Except it was. It had been. Everyone in town knew that.
“That’s enough.” Doncaster’s interruption kept Kel from embarrassing himself anymore. The Chief gave Warwick a quelling look as he added, “There’s no reason to assume that whatever happened to Dio Madden involved foul play.”
Warwick looked stubborn. “There’s no reason to assume it wasn’t either.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Doncaster corrected her. “Misadventure is cheaper than murder, Deputy. It costs the town a lot less. Take my advice, always hope for a pratfall. The politicians will love you for it.”
Warwick rolled her eyes and looked annoyed at the advice, but she grudgingly held her tongue. Once Doncaster was sure she was done, he turned back to Kel with his patented, easy-going smile.
“Either way, we aren’t here to accuse you of anything,” he said.
“Today,” Warwick muttered.
Doncaster’s smile tightened at the corners. His eyelid fluttered slightly.
“So why are you here?” Kel asked.
That got them back on track. Doncaster cleared his throat and hooked his thumb into the thick leather of his belt. He got his ‘good ol’ boy’ smile hitched back into place.
“We’re here to ask if we can store Madden’s car in your garage until the forensics guys from Meriden can get out here to examine it.”
That was reasonable enough. Not what Kel had expected, but reasonable. He rubbed his thumb along the stubble-rough line of his jaw as he considered the request.
“I mean, I’d have to charge you,” he said, as if it was a given instead of a question. “For loss of income, the use of a commercial space.”
Doncaster looked amused. “I assumed as much,” he said. “There’s a stipend. It’s not negotiable.”
Kel negotiated anyhow. Like his gran always said, if you don’t ask, then you don’t get.
Of course, with her, you could ask and still not get. She said that was an object lesson.
This time, his bartering didn’t get him far. The stipend was for a set period, even if the forensic team got here early, and a handful of parking tickets wiped for him. It would do.
It pissed off Warwick too, which was a bonus in itself.
Kel signed the forms that Doncaster produced and agreed to pick up the car by the end of the day.
It was a shame, he mused as he scrawled the date on the bottom line. Madden had a nice car.
A 1969 Firebird. Black cherry paintwork. The same one Madden’s grandfather used to drive. There was a picture somewhere back at the house with Kel’s grandmother on the hood of it, in her ‘80s best. It had been a nice car back then; now, it was a really nice one.
The only thing Kel’s family had to hand down was a stolen police car from the ‘90s that had been rusting in a barn ever since. Because what else were they going to do with it?
And whose fault was that, he wondered sourly. Other than their own.
He handed the forms back over and—he’d swear—idly asked, “What’s going to happen to the car?”
The question made Warwick give him a suspicious look. Doncaster didn’t notice as he licked his thumb to flick through the paperwork.
“That depends,” he said. “Usually it’s up to the next of kin, but we’re having no luck tracking them down. Might just end up with the bank. You forgot to initial here.”
He handed the sheet back, spot marked with his thumb. Kel took it with an absent ‘sorry’ and quickly corrected the oversight. He gave it back with an easy grin.
“Just need to set the tow truck up,” he said easily. “I’ll see you in an hour or so.”
Doncaster looked mildly confused by the assurance.
He was the chief of police. His dad had been a judge.
His mom spent the sort of money that meant one high tea with her friends—for a loose, committee-attendee definition of friends—could keep the town’s coffee shop afloat for another six months.
People might let him down, but they showed up to do it.
“Good for you,” he said and turned to head back to his car.
Warwick was less trusting. She gave Kel a hard look.
“We can claw back the stipend,” she warned him. “And I’ll make sure they do if you try anything.”
Kel flipped the pen he’d taken from Doncaster in his fingers.
“Don’t know what you mean, Warwick,” he said blithely. “I’ll give my cousin your regards, though.”
She flushed, two hard, hot blots of colour on her cheeks, and gave him the finger before she turned to storm after Doncaster. Kel waited until they were gone and then chewed idly on the top of the pen.
Huh.
As useful information went, he thought that might blow even Jodie’s weekly gripe opera out of the water.