Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
My luck, as much as I had, only extended a few hours before I was facing another threat to my cover in the form of Kenna walking into Mug+Shots later that night, scanning the room as though she were looking for someone before her gaze landed on me and she headed straight for the bar.
“Trick’s supposed to be working today,” she told me, as if that was something I didn’t already know.
“He’s in his office,” I told her, hooking my thumb over my shoulder towards the door to said office. “Said he wasn’t to be disturbed unless it was absolutely necessary.”
“Well,” Kenna said, taking a seat at the bar to my displeasure. “I suppose I won’t disturb him then.”
“Can I make you a drink?” I asked, trying to stay professional. Do the job and keep your head down.
“I don’t know, can you?” Kenna shot back and I sent her a puzzled look. “It’s just, I’ve asked around and it seems like all the regulars agree that you aren’t the best bartender. It makes me wonder why Trick hired you, if you don’t have the experience.”
Oh, so we were doing this now, then. I knew that this confrontation was coming, in some way or form.
I just hadn’t expected Kenna to be quite so blatant in her distrust of me.
But I’d made a plan in the hours between my impromptu pet store visit and my shift, a way to put her at ease and convince her I was exactly who I said I was.
“You’re right,” I said quietly, letting my shoulders fall. “He shouldn’t have hired me. I’m no good at this.”
“You can’t fool me, I know what you—wait, what?” Kenna asked, looking confused. I fought down a grin, pleased that I had caught her off balance.
“There’s no point in hiding it,” I shrugged, “Trick told me you’re a P.I. I figured you would have me figured out soon enough. It’s just hard, you know?”
“No,” Kenna said, “I don’t know. What are you talking about?”
“Starting over,” I said. “Your brother has been so generous, taking a chance on me, and I know I’m not the best at bartending but I’m trying to learn. I can’t go back. Not after—well. I can’t go back now.”
“Back where?” Kenna asked, eyes narrowed now as she tried to track the thread of my ‘confession’ to untangle the story I was weaving out of fragments of the truth.
“To that toxic relationship,” I replied, and even that wasn’t a lie.
Not entirely. “I barely had anything but the clothes on my back when I decided to run, but can you blame me? I can’t imagine what would have happened if I had stayed.
But maybe you’re right, maybe I should find somewhere else to work.
I’ve caused your brother plenty of trouble already.
Sorry. I’m a mess but I shouldn’t be dumping all of this on you. What did you say you wanted to drink?”
Kenna stared at me for a long moment and I stared back, praying that she would take the bait and believe that I really was just some girl hiding from her toxic ex, that I wasn’t worth looking into for the short time she was here.
“An Algonquin,” Kenna finally said, and all of her bravado was gone. “Do you know how to make that?”
“No,” I told her honestly, “But if you’re willing to talk me through it, I would love to learn.”
“—so then I tell him if he thinks I’ll be persuaded to go back to his place after he literally crashed the car on our first date, he’d better reconsider,” Kenna said twenty minutes later as she sat at the bar, regaling me with the story of her worst first date.
It had taken a while to tell it considering I was working and she wasn’t, but thankfully she knew the demands of the job better than I did and had been pausing in exactly the right places to keep me coming back to hear the rest. “And this man has the audacity to—oh, hell no.”
I turned away from the tequila sunrise I was making to look at her, surprised she had interrupted what I’m certain would be an absolutely hilarious end to a wild story she seemed to have decided to tell me to make me feel better about my supposed toxic ex.
She wasn’t looking at me anymore, though, her head turned toward the back of the bar.
I followed her gaze and scanned the scene, trying to figure out what had upset her, but all I could see were the three men playing pool, Melody sitting in the back booth with a nervous-looking young man, and another woman sitting alone with a glass of wine and a book in front of her. Everything looked fine to me.
“Watch this for me,” Kenna said, indicating her half-empty Algonquin and starting off toward the back before turning around again. “Oh, if a pretty Black woman comes in looking like she hasn’t had a drink in at least eight years, mix her up a lemon drop and tell her I’m sorry.”
“What?” I called after her, but she either didn’t hear me or didn’t care.
She made a beeline for the young couple sitting in the booth at the back, her phone up to her ear as she approached them.
I watched as she stood over the table, speaking into the phone and not addressing either Melody or the man she was with.
Whatever she said caused Melody’s eyes to go alarmingly wide as she whipped around to glare at her date and pushed her drink away from her like it was radioactive.
For his part, the young man froze as both Melody and Kenna stared him down, shaking his head and waving his hands around in defense as he stammered something out.
“Hi, could I get a gin sour?” one of the men from the group playing pool asked, turning my attention away from whatever was going on at the back.
His two buddies crowded around him, and I could tell they were going to have their own complicated drinks to ask for.
Whatever happened to just drinking a beer or a shot of J?germeister?
“Coming right up,” I replied, turning my attention to my job rather than whatever drama was going down between Melody and her date.
I did peek a glance at Kenna halfway through making pool bro number two’s Aviation.
She had settled in at the table with the couple now, seated next to the young man who looked like he wanted to be anywhere else.
Kenna paid him no mind, instead leaning forward and talking calmly to the young woman seated across from her.
Curiosity burned in me, but as soon as I finished making pool bro number three’s Ruby Tuesday the front door opened as another customer entered.
A gorgeous Black woman with her tight coils pulled back in a single puff at the top of her head, a bright blue-and-yellow bandana tied into a bow at her hairline. She wore a form-fitting dark blue dress and held a bright yellow clutch in her hands as she stared around the room with too-wide eyes.
This was clearly the friend Kenna was expecting.
“Lemon drop?” I asked, shaking her from her frozen state. She looked over at me with a furrowed brow, and I lifted the martini glass I’d just pulled out.
“Wow, you’re good,” she said, approaching the bar. “Yes. One lemon drop, please.”
“Coming right up,” I told her, swirling the rim of the glass in the sugar dish and getting to work on the drink. “Kenna said to tell you she’s sorry. She’s working out an issue with some customers.”
Kenna’s friend followed my gaze as I nodded toward the table at the back.
“This is perfect, actually,” she told me as I handed her the lemon drop. “We’re celebrating my divorce finalizing tonight and she’s going to try to get me absolutely wasted. If you could switch me to just lemonade after my third one of these, I’d really appreciate it.”
“Of course,” I said, wiping down the counter where a few drops of sugar had landed. “And congratulations?”
“Yes, thank you,” she replied with a massive grin. “We’d been separated for a while but making it official? Well, I felt like a whole new?—”
Her voice trailed off.
I glanced over to see what had caught her attention and felt my stomach drop.
I must have done something absolutely heinous in a past life to deserve this kind of luck. Two men had just walked in, and I immediately recognized one of them.
A detective’s badge was clipped to his waistband. Brown hair, artfully mussed. His posture was unmistakable, the way he scanned the room without meaning to, a mirror of the way his father had done just the day before.
There was no mistaking this was ASAC Shepherd’s son, Detective Lachlan Shepherd.
The man beside him was dressed too well for this place but not enough to stand out. Blond hair, blue eyes, wearing a white button-up and black slacks. Clean-cut. Confident. The kind of confidence that came from being used to wielding attention rather than authority.
Both men started toward the bar, and a flash of discomfort crossed Lachlan’s face as he realized that we were both staring at them, but he still made his way over.
His eyes were fixed on Kenna’s friend like I didn’t exist. The man with him lingered a few steps behind, catching my eye and giving me a polite nod.
“Gracie,” Lachlan said softly, stopping just short of her personal space.
“Lachlan,” she replied in an equally quiet voice.
“Sorry to spoil your night out,” Lachlan said, his voice low and genuinely apologetic. “I’ll be taking statements and then I’ll get out of everyone’s hair. Drop-off go okay?”
“You know it did,” Gracie replied, fingers twisting together. “She’s with your father, after all.”
A twinge of recognition lit up in my mind, and I glanced at his left hand, noting the tan line on his ring finger. This was the ex-husband she was here to celebrate separating from.
“Look, Grace?—”
“Detective,” I interrupted, setting my mixing tumbler on the counter a little louder than necessary. “I assume you are here because Kenna called you? She is waiting back there with those two.”
The detective glanced up at the sound of my voice, as if surprised to find me there.
I stared him down until he finally looked to where I was pointing.
Kenna was still sitting in the booth, boxing in the young man and talking to Melody.
Keeping her calm and distracted until the police arrived.
Shepherd glanced back at Gracie, opening his mouth as if to say something before reconsidering and turning to his tag-along instead.
“Come on, let’s go see what this is about,” he said, and then he turned and walked away.
His buddy followed him, and I watched their backs as they left.
It was clear to me that she had spotted something illegal, but what would inspire Kenna to invite her friend’s detective ex-husband to handle it the same night they were supposed to be celebrating the divorce instead of simply calling the uniformed officers who normally handled these kinds of things?
Gracie stared after them as well, a conflicted look on her face as she watched Kenna realize that Detective Shepherd was there.
The music was too loud to hear what anyone was saying, but Kenna was very animated as she spoke, waving between the two sitting in the booth and then at Shepherd and herself.
Detective Shepherd said something that made her glance at Gracie with an apologetic wince.
Then she stood up, and Melody did as well, carrying her drink with her but holding it out like it might bite her. Detective Shepherd turned to say something to his buddy, and the man nodded, sliding into the booth across from the young man.
Kenna led the other two over to a table in the middle of the room, though none of them sat down.
I still couldn’t hear what Kenna was saying, but I could surmise enough from the situation to assume that she had probably spotted the young man either trying to spike his date’s drink or succeeding at doing so.
“Thank you,” Gracie said, and I turned to her.
She gestured to where Detective Shepherd was examining the glass.
“For distracting Lachlan. The divorce was mutual, but it was still painful and awkward and—well, thank you for what you did. The last thing I wanted to do tonight was fight with him. It seemed like that was all we ever did lately.”
“Happy to help,” I assured her. “And I get it now, why Kenna told me to tell you she was sorry. I’m sure she’ll have this all wrapped up soon enough.”
We both looked over at the trio standing around the table that held the possibly spiked drink.
A flash of movement behind them caught my eye, and then Detective Shepherd was throwing his hands out to catch himself as the young man bolted past him, pushing him out of the way in a desperate bid to flee the scene of his potential crime.
I watched as he made a beeline for the door and imagined him getting away, Melody left without recourse for what he had attempted, other unsuspecting women going on dates with him and waking up the next morning with no memory of what had happened but a sinking feeling in the pit of their stomachs.
Time did not slow the way it did in movies, giving me a chance to make an informed decision or calculate trajectories.
Instead, my training kicked in, and I hooked one foot onto a lower shelf before hoisting myself up and over the bar.
The kid was fast, but I was faster, and before I knew it I had him tackled and pinned just the way they had taught me at the Academy.
“You have the right—” I started, reaching for a pair of handcuffs that were never there to begin with.
I trailed off as I remembered this wasn’t my job, that I wasn’t authorized to arrest this guy or read him his rights.
He squirmed beneath me, trying to get free, but even if I wasn’t the one arresting him, I was sure that Detective Shepherd would.
Especially now that he had attempted to make a break for it.
But when I looked over at him to gauge his take on the situation, my heart dropped into my stomach. The glass—the evidence—was shattered on the ground, the liquor mixing with the sticky floor and seeping into a crack in the concrete.
And even worse, every eye in the room was on me.