Ninety
HE POURS HER a glass of white wine, first thing. When Abby asks if Briar is going to join her in a drink, he says he might have a taste of Blanton’s in a little minute, just not quite yet.
“If you don’t object to me asking a personal question,” he says, “are you and Roof still seeing each other?”
Before she can answer, Briar grins at her, almost as if embarrassed by the way he’s phrased the question.
“Does that sound as silly to you as it does to me?” he asks, adding for emphasis, “Seeing him? Because by definition, and basic logic, two people in a relationship are seeing everything there is to see of each other, wouldn’t you say?”
Abby Wells blushes slightly as she sips some of her Sancerre.
“It’s more of a once-in-a-while type thing, I guess you’d say,” she says. “Me working for him just kind of came out of us seeing each other.”
“I see,” Briar says.
And is pleased to see her smile at his little play on words. She gets it, Briar thinks. Smart girl.
Probably why Roof picked her in the first place. His son has never been the dim bulb people think he is. Just the way he likes it. Keeps people underestimating the boy.
“By working for him,” Briar says softly, “you mean spying on Silas Tucker, of course.”
She nods. “Pretty much from the time he got back to town, and pretty much keeping it low-key. I guess I should feel worse about it than I do, but most of what I’ve told Roof is probably stuff that would have come to him eventually, and to you. I just look at it as speeding up the process.”
She sips more wine.
“But Roof says you have something rather important to share with me tonight,” Briar says.
“Yes, sir, I do,” she says, and then recounts the dinner conversation at the Tucker house, everything Taylor Webb had said about Helene Mayes, how it sounded as if she was getting close to solving the hit on Taylor’s husband.
When Abby finishes, Briar says, “If you had to sum up the entire conversation for me, how would you do that, Abby?”
“Well, Taylor didn’t come right out and say it, Mr. Crockett, but it came across to me that Helene and her people are getting ready to declare war on you.” She sips more wine. “And soon.”
Briar gets up now, walks into the kitchen, gives himself a generous pour of Blanton’s, brings the glass back with him into the living room.
“Well, then,” he says, touching Abby’s glass with his own, “let’s drink to you, young lady, and a job well done.”
“Thank you,” Abby says.
“No,” Briar says. “Thank you, on behalf of both my sons and me.”
He takes a sip of Blanton’s, puts the glass down on the coffee table, pulls out the pearl-handled .
357 he’d picked up in the kitchen out of the side pocket of the thick shawl-collared sweater he’s wearing, and puts two bullets into Abby Wells’s chest, one after another, the explosions like bombs going off in the front room of the lake house.
He watches as the dead girl slides down off his sofa and onto the floor, pleased to see that the blood has only gotten on the blanket he’d positioned perfectly over the cushions before Abby Wells had arrived.
Briar looks down at her now and, in a voice even softer than usual, says, “I should have mentioned that I don’t trust snitches.”
Then he takes out his cell phone and calls Roof and tells him to come pick up what’s left of his girlfriend, before informing him that the poor thing had been right about something in her last moments on this earth.
“Get ready to go to war,” Briar says.
Then he drinks more bourbon, no one left to toast now but himself.