Casey Daniels - Dead Man Talking

The hand briefly clutched my arm and, startled, I pulled it out of his grasp. I never had a chance to see who it belonged to. By the time I spun around, the crowd had closed around me, and along with Absalom and Sammi, I was carried toward the back of the house and an elegant sunroom that looked out over a perfectly manicured garden. Out there, more partygoers (was a tea considered a party?) walked the stone paths between topiaries cut into geometrical shapes and ponds where water lilies floated in the afternoon sun. The sunroom itself was glassed-in on three sides and filled with more guests who sat on the wicker furniture and waited in orderly lines at the tables mounded with finger food.

“Now we’re talkin’!” Absalom went for the lox and bagels. Sammi disappeared in the other direction. Delmar and Reggie were over near the punch bowl talking to Mae. Reggie was wearing jeans (they were clean) and a T-shirt that said HUNNIES PLAY ME CLOSE LIKE BUTTER PLAY TOAST. I saw Mae’s eyes glaze when she tried to make sense of the message.

Across the room, Bianca’s eyes met mine, and she looked me over, smiled, and nodded her approval. I hoped Greer got that and a full-length shot of me while she was at it because, of course, she was there, recording the whole, elegant affair for posterity. She’d even chosen a dress for the occasion, though something told me gray polyester wasn’t exactly tea-party fabric.

But I had better things to worry about than Greer’s poor fashion choices. Like everyone else there, I’d paid my twenty bucks to get in, and I planned on getting my money’s worth. I glanced over at a table stacked with designer brownies, and my stomach growled. I was just about to fill a plate when I realized Jefferson Lamar was standing right next to me.

“Don’t do that.” I pressed a hand to my heart. “Can’t you ring a bell or something when you show up, just to let me know you’re here?”

The sarcasm went right over his buzz-cut head. “You know I can’t touch anything, so how could I ring a bell? I had to see you, to find out about Dale Morgan.”

This was not the time or the place to discuss my progress (or lack thereof) on the case. I shushed him with a look, but since nobody but me could hear him anyway, I guess he didn’t think that was any big deal.

“It might be important,” he reminded me.

I looked longingly at the brownies before I turned and walked out of the sunroom. It wasn’t easy finding a private place to talk. The house was as big as a boat, but there were people in the study and people in the dining room and people in the hallways. Never one to let pesky numbers get in the way-of anything-I didn’t try to tally the size of the crowd against the kind of money we’d need to bring in to beat Team One at the fundraising game. Instead, I poked my head into the well-appointed kitchen, saw there was no one there, and ducked inside. Lamar and I had the place to ourselves, and the added bonus of a tray of broken brownies left out on the counter. I grabbed a hunk and popped it in my mouth. Chocolate caramel.

“So…” The warden pinned me with a look. “What did Dale Morgan have to say?”

I swallowed and grabbed a chunk of what looked like chocolate chip. It was, and the chips were dark chocolate.

“You haven’t picked the best place for a little heart-to-heart,” I told him, dodging the question. “You could have shown up someplace else. Anyplace else but here. Like when nobody was around.”

He didn’t apologize or explain. “I’m here now,” he said. “And if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were avoiding the subject.”

“Not avoiding.” I had chocolate on my fingers and the perfect excuse to avoid the subject some more. I washed my hands, then couldn’t find a towel, so I searched through the nearby catering boxes, found a napkin, and dried my hands. “I’ve been busy,” I finally said, tossing the napkin aside.

“You haven’t talked to Morgan.”

“I have talked to him.” That was the absolute truth, so I gave my statement all the oomph it deserved. “By the way, it looks like you were a little off base when you said you thought he could turn his life around. Morgan’s in prison.”

“That’s too bad.” A pained expression crossed Lamar’s face, but he didn’t let his disappointment distract him for long. “You asked him about the silver dollar? About me? About why-”

There was only so long I could keep up the shillyshallying. I crumbled like one of those brownies. “He came to the phone. Once. But he refuses to talk to me about anything. Not until I go and visit him.”

“And you haven’t done it?”

The question was so blunt and well… so darn logical, I had no choice but to be outraged. My shoulders shot back. “Like I said, I’ve been busy.”

“Not too busy to go shopping.” His gaze briefly grazed my taffeta dress. “You said this case was important to you.”

“And it is. You know that. But the coin doesn’t have anything to do with Vera. How can it? It’s just a whatchacallit. Red heron. Or red Herman. Or-”

“Red herring?”

“Yeah, that’s it.” He’d gotten me riled up, and as every woman alive knows, there’s nothing like the endorphins in chocolate to calm a girl down. I grabbed another hunk of brownie and talked with my mouth full. “Did Morgan have some kind of grudge against you? No, I didn’t think so. And besides, wasn’t he in prison at the time Vera was killed? You said he was a small-time crook, so was he the type who could have arranged a hit from the inside? Because of some sort of vendetta? What, you guys were fighting about the value of wheat pennies?”

I stared at him long and hard, waiting for his answers, and when he didn’t say a thing, I shouted a triumphant, “Aha!” I spun away, then spun around again. It took a while for my skirt to settle down.

“The Morgan thing is a dead end,” I said. “Admit it. Talking to him isn’t going to help us. It isn’t going to get us anywhere. I’d be wasting my time. Which I don’t have much of these days, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“You don’t want to talk to him because you’re afraid to walk into a prison.” Of course I was going to dispute this and remind him that I wasn’t afraid of anything, not even ghosts. But he stopped me like a traffic cop, one hand in the air. “I know you’ve got courage. You don’t need to remind me. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have gone to see Bad Dog. Or Reno Bob. That’s not what I’m talking about, Pepper, and you know it. You don’t want to go to a prison because a prison reminds you of your dad. And that hurts too much.”

I would have argued with this. If I could think of anything to say. Instead, I grabbed another bit of brownie. I didn’t eat it, though. I wasn’t all that hungry anymore.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” Lamar stepped closer. “You feel embarrassed. And let down. It’s natural. I saw it so often in the families of the men who were incarcerated. Your father, he betrayed your trust.”

I shrugged. What other response could I give him? While I was at it, I tossed the brownie, washed my hands again, and grabbed a glass for a drink of water. All that chocolate was clogged in my throat.

“I could go with you if that would help.” I was still facing the sink and Lamar’s voice came from behind me.

“To see Dale Morgan?” I turned to him. “Or to see my dad?”

“Either. Both. Though I think we should concentrate on Morgan first. If he knows something valuable-”

“You think?”

He spread his hands. “I’d like to find out.”

Yeah, me, too.

The only question was, how much?

I didn’t have the answer, and I couldn’t pretend I did. Maybe that’s why Lamar felt he had to try a little harder to convince me.