starter for the varsity basketball team.
If Jake Valentine was the secret drug kingpin of Elawah County, he was sure hiding it well.
'Nice night,' Valentine murmured. 'You and the wife out for a drive?'
Jeffrey opened the bottle with a twist, ignoring the pain shooting through his hand. He hated beer, but his head was hurting so bad he would've drunk poison to make it stop pounding.
Valentine said, 'All jokes aside, still no sign of your detective.'
Jeffrey wasn't surprised. Short of Lena knocking on the front door of the jail and asking to be let in, he doubted very seriously that she would be found. Jeffrey had asked Frank Wallace to keep an eye on her credit cards, but Jeffrey assumed nothing had come up or Frank would've called. He also asked the senior detective to keep an eye out in Heartsdale, but both men had agreed that it was highly unlikely Lena would show back up in Grant County.
Jeffrey stared at the abandoned building on the other side of the motel, a tin-roofed hovel that some enterprising soul had painted to look like a grass shack.
'Hank's place,' Valentine volunteered, nodding toward the building. 'Bartender was selling meth from behind the counter. ATF said a secret informer tipped ' em off. Told me this after the fact, mind you. First I heard about it was Junior, the night manager here, calling to ask me did I know Hank's bar was surrounded by sixty state police cars.'
Jeffrey took another swig from the bottle. He could hear the trickle of a stream, the swaying of trees in the forest that backed onto the hotel and bar. He wanted to be home, floating on his back in the lake, the sound of Sara and her sister's laughter muffled by the cool water. He wanted to be in bed, lying on his back, with Sara's mouth on him.
Valentine cut through his thoughts. 'I'm guessing you already knew about Hank's bar,' he said. 'Just like I'm guessing you're the one who cut the ATF tape on the back door.'
'Good guess,' Jeffrey said, though he had a feeling Lena had done the honors. So, she was looking for something. The cut tape was like a fingerprint. All it told you was that someone had been there. It didn't tell you when or why. Maybe she had gone there for money. Maybe she had been there last night while Jeffrey and Sara tried to sleep.
'Anyway…' Valentine stubbed his toe against the asphalt. 'I was in the neighborhood and figured I'd just…'
Jeffrey gave a heavy sigh as he stood from the bench, too tired to let this play out slow. 'I take it from the empty bottles in your cooler that you've been here a while. You're not in uniform, so you're trying to look like you're off duty, but the fact that a three-year-old could spot that ankle holster tells me you've either been watching too much TV or you've got something to be afraid of. My bet's on the last one.'
Valentine chuckled, but Jeffrey could tell the younger man was shaken. He looked out at the parking lot, took a long pull from his beer.
Jeffrey tossed the empty SunChips bag into the trash. 'Tell me about Al Pfeiffer.'
'Al retired.'
'Why?'
'Wanted to spend more time with his grandbabies.'
'And less time on fire?'
Valentine's eyes narrowed. 'Why're you interested in that old man?'
Jeffrey took a healthy mouthful of beer, trying not to shudder from the bitter taste. Not only did Valentine look like a teenager, he had the tastes of one. Jeffrey would've bet his pension the kid hadn't paid more than three bucks for the six-pack.
'Lookit,' Valentine said. 'I just wanted to let you know we've got the coroner coming in tomorrow.'
Finally, the reason for his visit. 'That so?'
'He's gonna look at the body from the Escalade, let us know what he thinks happened.'
'Sounds like a good plan.'
'You mentioned before about your wife…' Valentine's voice trailed off. When he saw that Jeffrey wasn't going to help him, he added, 'It just sounded to me like she's got a lot of experience.'
Jeffrey could not believe what he was hearing. 'She does.'
'I'd be real grateful if you could have her come over, maybe look at the body, tell us what she sees.'
Jeffrey tried to see the angles, to figure out why Valentine would make such a request. Nothing came to mind, and the beer wasn't helping. 'I thought you said your guy was good.'
'Oh, he is, but something like this… look, we'd pay her. We've still got some money left in the budget. Just tell me what her rate is.'
Jeffrey knocked back the rest of the beer and immediately wished he had another, then he thought of his father and wished he hadn't drunk anything at all.
Valentine took his silence the wrong way. 'I can get cash if-'
'Are they paying you off?'
'What's that?'
Jeffrey pressed his empty bottle into the man's chest. 'Something's going on in your town and you're either a part of it or you're taking money to look the other way.'
Valentine gave a forced laugh. 'You sure those are my only options?'
Jeffrey warned him, 'Listen, Barney Fife, I'm going to find out what's going on here one way or another, and I don't care whose toes I have to step on to do it.'
'You gonna punch me again?'
Jeffrey thought back to Sara slapping him, how powerless she must have felt locked in the car. 'I might.'
Valentine leaned down to put Jeffrey's bottle in the cooler. When he straightened, he gave Jeffrey a lazy, half-smile like they were old friends. 'You should come to my house for supper sometime.'
Jeffrey walked back down the tunnel toward the parking lot. 'Why would I want to do that?'
Valentine matched his stride. 'I'll show you around, point out the little projects I've been working on.' He flashed his goofy grin. 'I'm a lot handier than I look.'
'You going somewhere with this?'
'We're trying to build a deck out back. Every payday, we buy a couple of pieces of cedar for it. The wife figures it'll take a year before we've got everything we need, but we're real patient people. We're not like some folks who can just throw money around, raising mansions out of swampland. We just take our time and do it the right way.'
He was talking about Al Pfeiffer. Jeffrey wondered if Valentine knew his old boss had been paid a visit today. Pfeiffer probably still had ties to the community, maybe came back to see friends. People would know where he was living. They would keep in touch.
Jeffrey was in front of the room. He pointed to the door. 'This is my stop.'
Valentine tipped his hat. 'You enjoy your evening, Chief. Let me know what your wife says.'
