“Thank you so much,” the mother said. “We’ll be here.”
They left soon after and the dinner crowd began to thin. It hit me that Marco still hadn’t shown up for his bouncer job.
Molly was starting to look frazzled, and Ruth and I had been so busy, we’d barely had a moment to talk except for momentarily running into each other at the order counter, but once I had time to catch my breath, I headed over to Ruth to test the waters.
“It looks like Molly’s working out,” I said.
She gave me a look through narrowed eyes. “Please. She doesn’t even have a full section. You took several of her tables.”
“I thought we should ease her into it.”
Snorting, she said, “No one eased you in. You took half the room on a football night.”
“Yeah, but—”
She held up a hand. “Stop. No excuses.”
I released a huge sigh. “We need the help, Ruth. I realize you must have some kind of issue with her, but she did pretty well with the section she had, so let’s give her a chance, okay?”
She gave me a long look and her face softened. “Okay. Sorry. I’ll give her a chance, but I don’t trust her, Carly.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “You obviously know her and have your own perceptions of her, so I appreciate you putting them aside and giving her a chance.” I suspected her problem with Molly stemmed from her falling-out with May, but that wasn’t the kind of thing we should be discussing right now. It was likely more of a beer or wine conversation.
“I don’t know about putting ’em aside,” she grumped, “but I’m lettin’ her stay.” Then she added, “For now.”
I cast a glance toward the bar, where Wyatt and Max were working. “Do you know why Marco hasn’t shown up?”
“You’d know better than I would.” Our conversation was cut short when she headed over to a table of boisterous construction workers to take orders for refills.
My customers looked content for the moment, so I decided to head over to the bar and check on Molly. “How’s it goin’?”
“It’s obvious I haven’t waited tables in a few years,” she said with a wry grin, “but it’s comin’ back to me.”
“You seem to be holding your own,” I said. “How’s Tiny treating you?”
She shot me a surprised glance. “Okay, I guess.”
“He’s not very talkative when we’re busy, but if he’s upset with you, he doesn’t hide it. So that’s a good thing,” I said with a reassuring smile.
“Okay,” she said, looking relieved. “Good.”
“Don’t worry. It’ll all come back. And besides, as you already know, we’re not a formal kind of place. The main thing is to try to keep the customers happy, but don’t take any crap from the guys sittin’ around drinkin’.”
She got an uneasy look on her face, so I reached out and touched her arm.
“Don’t you worry,” I said. “If anyone gets out of hand, Max, Wyatt, or Tiny will be on them faster than a tick on a coon dog.” I cast a worried look toward the front door. “And Marco Roland when he shows up.”
“Wyatt Drummond…” she said with a playful grin. “Rumor has it you two dated.”
“Briefly,” I said. “When I first got to town. But we’ve been over for three times longer than we were together, so there won’t be any drama.” Hopefully.
She nodded. “Okay.”
Thinking about Marco had me worried, so I left her and headed behind the bar with my drink tickets, cornering Max while he filled a soft drink order.
Wyatt was a few feet down the bar filling a beer mug.
“Have you heard from Marco?” I asked, my worry seeping into my voice.
“No,” Max said with a frown. “Last I heard he was one of the deputies workin’ at the construction site.”
“Any word on that situation? Will they be able to start construction back up soon?” While the additional business was great, we couldn’t keep up at this pace, and a third of the guys in the room had been there all day, getting drunker by the minute. It was bound to turn ugly.
“I heard they took the bones to the state crime lab. They think it’s a woman.”
“Not a child?” I asked. When he gave me a horrified look, I quickly added, “I wondered if it was Floyd Bingham’s son. Or one of his wives.”
His brow furrowed. “What do you know about Rodney Bingham?” He released a loud groan. “Let me guess. Marco.”
Wyatt gave us an inquisitive look, but a customer waved at him from further down the bar, capturing his attention.
“He told me about it when we were looking for Lula. And then your father told me that he’d won a court battle over some disputed land on the Bingham-Drummond property line. I just presumed the body had been left by Bingham Senior.”
Max’s eyes brightened. “Hey. You’re right.”
I raised my brows. “You thought your father was responsible, didn’t you?”
He didn’t say anything for several seconds. “We both know that Carson Purdy was a murderer.”
The story went that Carson Purdy, Max’s father’s right-hand man, had gone rogue and attempted to start up his own drug empire under Todd Bingham’s nose by hauling in drugs from Atlanta in caskets delivered to a funeral home in Ewing. Carson’s gang had killed Hank’s teenage grandson for trying to get proof to implicate them, and I had witnessed his murder, which had set me in Purdy’s crosshairs. Purdy had shot Marco while trying to get to me, but Jerry had ultimately saved us all.
Bart Drummond had denied all culpability, but I sure wasn’t taking his word for it.
The look on Max’s face shifted to concern. “When did you speak to my father?”
Wyatt glanced toward us with a blank
