“Schedule those interviews,” I said with a sigh, “or I’ll hire someone myself. I need a day off.”
She frowned, then left the bar to carry a handful of dirty dishes to the kitchen.
While we were both pulling doubles, one or the other of us would get a few hours off in the afternoon, and it was Ruth’s turn today. So she headed off, and I kept busy enough until she came back at five for the dinner shift.
Dinner was usually even busier than lunch now that the construction crew was staying in and around Drum—there was nothing else to do—but tonight, five o’clock came and went with only a handful of the usual customers. By five thirty, I was beginning to wonder what was going on. Then Max took a phone call and his face lost color. I hurried over to talk to him.
He hung up the phone, scowling. “Work’s been halted at the construction site.”
“What?” Ruth asked. “Why?”
“They found a body buried on the property. It’s now the site of a murder investigation.”
Chapter Two
Max looked like he was going to be sick, and I had to wonder why. Was he worried about his father? The resort was being built on Drummond land, but a portion of the acreage was a disputed section that the Drummonds and the Binghams had fought over for years. When I’d seen Bart early last December, he’d told me that he’d won a court case granting him ownership, something that had allowed him to proceed with the construction. The question was, which side had the body been found on?
Ruth gave Max a long look. “Now, don’t go jumpin’ to conclusions.”
“And what kind of conclusions would I be jumpin’ to?” Max snapped, his eyes flashing. “Do you think my father’s stupid enough to bury someone and then put a resort over ’em? He’d go to the trouble of movin’ them first.”
I scowled. Like that was any better. Then again, I suspected the number of people Bart had actually killed was pretty low, not that he wasn’t culpable for quite a few deaths.
I’d learned that Bart ran a kind of barter system—a favor for a favor. The deal was that the person who’d asked for a favor—or, in my case, been cornered into it—had to do whatever Bart requested, no questions asked. I’d done some investigating over the past few months, and I’d found at least eight murders over the past two decades with loose ties to Bart Drummond. Of course, none of the articles mentioned him by name. I’d connected the dots myself.
After my chat with Bart in December, I was fully dedicated to bringing him down. Something that would probably have been easier with reliable access to the internet. I’d spent what little free time I had at the tiny Drum library, searching the online records of the Ewing Chronicle for articles about murders over the past two decades. Hours and hours of research. At first, I’d ignored the murders that had been “solved,” but it soon occurred to me that I might be underestimating Bart’s craftiness.
I knew enough to understand that Bart Drummond was a careful man. Which meant that Todd Bingham’s father had probably put the body there. According to Marco, Floyd Bingham had been a mean drunk and had likely killed multiple people. Rumor had it he’d buried them on his own property, two of his wives and his youngest son included.
“Is there any word on who they found?” I asked. “A man? Woman? A child?”
Max shook his head. “Not yet. All I heard was the word body.”
“It’s probably someone Floyd Bingham killed,” I said, trying to reassure him, although for the life of me, I wasn’t sure why. “I bet that’s where Floyd buried his bodies.”
“How do you know about the rumors?” Ruth asked.
I snorted, giving her a sassy look. “Please. People tell me all sorts of things.” Then I added, “Marco told me last winter while we were looking for Lula.”
The Baxters, a family of semi-regulars, headed in and sat in my section, and I broke away to greet them. I made small talk, asking the two elementary-aged kids how school was going. The little girl, Zelda, told me she was having trouble with her third-grade math, something her parents couldn’t help her with since they didn’t understand the way her teacher wanted things done.
I winked. “I think I can help you with that. I used to do some tutoring back in Atlanta.”
Which was my cover story. Really, I was from Texas, but only a few people knew that.
I checked on a few of my other tables and circled back. Squatting next to Zelda, I ripped a ticket out of my pad and showed her—and her parents—how to break the numbers down into tens and ones before multiplying and adding. We went through several problems I made up off the top of my head.
Understanding sparked in Zelda’s eyes, and the knowledge that I’d helped made me nostalgic for my old life. A year ago, I’d been teaching my third-grade class, preparing the kids for their spring PTA performance while I planned my August wedding to my best friend. My father had stolen it from me. On the night of my rehearsal dinner, I’d heard him talking to my fiancé, Jake—it turned out they secretly concocted a savage plan together. Jake would marry me to become my father’s heir in his illegal enterprise (something my father didn’t need given he was already wealthy several times over with oil money), and then they’d kill me.
I’d done the only thing I could think to do and run.
Six months ago, I’d thought that life—the life
