“He’s not wrong,” he said. “But Collymore’s dad had money. He wanted the kid to have a short, sharp shock, and everyone went along with it. Guess it worked, because the worst the guy got as an adult was the occasional speeding ticket. That it?”
“Files?”
“I’ll leave ’em in the restroom,” Jones said. “My payment?”
“I’ll leave it on the table.”
Jones drained his coffee, picked up his notebook, and headed toward the restroom. Clay waited until he was gone and then pulled an envelope out of his jacket. He set it down on the table next to his coffee.
“Looks like you were right,” Grade said. “Whether Collymore was involved or not, Ledger’s was the death that Charity cared about. And the reason is on that laptop. Charity must have figured that once Ledger was found dead, she could just have anything that looked like evidence seized under the fig leaf of confidential information. Only, none of the stuff she pulled out of the house scratched the itch, which left the one thing she didn’t get, Ledger’s laptop. What I don’t get, though, is if Ledger had all this? Why not just hand it over?”
Clay shrugged. A man in a green sweater stopped on the other side of the street, opposite the cafe, and took a picture. From the angle, it would catch Clay’s car in the image.
Maybe he was just a tourist, but it wasn’t exactly a scenic street.
“Because sometimes you just want to piss in someone’s Cheerios,” Clay said. “Ledger got wind that Charity was going to make her big announcement about running for election to the Kentucky Supreme Court, and she didn’t want her to enjoy it. So she turned up to tell Charity that she had finally found the proof. Just so she could see the look on Charity’s face in person when she heard the news.”
Grade shook his head. “I never get that.”
“Spite?”
“Of course not. You’ve met my sister,” Grade said. “I mean the number of people who do something that will definitely make someone want to kill them but never seem to expect that it might get them killed.”
“That’s the human condition,” Clay said. He took a drink of coffee and stood up, just in case Jones pissed like a firehose. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Grade nodded. “I’ll get on it.”
Clay left him at the table and headed down to the restroom, crossing paths with Jones at the door. He picked the heavy manilla envelope up off the tank of the toilet and tucked it into his jacket.
Corruption was always much easier to stomach when it was on your side.
When he left the restroom, Jones was gone.
Clay headed back to the table and sat down, just as his phone went off in his pocket. He pulled it out to answer it, and Ezra growled in his ear.
“Heads up from the courthouse,” he said. “Judge just signed off on a search warrant for our property. That’s not going to be a problem, is it?”
“Hope not,” Clay said. He hung up and lifted his coffee to finish the last syrupy dregs. “Talking about people who got themselves killed, though. Might be a good time to clean house at mine and Ezra’s. Before we get any unannounced visitors.”
Grade hesitated for a second.
“We’ll pay the going rate,” Clay said as he put the cup down.
“You should lead with that,” Grade said. He left his cup half full of tea and got up. “Ezra’s first, then we can go to yours.”
“That’s hurtful,” Clay said as he put his hand on the small of Grade’s back as they headed out. “Not going to lie.”
“I like you more,” Grade said, “but the transfers come from his bank account, so I don’t want it frozen. For a start, you’re about to buy me a new van.”
Chapter Thirteen
Sweat soaked Grade’s T-shirt. The fabric was plastered to his back as he dragged the dead man in the duct-taped-up trash bags down the stairs, his plastic-covered heels thumping rhythmically on the wood.
He’d been right. Ezra’s house had been easy. A broken neck was a gift when you were in a hurry. All they’d had to do was roll him up in a rug and chuck him in the back of the shitty camper they’d pulled off Benny Quinn’s secondhand car lot. It made Grade’s neck itch to have a whole dead body back there in case they were stopped, but some shortcuts needed to be taken when there was a time crunch.
It left you open to making mistakes, but not as big a mistake as having a body on the scene when the cops got there.
Then Grade had broken the back window with his elbow to spray glass over the kitchen floor. He didn’t have time to waste tidying up the mess that Charity’s thugs had made of Ezra’s house, so he would use it to his advantage.
