The man behind the desk raised his chin. “Virginia. You’re late.”
“Sorry, Grandpa,” Ginny said. She hurried behind the desk and kissed his cheek. “This is my fiancé, Shepherd.”
“Fiancé?” one of the blonde women gasped. “Ring!”
Ginny shook her head. “That’s what we were going to talk to Mom about this morning.”
It wasnutshow easily she lied. She came up with a cover story for a missing ring in a blink of an eye. Shepherd wasn’t even sure why they had to be engaged at all, but it wasn’t like he’d had a chance to ask her, either. The demon woman.
The demon woman waved him in, and Shepherd realizedhe was still standing in the doorway like a frozen idiot. He stepped fully into the room and offered a handshake to the old man.
“Shepherd is your first or last name?” the old man demanded.
“Last,” Shepherd said. “Preston.”
The old man didn’t shake his hand; instead, he gripped it, painfully tight, and Shepherd smiled to hide a grimace.
He released Shepherd and settled back into his large leather chair. “What do you do, Preston?”
Shepherd let his hand hang at his side and did not shake out the ache left behind. “Restaurant,” he said.
“You do restaurant?”
Ginny stepped in between them, a hand on Shepherd’s arm. “He owns a restaurant, Grandpa. The one I work at, actually.”
“Oh, getting it on with the boss,” one of the beautiful women giggled. “How very un-Ginny-like of you, Ginny girl.”
Ginny used her hold on his arm to maneuver Shepherd around the room. “This is my brother, Vincent, who Mom has already told you all about.”
Ah, the politician, right. He went to University of Florida, the Harvard of the South. He shook Shepherd’s hand in a much more normal way.
“And over here,” she said, gesturing to the two women, “is my stepmother, Brandy.” If he had to guess, Brandy was the older of the two women, though it was hard to tell, since neither had a single wrinkle anywhere on her skin. Her handshake was freezing cold and felt a little nice on his wound. “And this is Scarlett.”
He offered his hand to Ginny’s sister-in-law.
“My step-grandmother.”
Woah. OK, it was not Vincent’s wife who sat on the couch resplendent from bleach and plastic, but the old man’s. He kept a smile on his face because otherwise he was going to laugh, and he just knew the family would not take that well.
He didn’t need Ginny’s family making him feel like an idiot. He was perfectly capable of feeling like an idiot all by himself.
“So what happened?” Bradley Kent asked, securing the lock on the office door. “Ginny, start from the beginning, please, and get us up to speed.”
Ginny gave a detailed summary of the events from last night leading up to that afternoon, leaving out key points like, one, she and Shepherd were in a fake relationship to appease her mother, and two, they might have—maybe, potentially—killed a meth maker. Producer? What was the term for someone who made meth for a living? A meth artisan or a—shit—what were those guys in fancy restaurants who told you what wine to drink?
She was only occasionally interrupted with a question from the audience, but the questions were usually of the “She was hooking up with who?” variety, regarding Deandra’s interest in Mr. Martin. Poor dead Mr. Martin.
Shepherd needed to buy new shoes as soon as he woke up from this nightmare. No, Ginny was going to buy him new shoes. If she grew up in this house, she could afford to buy him ten pairs of new shoes. What was she doing working for him, anyway? Slinging pizzas and mixing cooladas for a couple of nickels to rub together; meanwhile, she had grown up in anMTV Cribs-style McMansion.
When she was done with her story, she turned to her grandfather and asked, “Why would Mr. Martin say ‘Cardello’ as his dying word, when Charlie Cardello is dead?”
He was tapping the tip of a fountain pen against a bright yellow legal pad, blue ink splattering with every motion of his liver-spotted hand. “Because he isn’t dead.”
“But Charlie wouldn’t have done this,” Bradley Kent said. “He doesn’t even know Deandra.”
The woman Shepherd was fairly certain was Ginny’s stepmother rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. Because shenevergets around.”
Vincent glared at Brandy before he sighed. Shrugging and grinning, he looked shockingly similar to Ginny whenever she sang karaoke. “I know there’s a lot up in the air right now, Dad. But I think we can spin this.”
