AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Nope, it’s too clever and too far removed from her. It’s somebody else all right, and we need to find out who. I want you to think about it, Hunter. Anybody who’d do this would do something a lot worse, you understand?”
“Yeah,” She was angry and frustrated, “If I find out, they better hold on to their asses.”
“Me, too. You watch your back out there. I mean it.”
“I will. Thanks, Truman, I’ll see you Monday.”
“Be there or be square,” He said and hung up the phone.
Hunter put the phone down and rubbed her eyes. What next, she thought. Sitting on the bed, thinking of who it might be, and coming up with nothing just made her more frustrated. She went into the master bathroom and turned on the water in the huge shower stall. When steam was rolling out in damp clouds, she adjusted the temperature and stepped under the spray.
She dressed afterwards in jeans, tennis shoes and white tee shirt, and put on a San Antonio Spurs ball cap as she grabbed the keys and walked out the door. When Hunter drove up to Raymond’s house, she saw him in the side yard wearing his Iowa jersey and sitting in a chair beside the pickup-sized barbecue pit he’d named Hayden Fry, after the legendary Iowa coach. A smokeless fire of split mesquite was burning in the hole in the ground beside it. Raymond waved her over as he took out two beers from the ice chest beside the chair.
Hunter unfolded a lawn chair and put it down beside Raymond. He handed her one of the beers and they both tilted the bottles back to take the first swallows.
Raymond said, “
You coming over to eat?”
“Depends. What are you gonna put on?”
“Well, Miss Picky, I’ve got some quail left over from hunting season, and they’ve been marinating since yesterday. I’m gonna cover them in fresh pineapple slices and wrap over that with bacon.”
Hunter took a sip of beer, “What else?”
Raymond rolled his eyes, “I’ve got corn roasted in the shucks, onions in the fire right now, ranchero beans, cornbread in the oven, and a cranberry-jalapeno salsa I made a couple days ago.”
“I don’t know…I was really looking forward to that slice of baloney on my last two pieces of stale bread.”
“Yeah, I can see how you’d be torn.”
“Okay,” she said, “You talked me into it.”
Raymond leaned over and poked at the fire with a long stick. “What else is going on? You always come over to eat, but you start fidgeting when you’ve got something else on your mind.”
“I don’t fidget.”
“Yes, you do. Just like now, you’re wiggling all over the place. So tell me.”
“My attorney got arrested last night for possession of cocaine.”
“Un-frigging-believable.”
“Truman said he’d still represent me.”
“They’re gonna suspend him. He won’t be able to represent you.”
“Truman said he’d do it as my personal attorney, not through Justice.”
“You don’t want a doper representing you.”
“He convinced me he was framed…I know, I know, but I don’t have time to get another one filled in on everything. Hell, the trial starts tomorrow.”
“You believe Truman?” Hunter nodded, and Raymond continued, “Well, he is up to speed on it.”
“Raymond, he said that somebody’s trying to get to me through him. That’s why they planted the coke on him right before the trial.”
“Lot of funny stuff’s been going on.”
