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“You think Nia implicated her family. That somehow Penske was with Bailey that night, on their orders. Maybe they had something on him. Maybe they could prove he’d been seeing Nia when she was underage. Something like that. The Crassleys blamed Bailey for Little Dan’s death, among other things. You think Penske was used to set her up, maybe even kill her.”
“Impressive, McCrae.” She was a little surprised he’d followed her thinking so closely. “So what do we do now?”
“You, stay away from the Crassleys.”
“What about you?”
But he had already clicked off.
* * *
Danny O’s was busy, with the waitstaff holding trays of food, a lot of breakfast items from their twenty-four-hour menu, and a large population of construction workers who probably liked the size of the portions, large, and the size of the price, small to medium.
Delta hadn’t been here in years. Tanner called it “slumming it,” and Delta tended toward salads and lean meat and expensive wine. I’m a snob, she thought, the label like a kick to the gut. She’d always thought of herself as that girl whose parents owned the mom-and-pop grocery store, not Dr. Tanner Stahd’s wife.
She was sitting at one of the smaller booths, perusing a menu for anything she might like to pass the time—iced tea was about all that appealed to her—when a shadow fell over her shoulder, and she glanced around quickly, apprehensively.
“Brad?” she said, seeing the hulk that was Brad Sumpter looming over her.
“Hi, Delta,” he said.
He was nervous, she realized. Well, so was she. Brad had already been a bodybuilder when they were in high school, and that had continued through the reunion and apparently for the years after. He’d never said much, being more Justin Penske’s sidekick.
“Can I sit down?” he asked, and then plopped down across from her, pushing the table a little closer to her side of the booth to make room for a swelling gut. Maybe his obsessive workouts had stopped, or at least petered out. He looked like he was going to seed.
“What . . . are you doing these days?” she asked him.
“I saw what Amanda said about you. I wanted you to know, I know you didn’t kill him. I was glad she said something. I thought you guys still hated each other. It’s good you don’t.”
“Yeah . . . thanks.”
The waitress came and asked if they were ready. Delta almost wanted to leave, but she ordered the iced tea. After a long moment, while he apparently waited for her to order more, Brad shook his head, and the waitress moved on.
“If you ever need anything . . .” He trailed off.
“Thanks, Brad. I’m doing okay. It’s hard . . . for all of us.”
He looked off across the restaurant, and she could see he was wrestling with some deep emotion. His lips moved, and his eyes were sad. “You know, when it all gets straightened out and it’s better, that’ll be a good thing.”
“Yes,” Delta said slowly.
Her iced tea was delivered, and she pulled the glass close.
“Aren’t you gonna put sugar in it?” he asked.
“No.”
“You look good, Delta.”
“Thank you.”
He waited another moment, then pushed himself up from the table. “Well, I’d better be going.” He hesitated, then added, “I didn’t want any of this bad stuff to happen to you or Tanner.”
He left before she could question him further.
* * *
A hard breeze was kicking up. As Amanda walked from the kitchen and cut across the dining room, she saw a paper bag fly up outside the front-room windows. She crossed the living room and unlocked the rarely used front door. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d opened it.
