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“Do you think he knows something?”
McCrae shook his head. “I felt like he was . . .”
“What?”
He glanced at her, and she remembered thinking how blue his eyes were all those years ago when they were at the river and he was stripping down to his faded cutoffs. They looked exactly the same now. Deep, deep blue.
“. . . throwing shade at everyone else. Brian Timmons. His ex-wife. Tanner.”
“Tanner, for certain. I knew he was a cheater; I mean, I turned my back on it, but I knew. But I didn’t know how much.”
“He brought up going to adult clubs, like you said.”
Delta looked away. “Whenever he was in trouble, he would lie and try to squirm out of it. He’d say, ‘The devil made me do it.’ Like that’s all it took to be absolved.”
McCrae frowned. Fido, looking up at him, started whining, and McCrae absently reached down and petted his head. Fido pushed into McCrae’s hand. His eyes closed, his tongue slipped out, and he started panting happily.
“You want something to drink? I’ve got water . . . and coffee, tea . . . beer . . . ?”
“Thanks, no.” Delta smiled. “It’s just kind of nice to make it stop for a minute. Oh, I saw Brad Sumpter today. He came up to me at Danny O’s and sat down in my booth. He told me he knew I didn’t kill Tanner. That was nice to hear.” She gave a short, humorless laugh. “He said he never wanted any of the bad stuff to happen to me and Tanner.”
Fido took a few steps forward, and Delta leaned down, holding her palm open for him to sniff. He looked up at her with those doggy eyes and pushed his head into her hand, hoping for a pet or a scratch apparently, and she obliged.
“That’s pretty good,” McCrae said. “He’s fairly picky about who he thinks should be allowed in the house.”
“I’m going to have to go get my son soon. I’m . . . I thi
nk I’m taking him to my mom’s. I’m meeting Amanda tonight. She has some things to go over.”
“You trust her to do right by you?”
“I do. Why? Don’t you?”
“Yes, she should.”
“I’ve heard so much stuff lately, about the barbeque, and how she was in the woods with Tanner and everyone saw, apparently.” She paused, wondering if she should take this further, then decided, why not? “You were with Ellie.”
“Um, yes.”
“And there I was, waiting for Tanner, being this good, good girl, I thought, while the rest of you were having fun.”
“Ellie and I . . . that was . . .”
“Not fun?” She lifted her brows, calling him a liar.
“Not a good idea. We’ve been at odds ever since.”
“Maybe it’s true love.”
He shook his head. “No.”
That confession warmed Delta’s heart. It was way too soon to be having the feelings she was having. Transference, yes. But it felt great, and she needed to feel great, just for a little while at least.
“I thought I was being followed, but now I don’t know. They kept switching lanes like I was, but they shot on by when I turned off to go to Woody’s Auto Body.”
“What kind of vehicle?”
“Oh, I don’t think it was anything. I’m just getting paranoid. It feels like everybody’s out to get me.” Seeing he was waiting, she said, “Big. Black. Big sidewalls, and I think it was like a Suburban? Something like that.”
