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Grinding his teeth in frustration, he decided to focus on anything other than Bliss Gault. He grabbed his laptop and sat on the couch, stretching out his legs. The world was not made for people his size. Even the keys on the laptop were too small for him.
One thing he liked about Minnesota was the sense of more available space. Ever since he’d arrived, he’d been able to breathe just a bit easier.
He checked in with Kirk, who was currently in a nearby hospital along with his sweetheart, Gina Moretti. “How are you both doing?” he texted on his laptop.
We should be released soon. Thanks for showing up when you did.
Why I’m here.
In truth, Kirk and Gina had handled the situation just fine by themselves. An obsessed fan with daddy issues had followed Kirk to Lake Bittersweet, then decided to grab Kirk’s niece as leverage. Gina had prevented the kid from throwing himself off a balcony, and then Granger had taken him into custody. He’d been assisted by Thomas Cooper, Bliss’ soon-to-be brother-in-law.
He wouldn’t mind having dinner at Cooper’s house. He’d liked the guy, especially because he hadn’t kicked up any kind of fuss about an FBI agent being part of the scene.
What are your plans now?Kirk texted.
Good question. After the big wedding, he should probably go home. But he didn’t want to. He was enjoying his time in this tiny, snowy dot on the map. Besides, he still hadn’t spent any time pursuing the second reason he was here, the one he still hadn’t mentioned to anyone.
Enjoy the rest of my vacation.
You have a funny idea of vacation.
True that. Need a pickup from the hospital?
No, Gina’s family is all over it. Expect a full-on convoy.
Granger chuckled out loud at that, picturing the Moretti family in a parade of trucks and Mustangs accompanying Kirk and Gina home from the hospital. Kirk was lucky, about to join a family like that. His own family was a mess; that was something he and Granger had in common. Kirk’s father had been an addict, while Granger’s…well, he had no idea, and that was why he was in Lake Bittersweet.
He pulled up a tab on his computer. He knew this page by heart. It was a biography of Alvin “Redfish” Carter, legendary blues musician and current heart and soul of Alvin’s Burgers and Blues. He stared at the array of photos on the page. A young Alvin grinning over a bass guitar. Crooning into a microphone. Arm slung over the shoulders of a young Steven Gault. Then more photos through the decades, performing to bigger crowds, even Carnegie Hall. Accepting a Grammy. More photos with Steven Gault. They’d been extremely close friends.
There were plenty of family photos too. His wife had been a singer in one of his bands. They had two kids before they divorced. He went on to have a daughter, Kendra, with his current wife.
Did he see any resemblance in her pretty features to himself?
His mother had always refused to talk about his father. Maybe that was one reason he’d become an FBI agent. He loved digging up facts. There was nothing so satisfying as executing a search warrant and finding incriminating evidence.
After much pestering, the only thing she’d told him was that, unlike her, his father wasn’t white. That explained his not-entirely white skin color, but not much else. No one could ever pin down his racial background, and neither could he. Genes were funny. He didn’t necessarily look black, but his father could be some mix that meant he had a dash of Jamaican or Puerto Rican or Kenyan.
Like Alvin Carter, who had a white grandmother. And who had invited Granger’s mother, Nora Granger Pitt, tambourine player and backup singer, on tour with the Freaks. And who was the reason why Nora had dragged him to Lake Bittersweet about twenty years ago.
He didn’t remember much about the trip, except for the time he spent waiting on the dock while his mother hunted down Alvin Carter.
“You wait here. Be good. Don’t bother no one, you hear? I just need to talk to a man who lives here.”
“Who?”
“That’s not your business. Well, I guess it might be, depending on what he says.” His mother giggled like a little girl with a secret. “You might get yourself a daddy out of this.”
He scrambled up from the spot on the dock where she’d left him. “My daddy lives here?”
“I didn’t say that. Now sit back down. Here, take this.” She grabbed a fishing pole that someone had left propped on a bucket. “Catch a fish or something. This won’t take long.”
She thrust the rod into his hand and hurried down the dock. He listened to her footfalls and heard her light voice asking someone, “Can you tell me where to find Alvin Carter?”
He put the fishing rod back in its bucket. He didn’t care about fishing at all. Besides, it was clearly someone else’s rod. His mother had a habit of laying claim to other people’s stuff as if it was hers. A lot of the time, people didn’t mind because she had such a charismatic personality.
But he minded. People shouldn’t take things that didn’t belong to them.
He looked down at his shoes, the laces so loosely tied they looked ridiculous. They were too small for him, but he didn’t want to point that out to his mother. Lately, they hadn’t had any money for anything, and she’d gotten tense and snapped at him and Marqui. She kept threatening to put them in foster care so she could go on tour again.
