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“Say, where do I know you from?” he continued, seemingly oblivious to my threat. “Were you at Mindy’s recital? I think I saw you on stage?”
“Doubt it," I said shortly. I didn’t know who the fuck Mindy was or why I would be on stage with her. Or why the old man kept talking when he should be able to see that I wasn’t the type for chit-chat.
“Oh, come on, Jer,” the plump brunette bartender, who seemed to have some good sense, said. “Leave the poor man alone. He’s new in town. It’s too early for him to put up with your hallucinations and shenanigans.”
“I swear to God, Bertha, it’s not a hallucination this time. I have seen him somewhere.”
“Oh yeah? And where would you know thisfinegentleman from?” Bertha’s voice dripped with appreciation at the words. I wasn’t looking at her as I was focused on the glass in front of me, but I could sense her eyes on me. I didn’t look back, not wanting to encourage anything. She seemed sweet, so very much not for a man like me.
I wasn’t going to be in town long anyway.
“I didn’t say I knew him,” the old man insisted. “Only that I’d seen him somewhere. Maybe even on TV or something." There was a sudden loud clap as the old man celebrated his discovery. “That’s it! It was on TV. He was on the news or something. I remember now. You’re that commander, right? The war hero? The man who led the team that took down the fuckers who kidnapped the Senator of California.”
Shit. This was why I hated publicity and news, but in that situation, we’d needed to publicize the case to lure the kidnappers out. I thought I wouldn’t need to worry about it after all this time.
It was a long time ago, and I looked different. Much older and harder. So what were the odds someone in this tiny backwoods town would remember?
Even worse than that was the fact that this man hadn’t exactly said it in a quiet tone, and now more curious eyes were staring at me with a combination of fascination, respect, and fear. Like I was a damn circus animal here for their amusement. It grated on every single nerve because they seemed to be expecting a reaction. I wanted to walk out. But instead, I decided to see if my newfound fame could help me solve the puzzle.
I turned to the old man, figuring someone as nosy as him was the right person to ask. “You know a Max Devoe?”
The man shook his head. “Nope. But I do know a couple of gangs that loiter outside of town that could use a stern talking to from a man like you.”
I turned away from him to glance at the bartender, who blushed at my gaze. “How about you? Max Devoe?”
“Erm.” She thought about it and then shook her head. “No, no, not really. I know a Max Turner, though. Short, blonde hair, and walks like he’s got a pogo stick between his ass cheeks?”
I shook my head. That did not fit the description at all.
I turned to the people on the other side of the bar. They shook their head too. I continued, and word spread as the neighbor began asking a neighbor for Max Devoe. The old man even went to the other side of the bar to make inquiries, and while people knew a Max Hart, a Maxwell Garter, and a Maximillian Thurgood the Third, no one knew Max Devoe.
Frustration climbed. This made no damn sense.
How come, in this room full of the nosiest people in town, nobody fucking knew Max? It was a small ass town. I even tried describing him—he talks a lot, has brown hair, and is tall—but none of that helped. They didn’t know him. They didn’t know about his wife and kid either.
“Anyone died in town recently?” I asked, finally at the end of my rope. This was way more conversation than I typically like, but unfortunately, the strong silent thing didn’t get answers in situations like this.
The old man perked up in interest. “Why? You a detective too? Cause I could tell you a few names who need to be locked up right away. Starting with the gang that I mentioned earlier.”
“Lots of people died recently,” the bartender said. “There was a power outage at our clinic, and it took a while to get the power back up. A couple of people died. Real tragedy. One of the casualties was the lady who runs the kindergarten, Missy…real pretty lady. Let me tell you about her….” She went on and on about Missy and then proceeded to tell me about all the other people who’d died during the outage. None of them fit the physical or social description of Max Devoe.
And by the end, I was only left with a social meter that had been strained to its limit. While the old man was still talking about his gang problems, I dropped a hundred-dollar bill on the table to cover my beer and walked out.
“Wait, you forgot your change!” the bartender yelled out from behind me, but I didn’t stop.
FIVE
TILLIE
It was a shitty Monday morning.
It started with me getting chewed out at the beginning of my shift. Rightfully so, because I was late once again. I took it on the chin on the outside, but truthfully I hated being yelled at in public, particularly by a boss like Erwin. He was a pretty nice guy, all things considered. He worked with mostly college students, so he was typically good about drafting schedules that let them balance out work with academics. Plus, he let us eat lunch and dinner free, and we got hour-long breaks in between shifts. Erwin rarely got mad unless someone truly fucked up big time or fucked up too often.
In my case, it was the latter.
“What the fuck? Do you think I’m running a charity here?” he berated the minute he spotted me as I walked in. His angry voice was louder than his natural speaking tone, which was already pretty loud, and it drew the eyes of several customers. It was a busy Monday morning, and the Sewells, the burger shack Erwin owned, was on its way to being filled to the brim. That was probably one of the reasons why Erwin was so stressed. Mondays were notorious for being our busiest days. More than any other day, on Monday, we needed to run a tight ship and make sure all hands were on deck.
And I was late. Not just late by a couple of minutes, but by an hour.
