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After the soup, servers brought out plates with sliced roast beef, mashed potatoes, and roasted green beans. Every bite was delicious, and I was ravenous, so I ate it all.
Dessert—trifle flights—was being served when I snuck a glance at the City of Sven’s Beard’s table, where Grady and Curt sat together with the mayor, Mrs. Jenkins, and a few other people I didn’t know. A pretty brunette in an apron was standing beside Grady’s chair talking to everyone at the table, her hand on Grady’s shoulder as he smiled up at her.
I kept my expression neutral, but inside, I was crushed. Of course there was a woman in his life. Behind his gruff exterior, Grady had a lot of great qualities. He was supportive and loyal. Smart. Funny. And hot. So, so hot.
Bess leaned over and softly said, “That’s his sister. Shea Grady.”
I couldn’t help letting hope flicker on my face. “His sister? She’s the chef here?”
“You betcha.”
It was time to admit to myself that I had a crush on Grady. My time here was limited, though, and I didn’t want to start anything that would be hard to walk away from.
Not to mention that I was too busy to add anything else. I needed to get the Chronicle’s subscription numbers up and hopefully, make a little something on the sale, because my job back home was hanging by a thread.
Shea said goodbye to the members of the city table and headed back to the doors I assumed led to the kitchen. Someone was testing the microphone, preparing for the showdown’s trophy presentation ceremony.
It was difficult to force myself to look at anything but Grady, but I had to. I was warming up to the Beard, and while thoughts of Grady made me more than warm, this only ended one way—with me back home in San Diego.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Grady
“Well, shit.”
I looked up at the bright blue Sunday afternoon sky, wondering how the hell such horrible things could happen on such beautiful days.
“I know,” Coulter said. “They haven’t covered him yet, and it’s pretty gruesome.”
The dispatchers always called me, no matter what time it was, when major incident calls came in. I’d left lunch at my parents’ house to come to the scene of a single-car fatal accident in a heavily wooded area just outside of town. I hadn’t been prepared to hear that my high school football coach Rick Spellman was the one who had died.
“What the hell happened?” I asked Coulter, who had arrived before me.
“No signs of drugs or alcohol. Jimmy thinks it might’ve been a seizure, and he was doing at least sixty-five, so when he hit that tree…”
“Shit,” I said again.
Jimmy Bond had been the county coroner for more than twenty years, and his preliminary guesses were usually right. Spellman was in his early sixties, though, and his first grandchild had been born a few weeks ago. Nothing about this was right. His family would be devastated.
“You’d better call Cindy before it spreads that there’s been an accident,” Coulter said, reading my mind. “You know how many people listen to scanners and tell the whole town before we’ve even left the scene.”
I nodded, remembering the way Spellman made us run laps if anyone on the team had a shitty attitude. One comment and the whole team was running, glaring daggers at whoever had gotten mouthy.
“If you want a hug, go see your granny,” he used to tell us. “I’m here to mold you sad sacks of shit into football players.”
We’d busted our asses to please him, and he was the kind of man who noticed and acknowledged it. I’d once seen a kid on my team without a dad at home break down in tears when Spellman put a hand on his shoulder and said, “I’m proud of you, son.”
I exhaled heavily. “I’ll go take a look to confirm and then I’ll go see Cindy.”
Ten minutes later, I was about to leave the accident scene to drive to the Spellman house and deliver the bad news when I saw Avon walking toward me, Pete’s old pickup truck pulled over to the side of the road about a hundred yards behind her.
“Hey, one of our pressmen listens to a police scanner and he told me there was an accident,” she said.
The camera around her neck and the notebook in her hand sent a jolt of anger through my chest. We had to take photos of the deceased at accident scenes, but we were tight about them, and we made sure only the people who had to see them did. There was no way she was getting a single photo of this crash scene.
“You can’t be here,” I said. “This is a crime scene.”
“Can I ask what kind of crime?”
“No.”
She furrowed her brow. “Chief, I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass. I’m just trying to get some basic details.”
