Poisonfeather (Gibson Vaughn #2)(16)
She texted Parker to set a meeting. A guard at the prison, Parker supposedly served as her eyes and ears. At least that was what she was paying him for, but getting blindsided by the full scope of Merrick’s interview made her reconsider Parker’s usefulness. Well, he was all she had, and she needed an update on Merrick so she could figure out what to do.
What was she going to do now?
Order another beer, to start. While she waited, she prodded her forgotten lunch with a fork until the fork got stuck. That’s what you got for ordering fettuccine Alfredo at a dive bar in West Virginia. That being said, it was far from the worst bar food she’d ever eaten and not even close to the worst bar she’d eaten it in. One of the drawbacks of not knowing how to boil water was you wound up eating too many meals in places like the Toproll. Even when it wasn’t your shift. Not that you could taste anything but the thick pall of cigarette smoke that hung in the air. There was no ban on smoking in West Virginia, and the citizens of Niobe took their smoking seriously. Only one p.m. and already it stung her eyes. After a shift, Lea changed clothes in the bathroom and tied them up in a garbage bag before heading back upstairs.
“You know you’re not on the schedule until tonight,” Margo said from behind the bar. Margo was her boss and landlord, a potentially dangerous combination, but they’d made it work.
Lea nodded.
“Just think it’s kind of sad. I own the place, and even I don’t hang out here on my days off.”
That was a lie, but Lea let it go. “If I’m the saddest thing you see today, consider it a good day.”
Margo nodded at the truth of it. “Well, it’s your youth, babe. Just don’t turn out like Old Charlie there.”
Old Charlie had been drinking at the Toproll back when it had still been Kelly’s Taproom. As the longest-tenured regular, he was treated with the lack of respect that such an accomplishment warranted. However, the position did come with its own barstool, a grace period after last call to order one more round, and the privilege of insulting Margo without Margo kicking his ass. Of those perks, it was definitely the latter that Old Charlie cherished most.
“Up yours,” Old Charlie said without breaking eye contact with his mug of Budweiser or the shot of Jameson’s keeping it company.
“Oh, hush up,” Margo said. “You know I love your old wrinkled ass.”
“Then come here and kiss it,” Old Charlie said and belted back the shot.
“Exhibit A,” Margo said. “Another beer?”
Lea nodded and pushed her empty across the bar top.
Margo had named the Toproll in honor of her first love, arm wrestling. Dozens of framed photographs of arm-wrestling greats decorated the walls: Duane “Tiny” Benedix, Moe Baker, Cleve Dean, John Brzenk. For years, Old Charlie and his cohorts had amused themselves by hanging a framed picture of Sylvester Stallone and seeing how long it took Margo to notice. When she finally did, Stallone wound up on the curb out front and the game began anew.
Margo competed in the West Virginia women’s over-forty division. She’d been runner-up to the state champ two years running, something Lea found hard to imagine. Margo was an obsessive CrossFitter; she rose at five a.m. every morning to drive to a Box over in Charleston and had biceps thicker than Lea’s thigh. Her long blonde hair hung between her powerful shoulders in a thick Valkyrie braid. One time, Margo had demonstrated a toproll on Lea, and her fingers had ached for a week. Lea didn’t much want to meet the woman who could beat Margo.
Lea couldn’t imagine Niobe without the Toproll. It was better attended than church, and Margo was the pastor of its thirsty congregation. The Toproll was Margo’s place, but if you asked her, she said it belonged to the bank. Then she’d smile, wink, and say, “But they’ve been nice enough to let me stay on until they find new management.” It was about 20 percent joke, 80 percent truth. Like a lot of businesses in Niobe, Toproll was barely hanging on.
Lea decided to give the interview another read. Maybe she’d missed something. She adjusted her earbuds and clicked to the next song on Mule Variations. Tom Waits seemed tailor-made for West Virginia dive bars, although he’d have started a riot if she played him on the jukebox.
“Whatcha reading?” asked a skinny white guy as he slid onto the stool next to her.
Lea had been bartending at the Toproll for two years, and there weren’t ever new faces, but she didn’t recognize him. He was part of a group that had been drinking hard since before she’d arrived. He smelled stale, like a case of empty beer bottles, and a cigarette hung long from the corner of his mouth. It bounced as he talked. Not bad looking, all told: a young thirty or an old twenty-two. Chances were he was somewhere in the middle, like Lea herself. He wore a close-cut, sculpted beard that was clearly his pride and joy. On his head, a camouflage-style New York Yankees cap canted at a weird left-leaning angle. He’d been looking over at her for twenty minutes, trying to catch her eye, but like a fish that had been hooked once and released, Lea’s eye was very hard to catch. She turned the magazine enough so he could see.
“Finance magazine,” he read aloud. “What’s it about?”
“Finance,” she said and reopened the magazine to her page. She was fairly sure her body language was visible from space, but this guy was looking at her like she’d just put her hand between his legs.