Poisonfeather (Gibson Vaughn #2)(49)

A crazy thought occurred to him.

He took out his laptop and opened his research on Charles Merrick. He scrolled until he found a picture of Merrick with his family: ex-wife, Veronica, and daughter, Chelsea. It was an older picture, posed for an issue of Hamptons magazine—Chelsea Merrick’s sixteenth birthday looked like it had been quite an extravaganza, and the family smiled brilliantly. Just two years before the roof fell in on her father’s house of cards. His research into her whereabouts hadn’t gotten past Portland, where she’d more or less disappeared off the grid.

Couldn’t get much more off the grid than Niobe, West Virginia.

Chelsea Merrick would be what? Twenty-six now? Gibson glanced back and forth from the picture to the bartender across the room, trying to imagine the sixteen-year-old as a grown woman. In the picture, Chelsea Merrick was blonde like her father, hair piled in a chic swirl atop her head. Gibson didn’t know enough about women’s fashion to say for certain, but her flowing summer dress must’ve cost a small fortune and was a world away from the black sleeveless Joan Jett T-shirt and blue jeans that the bartender wore. Gibson shook it off—there was a passing similarity, but that was it. He’d started to close his laptop when the bartender leaned out of her seat to gaze through the doorway, checking on the bar up front. She gathered her hair up in one motion and tied it up in a ponytail. And like that, he saw her. Same jawline, same ears, and a small mole on her temple above her right eye.

Chelsea Merrick, in the flesh.

Bartending in a dive bar in Niobe, West Virginia.

He let that sink in. Bartender was a good cover, but what was she really doing here? Obviously, it had to do with her father. Was she Merrick’s liaison with the outside world? Who else could it be? Whom else would Merrick trust with his money? And they were using this guard as their courier? It made sense.

“What?” Swonger asked.

“What?”

“You’re smiling again. It’s weird.”

“I need you to do something in a minute.”

“Oh, yeah? No can do, dog.”

The two men stared across the table at each other.

“What?”

“Nah, man, see, I’m here in a strictly observating capacity. Think that’s what you said.” Swonger shrugged helplessly. “So, wish I could help you out, but . . .”

Gibson sighed. “Fine.”

“Fine what?”

“I need your help.”

“And you’ll tell me what’s going on and quit condescending at me?”

“That’s a lot to ask.”

“Then do it yourself.”

“Okay, okay, it’s a deal.”

Swonger’s attitude changed instantaneously as he sat forward. “So what you need?”

“Table across the way. At your four o’clock.”

Swonger dropped his head and looked low over his shoulder. “One with the angry hot bartender at it?”

“Right. You see the guard?”

“The big boy? Uh, yeah. He ain’t exactly stealth. What’s the play?”

“You’re so good at following me. Follow him instead. I need a name and an address. Where he lives.”

To Gibson’s surprise, Swonger didn’t ask why but stood and drained the last of his beer. “Then what?”

“Then what, what?”

“After I got an address. What you want me to do then?”

Gibson wasn’t sure. He hadn’t expected Swonger to actually follow his lead, so he hadn’t worked out the next part yet.

“Text me and sit on him until you hear from me.”

“On it.”

Swonger ambled out. A few minutes later, Chelsea Merrick left the guard’s table and went back to work. The guard rebuckled his belt before heading for the door himself. Gibson hadn’t seen him pass the bartender anything, so the message must have been simple enough to remember.

He’d have dearly loved to know what it was.

After Gibson finally pried the check from the waitress and settled the bill, he went to have a closer look at Chelsea Merrick. There was an empty seat at the bar where he could watch the Dodgers and Giants getting underway on the West Coast. An old man on the next stool contemplated a shot and a beer; he glanced in Gibson’s direction as if his being there were a sin.

“Someone sitting here?”

“Aren’t you sure?”

“No, I mean . . .” Gibson realized he was being messed with and sat down. The man introduced himself as Old Charlie, which Gibson thought an odd way to describe yourself.

“Robert Quine.” They shook hands.

“So, Bob . . . you with these other out-of-town sons of bitches? Sitting in folks’ seats, acting like you own the place?”

“Not with them. But I am an out-of-towner.”

“Y’all here to cause trouble?”

“Not for you.”

Old Charlie thought that over and pointed to his two drinks. “Which would you drink first?”

“The shot.”

“Yeah, me too. But lately, I’m wondering to myself why. The order. Hard stuff first, easy stuff last. What kind of way is that for a man to do things? What if you never make it to the easy stuff? But you say shot first?”

“Shot first.”