Bone Music (Burning Girl #1)(32)

“Put the Jeep in park,” she says.

He thought he had.

“I’m just going to say this. Every day at four o’clock, Marty has a slice of pie at the Copper Pot before he heads over to the AA meeting at the clubhouse.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you know he was right, so I figure you’ll keep it civilized. You know, when you go and apologize for whatever it is you did. In the past. But four o’clock’s a couple hours away, and I got plenty of paperwork for you to do until then. So turn the Jeep off and come inside.”

He does as instructed, because sometimes that’s the only thing you can do.



His mom used to love the name of Altamira’s most popular diner.

She’d been a big fan of that TV movie they made about Martha Stewart, the one where Cybill Shepherd played her like a fire-breathing dragon. There’s a scene where Cybill Shepherd chases her business partner down the front walk of her house just so she can hurl a piece of cookware at her before screaming, “Every good cook deserves a copper pot!” It’s a nasty repeat of words she had said to the same woman earlier in the movie when they were first becoming friends, and every time his mother watched the scene again, she howled with laughter.

And even though the movie hadn’t been released when Abe and Dinah Crane first opened the place, his mother repeated the line, complete with a mimed pot toss, every time she set foot inside.

Luke can hear her saying it even now as he scans the mostly empty booths along the street-facing windows.

It’s the lull between the lunch and dinner rush, a time when the other three restaurants on Center Street lock their doors and mop the floors. But the Copper Pot’s pie case is so popular customers dribble in throughout the day. Customers like Marty, who’s sitting by himself in the farthest booth, talking into his cell phone in a voice so low as to be inaudible.

He’s changed clothes and showered. He looks ready for a nice night on the town. But if Mona’s correct, only his sober friends will be treated to the sight of his pressed long-sleeve denim shirt and his snowy mane, which he’s brushed out over his back and shoulders like some knight from a medieval fantasy epic.

Nothing in Luke’s life at present feels worth dressing up for the way Martin Cahill’s dressed for his AA meeting, and this realization stabs him with envy.

Finally, Marty sees him lingering inside the front door.

When Luke points to the empty bench seat across from him, the man ends his call, then gestures for Luke to come over. Changing out of his uniform was probably the right call, Luke thinks. Otherwise Marty might’ve shot out of his booth and demanded they talk outside.

“You here to arrest me?” he asks once Luke sits. There’s no edge to his tone, and Luke feels as if he’s being parented all of a sudden. And it’s not such a bad feeling.

“You just make up that stuff about the women’s shelter and the recovery home?”

“We on the record?” Marty asks.

“Record’s for journalists. But I’m off duty, if that answers your question.”

“You wearing a wire?”

“Over a bunch of AC units left behind by some jackasses who took the whole town for a ride? Hardly.”

“Silver Shore’s got powerful friends.”

“Altamira Sheriff’s doesn’t have wires, Marty.”

“Good to know. What are you doing here, Luke?”

“I’m here to apologize.”

“For what?”

Fat chance Marty’s letting him off the hook, more like asking him to put it in his own words.

“I might have come down a little too hard on you today,” Luke says.

“Maybe so.”

“Maybe so?”

“I don’t know. If you thought I was stealing . . .” Marty sips his coffee, stares out the window. The elm tree on the corner sends stained-glass windows of dusky-orange sunlight across the sidewalk. Altamira’s version of rush hour consists of a pickup, a minivan, and a PT Cruiser taking their time deciding whose turn it is at the four-way stop that marks the intersection of Center Street and Apple Avenue.

“Threatening to run your crew—that was out of line,” Luke says.

This gets Marty’s attention. He’d like to think the guy’s impressed, but he can’t be sure.

“You’ve always done good work. Always helped people. Everyone round here knows that, same way they all know I . . .”

His heart races. Should he slow down, try to do this in stages? He’d sure like to get it over with, but what he’s trying to do is bigger than this one conversation, and he knows it, so what’s the damn rush?

“Well,” Marty says quietly, “maybe it was out of line to bring your mother up the way I did.”

“Maybe.”

“That look you gave me, though.”

“What look?”

“Before you drove away, I just . . . it felt like I’d shoved an old lady or something.”

“You calling me an old lady?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Not sure I do.”

“The fight had gonna out of you. Not sure what it means exactly, or if it’s good or bad. But I could see it in your eyes . . . you aren’t that little jerk I wanted to strangle when you were in high school. Or at least you’ve lost hold of him for now.”