For You (The 'Burg #1)(36)

I wanted that print, it was f**king fantastic.

But the bed was what captured my attention. It was huge. It had to be a California king.

Colt was a big guy but I reckon even he’d get lost in that bed. Definitely I would. I climbed into that behemoth they wouldn’t find me for a month.

He dropped my bag on the bed and looked at me.

“Sheets changed, bathroom’s through there.” He jerked his chin and I saw that there was a master bath, another extension likely put in pre-Colt and Melanie, through an open door. “You can make yourself at home later. I got somethin’ I need you to do.”

I looked from the bathroom door to Colt but he was already moving out of the room. Again, I followed.

Mom and Dad were in by then. Mom was already in the kitchen making coffee. Dad had Wilson’s empty case and was heading toward a side door in the kitchen, one that probably led to the garage behind the boat. Wilson was plucking his way across the carpet, sniffing, smelling Puck and not liking it. Except for Wilson and me, everyone was no stranger to this house. They were comfortable, at home, welcome and something ugly slid through me that I tried unsuccessfully to ignore.

Colt stopped by the dining room table.

“Got my yearbooks out, need you to look through.” He tapped the set of four large, hardbound, plastic covered books on the table and then he picked up a piece of paper and waved it once before setting it on top of the books. “This is a roster of Mrs. Hobbs’s geometry class, second period, your freshman year. Look at these names, look at the books, think about anyone who might fit the profile we got yesterday, not just names on this list, anyone.” His eyes caught mine. “Your Dad tell you about the profile?”

I nodded.

“Good. Look. Think. Call me.” He was talking in clipped, short sentences and it occurred to me he wasn’t wasting time with me and it occurred to me this was because he was hacked off about something, likely my comment earlier that morning, or me walking out on him when he was being a total ass**le last night or the fact I was in his house at all.

He turned to Mom. “Gotta get to work.”

Mom came to the kitchen side of the bar, put her hands on it and said over it, “Why the hurry? I thought you were off the case.”

“Body found early this morning just inside the city limits.”

I drew in breath and it was so loud Colt turned back to me.

“Somethin’ else, looks like a drug sale gone bad.”

Mom shook her head. “I remember a time when we didn’t have homicides and the only drug around was weed.”

“City’s stretchin’, ten more years, it’ll engulf us,” Colt said. “City spreads, crime spreads.”

This was the ugly truth. There used to be miles and miles of cornfields between us and the city. For fifteen years, each time I came home more of those fields were gobbled up by strip malls and housing complexes. We still were protected by a thin shield of farmland but it was weakening fast.

Colt’s attention came back to me. “Scour these books, Feb. Don’t go into J&J’s until you’re done. I’ll expect a call by noon.”

I opened my mouth to say something but he was again moving, around the bar. He went into the kitchen and bent to kiss Mom’s cheek. Dad came in from the side and Colt gave him a wave and then a “Later,” and then he was gone.

“Where’s he goin’?” Dad asked the door Colt closed behind him.

“Work, some drug person was murdered last night,” Mom answered, moving right to the cupboard where the mugs were knowing exactly where to find them.

“Shit, I ‘member a time when worst thing that happened around here was a bar fight at J&J’s. Cops came, tossed the boys in a cell to dry out overnight and let their wives take ‘em home the next mornin’.” He went up to my Mom and kissed the side of her neck. “We got out just in time, Jackie, darlin’.”

Dad could say that again.

He and Mom got out just in time.

Though, bad news for me, when they got out, I got back in.

* * * * *

Mom was cleaning Colt’s house. Dad was over at Dee and Morrie’s doing something Dee needed done that Morrie never found time to do. I had my cell in my hand and I had to make the call.

I’d spent an hour going through the names on that list and looking at every face in Colt’s yearbooks and reading what people wrote in it deciding, from what she wrote, that Jeanie Shumacher was a traitor (she pretended to be my friend!) and a slut (even though now she had three kids, taught Sunday School and used to be president of the PTA). And deciding from what Tina Blackstone wrote she was just a bitch (she’d always been after Colt, even now she’d slither up to him at J&J’s and give him her patented look and although I was avoiding him, I always smiled to myself when I saw him shoot her down, time after time). And I noticed Amy Harris never wrote anything at all.

Nothing shot out at me. Most of the names on the list were people I didn’t even remember and only barely remembered when I crossed-checked them with photos. A bunch of them were gone, didn’t live in town or even Indy anymore. I looked, I thought, but nothing came to me.

Nothing but one guy.

I flipped my phone open, found Colt’s name when I scrolled down and then I hit go.

“Feb,” he said in my ear.

“Loren Smithfield,” I said back.