For You (The 'Burg #1)(81)

He put his coffee mug down and saw etched into the table, “Feb’s Spot, sit here and die.”

Meems’s kids were terrors.

Still, how Feb thought the town had lost respect for her was beyond him. She may have shocked some, disappointed others but that was a long time ago and she’d always be Feb. The woman who took her time to make Angie laugh, who told Sully she’d make him hot, honeyed whisky to soothe his cold and meant it, who kept Darryl employed when he was more burden than boon – that part of Feb had never changed and nothing she did back then could erase all that.

It was something to add to their list of things to talk about, after they got what was going on between them straight, but close after. He didn’t like that she thought it and it was time to disabuse her of that notion.

“You get anything?” Colt asked after Sully had two big bites of his cookie. Colt had had several of those since Meems opened and it might be wrong, but Meems’s baking helped brighten any shitty day, no matter why it was shitty. She was that good.

“Marie’s Dad, Mr. Todd, liked the guy. He’s feeling like a schmuck. Thought Denny was ‘sharp as a tack’. Said so. Was pleased his daughter found a man who wouldn’t lean on her for money but pull his own weight. They’re loaded, you know,” Sully said.

Colt nodded, he knew.

“Mrs. Todd didn’t say much around about this time, didn’t want to make her husband feel more a schmuck but, glances he gave her, guilty ones, made me think they’d chatted in the past and she disagreed.”

“They give you anything else?”

Sully shook his head. “Tried to get the mother talkin’ but don’t think she had much to say. I’m guessin’ her daughter didn’t tell her that her husband liked rough sex and made her call him by another man’s name. Still, they were close, easy to see, doted on Marie. They have another daughter. She and her husband are flyin’ in from Houston. They’re off to the airport to pick them up now.”

“Get anything from the house?”

“Nothin’.”

“The office?”

“Nope, clean. No files on his computer tracking Feb or you or any sick shit. Though his boss is stunned. Loved the guy. Said he was a genius. Said Denny got head hunted two, three times a year but was loyal to the company. Said Denny could be makin’ double, even triple, but he never left. Thought it was because he liked his job. Had no idea it was because Denny wanted to be close to anything Feb.”

That turned Colt’s stomach but he shook it off and kept questioning.

“Colleagues?”

“The Feds are hittin’ them this mornin’, as we speak.”

“More from the neighbors, any other friends?”

Sully shook his head.

“Anything else? He use a credit card? Called family, a friend, anyone been in touch with him since he did Marie?”

Sully took a drink from his coffee and another bite of his cookie. He did this while studying Colt.

Then he swallowed and said, “Nothin’ so far, we’re askin’ though. But apparently, he’s vanished.”

Colt sat back in the chair Feb always sat in and looked out the window, taking a drink from his own mug.

“Colt,” Sully called his attention back to him, “I know this is frustrating but we’ll get this guy. He’s f**ked up, he’ll f**k up again.”

Colt knew he didn’t have to remind Sully but he did it all the same. “He f**ked his wife pretending he was me and pretending she was February.”

“I could see that’d make you impatient for us to find him.”

“What makes me impatient to find him is, he gets word Feb’s in my bed, he’s likely to get gripped by another rage and anyone could get in his way.”

Sully changed the subject. “You been in that bed with Feb?”

Colt didn’t answer his question.

Instead he changed the subject himself. “You know Amy Harris?”

Sully’s wife was a local; she was two years ahead of Colt at school. Sully was from a small town about forty-five minutes away. He’d made the sacrifice, pulled up roots and made his life close to Lorraine’s people. He did this because she had two living parents, three brothers and a sister, all who still lived in town. Sully only had a sister and she lived in Maine. Lorraine’s way of thinking was, considering her family was close, and she was close to them, her town roots went deeper than his. Sully’s way of thinking was he’d give Lorraine anything she wanted, part because he loved her and part because she could be a serious nag.

He shook his head. “Nope.”

“She works at County Bank.”

“Lorraine and me do our banking at State.”

Colt lowered his voice. “I need you to mobilize the Lorraine gossip tree but I need you to do it without Feb, Jessie Rourke, Mimi VanderWal, Delilah or Jackie Owens gettin’ wind of it.”

Sully leaned forward. “What’s this about?”

“Gut,” Colt told him, “Amy Harris walked into J&J’s a couple nights ago. She’d lived in this town all her life and never been there. She eyed Feb in a way I didn’t like. She acted funny, we had a conversation that didn’t sit well and walked right back out. Then she disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”