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“I thought I’d get to know him first before divulging that. He’s a very nice man.”
“He is. Look, Stan... What’s your full name, by the way? Is it even Stan?”
“Stan Benally. Nice to properly meet you, Wendy Eastman.” He put out his hand, and Wendy, despite wanting to refuse, found herself automatically shaking his hand again, surprised once more by how warm and dry his palm was.
“Look, Stan. I’m happy you’re being paid by one or another Barrington for this fishing trip, but you’re not going to find anything, because there’s nothing to find.”
“You know, Wendy, I’d agree with you about that, except that when I asked your husband if he had ever been to Texas, he insisted that he hadn’t.”
A surge of annoyance at her dim-witted husband went through her, but Wendy simply said, “Honestly, he’s a little forgetful these days.”
“Why’s that?”
She took a deep breath, hoping Stan could tell how irritated she was getting. “He drinks too much and sometimes he forgets things. Look, I’m getting pissed off at you right now, so I’m going to go home. I assume you’ll pay for my drink.”
“I’ll put it on my expense account,” he said as he slid a business card along the bar to her. She almost left it there, but took it just in case.
Walking home under a canopy of particularly bright stars, Wendy considered calling her husband on his cell and telling him to come right home. But he’d already be relatively drunk, and she wanted to talk to him when he was sober. It could wait until the following morning. When she got home she poured herself a glass of wine and went out and sat on their screened-in porch, despite the cold night. She didn’t know what was more stupid, the fact that Thom had lied about being in Texas, or the fact that he hadn’t figured out that his new friend at the bar was the world’s most obvious private detective.
A car pulled into their drive, its headlights passing across the screen of the porch. She heard a door slam and Jason yell out “Thank you!” He came in the back of the house and Wendy shouted out to him that she was on the porch. He joined her, telling her all about the film he’d seen, something calledOncethat was apparently about Irish singers.
ii
Thom’s only class on Friday was in the afternoon so he was planning on sleeping in a little, but Wendy had shaken him awake andtold him that they needed to have a talk before she left for work. He dressed, his mind flipping through the assorted possibilities of what he’d done wrong.
“Am in trouble?” he said, sliding onto a stool at their kitchen counter. Wendy was eating toast with jam, her everyday breakfast.
“Maybe. I don’t know,” she said, and something in her face alarmed him. She looked nervous.
“I should get myself a coffee first,” he said.
“Stay there. I’ll get it.”
As she handed his mug over to him, she said, “Your friend Stan from the Tavern is a private investigator. He’s looking into Bryce’s death.”
“What?” Thom said.
“How did you not figure that out, Thom? It was pretty obvious.”
“Seriously?” Thom said. “How did I not figure out that the random guy at the bar was investigating me for something that happened twenty years ago?”
Wendy lowered her voice and said, “We always knew we would need to be vigilant our entire lives. We always knew that we needed to assume we were being watched. We talked about this.”
“I am vigilant.”
“Apparently not.”
“I didn’t tell him anything.”
“You told him you’d never been to Texas.”
“Right. What’s wrong with that?”
“Because you have been, Thom, and he knows that. Apparently, there are records that you flew there, or else he talked with your friends in Austin. Who knows? It doesn’t matter, but he knows that you lied to him.”
“Jesus,” Thom said. Bile suddenly rose up in the back of his throat and he thought he might be sick. He swallowed some of the bittercoffee. “I didn’t even think anything of it. He’s from Texas, and when he asked me, I mean, I’d forgotten...”
“Look, forget about it. I’m going to take care of this, Thom. Don’t talk to him again, okay? Even if he approaches you here, or at your office. Or go ahead and talk to him, but don’t say anything. Just tell him you forgot you were ever there. That’s what I told him.”