Page 117 of Traces Of You

He held his ground.

It felt good to bust his brother’s ass at a time like this.

Something to remind him that life could go back to normal.

Maybe Clay needed it too with the smirk on the big guy’s face.

But the phone ringing had his brother halting and turning, then grabbing it off the counter. “It’s Grady.”

Clay came over and sat on the couch, hit the answer button and put it on speaker.

“Hey, Clay.”

“I’ve got Ford with me,” Clay said.

“Good.”

He didn’t like the sound of that. It meant there was something to report.

“What did you find out?” he asked.

“Nothing concrete but enough to make the hair stand up on my arm.”

He looked at Clay and got the slight headshake. He was right, not good.

“Fill us in,” Clay said.

“Oliver is still coming and going as if nothing is going on. That his girlfriend of almost a year didn’t disappear from his life. He’s got a brand new seventy thousand-dollar truck in the driveway. Makes little sense for a guy that’s barely making fifty grand a year.”

Sounded like money coming in on the side to him.

“Some people live their life in debt,” Clay said.

“We know that isn’t always the case,” Grady said. “But Oliver appears to have moved on. There’s been a woman at his place a few nights too.”

Ford wanted to hear that part of it. “He’s got a new girlfriend?”

“Looks it,” Grady said. “There’s been no sign of Reenie’s car or possessions. My guess is he’s cleared them out of the house if he’s got another woman there.”

“Could be it’s done in his eyes,” he said.

“For all appearances. Not much to report on Randy either. I’ve had someone tailing Oliver to find out this much. Randy not as much, but he’s out and about doing his normal sly shit. Popping into the businesses he’d been dealing out of as if nothing is going on. Not sure if he’s trying to make up for the missing money or pills, but I can tell you, it hasn’t been found.”

“What’s making the hair stand up on your arms?” Ford asked. “This sounds as if Reenie didn’t exist to them.”

“That’s what I don’t like,” Grady said. “Maybe it’s me. But it’s not like they know she left. She disappeared. Everything was left behind. Let’s get real, why is that?”

“Because someone inside cleared it,” he said.

“That’s right. Is someone watching every movement every day for information on Reenie?” Clay asked. “Highly doubtful. But it’s going to come up at some point where she is.”

“What I don’t like,” Grady said, “is that there is still talk that Reenie is the one who took off with the drugs. Hushed whispers, but it’s happening.”

“Yet the police don’t think that,” Ford said. “Because of course they know nothing about the drugs. She was reported missing, which she’s not now. There is no mention of her being wanted for questioning about anything.”

“There wouldn’t be,” Grady said. “This isn’t fact. I have no idea of it other than what I saw yesterday, but there is at least one officer that is at Oliver’s lately when Randy is there. Going in with a backpack and coming out with one. Guys don’t carry backpacks like purses into houses, not without delivering things.”

“So it’s possible at least someone is running drugs with them? Possibly someone in the police department?”