knock at the door.
Hell.
“Yeah?” he snapped, not bothering to sound even remotely receptive to a repeat visit from Vita. But it wasn’t her. It was Garrett.
“Got a minute?” Garrett asked, coming in before waiting for an answer.
Reena was right behind him, and since she was frantically trying to fix her hair, it was obvious she wanted to impress their visitor. Clay had noticed that a lot whenever he’d observed women near Garrett. Even though he was married to the town’s former prom queen, Sophie’s brother caused women to primp, flirt and do other things that were normally directed at good-looking, single men.
Clay had seen a whole lot of eyelash batting going on.
“Vita,” Garrett remarked, glancing at the egg.
Maybe the air freshener hadn’t done its job. Or else Garrett guessed that Clay wasn’t the sort to have a shit-streaked egg on his desk. Thankfully, his attention didn’t seem to land on the Mighty Lube, or Garrett might have had some questions that Clay couldn’t answer.
Garrett looked at Reena. Smiled. It seemed a little forced to Clay, but he wasn’t exactly a smile expert. Still, it started the eyelash batting, and Reena coiled a strand of hair around her finger.
“I need to speak to Clay in private,” Garrett added to the deputy.
“Oh, sure.” Reena stuttered out a few more syllables, and eyelash batted her way out the door. Which she closed.
Clay had already done some bud-nipping with Vita, but he figured he was going to need another round of it with Garrett. “If you’re here to threaten me not to hurt Sophie—”
“I am. In part. But since you’re not involved with her, not yet anyway, just keep the threat for future reference.”
It probably wasn’t the average response, but Clay liked the guy. It’s something he would have said to anyone getting involved with April. Of course, Clay’s threats hadn’t worked, and in Garrett’s case, it wasn’t needed. Clay wasn’t getting involved with Sophie.
“The other part of why I’m here is something I’d like to keep just between us,” Garrett went on. “I’d like for you to question Arlo Betterton.”
Clay knew the name. Arlo owned the run-down gas station on the edge of town. He was in his sixties and resembled Santa Claus in grease-splattered overalls. “Has he committed a crime?”
Garrett shrugged, put his hands on his hips. “He was Billy Lee Seaver’s best friend when they were kids.” No need for Garrett to clarify who Billy Lee was. “The feds have already talked to him, but Arlo probably didn’t do much talking back. He might know something, though, and you might have better luck getting it out of him.”
“I doubt it. To Arlo I’d be as much of an outsider as the feds or Skunk the pig farmer.”
Garrett didn’t argue with that. “Lie to him. Cops can do that. Tell him you’re sleeping with Sophie, and you’re worried about her. Tell him that you need to find Billy Lee because you’re afraid Sophie’s about to fall apart.”
“Is she about to fall apart?” Clay asked before he could think about why he shouldn’t ask it.
It was a personal question, not related to this investigation. And it was what his granddaddy would have called a red pecker flag. Pecker as in dick. Flag as in Clay’s dick that had prompted the personal question about Sophie. Garrett picked up on it right away and scowled.
“No, she’s not about to fall apart,” Garrett assured him. “She’s a lot tougher than she realizes, and that means she doesn’t need a shoulder to cry on or a fuck buddy to console her. She just needs time to realize that Brantley is cow shit and that she deserves a whole lot better. Sorry,” he added, no doubt because Garrett remembered that the cow shit was now Clay’s brother-in-law.
Clay was sure he scowled, too, at that thought, but it was easy to push cow shit aside when Garrett had just dished up some official business. “Wouldn’t you have better luck talking to Arlo than I would?”
“No. He doesn’t trust me. He thinks all I want is to find Billy Lee, lock him up and throw away the key.”
“Don’t you?”
Garrett opened his mouth as if he might say something to contradict that, but he shook his head. “Just talk to Arlo when you get a chance.”
“Okay. I will.” It was the closest thing to any real police work as Clay might get. Plus, he might get lucky if he played the fake dating-Sophie card. Of course, that would only keep the rumor mill spinning about them, but as long as Garrett seemed to know the truth, that was okay with him. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry about what happened to your business.”
Garrett shrugged. “It was something my great-granddad started, a family legacy of sorts. Personally, I thought the ranch was legacy enough, but my dad and granddad wanted to keep the business going so we did. But it meant more to Sophie and my wife than me. And it’s not like we’re homeless or broke.”
No, even though the gossips were divided on the Grangers’ adjusted net worth. It varied from ten million to six billion. Clay figured it was on the lower end of those estimates, which meant they were still rich but had perhaps fallen out of the stinkin’ rich tax bracket. With all the work Garrett was doing at the ranch though, they’d be back in that bracket in no time at all.
Garrett tipped his head to Clay’s desk. “Sophie has one that looks exactly like that.”
It took Clay a moment to realize Garrett was looking at the envelope, and his ribs nearly cracked when his heart slammed against his chest. “Sophie got a letter like this?”
“Similar to it.”
Garrett kept on talking, but Clay could no longer hear him. That’s because his pulse was drumming in his ears. Hell. Sophie wasn’t part of this. Clay was about to snatch up the phone, but then he caught some of Garrett’s words.
Father. Thirtieth birthday.
“What did you say?” Clay asked.
Another head tip toward the envelope. “I was saying that my father died ten years ago when I was twenty-four, but he left us letters to be opened on our thirtieth birthdays. Sophie’ll open hers in November. For some reason, he put hers in a pink envelope. Mine and Roman’s were in white ones. For a second there, I thought maybe Dad had left you some kind of instructions, too.”
“No,” Clay quickly assured him. “It’s not from your father.”
Garrett leaned in, had a closer look, and he must have noticed the heart o because the corner of his mouth lifted into a near smile. “Good. Because so far my dad’s letters have been, well, a mixed bag of news, and you’ve already had enough of that.”
Yeah, he had. And Clay didn’t want to include Sophie in any of his personal mixed bag.
As Vita had done, Garrett left and shut the door behind him. Clay waited to see if there’d be more interruptions, but when a couple of minutes crawled by without another knock, he knew he should just get this done. Fast. Like ripping off a bandage.
