Page 47 of The Woman By the Lake

I saw Riggs standing at the back door.

When he spied me, he held up a bottle of wine identical to the one he’d had last night, and called, “This time, a thank you gift.”

I moved that way, pulled the hook lock out of its holder and pushed the door open slightly.

Riggs pulled it open the rest of the way, and my invitation to come inside was me walking to the kitchen.

He followed and put the wine down on the kitchen counter while I examined his face.

I didn’t have to examine very long before I said quietly, “It’s not good.”

“No,” he confirmed. “It’s not good. My friend, Bubbles, was beat to shit. So bad, he took so many blows to the head, they had to induce a coma in an effort to control the brain swelling.”

“Oh, Riggs,” I whispered.

He nudged the wine and said, “He’s the one who sold me this. He owns The Hole. Or that’s what locals call it. Officially, it’s The Black Hole, a bar just out of town. One of his staff came in this morning, found him unconscious in the storeroom. He went in and out of consciousness until they induced, but he was so messed up, they couldn’t get much out of him. They don’t know what happened, when it happened, why it happened or who did it. But with Bubbles, the list of culprits could be a mile long.”

“Do you want me to open the wine?” I offered.

“You got anything stiffer?” he asked.

“I could make you a gin martini.”

“Done.”

I set about doing that while asking, “Where’s Ledger?”

“He’s staying with Mom tonight.”

“Right,” I said, putting down the martini shaker and gin and heading to the fridge.

“His zygomatic bone was shattered, three ribs fractured, one punctured a lung,” Riggs went on with the litany of trauma his friend endured. “He took some hefty shots to his kidneys and is generally bruised and battered everywhere. He also has a broken wrist, but the way that’s fractured, they think it happened when he fell on it.”

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” I said as I grabbed a martini glass.

“Hup.”

At this strange noise from him, I looked over my shoulder to see Riggs shaking his head.

For a second, I was confused.

Then I realized hyper masculine, good-time, rough and ready, big-truck driving, part-time biker guys didn’t drink out of martini glasses.

I put it down and showed him a pink glass that could be used as an old-fashioned, but it had a bulbous bee formed from the glass sticking out the side.

“This is your other choice,” I told him.

He shook his head again and said, “Martini.”

As I suspected.

I grabbed it and went back to the counter asking, “Olive or lemon twist?”

“Honey,” was his only reply.

Okay, hyper masculine, good-time, rough and ready, big-truck driving, part-time biker guys also didn’t do “sissy” things like olives and twists.

“Gotcha,” I mumbled and set about making the drink.

---