Page 52 of The Best Trick

“You think Wilson’s bookie would dognap Doris?” I asked.

“If Wilson has a gambling problem, he might owe his bookie a lot of money. The bookie can’t exactly get paid if Wilson disappears into a witness protection life, right? Also, don’t forget—nobody knows where all of that money went. You heard Clarice say so herself. Maybe her husband lost it all gambling. Or maybe he hid some, knowing he’d be starting over. Wilson’s bookie would want to get at that.”

“Oh, I see,” I said. “Like once Wilson’s in his new witness protection life, he plans to retrieve it. And not bother to pay his bookie, because he’s a new person.”

“It’s worth checking out,” Zeus said. “Unless she’s working with him and she’s just a good liar.”

“Shewastaking the couples pictures down and all of the dude pictures and dude art, too,” I said. “It suggests she’s pissed at him.” It seemed like there was something about that... But Zeus was already calling around, and two minutes later we had the name of Wilson's bookie.

Stan the Man.

“Stan the Man. Ugh,” Thor grumbled.

“I know, but better Stan the Man than Handsome Jack,” Zeus reminded us. We'd gotten Handsome Jack in a lot of trouble some months back.

“Stan the Man,” I said. “Is that the kind of nickname you make up for yourself?”

Thor just grumbled. “Too early for Stan the Man. He doesn't come out until dark.”

“What is he?” I asked. “A vole?”

“A vole would be better,” Odin said.

Zeus caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “Did you notice anything else about Clarice?” he asked.

“Not sure,” I said. “Though I don't think she's sad that he's gone. She wasn't lying about that.”

“If anything, she might be glad he's gone—more so than she let on,” Odin said. “That was my sense.”

“Agree,” I said. “Her whole ‘don't get me wrong, I love him’ bit felt off. Something about that whole scene back there felt off.”

“Now that you say that, I agree,” Thor said.

I narrowed my eyes, looking at the scenery as we went—or more, as we crawled; the traffic was insane. “Maybe she doesn’t wanna dance on his grave, but Wilson definitely sounds like a jerk.”

“We need to talk to him and get a sense of other people in his life,” Zeus said. “It's not good enough that Denko and Alfred interviewed him, because they interviewed him with a mind to Don Pedro having taken the dog. There would be questions that they didn’t think to ask Wilson.”

“Does that gray Buick look familiar?” Odin suddenly asked. “Back two lengths. Shaded windows. I feel like I keep seeing it.”

Whenever anybody was following us, Odin was usually the first to notice. He was brilliant and sensitive and highly attuned to the outside world. He had an uncanny knack for feeling when we were being watched, stretching back to the time he’d been sent to a terrible prison.

Zeus grumbled a yes. “Fed car if I ever saw one.”

“Is this morefucking-gmicromanagement from Alfred? Because no, just no,” Odin said. “See if you can sneak in over there,” he said, pointing at the next lane over. Traffic was thick, but Zeus managed to maneuver over, earning angry gestures from a few people. He maneuvered over yet again, straight onto a side street and back in the direction from where we came, efficiently losing the Buick.

“What the hell,” Zeus complained. “Alfred? Did he guess we’d go see Wilson's wife? It's the obvious place.”

“Piggybacking on our investigation?” Odin bit out.

“We lost him,” I said. “But does it matter? I'm sure he can figure out that we'd go to see Wilson’s people. We told him as much.”

“I don’t care,” Zeus said. “I don’t like him on our ass.”

Such a Zeus thing to say. I beamed at him, feeling all the love in the world for him.

TEN

Harold’s and Wilson's shops were a tale of two cities.

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