Page 8 of Bait and Switch
“I could use a drink,” Karne said with a tired sigh. “Remind me why I don’t want one.”
Elton shot him an indecipherable look. “I imagine a strong cup of coffee is a better choice.”
“Peter encouraged me to stop drinking. The issue was that once I did, I realized I had no interest in being with him. He was such a high and mighty asshole about it.” Karne rolled his shoulders and shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. “He was right about the drinking, but he didn’t need to rub it in.”
“Did he?” Casey asked, curious about Gabe’s relationship with the dead man.
“What? Rub it in that quitting the bottle was a good thing? Oh yeah, he did. Peter liked to be Right About Things. Don’t get me wrong, he could be very charismatic when he wanted to be, and it did come in handy.”
“When you two were running a game?”
Casey appreciated Elton’s word usage. Game, con. Same coin.
“Yeah,” Gabe replied, “but it came in handy in general, too. You really can get more bees with honey. How about that coffee?”
“I got a new jar of instant the other day,” Elton said.
“You did not,” Gabe replied, shooting the older man a deadly glance while also pulling a vomit face. “That stuff will put you in an early grave.”
Elton snickered, enjoying the effect of his joke.
While Gabe and Elton slowly walked toward the gate, Casey turned and jogged back tohis boatto let Bowie out. He was rewarded with a yip. The dismembered toy had been spread across the saloon.
“Yeah, I know. It was too long.”
Wiggling past him, Bowie raced out of the cabin to leap from the deck to the pier and ran to catch up with Elton and Karne.
“What am I, chopped liver?” Casey called after him. Bowie did not slow down. Apparently, he was not even chopped liver. Bowie caught up with the other two men at the dock’s entrance, graciously accepting pets while they waited for Casey to catch up with them.
It was the off season, he reasoned, so there was no point in checking in at park headquarters. If anyone did need him, they knew how to contact him. Plus, Greta was back from vacation and had offered to staff the office for the week.
“I’ll ride with Elton,” Gabriel said, “and get a ride back with you if that’s okay.”
Casey suspected that Gabriel was avoiding unwanted questions about Peter Vale. But as he let Bowie into the Wagoneer and slid behind the wheel, he realized that Elton wouldn’t hesitate to ask hard questions, and Karne already knew that about the man.
So that wasn’t it.
FOUR
Gabriel
Still Monday
Shit.
Peter was dead.Gone foreverdead, not just on a pleasant vacation in Jamaica and dead to Gabe. Gabe didn’t know what to think. He didn’twantto think about it. He’d hardly begun to process his mother’s death and now Peter was gone.
Too much death.
“Why do you think Peter stopped by the marina last week?” Elton asked, keeping his attention on the road.
Gabe would have offered to drive, but for one, Elton wasn’t giving up the truck’s keys unless he was drugged by a professional and Heartstone didn’t have much traffic this time of year. And two, even though it was only a few minutes’ drive, Gabe didn’t want to be behind the wheel. He was too shaky.
“Honestly? No idea. I have no clue how Peter found me. Like I said, we haven’t spoken for weeks.” He sucked in a breath like he was eight years old and about to tell his mother he’d donesomething she’d specifically told him not to. “We got into hot water recently, and I decided it was time to lie low. Sans Peter. That’s the real reason I came out here. And I was curious what my mother had left me.”
If being chased by an armed man and a guard dog counted as a deciding factor, then that was it. Gabe had been planning to leave town anyway, but it had happened a tad more dramatically than he’d intended.
“I figured it was something like that, son. Are you thinking that the trouble has followed you?” Elton should have sounded more concerned. If he’d had all the facts, maybe he would have been. Gabe was keeping as many of those facts to himself as long as he could.
