Page 134 of Road Trip
“Do you like dogs, Scotty? Please tell me you do.”
“Who doesn’t? My family had golden retrievers my whole life. I don’t think one of them would fit in your bike basket, at least not a full-grown one. Hamish, our last golden, died last year, and I haven’t had the heart, or the time, really, to go looking for a new one.”
“Oh yeah,” she said. “I do remember back in the day, seeing your dad driving around town in that old convertible of his, with the top down and the dog sitting in the passenger seat.”
“The ’68 Mustang,” he said. “Mom wouldn’t ride in it because she said it messed up her hair. It’s mine now.”
“Really? Does it still run?”
“Hell yeah,” he said. “I just rebuilt the engine and put a 390-V8 in. It’s barely street legal.”
Therese did a delighted double take. “I have no idea what any of that means, but it sounds super cool. I didn’t know you were a car guy.”
“Total motor head,” Scotty said. “Dad never got into golf and neither did I. This is our father-son bonding thing.”
“Take me for a spin in it sometime?” she asked.
His face lit up. “How about Sunday? If the weather’s decent we could ride over to Bluffton and get lunch somewhere.”
“It’s a date,” she said.
He glanced at his watch and reached for his briefcase. “I better get back to the office. I’ve got a deposition to take this afternoon, and a conference call after that.”
“I told Letha I would call her tomorrow to arrange to pick up her folder of emails from the bank,” Therese said. “Anything else I can do for our cause?”
“Nope. Once I’ve got those, I’ll email Wooten and formally request a sit-down with him.”
“What if he says no?”
“He won’t,” Scotty said. “I can be very persuasive when I need to be.”
“I believe it. You just talked me into a date.”
CHAPTER 57
Savannah
Her phone rang and she saw from the caller ID that it was her sister.
“Hey!” Therese said. “How’s it going? Where are you?”
“Not going so great,” Maeve said, her voice dulled by exhaustion. “Esme’s been murdered and I was nearly killed too. I’m still in Tarrymore and I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do next.”
“What?” Therese shouted into the phone. “Esme’s dead? What is happening over there? Are you okay?”
“I’m hanging in. Barely.
“It was Reggie, Therese. The handyman? He killed her. I went by there this morning, on my way to Dublin, on the off-chance that maybe I’d dropped my passport in her house when we went to see her Wednesday morning. The front door was partly open, so I walked in and surprised him in the act of looting the place.”
“Oh my God!”
“He’d stacked up a bunch of silver and paintings and jewelry stuff on that sofa we sat on in the parlor Wednesday morning. He had me backed up against it, and he pulled this huge-ass knife and slashed it at me, but he was drunk out of his mind, and he missed and the blade got stuck in the sofa, and while he was trying to yank it free I bashed his head in. With a silver candlestick.”
Therese threw her head back and roared with laughter.
“What’s so fucking funny?” Maeve demanded. “You think it’s hilarious that I narrowly escaped being decapitated today?”
“I’m sorry,” Therese said. “I can’t help it. Do you even hear yourself? You just lived out a game of Clue, complete with ‘in the library, with a candlestick.’ If only it was Professor Mustard instead of Reggie the alcoholic handyman.”
