Chapter 16

That night Joe and I went to Herrera’s, one of Warner Pier’s best restaurants. Joe probably wanted to go there because of the food; I wanted to go because it was quick and quiet.

I wanted quick, of course, because I needed to get back to work for a couple of hours. And I wanted quiet because I wanted to discuss Brad Davis and how he’d spilled twenty pages of grant forms all over the floor.

Brad wasn’t particularly clumsy. I felt that the accident proved he was upset. Or amazed. Or discombobulated. Or something odd.

Joe scoffed at the idea.

“Honestly, Lee! Anybody can drop something,” he said. “You’re reading far too much into an accident.”

“I wish you’d seen his face, Joe.”

“I’ve never thought Brad was much to look at.”

I shook my finger at him. “He was a spectacle this afternoon. His face got—well, crazy. Then it went dead.”

“Wouldn’t it be more incriminating if he turned pale? Or flushed bright red? Or broke out in purple spots?”

I ignored that comment. “I’ve known Brad for several years—just casually, of course. But I’ve always had the feeling that I was only seeing and hearing the top layer of his personality. This time . . . well, it was as if I were finally seeing the real Brad, as if his personality popped out like measles.”

Joe grinned. “Again with the spots.”

I glared, then we both shut up. I think Joe finally saw that I wanted him to take me seriously. Or he may have realized I was nearing the end of my patience. Anyway, we each tore into our steaks for at least long enough to cut, chew, and swallow a few large bites.

Then I again went on the attack. “There’s one thing I’m sure of,” I said. “Brad was stunned when I told him the gun Digger and I found had belonged to his dad.”

I’d been concentrating on Joe, so I was startled when a deep bass voice boomed in my other ear.

“His dad? Hey, Lee, don’t mix it up with Brad’s dad. You’re likely to lose.”

I jumped about three inches off my chair as I turned toward the voice, and I discovered I was facing Tony Herrera, who had been Joe’s best friend since kindergarten.

Tony was the son of our mayor, Mike Herrera, who was also Warner Pier’s leading restaurateur and a couple of years earlier had married Joe’s mom. So Tony and Joe were stepbrothers as well as friends.

As in most small towns, Warner Pier’s connections between family and friends look as if a three-year-old drew a diagram of them the first time he got hold of a pencil.

Tony had always tried to dodge restaurant work—for anybody, not just his dad. Even though his wife and two of their teenage children worked in the family businesses, he steered clear and kept saying he would “stick to manual labor.”

Actually Tony is a skilled machinist. But at the moment he was wearing a white jacket and holding a big tray, indicating he had been busing tables.

“Oh, Tony!” I said. “What are you doing here anyway? I thought you were merely the father of a table clearer.”

“I’m filling in for Alicia. She wanted to go to the football game.” Tony frowned. “Some guy on the team has caught her eye. Sorry to be eavesdropping. Even about Brad Davis.”

“How did you know what we were talking about?”

“You said ‘Brad.’ How many Brads are there in Warner Pier?”

Joe waved at an empty chair at our table. “Would the manager get mad at you if you sat down and had a cup of coffee with us?”

Tony grinned. “Nah. She’d probably join us.” He moved toward the coffeepot.

Tony’s wife, Lindy, manages Herrera’s, as well as the Sidewalk Café. She gave us a cheerful wave from behind the cash register.

After Labor Day, when the big crowds of tourists left, all Warner Pier restaurants got pretty informal. Nobody was going to be shocked if Tony stopped busing tables and sat down for a cup of coffee with two of the guests. The tables were all clear at the moment anyway.

Tony likes gossip as well as anybody does. As he stirred his coffee, he looked at me. “I hope you didn’t really bump heads with a Davis.”

“I hope not, too. I just had a strange experience with one. I guess it only indicated that Brad and his dad don’t always see eye to eye. As if it was an unusual occurrence for fathers and sons not to get along.”

“It sure wasn’t for me and my dad. As you both know. He had me washing dishes beginning when I was fourteen. But working together was miserable for both of us. When I turned seventeen, we gave up trying, and I got a summer job as a lifeguard.”

“Yah,” Joe said. “Tony and I each spent a couple of summers looking good for the babes at Warner Pier Beach!”

Both of them chuckled. I’m always careful not to ask too much about those days. Now they’re both solid family men; then they were harebrained kids. When they talk about “action,” I don’t think they’re always referring to pulling people out of the water.

“I guess it worked,” I said. “The first time I saw Joe he was up in that tower. All I could think was ‘shoulders!’” We all three laughed.

Then I went on. “And I can understand why a father would like to see his son in a family business. But Dr. Davis apparently didn’t want to see Brad as another doctor.”

“I think he did at first,” Joe said. “I seem to remember Brad complaining about how he hated science, and his dad was making him enroll in Chemistry II.”

Tony nodded. “I think that for a long time he wanted to see Brad as a doctor. We used to get together and gripe about being expected to follow in daddy’s footsteps.”

“What changed it for you and your dad?” I asked.

Tony shrugged. “I don’t know exactly. I do remember it was junior year for us, so senior year for Brad. By September the whole situation had changed. The fight was apparently over.”

“And both you and Brad won?”

“I did. I convinced my dad that skilled labor was respectable. I don’t know how Brad managed.”

Joe spoke up. “I seem to remember that it really was quite a change, Tony. Your dad began to be proud of the talents you had understanding how things fit together and of how well you work with your hands. You began to see how hard he had worked to own his own restaurant.”

“He had only one restaurant then,” Tony said. “And he was proud of it. And, yeah, I was proud of him. But Brad and his dad—it wasn’t like they quit arguing about him going to med school. It was more like they quit speaking. Period. Just stopped communicating. I had the impression— Oh, I’d better shut up.”

Tony had obviously become uncomfortable with his own remarks. He ducked his head until his nose was nearly in his coffee cup.

Joe’s response was a frown. Then he spoke. “You knew Brad better than I did, but I remember that after the Country Convenience Store, the summer of the so-called robbery—” Joe and Tony both grinned at the thought. Maybe I did, too. Then Joe went on. “After that Brad quit working at the store and applied for an after-school job at the bank. I remember he worked real hard on a résumé; he even came by the insurance office and asked my mom to help him with it. And I was under the impression that he managed it all with no strings pulled. No help from his dad.”

“That’s how I recall it, too,” Tony said. “It was like his dad gave up trying to arrange his life, and Brad kind of knuckled down and began to act like a grown-up.”

He grinned. “I just hope something like that happens to my kids. Someday.”

Two customers left about then, and Tony got up to bus their table. Joe and I laughed a little, seeing Tony voluntarily doing a restaurant job because his daughter wanted a night off—the same job he had fought with his father to avoid.

We were both refusing dessert when Joe’s cell phone rang. I could tell it was Hogan, mostly because Joe’s first words were, “Hi, Hogan.”

Then he listened. “Okay. We’ll drop by,” he said.

As he hung up, I groaned. “Joe, I haven’t got time to go by and see Hogan. I really do have to get back to work.”

“He says he got the box open, and you’ll want to see what was in it.”

I reached for my jacket. “How quick can we get there?”

Yes, I was really eager to see what was in that box. What had Spud hidden in it? Why had he hidden anything?

The police department was only two blocks away, so we were there immediately. Hogan was watching for us and unlocked the door as we approached.

“Hi, Hogan,” I said. “What did you find?”

“Something we all like.” Hogan waved his hand at a big table the cops use for paperwork.

And Spud’s lockbox was filled with paper, true. Green and white paper. Wrapped in bundles. And each piece of paper had the face of a great American on it. Plus figures. None of them below twenty.

The box held a whole bunch of cash money.

Awe filled Joe’s voice as he spoke. “And this was in Spud’s office safe?”

“Yep.” Hogan’s voice sounded serious, too. “Around five thousand dollars.”