Sully couldn’t get Demitria Costanas out of his mind.
Even four days after their session, when he was engrossed in finding out why Isabella’s engine wouldn’t turn over and had pulled the Impala’s distributor, all he could think about was Demi, looking as mournful and slender as the thing in his hand with its connectors draping down in exile from where they belonged.
“What’s up with you?” he said to them. “What’s the disconnect?”
The hole he peered down into made him wonder about the places deep in her soul. When he took off the distributor cap and saw its crusted-down shape condition, he couldn’t help wondering what lie she’d told herself that had brought her life to a freezing halt. When he saw her stuck in the gummed-up carburetor he disassembled on the table, he called it quits for the day.
Holy crow, you’re obsessing, he told himself. Get outta here and—he grinned as he wiped his hands on a rag—go obsess about something else.
Ethan Kaye’s situation provided the obvious next choice. They’d had lunch Wednesday, and Ethan ate what Sully considered to be a pathetic portion of the rack of ribs they shared at Metzel’s, a clear signal he was brooding. That and the straight line that dug deeper than ever between his eyebrows.
“Jackals still after you?” Sully said.
Ethan nodded. “St. Clair hired an interim professor to replace Demi—the man looked qualified on paper, but he’s completely obsessed with the Apocalypse. Granted, that’ll lend itself to spiritual discussion, but he has the students making a timeline from the Book of Revelation.”
Sully half grinned. “You’re not serious.”
“Oh, I’m serious as a heart attack.”
“What about Wyatt Estes?” Sully said. “Heard any more from him?”
Ethan took to cleaning a miniscule speck of barbecue sauce from under his fingernail. “Are you sure this isn’t crossing some kind of line for you—since you’re seeing Demi as a client now?”
“I’ve thought about that.” Sully sucked on a bare rib and set it on his plate. “A—I’m not planning to break any cardinal rules, but my situation with Demi isn’t exactly conventional. The lines are a little blurred. And—B—my interest in Wyatt Estes is for you, Ethan, not Demi.”
Ethan gave him a long look. “I’m going to leave the ethics to you, then. You know what you’re doing.”
“On a good day, yeah.” Sully grinned. “So—what about Wyatt?”
“I still can’t figure that one out. I know he wants the college turned legalistic, which is going to mean getting me out of there. But a man of his standing in the community—I can’t imagine him being involved in that picture-taking thing.”
“You mean with Demi and—what’s his name—Archery Boy?”
Ethan’s eyebrows knit together. “Archer.” He gave Sully a closer look. “I guess my opinion of Dr. Archer has rubbed off on you.”
That and the state Demi Costanas was in. Where was this guy who’d convinced that woman to risk tearing her life apart? But now that Demi was his client, he couldn’t go there with Ethan.
“Anyway,” Ethan said, “that still mystifies me. It seems like—”
“I know—we need to know where those pictures came from. I’d like to see what I can find out.”
Ethan sat back. “You’re really going to play detective, on top of rebuilding an old car and seeing Demi because I asked you to? I didn’t mean for you to spend two-thirds of your time up here on my problems. You came to deal with your own.”
Sully skirted that one. “I don’t know how much good it’ll do, but I’m going to start looking up photographers—see if I can’t get a feel for who might have snapped the pictures. It would have to be a certain type.” He licked his lips dryly. “Something from the sleaze-ball category.”
“Whatever you can find out, I’ll appreciate.”
So on Thursday Sully closed up the garage and went in search of sleazeball photographers. Callow seemed like the appropriate place to start, seeing how the Laundromat across the street had been robbed twice since he’d moved in and the coffee shop around the corner was either a drug drop or merely a breeding ground for ptomaine.
It was obvious as he headed down the sidewalk on Callow Avenue, the main thoroughfare, that this had been a nice little American town at one point—the kind where people lived their whole lives getting their cuts of meat from the same butcher and being baptized, married, and buried in the same church.
There were no photographers, and he was about to turn down a side street when he found himself in front of a business that was obviously still a going concern.
MCGAVOCK’S BAKERY, the pink sign said. SINCE 1942.
Sully hadn’t seen an establishment like that since he was a kid in Birmingham. Two large display windows were lined with paper doilies and still offered the remains of the day’s baking. Letters painted across the glass read HOME OF THE FAMOUS PINK CHAMPAGNE CAKE.
The thought made Sully’s teeth ache. Holy crow—it sounded like a recipe for diabetes. He was about to pass when something else caught his eye.
A girl behind the counter was dropping oversized cookies into a bag and remaining so otherwise motionless in the act that even the string-of-beads earrings that dangled nearly to her shoulders swayed only slightly. Sully peered shamelessly through the window. Ethan, he decided, had used the word detective too lightly.
The door opened, letting out a wizened old lady who was fairly pink herself and had, in Sully’s mind, probably been buying her cookies there since the grand opening. He slipped inside and watched Counter Girl as she returned the tray of cookies to their case between a display of rum pudding cakes and several flats of plastic-looking petit fours. She looked up at him, and the eyes cinched it. Nobody else had those wide, blue, sardonic eyes with the gold flecks. This was the girl from the Estes auction.
“Can I help you?” she said, though Sully sensed that she wanted to suggest he either take a picture, which would last longer, or move on. But as she looked at him, recognition seemed to flicker. She didn’t exactly smile—but she didn’t look unhappy to see him.
“So,” she said, “how’s your car? Don’t tell me you drove it over here?”
She looked out the window, a bemused look on her face. She obviously had no expectation of seeing the Impala out there at the curb, probably ever.
“She’s not ready to be unveiled yet,” Sully said. “So can I ask—”
“What I’m doing working here when I’m an Estes?”
Sully didn’t try to hide his surprise.
“You know you want to know.”
“Okay.” Sully leaned on the counter. “What are you doing working here when you’re an Estes?”
“Actually I’m not technically an Estes. I’m a Farris.”
“Do you have a first name?” Sully said.
She straightened the pink apron she wore over the same-colored T-shirt. Sully was sure it wasn’t a hue she’d chosen.
“Have we established you’re not trying to pick me up?” she said.
“Oh, yeah—we got that straight at the auction.”
“Then it’s Tatum.”
“What is?”
“My first name. And I’m here because I want nothing to do with being an Estes at this point in my life. You want to try the pink champagne cake or what?”
Sully had to grin. He was used to being the one who made everyone else’s head spin. She had his in a mixing bowl and was going at it with an eggbeater.
“Sure, I’ll try a piece.” His stomach gave a warning gurgle.
She sliced into a pink concoction that sat up on a cake pedestal like a cotton candy castle dotted with icing puffs. As it fell onto the plate, Sully’s worst fear was realized: pink inside too. It would match the Pepto-Bismol he was going to have to take later.
“So—do you want a cup of coffee, or are you going to try to gag it down dry?”
“Excuse me?”
She leveled those eyes at him. “You look like you’re about to taste the hemlock. It’s just cake.”
“I can’t wait.”
The only thing making it worthwhile was the possibility of finding something out about Wyatt Estes.
Halfway into his second piece, he knew that Wyatt was Tatum’s uncle, her mother’s brother, and that he—more than anyone since his grandfather—had been responsible for building the sizable Estes financial empire in Kitsap County.
“So I take it your working here is part of a family feud,” Sully said. He was having trouble resisting a plunge into Game Show Theology. That thing that simmered beneath her surface fascinated him.
“Sort of,” she said.
Sully pretended to enjoy his next mouthful and waited.
“It has its benefits and drawbacks,” she said. “Right now I’m the one doing the drawing back.”
“Well put,” Sully said.
“Oh yeah, I’m positively eloquent.”
“Not to mention humble.”
“Whatever.” Tatum took the empty plate he pushed toward her. “You know,” she said, “I’m not sure why I just told you all that.”
“Because I’m new in town and I wanted to know who the movers and shakers are around here, and you were nice enough to tell me.”
“Like you so care about movers and shakers,” she said. “You live in Callow and own a thirty-year-old car.”
“Don’t let her hear you say that,” Sully said. “She’s sensitive about her age.”
“Okay,” Tatum said.
“Now I heard . . .” he said as he dug for his wallet to pay for the punishment that surged up his esophagus. “I heard that Wyatt Estes gives a bunch of money to that college—what is it—Covenant Christian? Is he a major donor?”
She didn’t miss a beat taking his money, poking numbers into the cash register, handing him his change. But when her blue eyes met his again, the gold in them had hardened.
“I wouldn’t know about that,” she said. “Look, I need to get back to work.”
She didn’t wait for Sully to leave before she disappeared into the back room.