Nathan leaned back, exhausted. We waited for him to continue his story, but he seemed distracted and gulped down more water.
Rosie took advantage of the pause. “So how did you guys get inside?” she asked, looking from Brock to me.
“We just walked in,” I told her. “The door was unlocked.”
“Someone was sure in a hurry to get outta there,” Brock added.
“Or maybe they wanted to make it easy for whoever showed up to get into the house,” Nathan said. “All I know is that Charlie just stopped showing up a few days ago. I never saw him again. And when Larkin didn’t bring me food last night or today, I figured he was taking care of that project they mentioned.”
He might as well know now, I thought. Get everything out so there are no surprises left. “Charlie’s dead.” I hadn’t meant to be so blunt and wished I’d delivered the news a bit more gently.
It was as if an invisible club hit Nathan square in the face the way he jerked back. Stunned—no, shocked was a better description. We all sat watching him, afraid what would come next.
“You okay, boss?” Brock asked timidly.
E.T. rolled his chair close to Nathan. “That’s good news, right? Now that creep can’t hurt you again or make any more threats.”
I remembered what Nathan had told me about E.T. before I met him. How he thought his employee was quite an enigma. A pacifist who would do whatever was necessary to stop a bad guy but refused to kill a mosquito or ant. He’d been trained in martial arts but would much rather talk his way out of a dangerous situation than have to fight. And yet, as I watched him reassure Nathan, I knew he’d probably be the one crew member who would go the furthest to protect their boss.
“So what happened to Charlie?” Nathan finally asked.
I explained what I’d found out from Bostwick and then later from Barbara. “The car that hit him was a blue sports car, so I think it’s a safe bet the car belonged to Larkin,” I explained.
Nathan sat forward and nodded. “Well, Charlie was standing next to it in the parking lot that first night. But he had to drive me back to the house in my car. It would have been too dangerous in that little thing with me fighting to get away or him trying to hold me down.”
“And one of them had to come back to get the Porsche after they got you in the house,” Polly said. “I bet it’s parked in Mr. Larkin’s garage. That should be easy to check out.”
Rosie joined in, eager to play detective. “So all we gotta do is see if the paint on Charlie matches up with the paint on the car. Then bingo! The cops grab Larkin for murder and kidnappin’. That dude’ll never see daylight again.”
“Kidnapping, maybe, but there’s no way to prove he was driving the car that ran down Charlie,” Nathan said. “By the way”—he looked at me—“where’s my car?”
“I found it over at Bredesen Park, on Wednesday,” E.T. explained. “The cops impounded it. They have to go over it for evidence . . . you know.”
The pieces were fitting together nicely. “The steering wheel was tacky with varnish from the job Charlie was working on,” I said. “So he had to be the one who drove it out there.” That effectively did away with any questions about glue.
“Anybody hungry besides me?” Brock asked, distracting us.
Tension can do crazy things to your body. You can look relaxed on the outside but be frustrated and scared to death on the inside. The knots in my stomach had been tightening ever since I heard Nathan was missing. Nothing had been easy or steady for days. But now that he was sitting in front of me, alive and well, I could feel the muscles in my neck loosening. I could also hear my stomach growling. “Now that you mention it, I’m starving.”
“Sorry, guys,” Nathan said. “I just want to go home and sleep in my own bed, in my own house.”
I expected a big discussion over who would drive him home, but there was none. The crew just looked at me.
“Katie, you should take the boss home.” There was a look that passed between Rosie and Polly. I could see they had already discussed the possibility of this situation happening.
Polly smiled. “Yeah, Kate, you take him. We’ll handle the stuff here and lock up.” Then she pointed to Nathan. “And don’t expect any of us to show up before noon tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Brock said, “if we was to charge you for all the hours we put in this week, you’d go bankrupt.”
“In that case, I’ll have to think of a way to thank all of you with something other than money,” he said. “Money’s so . . . so impersonal. Right, Kathy?”
I nodded. “I think a nice turkey. Thanksgiving’s coming. Everyone likes turkey.” It was mean of us, and I tried to keep a straight face. “Or maybe a gift card at the grocery store would be better. That way they can get what they like.”
Nathan got up and started walking to the door. “I’ll come up with something real nice.”
“Turkey?” Brock looked at the others, confused. “I was just makin’ a joke.”