“I’m in the lobby. What room are you in?”
Beth considered hanging up on him. “You sound like you’re in a state.”
“I am. I’m unemployed. Now, for the love of God, what room—”
“Three oh seven.”
John clicked off.
She was in a state herself. She was furious at him for his refusal to help her, and even angrier over his kissing her like that, then, seeming that it had had no effect on him, sending her on her way.
Contending with both those disappointments, she hadn’t yet decided whether to stay or return to New York. Her roll-aboard stood unopened near the door where she’d left it when she’d come in. She stepped around it now to answer his knock. He came inside and squeezed past her and the suitcase. Neither said hello.
She shut the door. “What do you mean you’re unemployed?”
“Just that.”
“You got fired?”
“Yep.”
“Barker?”
“The one and only.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’ve never been better.” He squatted in front of the mini bar, took out a small bottle of bourbon, uncapped it, and raised it in a toast. “Cheers.” He drank half of it in one swallow.
“What happened?”
At some point he’d changed into office clothes, but he still had his rain slicker. He tossed it onto the bed, threw himself into the easy chair, and jerked at the knot of his necktie.
“It’s not what happened, past tense, that concerns me. It’s what will happen in the future. In the immediate future, I’m getting you out of here. If Barker put someone on my tail before he went to the hospital, they’ll assume we’re up here…” He glanced toward the bed and saluted it with the bottle of bourbon.
“He went to the hospital?”
“The ER. He doesn’t look so good, and I’m sure he’s in a lot of pain.”
She didn’t know what to make of any of this, but especially not his wholehearted belly laugh. Up till now, his laughs had been limited to chuffs, his humor always wry and cynical. This laugh came from deep down and sounded too wicked to have been caused only by the whiskey, which he finished in a gulp. He tossed the empty into the wastebasket, where it landed with a clatter.
Then she noticed that the knuckles of his right hand were blood-smeared. “What have you done, John?”
He sobered instantly. “What you wanted me to do all along. Bridges are burned. I’m committed to conducting the investigation that should have been.”
Before she could express her gladness to hear that, there was a knock on the door. “That’ll be Mitch. I called and gave him the room number.” He got up quickly and went to the door. “Hey, thanks, buddy.”
“I owed you a favor, remember? We’re square now.” He walked in and, looking past John, said to Beth, “Hi.”
She recognized him immediately. “You were in the bar.”
He gave her a thumbs-up.
His friendly smile was framed by a grubby mustache. She looked from him to John. “This is your friend Mitch?”
John gave a shrug that said yes.
“Him? He’s your former partner who wouldn’t betray you under pain of death?”
“Wait,” the other man said as he held up a hand and turned to John. “Under pain of death?” He stroked his mustache. “I dunno know about that.”
John made a dismissive sound and asked, “Did that piece of shit pickup with the bullet holes belong to you?”
“No, but I’ve got another piece of shit that does. It’s right outside. Y’all ready?”
“Hold on!” Beth exclaimed. The two men turned toward her. “What… I… Slow down and tell me what is going on.”
“We don’t have time to go into it now,” John said.
“Time to go into what?”
He looked at her with frustration and impatience. “Beth, we don’t—”
She interrupted him. “‘I can’t help you. I won’t.’ That’s what you said—repeatedly—before you sent me packing. Now you bust in here, acting like your hair is on fire, and…” She ran out of breath. “Time to go into what?”
His friend folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the wall as he’d done in the bar. “She’s entitled to an explanation. Take a minute. If we pick up a tail, I’ll lose him. No problem.”
John gave him a perturbed look, then came back to Beth. “I called Galveston PD and spoke with a Detective Gayle Morris who was lead investigator on the Larissa Whitmore case.”