Down Home and Deadly

up into Bob’s questioning eyes. I didn’t see any reason to deny it. “How could you tell?”
    “I’d braced myself for your questions. I knew as soon as I hinted at the past, you’d want to know it all. But you didn’t ask me anything.”
    “I just didn’t want to make it any harder for you than it is already,” I said quietly.
    He spun his chair around, turning his back to me. When I heard his voice, thick with tears, I knew why. “Wilma and I, we’d just moved here from California not long before all that. She wanted to settle down, but I liked the fact that the kids all thought I was cool.” His voice broke. “They made me feel young. I didn’t see any harm in it.”
    I stared at his shaking shoulders.
    He shook his head and didn’t speak for a minute. Even from the back, I could see he was struggling to keep any composure at all.
    “We didn’t know about the drag racing, but if I could go back and live that part of my life over, I would. We both told Harvey and Alice how sorry we were. And they seemed to forgive us to some extent. Dropped the suit, which you probably know. But when Lisa was born a couple of years later, all the old feelings of hate boiled up again. They both looked at us like we had no right to have a daughter when they’d lost theirs because of my stupidity.”
    “So now you think Harvey wants to take your daughter away from you?”
    He nodded, with his back still toward me.
    “Does Lisa know about this?”
    “No!”
    “J.D. didn’t tell her?”
    “No. He probably would’ve. But he died before he got a chance.”
    My heart thudded in my chest.
    He spun around to face me, mindless now of the tears coursing down his cheeks. “I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t kill him.”
    “So he wasn’t blackmailing you?”
    “Not really. He just kept reminding me that he had one over on me.”
    The precursor to blackmail. Reason enough to murder someone? Maybe. But I didn’t believe for a minute Bob would kill someone and let his precious daughter take the blame. In my eyes, that fact alone exonerated him.
    I stood and put the key in my pocket. “I’m sorry.”
    He nodded. “Me , too.”
    I left him to his thoughts.
    On the way home, I stopped by Carly’s to tell her what Bob said about Harvey being the killer.
    “You know, as bad as I hate to say this, the same things could be said of Alice ,” she said.
    “ Alice ? You’re just mad because she bosses you around in the kitchen,” I teased her. “ And she makes better pies.”
    “Ha. She does not make better pies. She just has more years of practice.” Carly fluffed her short curls. “Just wait until you taste the pies I make when I get as old as she is.”
    “You’re right, though. She does have the same motive.”
    “But not the same opportunity,” Carly said suddenly. “Because Harvey took the trash out.”
    I put my hand to my mouth. “You’re right. He could have shot J.D. then walked right back into the diner.”
    “ He would have stayed out there long enough to see you and knock you in the head. But as busy as we were . . . ”
    I remembered how long it took anyone to realize I was hurt. “Nobody even would have noticed.”

Chapter Fourteen

    You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar .

    “Jen?” Carly sounded harried on the phone. “I have a huge favor to ask.”
    “Let’s hear it.”
    “Is there any chance you’re going out to the athletic club tonight?”
    “I was planning on it. Why?”
    “The girls and I need a ride to school.”
    “No problem.” The school was out near Bob’s gym anyway. “Is your car torn up?”
    Silence.
    “Carly, you still there?’
    “I’m here,” she said, embarrassment evident in her tone. “Technically, my car isn’t ‘torn up.’ It’s more like ‘out of gas.’ ”
    Any other time, she’d have called Elliott to bring her some gas or give her a ride to school. I certainly wasn’t complaining, but it made me sad to see them drifting apart.
    “I’ll be right over.”
    When I pulled up in front of their cabin, Carly and the girls came running out and jumped in.
    “How long will your school thing last?” I asked when we got on the road.
    “It’s an open house,” Rachel said from the backseat.
    “So there’s no set ending time,” Hayley finished.
    I glanced at Carly. “In that case, why don’t you just drop me off at the gym , and I’ll work until you pick me back up?”
    “Really? That would be perfect. You’re a