“You’ve served your warrant,” Quentin said. “Now get the hell out.”
Silas lifted his chin challengingly. “You might run Fontaine, Quentin, but you don’t run me. I’m here in an official capacity.”
“Which has been completed, and now you can go. Any time.” Quentin looked at the officers with him. “Unless there’s something else, gentlemen?”
The officers looked at one another, and then one of them looked at Silas. “We’re done here, Sheriff Barnes.”
After they left, Lowey cursed. “Son of a bitch. We need to get to the bar. I know there’s not much left of it, but what is left will be torn all to hell if Silas has his way.”
“How many guns do you have in the bar, Lowey?”
“I’ve got Papaw’s shotgun, and I’ve got a forty-five stashed there as well. Why?”
“Do you trust Silas to do an honest search? Do you think he’s above planting evidence?”
Her face paled. “Let’s get to the bar.Now.”
Seventeen
Ciaran went straight to The Kicking Mule. He’d texted Quentin and knew that was where they were going. Matt had given him a heads-up that Joey had missed an important meeting with the suppliers. Without seeing the transactions go down, Matt was stuck. He couldn’t arrest them simply for being present, which meant he’d have to lean on the cousin, Tommy, get him to step up and take over as point man so they could finally put an end to all of this. He knew Matt had planned to use the threat of a return to prison to bring Joey to heel, but that wouldn’t work with Tommy. Of course, Tommy also wasn’t nearly the hard ass that Joey was, so it might work still.
In the meantime, Ciaran had his own suspicions about Joey’s death. Silas was a man with his eye fixed firmly on the prize. His current position was nothing more than a stepping stone to bigger, better, and more lucrative things. A power-hungry politician with a liability like a relative of Joey’s ilk was a recipe for disaster. And Lowey was the perfect scapegoat.
Easing his truck into the parking lot of the bar, he noted the two sheriff’s vehicles present. He could hear the breakingof glass and smashing of furniture from inside. He could also hear Quentin yelling.
He acted quickly, crossing the gravel lot at a run and entering the bar. “You’ve a search warrant for a gun,” Ciaran said. “You’ll not find it hiding in the bottom of a clear vodka bottle. Smashing it is willful destruction of property—with witnesses!”
The deputy tossed the bottle to the floor, glass and liquor scattering as it shattered. “It slipped.”
Ciaran looked back at Lowey who stood there with her lips clamped firmly together and an expression of pure hatred burning in her eyes.
“It can all be replaced,” he offered.
“No. It can’t. And I’m not even sure I want it to be,” she said. “Maybe this is what I needed to push me out of the bar business after all.”
One of the deputies reached beneath the bar and retrieved a wooden box. Opening it, he removed the handgun from inside it. “Looks like we’ve found our weapon.”
“You’ve foundaweapon,” Quentin stated, “Nottheweapon.”
The deputy, one of Silas’s brown-nosing sycophants, grinned. “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…where were you this afternoon, Miss Tate?”
“I was with Quentin at Ash Grove Farm,” she replied. “And then at around five, we went to have dinner with his siblings at Mia’s home.”
“There are witnesses who can corroborate that?”
The question had come from Silas who’d just walked into the bar behind Ciaran.
“Mia Darcy, Bennett Hayes, Clayton and Annalee Darcy were all there,” Lowey replied. Her tone was robotic, without any inflection at all, as if she’d gotten so used to Silas’s accusations and harassment that it no longer registered.
Ciaran didn’t point out that he’d been invited to the fête and elected not to go. The object was to remove Lowey from the suspect list, not to put himself on it. But he did watch Silas closely for a reaction, and he wasn’t disappointed. The man’s face paled, and his breath quickened. He was scared, Ciaran realized, and guilty. Very,veryguilty.
“Did the kids who found the body see any vehicles near there? Were any tire tracks found?” Ciaran demanded.
Silas turned on him then. “You might be Matt Crawford’s errand boy, but that doesn’t give you any jurisdiction here.”
Ciaran walked over to him, met Silas’s guilty gaze directly and warned. “If you don’t dot every I and cross every T on this, you’ll regret it, Barnes.”
“Are you threatening an officer of the law?”
