“I have to deal with this.” I tilted Sunny’s head back and dropped a kiss to her forehead. “Remind me not to kill anyone.”
“Think of it this way,” she said, “if you’re in jail, that leaves Parker in charge. Do you really want that?”
I caught her in a quick hug. “You’re absolutely right.”
My plan was to drag Decker upstairs and lock him in the office until his present condition improved. If I was lucky, I’d get some answers about what the hell was going on with him, why he was here, and what kind of mess he’d left in his wake.
Decker’s plan went something like this: invite me and my “big brother boss bitch routine” to fuck off, stumble-crawl into the oyster company, tuck himself behind the bar and start slinging drinks, chug whiskey straight from several bottles, break an entire rack of water goblets, shove his bare hands into all the garnishes, recount the behind-the-scenes story of last year’s playoff games to anyone who’d listen (and could hang on to the meandering through-line), shit-talk most of his former teammates and loudly allude to which ones were using undetectable performance enhancers, and then dive face-first into the raw bar, contaminating the whole damn thing.
All I could do was watch and there were moments when that felt like too much. Parker appeared at some point, taking in Dex’s reign of destruction from the far side of the bar. His forehead crinkled and he gave a small shake of his head like he didn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t either. I didn’t know what had gone wrong or why he was digging this hole to hell now, but I didn’t know how to stop it either.
Mel motioned for me to step outside with her while Zeus distracted Dex with a drink and questions about that infamous playoff series.
“We aren’t doing this,” she said the minute the door shut behind us. “We are not hosting Dex’s Dank and Drunk Variety Hour tonight. You need to take him home. Or to an asylum. I don’t know if those still exist but this would be a good time to look into it.”
“You don’t think I know this?”
Mel held up her hands. “I think you’ve passed on several opportunities to tackle his ass to the ground. Between you, me, Zeus, and Woot, we could get that boy hog-tied without breaking a sweat. He’s a big brute, but he’s too stoned to realize what’s happening until it’s over.”
I folded my arms. “You really think we could do that?”
“I’ll get the bungee cords.” She pointed to my SUV. “You open the rear gate. We’ll toss him in there.”
“Some containment would be nice,” I murmured.
“If anyone else destroyed that many of our homegrown oysters, you wouldn’t be out here waffling around to find the right answer. You would’ve raised all kinds of hell, and you know it.”
Before I could respond, a man in an alarmingly bold pair of electric blue and neon pink plaid trousers approached, his hand extended. I winced at the sight of his matching polo shirt. My retinas weren’t equipped for the kinds of colors Gaines Campbell kept in his closet.
“My god,” Mel said under her breath.
“How are we today, Beckett Loew?”
I accepted his hand, saying, “What can I do for you, Gaines?”
“I heard through the grapevine, I’ll tell you what I heard around town today, what I heard was that you fine folks opened up your doors after the storm. Hot food, coffee”—he leaned in conspiratorially—“air conditioning.”
I shrugged, dipping my hands into my pockets. “The food came from Naked Provisions. We just turned on the coffeepots. Not a big deal. Truly.”
“That’s not how I hear it,” he said, wagging a ruddy finger at me like I was holding out on him. “I’ll tell you what I hear. I hear the people in this town singing your praises. This town has a lot of love for the Loew family. But I bet you knew that already, didn’t you?”
A crash sounded inside and a watery groan stuttered out of me.
“I’m just going to—” Mel turned around and walked back inside.
“This town has always embraced Small Point Oyster Company and we’ve always appreciated that. It’s kind of you to remind us of that goodwill,” I said as diplomatically as possible. “Can I pour you a cold drink? Show you to a table?”
“No, no, none of that,” he blustered. “Here’s what I want to do. I thought to myself this morning, I was thinking about your oysters and I was thinking it’s time to get that oyster festival on the books. That’s what I want to do.”
The door banged open and Decker emerged with a pint glass filled to the brim with what I had to assume was more whiskey, and he was wearing heart-shaped sunglasses. He crip-walked across the driveway toward Naked while Zeus and Agent Price watched from the entrance. They gave mewhat do we do now?shrugs.
This day was cracking under many, many layers of catastrophe but nothing could be worse than Decker, unsupervised, in Sunny’s café. Those women would barbeque his balls.
“And that got me to thinking, what I thought was, I think we need a whole oyster weekend. If we’re going to do this, we should do it all the way. That’s my thinking, that is.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said to Gaines. “You’ll have to excuse me.”
“I’ll come by next week,” he shouted as I jogged toward the café. “We can hammer out the details.”
