“When’s the last time you spoke with Brett?” I asked, shifting the focus back to him.
“Is this an interrogation?” Joe huffed out air and reclined in his seat, already tired of talking to me—and probably realizing that he was under no actual obligation to do so. “Because I’ve already answered the sheriff’s questions.”
I crossed my arms. “I’m sure Charlie will have more.”
“Okay.” Joe laughed darkly. “In addition to sleeping with him, you speak for him now, too? I wonder how his pretty new deputy feels about that?”
That was a punch to my gut, and he seemed to know it.
Joe’s lip curled. “Your life and everyone else’s in Aubergine has been practically perfect.”
I started to interrupt him, to correct him, but he stopped me. “Comparatively perfect,” he clarified. “Do you know where my dad was on the night of our graduation?”
I swallowed hard. This wasn’t the direction I’d wanted this conversation to take.
“He was at the hospital because he’d OD-ed the night before. Someone found him passed out behind the wheel on Drake’s Road. At first they thought he was drunk, but when the ambulance arrived, they realized he’d given himself so much oxy that his pulse was practically nonexistent.”
The words hit me hard, mainly because I hadn’t realized that I was the kind of person who could be that oblivious to the pain of someone so close to me. I guess with the pranks and the crude humor, I hadn’t registered what Joe had been dealing with, but this was exactly what Aunt DeeDee had been talking about.
His eyes were glassy now, but I could tell it wasn’t from drinking. He was on the verge of tears. “Before we went to the after-grad party, Brett stopped by the hospital with me, said that he wanted to see with his own two eyes that my dad was okay since he used to coach us both in peewee football. Brett was a good friend – at least, I thought he was until…” Joe’s voice trailed off and he sniffed.
“Until what?”
Joe shook his head as if trying to rid himself of painful memories and said simply, “We had a falling out in our first semester at college.”
I braced myself for his reaction to my next question, but I had to ask it. “Did he get you kicked off the football team? Out of college?”
Joe blinked at me several times, his jaw clenched. “I think we’re done here.” He made as if to stand, but I put out a hand.
“Please.”
Joe forced out a big huff of air but he sat back down, though this time on the edge of his seat as if he might leave any second. “Brett put steroids in my locker, which was the one and only thing that could actually get you kicked off the team and out of school. It sent my entire life in a different direction. No more football. No more scholarship. I never forgave him. Is that what you want to hear?”
It was. Kind of. I stayed quiet, hoping he would keep talking.
“Brett apologized, tried to throw me a few bones here and there. Job opportunities, girls he didn’t want to sleep with anymore.” Joe’s face contorted into a grimace. “When we were kids, I had no idea how selfish he was, how he used people, how he was using me.” He lifted a hand and pointed at his own chest. “Did you know that I trained him? I spent hours on the field, throwing the ball with him, trying to get his arm in shape for college try-outs. It didn’t come naturally to him, and he barely even made it on the team. After he got me kicked out of school, he quit the team, said he wanted to focus on his studies. But it was because I wasn’t there to compete with anymore. He just wanted to make sure I didn’t succeed, and once I was back home, ashamed of something I hadn’t even done and my college prospects ruined, he felt free to go his own way.”
“When’s the last time you spoke to Brett?” I asked, gentler than I’d been moments ago, in part to encourage him to keep talking but also because hearing his story brought out compassion that I didn’t know I had for this guy. “I mean, before tonight?”
Joe hung his head and sighed, a sort of resignation settling across his face. “He called me last week to tell me that he was bringing Presley. He asked if I had a date, and I told him I’d be working.”
“He didn’t know you were catering tonight?”
“Not as far as I know.” Joe shifted in his seat. “He probably called just to remind me that he was dating this amazing woman, and I have…” Joe didn’t finish the sentence, so I waited. “No one. Not really.”
“Except you’re staying next door to Presley and got an extra room key for her.”
Joe sighed but didn’t deny the fact. “It’s complicated.”
NINETEEN
After Joe left me alone in the solarium, I was catching my breath for a few seconds when I heard the faint sound of raised voices coming from outside. I turned to the door that led to the back gardens and listened again.
I grabbed the doorknob that led to the portico and opened it slowly so as to not be overheard by whomever was out there.
“We’ll have nothing to show for months of work,” the man’s voice said loudly enough for anyone within fifty yards to hear. I was pretty sure it was the cameraman, Lee Frank. Even though I couldn’t get a visual on them, I caught the scent of tobacco coming from the direction of the rose hedge maze. I wondered if Charlie or any of his officers were keeping an eye on them.
“I was an idiot, letting him string me along like that.” The man’s voice sounded desperate, frantic even. “I even used my own credit cards on travel because he promised to reimburse us.”
