“Never seen him before.”
I nearly tell her who he was but stop myself. Seton would welcome a long-shot suspect to clear her mother of the arson charges, so I need to be one hundred percent certain before I say anything.
“What are you doing here anyway?” I ask. “I thought you’d be at the hospital.”
“There’s no change in Mom’s condition,” Seton says. “No arrest yet, either. I’ll catch a few hours of sleep before heading back.”
“Are we friends again?” I ask.
She folds her arms across her chest. “Check with me tomorrow.”
“There’s an empty seat at the bar. We don’t need to talk, especially if we’re not friends till tomorrow.”
Seton barely shakes her head. “Let me stew in my own misery.”
“You know where I am,” I say.
At the bar, Blancy hasn’t had a chance to clear the pint glass my father used. I wrap it in a paper napkin and slip it under my coat. There could be fingerprints on it. Or DNA. I doubt my father’s fingerprints are on record, and I’m certain his DNA isn’t, but I have my own DNA.If I arrange a test of what’s on the glass, there could be a parental match, and I’ll finally know what’s real and what isn’t.
“Did your friend take off?” Blancy asks as he wipes down the counter.
“Does he come here much?”
“Not before tonight, though lots of people are passing through for the long weekend. If he’s staying local, we’re the only game in town. Come back tomorrow and bring your brother with you.”
I’m not sure what Reid would do if he saw our father stroll into the Landing.
Blancy pours me another IPA, then moves down the bar, seeing to other customers. He grew up in this town but could only have been ten or twelve when the murder happened. In fact, most of the people at the Landing tonight are too young to remember Mark Kilgore even if they have heard about the murder, so my father could have come here without expecting to be recognized. Except ... except Paul was at the Landing tonight, if only briefly. And Paul would recognize my father, no matter how much my father had changed.
Something cold and wet brushes along my hand. I jump, only to find Freya Faith’s German shepherd sitting at attention beside me.
“Ginger likes you.”
Freya slides onto the same stool where my father sat. It’s only now I notice the music has ended and the crowd has begun to thin.
I hunch over my glass and take Freya in out of the corner of my eye. She has a way of carrying herself, cool and unattached, savvy enough to know a camera could capture her at any moment, and that all eyes in the room, including mine, are turned her way.
“Ginger’s my emotional support,” she says. “At least if they reprimand me for having her here.”
I doubt Freya Faith gets reprimanded for much.
Blancy mixes her an old-fashioned while Freya chats with a couple who compliment her on the show. After they leave, she downs the drink in one gulp. “Sugar’s good for the throat.”
Blancy already has another cocktail ready.
“This one I’ll sip,” Freya says. “Did you enjoy the set?Scene of the Crimeended almost ten years ago now, and I’m trying to get back out there before the world forgets me for good. I may talk to my agent about booking some other clubs in the area, though my manager thinks it’s a shitty idea. I’m testing material. I’m calling the show Rocker Chicks.”
“Great name,” I say.
“It’s a terrible name. I’ll come up with a new one, but I’m only playing songs from the eighties. Stevie. Chrissie. Cyndi. Maybe a little Madonna.” She looks me up and down. “The eighties are ancient history to you.”
“But I’m an old soul.”
“If liking the eighties makes you an old soul, does that make me old because Ilivedin the eighties?”
“That’s not what I meant,” I say.
She taps a fingernail painted metallic blue against her glass. “Make it up to me. Order another beer and stick around. This town closes by nine, which isn’t my style after all those years in New York.”
