“Though, to be fair,” Vance said as he dunked a quarter section of a Belgian waffle into his syrup. “He who habitually works the early shift basically owes the closers breakfast.”
Tucker rolled his eyes. “I think the phrase you’re looking for is ‘Thank you, Tucker.’”
“Thank you, Tucker,” Vance and I said in unison, as I opened my notebook and pulled my pen free from the spine. “Okay. Updates?”
“Wait!” Tucker popped up from his seat, headed toward the bar. A moment later, he was back, carrying three tall Bloody Marys garnished with celery, olives, cherry tomatoes, and one wedge of avocado each. “I almost forgot the healthy part.”
Vance snorted. “That’s the healthy part?”
“Do you not see the celery?” Tucker demanded. “The avocado? They’re both green.”
“As is the olive.” I plucked mine from the end of its toothpick and ate it. “Okay. Take two. Updates?”
“The new census app is up and running, in beta,” Tucker said. “Titus wants us to make a list of trusted Pride members to invite, to try it out. We’re really hoping this’ll make it much easier for new members to register, and for us to keep up with changing addresses and phone numbers. You can set personal details to completely private, or to be shared only with Pride leadership. Members have to have an invitation to join, and they have to be confirmed by the admin before they can actually use the app. For obvious security purposes.”
“Awesome.” Vance tapped on his phone as he chewed, checking out the app’s updates.
“Yeah. Great,” I added. “And I amreallygoing to find a moment to download that. I swear.”
“Charley, I promise it’s much more efficient than keeping a list of phone numbers in a notebook in your purse.”
“Joke’s on you,” I informed Vance. “I don’t carry a purse.” But I did have an address book full of scratched out and replaced phone numbers. “Fine. I’ll download the app.” That waskind ofpart of my job as Marshal. “What else?”
“Rob and Gael have sent their weekly reports,” Tucker said, referencing my two northernmost enforcers, whom he’d visited in person earlier in the week. “The printouts are on your desk, but they’re also in your inbox, should you decide to log into your email. Ever.”
“Funny. What about Logan and Elias?”
“They promised we’d have their reports by five,” Vance said. “I can print those too, if you want.”
“Both of you can fuck right off. I know how to work my email.”
“Sheisa little young for a technophobe,” Tucker stage whispered as he dunked a chicken strip into his gravy.
“I’m not too young for a damn thing,” I informed them as the familiar growl of my sister’s engine rumbled from the front parking lot. I mentally tracked the sound as it circled the building to the employee lot out back. “What about the obit search? Tell me you guys had more luck than I did.”
“I found one possibility,” Vance said.
“Me too. But just the one.” Tucker dribbled melted butter onto the last half of his waffle. “I haven’t heard from Austin yet, but I was going to give him a call after this, for an update.”
“No need,” Davey said as she pushed her way through the swinging doors into the front of the bar. “Charley was over there ’til nearly two in the morning. I’m sure she can give you both the inside scoop.”
Tucker’s brows rose as his gaze slid toward me.
“Don’t,” I snapped. “Davey helped Bishop get shitfaced, so I took him home.”
“She also took dinner to Austin,” my sister added. I twisted in my seat to glare at her as she set up her laptop at the bar and began opening the register.
Davey gave me a sugar-sweet smile. Evidently that was my comeuppance for sticking my nose in her business.
“Austin Graham is hyper-competent, even-tempered, and he has access to police resources,” I said, sitting straighter as I leaned into my professional voice. “Titus agrees that he’d make a valuable addition to the Pride, and he’s made a budget line addition specifically for that recruitment effort. So while our top priority is obviously finding Yvette’s killer or killers, we are also officially pursuing Austin Graham as an employee of the zone.”
Davey snorted. “Yeah. All potential bosses take their hot male prospects dinner in the middle of the night. Nothing at all to do with those eyes…”
Tucker chuckled. “She’s not wrong about the eyes.”
I ignored them both. “But to answer the original question, no, Austin didn’t have any luck. And I’m betting if we don’t find anything today, he’ll be done with our ‘multiple victims’ theory.” A cop needed evidence to build a case, and if we couldn’t give him any, I was worried that he’d revert to his original suspect. Who was snoring in my basement at that very moment. “So…what’d you find?”
Tucker reached into his back pocket, then he slid a folded piece of printer paper across the table toward me. “Emily Forrester. She was twenty-six when she died almost three years ago, of a non-specific infection. I found an old Facebook post from her mother, saying Emily had died within hours of developing a high fever out of the blue. By the time they got her to the hospital, she was non-responsive. She never woke up. She left behind a twenty-seven-year-old husband, but no kids.”
