“Can I go with you when you introduce him to Tammy and tell her he’s working for you?” Frank asked cryptically.
“Why?” Wade asked.
“So he has backup when Tammy tries to murder him.” Frank was casual in his reply, but the sinister grin told me everything I needed to know.
“Shit,” Jack said. “This is gonna complicate things.”
“Actually,” Archer said, leaning back in his chair as though he was working through a new plan in his head,“I think this could work in our favor.”
“How?” Jack asked.
Archer held up his hand. “Hear me out. The whole point of our plan was to have him sit in the restaurant and pretend to be a customer to see if he noticed something, right? Check out the regulars and employees, see if anyone acted suspiciously. Well, now he has the perfect excuse. He’s seeing Tammy.”
“Not if she kills him first,” Frank said, shaking his head back and forth.
“She’s not gonna kill him,” Vince shot back.
“Son, if she finds out you hired him to scope out potential people at the bar—potentialemployees—she’s gonna think he was there to spy onher. Add in the fact that they slept together… She’s gonna think he did it to get close to her.”
“Why would she think that?” Axel asked.
“Because it’s exactly what any undercover cop or private investigator would do if they suspected her of being involved,” Archer explained, and his history in law enforcement meant he understood this better than most.
Shit. He was right.
And the mumbled curses around me showed that the others agreed.
In my defense, I hadn’t known the bar was the place that was robbed, but Tammy didn’t know that.
She absolutely might think the worst. While I didn’t know her well, I had definitely picked up that she was not only inherently suspicious, but she was also smart.
“Then we talk to her and tell her the plan,” Wade said. “We need someone to be in the bar and see if anyone acts suspiciously or if we missed something. All the regular customers know who we are. They won’t know him. If he’s there under the guise of dating Tammy, people won’t suspect him, and they may slip up or he may catch something inadvertently. We’d also like you to interview all the employees to see if they noticed anything unusual.”
They could do that themselves, which meant there was more to it than that.
“And see if any of them look like they could be the suspect.” It was more of a statement rather than a question that I had asked, but Wade nodded in response.
“How long can you stay?” Vince asked me.
“I’ve got a hotel through Sunday night and a plane ticket for the next afternoon, but I can adjust if you need me to,” I told them, having bought a fully refundable flight just in case.
“Don’t waste money on a hotel. Come stay with Susan and me,” Frank offered.
I appreciated the offer and likely would have taken it, but there was a part of me that hoped to have another night with Tammy, and I’d like to keep my hotel as an option just in case.
“I’m already paid up for these next few nights, but we can figure something out if I have to stay,” I said, hoping to appease him.
“I’ll go over to the Watering Hole and watch the bar while you talk to Tammy,” Axel suggested. “Plus, I have a princess cake from Stella’s bakery that I can give her to soften her up a bit before you talk to her.”
All the men in the room seemed to nod in agreement to that.
“Great idea,” Jack concurred. “Take Ruthie with you, too, so she’s got a friend when she comes back.”
I wanted to laugh, but no one else in the room was. It seemed weird to me that they felt the need to not only bribe Tammy with food—although I needed to make a mental note of this bakery Tammy was so fond of—but also send over a friend for support.
I had met Ruthie an hour prior when I arrived. She was the receptionist for Ranger Shield Security and Jack’s wife. She was sitting in the front lobby and greeted me along with a woman named Cat—Vince’s wife.
Maybe I had vastly underestimated Tammy and her propensity for violence and spite.
