Page 29 of Grave Stone

“Morning,” Stevie rasped when she stumbled into the kitchen. She looked like hell.

“Did you get any sleep last night?”

“A few hours. Shit finally settled down around four,” she said as she made herself a cup of coffee.

“Are you sure your stomach can handle coffee?” I asked.

“If there’s anything left after last night, I want it out.” Picking up her mug, she joined us at the table. “Let me see your wedding ring.”

“For crying out loud, it is not a wedding ring.”

“Hadley said it was. I’ll be the tiebreaker. Let me see it.”

“It’s upstairs.”

“How are you going to barter for your safety if you don’t have it on you?” she asked.

“I have it, and I can produce it. That’s what’s important.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Then you can believe it later because I am not going upstairs to get it right now.”

“You seem snippy. Maybe you should have more coffee.”

I wasn’t snippy; I was fucking tired because I had gotten little sleep, but more coffee was always a welcome suggestion.

“When you two are finished bickering, there’s something on the news you should see,” Hadley called from the living room.

“Local attorney Glenn Warner has been missing since Friday. If you see him or have any information on his whereabouts, please contact Detective Yates with the Palmetto Harbor Police Department or Glenn’s girlfriend, Tori Mustard, at the phone numbers listed on your screen.”

“Fucking great. What if the police want to talk to me?”

“You tell them the truth until the part about chasing him out of the parking lot. Tell them he was gone by the time you got to your car. You drove around some but went home when you couldn’t find him.”

“But I have my wallet.”

“Glenn stole the wrong one.”

“I have two?”

“Yes, you have two. One for cards and cash and one for coins. You realized he took the one with the coins after you got home, which is why you didn’t report it. We really need to work on your lying skills.”

“It’d be easier to say I didn’t have lunch with him.”

“How is becoming a person of interest in a missing person case easier?” she asked, but didn’t wait for me to answer. “If they haven’t already, they’ll check his phone records and see that he’d recently been in contact with you.”

Great. In addition to loan sharks and an outlaw motorcycle club, I might have landed on the police’s radar too.

Fucking Glenn and his fucking bullshit.

“I broke up with him over a year ago, and now he’s dead. How is he still causing problems for me?”

“It’s not a problem. We don’t know if they’ll contact you. I was just saying they might. If they do, now you know what to say.”

“That was a less sucky pep talk.”

“I’m not here to coddle you.”