“Huh?” Griffin asked.
“Scott is taking his girlfriend and our money, and he’s leaving the country. I’m going to fucking kill him.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
RUBY
We sat in Dak’s bar trying to grapple with what Cricket had discovered that afternoon. It wasn’t easy to catch hold of. Maybe because if Scott was colluding with Donner Walker to bilk people out of millions of dollars, Ty had to know what was going on. Which meant that the guy who’d romanced me for the past month was worse than a douche. He was a slimy, no-good pilferer of innocent people’s bank accounts.
How depressing.
“I don’t know what to do with this information. How can I get the money back? It’s probably now in a foreign bank,” Cricket said for the third time, jarring me out of how this whole hinky business was affecting my dating life. My poor boss now knew that not only was her husband cheating on her, but he was cheating his friends and customers.
How very depressing.
“We’re going to figure out what to do, Cricket. Juke said he’d be down in a minute. He’ll have some ideas or maybe know someone we can contact who can investigate what Donner Walker and Scott are up to.” I slid the glass of wine that the waitress, Shirley, had set on the table toward Cricket. I knew that alcohol didn’t solve problems, but Cricket had been vacillating between flushed pink with rage and white with horror. In this case, the wine would probably help.
Griffin had excused himself to go to his office to check on things. He’d left his bike outside, and I had marveled that Cricket had climbed on that death trap with him. I had a hard time reconciling the woman straddling a hog behind my cousin with my prissy boss who always sat with her knees together. I kept trying to picture them roaring up North Market, rattling across the Caddo Lake bridge, drinking longnecks at the Channel Marker, but that image escaped me.
Dak stood behind the bar, casting glances my way occasionally. There was something about a handsome guy behind a bar, towel flung over his shoulder, biceps singing a siren song, that made a girl look thrice.
“You’ve looked at him, like, ten times,” Cricket said, taking a gulp of chardonnay. “You have something going on?”
“No. I mean, we’re friends. We used to . . .” I stopped because I couldn’t really answer the question because I didn’t know what we were. He’d come over and watched American Idol with me before saying good night and disappearing into the darkness of my driveway. And then we had texted a few times throughout the day about who we thought would get voted off that night. This was something we used to do when we were dating in high school. Both of us had loved watching the talent show and choosing our favorites, then calling in votes and actively campaigning our friend groups to get more votes. And we had made crazy bets. Like if someone got voted off who one of us swore wouldn’t, there was a penalty of buying a Coke or wearing an awkward shirt to school. We’d had a lot of fun with our affectionate rivalry for those years we’d been together. Silly children.
But what was Dak to me now?
I was afraid to examine it too greatly. My heart had always been on the table when it came to Dakota Roberts, and I wasn’t sure I could stand having it sliced and diced again, even though deep, deep, deep down I longed for him. But I wasn’t ready to do anything more than have a cautious friendship, if even that.
Still, I couldn’t ignore that it had been easy to suggest that Griffin and Cricket meet me at the Bullpen after I closed Printemps, which I did early, at Cricket’s direction. Honestly, Tuesday was a super slow day anyway. We’d only had a few looky-loos who purchased nominal items and one sale of a bed from the online offerings. Both Cricket and I had been distracted and needed to attend to posting new items and prepping for the Junior League’s Spring Fling shopping event, where we would house a booth. That was a month away, but time was flying.
On the way to the bar, I had put in a call to Juke, telling myself that was the real reason I had chosen Dak’s bar as our meeting place—for ease. Cricket needed Juke’s help with this new potential criminal element, and to my relief, my cousin actually sounded sober and interested. He said he was out working and should be back at the close of the day. He said he would join us at the bar and that I should tell Dak to make fresh coffee. Good sign.
Cricket set the wineglass on the table. “You used to what? Did you date the bartender?”
“Well, actually, he’s the owner of this bar, but yeah, we dated when I was in high school. After my dad left and my mom started having some issues, well, lots of issues, we broke up. Dak was going to LSU on a baseball scholarship, and I still had a year left in high school. Just made sense.”
“Oh, your father left?”
Here we go. Perfect opportunity to come clean. It was beyond time to clue Cricket into who she was dealing with. We had formed a sort of friendship, and I was afraid of jeopardizing that—and of losing my job—but I didn’t want to hide my past any longer. “Yeah, my dad was sort of at the end of his rope. Not necessarily a breakdown but close enough. My family has a bit of a reputation in North Caddo Parish. You probably wouldn’t know them, but most out here do. The Balthazars are fringe people.”
“Fringe people?”
I cleared my throat. “Like on the fringe of being a crime family. I mean, not like cartel or anything. We just have a certain reputation. Or used to. My uncles and cousins sometimes ran afoul of the law, but we’ve mostly straightened up. And my dad, he just, well, I guess he just needed to be away from the temptation. So he left when I was a junior in high school. It sort of set me off a little. I may have picked up some bad family habits.”
Cricket leaned forward, her manicured nails brushing against her wineglass. “Like getting in trouble?”
“Yeah, I raised a little hell in high school, ended up dropping out after I skipped so many classes that I was failing most of them. I smoked a lot of weed, sold some to kids at the school. Got picked up for being an accessory to stealing cars.” I couldn’t keep the shame from my voice. The girl I once was had faded away, but she’d been there. She’d been angry, reckless, and very much a Balthazar.
“Oh. Well, it’s obvious you’ve found yourself. Look at you, in school with a job and a future waiting for you to grab. I saw the new dresses, by the way. They are fantastic, Ruby.”