“Those charges were dropped.” Jarret rubbed his forehead. “I’ll ask Kyle about his meetings.”
Hungry, and assured Jarret would be curious enough to follow through on Kyle, I buttered a slice of warm sourdough bread and popped a piece in my mouth, crunching on the savory combination. “Did the police let you go back home yet?”
“Tomorrow. I don’t plan on living there much longer. That house has been bad luck for me ever since you moved out. I met with a real estate agent today. I’m going to sell it,” he said. “Now I have to decide where I want to live.”
“Were you with a Realtor when I called this afternoon?” I said.
“No. I spent a few hours with a friend.”
“I thought you said business associate.”
He took a drink of his beer. “Do we have to talk about this? You haven’t been interested in my social life lately.”
“Friend.” No gender, just “friend.” What was he holding back? “You rarely talk about your friends. Were you with one of your teammates?”
“I hung out with someone I don’t see very often. No one special. There’s nothing between us.”
“An old friend? Like an old, old friend? From your hometown?”
He rolled his eyes. “God. You’re not going to stop, are you?”
“Nope.” I ripped off another piece of bread and took a bite.
“She’s a girl I dated in high school, Liz. She moved out here recently and called me before I left for spring training. I took her out to dinner, curious to see how she held up. She was my first…” He wagged his eyebrows. “You know.”
I gulped my bread. Moved here recently? Margaret Smith left the Bull Valley house in December. Dodger spring training began in March. His “hometown friend” fit right into the schedule. “First girl you had sex with?”
“Uh-huh.” He winked. “My taste has improved since high school.”
“What’s her name? Janie? Mary? Margaret?” I watched his face for a flicker of recognition.
He grinned at me. “Are you jealous, Lizzie-Bear?”
“Not even close.”
“Then what’s the big deal?” he said. “Trust me, I’m not interested in her. She’s not my type. Forget about her. Let’s talk about something else.”
Our waiter came down the aisle, balancing a loaded tray and placed it on a stand. “Hot plates,” he said, handling each dish with a napkin as he set our dinners in front of us. “Can I get you anything else? Refills?”
We said no and thanked him. Jarret sliced into his steak and took a bite with relish. I picked at my fish, more interested in the woman from McHenry than in eating.
“How nice of her to contact you after all these years,” I said. “It must be fun to reconnect with someone from the old hometown. Do you see her often?”
“Nope. I’m on the road half the time and at the stadium almost every night when I’m here. Hell, you probably see her more than I do. She works out at Game On in the morning. A short brunette. Plain. On the chubby side.”
Jarret dated models. His idea of chubby was any woman with hips.
“What’s her name?”
“Gretchen. Gretchen Kressler,” he said.
I straightened back, curious. “I know Gretchen. In fact, I saw her at the game Tuesday night. Did you give her the tickets?”
“Yeah. How did you guess?”
“Gretchen told everyone at the gym that her boyfriend got her tickets.”
He groaned. “Geez. Why would she say that? She knows I don’t have those kinds of feelings for her. I warned her not to talk about me around there. The tabloids bug me enough the way it is. What else is she telling people about me?”
“I don’t know. I’ve only seen her at Game On a few times and once at the ballpark. To be fair, she didn’t call you by name when she talked about the tickets. And she still didn’t admit to knowing you when I bumped into her at the game and introduced myself.”
“She didn’t recognize you? She saw your picture at the house. I told her all about you.”
“Big difference between seeing me in person and seeing me in a photo. Did Gretchen know you were with Laycee Monday and Tuesday night?”
He snorted. “What I do and who I see on a daily basis is none of Gretchen’s business. Kyle is the only one who knew I left with Laycee on Tuesday, and I didn’t tell him I saw her Monday. Why?”
I put my fork down and covered my half-eaten fish with my napkin. “I wonder if Gretchen is the jealous type. You might not have feelings for her, but she called you her boyfriend at least once. A small-town woman reconnecting with her first love, now a Major League Baseball player, sounds like the plot of a romance novel to me. Tell me you’re not having sex with her, Jarret.”
He shrugged, curling his mouth into a bad-boy grin. “Maybe once. For old times’ sake.”
Like I had to ask. Although I detested Laycee for sleeping with him in Atlanta, she had given me a tangible excuse to escape from his street-cat morals.
“Is Kressler a married or maiden name?”