He pulled the two six-packs out, one of Coke for him, one of cherry Fresca for her. They were cold.
He popped a can from each, set them aside and muttered, “Be back.”
He took the rest to her fridge, shoved them in and then he was back.
She was again on her ass, her hand wrapped around a pack of paper plates held up in the air.
“Dude,” was all she said.
“What?” was his reply.
“Nothing says environmentally unfriendly more than a paper plate, except,” she gave him a wicked grin, “a paper towel.”
He sat on the edge of the bed and started pulling off his boots. “That’s just plain not true.”
“I’m a liberal artist. They find out I use paper plates, they won’t ask me to play at concerts to save the whales and shit.”
He looked to her. “You play those concerts?”
She was still grinning, though it was no longer wicked. “No.”
“Then you’re good.”
“I am but only because I have stoneware on order and might get a kitchen in the next century, so soon we won’t need to resort to paper plates,” she muttered. “And just for the record, I do want the whales to be saved…in a big way.”
He looked to her, smiling and twisting fully into the bed as she unwrapped sandwiches, putting them on paper plates.
“Speakin’ to that, not the whales, the kitchen, called Max,” he shared. “Told him progress on your house was suspended today due to celebratory circumstances.”
She waggled her brows. “Did you tell him all the celebratory circumstances?”
“No, but I’m gettin’ he gets ’em anyway seein’ as he said his wife Nina wants us to pick a date to go to The Rooster. That’s us, not you. They’re payin’,” he told her. “Client dinner. Max can write it off. Nina can look you over. And we can eat a fuckin’ great steak.”
“I’m in as soon as my black eye is totally gone.”
“I’ll let him know.” Deke took the plate she gave him with the sandwich buried under an upended Big Grab of Chili Cheese Fritos. “Get your calls done?”
She’d taken a big bite, was nodding and chewing.
Once she swallowed, she said, “Lacey and Mr. T. Mr. T and my publicist are on it with the LA cops so they can put a lid on anything leaking about this having anything to do with me. Mr. T is good at that shit. I don’t wanna know and he doesn’t share his secrets, but I figure he’s right now deep in the throes of palm greasing.”
“Good news, gypsy,” Deke replied.
“And Chace called too,” she went on. “He says he heard word from your Decker friend as well as the cops in LA. During autopsy, they’re gonna do a DNA test on Caswell so it can be compared to the DNA they got from me. That way Chace says all the T’s are crossed and I can breathe easy. Though he said it’s highly likely I can already breathe easy because I might not have seen the guy’s face, but I gave a physical description of his body, and that all matches. Not to mention the other stuff,” she mumbled her last sentence before taking another big bite of sandwich.
“That’s good too.”
Her phone beeped with a text, she looked at it, her brows drew together and she dropped her sandwich on her plate, quickly wiped her hands on a napkin and nabbed it.
“Fuck,” she murmured.
“What?” he asked.
Her thumbs flew over the screen and she didn’t answer him.
“What?” he clipped.
He heard her text go and she looked at him.
“Lacey,” she stated.
“Doesn’t answer my question,” he informed her.
“And Anton Rojas.”
She said no more, her phone beeped again, she looked down at it and immediately started replying to the text.
“Gypsy,” he growled his warning.
“Two seconds, honey,” she muttered, hit send and looked to him. “Anton Rojas. A black, sharp-dressed man.”
Deke’s shoulders went straight. “You think you know the guy with Bianca?”
She shook her head. “No, I didn’t. But Lacey thinks she does.”
Another beep came from her phone and he exercised patience with difficulty as she read and returned the text.
The second he heard hers go, he grunted, “Explain.”
She again gave him her attention.
“Okay, Anton, Tony, he’s…well, he’s a good guy. We knew him years ago. Years and years. Like, we were in our early twenties when he was in our lives.”
“And?” Deke pushed.
“And, he met Lacey first. Head over heels she went for him. He was totally her type. They’d been dating a few weeks before she introduced him to us and that is not her MO. We always got feedback from the posse before we went in deep with a guy. She did not do this. She was way in deep before Bianca or I ever laid eyes on him.”