I sipped again and opened the clutch, pulling out my phone.
I looked to the screen, and outside some Facebook notices, there was nothing, and I found it weird I was attacked in my kitchen last night and this morning there was nothing.
Then again, it wasn’t yet ten o’clock. Maybe news hadn’t made the rounds.
But I should call Lou and share things with her before she heard anything from anyone else.
Shaw returned with some pills, two white ones (I didn’t tell him four would be better, I didn’t want to concern him).
I juggled phone and mug, he dropped them in my upturned hand, and I expressed my gratitude before I said, “I should probably call Lou. If she hears before I tell her, she might not like that much.”
He nodded. “I get that. But just to say, I heard Dad talkin’ to Hal last night and he said he wanted a lid on this. Lotta stuff got ’round about that Calloway thing and he knows his deputies talk to their husbands, wives, girlfriends, whatever. It’s inevitable, but he wasn’t a big fan of it.”
I could guess that since he hadn’t shared even a single detail with me.
“It’s mostly Hal, who can be a douche,” Shaw informed me. “But it can sometimes be Larry. He’s a good guy. But that Calloway thing was big and he was, like, I don’t know . . . I guess frustrated they haven’t nailed him yet. Anyway, they had to ask for the public’s help because they have to find him. I mean, everyone knows the guy was insane just shootin’ somebody, but he’s like a drifter, and they have to find him before he drifts away for, like, ever.”
“Yeah,” I said softly.
“Dad wasn’t mean about Hal and Larry,” Shaw assured me quickly. “He didn’t bitch . . . I mean, complain or anything. I can just tell when he gets quiet and into his head, and his mouth gets tight when folks ask him about stuff they’re not supposed to know. But he gets that this situation is, you know, extreme.”
“It’s definitely extreme, honey,” I whispered.
He nodded. “Well, you should call Lou and I need to call Wendy. She was comin’ over to hang with us today but Dad asked me if I could ask her if she wouldn’t so, you know, you could be comfortable after what happened, and since you’re gettin’ to know us all at the same time.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I told him. “I can . . . go to Lou’s or something.”
Shaw grinned big. “No way Dad’ll let that happen. He didn’t say anything but I can tell he’s super-miffed some guy slammed your face into your kitchen island, but he’s still real happy you’re here and gettin’ the chance to get to know all the Drakes. And anyway, Greta, he said I can go for a few hours over to Wendy’s this afternoon so it’s all cool.”
He’s still real happy you’re here and gettin’ the chance to get to know all the Drakes.
God.
Sweet.
“Just as long as you’re not disappointed you don’t get to spend a day with your girl,” I replied.
“No. Totally. It’s all cool.”
It was then I grinned at him.
He grinned back and muttered, “Gonna go call Wendy. Be back,” and with that, he rounded the corner beyond the kitchen and disappeared.
I threw back the pills then walked my phone and mug around the dining room table to stand at the big window that faced out to Hix’s stairs to stand in the sun while I called Lou.
I took a sip of coffee, noting that it was good the owners of the apartment complex planted those trees because now that they were tall enough, they kinda hid how ugly the units were.
But I froze while doing that when I saw my Cherokee was now parked next to the silver car.
While I stared at it, it hit me that Sheriff Drake must have deduced I’d dropped my keys where I’d fallen on the stairs. He found them and he moved my car from its place butting the trees and parked crazily to the space closer to his apartment.
It was just a few feet closer.
But it was closer.
It probably didn’t need to be moved.
But he’d moved it.
And this told me that Hixon Drake wanted the people he cared about to have the premier parking spots (such as they were, but still).
He also wanted comfortable furniture his kids could lounge on, even in a cramped, not-very-attractive apartment. Good mattresses for his daughters to sleep on. Washcloths in colors they liked. Fluffy rugs in front of the bathroom sink.
His life had imploded and it had taken his kids right along with it.
But he bought fluffy rugs for them to stand on when they brushed their teeth, and pink towels for his girls, stocked his first-aid shelf with anything they might need and let his daughter shove all her girl stuff in the remaining space.
I knew something about living the life you thought you’d be living for the rest of it, the life you wanted to be living, having that end and having to start from scratch, and I’d only had Andy to look after.
Not three growing kids.
I thought about Corinne finding out about us, Hix learning his son was done with his mother, knowing he had to find a way to do the right thing about their deteriorating relationship, even not having the desire to do that, these at the same time investigating a murder. All this happening while needing to build something stable for his children and rebuild his own life with the additional complication of meeting a woman he connected with in a way that couldn’t be ignored but had to have been confusing.
None of this made Hix treating me the way he did okay.
But being in that apartment. Seeing my car where it was. Standing by a nice dining room table that Hix probably couldn’t afford but he bought because he likely didn’t want to spend a lot of money getting a place that cost a fortune that he thought he wouldn’t be staying in long, but his kids would have to be there however long it took, and he was going to make it as nice as possible. And knowing all the rest . . .
It made me understand why he lost it.
I dropped my head to my phone, called Lou and put it to my ear.
“Yo, girlfriend,” she answered. “What’s up?”
“I need to tell you something and say first, I’m okay, totally okay, so when I tell you, I don’t want you to freak out.”
“Oh shit,” she muttered.
I decided just to lay it out and brace for any fallout, so I launched right in, telling her about the night before, doing it with my eyes to my car and forgetting the fact she was a mother, a business owner and Bill’s wife so, even if the news was extreme, she wasn’t a freaking-out kind of chick.
Thus, when I was done talking, all she did was ask, “Oh God, babe, are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’ve learned a broken nose feels a lot worse than a black eye but I just took some pills and I’ll be all right.”
“Do you need me to cancel your clients tomorrow?”
I shook my head regardless she couldn’t see it. “No. I think I’ll be okay to go in. I have to go to the hospital in the afternoon to have the dressing changed, but I’ll call those clients and switch them around.”
“And you say Hixon got the guy?”
“Yeah, they caught him.”
“Good,” she murmured, then, “And you’re there? With him? And his kids?”