Chump Change (31 page)

There he was, grinning at me. Keith Taylor in his handy-dandy, brand-new Asotin County deputy’s uniform. I opened the gate. He drove an unmarked county car right up to the side of the house and got out. We shook hands.

“Don’t you look slick,” I said.

“They sent me over to help bring Rockland’s body back,” he said.

“How’s the ladies?” I asked.

He went on for a minute and a half about Ginny. Capped it off by saying they were thinking about getting married.

“Irene says hi,” he told me after he’d wound down a bit.

“Give her my regards,” I said.

I gestured toward the front door. “You want to come in?”

He shook his head. “I gotta get back,” he said. “Got a shift in the morning.”

“Nice seein ya then.”

“Hey . . . uh . . .” he started to say and then stopped.

“What?”

“I wanted to thank you,” he said.

“For what?”

“For whatever it was you did to get me this job.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Bullshit,” he said. “I don’t know how you did it, but you did.”

“You were the best man for the job,” I insisted.

“Thanks,” he said.

I didn’t say anything.

He started for the car, changed his mind, and came back. We hugged. One of those prickly porcupine hugs common to men, but a hug nonetheless.

“Drive carefully,” I said.

I stood on the front steps and watched as he drove out through the gate and disappeared from view. I pushed the button, closed the gate, turned the security system on, and walked back inside the house.

Rachel was in L.A. at a convention, so I was taking the opportunity to catch up on all the little tasks I hadn’t gotten to in the past couple of weeks.

I was in the laundry room, going through the pockets of everything, when I came upon a little white envelope in the back pocket of a pair of jeans. The one from Jules’s joint. A lot had happened since then. I’d forgotten about it. I opened the envelope and pulled out the plain white card.

There was only one line. I read it three times before slipping the card back into the envelope. It said:
Maybe we should talk
. That’s all. Just
Maybe we should talk
and
Rebecca
on the bottom.

I picked Rachel up at the airport at four-thirty the following afternoon. Traffic was murderous, and she claimed to be starving, so I followed the arrival ramp around and pulled into 13 Coins, figuring to wait out the rush hour over cocktails and conversation.

We were seated in a brown leatherette booth about fifteen feet tall. Real retro sixties. Gave you the sense of having the place to yourselves.

“How was the conference?” I asked.

“Same old, same old.”

“Then why go?”

She shrugged and finished her Tom Collins. I caught the waiter’s eye and ordered another round. “Oh . . .” she said, “I get to see people I went to college with. I get to hang out in the bar with the girls.” She thought about it as the waiter brought our drinks.

“I get to be Harvey and Susan’s girl Rachel, more than I do most of the time.”

I lifted my glass. We clinked.

“Nice to have you back,” I said.

She set her glass on the table.

“So . . . how’s things on your end? You get everything settled?”

“Back to status quo,” I said.

“You want to tell me about what happened to Gordy?”

“No,” I said.

She nodded that she understood.

“What about you?” she asked.

“What about me?”

“You get over your money guilt?”

“Moved completely past it,” I said.

She smiled. “Really?”

“I’m giving up guilt for Lent.”

Her smile got bigger, so I kept talking.

“I’ve decided that money isn’t important, unless you don’t have any, and that anybody who says money won’t buy you happiness just doesn’t know where to shop.”

She did that searching-my-eyes-with-hers thing she does.

I don’t want to think about what she might have found in there, because I was feeling like I needed to tell her about Irene. Fortunately for both of us, she read my mind.

She reached across the table and placed a long manicured finger over my lips.

“I don’t have to know everything,” she said.

“You don’t?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

She laughed. “Because
you
don’t know everything.”

I loved it when she laughed.

Acknowledgments

To my agent, Lisa Erbach Vance, for hanging in there when the light at the end of the tunnel looked like it might turn out to be New Jersey.

About the Author

Photo © Skye Moody, 2004

G.M. Ford is the author of seven other novels in the Leo Waterman series—
Who in Hell is Wanda Fuca?
,
Cast in Stone
,
The Bum’s Rush
,
Slow Burn, Last Ditch
,
The Deader the Better
, and
Thicker than Water
. He has also penned the Frank Corso mystery series and the stand-alone thriller
Nameless Night
. He has been nominated for the Shamus, Anthony, and Lefty awards, among others. He lives and writes in Seattle, Washington.