Page 30 of No Safe Place

“Is it that obvious, Daisy?” I said, grinning back.

“I figured with that nervous look on your face, it’s either that or you’re applying for a job. Corona to start as usual?”

“Yes, please, Daisy, and when the lady gets here, please make sure you keep them coming. You know, for my nerves,” I said.

The bar she walked off toward was a big, elaborate, darkly varnished horseshoe-shaped affair with all the booze bottles on an island in the middle of it. The bartender behind it, who was also the owner of The Forge, was a tall, lanky, middle-aged man named Scotty.

Scotty had the look of an aging hippie with his long gray hair and wore aviator-style eyeglasses along with a defeated expression of a guy who seemed suspicious that maybe life had passed him by. In front of him sat about a half a dozen regular Joe six-packs staring up at a big flat screen on the back wall where a hockey pregame for the Carolina Hurricanes versus the Pittsburgh Penguins was underway.

As my eyes drifted into the restaurant’s dining room, I saw at its biggest table there were a half dozen rough-and-tumble guys laughing and carrying on. I’d seen this group three or four times before. Daisy had told me they were construction workers who were staying in town for the last month, refurbishing the bridge as well as retrofitting a huge modern hydroelectric generator into one of the old Beckford Tool Factory’s brick mills beside it.

“What’s up with the dinner party with the rowdies?” I said when Daisy came back with my beer.

“I think one of them is leaving or something so they’re having a going-away party.”

“Are they done with the project?” I said.

“Getting close it seems,” Daisy said, “which is making Scotty more depressed than usual. With the way these roughnecks drink, he was thinking of retiring to Palm Beach.”

As the men continued to laugh and make fun of each other, I found myself smiling over at their masculine chop-busting merriment. Like most former cops and soldiers, having spent most of my life working with other men in tight-knit units, one thing I really did miss in my retirement was the goofing around and camaraderie.

With nothing else to do as I sipped my beer, I found myself imagining that the men at the table and I were all in the same SEAL unit together and I decided to come up with call signs for them.

The one with the most serious face on him who was probably the foreman was a wiry medium-sized man of about fifty with short spiky red hair and a reddish mustache. That was Sonic.

Next to him was a thin, long-faced sort of poetic-looking Hispanic guy with a goatee who was maybe thirty. I noticed he favored plaid shirts so he was Plaid Don Juan.

The oldest of them was a stocky white guy in his midfifties with a buzz cut and glasses and a graying beard. He always sat there with his arms folded, drinking beer and laughing softly at everything. He seemed to exude more intelligence and competence than Sonic so maybe he was an engineer or something? I dubbed him Papa Bear.

The bald thirtyish guy in a neon orange hoodie next to him looked like he worked out a lot and had a loudmouth New York street accent. I dubbed him Brooklyn.

And last but not least was a lanky and gangly, scruffy blue-eyed pothead sort of guy of thirty or so with longish brown hair. He was Shaggy, of course.

The farewell dinner must have been going on for quite a bit because the gang seemed even drunker than the last time I’d seen them. Which was saying something.

I took another hit of my own cerveza mas fina then decided to check my watch again.

It was 8:15 now, I saw with a frown.

Colleen was running a little late.

Or had she fallen asleep or something?

That would suck, I thought. Really suck. If she was asleep then that would be it. Tomorrow obviously she would be done with her work up here and be gone.

I looked at my watch again.

Was my bucket list going to go wanting after all?

27

A Mormon temple flashed by outside the window. And then a driving range. A red light ahead made Colleen pause, but then it went green and she hammered it alongside a cornfield, picking up the pace back toward the center of Beckford.

They were in Jodi’s car now, a new Mercedes-AMG C 43 sedan. It was Colleen’s idea to do the quick switch back at the hotel parking lot as Travers was no doubt putting an APB out on her rental.

Jodi was a nervous wreck so she had insisted that Colleen drive.

She wasn’t the only one, Colleen thought as she took the nimble silver Merc up to seventy.

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