Page 31 of Brewbies
Straight to business, this one.
Darby bent to crank the handle of the water hookup pipe jutting out of the ground behind her strategically placed flower planter. After a groan and a hiss, the collapsible garden hose began to fill, drawing with it the memory of a certain part of Ethan’s anatomy as he’d reached across to buckle her seatbelt.
“Did you come to offer your condolences?”
“My assistance.”
Darby lifted the hose’s brass spray nozzle and glanced at Fawkes over her shoulder. “Are you volunteering to crumple Ethan into a sheriff wad and stuff him into a sewer grate?”
“I’m officially retired from that kind of assistance,” Fawkes said.
“I have plenty of other ideas.” Darby twisted the spray tip from “could probably peel flesh” to “rain shower” and aimed it at the next pot. “But some of them require specialty equipment.”
“Like cement galoshes?”
Darby arched an eyebrow at him, wondering whether his question was a general nod to her East Coast roots, or a hint at specialty research on his part.
“Like Vaseline and a nine iron,” she said. “Or KY and a pitching wedge. I’m not picky.”
An enigmatic almost-smirk tugged at one corner of Fawkes’ lips. “As much as I’d like to see that scenario play out, sporting equipment isn’t your most effective weapon in a place like Townsend Harbor.”
“Slander?” A guess based on her own recent experience. “Blackmail?”
“Information.”
“Like when the tides are coming in so you can figure out when to dump a body?”
“Like who stands to gain the most from your loss,” Fawkes said cryptically.
“The whole goddamn town, apparently,” Darby muttered as she hauled the hose to the next planter.
“Or the person who tried to get his grubby hands on this land before you bought it.”
Darby’s stream snapped off as her thumb slipped from the grip. “Is this information you have?”
From some unknowable environ on his hulking form, Fawkes produced a manila envelope and held it out to her in one massive paw.
Darby slung the hose over the back of an Adirondack chair and picked her way over to him, feeling a little ridiculous about her choice of footwear in his presence. With one pointed fingernail, she flipped open the envelope’s flap and pulled out the paper within. She made it halfway down the page before a prickling chill stole down her spine.
“Roy Dobson?”
Fawkes nodded. “Kind of odd that Roy Dobson frequents your establishment despite being one of the most vocal members of Townsend Harbor’s self-appointed morality police, no?”
“I mean, yeah. But then, odd is kind of Roy’s thing, right? Cady told me all about his creeping around the bookstore like some kind of discount bin poltergeist.”
“That’s not all he’s been doing.”
Darby looked up from the document in her hands, studying Fawkes for a moment before he spoke.
“Always struck me as strange that he was so willing to be Caryn Townsend’s fall guy when there’s no proof that money ever changed hands.”
“Maybe she paid him with nature’s credit card,” Darby said, tucking the paper back into the envelope and sandwiching it beneath her arm.
Fawkes’ heavy brow lowered. “Or maybe Roy wanted the leverage.”
“For what purpose?”
“The Townsend family has steered Townsend Harbor like a private yacht for centuries. And yet a guy as universally disliked as Roy seems to have his fingers in just about every pie in town.”
