His glare softened as he looked down at her, and I was amazed for the hundredth time that this deadly man, well into his forties, had such a soft spot for this twenty-year-old woman.

“See you tomorrow, Carly,” Lula said as she headed out the door.

Ruth glanced up from the table she was bussing. “Bring that baby around,” she called out cheerfully. “We need to see her. It’s been too long.”

Lula gave her a surprised look, which transformed into a wide smile. “Okay.”

I was surprised too, mostly because Ruth didn’t usually show any interest in Lula’s personal life.

As soon as the door closed behind them, I walked over to Ruth. “What was that about?”

She shrugged but didn’t look at me. “We haven’t seen her baby in weeks.”

I put a hand on my hip. “Since when do you have a thing for babies?”

She hesitated, then leaned closer and whispered, “Franklin’s makin’ noise about havin’ one.”

He’d also been saying they were going to buy a house, but so far that hadn’t happened. Whenever I asked Ruth about it, she always said they hadn’t found the right one yet and she didn’t intend to settle.

I stared at her in shock. “What? How do you feel about that?”

She shrugged again. “I’m not sure, but I’m not gettin’ any younger, you know? I guess my biological clock’s a-tickin’.”

“So you want to spend time with Lula’s baby to help you decide?”

“Yeah, I thought I’d hold Beezus and try her on for size.”

“You mean Beatrice?” I said, holding back a laugh.

She waved me off. “Beezus. Beatrice. Same difference.”

My brow lifted. “Lula and Bingham would probably beg to differ.”

A solo customer walked in, so I broke off to wait on him. After I placed the guy’s order with Tiny, Ruth and I headed behind the bar to count out the tip money from the lunch rush.

“We need to find a new waitress,” I said to her quietly. “This is gettin’ to be too much.”

She stopped counting the cash in front of her, then turned to me. “I haven’t minded, to be honest. I think part of me is afraid you’ll take off as soon as we hire someone.”

I snorted. “I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me.” Of course, technically speaking, I could leave. Last fall, I’d only stayed in Drum because my car had broken down nearby and I’d lacked the funds to fix it. But I had a new car—well, a new used car—and I could drive away whenever I pleased. Technically. Unbeknownst to anyone except Marco, Bart Drummond had summoned me to his house to blackmail me into sticking around Drum—if I left, Bart would give information to the sheriff that would incriminate my landlord and friend, Hank Chalmers, and lock him away for the rest of his life. Sadly, the information likely wouldn’t be hard to dig up given that Hank had once been the largest marijuana distributer in Eastern Tennessee. Bart seemed to think I could be useful to him one day, but I had no intention of letting that happen.

“Schedule those interviews,” I said with a sigh, “or I’ll hire someone myself. I need a day off.”

She frowned, then left the bar to carry a handful of dirty dishes to the kitchen.

While we were both pulling doubles, one or the other of us would get a few hours off in the afternoon, and it was Ruth’s turn today. So she headed off, and I kept busy enough until she came back at five for the dinner shift.

Dinner was usually even busier than lunch now that the construction crew was staying in and around Drum—there was nothing else to do—but tonight, five o’clock came and went with only a handful of the usual customers. By five thirty, I was beginning to wonder what was going on. Then Max took a phone call and his face lost color. I hurried over to talk to him.

He hung up the phone, scowling. “Work’s been halted at the construction site.”

“What?” Ruth asked. “Why?”

“They found a body buried on the property. It’s now the site of a murder investigation.”

Chapter Two

Max looked like he was going to be sick, and I had to wonder why. Was he worried about his father? The resort was being built on Drummond land, but a portion of the acreage was a disputed section that the Drummonds and the Binghams had fought over for years. When I’d seen Bart early last December, he’d told me that he’d won a court case granting him ownership, something that had allowed him to proceed with the construction. The question was, which side had the body been found on?

Ruth gave Max a long look. “Now, don’t go jumpin’ to conclusions.”

“And what kind of conclusions would I be jumpin’ to?” Max snapped, his eyes flashing. “Do you think my father’s stupid enough to bury someone and then put a resort over ’em? He’d go to the trouble of movin’ them first.”

I scowled. Like that was any better. Then again, I suspected the number of people Bart had actually killed was pretty low, not that he wasn’t culpable for quite a few deaths.

I’d learned that Bart ran a kind of barter system—a favor for a favor. The deal was that the person who’d asked for a favor—or, in my case, been cornered into it—had to do whatever Bart requested, no questions asked. I’d done some investigating over the past few months, and I’d found at least eight murders over the past two decades with loose ties to Bart Drummond. Of course, none of the articles mentioned him by name. I’d connected the dots myself.

After my chat with Bart in December, I was fully dedicated to bringing him down. Something that would probably have been easier with reliable access to the internet. I’d spent what little free time I had at the tiny Drum library, searching the online records of the Ewing Chronicle for articles about murders over the past two decades. Hours and hours of research. At first, I’d ignored the murders that had been “solved,” but it soon occurred to me that I might be underestimating Bart’s craftiness.

I knew enough to understand that Bart Drummond was a careful man. Which meant that Todd Bingham’s father had probably put the body there. According to Marco, Floyd Bingham had been a mean drunk and had likely killed multiple people. Rumor had it he’d buried them on his own property, two of his wives and his youngest son included.

“Is there any word on who they found?” I asked. “A man? Woman? A child?”

Max shook his head. “Not yet. All I heard was the word body.”

“It’s probably someone Floyd Bingham killed,” I said, trying to reassure him, although for the life of me, I wasn’t sure why. “I bet that’s where Floyd buried his bodies.”

“How do you know about the rumors?” Ruth asked.

I snorted, giving her a sassy look. “Please. People tell me all sorts of things.” Then I added, “Marco told me last winter while we were looking for Lula.”

The Baxters, a family of semi-regulars, headed in and sat in my section, and I broke away to greet them. I made small talk, asking the two elementary-aged kids how school was going. The little girl, Zelda, told me she was having trouble with her third-grade math, something her parents couldn’t help her with since they didn’t understand the way her teacher wanted things done.