Chapter Twenty-Six

“I’ll have an associate drop by with the check on Monday,” Bingham said. “Just let Wyatt Drummond know that my men will be pickin’ it up.”

“Will do, but don’t you want to know about the title?”

He grinned. “I don’t need the title.”

“Okay…”

He started to get up, then settled back on his seat. “You got paper and a pen?”

“You giving me a bill of sale?” I asked as I pulled my order pad and pen out of my pocket and pushed them across the table.

“No.” He wrote down a phone number. “This is my direct number. It’s a satellite phone. I get reception just about everywhere.”

A satellite phone? Why hadn’t I thought about that? Bart had brought a cell carrier to town, but Bingham probably wouldn’t want to use it on principle alone, not to mention it didn’t reach far outside of Drum city limits. “How much do those cost?”

He laughed as he slid the ticket over to me. “More than you can afford. Don’t call this number just to shoot the shit. You better have something important to discuss. And don’t share it with another damn person. It’s for you only. Got it?”

I picked up the paper and folded it in half. “Got it.”

Then he stood and walked out the door.

I got up and started making the rounds. When I made it to the counter, Ruth gave me a look of disbelief. “Well? What did he want?”

“I was right,” I said. “He was here to make a deal about my car. Four thousand.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Todd Bingham came here all alone to make a deal about your car?”

“Yeah.”

“And it took y’all that much time to reach a deal?”

I shrugged. “What can I say? It was a tough negotiation.”

“What were you showing him on your phone?” she asked suspiciously.

I hadn’t seen Shane in the tavern the night before, but it occurred to me that she might have. I slid my phone out of my pocket and pulled up his photo. “Did you see this guy in here last night?”

She took the phone and squinted at it. “Your phone takes crap pictures.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I know, but did you see him?”

She pushed out a breath and held the phone closer to her face. “Maybe?” She looked up at me. “Where the hell did you take this photo?”

“Greener Pastures nursing home in Ewing.”

“Are you lookin’ for a replacement for Wyatt?”

“At the nursing home?” I asked in disbelief. “No, but I think this guy kidnapped Greta.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Greta from Watson’s Café?”

“Yeah.” Which wouldn’t mean much to her unless she knew everything else. I’d thought it best to keep my worry about Lula from her, but maybe that was a mistake. Ruth knew a lot about Drum and the people here. She might be able to help. Besides which, she was my friend, and it felt wrong to keep this from her. It concerned her too. I took a deep breath, then added, “And it’s somehow connected to Lula.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What are you talkin’ about?”

“Lula didn’t just run off this time. Someone took her. Even Marco thinks so. We’ve been trying to figure out what happened to her, and after we questioned Greta, she disappeared too. She came here last night to talk to me, not Max. She answered some questions about Lula, but then she saw something that scared her, and I had Max walk her out to her car. But she never went home, and her sister and her coworkers say she’s not dating anyone, so they have no idea where she is.”

Worry filled Ruth’s eyes. “Did you talk to her cousin?”

“Ginger? Yeah. And I even went to Greener Pastures to talk to her nana, which is where I got the photo.” I pointed to the picture on the screen and explained what I’d learned about Shane Jones, holding back that I’d seen him today at the garage.

“So he was stalking her?”

“I think he thinks she knows something about Lula.”

She stared at me in disbelief. “Like what?”

I knew police usually held back information, and it didn’t seem like a good time to tell her about Lula’s packages. “I don’t know, but he’s looking for something.”

Frowning, she looked at the photo again. “I think I may have seen him a few months ago, but his name wasn’t Shane. It was Charlie. I don’t know his last name. He came in with Dwight Henderson.”

I gasped. That was the link I needed.

Dwight Henderson had been part of Carson Purdy’s gang.

We got busy again after that and stayed that way until well after midnight. We closed at one, and I realized Max still hadn’t returned.

“Should we be worried?” I asked.

“Normally, I’d say no,” Ruth said. “But in this instance, I don’t know. Tiny said he left with Wyatt. He’s never done that before. Why don’t you call Wyatt and ask him?”

I shook my head. “I can’t. We broke up.”

Her mouth dropped open. “For real?”

I nodded.

Worry creased the corners of her eyes. “Does this mean you’re leavin’ Drum?”

“I’m not just here for Wyatt. I like living with Hank. And I like working here with you and Tiny and Max. If I still have a job.” A lump filled my throat. “I want to make things right with Max. I hate being at odds with him.”

She put her hand on my arm. “Don’t you worry. We’ll make it right.” She gave me a little squeeze, then said, “Now, what happened with you and Wyatt?”

I’d kept so much from her, I wanted to be as honest as I could about this without giving too much away. “Wyatt keeps his past locked up tighter than the gold at Fort Knox. He won’t tell me hardly anything. Nothing about his past girlfriends. His family. Not even why he’s at odds with his father and Max.”

She started to say something, but I sighed and held up my hand. “Before you tell me that we’ve only been together a month, I’d like to point out that I’ve shared very deep, intimate things about myself, and he hasn’t even come close to reciprocating.”

She tilted her head and gave me an are you finished look. “I was tryin’ to say that the very same thing was part of what broke us up. He’d gone out with Heather for years. They broke up, and about a month later we started seein’ each other. We were together for only about three months, but he never told me why they’d broken up, or anything about anything. It was like he was dropped onto Planet Earth without a past. It’s hard to get close to someone who won’t share his life. And then I found him kissing Heather in the back room.” A wry grin twisted her lips. “And that was the other part of what broke us up.”

My mouth parted as her words sunk in. His reticence to share his past hadn’t come out of some need to protect me, and this had all gone down before his time in jail, so it wasn’t just that his incarceration had changed him. This was a pattern.

“That’s part of my beef with Lula,” she continued. “I don’t dislike her, really. It’s more that I don’t trust her. I can’t help but think Wyatt never opened up to me because I was the filler until he got back with Heather. Why waste his time and make himself vulnerable? Right or wrong, between her runnin’ off and keepin’ her business to herself, I can’t help thinkin’ it would be a waste of my time to get to know Lula better.”