Cade and Marcus were about halfway to San Antonio when Cade finally said, “So what happened between you and Sadie?”
“What? Nothing happened.”
“Liar.”
Marcus chuckled. “I’m not lying. Nothing happened. It kind of seemed like something was about to happen, but I screwed it up, as usual.”
Cade cocked an eyebrow. “How’d you do that?”
“I said too much.”
Cade burst out laughing. “Well if that’s the case, it will definitely be a first. You’ve never said too much in your life.”
Marcus was chuckling too. Cade was right. Too many words were never his problem. “I told her that I love her.”
Cade laughed again, this time harder. Marcus didn’t laugh that time. When Cade got it out of his system he said, “I’m sorry, kid, but…damn if you don’t do everything full bore.”
“What do you mean?”
“You and Sadie have spent years being afraid to look at each other, much less talk. You go from that to telling her you’re in love with her, right in the middle of all of this other shit going on. Zero to sixty, kid. You have to learn how to accelerate more slowly.”
“The ten years in between don’t count as acceleration?”
“They may have, if you hadn’t just been idling that whole time. You’re all or nothing and although it’s admirable to me the way you put all of yourself into everything you do…I’m guessing a declaration like that after all these years could be a little off-putting to Sadie.”
Marcus nodded. “You guessed right. She felt sick and excused herself, and when she came back she changed the subject. When I mess things up, I do it right, that’s for sure.”
Cade was still chuckling. “You’re too hard on yourself. You probably just shocked her. She’ll come around.”
“Maybe…hey, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“It’s about you, not me and Sadie.”
Cade cocked that eyebrow again. “Okay.”
“Were you dating one of the Treager girls?”
Cade sighed and rolled his eyes. “Who told you that?”
“I just heard it around.”
“Mickey?”
“I’m not sure…”
“Oh knock off the ‘I don’t snitch’ bullshit. I know it had to be Mickey. What did he say exactly?”
“All I heard was that you’d been seeing one of them and now you’re not and it put you in a bad mood while the guys and I were in Tahoe.”
“Fucking Mickey.”
Marcus laughed. “It’s Blossom Hill. What makes you so sure it was Mickey who told me?”
“Because that SOB saw me with her. He’s the only one that knew. I’ll bet you he told you it was a rumor in town, huh?”
“Well…”
“He saw her at my house. He showed up one night out of the blue and she was there. He knew I’d kill him if he spread it all over town but the old gossip was dying to tell someone so he told you, the one person he knew wouldn’t tell anyone. I ought to wring his damned neck.”
Marcus laughed. “I’ll be damned. He was hoping I’d know something too, I’ll bet.”
“Hell yeah he was. He’s like an old woman with that gossip. He’s got too much time on his hands.”
“So, now that the cat is out of the bag…which one is it?”
Cade shot him a dirty look and they drove in silence again for another ten miles before he sighed and glanced at him. “It was Bobbie, but it’s not what you and that old blabbermouth are thinking.”
“It’s not?”
“No! I’m not sleeping with her.”
“Aw, I like Bobbie. Now I’m disappointed.”
“Shut the hell up. It’s not like that. We’re…friends, that’s all.”
“Oh, well then, why is it a big secret?”
“Because you know how this town is. As soon as people know she and I are hanging out they’ll have us doing the horizontal mambo ten times a day.”
“You’re not attracted to her at all? She’s kind of cute, in a really tall and big-boned sort of way.”
“Knock it off! She can’t help how tall she is and she might be big-boned but she’s in damned good shape.”
Marcus was trying like hell to control the smile that wanted to sprout up on his face. Cade was protesting an awful lot for a man that wasn’t attracted to her at all. “And wipe that stupid smirk off your face. I told you, it’s not like that. But if it was, I wouldn’t have a thing in the world to be ashamed of.”
“Of course not,” Marcus said, this time seriously. “I really do like Bobbie and I wouldn’t see a thing wrong with you and her being together. I’m sorry. It was just surprising. You never dated anyone local before.”
“And I’m not now. We’re friends. Leave it at that, kid, okay?”
“Sure.” Cade’s reaction had Marcus convinced more than ever that it was true. But he wasn’t stupid. Taking the conversation any further would be like poking a lion with a stick. As Cade exited the freeway into San Antonio Marcus asked him, “So where are we going first?”
“I thought we’d stop by the police station first. I have a friend that works there who might be able to convince the jail to let us see the visiting log for this Michaels guy.”
“Good. Do they keep logs of where their mail came from too?”
“Yes, but the mail thing might be harder to access without a court order, just because that’s crossing into Federal territory.”
“That makes sense. Well, let’s hope whoever is helping him came to visit him a time or two.”
Cade drove them to the police station and they parked and went inside. At the front desk he asked for Detective Grady. It was the detective that had interviewed Sadie at the hospital…the one that Marcus had been kind of rude too. “Detective Grady is the one working on Sadie’s case, right?”
“Yep, that’s him.”
“Um…I wasn’t exactly welcoming when I met him last night.”
Cade rolled his eyes. “Shocking,” he said. Marcus suppressed a smile again just as he saw the detective approaching them down the hall.
“Cade!” he said, glancing quickly at Marcus and back to Cade. “It’s good to see you.”
“It’s great to see you, Tim. I guess you met my boy Marcus here last night?”
The detective turned his attention on Marcus then. “Yes, we did meet. How are you today, Mr. Black?”
“I’m doing better, Sir, thank you. I’m sorry if I was a bit rude last night. I was really worried about my friend.”
“I get it. Let’s go back to the interview room where we can talk in private.” The men followed the detective to a room in the back with a small folding table and four folding chairs and nothing else in it. “Y’all want some coffee or something else to drink?”
“No,” Cade spoke for them both, “we’re okay. So you’re aware that we’re looking for this Michaels guy…”
Grady laughed. “As are we.”
“Right. You know me, Tim. I’m not trying to infringe here or get in your way at all, but this is personal to us. Sadie is one of our own. Y’all are going to hand this off to the sheriff’s office anyways, right, since it happened out in the county and not in the city limits?”
“Eventually, yes. But they don’t have detectives so we’ll lead up the investigation for as long as we can.”
“That’s good, but considering that this city saw over two hundred murders last year and that’s not even mentioning the robberies, shootings, rapes, domestic disputes…well, what I’m trying to say is that I know y’all are awfully busy.”
“So you’d love to take some of that burden off of me, would you?”
“Anything I can do to make your life easier, Tim.” Marcus loved listening to Cade. He could make one sentence sound sincere, sarcastic, and even scripted all at the same time while always getting his point across.
“What do you want from me, Cade? We really haven’t gotten anywhere on this yet. The blood results aren’t even back yet.”
“Records from the jail. I want to see the visiting records for Brendan Michaels. He was just released two weeks ago. I talked to his P.O. on the phone this morning. He says Michaels ghosted on him as soon as he stepped out of jail. He hasn’t shown up to report in, he’s not living where he said he would be, and no one has a clue where he is. Since he just finished two years on a simple assault charge, I doubt that anyone will put any real effort into finding him.”
The detective looked at Cade long and hard and then asked, “What’s in it for me?”
“You’ll get the collar when we find this SOB All the credit will go to you. Trust me?”
“I trust you or I wouldn’t have heard you out this far. Give me an hour or two.”
Cade smiled. “You got it. We have some other things to check out and we’ll be back.”
Detective Grady stood up, and Marcus and Cade did the same, shaking his hand.
“I love watching you in action,” Marcus said once the two men were outside
Cade shrugged as they got back into his big Ford F-250. “It’s all about trading services. Never go in cold. Always make sure if you want something, you have something to give in return.”
“Where are we going now?” Marcus asked him.
“We’re going to try out that restaurant supply company that Michaels worked at last.”
“Did you know this Brendan guy well?” Marcus asked him. He’d been trying to avoid it, but he was too curious to hear Cade’s take on him.
“Not really. I always got the feeling he was trying too hard and what we saw wasn’t really who he was. I didn’t care for him, but I only saw him at the bar or occasionally in town.”
“Sadie said Mickey didn’t like him either.”
“Well, you know Mickey. The fact alone that the guy was sleeping with his daughter was enough to make him hate him.” Marcus didn’t realize it, but he must have made a face because Cade glanced over at him and said, “Sorry about that, but I don’t know how to sugarcoat it. Sadie had a relationship with this guy for two years. Before this investigation is over I don’t doubt that you’ll hear a few more things that you don’t want to.”
Marcus nodded. “I know. I guess I’m just really surprised that I hadn’t heard anything about him. You think Bubba would have loved to rub it in.”
“You know, I think you’re convinced that everyone in town wants to see you and Sadie doing this awkward dance around each other forever. But the truth is that they’re all really rooting for you. I know they tease you relentlessly but that just comes from a place of not really having much else to do. I think the very fact that none of them told you about this guy speaks to that. They all expect you to end up with Sadie and they’re going to be awfully disappointed if you don’t.”
Marcus chuckled. “When you put it like that it’s kind of like our lives have been reduced to a sitcom.”
Cade smiled. “Like you would know anything about a sitcom Mr. ‘I don’t watch TV.’”
Laughing, Marcus said, “I spent eight years in the navy, remember? In our downtime we watched re-runs of M*A*S*H, Seinfeld, Friends, and Frazier repeatedly.”
“Oh, well, that explains it. I should have known. We marines were way too busy saving the world to do much TV watching.”
Marcus rolled his eyes. Cade joined the marines at eighteen and came home when he was twenty-five. Marcus left the next year to go into the navy and Cade had loved nothing more than to tease him about how much tougher the marines were ever since.
They made it to the big industrial building that housed San Antonio Restaurant Supply Inc. and Cade parked the car. They went inside and spent the next two hours mostly trying to convince people to take the time to talk to them. No one knew much about Brendan Michaels or seemed to have much of an opinion about him at all. He wasn’t the most popular guy, nor was he the least. Nobody knew if he had a family or not and only a few of them knew he’d moved out to Blossom Hill to live with Sadie. They all feigned ignorance about him being in jail. But in all of that doubt, there was one common thread. They all agreed that he had a drinking problem and anger issues. He’d been fired about a week before the day he left Blossom Hill. Sadie hadn’t mentioned that, so it was likely she didn’t know. He’d shown up for work smelling like booze and looking like he’d been out all night, not for the first time. When the supervisor told him to pick up his last check and not come back, he got in the guy’s face and made threats to hurt him and his family. Security had to be called to escort him out. It was becoming more apparent that this guy had a really short fuse, and Sadie was probably lucky that he ended up in jail when he did. Marcus hoped that when they did find him, Cade would give him just a few minutes alone with him first.