Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [24]
I frowned at Jason. “He thought he was keeping this Keith from bringing in another woman just days before his wedding.”
“Exactly.”
I frowned harder, and then the light dawned. “He’s their cleanup man.”
Jason nodded.
“Why does their cleanup man need to be armed?”
“Why are you armed?”
“I don’t go out of the house unarmed,” I said.
Jason gave me a look. “Maybe Chuck is as paranoid as you are.”
“I don’t…”
Jason knelt on the floorboard of the limo at my feet. He took my hands in his and gazed up at my face with a look of pure begging. “Please, please, God, let this go, Anita. I will do anything, you name it, if you will just not poke at the Summerlands. Because of the wedding and the family resemblance we are going to have enough trouble.”
He laid his head in my lap, and said, “Please don’t make more trouble, please, don’t make this harder for me. Please.”
I said the only thing I could say. “Okay, Jason.”
He raised his face up and flashed me that infamous smile. It wasn’t his real smile. This was the smile I’d seen him use on customers at Guilty Pleasures when he was trying to part them from their cash. Jason didn’t want cash from me, he wanted peace. I’d have rather shoved a twenty down his pants then let go of the niggling feeling that there was something wrong with the Summerlands. Something that needed an armed cleanup man. Something beyond a womanizing son. But I did for Jason what I wouldn’t have done for almost anyone else. I let it go.
If Chuck of the too-small gun would leave me alone, I’d leave him alone. I wasn’t here as a marshal. I was here to help Jason say good-bye to his dad. I’d just keep repeating that over and over, no matter how many clues I tripped over. The question was, clues to what?
None of my business. I’d promised Jason, and it really was none of my business. Unless the Summerlands turned out to be evil vampires, it would never be my business.
I went back to looking at the amazing scenery on either side of the road. There was no bad view. Jason was back to looking out the window, too, but he didn’t seem to be seeing anything special. I thought the drive into Asheville, North Carolina, was one of the prettiest drives I’ve ever been on, but then I hadn’t grown up looking at it all. I guess you get jaded about anything you see every day. Was I jaded about zombies and vampires? Maybe. But the mountains were pretty.
10
THE SCENERY STAYED all mountains and hills and green with more evergreens than we have at home until we turned off the Highway and onto Charlotte Street.
Then we were in small-town America. No building too tall, nothing too built up, a lot of houses and small businesses among the trees.
The limo had dark glass so no one could see in, but we could see out just fine. One of the interesting things you find out if you ride in limos. Jason was more interested in the scenery now. I guess he was just a city boy at heart.
“There’s the dance studio,” he said in an excited voice. There was a sign with a silhouette of a ballet dancer outside one of the larger homes. Two little girls in leotards were being led inside by a laughing woman.
“I wish we could stop. I’d like to see my old teachers again.”
If it had been our limo, or rather Jean-Claude’s, I would have said stop, but we were borrowing. It would be the height of rudeness to ask.
“We can come back,” I said.
He nodded and pointed at a small mom-and-pop grocery sitting just doors down from the studio. “I would have thought Siglier’s would have gone out of business. I got my first cigarettes there.”
“You don’t smoke,” I said.
He turned and gave me a grin that filled his eyes with laughter. “I don’t smoke, but everybody tries them at least once.”
Something on my face must have shown, because he scooted closer to me. “You never tried to smoke, not once?”
I shrugged, and moved a little in my seat to try to keep the gun in a comfortable spot. I was beginning to remember why I seldom wore a gun there. It made sitting down harder. “I had a couple of cousins who were bad influences.”