Playing Dead_ A Novel of Suspense - Allison Brennan [112]
“I promise,” she said and hung up.
Tip Barney had moved to the opposite side of the bar, serving up drafts to the men at that end. Lora had migrated to that end of the bar as well. Good, the woman was a bit freaky. Since she’d arrived, more people had come in. It was nearing five o’clock. People getting off work. Tip was avoiding her, Claire could tell. What more could she get out of him? She was certain he knew more than he was telling her. She sipped her beer. She’d pushed him hard, appealed to his sense of humanity and justice, and he hadn’t budged. Maybe he knew Frank had been murdered and he was scared. He had left Sacramento shortly after the fire, for Los Angeles. A big place. She’d need to go back to the Rogan-Caruso offices and run a more detailed search on Tip Barney, focus on L.A., see if she could find a pattern to anything. Maybe he’d been paid off. No, that didn’t fit. He seemed genuinely upset that Frank was dead. Upset and scared.
Tip lived upstairs, and he was working down here in the bar.
Claire drained half her beer, put a five-dollar bill under the glass, and walked out.
Out of the corner of his eye, Frank Lowe watched Claire O’Brien leave the bar. When she was gone, he was still tense.
First the law student, then the Feds, now Tom O’Brien’s daughter.
For fifteen years Frank Lowe had led a quiet life off the grid. And now it was over. He should never have come back to Sacramento. But after his dad died, he had nothing left in L.A. And even though his mother thought he was dead, he felt better being here than there. Isleton was perfect. No one should have been able to find him. He’d taken Tip’s identity—it had been his dad’s idea in the first place—and he thought he could simply run the bar here until he was as old as Sanderson.
But for the first time in fifteen years, he feared his days were numbered. In the single digits.
“Tip? You okay?”
He smiled brightly at Lora. The dim woman was really a sweetheart, but sometimes she was too nosy. Because her father was the chief of police, Frank made sure Lora was well taken care of. He didn’t need Henry Lane looking too hard at his past. He might find out that Tip Barney was supposed to be sixty-one years old.
“Just fine, Lora.”
“That woman was mean.”
“She was just doing her job.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She’s a private investigator. I just didn’t have the information she wanted.”
What he knew would get him killed. If they knew he was still alive, they would burn down this bar with everyone in it. Frank didn’t want anyone else getting hurt. It was bad enough that the woman Taverton was having an affair with had been killed, but . . .
Claire O’Brien was that woman’s daughter. Guilt washed over Frank. While he didn’t know for certain that the husband wasn’t guilty of murder, he knew in his gut that Jeffrey Riordan and his partners were responsible for Taverton’s death and the fire that killed Buddy, the poor bum whom Frank and Tip had let sleep in the storeroom on those nights when the temperature dipped below thirty-two.
It was sheer luck that Frank had been able to climb out the window and into a tree; then he’d hopped a fence and gotten out into the neighborhood. He’d walked the twenty-seven blocks to Tip’s small house and told him what happened.
“It was Riordan’s people, I know it.”
“Did you see them?”
“No, but on the news they said D.D.A. Taverton was killed today. He knew. Somehow, Riordan knew I was turning state’s evidence. I couldn’t get to Buddy—he’s dead, I’m certain. I don’t want to die, Pop.”
“I’ll figure something out.”
What Tip decided was to let everyone think Frank was dead—including Frank’s mother. Frank felt bad about that, but he’d never been close to his mom. Always wrapped up in her own life, she had never really cared what he did or who he did it with. She had sent him to live with Aunt Rose, who was ancient.
Which was what put him in this miserable situation in the first place.
Aunt Rose had kicked him off her property