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My stomach turned when I considered that she might confirm the relationship I’d seen. I shouldn’t give a shit, but the idea of Angela tangled up with my mortal enemy was too fucked up to imagine.
But I wasn’t giving up until I knew everything. This idea that Angela was just stopping in as a dogsitter had never made any sense.
“Hi, Bossman.” Grace answered with a slur in her voice.
“Grace, I’ve got some questions for you,” I began.
She giggled. “These margaritas are good. Get me another, babe,” she said off to the side, to Dirk I guessed. “Well, you see, Mr. Bossman,” she singsonged. “I’m on vacation, so your questions are going to have to wait.”
I took in a deep breath to deal with drunk Grace. “It can’t wait.”
“Hey, Mr. B,” Dirk said, obviously having yanked the phone away from Grace. “We want to thank you a million times over for this super vacation. Right now we’re in the middle of lunch, and Grace’s not in great shape. What if we talk to ya later?”
I recognized a liquid lunch when I heard one. “I just need Grace to answer a few simple questions.”
The line was quiet.
Checking the phone, I found he’d hung up.
Fucking-A. I was paying for their super vacation, and I was damned well going to get my fucking answers. I dialed them back.
“This isn’t exactly the later I meant,” Dirk said. He had less of a slur than I’d heard from Grace, but he wasn’t sober either.
“Give the phone to Grace, Dirk. I need to talk to her, and now.”
“I don’t think—”
“Do you want me to cancel the vacation?”
“Hey, honeybunch,” he said. “Angry boss wants to talk to you.”
“Hey, Mr. Bossman,” Grace slurred again. “Who can I do ya for?” She laughed at her own joke.
“This is serious, Grace. I need some information,” I said.
“Information you want; information we got.” She giggled. “It’s like eighty-five here, and the water is soooo warm. You gotta come on down and check it out.”
If three sheets to the wind was too drunk to drive, she was four or five sheets.
“I need to know the real story behind Angela’s trip down here, and what you know about her and Devlin Pollock.”
“Well, that’s a complicated one. I thought you wanted to know how warm it was here down. It’s warmer than we thought, isn’t it, babe?”
I listened for Dirk’s answer before getting back on track. “Grace, concentrate. Devlin and Angela, what’s going on? And why is Angela back here in the first place?”
“Like I said, complicated.” She hiccupped. “She told me she was on her way to her mom’s in Florida, and she was going to stop in for a day or so to say hi. And it was right when this trip came up, so I asked her to take care of the dogs when we were gone, and she said yes, and… We’re having a great time down here. But then after we got here…” The sound of a straw sucking air at the bottom of a drink came over the line, and she didn’t finish the sentence.
This wasn’t anything I didn’t already know. “Is that all?” I asked. Why was talking to a drunk Grace harder than getting information out of a five year old with a bag of cookies in his hands?
“Let me finish. Hey, babe, where’s that margarita?”
“Right,” Dirk said in the background.
“Where was I?”
“After you arrived,” I filled in.
“Yeah. Since then I’ve gotten a few calls from her boyfriend. Kevin is his name. Anyway, he’s real worried about her. Wants to know where she is and all. But I’m sworn to secrecy. So you know what that means.”
