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“Sure is. She’s in the back somewhere. Hold up. I’ll get her for ya.”
Luke hurries through the back door, and Missy comes through a second later.
She’s in her sixties now, must be, with her hair dyed Dolly Parton blonde, always wearing red lipstick and tight-fitting tops and jeans.
“Hey, honey,” she says in her raspy, familiar voice. She flutters a kiss on my cheek. “It’s good to see ya in daylight. And to see less of you at night.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That a good woman makes a good man even better and vice versa. You want to talk in the office?” she asks.
I follow her through to the spacious office, with leather armchairs and a view of the sand and beach scrub that lines the path past the bar. Missy sits down in her big executive chair and gestures for me to do the same in the comfy chair opposite her fuck off big desk.
She deserves it. Missy’s been running this place for years, ever since her mother left it to her when I was a kid.
“What did you want to talk to me about?” Missy asks.
“Sheriff Davis,” I say.
“What about that asshole?”
“I’m doing some research about the night Kevin Walsh died,” I say. “I’ve heard rumors saying he was drunk, others saying that it was the sheriff who crashed into him, also drunk. I’ve done some, uh, research, and the only information I can find is a vague reference to a bar. And I’ve checked with the other bars that were around at the time. All of them are closed, except this one.”
Missy purses her lips and moves them from side-to-side.
“I’ve tried speaking on this before, y’know. Every time, it’s been squashed.”
“Squashed?”
“That’s right,” Missy says. “Went to the papers with it at the time too, and the story never got published. Got so bad at one point that Longhorn’s nearly went under.” She lets out a rough sigh. “I’m pretty darn sure that the sheriff’s responsible for the fire here back in the day.”
“You’re fucking kidding.”
“I wish I wasn’t. After that, I realized that trying only endangered my business, my family, and the people I care about,” she says. “I feel a lot of guilt about it, but I had no choice. It’s been so long, though, so long. I— Why are you looking into this?”
“For my wife,” I say.
“Congratulations, honey. Like I said, good men and good women.”
I nod. “And you’re comfortable talking with me about what happened now?” I ask. “Because Davis is on his way out as sheriff, and I’m not going to let him go easy. I want him to pay for his crimes. I want his family out of power in this town.”
“You’ve got no idea the shit that he got up to back in the day,” Missy says, and taps her red fingernails on her desktop. “He got away with murder, Jesse, honey. He got away with everything because he’s got that position of power. It’s no wonder that some of the people in this town have a hard time trusting the cops.”
“What changed?”
“Time,” Missy says. “Time passed. New people came in. The sheriff got better at playing the part.”
I haven’t killed anyone, but knowing that Sheriff Davis is faking it makes me fucking ashamed. This town deserves better. So do people like Marci.
“What happened that night?” I ask. “Was Mr. Walsh here?”
“Nope,” Missy says. “Kev didn’t come by the bar often. I remember he was trying to be responsible at the time. Before his wife left him was a different story, but once she was gone, he took being a father real serious. He didn’t want anything in the way of his family or his diner. I think the sheriff resented him for that. At the time, there was talk of Kev running for sheriff. Back then, you didn’t need to be a peace officer to do it.”
“And did he want to run?”
“I don’t think so,” Missy says. “He was a family man through and through. Kids came first. I think that’s why Marci turned out the way she did, even through the shit that went down.” She takes a breath. “You know whowashere that night?”
I wait, tense. I want to rip the sheriff’s head off. I want to make him pay for what he’s done to Marci, her family, this town. He ruined their lives.
