Thirty-Four and a Half Predicaments
Page 64

I nodded my agreement, wondering why she was laying it on so thick, but I’d let her butter him up before I swooped in with my questions.
He took a long drag from the bottle. “I’m Dirk.”
“Neely Kate,” she pointed to herself, then me. “And my friend Rose.”
“Well, let’s get started.” Dirk grabbed a rack and swept the balls over to one end of the table. “How about eight ball?”
Neely Kate’s eyes widened in confusion. “Eight ball?”
I pointed to the table. “Isn’t it that little black ball in the middle?”
He chuckled. “Don’t you girls worry. I’m gonna teach you all about it.”
He explained the rules of the game—pretty much the same rules Skeeter had explained to me the first time we met—and we started playing.
We were halfway through the disastrous game when I asked, “What do you do, Dirk?”
“Oh, a little bit of this and a little bit of that.” He took his shot, getting his solid colored ball into the pocket. “I’m into investments right now.”
“Oh,” Neely Kate squealed. “Like a stock broker.”
He chuckled. “Something like that.”
“Have you always been a stock broker?” I asked.
“Nah,” he leaned over the table for another shot. “I’ve done a bunch of other things.”
“Like what?” Neely Kate asked.
“Oh…” He moved around the table, looking for his next shot. “I was a used car salesman. A truck driver. And once upon a time, I was a supervisor at a plant.”
Neely Kate’s eyes widened with interest. “You got to boss people around?”
He grinned. “Sure did.”
She put her hand on her hip. “A plant, you say? Shoot. I bet you’re exaggerating. You probably supervised a few employees at an office supply store.”
“You’ve got it wrong, little lady. I bossed around a lot more than that. Back in the day, I was a supervisor at Atchison Manufacturing.”
“You don’t say?” Neely Kate said. “Ain’t that the place that closed down after a big fire years ago?”
He nodded. “Sure was.”
“Goodness,” I said, feigning fright. “Were you there when the fire broke out?”
He leaned over the table and lined up his cue. “Nope. It happened late at night after everyone had left for the day.”
Neely Kate turned to me. “Hey, Rose. Don’t you know someone who used to work there?”
“Oh! You’re right. I forgot all about it.” I leaned against the table. “Dirk, maybe you knew her.”
“Well.” He took his shot, sinking another ball. “It depends on when she worked there.”
“Right up until the fire,” I said. “Gloria Gunner.”
Neely Kate flashed me a look of surprise over his head, but I had my reasons. If he knew something about Dora, he might clam up if I mentioned her name.
“Yeah, I knew Gloria.” He finished off his beer and set it down on the table. “She was a real busybody.”
The bartender was openly staring at us, so I motioned for him to bring another bottle over. He rolled his eyes and shook his head as he moved to the cooler.
“She liked to get in everyone’s business?” I asked, taking another sip of my beer.
He eyed it longingly.
The bartender walked over with the fresh bottle and handed it to me. I leaned into his ear. “Keep ’em comin’.”
“Really?” he asked in dismay before grabbing the three empty bottles on the table. Changing tactics, he waved up and down at his chest, beer bottles clutched between the fingers of both hands, and shot me a cocky grin. “Darlin’, I’ll give you a round on the house if you come sit with me.”
Dirk’s head jerked up. “Hey!”
Neely Kate stopped mid-shot, then cast an adoring gaze at Dirk. “I found my honey bunny.” She waved her hand in a shooing motion. “You can run along now.”
The bartender lifted his eyebrows in question as he turned to me.
I gave him an apologetic grin and tilted my head toward the slovenly man on the other side of the pool table. “We’re fighting over him.”
Dirk looked like a goat let loose in an aluminum recycling lot.
The bartender groaned his disgust as he stomped back to the bar.
I could see his confusion. Not only did he look a whole lot better than Dirk; he smelled better too.
“How do you know Gloria?” Dirk asked after he’d had another drink. Judging from the empty bottles, this was his fourth beer of the day. His second in about fifteen minutes. How high was his alcohol tolerance? The fact he was drinking his fourth beer before one in the afternoon was pretty suggestive.
“She’s my friend’s mother. All these years later, she still loves to gossip about the bookkeeper there.”
“Dora,” he chuckled. “She gave people something to talk about.”
“Yeah, Gloria says she carried on with several guys while she was there.”
“Several, you say?” He took another shot. “I only know about her and Henry. And the guy on my line.”
“Henry?” I asked. “Was he her boss?”
I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and saw someone emerging from the back. My chest constricted when I realized it was Jed. He cast his gaze around the room and landed on our party of three. A look of uncertainty crossed his face, but he quickly recovered and ignored me, heading over to take a seat behind the bar.