“What’ll it be?” said the bartender, a stocky gray man with a dented nose, who looked like he had seen trouble in his life and pounded it into submission.
“A draft,” I said, pulling out a twenty from my wallet, “and keep ’em coming.”
The barkeep nodded, and a moment later a coaster was spun in front of me, a full glass set atop the coaster, and the twenty changed into a pile of lesser bills and coins.
“Tough day?” said the bartender.
“They’re all tough.” I took a long draught and kept draining until the glass was emptied. I dropped it down upon the coaster. It wasn’t a moment before the glass was filled again.
The bartender drifted to the end of the bar with the television turned to some lurid local news. The kids in the booth laughed out loud. I turned to the man next to me and said, “You know any good places to eat around here?”
“Where you headed?” said Grady Pritchett.
“Clarksburg.”
“The Rib-Eye up the road a ways. They make a steak almost worth eating.”
“Thanks,” I said and took a long drink of my beer.
When the bartender came over to refill the beer, I gestured him to give the man next to me whatever he was drinking.
Grady Pritchett had a paunch and his hair was going. You could see he had once maybe been good-looking, but his face was now all bloated and shiny. He wore gray dress pants and a short-sleeved shirt with a tie, and there was a ring on his finger, but he was in no hurry to get home to the wifey-poo. Life had happened to Grady Pritchett in the worst way.
“Thanks, man,” he said to me when a fresh Scotch and soda was placed before him. “Where you from?”
“Chicago.”
“You come down this ways much?”
“First time.”
Grady Pritchett raised his glass. “Welcome to paradise.”
I was an investigator, working for a Chicago law firm that specialized in trusts and estates, seeking out missing heirs. That was the story. Generally we could do what we needed over the phone or on the Internet, but sometimes you just had get out there yourself and check the records that needed to be checked or, more important, meet up with the heirs and review with them their options. I dreaded these trips, the long roads and cheap hotels, the dust in the old county record rooms, the local lawyers who started sticking their noses in something that was none of their business. I didn’t tell him all this in one swoop of words, that’s not the way it’s done. But it was there, the whole story, there in the sighs, the silences, the weary slump of my back. In Charleston I found the death certificate I was looking for. In a few small towns along the way I had talked to some people who needed talking to. In Clarksburg there was a lady who refused to tell me over the phone the whereabouts of another lady who was up for a pretty nifty sum. In Gettysburg I needed to check on a old man who’d disappeared from his nursing home six months ago. And then in Philadelphia I had the lovely task of trying to sift through three generations of Olaffsons to find the one that really mattered. I had been putting it off, this trip, letting the work pile up until I could put it off no longer. There were deadlines looming and commissions due, if certain parties that I found signed certain documents. So here I was on Route 19, making my way from Charleston to Clarksburg and thinking for the thousandth time I should find myself a more congenial line of work, like slaughtering pigs.
“You know any places to eat in Clarksburg?” I asked.
“The Holiday Inn ain’t all bad.”
“How about Gettysburg.”
“Never been. They got that Civil War battlefield there.”
“Yes they do. I’ll be taking pictures for the kiddies. What about Philadelphia, you ever been in Philadelphia?”
“Sure. Lots of times.”
“Business?”
“Sort of.”
“That’s the best kind, isn’t it? I used to have a girl from Philadelphia with a mouth like wet velvet. I never been there, but it got so every time I heard the name Philadelphia I popped a woody.”
“What happened to her?”
“Who, the girl from Philadelphia?”
“Yeah.”
“Dead.”
Grady Pritchett’s face paled for an instant, and his mouth quivered.
“Cancer,” I said. “It just ate through her insides like it had teeth, but she was married to someone else, so I was glad to let him hold her hand through it to the end. Still, when I hear Philadephia…”
There was a long silence, where Grady and I just sat and drank. Maybe he was thinking about an old girlfriend in Philly who now was dead. Maybe he was thinking about how it was that he had caused it. See, I had come up with a theory about Grady Pritchett. What if Hailey Prouix, in her youth, had concocted an alibi for Grady Pritchett in exchange for a college and graduate school education from his wealthy father? And what if, later, when pressed by Guy Forrest for some missing cash, Hailey Prouix had gone back to the source that had worked so well before, the Pritchetts, to fill her empty accounts? And what if Hailey Prouix had told Grady she needed the money and would recant the alibi if he refused, and what if Grady had decided that enough was enough, and what if he had gone to Philadelphia himself to finish the job? They say after the first killing it gets easier, and it seemed to me that maybe Jesse Sterrett was the first for Grady Pritchett, and so killing Hailey Prouix might not have been so hard after that. It was just a theory, sure, but I had to contain my anger as I sat beside the man who might have murdered Hailey Prouix.
“You from around here?” I said.
“You won’t find too many tourists in this place. I live in Weston.”
“Born there?”
“No.”
“Where?”
“Pierce.”
“Pierce? Pierce, West Viriginia? Now, how did I hear about Pierce?”
“You didn’t.”
“No, I did, I did.”
“No one ever has.”
“Let me see. Pierce. I think I heard about some family there up for a small inheritance. Is that possible? Nothing much, but it turned out one of the kids I was looking for died in a quarry.”
Grady didn’t say anything, he just stared straight ahead.
“He got his head smashed in and fell into the water there. You ever hear anything like that?”
“I think you’re asking too many questions.”
“Just trying to be friendly,” I said, showing him my palms. “No need to come at me like a block of stone.”
Grady gripped his drink and narrowed his eyes.
“I suppose that was an unfortunate term to use,” I said, “considering the circumstances.”
“I had heard there were two of you asking questions.”
“Yeah, well, tonight I’m solo. So tell me something, Grady, which of your pals was worried enough to give you the warning?”
“Leave me the hell alone, okay? That’s all I’m asking.”
Just then the bartender leaned in between us, staring at me with his gray eyes even as he spoke to Grady. “Is there a problem here, Mr. Pritchett?”
“No, Jimmy, I was just leaving, thanks,” said Grady, sliding off his stool and dumping some cash on the bar before turning to me. “This is what I’ll tell you, same thing I told them fifteen years ago. I had nothing to do with what happened to Jesse Sterrett. Not a thing. There was bad blood, yeah, but still, I didn’t have nothing to do with what happened. What happened to him destroyed me as bad as it did him, worse, because I had to keep living with all the doubts, but I had nothing to do with it. Believe me or not, I don’t give a damn, but leave me the hell alone.”