Cemetery Road

“Hey, this is a celebration day. All day, all night.”

I hand him the Sprite. “Can you make sure Jet gets this?”

“I’ll take it myself,” Jet says, stepping up from behind me and brushing my cheek with a kiss. God, this woman has nerve.

She moves on through the bodies under the tent, stopping to speak to her paralegal, who’s talking to one of the Prime Shot girls. Paul steps closer to me. “I heard about Buck, man. I’m sorry as hell. I know how close you two were.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“What do you think happened?”

“Don’t know. Guess I’ll wait to hear from the police.”

Paul snorts. “Like you’ve never done once in your life. Come on, man.”

“I really don’t know. Accident seems unlikely. Floating into that snag would be a stretch. That’s a wide river.”

“Yeah.” Paul lowers his voice. “You think somebody stuck him out there? Wasted him, then tried to hand the cops an accident on a platter?”

“Buck wasn’t going to win a popularity contest during this past week.”

“No shit. I sure hope it was an accident.”

“He didn’t die where they found his truck,” I say, watching Paul from the corner of my eye. “Somebody staged that.”

This intrigues him. “You have proof of that?”

“Call it intuition. But your buddy Beau Holland sure seems on edge about the whole thing.”

“Fuck Beau Holland,” he says with venom. “He ain’t my buddy.”

“Did you say you want to have sex with Beau Holland?” asks a deeper male voice.

Max Matheson claps his son on the back, then laughs heartily. “Hey, Goose, how’s it hanging?”

I nod but say nothing. Back when he coached us as boys, Max would ask this to trigger responses like “Long and loose and full of juice.”

“Heard about Buck,” he says, then takes a pull from what looks like Scotch on the rocks. “Bad luck.”

“Maybe.”

Max’s eyes linger on mine long enough for him to read my emotions. He’s always had that gift, the predator’s lightning perception. “That river can kill you quick. You know that better than anybody.”

“Jesus, Pop,” Paul says. “Shut the fuck up, why don’t you?”

Max clucks his tongue. “All right. Guess I’ll leave you girls to it.”

As he slides away, Wyatt Cash walks up wearing navy chinos and a Prime Shot polo beneath an olive blazer. With his 1970s mustache and bulging muscles, he still looks like a baseball player. The girls in the Prime Shot shirts are watching him with something like reverence. I’m guessing they’ve all ridden on either his jet or his helicopter. Cash hands me a sweating Heineken and smiles.

“Welcome to my humble abode, sir.”

Most people under this tent would prefer me anywhere but here, but Cash is being polite. “Thanks, Wyatt.”

He pats Paul on the shoulder, then moves off in Jet’s direction. As I follow him with my eyes, I see Jet’s left hand wrapped around one of the poles supporting the tent. Not her whole hand, actually. Only three fingers. Three P.M.

Her flagrant flouting of danger makes me dizzy.

When I look back at Paul, he’s watching me with his usual lazy alertness. We stare at each other for several seconds without speaking. It amazes me how deeply I can bury the sin of sleeping with his wife while we’re together. In this moment he’s the guy I played ball with for years, the buddy who saved my life in Iraq. Who am I to him right now?

“Listen,” he says, so softly I have to strain to understand him. “What do you think about that guy?” He nods in Jet’s direction.

“Who? Wyatt?”

“No, dumbass. The paralegal. Josh whoever.”

“Josh Germany? In what capacity?”

Paul raises his eyebrows like, Come on, man. “Him and Jet.”

The rush of adrenaline that flushes through me after these words makes it hard to hold my composure. “You’re kidding, right? The kid’s like, what, twenty-five?”

“Exactly.”

To mask my gut reaction, I look down the tent at Josh Germany. He’s a good-looking guy, blond and fit, but still a boy—not remotely the kind of man that interests Jet. Witness myself, exhibit A. “Dude, there’s no way. What made you ask that?”

Paul doesn’t answer. His eyes are fixed upon his wife.

Wyatt Cash leans over Germany’s shoulder and says something brief, and Jet laughs with obvious enjoyment. “I’d suspect Wyatt before that kid,” I add.

“No way,” says Paul. “It’s a rule.”

“A rule?”

“Poker Club rule. Other members’ women are off-limits. Period.”

“You’re not an official member, are you?”

Paul considers this. “That’s true. But Wyatt knows how bad I’d fuck him up if he crossed that line. The kid, on the other hand, may not realize the risk.”

I need an infusion of morphine. At no time in the three months since I’ve been sleeping with Jet has Paul even hinted at suspicion of infidelity—not to her or to me. In relative terms, this is an earthquake. Then it hits me: Is this why she squeezed my wrist and asked for a meeting at three o’clock?

“For real,” Paul says. “If somebody killed Buck, who do you think it was?”

Thankful for the 180-degree turn, I decide to throw out some bait. “Some people have suggested the Poker Club killed him.”

Paul’s face tells me he doesn’t believe this. “Doesn’t make sense, Goose. Murder creates problems. They’d have bought Buck off, not killed him.”

He’s right. Bribery would be the logical move. And maybe they tried that. “There’s one problem with that theory.”