Maggie considered this seriously. Can you fix it? Already am Will said. She nodded satisfied with this answer. Emily set a bag on the clear corner of the bench sandwiches from the diner and looked at Will with an expression that asked the question she was choosing not to ask out loud.
"Nothing yet," Will said without looking up from the Norton. "I went to the pharmacy this morning," Emily said, keeping her voice even. "Lou wasn't there. His wife was behind the counter. She said he called in sick, but her face said something different."
Will straightened and looked at her. "And I stopped at Tommy's on the way home yesterday," Emily continued. He had the blinds down in the front of the shop. In November, he has the blinds down. Tommy Reese, who has never closed those blinds in 30 years because he likes to see the street.
Will set down the timing cover. He looked at his hands. They're frightened. Emily said more frightened than before. Something happened.
When? Thursday night. I think nobody's talking directly, but I can tell the temperature changed. Something happened Thursday night after you. She paused.
After your visit from Decker, Will moved around the bench and picked up the landline. He called Tommy Reese's number. It rang six times. No answer. He called Lou Baitman at the pharmacy.
Same thing. He called Patty Gould at the diner who picked up on the second ring. Patty Patty, he said. What happened Thursday night? Silence.
Then Patty's voice quieter than he'd ever heard it. The voice of a woman who kept six tables running at a controlled chaos and never flinched at anything. Quiet like that, it meant something. They went to Lou's house, she said. His house will, not the pharmacy, his home address.
One of Brandon's men knocked on the door at 10:30 at night when Lou's wife and his mother were there. And he delivered a message that if anyone in town was talking to the wrong people or making arrangements, they shouldn't be making, there would be a conversation that Lou's family wouldn't enjoy. Will's hand tightened on the phone. His wife called me at 11 is crying, Patty said. And Tommy saw it happen from his car.
He was coming home from his brother's and now Tommy won't open the shop. He said he's going to pay. He said he's going to pay and tell everyone else to pay and just her voice cracked slightly. Then it hardened. The Patty voice came back.
The one that ran a diner for 20 years. I didn't pay, she said. I want you to know that I didn't pay and I'm not going to. Patty Will said, "Don't tell me to be careful." She said, "I've been careful my whole life.
I'm 67 years old and I'm not going to be careful anymore. I'm not going to tell you to be careful." Will said, "I'm going to tell you to stay inside your diner and let me handle what comes next." A pause. "You have a plan.
I have something in motion," Will said. "Is it enough?" He thought about Marcus's voice on the phone, the quality of a man who answered like he was already prepared. "Yes," he said. He hung up.
He looked at Emily, who had heard all of this from her position at the bench and whose face had gone still in the particular way of a person processing real fear without letting it take control. "He went to families," she said. Yes, Maggie was looking at both of them. At four years old, she couldn't follow the conversation, but she could read the room, and she'd gone quiet on her stool in the way children do when they sense that the adults in front of them are carrying something heavy. Will looked at her.
She looked back at him with her mother's eyes and waited. "Hey," he said to her, keeping his voice easy. "You still want to learn to use a wrench?" She brightened instantly the way only children can shift from gravity to joy. "Yes."
"Okay, come here. I'll show you the difference between a socket wrench and a box wrench and why each one matters. He spent 15 minutes teaching Maggie about wrenches slowly and specifically explaining each one with the same precision he brought to everything. And Maggie listened with the focused attention of someone who took new information seriously. And Emily sat on the stool and watched them both and said nothing.
And some of the tension in the room reorganized itself into something more bearable. After Maggie had held both types and understood the basic principle and declared the socket wrench superior, which Will told her was a reasonable position, Emily got up and put her jacket on. "Stay at the diner tonight," Will said to her quietly while Maggie climbed down from the stool. "Or take Maggie to your sisters in Billings for the weekend." Emily looked at him.
"Is it that close?" "I don't know how close it is," he said. "But Brandon Keller went to someone's house. That changes the category of what this is. Emily thought about it.
Not long. She was not a woman who needed long to decide. I'm not going to Billings, she said. I'm not leaving town while you're here dealing with this. Emily, I'm also not Patty Gould, who's 67 and runs a diner alone, she said.