His lips pulled back, exposing his teeth as he spun around and grabbed a clear, unlabeled bottle from the shelf behind the bar.
“Max,” I said more insistently.
Ruth glanced between the two of us. “What are all y’all talkin’ about?”
Max gave me a look that suggested it was my call.
Did I want to share this with Ruth? I barely knew her, but I felt like I could trust her. I had to trust someone. Besides, I suspected most people around here would think nothing of carrying a gun for protection.
Pushing out a sigh, I leaned my elbow on the counter and rested my forehead on my hand. “I knew something was wrong, so I brought a gun outside with me. I set it down when I was trying to help Seth, then I forgot all about it until right before the deputy showed up. I told Max, and he said he’d take care of it, now he says it was gone.”
“It just up and vanished?” she asked him incredulously.
“Hell if I know,” Max said with a shrug. “But I know it wasn’t there when I distracted Detective Hard-on-for-the-Drummonds to go get it.”
“Did another deputy get to it first?” Ruth asked, worry on her face.
“I don’t see how,” Max said, pouring himself another drink. “I came upon Marco as he got out of his car. Then we walked together to the body. It wasn’t there. Marco was the first on the scene. There’s no way the Hensen County Sheriff’s Department has it.”
“So who does?” I asked, my stomach falling to my feet.
“Now that is a mighty fine question,” Max said, pointing a finger at me as he lifted his glass, now half full of a clear liquid. Had he moved on to vodka?
“Did you see anything else?” I asked him.
He squinted. “Like what?”
“I don’t know…clues? Evidence?”
“There was nothin’ on the ground next to him. Trust me. I checked.”
“Who would take my gun?” I asked, trying not to panic.
And my key fob.
I decided not to mention it. If I admitted to setting off the alarm, they’d wonder if I’d seen more than I was saying.
“Somebody who was watchin’,” Ruth said solemnly.
I turned my head to face her. “Someone who saw the murder?”
“Maybe.”
“Or someone who heard you scream bloody murder,” Max said, taking a generous sip of his drink, then grimacing as it went down.
“You’re gettin’ sauced,” Ruth said with a frown. “That deputy got you worried about your daddy?”
“My father ain’t got nothin’ for him to find,” Max said, topping off his glass.
Ruth didn’t look like she believed him, but she didn’t press. “Max, it’s three in the mornin’, so you need to go back to bed. And so does Carly.”
“She can’t go back over to the motel,” Max said. “The deputies have her room roped off for their investigation, not to mention the whole rest of the motel since whoever did this kicked in some doors.”
“They can’t go into my room, can they?” I asked in a panic. “Wouldn’t they need a warrant?”
Max’s eyes narrowed. “You got somethin’ in there to hide?”
He laughed like he’d made a joke. But I didn’t want the police to look too hard at my identification paperwork. My cell phone. Of course, the gun—the only thing that could really incriminate me—was gone.
The gun just didn’t vanish into thin air, though. Someone had taken it, along with my key fob…the real question was what they planned to do with them.
Chapter Seven
Ruth offered to take me to her place, but first she insisted on leading Max upstairs and making sure he got to bed. I decided to clean up while I waited, but first I picked up the clear bottle and removed the lid to get a whiff. The smell of pure alcohol made my nose burn, and I made a face as I set it down.
“You’re besmirchin’ what’s supposed to be the finest moonshine in all of Eastern Tennessee,” Wyatt said from the door to the back room. He was leaning his shoulder into the doorframe as though he didn’t have a care in the world.
Startled, I jumped a good couple of inches, and my heart started to race. I wasn’t sure if it was because he’d scared me or because of his effect on my hormones, but I chose to believe it was the former. “What in the hell are you doing here? I thought you and Max were at odds.”
“You’ve already been drawn into the Drummond family secrets, huh?” he asked, sounding bored. “That didn’t take long.”
“If you came to see Max, he’s—”
He slowly began to advance toward me. “It wasn’t Max I came to see.”
“If it’s Ruth, she’ll be—”
“I didn’t come to see Ruth either.”
I swallowed hard. “What do you want?”
He laughed, but he didn’t sound amused as he walked behind the bar and picked up the bottle. Although he supposedly didn’t spend much time at the bar, he seemed comfortable enough as he reached under the counter and retrieved a glass. He poured himself a small amount of moonshine, then downed it.
“Same damn garbage it always was,” he said, setting the glass and the bottle on the counter, his gaze fixed on me.
He was close enough to make me uncomfortable, and while I had plenty of space to back up and put some distance between us, I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of letting him know I was intimidated. Max had said he didn’t think Wyatt capable of murder, but was he capable of hurting a woman? Plenty of men were.
“What do you want?” I repeated, but with a lot more attitude than before.
A hard look filled his bloodshot, slightly puffy eyes. He’d either been crying or drinking, but the moonshine on his breath made it difficult for me to tell the difference. “I’m gonna give you one more chance to tell me what you’re doin’ here.”
What did he think I’d done? It struck me that he might have been at the garage at the time of the murder. The car alarm would certainly have given him a jolt. If he’d run over to the motel, he might have witnessed something.
Had he seen me next to Seth’s body?
Was he the one who’d taken my gun and key fob?
I propped a hand on my hip and glared up at him. “Or what? What are you gonna do to me, Wyatt? Kill me?”
As the words fell out of my mouth, I wanted to reel them back in. If he actually did want to kill me, was it a good idea to so blatantly accuse him of it?
I blamed the whiskey and my nerves.
But his reaction was more startled than intimidating—his eyes flew wide and he took a step back. “What?”
“What’s goin’ on here?” Ruth asked in a hard voice as she came around the front of the counter, holding a handgun of her own. When she saw who was with me, she relaxed a little but didn’t put down her gun. Wyatt’s look of surprise might have been comical if I’d been in a laughing mood.
“What are you doin’ here?” she asked him.
Frustration tightened his face. “I came to talk to Carly. No need for a weapon.”
“We’re all a little jumpy what with poor Seth lyin’ out there in the parking lot, surrounded by a chalk line.”