“So tell me, Lafferty, what is it you’re afraid of ?” Jarrod asked. He peeled the label from his bottle of beer while some old country ballad wafted through the smoky interior of the bar. From the back room, billiard balls clicked while conversation at the few odd tables scattered around the room was punctuated by laughter. A television mounted high over the bar was tuned in to a baseball game, which the bartender watched as he polished the battered old mahogany with a white towel.

“‘Afraid of’?” Mason took a swallow from his long-necked bottle and let the beer cool his throat. He didn’t like lying; wasn’t much good at it, but knew that once in a while it was necessary. This was one of those times. “Nothing.”

“Bull.” Jarrod eyed him with the calm of a cougar advancing upon a lamb. He leaned forward. “You’re scared that Patty’s involved up to her eyeballs in old man Wells’s disappearance.”

“I don’t know how.” That much was the truth, though he couldn’t help suspecting that Patty, with her penchant for trouble, knew something about their uncle’s vanishing act. What, he couldn’t imagine, but then Patty always kept him guessing. He never knew what to expect from his mule-headed sister.

“Yeah, and I’m the Pope.”

“Why would I pay you a lot of money if I already knew the answer?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.” He hoisted his empty bottle and signaled to a bored-looking waitress. “Hey, Tammy, how about another one?” He motioned to Mason. “For him, too.”

She nodded a head of overbleached and kinky-permed hair, and Jarrod swung his gaze to his friend again. “I get the feeling that you’ve led me on a wild-goose chase, Lafferty, and I don’t like being played for a fool. You know that.”

“Look, I don’t know where Patty is and I sure as hell can’t begin to figure out what happened to old Isaac. As much of a pain in the butt as he was, most of the people in this county think it’s a blessing that he’s gone, but I’m not one of them.”

Jarrod snorted as Mason drained his beer. “Right.”

The waitress, slim in her blue jeans and white T-shirt, deposited two more bottles on the table. “Anything else?”

“Not just yet,” Jarrod said, flashing her a smile that was known to break women’s hearts.

She, today, wasn’t in the mood. “Just let me know,” she said sourly and took the empties.

“You got it.” Jarrod rolled the new bottle between his palms.

Jarrod had phoned Mason, invited him for a drink, and Mason had agreed. He needed something—anything—to get his mind off Bliss. But he wasn’t too keen on being grilled by his old friend.

Jarrod checked his watch. “Look, I’ve got to go, but there’s one more thing.”

“Shoot.”