Quinn took one of the butter cookies on a serving platter, made a face after one bite, and put it back. Whatever, Darren thought. It was Quinn’s investigation. Darren was here to fish for what he could on the Brotherhood connection, to find intel for the task force. All he needed was to get in a room alone with Gil, Marnie, or Bill King, and he’d make his plan work. Not a one of them was worth the horseshit he’d had to scrape from the soles of his boots at Rosemary King’s front door. That the woman in whose palatial Victorian colonial Darren now sat had raised a captain of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas—a man who now sat in a Texas penitentiary—made about as much sense as a freedmen’s community sharing real estate with Nazis. Meaning it didn’t. Not one bit.

Darren had gotten two texts since they’d been waiting.

One odd—his old friend Greg asking, U where i think u are?

And one ominous—Mack texting, We need to talk.

Darren was sliding his phone away when Rosemary King entered her parlor followed by a rakish man slightly younger than her, in his late fifties. Rosemary was a broad-shouldered woman with a head of blondish-gray hair that was coming loose from a chignon. She was flushed. Her cheeks and sternum—peeking through a crisp white shirtwaist dress—were both pink with heat. The same could be said for her guest. The man was wearing a suit jacket—linen, even though it was December—and no tie. Darren had no knowledge of the layout of the house, but it sure appeared they’d just come from upstairs. The curved staircase was behind them, the banister wound with Christmas holly and white poinsettias.

Rosemary asked Mary, her maid, for two glasses of water. “With ice,” she said, sitting down and shooting a sidelong glance at the man beside her. There was something intimate and conspiratorial about the look that made Darren uncomfortable. What exactly had they walked in on, and why hadn’t this woman been ready to receive the sheriff who was looking for her missing grandson? “Sheriff, can I have Mary fetch you anything else? Would you prefer a Coke or some coffee?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Ranger?”

“I’m sure Mary’s done enough,” Darren said.

Rosemary turned her attention back to the local sheriff. “Steve, I told you when you called yesterday, I haven’t seen the boy since before Thanksgiving. Marnie doesn’t exactly make it easy for me to have a relationship with my grandson.”

Darren leaned forward and said, “Perhaps this is something better discussed in private.” He gave a courteous nod to the man sitting in the King Louis armchair across from him. The man smiled, tickled in some way.