Joel agreed to the beer. “Are you the only person on this block?”

“Only person for miles,” Wesley called. He returned to the living room with two sweating bottles of Corona. “I got this house off the Evers family for a song a few years back. Mrs. Evers got a little carried away with her redevelopment plans and had to unload fast.”

Joel took a long pull of the cold beer. He knew the sort of property developments Wesley was talking about—fat bubbles of speculation slippery with enthusiasm—and had counseled plenty of investors against them in the course of his career.

“This is the same Evers family as Luke, the running back?”

“The very ones. His family owns half the town these days, runs the Chamber of Commerce, such as it is. Did you ever go in the back room of the steak house on South Street? Mr. Evers is like a king in there these days, smoking and talking with the other men, scheming how to get us back in the black. Not that it does him much good at the moment. Football’s the only business still going around here.”

“You don’t say,” Joel said, as casually as he could. “Were any of your kids at the youth group talking about the fight Luke and Dylan had at the game?”

“That’s all for appearances. Those boys have to keep up a rivalry, you know. Your brother stole Luke’s girl back in middle school so now they have parts to play.”

“Luke and Bethany Tanner used to be an item?”

“I think their parents still wish they were. Evers and Tanner would be worth a small fortune if they got together.”

“But instead she chose my family.”

Wesley laughed. “Bethany and Dylan seem like the real deal.”

“She certainly loves the attention. Mind if we lay into something stronger?”

Joel was halfway to the drinks cart by the time Wesley told him to help himself.

Joel plucked a whiskey at random from a thicket of bottles and poured himself a double. He drank it down fast, poured another for himself and Wesley. For a man with a cross in his living room, this youth minister possessed quite an array of booze.

“Does KT Staler ever come to church with my brother?” Joel shouted toward the kitchen.

“You mean Mister Powerball? He’s a cat, he comes and goes. His sister, Savannah, was in your class at school, no?”

“The one who went to jail?” Joel faintly remembered Savannah Staler, a cheerleader rumored to have a hole in her nose from all the powder she snorted.

“The very same. She used to date Jason Ovelle.”

“I saw that guy getting loaded into a cruiser Friday night,” Joel said, with a faint odd blush of nostalgia. Jason had been a bully, and a savage one at that, but Joel had once had quite the locker room crush on him (and on all that he’d once kept, barely concealed, beneath his towel). “What did Jason do at the game to get arrested for?”