Ugh. If only my stomach would settle.
I walk into Lorenzo’s. Lambert’s already here, at a table in the back. The owner, Lisa Lorenzo, is at the hostess stand today.
“Hey, Donny. Just you today?”
“Actually, I’m meeting someone. I see him in the back.”
“The guy from Denver? Okay. I’ll send your server over.”
“Thanks.” I walk to the table and take a seat. “John.”
“Hey, Donny.” He cocks his head. “You’re looking a little glum.”
“Just don’t like owing people favors, man.”
“I feel you. I don’t either, which is why I’m glad I’m on the receiving end this time. You’ve bailed me out enough.”
True enough. “What’s it going to take, John?”
“Ease up, Steel. Let’s order. Have some lunch. We can get to details later.”
“I’d be more comfortable getting to details now.” I can’t eat anyway, so I’d rather know exactly what the cost will be for John’s help with the Murphy situation. I’m hoping it only costs dollars. I’ve spent enough of my ethics already. I’m really in debt there.
“Nah,” he says. “I’m starved.” He waves at a young woman. “Debbie, we’re ready over here.”
Are we? I haven’t even looked at the menu. Doesn’t matter. Whatever I order will taste like sawdust anyway.
Debbie hustles over, pad in hand. “Hi, Donny.” She gives me a smile. “You gentlemen ready?”
“We are,” Lambert says. “I’ll have Lorenzo’s feast.”
“You’ve got a big appetite,” Debbie says.
Indeed. Lorenzo’s feast is a hunk of lasagna, chicken parmesan, ravioli, and a side of spaghetti with a giant meatball.
“Donny?” Debbie lifts her eyebrows.
My standard I’ll have the same is replaced with, “Just a small plate of spaghetti marinara, please.”
“Since when does a Steel boy not order the feast?” She laughs.
“Had a big breakfast,” I lie.
Damn, I’m a good liar. Who knew? Even this little white lie makes me hate myself.
“Good enough.” Debbie pushes her pad into her apron pocket. “I’ll get this started.”
“So”—I raise my brow at John—“don’t leave me in suspense.”
Lambert takes a sip of his water. “We forgot to order drinks.”
“I don’t drink during the workday.”
“I’m not talking alcohol, Don. Jesus. I was thinking maybe an iced tea?”
I wave to Debbie, and she rushes over.
“Yeah, Don?”
“My companion would like an iced tea.”
“Sweet or unsweet?”
“Unsweet,” Lambert says.
“And you, Don?”
“Water’s fine.”
“Good enough. So sorry about that.” She hustles away, clearly flustered that she didn’t ask us about drinks.
I couldn’t care less.
“Let’s get to it,” I say.
“Ease up,” Lambert says for the second time. “Can’t a couple of old friends enjoy a meal?”
A couple of things are wrong with Lambert’s statement. First of all, we’re not friends, so we’re hardly old friends. He was a client when I practiced law in Denver, and I got him out of several scrapes, the most notorious being a defamation lawsuit. Second, I won’t enjoy any meal while all this is going down. I feel like complete shit about what I’ve caused to happen, but Lambert?
He doesn’t seem to care in the least.
How can I enjoy a meal sitting across from a person of such questionable ethics?
I laugh aloud—a soft scoff.
Who the hell am I to judge? Lambert breached his ethics big time, but he did so at my request. I’m the king of ethics breaching. I put this plan in motion, and I’m going to break and enter someone’s property to search for documents involving my family.
Who the fuck is the worst?
It’s not the man sitting across from me.
And that stark realization has me wanting to unload the contents of my stomach right onto the table.
Chapter Eight
Callie
Bonfires at Snow Creek High School were all the rage. The town stopped allowing them after my sophomore year due to fire hazards—at least that’s what they said—but when Rory and I were in school, they were the bomb.
They were supposed to be, anyway.
The school sponsored one after each football game, and it was at one bonfire during my sophomore year—Rory’s senior—that things got out of hand.
Someone had brought alcohol, of course. That in itself wasn’t out of place. Someone always sneaked alcohol in. This time, though, it was laced with something.
The party line was—and still is—that the culprit was never caught.
He was, though. Just not by the police.
He was caught by Rory and me. And four others.
We were ready to turn him in for the reward money. The Steel family offered a huge bounty because one of their sweethearts, Diana Steel, got caught in the cross fire. She attended the bonfire her freshman year and ended up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning—which turned out not to be just alcohol poisoning, but alcohol poisoning plus something else. The records were sealed, so to this day, we don’t know what else was in that mixture that someone called hairy buffalo.
We only know that it made those who drank it pretty stoned out of their heads. I still remember watching Carmen stare into the flames of the fire as if she were ready to walk into them.
Then there was Rory. She’d been crowned homecoming queen at the game, and on a dare, she drank a red plastic cup full of hairy buffalo.
Big mistake.
I warned her, but she was high on life that night. She was the Snow Creek homecoming queen—the most beautiful and popular girl in school.
She drank it down, and to this day, she still says it is the sweetest concoction she’s ever tasted. Thankfully, she didn’t drink any more of it, or she might have ended up next to Diana in the hospital.
That was the start.
We found out who’d spiked the hairy buffalo.
Pat Lamone.
And he tried to destroy us for it.
Rory’s staring out the window from our table at Rita’s. I have no doubt she’s replaying the same episode in her mind.
In the end, we didn’t turn Lamone in, for reasons that seemed valid at the time.
Now he’s back.
“Diana Steel,” I say. “Funny how I’d forgotten her part in all this.”
“She didn’t play a part,” Rory says. “She was a victim, like I was. Like Carmen was. Like many were.”
“Yeah, I know. I just mean, Donny and all… His sister. Maybe…”
“No,” Rory says flatly.
“He could help.”
“The only way he can help is to pay off Lamone, and you won’t ask him to do that.”
She’s not wrong.
“I wonder,” I say, “how the Steels handled it back then. You and I were so involved in our own issues that we didn’t pay any attention to Diana and what this cost her.”