All The Way Down

Chapter 36

Esto's office was just large enough to hold an ornate hardwood desk with a high back leather chair behind it and a simple metal chair with a missing foot peg. The chair rocked a little when I shifted my weight, but I didn’t mind. I knew I could have been in jail all night with the losers Bullard had found to entertain me.

I held some of the ice against the knuckles on my left hand. Esto poured us a couple of tall drinks and after we toasted to not spending time in jail, I gunned down a couple of big swallows from my glass. My head still throbbed painfully from the blows I'd gotten in the cell, and my leg had a knot on it the size of a golf ball from where Bullard had clubbed me with a nightstick.

Then I remembered I was supposed to be up at Michelle's and I asked Esto if I could use the phone. He nodded and I got her number out of my wallet and dialed.

"Hello," she said. Her voice sounded tight over the phone.

"It's Del," I said. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for dinner. I was thrown in jail this evening."

"Well imagine that," she said. "How was it?"

"It was pretty damn terrible. I said I was sorry, what's the problem?"

"I'll tell you the problem, Del. You told the police about our looking at those personnel records, didn't you?"

"Yes," I said. "I had to."

"Well, my boss had a visit from Sgt. Bullard today, who told him that I was interfering with a police investigation. He had the copy of Ray's personnel file with him that we made."

I swallowed.

"I told you that I'd get in trouble if people found out I was copying that stuff. Dean said things like that make the quarry liable for lawsuits. Now I'm suspended without pay for two weeks. Dean said if my mother wasn't his friend he would have fired me."

"I'm really sorry, Michelle. I had to tell them to get them to help me."

"God," she said. "Not that again." I heard crying in the background.

"What's wrong with Rosalie?" I asked.

"Not that it's any of your business," she said. "We found one of the doors open this evening and Colonel is missing. Now Rosalie can't find your damned golf ball, either."

"Oh," I said. "I'm sorry."

"Go to hell," she said. And then she hung up on me.