Dark Horse by Tami Hoag Page A

Chad? Is that why you came back later and keyed her car?”
    “What’s with you?” he demanded. “Why are you here? Do you have a warrant or something?”
    I was standing too close to him. He wanted to back away. “I don’t need a warrant, Chad,” I said quietly, my eyes steady on his. “I’m not that kind of a cop.”
    He didn’t know quite what that meant, but it made him nervous. He put his hands on his hips, shuffled his feet, crossed his arms over his chest, looked out at the street.
    “Where’s Erin?” I asked.
    “I told you, I don’t know. I haven’t seen her.”
    “Since when? Since Friday? The night you fought with her? The night you keyed her car?”
    “I don’t know anything about that. Talk to that fat cow she works with,” he said. “Jill Moron. She’s nuts. Ask her where Erin is. She probably killed her and ate her.”
    “How do you know Jill Morone?” I asked. “How would you know anything about the people Erin works with if you haven’t been in touch with Erin?”
    He went still and looked out the door.
    Gotcha.
It was nice to know I still had the touch.
    “What did you fight about Friday night, Chad?” I asked again, then waited patiently while he struggled to decide on an answer.
    “I dumped her,” he said, turning toward the shelves again. He selected a white cotton towel from a stack of white cotton towels, all neatly folded. “I don’t need the trouble.”
    “Uh-huh. Bullshit. You don’t dump a girl, then come back and key her car. There’s no point if you’re not the dumpee.”
    “I didn’t key her car!”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    “Well, that’s your problem, not mine.”
    “I don’t see you dumping her, Chad. Erin might have been off the hook with Krystal and Bruce because she moved out, but you could still pull your old man’s chain by staying involved with her.”
    “You don’t know anything about my family.”
    “Don’t I?” I looked around the garage with its place for everything and everything in its place. “Your old man is a tight-ass control freak. His way is the only way. His opinion is the only opinion. Everyone else in the house is there to serve his needs and validate his superiority. How am I doing so far?”
    Chad went to his truck in a huff and started trying to towel off the water spots that had already dried on the finish.
    “He’ll ride you if you don’t get those spots out, won’t he, Chad?” I said, following him around the truck. “Can’t have spots on the cars. What would the neighbors think? And imagine if they found out about you and Erin. What a disgrace, doing it with your stepsister. It’s practically incest. You really found Dad’s hot button, didn’t you?”
    “Lady, you’re pissing me off.”
    I didn’t tell him that was the idea. I followed him around the hood to the other side of the truck. “Tell me what I want to know and I’ll leave.”
    “There’s nothing to tell. I don’t know where Erin is, and I don’t give a shit.”
    “I bet you’ll give a shit when you’ve got a cop tailing you. Because maybe there’s a drug angle to Erin’s disappearance. I can tell you from experience, there are few things a narc likes better than getting his hooks into a kid with money and connections. And how about when your father gets questioned about your involvement? I guess you might enjoy that—”
    He turned on me, hands up, as if I was holding him at gunpoint. “All right! All right. Jesus, you’re something, lady,” he said, shaking his head.
    I waited.
    “All right,” he said again, letting out a sigh. “Erin and I used to be together. I thought it meant something, but it didn’t mean anything to her. She dumped me. That’s it. That’s the whole story. There’s nothing to do with drugs or deals or anything else. That’s it. She dumped me.”
    He shrugged and his arms fell back to his sides, limp, the admission taking all the starch out of him. The male ego is a fragile thing at seventeen or