Free The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney

dipshit.”
    â€œI like to think I’m more of a jerk-­off,” Wyatt said.
    â€œYou’re the private investigator?” She eyed him skeptically. “You don’t look like a private investigator.”
    â€œYou don’t look like a Candace Kilkenny.”
    Not even close. She had skin the color of fresh cinnamon, and dark hair pulled back in a ponytail that highlighted the exotic cant of even darker eyes. Wyatt put her at twenty-­three, maybe twenty-­four years old.
    â€œI don’t? Wow, really?” she said. She stood with her fists on her hips, legs wide, a colossus astride the world, all five feet, two inches of her.
    Wyatt liked her already.
    â€œEveryone always thinks I’m some mail-­order bride from Thailand,” she said, “and I’m like, ‘Screw you! I grew up in Arizona!’ I’m all-­American trailer trash! I’ve never even been to Thailand, not since I was like six months old! Give me a break!”
    â€œI’m glad we’ve cleared that up. I feel as if it was starting to come between us.”
    â€œI thought you’d be some big tough guy. Like Gavin? Gavin looks like he could kick somebody’s ass.”
    â€œHey,” Wyatt said. “I’m six feet tall and reasonably fit. Almost six-­one. Who’s to say I don’t kick the occasional ass?”
    â€œDoubt it.” But she reached out and gave his bicep a squeeze. A hard one. “Maybe.”
    â€œMy name’s Wyatt. Wyatt Rivers.”
    â€œWyatt Rivers.” She looked doubtful about that, too. “You want a beer? Come on in.”
    She led him inside. Wyatt saw that the wooden cabinets that once held the card catalogs were still there. The stage. The battered old bar. The Art Deco skylight that had probably never been cleaned and the rickety balcony that twenty-­six years later still seemed on the verge of collapse. Posters for past shows covered every available inch of wall space.
    Wyatt sat on a lopsided stool at the far end of the bar while Candace drew him a draft.
    â€œI want to put in a kitchen,” she said. “Just a little one, for hamburgers or whatever, so we can open for lunch. Can you imagine the lunch business we’d do, all the ­people who work downtown?”
    Wyatt reached for the beer and noticed on the wall behind Candace a show bill for the Hüsker Dü show. May 1, 1986. He felt his stomach clench again, not so gently this time. He checked his watch. The last plane back to Vegas left at four. He flipped open his reporter’s notebook.
    â€œGavin says someone has been harassing you.”
    â€œSomeone’s been totally harassing me!”
    â€œMy mistake. Totally harassing you. Tell me.”
    â€œIt started a ­couple of weeks ago. Three weeks ago? I get to work, and all the beer kegs out back, the empties, somebody had tipped them over and rolled them around, all over the parking lot. Two days later, totally same thing!”
    She waited. Wyatt waited. If that was it, the Case of the Tipped-­Over Empty Beer Kegs, his prospects for making that four-­o’clock flight back to Vegas had just improved dramatically.
    She reached across the bar and thwacked him in the sternum with the knuckles of her small, cinnamon-­brown hand. The pain was surprisingly sharp. “Stop it!” she said.
    â€œStop what? I’m listening attentively.”
    â€œWhat you’re doing with your eyebrow.”
    â€œMs. Kilkenny,” he said, keeping an eye on her hand in case she decided to thwack him again, “just because your beer kegs—­”
    â€œShut up, I know,” she said. “Call me Candace. It’s not just the beer kegs. There’s more. Okay? A ­couple of nights later, the sign—­my big sign out front?—­somebody climbed up there and rearranged all the letters one night. They took the letters and moved them around so they spelled