Free The Grilling Season by Diane Mott Davidson

hungry, he’ll eat.” In the three weeks he’d been with us, however, that hadn’t happened. But I was ever hopeful. Now I set aside the eggs and butter and went back to our refrigerator. There I retrieved a bowl of homemade chocolate pudding left over from a catering job. I ladled spoonfuls of it into a crystal parfait glass.
    Arch clomped back into the kitchen after completing his summoning duty, flopped into a chair, and turned doleful eyes to me.
    “When do you suppose I’ll be able to talk to Dad? He hasn’t called his office and ReeAnn is having a fit.”
    “I don’t know,” I answered truthfully.
    “But … is Dad in jail? When will he get out?” Arch insisted.
    “Um, I’m not sure. He’s probably being processed.”
    “Oh, great. Like liverwurst.”
    I let this pass, set the chocolate pudding on the table, and started to mix up a batch of hockey-puck biscuits. If Macguire wouldn’t go for traditional bacon-and-egg-typebreakfast-taste sensations, perhaps he’d flip for chocolate and biscuits.
    While Arch contemplated the table, wrestling with his confusion, I sifted the flour with the other dry ingredients while my food processor cut through the shortening. I mixed in the buttermilk, patted out the dough, cut it into circles on a sheet, and set the sheet in the oven. Then I cleaned the doser and refilled my espresso machine with water. This would be my fourth quadruple-shot of the morning, but I desperately craved the clearheadedness that caffeine usually offered. Unfortunately, such clarity had eluded me ever since my gruesome discovery on Jacobean Drive.
    Nevertheless, the coffee-making process gave me time to think about how to deal with Arch. I wished that I hadn’t told Marla it was okay to leave. She’d have been able to help me with this minefield of a dialogue, cowardly as that sounded. Arch’s questions were difficult to answer, not only because they were delivered in an alternately pleading and hostile manner, but also because the answers themselves were sure not to please him. When would John Richard be freed? How was I going to tell my son that bail was not supposed to be granted in capital cases? Of course, occasionally something was wrong with the arrest or the evidence, or the judge had a surpassing reason for granting bail. Sometimes the suspect’s standing in the community was so impeccable that the judge let him or her out once a huge bail had been set. But John Richard’s reputation was far from impeccable.
    I took a deep breath and poured Macguire some juice. “Your father’s lawyer will go before ajudge first thing Monday morning and at least
try
to get him out on bail. I have to tell you, Arch, it would be unusual for the request to be granted. And if bail is set very high, I don’t know if your father has that kind of cash or equity in his house.”
    Arch’s face darkened and he turned away from me. On some level he seemed to be aware of his father’s financial problems. “What about Tom? Are they going to assign Tom to this case?”
    “I doubt that very much,” I said carefully. “It would probably be viewed as a conflict of interest.”
    Arch flashed back around. His forehead was so furrowed with alarm that I felt my heart slam against my chest.
You bet it’s a conflict of interest
, I could imagine him saying. But to my surprise his distress went the other way. “They’re not going to assign Tom? But I thought you said he was the best the department has! If they don’t assign Tom, how will we ever prove Dad’s innocent?” I was speechless.
    So Arch’s question hung unanswered as Macguire Perkins galumphed slowly into the kitchen. His yellowed eyes were difficult to look at, as were his hollow cheeks and emaciated frame. When I first met him, he’d been strong, a basketball player and bodybuilder. Now, thin and lethargic, Macguire seemed to teeter on his long legs like a precariously staked scarecrow.
    “Well,” he murmured without enthusiasm, “how’s