Chapter 7: Said Nothing

Everybody drank.

I handed Lyle his phone back without looking at him.

My hand was steady, and I was proud of that.

Ron went back to his steaks.

The bride laughed at herself and wiped her eyes with a cocktail napkin.

Her mother hugged her from behind.

Her father, a big quiet man in a company polo, clapped Ron on the shoulder.

I could have said it right then.

One sentence would have done it.

I looked at the bride, still laughing into her napkin with her brother's gray eyes.

Then I took a shrimp off Sharon's tray as it went past and ate it.

Lyle lifted Evie off his shoulders and set her down beside his sister.

"Can you watch the T. rex for five minutes?"

"Actually," Evie told her, "I'm watching you."

"Deal," the bride said.

Lyle looked at me and tipped his head toward the dock.

I went, because if I didn't, he was going to say it on the deck.

The dock ran forty feet out over the water.

The boards were gray and going soft at the edges.

Lyle walked to the end and turned around.

"You saw it," he said.

"I saw it."

"And you said nothing."

"So did you."

"I was waiting for you."

"Why me?"

"Because I know it's a rental." He crossed his arms. "You know where the money for the rental comes from."

I looked back up at the deck.

Ron was laughing with his head thrown back, one hand on the bride's father's arm.

"My husband's paycheck," I said.

Lyle didn't move.

"All of it?"

"I don't know yet. I've never seen the account. Nobody has but Ron."

"Then we go up there and ask him."

"In front of your sister?"

"In front of everybody. That's how you stop a con. Daylight."

"That's how you humiliate a twenty-seven-year-old at her own engagement party."

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