Page 61 of Everyone’s a Liar

“No. I need this information,” she insisted. “I assume you knew he became a private investigator.”

Bob nodded. “That’s when he started coming out here again. He seemed happier, although I don’t think he ever fully got over his grief.”

Bryce studied the large man. It was time to find out how far he would go to help his friend.

“Did he bring his clients to this place?”

“He might have.”

“And you knew that he was using aliases to trick people?”

Bob stiffened. He hadn’t been expecting the question. The urge to deny any knowledge of Larry’s deceptions warred with the unease of lying to a cop. At last he tried to hedge.

“Larry helped me out more than once over the years,” he muttered.

“That wasn’t my question.”

Another painful pause. “Yeah, okay,” he finally burst out. “When he asked me to use a different name for him every now and then, I didn’t care. Why would I? He was just doing his job.”

Bryce narrowed her eyes, thinking of Livia’s raw sense of betrayal. “I’m not sure the women he lied to and manipulated would agree.”

“Is that what this is about? Did some woman call the cops because he lied to her?”

Bryce arched a brow, her expression hard at his dismissive tone. “I’m here because I’m trying to get a feel for who Sutton is and where he might go if he wanted to disappear.”

He hunched his shoulders, no doubt sensing her annoyance at his lack of sympathy for Larry’s victims.

“It could be anywhere, really. He once spent a month living on the streets in an effort to find the missing daughter of one of those mega-church preachers. He was filthy and covered in bug bites by the time he tracked her down, but the father paid him a damned fortune.”

“According to his secretary, she hasn’t seen or heard from him in days despite her efforts to contact him. She was packing up her things when I went to the office. She said that he might disappear for a few days or even weeks, but he always returned her calls. And this was the first time he’d ever missed signing the payroll.”

Bob paused, as if suddenly taking her concern for Larry Sutton seriously. “That’s strange, even for Larry,” he conceded. “He can be a selfish bastard, but the one thing he cares about is his business. And that includes Cherry.”

“Where would he go if he needed to lay low for a while?”

“I really don’t know.”

With a grunt of annoyance, Bryce leaned forward, folding her arms on the table as she glared at her companion.

“Look, Bob, I get that you feel some sort of loyalty to the guy, but I’m not looking to arrest him. I just want to know that he’s okay.”

Bob licked his lips. “Like a wellness check?”

“Something like that,” she said, dodging a direct answer. “Does he have any family in this area?”

“He never spoke about any family. I got the feeling that he’d taken off from home when he was young and never looked back.”

Bryce ground her teeth. Of course he couldn’t have a large extended family that she could use to track him down.

“What about close friends who would let him camp on their couch?”

“Not that I know about. At least not in this town. He’s burned a lot of bridges over the years.”

“There has to be someplace he crashes,” she insisted, refusing to concede defeat. “He has too many enemies not to have a hiding spot.”

Bob heaved a deep sigh. “If he isn’t with one of his current girlfriends, I suppose he could be at one of the cheap hotels he uses when he’s avoiding an angry husband or unhappy client,” he reluctantly revealed.

Bryce felt her first prick of hope since driving to La Harpe. Reaching into her purse, she pulled out a small notebook and a pen, shoving them across the table.