Going to the Bad by Nora McFarland Page B

uncomfortable and refused to make eye contact. “The more you investigate who shot Bud, the more you’re going to discover about his life. Not all of it’s going to be good.” He finally looked at me. “If he does die, don’t you want to remember the best of him?”
    I laughed. “I have no illusions about Bud. He’s a cheat, a liar, and probably even a petty criminal, but I love him. There’s nothing I can find out that’s going to change that.”
    â€œAre you sure?”
    I flashed on Erabelle standing in her bedroom doorway. Bud was good at hurting people. Was Rod right? Was I going to find out that Bud used women? That he even led them on and treated them badly? He’d obviously treated Erabelle badly. What had happened that she still felt the pain after so long?
    â€œYou’re right,” I said. “There may be some things about Bud that I’d rather not dwell on, but even if the worst is true, it won’t change the way I feel about him. He’s always been there for me, and my dad before that. If our situations were reversed, he wouldn’t rest until the person who hurt me was caught.”
    Leanore had seen us in the hallway and now joined us. “Rod, you look terrible.”
    â€œI’ll be okay.”
    â€œPoor thing.” Leanore hugged him. “Don’t worry. Lilly and I will handle this new assignment for Callum. You rest.”
    We left an unhappy Rod slumped in one of the waiting-room chairs. The only time I’d seen him looking worse was when he’d been shot.
    Leanore and I drove north past the city limits. The freewaywas crowded with people ripping through Bakersfield on their way to Fresno or Yosemite for the holiday. On the relatively short drive, Leanore filled me in on what she knew about Warner’s sister and son.
    Apparently Erabelle had been a fixture in Warner’s household until the early seventies. Rumors at the time said she ran away to Europe against Warner’s wishes. He’d cut her off, but she hadn’t returned. That is, until five years ago when Warner had funded a charity she was running. Leanore thought it helped businesswomen in developing countries but wasn’t sure.
    â€œThat must be what Erabelle was talking about,” I said. “She had a huge fight with Junior because he cut off all of Warner’s discretionary spending, including Erabelle’s foundation.”
    â€œJunior, as you call him, is well thought of, but rarely seen. He lives in New York, I think.”
    â€œHe may be in debt. Erabelle accused him of siphoning off money while his father was sick.”
    I spent the rest of the trip describing Warner’s mansion. Leanore was like a kid in a candy store as I detailed the architecture and construction. By the time we’d exited the freeway, I’d resolved to blackmail Warner into finally letting her do a story on the house.
    That we were discussing a famous property, whose owner and architect had spent a fortune to perfect it, was ironic considering the property at our destination was a rocky, barren stretch of no-man’s-land.
    â€œI thought you said this was a farm.” Leanore leaned forward to see out the windshield. “Demeter herself couldn’t grow anything on this land.”
    I didn’t point out that weeds and scrub brush were growing with abandon. Instead, I looked again at the county assessor’s website on my iPhone. “Callum’s the one who said it was a farm. Maybe it used to be.”
    â€œI’m guessing there’s no oil.” She glanced at the fence on the opposite side of the road from the King property. A WarnerPetroleum sign cautioned that the fence was electrified. “Otherwise the Kings would have sold the land or dropped their own well a long time ago.”
    She was probably right. It didn’t appear Warner had any actual oil wells nearby. Instead his property housed a massive