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couldn't refuse," he said. "So I moved back last week. They hung the shingle yesterday: Gill, McClellan, and Harding. Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"
    I swallowed the last inch of my beer, surprised it had gone down so fast. "Hit me again, Paul. So you turned out to be a big-shot lawyer."
    "Hardly," he said. "Mom told me you were on the PGA Tour."
    "Not anymore," I said, reaching for the third Bud-weiser. "I'm working over at the Grandpappy for now." Max's eyes widened.
    "Where your Dad..."
    "Yep. And Kaitlin Rupert's home base now, too. What's up with all that?"
    "If you read the paper, you know the story. She says Coach molested her; he says not a chance. And I believe him. That's why I took the case."
    "And now the headshrinker who brought this all out turns up dead. Sounds like trouble to me." This wasn't going so badly. Max and me actually having a conversation. "Buy you a beer?"
    He glanced at his watch. Then a wave of red washed up his neck, flooded across his jawline, and bled into his cheeks. "Sorry. I'm meeting Brenda for dinner. I'm already late." He gathered his trench coat from the barstool and reached for his wallet. "Let me get this young lady's bill, too."
    "Not in this lifetime," I said, in a voice so hard even the drunk three stools down from me looked up in surprise. Brenda was the cheerleader who'd replaced me a couple of months after Max shut me out. I'd heard from Mom she'd married Max five or so years ago—promoted to cheerleader for life. Let him buy her drinks. I would get blasted on my own tab, thank you very much.
    I watched Max leave the bar. "Once an asshole, always an asshole," said a stocky man who slid into an open seat beside me. "Gary Rupert. You remember me, don't you? Katie's my baby sister. And don't worry, Brenda's still got the biggest ass Myrtle Beach High School ever saw. In more ways than one." He laughed loudly and pulled his stool closer to mine.
    Jesus. It was beginning to feel like the set from Cheers in this bar tonight—everyone I'd ever known was making a cameo appearance. I had no trouble remembering Gary. He'd asked me out several times after Max dumped me. With my sixteen-year-old heart broken, I wouldn't have gone out on a date even if my fantasy heartthrob Robert Redford had called. And Gary was no teenaged Robert Redford. Where Kaitlin had inherited the long-limbed, aristocratic features of her mother and the athleticism of her father, Gary had gotten the reverse—his mom's clumsiness and Coach's looks, only more squat and lumpy, and minus his father's charm. Maybe it was the beer and the tequila shooter I'd just swallowed, but it seemed like he'd improved on all those fronts over the intervening years.
    Gary picked up my empty shot glass and sniffed it. "Bring us a couple more shots of tequila, Pauly. My friend Jose Cuervo, if he's available tonight."
    "I'm sorry about your sister," I said. Which seemed entirely inadequate, given the circumstances, but the best I could come up with.
    "I hear you've been working with Katie over at the Grandpappy," he said. "Can't you talk her out of this mess? It's tearing the family apart."
    "I'm not working with her.. We only met today," I said. "We're both spending time over there before we leave, but that's as close as it's going to get. Sorry."
    "She's crazy," he said. "We can't figure out what's got into her. I'm the only one will talk to her anymore. It's breakin' Mama's heart. She's even joined a support group for wacked-out parents. They had pickets over there today at Bencher's office."
    "Charlatan shrinks write shfiction," I said, noticing my words had started to slur.
    He nodded. "I wouldn't be surprised to hear they were involved in the murder."
    The second tequila shooter arrived at the same time as my open-faced roast beef sandwich. Although the mashed-potato-walled pool of congealing gravy made me queasy, I knew dinner was the smart choice. I'd suffer a whole lot more than heartburn tomorrow if I went with the