Not that he cared. But it pissed him off all the same, especially after the way she’d cozied up to him last night and then had left him wanting. And because he still was. Wanting.
“If I didn’t fawn over you,” she said snidely, “it could be because my mind is on something else. Like, that may be the last time I see my dad alive. Something preoccupying like that.”
Shit. Now he felt like a heel for deliberately provoking her. Being a nice guy was work, and he obviously had a long way to go before he got it right. “Considering the way of things, my complaining was selfish. I’m sorry.”
She made a dismissive motion with her shoulder.
“Did you two have an emotional parting?”
She nodded.
“Then why’d you part?”
“What?”
“If he’s that near death, why’d you leave? I figured I would be flying back alone, that you would stay in Houston so you could be there with him when he died. Why were you in such a hurry to get back to Austin tonight?”
She picked up a french fry, but returned it to her plate without eating it. “We had a sobering conversation.”
He gave her a pointed look.
“About matters that are private.”
“Hmm.” But he continued to hold her gaze.
Finally she said, “He advised me not to trust you.”
So much for trying to be a nice guy. He speared a sausage link, taking his anger out on it. “Howard Lyston’s dying words, and they’re about me. I’m flattered.”
“It wasn’t only about you. He asked me to do something for him.”
“Pick out his burial suit?”
She glared at him.
“It’s gotta be something that urgent or you’d still be down there.”
She fumed for several more seconds, then turned her head away and looked through the window out across the parking lot of the restaurant. When she came back to him, she said, “Before he dies, Daddy wants to know for certain that Allen Strickland was the man who killed Susan.”
Reading his startled expression, she said, “Yes, you heard right.” She then recounted the conversation with her father.
When she finished, Dent frowned. “He’s had doubts about Strickland’s guilt all these years?”
“It seems so.”
“And he raises the question now? Now. When he’s o
n his deathbed? Jesus!” Frankly, he thought laying this burden on Bellamy at this particular time was a shitty thing for her father to do, but he edited the way he expressed his opinion. “He’s given you an awfully tall order. Does he realize that?”
“He said I needed to know the truth, too. Basically, when you think about it, he’s only asked me to do what I was already doing.”
Yes, but failing herself was one thing. Failing her dying father was quite another. Dent didn’t express that opinion at all, because he was certain Bellamy had already thought of it. That would explain why she looked like she’d been beaten with the chain that she was now using to tow the weight of the world.
He tried to wash down his resentment toward Howard Lyston with a sip of ice water. “Okay, what’s your next move?”
With a weary gesture, she pushed back a strand of hair. “Daddy suggested I talk with Dale Moody.”
“I can’t believe I’m agreeing with him about anything, but Moody’s a good choice.”