Reagan's Ashes

by Jim Heskett

  Dalton threw the first punch, and Spoon dodged it easily. The bigger problem was keeping his balance with his legs spread so far apart.

  He countered with a jab to Dalton’s gut, which sent the little bastard into a coughing fit. So far, so good. Maybe this wouldn’t be a beating as it had been with Gus and Tyson yesterday.

  Dalton recovered and raised his fists, bouncing around on his heels, ready for more. He barked a laugh and beckoned Spoon to come closer.

  As Spoon took a deep breath and raised his fists again, he saw Tyson out of the corner of his eye, turning into the farmer’s market.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  8:25 am

  Reagan sprinted through the farmer’s market. Boulderites milled about in their Lycra and yoga pants, sampling locally sourced organic produce and homemade cruelty-free products as a crunchy jam band played frenetic bluegrass music at a gazebo in the park nearby.

  She dodged several people and barreled straight into a teenager with dreadlocks in a dirty flower dress. “I’m so sorry,” Reagan said as she tried to help the girl up off the ground.

  “You should slow down,” the hippie girl said.

  Reagan didn’t have time to respond, so she shrugged and kept on running. She spun to avoid crashing into a man carrying a bushel of corn above his head. A little kid fell in the middle of the laneway, and she hurdled him. The parents probably wouldn’t be too happy about that, but she didn’t bother to stop and explain herself.

  At the end of the block, the farmer’s market ended, and she sprinted across the intersection to Pearl Street. Her chest burned and her leg muscles felt as if they were about to snap, but she kept pushing herself beyond what her body told her was possible.

  She dashed across Canyon street and then Walnut street. The lockers were only one more block away, and she didn’t look left or right or behind her. Eyes on the destination only, breathing in and out and tuning out everything that was not her goal.

  Ahead were the lockers, a row of them next to a big brick building. Painted mustard yellow, the same as they’d always been. The memory of Saturdays with Dad smacked her in the face. Lunch at Mountain Sun, afternoon coffee at Bookends, then racing home to beat the sunset. “Better get a move-on before your mom sends out the National Guard looking for us,” Dad would always say.

  She slowed her pace as she came within a few feet of the lockers. After pausing a second to catch her breath, she reached into a pocket. Empty. She checked the other front pocket, then her cargo pockets, back pockets.

  She didn’t have the key. Bolts of panic multiplied and stabbed her flesh.

  She whirled around, patting all of her pockets again. Gone. Eyes on the ground, she started to backtrack, going over every inch of terrain she’d just covered. There wasn’t time for this crap. She had to get in that locker now.

  Ten feet up ahead, something shiny and silver glinted in the sun. Chest thumping, she raced to it, bent over, and as soon as she put a hand on the key, a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots stopped directly in front of her.

  “What’ve you got there, Reagan?”

  Tyson stood above her, blotting out the light. “I saw you at those lockers, and it feels like my eyes are open now. That’s where it is, isn’t it? It’s not out in the woods, it’s not in a random safety deposit box… that was all horseshit to keep me occupied, or the ramblings of a crazy old man, or some other kind of distraction. After all that nonsense, it’s sitting out right here in a goddamn public locker in Hippietown, Colorado.”

  Reagan didn’t know what to say. She was out of options.

  “Go on then,” Tyson said, digging his hands into his pockets and nodding at the lockers. “Let’s get this over with.”

  She considered running. She still had the key. But it wouldn’t do any good to escape, because he knew now. He could come back at night with a crowbar and bust open every one of those lockers until he found what he was looking for.

  The key reflected the sun as she turned back to face the lockers. There were two rows of ten, with angled slits across them like her locker in high school. But which one was it? It’s not as if they had a favorite locker.

  She started at the bottom left and tried the key. Didn’t work. She moved on to the next one, no good there either.

  “Quit stalling,” Tyson said.

  “Screw you,” she said as her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know which one it is.”

  The key opened none of the lockers on the bottom row. She moved to the top as Tyson grumbled behind her. Starting again on the left: first locker, no turn. Second locker, the key began to turn.

  She jerked her hand away.

  Tyson stepped behind her. His breath brushed the back of her neck. “Open it. Now.”

  Steadying her feet, she reached out and turned the key, and the mechanism made a solitary clink as the catch slipped. She grabbed the latch and lifted it, then swung the door open.

  The locker was empty.

  Tyson roared. “What in the holy hell fucking goddamn shit?” He pushed her out of the way, his face so red and engorged that he appeared to be on the verge of passing out.

  She stared at the empty space in front of her, a cubic foot of nothingness in a metal shell. This didn’t make any sense. “I don’t… I don’t know what’s going on here.”

  “You’ve been here already, you devious little shit. You’ve already gotten it, stashed it somewhere else, and this is just some big show to trick me.” Her uncle’s meaty arms crossed in front of his body.

  “No, I swear, I haven’t done anything. I didn’t even know about this place until last night.”

  He bent over, smacking a fist against his thigh and taking huge breaths. He winced and placed a hand over his heart. When he stood up again, he leaned close and looked into her eyes as if he could bore into her soul and find out the truth with intimidation.

  Reagan wiped the tears that were dribbling down her cheeks. “I’m telling the truth, Uncle T. I don’t know where it is.”

  His eyes darted back and forth over her face for a few seconds, then his expression softened. “Okay. Fine. You know what? Fuck this. Mitch probably blew it all in Vegas because that’s what piece-of-shit gamblers like him do anyway. Steals from his own brother, doesn’t take care of his family, doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself.”

  Reagan kept her eyes on the ground while her uncle berated her dad.

  “I’m done with this whole mess of a family. You, Frank, your mom, and even Anne. All of you leave me alone.”

  With that, he strode away from her, turned at the next intersection, and disappeared into an alley.

  Reagan’s vision went muddy and unclear as she stared at the clean and modern brick buildings of downtown Boulder. A few people strolled by in each direction, barely stopping to notice the crying girl standing in front of a row of lockers. She turned back to them. How could it be empty? The key opened the locker, and the letter Dad wrote mentioned the farmer’s market, so this had to be it. Why wasn’t it here?

  She took the letter from her pocket and read it again. Her eyes repeatedly dragged over the sentence fragment that had brought her here:

  what the key in … farmer’s market. You’ll understand when you get there.

  You’ll understand when you get there. What was she supposed to understand? That the locker was going to be empty? That didn’t make any sense.

  She put her hands on either side of the opening into the locker and leaned closer until her face poking inside. Then she saw something she hadn’t noticed at first glance. On the back wall of the small metal space was an image that looked like it had been drawn with a black Sharpie. Five lines: the bottom three sides of a square, with two diagonal lines at the top, angled together. A house. A marker drawing of a house.

  Another piece from the letter jumped out at her. Two words: your grandfather.

  Reagan blinked as the world around her stopped spinning. She understood.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

 
8:40 am

  Reagan jogged back through the farmer’s market toward her fiancée, all these new realizations bouncing around in her head like a pogo stick in an inflatable castle. After all this struggle, the solution to where the money was actually hidden seemed so achingly simple that she hadn’t seen Occam’s razor staring at her in the face. Bend a stick, it breaks at the weakest point.

  When she crossed Arapahoe, Spoon was sitting on the ground next to Dad’s car. He was breathing heavily and wincing as he rubbed one side of his face. She broke into a run to him.

  “What happened?” she yelled across the parking lot.

  He waited to speak until she was within a few feet. “Your cousin found me and decided to have a bit of a go at me. Nothing major.”

  She knelt by him, caressing his cheek. A sweeping sense of guilt pounded across her brain. “I’m so sorry. You never asked for any of this and it’s all my fault.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t you even worry about it. I’m pretty sure you didn’t ask for it either, love. Was a little hard to see him with only one good eye, but I held my own.”

  Reagan looked around the lot. No sign of Dalton or Tyson. “Where did they go?”

  “No idea. Tyson came by here a minute before you did, yelled at Dalton, and they hit the road together. I’m guessing you didn’t find what you were after?”

  “Oh no, baby, I found what I was looking for. Now we just have to go get it.” She helped him up and put him in the car, then rounded the driver’s side and they held each other’s gaze for a few seconds in silence. Her sweet, battered boy. Soon, she would settle everything and they could do whatever they wanted. She would have to find a way to make it up to Spoon, if that were even possible.

  The drive was short, across town to the Assisted Living center where her grandfather stayed. “Your grandpa has the money,” Spoon said, wide-eyed and grinning.

  She bypassed the office and drove straight to his apartment. “Kind of. Would you mind waiting in the car? I need a few minutes alone with him and I think it might be easier this way.”

  “Sure, sure. Do whatever you need to do. I’ll rest my knuckles. They’re pretty sore from pummeling that miscreant’s face.”

  She smiled and kissed his cheek. “My brave little prize fighter. Thank you for being supportive. I know the last few days haven’t been easy for you.”

  “All I care about is that you’re safe.”

  She kissed him again, tasting the rusty blood on his bruised lips. “I am. And we are. I have to do a couple more things to make sure, but this will all be over soon. You stay here and I’ll be right back.”

  She left him there and knocked on the door. No answer, so she tried the door and it opened. Then she eased into the apartment, closing the door behind her.

  A rhythmic beep came from the bedroom, and she walked toward the sound, navigating stacks of newspapers and piles of trinkets. Frank Darby’s Hoarder Palace hadn’t changed one bit since her last visit.

  He was sleeping, and the beeping sound was some kind of monitoring machine on a stand next to his bed. A green line jumped with each beep, painting scratchy trails across the screen. His eyes were closed, and although Reagan had seen him not too long ago, he seemed to have aged at least a decade. His cheeks looked sunken, his skin dry, and as red as an apple.

  “Grandpa?” she said as she took a seat in a chair across from the bed.

  He stirred, mumbling, then opened his eyes. He looked at her, but his expression didn’t change. “Hey there, pumpkin,” he said, and the words sounded like the guttural utterance of a talking bear. “I heard you were camping.”

  “I was, grandpa.”

  “Did you have a good time?”

  “I got into a fight with a moose. At least, I think I did.”

  He cackled, a wet grumble that sent him into a coughing fit. “Did you, now? I hope you won. Darbys don’t back down, even from moose.”

  She grinned. “You could say I won, yeah. I’m here, aren’t I?”

  He tried to sit up in bed, but only managed to raise a few inches, then he sank back into his pillow. “And why are you here? I thought you moved to Texas.”

  “I did. I came back early this week for Dad’s service.”

  “Who?”

  The awkward look on her grandpa’s face squeezed her, made her want to cry. “Mitchell, your son. He passed away last week.”

  He turned his head to the side, concentrating on the shiny sextant hanging on the wall. She couldn’t tell if he was confused, or contemplating, or what else might be going through his head. “Good riddance,” he finally said. “That kid was nothing but a pain in my ass, for a long time now.”

  She sniffled, trying to keep the stinging at the corners of her eyes from turning into tears.

  “At least his brother—your Uncle Tyson—still comes and visits me. Mitch only turned up when he needed something. He was always like that, though. If I knew how those brats were going to turn out, I might never have had kids.

  “Your dad was a gambler. Did you know that? Spent up all his 401K and retirement accounts. What kind of a man does that? What kind of man gambles away all his family’s money? Did you know about this?”

  Reagan leaned forward until she had his attention. “Yes. I know about him now, and I understand. Whatever he did, though, he was still my dad.”

  He shifted in bed, sighing. “It’s your life, kiddo. All that matters to me is that you’re healthy and happy. Now, tell me why you’re visiting your poor old grandad.”

  “I used to have this dollhouse,” she said.

  He pointed across the living room to the dollhouse sitting on the stand. “That old thing?”

  “Yes. Dad used to keep it at our house, when I was a little girl. You maybe don’t remember. He gave it back to you when I was in high school.”

  Frank opened his mouth and pushed out his dentures, clacking them together. After a few seconds, he pulled them back in. “That old ratty thing was my mother’s, a long time ago. Don’t exactly know how your dad ended up with it, but he said you didn’t need it anymore. He still comes by sometimes to look at it, even though it’s just another piece of crap in my collection.”

  “Do you think I could have it? I think there’s some money inside that Dad left for me.”

  He chewed on his lower lip, his jaw bouncing back and forth. “Money, you say? You’re welcome to whatever you find, I suppose. I don’t have much use for it. All of this is going to have to go sooner or later.”

  She walked to his bedside and kissed him on the forehead. “Thank you.”

  “I’d like to visit with you, pumpkin, but I’m very tired. Can you come back some other time?”

  She brushed a hand against his shoulder. “Sure, grandpa. I’ll come see you again soon.”

  He smiled and closed his eyes, and Reagan walked to the dollhouse. As a kid, she remembered it towering over her, feeling almost as big as a real house. It still seemed big, at least three feet tall and a few feet around the base. She picked it up, and the girth of the thing challenged her more than its weight.

  She carried it into the hall, then sat it on the carpet. With an ear pointed to the bedroom, she listened to the beeping machine and the warble of her grandpa snoring.

  On the outside of the house, she found no switches or buttons to push. The base was thick, at least six inches deep, so she started poking around, and found a tiny lip near the bottom of it. She placed one hand on the side of the dollhouse and one hand on the lip, then pulled apart, and the dollhouse moved but the lip stayed put.

  As the two halves separated, crisp wrapped bills started to spill out of the opening. Stacks of hundred dollar bills bound with adhesive paper slips, the number 10K printed on each one. She counted bills and stuffed them into her purse, then pushed the top part of the dollhouse back into place.

  She slipped the now-heavy purse over her shoulder, put her hands underneath the base, and stood up, groaning from the weight and the general collective wearine
ss of her muscles. Opening the front door was a struggle. She had to set it down, open the door, move it outside, shut the door, pick it up. Spoon tried to get out of the car to help her, but she waved him off.

  “Picking up some family heirlooms?” he said as she lifted the dollhouse into the trunk.

  “No,” she said. “The money was in here, hidden in the base. All of it. Grandpa had no idea.”

  Spoon’s face lit up. “You found it? You really found it?”

  “I did.”

  “I had no idea my future wife was such a great detective.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Baby, there’s a lot of things you’re going to learn about me.”

  “So, we’re rich, yeah? What’s next on the agenda? Rome? Paris? Singapore?”

  She frowned. “We have one more stop to make.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  9:45 am

  Halfway between Boulder and Denver, Reagan exited Highway 36 in Broomfield as Spoon pivoted his head around to survey the surroundings.

  The sense of comprehension on his face appeared in an instant as his jaw tensed. “What are we doing here?”

  She reached across the seat and ran her fingers up and down his arm. “I said we have one more stop to make. This is it.”

  “And we’re going to the lawnmower shop? We’re going to see Tyson? Did you forget that an hour ago, these blokes were chasing us across Boulder?”

  She lifted her hand from his arm to the side of his face, caressing the bruises there. “Trust me, baby.”

  “I’m not comfortable with this,” he said. “This guy was just trying to hurt us, and you want to walk right up to his door?”

  “This is going to be okay. I know what I’m doing.”

  He didn’t seem convinced but held his tongue anyway. The lawnmower store was close to the highway, but Reagan parked across the street at the Slinky Grape coffee shop.

  “Why are we parking here?” he said.