by Dale Mayer
“When people are afraid, they do all kinds of things,” he said. “There’s often absolutely nothing you can do or say to calm somebody down. They’ll do whatever they choose because, to them, it is literally a fight of survival. But, before the day starts,” he said, as Eton poured a cup of coffee and brought it to her, “we’ll have a little bit of downtime to have some coffee and some real food.”
She nodded slowly. “I need to write down a list of everything to do,” she said. “I’ve got a ton of details to take care of.”
He reached out and squeezed her fingers. “If you need us to stay an extra day—”
She looked at him, with a small smile. “As much as I would love to have that kind of emotional support, you guys are on a mission yourselves. You don’t have the time. I’m not sure what this is all about here and how it affects you, but it’s obvious that you made a trip here for some interrelated reason.”
“We did,” he said, “and now we’ll track down this Tristan. Any ideas, besides his father’s place?”
“You know what? Those kids had different mothers, and Tristan’s mom remarried and lives here in town.”
He stopped and looked at her. “What’s her new name?”
“Monteith, is his name. They’ve been married about five years or so, I think.” She settled back with her cup of coffee, but a frown was on her face.
Cain waited for a long moment. “What is it? What are you thinking?”
She tilted her head to the side and looked at him. “I don’t know much about her, but her husband’s another one of those very unsettling men,” she said. “Looks more like a thug than anything.”
“Do you think he’s one of Tristan’s gang?”
“No. I’d want to say Tristan’s one of his because I can’t stand the man,” she said quietly. “But that’s not fair. I don’t believe he’s connected to this mess, no.”
“Sounds like something I need to get into then,” Eton said. “Everything’s kind of on hold, until we sort out this new wrinkle.”
“Did you actually have a location to disappear to?” she asked the guys.
“Not yet,” Cain said. “That was next.”
“Well,” she said, “today will be a shit day anyway. You might as well get all your ducks in a row, before you fly off in the wrong direction.”
He looked at her, smiled, and said, “What about you? Where will you start?”
“With my aunt. After I get a decent meal, I’ll go to her and see exactly what the hell happened.”
Chapter 9
And that’s exactly what Petra did. After a small breakfast of fresh fruit and yogurt, the men insisted on eggs and toast. Then she walked to her aunt’s house, with Cain at her side. She looked at him. “You don’t have to come with me, you know?”
“I want to,” he said. “I want to see what exactly is going on here and see if I can figure it out.”
“Until we get an autopsy report,” she said, “chances are we won’t hear very much.”
“Maybe not,” he said, “but we’ll go take a look, shall we?”
She smiled and nodded. “Thanks,” she said.
“Thanks for what?”
“Letting me sleep,” she said. “Assuming there was nothing I could have done to help him, and I couldn’t say goodbye because he was already gone, then you were right. I needed some rest pretty badly after last night.”
“Will you tell your aunt about your sister?”
Her steps faltered at that. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her light sweater and said, “I’m not sure. But you know how news travels, so she’ll find out somehow. I guess she should hear it from me.”
The B&B was up ahead.
“You know something? It looks so innocent and inconspicuous,” she said. “It used to be a large property here, all by itself, but, with them slowly selling off parts, and other properties being built up around it, it became this.”
“A lot of farmers did that,” Cain said. “You can work the land—as long as it brings a profit and as long as you’re young and healthy, where you can afford to expend the physical work. But, once that starts to fail, it doesn’t leave you with a whole lot left.”
“I’m not sure Migi ever worked,” she said. “She planned to have a family, but they never did have any children.”
“That’s too bad,” he said. “But, if she worked the land with him, there’s only so much money you can eke out for a living. Eventually something else looks a whole lot easier.”
“And that would be her too,” Petra said. “I’ve struggled with just so many things about her. But she’s the only family I’ve got.”
“I’m sorry about that,” he said.
She smiled with a nod. “We’ll be sorry, until it’s all over with,” she said. “But it doesn’t change anything, does it?” She groaned. “So, I’ve got to tell you that this conversation with Migi? I don’t know how it’ll go.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ve seen and heard a lot in my life. Nothing’ll surprise me at this point.”
“I get it,” she said, “but my aunt may not be the warmest.”
“She should be,” he said. “She’s the only family you’ve got. She’s looked after your father for a number of months. She needed your money.”
“I understand, but I don’t know what we’ll be facing when we get there.” As it was, her uncle sat outside on her father’s chair, slowly rocking. She made her way up the steps and sat down on a rocker beside him. “Are you okay?”
He looked at her, and his eyes were older than she’d ever seen them before and were sad, so very sad. He nodded slowly. “He just wasn’t there from one moment to the next,” he said. “I was calling to him to get him up to bed, and, when I touched him, he was already gone.”
She smiled with a nod. “You know that there are worse ways to go.”
“There are, indeed,” he said. “I was just so hoping that it wasn’t true.”
“What?”
“That he was gone, of course,” he said.
“How’s your wife?” Cain asked.
The old man looked at him. “She’s the way she always is. She’s in there, baking up a storm.”
“Did the doctor say anything when they picked him up?” Petra asked.
“It was the paramedics,” he said. “And, no, they just collected the body and disappeared.” He looked at her. “You have to decide what you want to do with him now.”
“No decision needed,” she said. “He’ll be buried in the family graveyard, beside my mother.”
Her uncle smiled, patted her hand, and said, “You’ve been a good daughter.”
“I tried,” she said. “But, ever since that accident, it’s been pretty hard.”
“I know. It’s been hard for us all.” That was almost the first time he’d ever made mention of how hard it was to look after her father, and she realized just how much he, too had been emotionally bonded to her father. The two men had been together for a long time. “You did a good job helping him,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “Thank you.”
He smiled, but a wateriness came to his eyes. “It feels like everything’s different now,” he said.
“I was thinking the same thing,” she said. “Everything’s changed.”
“It has.”
She got up and walked in to see her aunt in the kitchen. She called out, “Good morning.”
Her aunt spun in shock and immediately glared at her. “Oh, you finally decided to show up, did you? Shows how much you care.”
“And is my father here now? No, of course not,” Petra said. “So what was the point of coming early?”
“No, that’s quite true,” her aunt said. “But you didn’t come last night either, did you?”
“I didn’t wake her,” Cain said easily.
“Sleeping together?” she said, with a sniff. “What is it with young people today?”
“I don’t know,” Cain said. “What is with young people today
?”
She glared at him and said, “Good thing you’re gone.”
“And thank you for your kind hospitality,” he said, with a genial smile, as if missing the barb of her words.
Migi just sniffed again, banging pans around.
“I came to clean up my father’s room,” Petra said.
Her aunt stiffened, spun, and glared at her. “Is that all you think about?”
Petra stared at her aunt in shock. “What are you talking about?” she asked. “You haven’t wanted him here since the beginning, so I came to get rid of his stuff for you, while I had somebody to help carry things.”
“Whatever,” she said. “Go. Go get it all. Nothing’s there worth keeping anyway.”
“And how would you know?” Petra asked.
Her aunt just sniffed.
With a motion toward Cain, she turned and led the way back around the kitchen and up the stairs. As they got to the top of the stairs, he thought he heard some footsteps down below. He leaned over the railing and saw the aunt standing at the base of the stairs, glaring up at them. He turned to Petra and held his fingers to his lips and motioned at Petra.
Petra walked over, took one look, and rolled her eyes. She went into her father’s room, closed the door, and whispered, “Like I said, no love lost here.”
“It’s sad,” he said. He looked around the room. “Is there anything to pack his clothes into?”
“Well, a suitcase was here, but I’m not sure if it’s here now.” She opened up the closet, dug into what was on the floor, and pulled out a bag. “This’ll do,” she said. “I’ll take his clothes to the church when I go into town.”
With Cain’s help, she quickly packed up all her father’s clothing. She found no personal belongings to be seen anywhere. Nothing. She frowned at that. “I had pictures of my mother in here and some of his personal mementos. I wonder what happened to those.”
He just stood by, not saying anything.
She glanced at him. “Do you think Migi got rid of them?”
“Your aunt isn’t exactly the warmest and most loving person on the block,” he said, “so I’ve no idea.”
She turned and checked the closet again. “Nothing’s here. It’s completely empty now,” she said. “Can you check on top of the shelf? And I’ll check under the bed.”
They went through the motions, but there didn’t appear to be anything else to be found. Finally she shrugged and said, “Well, that’s very depressing. I brought those things to make him feel like he wasn’t so alone.”
“Was he aware?”
“No, he wasn’t, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he wouldn’t have found some comfort. That was the whole reason for it.”
“Well, let’s go ask your aunt then,” he said.
She looked around and said, “We’re not missing anything, right?”
“Nothing here to miss,” he said. “It’s really bare in here.”
“Totally bare.” She took a deep breath, motioned at the bag, and said, “Would you mind?”
He grabbed it and said, “Let’s go.”
As they went down the stairs, her aunt scurried away from the base of the bottom of the stairs, back into the kitchen. Petra rolled her eyes at that. As she walked into the kitchen, she said, “Where are his personal belongings?”
“What do you mean?” she said.
“I mean, the pictures of Mom and the other stuff that I brought from the house to be with him.”
“He got mad one day and threw it out,” she said dismissively.
She looked at her aunt in surprise. “You never told me about that.”
“So what?” she said. “Besides, he didn’t need a picture of her sitting there. She’s been gone twenty years.”
“Longer than that actually, but he never remarried because he never fell in love with anybody else,” she said in a smooth voice. “So you had absolutely no reason not to leave it sitting there.”
“Well, I didn’t do anything with it,” she said, “so don’t go accusing me of anything.”
“I’m not accusing you,” Petra said. “I’m just asking.”
“Says you,” she said, with a big sniff. “Go take your little boyfriend and leave.”
“Oh, absolutely,” she said. “Have a nice life.”
As he walked out to the front door, Cain asked, “Do you want to go back and say something about your sister?”
She glared at him but understood the sense of it. She shrugged. “Maybe I’ll tell my uncle instead.”
As she walked outside, she saw her uncle, still sitting there, a forlorn look on his face. She sat down in front of him. “Unfortunately I have more bad news to share.”
He looked up at her and said, “More?”
She sighed. “Yes, I’m sorry.” Then she told him about her sister.
He just stared at her in shock. “Both of them?”
“Yes,” she said. “Both of them.”
This time there were tears in his eyes. He reached up and wiped them away. “You know? I thought I saw her a few months back, but I couldn’t believe it. When I called out, she didn’t answer me, so I figured I was wrong.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m sorry. It must have been somebody else.”
“Well,” she said, “hopefully we’ll find answers as to why she was here.”
“I hope so,” he said, “because that is very sad. She had so much to live for.”
“I know, but she was also not very happy with us,” she said sadly. “And now it’s too late to do anything about it, and I’ve lost both of them.”
He shook his head. “It’s a sad, sad world.”
“Who was she with?” Cain asked.
He shrugged. “She was in a vehicle. I didn’t see who was driving and didn’t recognize the truck.”
“What do you know about a guy named Monteith?” she asked. “He married Tristan’s mom?”
“Bad news,” he said. “The way I see it, that whole family is bad news.”
“Were they involved in Tristan’s business?”
“I don’t think so, but they’re living high on the hog,” he said, “in an area where none of the rest of us are doing very well at all.” He looked at Petra. “I have no idea what we’re supposed to do now.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know looking after my father helped you pay the bills.”
He nodded slowly. “That it did. But your father was my friend, and I would have done it for nothing.”
“Well, you might have,” she said with a small smile.
He acknowledged the notion with a nod, then shook his head back and forth. “She is who she is, but deep down there is a good woman inside.”
Petra nodded wistfully and turned to walk away.
Cain looked back at him and said, “Does anybody here have life insurance?”
Her uncle looked at Cain in surprise. “I got some way back when,” he said. “But I don’t think your father did, did he?”
She looked at him and frowned. “I haven’t been paying for any,” she said, “so I don’t think so.”
“It’s something we’ll have to look into,” Cain noted.
She turned, looked back at her uncle, and said, “I’m surprised that you had some.”
“I set it up a long time ago,” he said. “It wasn’t very much back then, but it sure has been hard to pay for these last many years.”
“Are you still paying for it?” she asked.
He nodded. “I can’t take the chance of leaving her with nothing,” he said.
She smiled, nodded. “You are a good man.”
“Well, sometimes I am,” he said, “but it hasn’t felt like it lately.”
“You’re okay,” she said.
He just shrugged and started moving the rocker back and forth. She turned and headed down the road again. As they walked away, she said, “Why did you ask him about life insurance?”
Cain smiled and said, “Honestly I’m wonde
ring if whatever happened to your father was meant to happen to her husband, so the life insurance could be claimed.”
She shuddered. “You guys must inhabit a world full of very unpleasant things.”
“Indeed,” he said. “But it is what it is.”
“Do you think it could actually be something like that?”
“No way to know yet,” he said. “We’ll have to take another look into it.”
“I don’t want to deal with that,” she said. “That doesn’t sound like something I want to get involved in.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But you want to know the truth, right?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “That sounds like a waste of time and energy because what can we do about it now?”
“True,” he said, and he stayed quiet.
They kept walking.
Then she added, “It’ll drive me nuts now. You know that.”
“Yep,” he said, “I figured it would.”
She groaned. “I almost prefer not knowing anything.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I get it. But you have to make a decision about it before too many things happen.”
“True,” she whispered. “I need to call the coroner, I guess.”
“You do. And the cops.”
“Cops? I don’t think there’ll be any kind of investigation,” she said, “so I don’t suspect there’s any problem with that.”
“A phone call won’t hurt.”
“If you say so,” she said.
As soon as they walked into her house, Eton looked up expectantly. She shrugged and said, “There wasn’t anything to learn, except that apparently my uncle has life insurance.” At that, Eton’s face lit up. She frowned at him. “Why does that make you happy?”
“Because I highly suspect that the original attempt was to take out your uncle,” he said. “And now that you’ve confirmed the existence of life insurance, I should be able to find it.”
She shook her head. “Is that all you do? Pry into other people’s lives?”
“Lots of times. Yes,” he said, “that’s exactly what I do. But only because we have to.”
