by Dale Mayer
Lilianna laughed. “I hardly think saying the word damn is the issue at the moment.”
“That’s not how you talk to your mother.”
“It is if my mother is only trying to cause trouble,” Lilianna said. “So what the hell is my sister up to?”
“What makes you think she’s up to anything?” her mother said, then, as if trying to change tactics, asked, “What are you thinking she’s up to?”
Lilianna leaned against the front door and smiled. “There you go, fishing for information again.”
“Obviously you’re in a mood,” her mom said with a sniff. “I’ll call back later.” And she hung up.
Lilianna stared at the phone. She wanted to say, good riddance. The trouble was, the woman was still her mother. And it was damn hard to let go of any of the memories. All the memories were still tied up with her father, and that just reminded her how much her father had already been through. Had her mother had anything to do with all this? And, if so, why?
The answers wouldn’t be found on the front doorstep, but she did have access to her sister’s email. If her password was still the same. Brianna hated changing her passwords.
Lilianna returned to the computer and logged in. Perfect. It was still her last name and birthdate. Checking her sister’s email was an invasion of privacy, but, given the circumstances, Lilianna wouldn’t feel guilty about it. Once there, she checked for emails from her mother.
And sure enough, there were dozens of them. Lilianna glanced through several and frowned as she realized what was going on. They were trying to sell part of the property to the development company. Her mother had suggested it, apparently sometime around the wedding.
Lilianna didn’t quite know what to do with the emails. She saved them onto a USB drive and checked for emails between her sister and the development company. By the time she was done, she was furiously angry. But she had a ton of material on a key, and she had forwarded a ton of the emails to the lawyers. Hopefully somebody could stop her sister and fast.
She heard a door open and close out front. She logged into her own account and, with the stack of paperwork in a folder in front of her, she waited to see who would come in.
Her sister flounced into the office, only to stop and stare at Lilianna sitting at the desk. “What are you doing here?”
Lilianna looked up. “What are you talking about? Why shouldn’t I be here?”
Her sister dropped her purse. “I don’t know what the hell is going on, but my life is terrible,” she wailed. “That police officer took me down to the station and interrogated me.”
“Interesting,” Lilianna said smoothly. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything,” her sister roared. “Didn’t you hear me?”
“No, I was too busy spending time with Dad,” Lilianna said with a smile.
“That old geezer. He should just kick the bucket before we lose every penny we have to that old-folks’ home.”
Lilianna stared at her. “And maybe you and Mom did something a few months ago to speed that up, huh?”
Her sister took a stumbling step forward and then collapsed in the chair. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, I think you know,” Lilianna said with a hard smile.
*
Liam stepped inside the empty house and took a moment to listen. There were no sounds of the living. No creaks, no voices, nothing to say anybody was home. But he’d been fooled before. The last thing he wanted was to appear like an intruder. He called out, “Hello?”
No answer. He walked through the lower part of the house, quickly assessing what was on each floor. The ground floor was a standard layout with a dining room, living room, kitchen, bathroom, and in the back corner was an office. It had French doors leading out onto a deck. Upstairs he found the master bedroom, obviously occupied by the couple living here, and three spare bedrooms, all empty. He took a moment to check the closets, but they held nothing but linens. In that case, what had happened to Jim’s clothing and personal belongings?
Frowning, and not liking where his thoughts were taking him, he returned downstairs, headed for the office. If there was any information to be had, it would likely come from there. He sat down at the desk and booted up the laptop and desktop computers. Both were still on, had just been in Sleep mode. He hit Enter and got into the desktop.
The laptop required a password. He left that one for the moment and clicked through the desktop to see what he could find. He was aware of the passage of time. He didn’t know how long he’d have alone. And there were not only the computers to deal with but he wanted to check the nearby file cabinet. He checked the folders in the main hard drive, saw no USBs or anything else attached and put a USB key in himself. The hard drive had a lot of different folders with business type names.
He copied everything onto the USB and then tried to bring up email. That was locked. Of course it was. He checked the icons on the desktop, but only a couple were folders sitting in plain sight. He copied those as well and then turned his attention to the desk’s drawers. In the top middle drawer were pencils, pens, the usual junk everybody tossed in. On the left side, the second drawer was enough to make him give a soundless whistle. Stacks of cash and a handgun.
He pulled out his phone and took a photo and then lifted the gun, checked to see if any bullets were in the barrel and emptied it. He wiped it clean of his fingerprints, replaced it, took a solid look at the money and realized there had to be at least twenty thousand cash in this one drawer. Interesting to have so much money lying around the house when the sanctuary was struggling. But then Carlos was a businessman, and there was no reason for his business to integrate with the sanctuary, other than a husband helping out his wife during a downturn. On the right side of the desk, Liam pulled out the top drawer and found stacks of folders lying inside that were obviously current projects.
The first contained only a couple pages. He didn’t have the time to look at them; he just took photos of the contents of each folder, so that he could enlarge them later, once he got them uploaded into the special program on his laptop. The next drawer down was a file drawer with four or five hanging folders.
Feeling the edge of time bite at him, he took as many photos as he could, closed the file drawer and moved to the filing cabinet against the wall, only to find it was locked. Swearing softly, he checked the walls and found a safe behind one of the paintings. It was obviously not a new addition to the house, so something Jim should be able to access—unless Brianna and Carlos had changed the combination. Liam sent the lawyer a text, asking Jim for the combination.
In the meantime, Liam did a full sweep of the rest of the office, quickly planting two bugs. He could only hope they would go unnoticed. What he wanted to do was get back upstairs to the master bedroom and place a bug in there too.
As soon as he was done here, he ran upstairs, planted the bug behind the headboard and came back down. Outside, he saw somebody walking toward the house.
A quick glance confirmed it was Brianna. Her strides were just as long and mile-eating as Lilianna’s, but there was a clip of anger to hers. Liam stepped out the rear exit of the home office, through the French doors to a backyard deck, and ran for the trees up along the right side of the house. He heard the door of the house close as she slammed it behind her and realized just how close he’d come to getting caught. Keeping to the trees, he went over the rise and headed for the cabin. The dogs greeted him joyfully. He walked inside to find North online already. “How many bugs did you find here?”
“Three. And you have three up and running at the house,” North said quietly.
“I wanted to get one in the kitchen, but I didn’t have any left.”
“We might get another opportunity.”
“What we really need,” Liam said, “is something to break in this case. How about they come home and have a fight, giving us the juicy details of their plan?” With a shake of his head, he shared what he’d found in the house. “Ther
e’s no sign of her father’s belongings. No clothing, nothing. It’s like they completely took over his house and thought he’d never come back.”
“If we’re fair, her father did appear to be declining at a very rapid rate. It’s not all that hard to imagine they thought the house was theirs.”
“Hardly fair, if Lilianna is in a small cabin like this, and they get a big house.”
North shrugged. “Doesn’t sound like Brianna has been fair about anything. It’s more a case of take what they want and to hell with anybody else.”
Liam nodded. “I presume you’ve left the bugs in place here but shut them down?”
North nodded. “Yes.” Just then a voice came through his laptop.
North and Liam sat back and listened as Brianna’s voice filled the cabin.
“Look. I don’t know what’s going on, but obviously they have some idea something’s up,” she snapped.
They couldn’t hear a response or anybody else talking, so Liam assumed she was on the phone.
“No. No. Lilianna didn’t ask me anything like that, but she was different. More confident. I don’t know what’s going on. And I don’t know why the hell she thought she could bring in those two goons.” And then her voice relaxed. “I know. I know. I’m just irate. I spent all morning at the police station. They were asking me all kinds of questions. There will obviously be some kind of an investigation into the sanctuary.” She groaned, a hard, irritated sound. “No, I didn’t say anything about our business. No, I didn’t say anything about the development project. I just told the detective to contact my lawyer. And, yes, Eric did show up finally,” she snapped. “I swear to God, I was there for at least an hour before he arrived.”
There was silence, and they could imagine her listening. She snorted every once in a while, and then she gasped. The two men both wished they could hear the other half of her conversation.
“You said the paperwork was all in order. I signed everything, so what else is there we possibly need to do? It doesn’t matter if they try to stop us. Everything’s completed, right?” When there was silence for a moment longer, she said, her voice rising, “Right? … What do you mean, you don’t know? That you left it with the lawyers to finish?”
There was a sound of clipped footsteps as if she were pacing through the house. But her voice didn’t drain away, so she was pacing the office.
“Look. You need to find out what the hell is going on. It’s one thing for them to come back at us afterward and say, Hey, what did you do? We’ll prove you did something wrong, but it’s another thing entirely for them to stop the process beforehand because we’ll never get ownership of this place if that happens. And, if that happens, we won’t complete the deal with the damn development company either.”
Just then Liam heard a nearby gasp, and he looked up to see Lilianna standing in the doorway of her cabin, the dogs weaving around her legs. She’d heard her sister’s voice through the laptop. She stared at him, her eyes huge.
He lifted a finger to his lips, and she nodded, placed her bag with her own laptop and purse on the kitchen counter and came to stand behind North.
“No. I know. I know. I won’t say anything to anybody. Look. Either you come home, or I need to come into town. You decide.” Then she changed her mind. “No. I’ll just come in. This place feels creepy enough now. I can’t wait until we can sell the whole goddamn thing. I’ll be there in about forty-five minutes. I’ll pack a bag and stay overnight. Do you want me to bring you anything?”
And there followed a laundry list she repeated back of what was required for the overnight stay.
“Book us a hotel room, will you? Unless you want to stay at the penthouse suite. But you said it was being renovated still.” Silence again. “Fine then, book us the hotel room,” she snapped.
And she hung up, or at least they assumed she’d hung up. There was silence for a moment, followed by sounds of papers rustling, clicking on the keyboard, and then she exclaimed, “What the hell? I need to get going. I’m so late already.”
They heard a chair being pushed back and Brianna bolting from the room. In a minute, there were sounds coming from the other bug in the master suite as she packed up clothing, muttering to herself.
“I don’t have time to pack his shit. This should have been put to rest already. He damn well better be doing his job. And why aren’t the renovations done? We’re supposed to have moved already.”
It was all very interesting, though had nothing to do with the problems at the sanctuary, but had an awful lot to do with understanding her mind-set. They listened until she was done, approximately fifteen minutes, and then there were sounds of bags being carried.
After she slammed the front door shut, no more was heard.
Lilianna raced upstairs to the loft. Liam followed her. She looked out the window to see her sister driving slowly down the driveway toward the highway. She turned to look at Liam. “You put bugs in the main house?”
“I did. Two in the office. One in the master bedroom. I wanted to get a fourth one in the kitchen, but I didn’t have another.”
“She always acts like she has nothing to do with anything. Then you hear this … What penthouse? When I knew Carlos, he didn’t have anything like that.”
“You said he was an investment advisor. They’re usually very well paid.”
Confused, she said, “I know, but, at that time, he told me that he didn’t own any property. Maybe he just didn’t want to let me know what he had because he was afraid I would take advantage …”
“Or he’s taking the money coming into the sanctuary and using that to complete his penthouse. Obviously Brianna would much prefer a penthouse to staying here in an old house and looking after the elephants.”
She nodded. “How sad is that?”
“You also should know the results of my house search,” he said. “Obviously I didn’t have time for a full search, but I couldn’t find any sign of your father’s clothing or personal belongings.”
She turned to face Liam, her mind working, her lips thinning. “Then they’ll be in the basement most likely. But there’s no guarantee she even kept them.”
“She’s gone now. Shall we take a look?”
She hesitated as if still warring with the idea she shouldn’t be allowed in the main house, and then she nodded. “Yes, we need to. I have to find out what my dad wants to do too. He’s supposed to be staying at Gunner’s. But I can easily see him deciding, if Brianna and Carlos aren’t coming back tonight, then maybe he should move back home again.”
“Maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing, especially if Gunner can lend a couple men to bring him home.”
“And stay here for a few days,” she said drily.
“Until everything is fine again, yes.”
She nodded and glanced at North. “Do you want to come too?”
“Absolutely,” North said with a big grin. He jumped to his feet. “Nothing I like better than snooping around other people’s houses.”
She shot him a look, but Liam laughed and gently stroked her shoulder. “Easy. We’re only joking.”
She nodded. “I’m sorry. I’m just so touchy. It seems I haven’t slept in weeks.”
“Let’s take a look at the house again and see what we can find.” He walked toward the front door, holding her close. “Does your sister keep much money in the house?”
“I don’t think so. We never had much money.”
“Did Carlos ever live with you?”
“No, but he spent the night often.”
“Did you ever see him with large amounts of cash?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Do you know how to get into the safe?”
She gave him a startled look. “You found the safe?”
“Of course,” he said. “I also found a large amount of cash and a handgun in the desk in the home office.”
She stopped. “What?”
He shrugged. “I was going to ask you about it.”
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She stared at him. “As far as I know, my father has two rifles. I don’t know anything about a handgun. This is Texas. Most of us are armed,” she said, her tone short. “But I don’t think he ever kept anything in the office, and none of us ever had cash.”
“Let’s take a look,” Liam said, “and we’ll see if you recognize the gun.”
He held out his hand.
Chapter 11
Lilianna didn’t know why, yet it was instinctive to grasp Liam’s hand. It was like a lifeline. Somebody understood what she was going through. Somebody way too attractive for her peace of mind. He’d been a godsend these last couple days. She’d had no idea what she’d set in motion when she had contacted Gunner a few days back. She couldn’t imagine the depth of the ugliness she’d found.
And yet a constant throughout the last two days was Liam. Honest, with integrity, standing stalwart in the face of all kinds of evil. She hated to think he’d spent his life with so much of this same kind of nastiness. “You couldn’t have had an easy life if all of this is commonplace for you.” She studied his face as he glanced at her.
A smile kinked up the corners of his lips. “The thing about life is, you get to decide how you want to deal with it. You can stand still and let things run all over you, or you can step up and do your part to stop it. After years in the military of doing my part to step up, it’s a whole lot easier to recognize when somebody else is trying to be an absolute shit.”
She nodded. “And I guess that’s one of the things I struggle with, isn’t it? I had no idea anybody would do something like this.”
“There’s always somebody out there ready to take advantage. While your father was at the helm, they saw him as a strong, capable, honest person, doing his best to help the elephants. In your case, there was no one designated person at the helm anymore. It was either your sister or you, but one of you needs to be the dominant figurehead. The sanctuary needed that.”
“You think Carlos is behind this?”
“I want it to be so to take your sister out of equation,” he said, “but it sounds to me like she’s just as deep in this as he is. In the past has she spent much time with the elephants?”
