by Dale Mayer
“Maybe,” she said passionately. “But they could have had the damn thing if they’d have left my grandmother alive.”
“Chances are the killer didn’t think of that or didn’t think that you would allow such a thing,” the detective said. “Anyway I need you to clear out of here,” he said, “and we’ll be in touch.”
Dismissed, she turned helplessly to Rowan. He looked at her, smiled, and said, “Come on. Let’s go.”
“Go where?” she asked. “This is just such a nightmare.”
“It’s a nightmare, but we’ve actually learned a lot,” he said. “You have enough money to survive on, if you need it,” he said. “There’s also a safe deposit box and two other accounts. Whether there’s any other family is what I’m interested in or if there’s anyone else in her world who’s also of interest.”
“Would somebody really have killed her to get a hold of the coin collection?”
“I guess it depends on the value of the coin collection,” he said. “You have to understand that some of these things are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
She just shot him a look, turned her lips down, and said, “I really don’t care. I just want my grandmother back.”
“I get that,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean anybody else gives a shit.” Her shoulders hunched at his wording. He sighed, reached across, and said, “Look. I’m sorry, but, when it comes to motives, money is often the number one reason.”
“I get it,” she said. They were back out in the parking lot, their vehicles the only two beside the one detective vehicle. “I wonder when forensics is coming.”
“They’ll be here as soon as they can,” he said. “The bottom line is, we don’t want to be here.”
“Would that be bad?”
“Long. Boring. Nobody’ll tell us anything,” he said. “And, given those factors, I have other things I’d rather do, like get the dog and the puppies back to the motel.”
She frowned, nodded, and said, “I don’t want to go home.”
“Then come back with me,” he said. “I need to pick up some food as it is.”
“What kind of food?”
“Dinner,” he said. “I’m damn tired of eating protein bars today.”
She chuckled. “Well, we can always do takeout.”
“A burger place is not too far from me,” he said. “I was there last night. I was thinking I might stop by and see if I can get a couple to-go orders.”
“Why don’t you and the dogs go to the motel, and I’ll stop by and pick up burgers,” she offered.
He looked at her in surprise, shrugged, and said, “Sure. Why not?” He gave her the name of the motel and said, “The burger place is just down at the end of the block.”
She got back into her vehicle and said, “Look after those dogs.”
“Yes,” he said. “I suggest we check in at the vet’s too.”
“I’ll do that too,” she said and turned on the engine and headed to the edge of the parking lot. She felt pretty weirded out by everything. She wanted time alone, yet, at the same time, she didn’t want to be alone at all. This was just too unbelievable. “God, I’m so sorry, Grams. I don’t know what the hell’s going on. But this one’s just plain ugly. You should have had another ten years easily.” Her grandmother was only in her early seventies. She could have lived another ten, even twenty years. She was in great health. Except for the damn knife in her ribs. Upset, distressed, grief-stricken, she drove slowly till she saw the motel and drove past it and pulled into the burger joint. She didn’t know anything about it, but food was necessary. She walked in and ordered a big double burger for Rowan and a single for herself with fries, all to go. By the time she paid for that, she added a cup of coffee to the order. She took everything back outside to the front seat and then slowly reversed around and pulled into the motel’s parking lot. She could see his vehicle, so she pulled up beside it, and then she texted him. What room number?
Two-seventeen came back the response. She got out, grabbed the food bags, locked up her vehicle, and slowly walked over to the outside set of stairs.
There she walked up and down the hallway until she found the right door. She knocked on it, and he called out, “Come in.”
Awkwardly she opened the door and stepped in, only to be immediately greeted by roly-poly puppies. Just the sight of them put the smile back on her face again. Rowan came to the door, took all the food from her. She dropped her purse as the door closed and sat down on the floor so she could love the puppies. She picked up the first one and just hugged the wiggling mass of fur. She could feel the tears in her eyes, but also something settled a little bit on the inside. “They’re really good for the soul, aren’t they?” she said.
“They absolutely are,” he said with a smile. “Did you call the vet clinic?”
“No,” she said. “I wanted to get here first, just in case the news was bad. I couldn’t drive afterward.”
He nodded in understanding. “I’m really hoping it’s not bad news at all,” he said.
“Yes, but bad news happens to good people,” she said. “My grandmother is a good example of that.”
He looked down at her as she sat there, cuddling the puppies. “Do you want me to call?”
She looked up at him and gratefully said, “Would you mind?”
He shook his head, walked toward the kitchenette while he dialed. She listened, not wanting to hear the answer but really hoping for good news, and found that she couldn’t do anything but keep her gaze locked on his face while he talked. He managed to somehow keep his expression completely neutral, and that wasn’t telling her a damn thing. And finally he said, “Perfect, thanks for the update.” He shut down his phone to turn to look at her and said, “The pup’s doing much better,” he said. “Its eyes are open, and it’s moving around.”
She felt her heart lighten. “And Lacey?”
“No change,” he said gently. “They’ve set her leg, and she’s on heavy antibiotics. Plus painkillers. They’re optimistic though,” he said. “It’s just too early to tell.”
Rowan wished he could have said that Lacey was up on her feet, dancing around like her young pup had been, but she wasn’t. It would take time, and she’d suffered these last few weeks. He motioned to the food. “Come on. Let’s eat. You’ll feel better.”
“I’ll feel better once Lacey and her puppy are out of that vet clinic,” she cried out passionately.
“I hear you,” he said. “That’s how I feel about Hershey here,” he said. “I can’t believe we found the dogs as it is.”
“Me neither,” she said. “What a surprise ending to this nightmare.” She walked toward him and pulled out the chair on the other side of the table and sat down. “I wasn’t exactly sure what to get you, so I ordered you the double burger, and I got a single.”
He divvied up the food, got a plate, pushed down the paper bag that the food had come in, and dumped all the fries into the hollow so that they could share. She smiled at that. “I should have asked them for ketchup,” she murmured.
“Not an issue,” he said. “I’m hungry enough to eat them just as they are.” Indeed, he was putting them down four at a time. She smiled at that. He smirked and shook his head as she picked up one. “You can eat more than one french fry at a time, you know?” he teased.
“I’ll eat the burger first,” she said. “It’s huge. If there’s any room after that,” she said, “I’ll have some fries.”
“Good enough,” he said, and he picked up his burger, unwrapped one side, and took a big bite. It was just as good as last night’s because he was even hungrier, or maybe it was even better tasting.
The whole way home he’d been tossing around in the back of his mind what was going on. But it all seemed to point to something of value that the grandmother had owned and hadn’t told the granddaughter about, whether that’s because she was ashamed, didn’t want to bring it up, had completely forgotten about it, or didn’t see any value in it. And who
knows what other kind of motives could have been in there. But stuff like this always had to come to the light before it was solved. “Did you have anybody local who came around the house to do yard work or anything for you?”
She shook her head, while she munched on her burger. “I did most of it myself,” she said.
“Other family?”
She shook her head. “No. No other family either.”
“What happened?”
“My parents were killed in a car accident. I was in the accident with them, although I still, to this day, have no memory of it,” she said. “I spent three weeks in the hospital, and, when I finally came out of the fugue, my parents had already been buried, and my grandmother had taken over my guardianship,” she said softly. “It was a pretty rough year. Both for her and for me. But we grew together, and we were very close. I miss her terribly.”
“And you never met any other family, in all that time?”
She frowned as she thought about it, reaching across to get a fry off the pile. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Not that I have any recollection of, put it that way. I presume there might be some other family somewhere in her world. I just don’t know where.”
“Meaning that she wasn’t an only child maybe?”
“I don’t know if she was,” she said. “It’s possible that she had siblings. I don’t know. My understanding though is that I’m the last one.”
“Okay, those are all things that we need to know,” he said, “so we’ll have to do a bit of research into it.”
“The lawyer should theoretically have all that information too,” she said.
“The lawyer should have had a list of likely beneficiaries,” he said, “and that’s what I really want to know because, with your grandmother deceased, who gets the money?”
“Well, the money would have been in the house,” she said, “and that’s burned to the ground.”
“But there will be compensation of some kind,” he said, “so it’s a question of who’ll get that too.”
“It’s just so wrong that anybody would hurt that sweet, innocent woman for her house.”
“People would have murdered that sweet, innocent woman for a sandwich she held in one hand,” he said. “Don’t romance the population out there. Ninety-eight percent of them are all great, but the remaining two percent of them are complete A-holes.”
She nodded. “I just haven’t had too much experience with that side of life.”
“Maybe not,” he said, “but you’re getting a crash course in it now.”
Chapter 10
When Brandi finally got home to her own bed that night, she was exhausted and worn out. The trouble was, she woke up the same way the next morning. But it was now Sunday, and she had to go to work to catch up on a few things again. If she worked weekends she tried to take time off during the week in compensation but she’d lost a lot of time over her Grandmother’s death, so she was still catching up. She told Rowan that she would contact him at the end of the day to see if he had checked in with the vet clinic or if he’d found out anything new otherwise. He kept talking about seeking more information. She just didn’t understand what he was supposed to find out, but she wouldn’t let go of that possible result either.
By the time her long day at the lab was over, she drove back to her crappy little rented unit and sat down on the furnished couch—and she realized she didn’t want to be here. She wanted to go see the pups, and she wanted to go see Rowan, and she wanted to go see Hershey. And whatever excuse worked, and she was happy for them all. She pulled out her phone and sent him a text. What are you doing?
Thinking about dinner. What are you doing?
I just got home. I’m tired and fed up. My mind’s buzzing in a million directions, and I can’t rest. I need food too. But I also want to see the pups.
We can order in, if you’d like.
Or I’ll just bring a sandwich, she typed.
Bring two then, he wrote, with a happy emoji.
She smiled as she got up, went to the fridge, and realized that was about the extent of what she had. She quickly made up several large sandwiches. And she grabbed some fruit and some tea bags because he had a kettle there, and she grabbed a few other kitchenette items. She drove the ten minutes to his motel. She parked outside and walked upstairs and could already hear the puppies yipping inside. As she stood outside the door, she called out to them, “Hey, little ones. Guess who’s here?”
They recognized her voice, and they raced to the door, barking and yapping like crazy. A moment later, Rowan came to the door and opened it for her. She handed him the food and immediately fell to the floor and soaked up some puppy love. “I called the vet twice today,” she murmured, “and each time it was the same answer. No change. No change.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s got to be tough.”
“The cops also called me with more questions,” she said, “asking about when I might have seen the lawyer in the past. How much contact did my grandmother have with him. All kinds of stuff. And I didn’t have any answers for them.”
“They’ll figure it out,” he said comfortably.
She shook her head. “I might have believed that before,” she said, “but now it just feels like everything’s wrong.”
“And, of course, with all that going on, it was a crappy day at work, wasn’t it?”
“It’s essentially a Monday for me, as I sometimes work weekends,” she said. “I think that alone makes it a crappy day at work.”
He laughed. “True enough.”
She looked at him. “Now your job’s basically done though, isn’t it?” It had occurred to her that morning, when she drove to work, that Rowan had come to find the dog. Now that he had Hershey, his job was over. “When are you leaving?”
“Not for a few days,” he said.
She nodded, sad. “Well, that’s to be expected. You’ve completed your mission, so now you get to go home with the dog.”
“True,” he said. “At least in part. But another part of me wants to get to the bottom of this mystery.”
“Well, nothing’s happened in the last few weeks since I returned stateside,” she said, “so I highly doubt we’ll get any answers before you have to leave.”
“Maybe not,” he said, “but who knows? I have an advantage in this case,” he said, as he unwrapped the sandwiches. “I’m my own boss. So, if I want to stay longer, I can.”
She looked at him hopefully. “That doesn’t mean I can afford to pay you to help me to get to the bottom of this.”
“I didn’t ask for payment, did I?” he said mildly.
“No,” she said, raising her hands in frustration. “I’m just out of sorts. As I look at everything in my life, it’s like nothing matters as much to me anymore. Other than Lacey and her puppies …”
“Maybe it’s time for change,” he said. “Do you want to stay in this area?”
“God knows I’d always planned to stay in my grandmother’s house. It was my home since I was ten,” she said. “Now that’s been ripped out from under me, and I feel rootless. I’m living in a stupid furnished apartment because I don’t want to buy furniture, much less a home. I don’t want to make anything mine. I don’t want to put down roots,” she said. “But it doesn’t make any sense because I’ve got to live somewhere.”
“Which is why you’re living there now,” he said, “but you don’t have to stay there.”
“I don’t intend to,” she said, “but I do like my job.”
“And that’s a good reason to stay,” he said, “and I presume its offices are only here?”
“No,” she said, “several other offices are across the country. I could go to any one of them, if I wanted to.”
“That opens up a lot of America for you,” he said.
“I don’t want to go to the East Coast because I don’t want any more winter,” she said.
“Well, if you go south,” he said in a dry tone, “you can avoid a lot of winter.�
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“Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”
“What states do you have other offices in?”
“Let me see,” she said. She brought up the company website on her phone. “New Mexico, Florida, Illinois, and New York.”
“Do any of those appeal to you?”
She shrugged. “I’m not familiar with any of those states.”
“Well, I can vote for New Mexico,” he said, “because that’s where I came from. That’s where the company I work for is based.”
“Is that where you live though?” she asked, raising her head to stare at him.
He gave her a crooked smile. “And that’s also a very good question,” he said, “because, in my previous career, I was doing naval missions. Then I got badly injured and have since recovered, and now I’m figuring out what I want to do after this.”
“That’s a good question,” she said. “What do you want to do?”
“I’m happy working for Titanium Corp,” he said. “No stress. Always interested in doing something different, like the kinda cases they get. I’d be okay staying with them,” he said, “at least for the next few years, until I see if I want more than that.”
“You okay with just something like that for now?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “It’s kind of nice to have time to spend in the evenings at home. And, even if I do get sent away, it’ll only be for a day or two—or five, like now—not for weeks on end. I used to do heavy extreme training all the time, and I was never home. This is different. This is local stuff usually. It means coming home at the end of the day and having weekends off. I really like that. It’s the first time in my adult life that I’ve had anything even similar.”
“Understood,” she murmured. “Our lab has offices in Albuquerque.”
“That’s good,” he said. “All kinds of opportunities are there. Plus there’s no ugly winter,” he added with a smile.
She looked down at Hershey. “Will you take this guy with you?”
“I’m hoping so,” he said. “I put in a request to Badger. He runs the company and was looking after these War Dogs’ files. I think I have a prior claim, but it’s still likely to go through the navy, getting the paperwork finalized.”
