by Dale Mayer
“Always red tape, isn’t there?” she said.
“Always,” he said. “I put on the teakettle, and we have sandwiches. Why don’t we eat?”
She sighed, picked up the puppy falling asleep in her lap, gave it a gentle kiss, put it down, and stood. “I really missed the animals,” she said.
“And that’s another thing,” he said. “You have to decide what you’ll do with the pups. There’s three puppies and your female.”
“I need to get her fixed, which we should have mentioned to the vet while I was there.” She frowned and quickly dialed the vet’s office, caught one of the receptionists, and mentioned about getting Lacey fixed.
“I’ll talk to the vet about it tomorrow,” the woman said. “If we have to go in and do any more surgery that would be the time to do it. I’m not sure she’s strong enough to handle that kind of major surgery right now though.”
“Good enough,” she said, “as long as we can keep it in mind.”
“Will do.”
She hung up the phone, sat down, and looked at the sandwiches. “I made these with what I had at home,” she said, “and I didn’t even think about asking you what you like, what you don’t like. I just put everything into them.”
“It’s great,” he said, and he was already halfway through his first sandwich.
She picked up a piece, took a bite, nodded. “I do like sandwiches,” she said. “Hot or cold doesn’t matter. They’re all good.”
“They are.” By the time they were done eating, he had made tea for both of them and said, “We could take the pups for a walk, if you want. They have been out twice today, but they’ll need another time to go piddle.”
“We can do that,” she said, “Where do you take them around here?”
“Around the corner,” he said, “is a nice wooded area. We could take them there.” And outside they went, all three of the dogs on ropes. The two pups still didn’t like the makeshift leashes, not understanding when they hit the end of the rope that they had to stop, so watching them was full of hilarity and joy.
Just as they got into the wooded area and walked up and around and back again, she said, “What about the shooter question?”
“Honestly it’s one of the reasons I wanted to get outside,” he said. “Somebody’s been sitting in the parking lot, watching us since you arrived.”
She stared at him in horror. “Did we walk past him then?”
He shook his head. “No, we went the opposite direction,” he said, “but, as we head back around, I want to see if this guy’s still there.”
“And if he is?”
“Then I’ll have a little talk with him,” Rowan said, and the look on his face made it very clear it wouldn’t be a good talk for the other guy.
After leaving her safe in his motel room with the pups, he walked back out with Hershey and headed toward the vehicle parked at the other end. As he walked directly toward the guy in the driver’s seat, the guy turned on the truck engine and tried to back away. Rowan had already taken a quick photo of his license plate. He walked up to the guy, who was still trying to make a turn around so that he could pull out again, and knocked hard on the window.
The guy turned to look at him, and, at that moment, Rowan took a quick camera shot of his face. Outrage was the next expression on the man’s face. He rolled down his window. “What the hell was that for?”
“When people are following me,” Rowan said quietly, “I want to know who they are.”
“Go fuck off!” the guy said, as he shifted gears in the old black Ford and took off out of the parking lot.
Rowan quickly sent both images to Badger, with a short message saying what had happened. Badger called him a few minutes later. “Any reason to suspect he’s part of these connected events?”
“No reason to suspect he’s not,” Rowan said. “You know something shifty is going on here.”
“So was he armed this time?” Badger asked. “We did check into the cop you asked about. Can’t find any connection.”
“Okay. That’s good. And no, I didn’t see that he was armed.”
“Yeah, it’s almost comical. If this is the same guy doing all this, why is he armed one time and not the next? Why is he passively watching and following you at times and then actively taking potshots at other times? And, if you throw in the knifing of the grandmother, this guy is a walking conundrum,” Badger stated, thinking out loud, not expecting an answer. “Unless he’s just some amateur. And I’m not getting very far on information on the lawyer either.”
“Right, and I’ve heard nothing from the cops,” said Rowan. “The lawyer was definitely murdered, but we need to track down a copy of the grandmother’s will.”
“You think it all comes back to the inheritance?”
“The killer came for something at the attorney’s office. My guess is for the will of Brandi’s grandmother. So, if we can get a copy of that, we can get Brandi into the bank to see what’s in the safe deposit box.”
“Okay, I’m checking public records for filings and should have an answer for you on the will pretty quick. By the way, further checks into Hershey’s last tours and Brandi’s background come back clean. Nothing suspicious in either of their histories. At least not recently for Hershey.”
After he hung up, Rowan slowly walked back up to the motel. Then he detoured, heading over to the burger place. From the doorway, he asked if he could get a couple cups of coffee to go. The woman recognized him and nodded and then saw the dog and shouted out, “He’s welcome inside, if he can behave himself.”
Rowan said, “He will definitely behave himself.” He stepped forward, and then his senses caught the sight and the smells of the burgers. “I will come back for some burgers tomorrow.”
“We do deliver,” she said. “You might want to keep that in mind.” And she fished across the counter for a stack of pamphlets and handed him one.
He looked at it and smiled. “I’m at the motel across the road. It’s easy enough to walk across.”
“Then call in the order,” she said. “We will have it ready in a few minutes. You can come and pick them up.”
He nodded and, with the two coffees in his hand, Hershey to his side, Rowan managed to get out the door without spilling everything. Outside he walked across the road and then down to the motel. Back up at the room, he knocked with his knuckles and then gently tapped it with his foot. “Hey, it’s me,” he said.
Immediately she opened the door, saw the coffee, and chuckled. “I was just thinking that it would be nice to have one,” she said. “So good timing on your part.”
“I was outside anyway,” he said. “And it’s the same place we went to earlier, where we got the burgers from last night. Apparently they deliver, and, if we call ahead, we can get burgers again tomorrow.”
“Do they have anything but burgers?”
He put down the coffee cups and fished out the pamphlet the waitress had given him, handing it to Brandi.
She looked at it. “Pasta,” she said. “Well, we can certainly do dinner again there for me.”
“Not a big burger fan?”
“I love a good burger. It’s fine,” she said, “but not every day.”
“You are not a guy,” he said. “Guys can do burgers every day.”
At that, she laughed. “And you know what? That could very well be true. You are right. I’m not a guy. I do like a little variety in my food, and I especially like a vegetable now and again,” she teased.
“Not a whole lot of vegetables with pasta,” he warned.
“Then they are not making it right,” she said and then acknowledged, “We can always order a salad on the side.”
“Sure,” he said, “as long as you eat it.” He tossed her a big grin, as he headed to the couch with his coffee. He sat down, picked up one of the puppies, who immediately started to walk all over him and then to chew on his chin. “I forgot what it was like to have little ones this size,” he murmured, his hand gently rubbing
and scratching the pup’s neck. “It’s pretty special.”
She said, “I’ve already missed out on so many weeks with them.”
“You did,” he said, “but you are making up for it now.”
“I just hope the third one makes it,” she said.
“Yeah, three pups are a lot to handle,” he said, studying her. “Are you prepared for the expense and the responsibility?”
“Absolutely,” she said, “but I’m not prepared for them in my furnished flat. I’m pretty sure that they won’t let me keep dogs, particularly not four.”
“Back to that earlier question, What do you want to do with your life?”
“No clue,” she said. “I was so damn busy at work today. I didn’t get a chance to think about anything else.”
“I got it,” he said. “Do you think your work is somehow related to this?”
“By this, you mean, my grandmother’s murder, the coins?”
“Yes.”
“I doubt it,” she said with a shake of her head. “I have worked there since I graduated, at least six years now, and it’s never been an issue.”
“You have never mentioned your inheritance, or the coins, or anything about the house to anybody?”
“I didn’t know about the coins—if there are even coins,” she said. “I’m still not convinced of that. And I don’t really see that there’s any inheritance.”
“There is a hefty bank account with your name on it,” he murmured.
“Which I never knew about. Like I said, I’d rather have my grandmother instead,” she said sadly.
Just then his phone rang. He fished it out and answered it, while placing it on Speakerphone. “Badger, what’s up?”
“I’m sending you a copy of the will,” he said. “It was changed three months ago.”
“Do we know what the changes were?”
“Beneficiaries had been set up in the original document, who had apparently passed away, so they were taken off, and now Brandi receives everything.”
“So outside of probate …”
“Exactly,” he said. “Once the paperwork is done, she can access everything. She is also the executor of the estate.”
“I didn’t think she realized that,” he said, looking over at her.
She shrugged. “There was the lawyer, who would have known, but I didn’t know.”
Badger added, “So, you can take a copy of this to the bank and see what is in the other accounts and in the safe deposit box.”
“Can we get a copy of the old will, so we can see who was taken off?” Rowan asked. “Maybe the motive is coming from there.”
“The note I have here says that everybody’s deceased.”
“But it’s easy to say that, when it isn’t necessarily so,” he said.
“We’ll double-check that, as well as digging up any related family trees.”
“Grab a copy for us, if you can.”
“Will do.”
When Rowan got off the phone, she smiled at him and nodded. “That sounds like Grandma to leave it all to me. But what was that about ‘related family trees’?”
“We will get a copy of the old will, just to make sure anybody she removed might have had expectations and found out that they weren’t getting anything. Whether it’s a living beneficiary or maybe a relative to the dead beneficiaries.”
“It’s so sad to think that people would take money over a person’s life.”
He said, “People are greedy.”
“I don’t even know if it’s greed,” she said. “Sometimes I think it’s fear, fear of not having enough, fear of tomorrow, and a huge lack of respect for all of yesterday.”
He looked at her curiously.
“Very few people in this country honor or respect our elders,” she said. “I see that a lot. Whereas my grandmother was somebody special to me, so I always wanted to make sure that she knew it and that she was looked after.”
“Sounds like she was a very special woman, and, with any luck, she knew how you felt,” Rowan said with a smile.
She looked at him and said, “Can you forward the will to me, please.”
“Already done,” he said.
Surprised, she pulled out her phone and took a look. Her notifications were off. “I tend to turn off my phone at work, and then I forget to turn it back on again.”
“Understood,” he said. “I would too. With good reason,” he added. “It’s a small screen, so why don’t you wait until you get home again.”
“I’m just looking at the beneficiaries,” she said. “Everything was given to me.”
“Does that surprise you?”
“Not really,” she said. “There was just the two of us.”
“I still want to see the previous will that listed other people,” he said. “Supposedly the previous beneficiaries are deceased, so they were just writing a cleaner will.”
She flicked through the document, finding it hard to read on the phone. “I know everybody loves their phones for reading,” she said, “but it drives me crazy.” Then she stopped, looked at him, and said, “You want to meet at the bank tomorrow after work?”
He looked at her in surprise and answered slowly, “Yes, I do. You coming back here for dinner tomorrow after your workday is over?”
“Absolutely,” she said, “as long as I get to order something other than a burger.”
“You can pick up your dinner and bring it home with you,” he said, laughing at her.
She smiled at that because the sound of home here sounded a whole lot better than going to her place to be alone.
Something about this man just made her think of permanency and the future. She’d lied when she said she hadn’t had a chance to think about what she was doing next. Just the thought of going back to the empty apartment filled her with sadness. She also knew that she couldn’t take the pups with her. They were much better off to be with Hershey and Rowan.
She walked over to Hershey, crouching in front of him and putting out a hand gently. “Thank you for looking after the pups and Lacey,” she murmured. Almost immediately both pups came tumbling toward her. She chuckled, scooped one up, gave him a cuddle, and then scooped up the other one. When she was done, she leaned over and gently rubbed Hershey’s head and scratched the big thick ruff at his neck and then stood. “I need to go,” she said. “I don’t want to, but I need to.”
He got up and walked her to the door. “Drive home carefully,” he said.
She stopped, looking at him, frowning. “You have made a couple statements about me being careful now,” she said. “Am I really in danger?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “All I can tell you is what we already know. Your grandmother was murdered. Your lawyer was murdered, and somebody was in the parking lot, watching us earlier, not to mention the potshots in the forest.”
“At both of us or at you?”
“Or you,” he said gently.
A frozen fear rippled down her spine; she crossed her arms over her chest and said, “What are we supposed to do?”
He hesitated and then said, “You could spend the night here. I will take the couch. You can take the bed.”
“But you are not staying here forever,” she said softly. “I can’t just hide behind you.”
“But you could hide behind me for a little while,” he said. “If we could bring the dogs to your apartment, I’d say that would be fine. We could all move in there, and I could ensure that you were safe, at least for the time you were there. But presumably this person knows where you work and followed you here to this motel or tracked down where I was staying.”
“That’s a pretty freaky thing to consider that somebody cares enough to track you down and to find out that you’re staying here, just to keep an eye on us. Do you think he’s out there now?”
“I don’t think so,” he said gently, “but I’ll walk you out to your vehicle anyway.”
She shivered slightly as they walked out together with Hershey at his si
de, leaving the two pups alone in the motel room. As soon as the door closed, they started howling.
Rowan walked her to her vehicle, shaking his head. “Management may kick us out of here soon, if the puppies keep that up.”
She stood here at her car for a long moment. “Well, I’ll go home,” she said, “and I’ll see what it’s like.”
“The offer will always be here,” he said, “as long as I’m here.”
She tossed him a bright smile. “You’ve got that protective thing going on, huh?”
“I’m just a person who doesn’t like to see somebody else scared, intimidated, or hunted.”
At the word hunted, her eyes widened. “I don’t like the sound of that,” she said. But she was determined to head back to her apartment. She certainly had to go back to work in the morning. She hopped in, turned on the engine, and gave him a wave.
He leaned forward and said, “Give me your address just so I have it.” He keyed it into his contact list on his phone. Then he looked over at her. “And remember. If you get there, and it doesn’t feel right, call me.”
“Will do,” she said.
Chapter 11
These words kept a staccato beat in her brain as Brandi drove home. Her apartment wasn’t very far away, just enough that she felt completely separated from Rowan.
As soon as she left the parking lot, the disquiet set in. The closer she got to home, the deeper it became. As she parked and then walked along the hallway to her apartment, she could feel something inside her freezing up at the thought. She was only a few steps away from her front door when she noticed something—something she had seen at the lawyer’s office. She got closer and found herself tiptoeing, as if to keep her steps quiet. The door wasn’t latched, as in not locked or not pulled shut. Her heart froze, and she instinctively backed up, all the way down the hallway to the stairs, and then bolted for her car. Back outside, she hopped into her vehicle and tore out of the parking lot.
Her hands were shaking so hard, and she was gasping for breath. She should have called Rowan, but she couldn’t talk and drive at the same time. It wasn’t very far back to his motel, and, before long, she found herself sitting in the parking lot outside. She gathered her purse and raced up the outside steps. When she knocked, he was at the door immediately, with a look of concern. “What’s the matter?”
