by Dale Mayer
She nodded. “I hear you. It’s something to consider.” Just then their orders arrived. She stared at the monster plates with the five big meatballs on top, and she gasped.
He looked at the food and chuckled. “We’ll need take-home containers,” he said to the waitress.
She smiled, nodded, and said, “I’ve heard that a time or two. I’ll bring them back later. Let’s see how you do first.” She left and returned with fresh parmesan in a big grinder and topped their pasta.
“Wow,” Brandi said a few moments later. “This is excellent.”
“It is. I had no idea something like this was around the corner.”
“That’s because you didn’t see anything but your burgers,” she teased.
“And the fries,” he added. “You can’t forget the fries.”
Just as they finished eating, and their plates had been taken away to pack up into take-out containers, his phone rang. He looked at it and frowned.
“Why the frown?” she asked.
“It’s the detective,” he said. “Let me take this quickly.”
He answered the phone, putting it on Speaker, and the detective asked, “How is she?”
“She hurt her ankle when jumping from the kidnappers’ van, but she seems fine otherwise,” he said. “We just finished lunch.”
“Good. You want to come down here and do statements now?” he asked. “I would rather that than wait until tomorrow.”
“Okay,” he said slowly. “Do you have any information for us?”
“Some. The handgun found in her grandmother’s safe deposit box is in the clear. It’s licensed. Her husband bought it several months before he was killed. Yet it does kinda seem like he knew his life was in danger. Too bad it didn’t save him. Plus, absolutely no cameras were in the area where Brandi was kidnapped. Also I don’t know when her tire was sabotaged.”
Rowan nodded. “I had already reported to you about the one guy in the motel parking lot yesterday.”
“Right. I did find your email with his photo and the license plate. We’re running both. Once we get a name, we’ll search for local family and friends.”
“Plus,” Rowan added, “now that we know two guys kidnapped her, that would explain why I didn’t see the same guy following us this morning from the motel. His buddy must have taken over the surveillance of us.”
“That’s possible, or—and I hate to say this—maybe somebody tracked her. I don’t know who else she works with, how close she is with any of her coworkers, but somebody saw you at the bank.”
“Right,” he said, eyeing Brandi. “We don’t know who all the players are yet.”
“Yeah, so … if you could come somewhere in the next hour?”
“We’ll come as soon as we’re done here,” he said. He thought about the animals back home. “Actually we’ll go home, take the animals outside, and then come down. Did you get any forensics off her apartment?”
“No,” he said. “Not at all and not from the apartment building’s cameras either. Yes, there’s a male walking, but he’s got on a big overcoat and a hat.”
“Right, figures.”
After Rowan hung up, she nodded. “What about the prison?”
“As far as I know, they’re working on it, but he still wants to see us this afternoon.”
“Right, to give our statements,” she said. “Well, we might as well get it over with. I’m tired enough now after that big meal though that I might need a nap. So let’s do this first so I can crash later.”
“Got it,” he said. “What about the dogs?”
She shrugged. “We should probably take them outside first, but we haven’t been gone all that long.” She looked at her watch. “It’s only been like ninety minutes, and we still have to pick up the tire.”
“Okay, fine. Let’s grab that tire, go see the cops, and then we’ll check on the pups.”
And that’s what they did. By the time they finished telling the detective everything that had gone on that morning and had signed their statements, the detective added, “We have picked up an address on the nephew. It was in that area where you were, after escaping from your kidnappers, but nobody was at home. The landlord said he rented it to him for several months, and, after a month, the kid took off.”
“How old a kid is this?”
“He’s twenty-seven,” the detective said. “So not exactly a kid.”
“No, not at all,” Rowan said. “And how old is the uncle, this Steve guy, in jail for killing Brandi’s grandfather?”
“Midfifties.”
“Any relationship to my grandmother?” Brandi asked the detective.
“That’s a good question,” he said, turning to Brandi. “Did you ever meet him?”
She slowly shook her head. “I don’t know any Steve. I don’t know who you’re talking about, but she didn’t have a long-term relationship with anyone since I’ve been ten.”
The detective frowned, tapped his pencil on his desk, and said, “I spoke to Steve on the phone. And that’s what he said.”
“Unless,” she added, “he meant as just friends.”
“I might have to give him a call back,” he said.
“Or we can go see Steve ourselves,” Rowan suggested.
The detective looked up at him and frowned, but Brandi immediately leaned forward in her seat and said, “I think that’s a good idea. This Steve guy obviously wants something I have—the coin collection—but I don’t know why he feels he deserves it or that it should be his. And Steve may have killed my grandfather, yet he didn’t kill my grandmother because he’s in jail.”
“That’s true. However, the nephew was in town at the time.”
“I got it,” she said, “but still a mystery is here, and no way she was in a long-term relationship all those years that I lived with her.”
“Okay,” the detective said. “Maybe I’ll come with you to see Steve. He tapped the paper in front of him, made a decision, and picked up the phone. By the time he was off the phone, he’d arranged for them to go to the penitentiary and to meet this guy at one in the afternoon tomorrow.
“Perfect,” Rowan said. “Where do you want to meet?”
“At the penitentiary,” he said. “At one tomorrow.”
“Okay, we can make that, no problem,” Rowan said.
They got up to leave, and the detective asked Brandi, “Are you staying in town?”
“For a little bit,” she said, “but I’m looking at transferring out. I can’t say this state has been very easy on me for the last couple months.”
“I just need to know that you’ll stay around for now,” he said. “We want to get to the bottom of this. And I don’t want you leaving, and particularly I don’t want you leaving without letting me know.”
“Okay, I won’t do that,” she said.
Back outside, Rowan asked, “Home?”
“Wherever home is now,” she said, “but, yes, back to the pups. And, speaking of which, I want to phone the vet.”
He drove back to the motel while she called.
When she finally got through after three tries, the receptionist said, “Oh, I’ve been trying to call you this morning, and, every time I dial you, I’ve got somebody else on the phone, or somebody else walks in.”
“How is Lacey?” she asked.
“Much better,” she said, her tone warm and full of joy. “Her tail wags. She’s up, and she’s alert.”
“And the puppy?”
“Not quite as good, I’m afraid,” the receptionist said. “Still alive, still fighting, still weak.”
“Can we come see them?”
“That’s what I would suggest, that you come by and say hi.”
“Okay,” she replied. “We’re just taking the pups out for a pee walk, and then we can come by.”
“You might want to bring the pups. It could make Lacey feel even better.”
“That’s true,” she said, and she looked over at Rowan. “Are you up for that?”
He shrugged. “Why not?”
Chapter 15
With the puppies and Hershey loaded in the back seat of his rental vehicle, they drove to the vet clinic. When they got there, the puppies were completely entangled in their leashes attached to their collars and also the ropes he’d left in the back. It took a moment to separate them, and then they walked into the front reception room, with Hershey calm and quiet at Rowan’s side. As soon as the receptionist saw them, she smiled and said, “This is good timing too. Lacey just woke up from a nap. We’re about to take her out to the backyard to go to the bathroom. It’ll be for her first time, so this will be interesting to see how she does on that leg.”
At the receptionist’s request, they went around to the dog run and waited for Lacey to be brought here. As she came out, she hobbled slowly, looking like every step hurt her. But, when she saw Brandi, she got so excited that they were afraid she would hurt herself. Brandi immediately jumped to the ground in front of her and just tried to hold her to calm her down. “Oh, my goodness,” she whispered, tears in her eyes. “You look so beautiful.”
She gently stroked the Lab and held her close. The dog finally calmed down and lay there in her arms. She whimpered several times, but Brandi wasn’t sure if it was in pain or in joy. At that point, Rowan walked over with the puppies. And the mother and puppies had a big reunion too. Of course the puppies zeroed in on her teats and latched on. Lacey lay here with a happy sigh as the puppies nursed a little bit. Brandi looked over at the receptionist. “It’s probably not a good idea that they’re nursing, is it?”
“Probably not with the antibiotics,” she said, “but it’s very comforting for both mother and pups.”
“And the other pup?” Rowan asked.
She shook her head. “Still quite weak.”
“Maybe we should bring her out, to be with the rest of the family too,” he suggested.
She frowned and said, “I’ll talk to the vet.” And she went back inside, leaving one of the techs here to make sure Lacey didn’t hurt herself. She returned a little later, carrying the third puppy. She was placed down on the ground close to her brothers, and her tail started to wag. They came over, sniffled her, licked her, and gently roly-polied around her. She was about half their weight and obviously suffering but looking much better than Brandi had seen her before.
She picked her up and gently cuddled her. Then with Lacey on her lap, she held the two of them close. Finally the vet tech said that the puppy needed to go back inside. She nodded, handed over the puppy, and then stood. With Rowan helping to hold Lacey back, they walked her around the yard, so that she’d go to the bathroom. And that was about as much exercise as she could handle. They helped her back inside to her cage, and it just broke Brandi’s heart to leave Lacey. Even Lacey laid down, quite depressed too. Brandi whispered to her, “I’ll be back. I promise with all my heart. However, you need to stay here and continue to heal.” With the door to Lacey’s cage shut, they picked up the two puppies and walked back outside. She stood by Rowan’s car in the parking lot, wiping away her tears.
“It’ll all be fine when we can pick up her and her pup and have them with us on a full-time basis,” he said. “I know it’s really hard right now.”
“It’s more than hard,” she said. “I feel like I’ve deserted her all over again.”
“You know that that’s not true,” he said. “We will come back. She’s getting much better. She just needs a couple more days, that’s all.”
She looked over at him, smiled, and said, “And that brings me back to, And then what? I don’t even have an apartment.”
His face sobered as he realized what she meant. “It’s kind of like being on the cusp of a major change, isn’t it?”
“It’s more than kind of,” she said. “It’s a fork in the road, and I feel like I want to make sure it’s the correct fork that I take.”
“The one where you follow your heart will be the right one,” he said.
She nodded slowly and watched as he got all the dogs back into the car, and she asked, “Now what are we doing?”
“Well,” he said, “I thought maybe we can take the animals to the park, get out for a little bit, and forget about all of what’s going on. Hopefully the police are doing what they’re doing, and that will make this a whole lot easier.”
“Even the lawyer,” she said, as she leaned against the seatback, “is dead, but …” And her voice trailed off.
“But?”
“I feel like I need to know more today,” she said, frowning. “And where do we get that information?” She thought for a moment and then said with a laugh, “Probably the internet. It’s not like we’re short on getting what we need there.”
“Fine,” he said. “Let’s go home, do some research, and then we can go out for a walk.”
Back at the motel she set up her laptop, and he set up with his. She said, “There’s got to be proof of some relationship somewhere in here, if Steve says Grandma had a long-term relationship. I know it wasn’t an intimate one because I was always there.”
“But also remember,” he said gently. “You were just a child.”
“But she was alone,” she said.
He stopped, looked at her, and said, “But your grandfather was murdered too.”
She nodded, then frowned. “You think it’s connected?”
He looked at her and said, “When two murders happen in the same family, I’m not sure anybody would say they weren’t connected.”
“That’s possible,” she said. “Quite possible.” She looked up at him, still frowning. “But so far apart.”
He said, “Remember those letters in the safe deposit box?”
She stared in surprise, bolted to her feet, raced to her purse. She came back and gave him half the letters. “Let’s each read five, then swap them out, read the remaining five, and afterward share our findings.” Rowan nodded. They slowly read through the letters one at a time. “These are love letters,” she said, when she was done. “More caring on his side than on hers.”
“And they’re written a long time ago,” he said. “And the murderer’s name was Steve … what? Steve Bannon?” At that, Rowan stopped, waved the letter in his hand, and said, “This was written by Jeff Bannon.”
“His father,” she breathed. “Or so we presume. If Steve is fiftysomething now, then Jeff would be seventysomething, so close to my grandmother’s age. Yes, and it’s quite possible Steve heard about the coin collection from his father, Jeff, who must have known about it from Grams.”
“Well, that would make sense,” he said. “Let’s recheck these letters.”
As they read through them again, she smiled and said, “Sounds like my grandmother was friends with Jeff. But I doubt she’d have been unfaithful. Maybe she married my grandfather instead of Jeff. Maybe he thought their friendship would lead to more. Or maybe Jeff was friends with both my grandparents?” She stared at Rowan, her eyebrows raised.
“What was your relationship like, with your grandfather?”
“I have no recollection of him,” she said sadly. “I was only a child of like eight when he was murdered, and I have no recollection of him at all. Maybe because I was so young? I had no idea of him before that, and, of course, I didn’t have my parents to ask either.”
“No,” he murmured. “What about those pictures?”
She looked at them carefully; they were old, but there her grandmother was, with her arms around two men.
“What do you want to bet that this is Jeff Bannon on one side of my grandmother and my grandfather on the other?” she asked. She turned over the photo and read the handwritten note, Robert, Isabella, and Jeff. And she held it out to Rowan.
“Well, there’s the connection,” he said.
“And does that mean that they are related—Jeff and/or Steve and my grandfather—or just all good friends?”
“Either is possible,” he said, “but you’d think it would be a closer connection than just friends.”
“We need a Bannon family tree,” she said suddenly. She sat down and started typing and looking for articles on Steve’s family.
“And I’ll get the cops on it,” Rowan said. In the background she heard him contact the detective and explain what the photos were. He came back in a short time, just as she found an article on the obituary of Jeff.
“Jeff died fifteen years before my grandfather,” she said. “Jeff never married.”
“Although that doesn’t mean that he didn’t have children,” Rowan said.
“Of course not,” she said, “but, Jeff had a sister, Susan, and she had a child named Steve Bannon.”
“Sister-in-law then?” he asked.
She frowned at that, went back, nodded, and said, “Right. Sister-in-law. There were two Bannon brothers. Bart was married to Susan. Jeff was single. The married one, Bart, had a child, Steve Bannon, with Susan.”
“And according to the text I just received from the detective, Steve Bannon married, but he had no children. And,” Rowan added with a grin, “note that none of these people crossover into your family tree. So they are not your relatives.”
It didn’t take long to come up with more Bannon family members. Steve had a sister, born two years later, so younger than Steve.
“Okay, so now we have Bart, the brother of Jeff, and Bart had a son, Steve, and a daughter, Rosamund. She got married to someone and had her son, who would be Steve’s nephew. And if his parents are fiftyish, then the twenty-seven-year-old son, who is Steve’s nephew, fits.”
“Right, so are we thinking that this nephew is the one who’s been attacking everyone? Or ordering the attacks?” Brandi asked. “He ordered my kidnapping? He ordered the potshots? He had Grams killed and had her lawyer killed and my apartment ransacked? But … he’s only twenty-seven. Does that seem possible to you?”
“I guess it depends on whether he was raised to hate, or maybe he got into a bad crowd? What are the chances that Jeff told somebody else about this coin collection?”
