18. Hartley
18
HARTLEY
“If you don’t settle somewhere, you’re going to have to leave,” I said to my brother.
His relentless restlessness was maddening. First, he was sitting, then he stood, then he paced before sitting again and bouncing his leg up and down. I’d asked him repeatedly what was bothering him, but he said nothing, even though he remained shifty-eyed, like at any moment something was going to jump out and bite him. Maybe Rory would, because by the look on his face, he was about to throttle him.
“That’s it.” Hazel put her hands up. “I can’t handle this. I’m taking lunch. I know you like us to do it in shifts, but you need to fix him or make him leave before I get back.” Hazel dealt with a lot around here. She didn’t need to add my brother to the list. She shouldn’t have to be interrupted by him.
“I’ll take care of it.” I glanced over and saw Forest looking out the front window. Rory was outside, glaring at him through the glass .
I waited for Hazel to grab her things and leave out the back. The door closing was my signal to speak to my brother.
“Forest, we’re alone. Talk.”
He shook his head as he came over to me. “I don’t know if I can. I mean, I need to, but what the fuck, Hart? I shouldn’t even have this.” He pulled a wrinkled, folded up piece of paper out of his pocket and held it up.
“What is it?”
“Evidence,” he whispered.
“Dear god, have you been watching those spy movies again?” For a solid year, Forest was hooked on them. He’d call me from California and talk about the shit he saw, asking if any of it could be real. I had to talk him off the ledge every time.
“No, this is legit. And it has Pop’s name on it.” I reached for it, but he pulled it back. “Once you see it, there’s no going back. You’ll be looking over your shoulder, waiting for someone to jump you.”
“Not for nothing, but you see who I’m in a relationship with. Do you think I run around the city and make myself an even bigger target?” Sometimes I worried if I was running errands. Mostly, I tried to push it from my mind and trusted Rory to keep me safe. I wasn’t sure if that was the smart thing to do. It was that or become like my brother, apparently.
“If you see this, you’re going to tell Jordan and V. I don’t want them involved. It will only escalate.”
“When have you known Vail to add fuel to any fire? That’s not him. Jordan, well, you’re spot-on. But you need to show me because now I’m curious. I won’t stop asking until I see what you have.”
Forest looked over his shoulder toward the front of the studio, where Rory still stood guard. Facing me again, Forest opened the paper and put it on the table I was working at, smoothing it down so I could read it. Thankfully, it was written in pen. If it had been pencil, some of it would have probably worn away due to the shape it was in.
Sure enough, our grandfather’s name was at the top in all caps. The rest of the note was written that way, like this was how whoever wrote it liked to write. My grandfather had much less refined writing, using a choppy cursive that was hard to read.
There were four rows with dates on the left and monetary amounts in columns to the right. No years.
SEPTEMBER 8th | $125,000 | $100,000 | $50,000 | $0
FEbrUARY 16th | $25,000 | $15,000 | $0
AUGUST 1st | $5,000 | $0
JANUARY 29th | $200,000 | $195,000| $150,000
“What the hell is this?” I asked. Was my grandfather helping someone with their accounting? The man wasn’t the best with money, obviously, but maybe he was helping one of his neighbors.
“Keep reading.”
I moved lower on the page.
LATE FEES | $10,000 | $20,000 | $30,000 | $40,000
And lower still.
A signature that read E. Everhart .
My eyes went wide. “No,” I gasped.
“Yes.” Forest took the paper and folded it back into a little crinkled square, shoving it into his pocket. “Do you know what this means?”
“He owes that awful family a lot of money and he’s not here to pay the debt.” Oh my god, what did he get himself into?
“I don’t think the cancer killed him.”
“What?” I yelled, which caused Rory to peek his head in the door. I told him I was fine, and he went back outside. “What the fuck, For? What do you mean, the fucking cancer didn’t kill him?”
“I don’t know for certain, but a man doesn’t owe this much money and get to leave this earth on his own.”
“You think they killed him?” Did that mean Lane could have had a hand in it? He told us he never did that shit with his family, but he was also in our building at this very moment. A building I had friends and loved ones in. “I have to call Jordan.” I went to grab my phone from the table, but Forest lunged, knocking it to the floor. “If you don’t stop it, I’m going to punch you,” I growled. It was nothing like Jordan did, but I hoped it came off threatening.
It didn’t.
Forest walked around me and used his foot to push my phone across the tile, away from me. “Let me finish before you call your boyfriend.”
“You know he’s much more than that.”
“I don’t care. Aren’t you going to ask how I got it?” Oh, right. That was a good question.
“How did you?”
“Sheldon gave it to me. ”
“Wha—” My yell was cut off when Forest put his hand over my mouth.
“Would you stop doing that? I don’t want Rory in here.”
I nodded so he’d drop his hand. “You think Jordan is going to be pissed at Sheldon?”
“Of course he is.”
“Then why did Sheldon give it to you? He had to have known Jordan would be angry when he found out Sheldon handed it to you instead of him.”
“Good question.”
“Forest, do you know why Sheldon gave it to you?”
“No, do you? He should have given it to you or Vail or fucking Jordan.”
“You don’t know him well, but I think this was Sheldon’s version of showing he trusts you and was hoping he’d earn your trust in return.” I couldn’t say because Sheldon was obviously attracted to my brother. I thought it was more than that. This could get Sheldon fired, which meant I had to protect him too. Fuck’s sake. I did not need to be on Jordan’s bad side.
“Well, I feel like I’m carrying around a fucking grenade with it in my pocket.”
“When did he give it to you?”
“After we landed.”
“Jesus,” I muttered. “He must have found it in the house. I wonder if Ollie knows too.”
“He does but only him. Sheldon said it had to do with my family and he knew I’d do the right thing. But what is the right thing? What the fuck was Pop doing borrowing money from them, and when is this from?”
“It could have been from decades ago when they lived here, or it could have been more recent. And to circle back to him being killed. Wouldn’t the coroner’s report have it listed? ”
“Why would they do an autopsy if he died from cancer? It wasn’t like he suddenly passed, and they needed to know why. Pop was sick.”
“Shit. So, he could have died from something else, but the Everharts weren’t here. They were hiding elsewhere.”
“Doesn’t mean they didn’t hire someone to carry out their business for the debts owed to them.”
I had to think like Jordan and not feed into the wild theories my brother had rattling around his head. Yes, they would want a debt settled, whether it was their money or a body. Maybe since they were running out, they hired someone to collect the money owed to them. They couldn’t do it themselves. But to kill my grandfather? He wouldn’t even put up a fight.
It was bad enough thinking about him dying of cancer alone, but this… To wonder if he was murdered before the cancer could take him… That was too much.
“We need to know how old that paper is,” I said to my brother. “Then we can trace it back. Maybe there’s another Everhart.” Okay, I was grasping at straws.
“I searched online.”
I groaned. “Seriously? No good will come from that. It’s like if you have stomach pain and don’t know what it is, so you do a search. It always points to disease or death. Every. Time.”
“Please, like you wouldn’t have done the same thing.”
“I probably would have,” I grumbled. “But I also would have told Jordan. He has people who can figure it out much faster. Plus, he would know exactly what to do about it.”
“What’s there to do, Hart? Pop’s dead, and this is obviously an old note. If they had him killed, then they settled the debt that way. ”
“Until they saw his grandson is in a relationship with their fucking enemy. This is all the more reason for them to go after us. What better way to get the money owed than to try to get Jordan to pay it or else threaten harm to us.”
“They won’t come here.”
“You think that? If you were running low on money and someone owed you enough to live on for a while, wouldn’t you try to collect? Who knows what other kind of late fees they tacked on after he got the paper? Pop could have owed them a mil for all we know. That could be bill one of thirty.”
I folded my arms on the table and dropped my head down. What were we supposed to do? We had to tell Jordan, that was a given. But the note added another layer to this shit with Lane’s family.
My head snapped up. “Lane. We need to talk to him without Jordan around.”
“The guards will never let you speak to him without their boss present.”
“Maybe they will if we ask Sheldon. He can be there with us. He already knows about the note. It would be easy to ask him to help us, and maybe Ollie, instead of involving others. The more who know about that paper, the more who will want to tell Jordan.”
“You want to tell him.” He pointed at me.
“Of course I do. I love him, and this is right up his alley, but if I go to him and he tries talking to Lane, there will be yelling, threats, and possibly bloodshed. I really want the community to get the money Lane said he’d give Jordan for his family’s deaths.”
“Do you think Lane will tell us the truth?”
I shrugged. “What do we have to lose? He could surprise us and be honest. I think he has been this whole time. He’s not like the others in his family.” Not that I knew them for a point of reference, but he didn’t strike me as someone who would shoot out a guy’s kneecaps and gut him like a fish.
“If Sheldon says no…”
“Then we tell Jordan. That way, we have a backup plan. Either way, we’ll hopefully get answers. And if Lane doesn’t know shit, we still tell Jordan.” I wouldn’t know what else to do on my own. Forest would suggest a crazy idea I’d never participate in.
No, this was the plan, and we were sticking to it. At least, I hoped.