Chapter 12
In the hospital, Crystal sat beside her grandpa, the covers pulled up under his neck. The doctors had been in to check on him again. Khan was at home with her dogs. The three seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves together.
Grandpa had apparently been given a hefty dose of ketamine, and they were hoping he could just sleep it off. But given his age and his current condition, they weren’t exactly sure if or when that would happen. The ketamine had supposedly already been processed through his system.
So, wait and see was the only course of action they had, which didn’t feel like action at all.
Grandpa had been given fluids and drugs to counter the effects of the ketamine.
She sat here with tears in her eyes, staring down at this man who had been the kindest, most caring person she’d ever known.
He had been the one who insisted she stay with the family, after they lost their son and then, not long afterward, their daughter.
And Grandpa was the one who had been there for Crystal this whole time. He’d been the one who had gone to her graduation and had been to all her milestone markers at school. He’d just been the best grandpa anybody could have.
And to see him in this situation right now, brought on by God-only-knows what kind of craziness in this world, was just heartbreaking. When she heard something behind her, she turned to see Ashton smiling as he came over and looked down at their grandpa.
She could see the toll all this had taken on him. She smiled at him, asking, “Did you ever think that maybe you came home just in the nick of time? Plus, you’ll probably go crazy worrying about what if you hadn’t come home right now.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I probably won’t sleep for a very long time, and I’ll end up with PTSD over being too late on this one. Absolutely nothing is worse than knowing you should have come home a little bit earlier but didn’t.”
She reached up a hand and squeezed his. “I’m so sorry. This isn’t exactly what you were hoping for as a homecoming.”
“No, it sure wasn’t,” he admitted, looking down at her, “but we found him, and that’s the main thing. For the rest, I don’t know. That’s in the hands of the lawyers and the sheriff and his idiot deputies. They are still looking for Grandma right now.”
“Isn’t she like eighty?” Crystal asked, turning to look at him, “Where does an eighty-year-old go? And how does an eighty-year-old even know what to do in this situation?”
“Those are really good questions,” he noted, “and I am not sure because I don’t know if she’s done this on her own or if she has a partner in crime or if a completely different scenario is at work here.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that she has gambling debts.”
“Maybe she really was trying to get enough money to get Grandpa back.”
“Except,” Ashton pointed out, “I don’t know why anybody in the gambling debt world would keep Grandpa over at Oliver’s place.”
“Maybe because it’s the least likely of all places we would look. Having found him now, of course, everybody’s looking at Oliver as being the guilty party. So, in a way, it was a very smart plan.”
He nodded and added, “I did consider that, but also it brings it very close to home—our home—because how many people would know about the feud and the unneighborly relationship between us and Oliver and Max in the first place? Plus, who else has easy access to his place from our place? Those tire tracks on our property lead right to his.”
She frowned at that and nodded. “I wasn’t really thinking along that line, but you’re right. Somebody had to get in the barn to check up on him.”
“Or maybe they didn’t and just decided he would live or die, and that surely is the way it looks to me.”
She felt the weight of his words pulling on her heart as she thought about Alexander lying there in that barn for days. “Do you think he was conscious at all during this? Would he have known what happened?”
“I don’t know.” Ashton sighed. “We would hope not, but that hope won’t save anybody when it comes down to the fact that we have something truly nasty going on here. I would say we have a very limited scope of bad guys to look at.”
She nodded. “I can’t even imagine the scope of what we have,” she muttered.
“It just seems so unbelievable to do something like that to such a nice old man. Then to even think of your grandmother having the know-how to do this is a stretch too. That’s another part that bothers me.
I’m not saying she has not got the know-how because she’s always been pretty tricky, as we have repeatedly been shown. ”
Ashton agreed. “Gamblers will do all kinds of things to keep feeding their habit, their addiction. What I don’t know is whether all the money she’s collected was to pay back a gambling debt or just to escape being caught.
But I’m sure she’s thinking, Who cares? After all, I would end up paying any ransom to buy Grandpa back anyway. ”
Crystal frowned. “Or she was getting the money to run with, knowing she has nothing left here, what with everyone soon finding out about all the bad things she has done. Particularly if she figured that Grandpa didn’t survive all this time.
And where will she run to anyway?” she asked, looking at him.
“I mean, how is it even possible for her to run? She’s not a spring chicken. ”
“No, but she still drives on her own, and she’s still got her cognitive abilities, at least according to the doctors. My lawyer confirmed that she had a full checkup recently, and everything was fine.”
“Unless she bribed them to say that,” Crystal suggested.
“Unless she bribed them to say that.” He nodded. “Totally possible, I don’t even know what to say at this point. … My first priority is getting Grandpa back on his feet, hopefully alive and well.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I agree with that one.”
“And God help anybody else who’s decided that they should steal anything from our family, which then brings us to the brothers. Do you think they had anything to do with this?”
She knew exactly who he was talking about. She thought about it and admitted, “I guess I wouldn’t be shocked if they did, but, in a way, it’s too easy of an answer.”
“Whether they had anything to do with Grandpa going missing or with Grandma’s newest cons is just one aspect, but whether they knew what they were getting into is another thing.”
She groaned. “Meaning that Grandma may have set them up for this too?”
“Knowing how lazy the twins are, they may have thought that whatever they were doing to help Grandma would get them a pile of money because she obviously knew what she was doing.”
“Are they that stupid?” she asked.
“What do you think?” he quipped, rolling his eyes.
“I hate to say it, but they’re as uneducated as anybody that age can be.
I mean, they both read and write, but they didn’t finish school.
They barely have any cognizant understanding of what’s going on in the real world.
They don’t have girlfriends, which would, if nothing else, maybe keep their brains focusing on other things to some degree.
As it is, their friends are basically like them.
I mean …” She broke off and just nodded. “They are bullies.”
“I hear what you’re saying. It just confirms how stupid and useless they are.”
She chuckled. “It sounds absolutely ridiculous that this is where we’re at.”
“That may be, but the fact remains, if the brothers were paid to put Grandpa up there and got a big chunk of money—or the promise of a chunk of money—they might’ve done it.”
“Could be, but again there are other possibilities.”
“Like?” Ashton asked.
“They were doing it as a favor, thinking it was a lark, and they might’ve done it. If they were doing it for Grandma, who had a reason they could actually understand, they might’ve done it,” she shared, “but all those are just ideas, so we really still have more questions than answers.”
“Well, Glenn and John have been picked up for questioning,” he shared, “so hopefully, by the end of the day, somebody will tell us something.”
“Theories aside, it’s almost always something simple in the end though, isn’t it?”
“It is,” he agreed. “It almost always comes down to greed. And, so far, considering the amount of money Grandma has been stealing from everybody, including Oliver, greed appears to be the bottom line. What I don’t know is if it’s that simple.”
Just then Grandpa groaned, shifted uneasily on his bed, a half murmur coming from his lips.
Crystal leaned forward and spoke softly to him. “Grandpa, hey, I’m here. It’s okay. It’s Crystal. Take it easy. You’re just waking up.”
He shifted again, and another whimper escaped, and she hated it. She hated everything about seeing him in pain. She told Ashton, “Get the nurses in here. Maybe we can get him something for pain.”
“I’ll go get them right now,” he said, heading for the door. “They’ll want to know he’s awake anyway.” And he quickly disappeared, only to return a few minutes later with one of the nurses.
The nurse looked down at Grandpa and smiled. “Good, he’s starting to come out of it,” she said, checking him over. “It’ll still take him a bit. So, let’s just give him a chance to wake up on his own. It will help him get oriented if he does it on his own.”
And, sure enough, Grandpa opened his eyes not too many minutes later and stared from one to the other. He frowned when his gaze landed on Crystal, but then his gaze cleared when it landed on Ashton. He whispered, “Thank God, Ashton. You’re home.”
“Yeah, I’m home,” he said, “but you should have called me a lot earlier.”
He shifted in his hospital bed. “I know. … Johanna’s gone nuts.” He took a deep, labored breath. “It’s bad, Ashton.”
“I know, Grandpa. It’s way worse than you even know,” he added, “but I’m home now. So, we can get to the bottom of it.”