Chapter 10 #3
“I waited…almost,” Nora said, pointing to the bite she’d taken out of one of her hush puppies.
Ash leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “You pulled the stinger out of that little boy’s heart. You are the best.”
Gunner nodded. “Not gonna get an argument out of me about that. Let’s eat. I’m all fired up to get back to work. All I needed was a confrontation to stir the brain cells.”
Pearl came to their table with three desserts on a tray.
“Bouncer pay and one for Nora,” she said, and flipped back to the kitchen.
* * *
The night sky was clear. The sky was full of stars, but it was too cold for stargazing and too early to go to bed, so the current residents of Jacob Kingston’s house had gathered in the living room to watch a movie. They let Gunner pick. He chose The Bourne Legacy.
“Why do you always choose this one?” Ash asked.
“Jeremy Renner. He’s a badass in that movie, and a badass in real life. Anybody who survives being run over with a snowplow is a badass.”
Nora glanced at the brothers but said nothing, guessing it likely had something to do with their family history, as much as the movie.
Two hours later, they had moved into the kitchen and were playing Train with a set of dominoes.
“You can’t put that double six there,” Ash said.
Gunner grinned. “I didn’t think you were paying attention.”
“I’m out,” Nora said, and got up to refill her drink. When she sat back down, they were still going at it. “Can I ask questions about the investigation? You already know you can trust me, and I’ll match my security clearance and your security clearance and raise you,” she said.
The mere mention of security clearance got their attention, and the game of Train slid to a halt.
“You have security clearance?” Asher asked.
“I’m in IT. I consult worldwide. Yes, I have security clearance.
You both said you have information. You also said the pieces don’t fit with your theory.
I’m a troubleshooter…of sorts. I’m here.
I already know about the white Mustang. I know you are trying to connect it with Pete Brandt’s death.
I understand the timing could just be coincidence, but I doubt it, and I think you both do, too. ”
The men looked at each other. Gunner shrugged. “Fine by me.”
Ash leaned back in the chair, eyeing the intent expression on her face, and then he began.
“We had nowhere to go with the investigation until Dad woke up. He told us that a week before the shooting, two men came to the bar, and asked him if he was interested in selling it. They said their names were Joe and Darren Wilson, and even then, he knew they’d given him fake names and told them he wasn’t interested in selling.
They left. About a week later, the shooting happened.
It was two men. He couldn’t see their faces.
Didn’t recognize their voices, but the one who took him down from behind whispered in his ear, ‘you should have sold the bar, old man,’ and then the other one shot him. ”
Nora was leaning forward now, resting her arms on the table, intent on every word.
After that, Ash began to lay out the rest. About the avalanche of DNA from the bar, and the background research they did on every gang member, and about Brandt’s sons visiting him at the prison on his deathbed.
Then Gunner filled her in on the FBI files they’d accessed about the armored car robbery, and Pete Brandt’s statement that he’d hidden the money and was going to take the location with him to the grave.
He told her about learning of Brandt’s sons visiting him in prison.
That after he and Asher ran background checks on both Everett and Freddie Brandt and learned they both had priors.
Asher picked up the story, explaining how Jacob identified them from their mug shots as being the men who asked about buying the bar. But he could not identify either of the men who shot him.
“So now we knew that much. But neither of Brandt’s sons was at his last known address.
One in Fort Worth, one in Mansfield, a suburb of Dallas, and neither of them owned, or had ever owned a white Mustang.
Then yesterday morning, Dylan was at a gas station refueling before going to see Dad, and who does he see coming out of a store across the street, but both of Brandt’s sons, getting into an older white Mustang.
He was caught at the pumps and couldn’t get free in time to follow them, but he took a good dozen pictures, including several with a good shot of the car tag. ”
“I ran the tag,” Gunner said. “It came back reported stolen. It was stolen after the owner was imprisoned for a crime. Everett Brandt was living in Fort Worth at the time. Apparently, he knew the owner was in prison, so he stole it. And that’s where we are.”
Ash nodded. “We now know they’re somewhere in Amarillo, but we don’t want them picked up just for car theft, and we have zero motive for why they would want Dad dead. We also have hired around-the-clock security on Dad’s room.”
Nora had been silent through the entire scenario they’d laid out, but for her, there was one huge omission.
“I already see a glaring hole in all of it, but if we’re going to discuss this, it needs to be all of you hearing it and answering questions for me. Would it be possible to call Dylan, then put the phone on Speaker so he could be a part of it?”
Asher nodded, then made the call and was waiting for an answer.
Dylan picked up on the fourth ring. “Hey, Ash, what’s up?”
“Nora is here. Long story, but we’ve been having a gathering of evidence meeting, and as we laid out what we knew, she found a gap…something we hadn’t even thought of, but she didn’t want to start discussing it without including you. Are you free to be in on this right now?”
“Absolutely,” he said.
“Okay, I’m going to put you on Speaker so you can hear everything we’re about to hear.” He set the phone down on the table in front of Nora.
“Dylan, this is Nora, can you hear me okay?”
“Yes, ma’am. Fire away.”
“This is for all of you. I’m going to ask questions for you to think about, and if you know the answers, speak up, okay?”
“Okay,” they echoed, and so she began.
“Pete Brandt told the Feds he hid the money, and that he was taking the location to his grave, and they took that as gospel. Am I right?”
“It’s a written statement in their files,” Asher said.
“And his sons were called to his bedside only hours before he died?” she said.
“The warden notified them what was happening with their father, and they came,” Asher said.
“This is pure conjecture, but what if Pete Brandt told his boys where the money was buried?” Nora said. “And if he did, then why would their next port of call be your father’s bar?”
Gunner stilled. Asher paled, and Dylan was in shock, too stunned to comment.
“Okay…don’t answer that,” Nora said. “Just think about it. Now I’m going to switch gears a bit. You’re all too close to this to see the hole in the investigation, but it’s big as Dallas to me.”
“We’re listening,” Asher said. “Ask.”
“What was happening in your world…in your house…the day of the robbery? Jacob isn’t here, so I can’t ask him, and I know at this time, you’re all three still kids. What do you remember?”
“It was my birthday,” Gunner said. “I turned seven. We were having cake and presents after school.”
“I needed a permission slip signed, and mom couldn’t find a pen. She signed it with a crayon,” Dylan said.
“Mom took us to school like always. She told me she was going to Amarillo to get presents and a birthday cake. This was before Belker’s had the deli. She said she’d be home in time to pick us up from school,” Asher said.
Nora nodded. “Okay then, so whatever part she took in the robbery is unknown, right?”
Asher reeled as if he’d just been slapped. “My God, you’re right.”
“Wait… What?” Gunner said.
Dylan’s heart was pounding. “I don’t get it. What does that mean?”
“It means that there was no official statement ever taken, because she killed herself before they could interrogate her,” Nora said. “Nobody knows what she was doing, only that she’d been ‘in on it’, and that was according to the gang member who was shot and gave them all up.”
Asher already saw where this was going. It was like watching an avalanche coming straight at him, without the ability to move away.
“So, school is out now,” Nora said. “Who picked you up?”
“Mom did,” Asher said. “She brought us a bag of chips and a cold drink to share, when she picked us up.”
“Then what? How was the party?” she asked.
“It was like always. Dad came from the bar long enough to eat cake and watch Gunner open presents. Mom was licking icing off her fingers. We had hot dogs and chips for supper because that’s what Gunner wanted.
We watched a Disney movie. We went to bed,” Ash said, but his heart was pounding.
“I don’t know anything after that until Gunner woke up bawling, covered in blood. ”
“We slept together, Gunner and me… I had to change my pajamas, too, because some of his blood was on me,” Dylan said.
Gunner’s face was white. “I had a loose tooth. I swallowed it in my sleep and woke up to all the blood. I was upset about no tooth for the tooth fairy.”
Nora could hear the panic in their voices and hated being the reason it was there, but she couldn’t stop. It wouldn’t show them what they needed to see. What they’d known all along.
“Then what happened?” she asked.
Asher couldn’t look at her—at the sympathy on her face.
“Gunner was hysterical, and when Mom didn’t show up, I got out of bed and went to see what all the crying was about.
When I went in the boys’ room and saw all the blood, then figured out Gunner was mad, not dying, I went looking for Mom, but she wasn’t in the house.
I got a clean washcloth and handed it to Gunner to stop the bleeding, then made a second sweep through the house, calling for her and…
” he hesitated, frowning…trying to remember the order of it all.
“She was in the kitchen then, and her hands were dirty, so she washed up at the sink and followed me back to the boys’ room, calmed Gunner down, cleaned him up and put clean sheets on the bed, then wrote a note to the tooth fairy to excuse his missing tooth and all was well. We went back to bed.”
Nora’s heart skipped. “Her hands were dirty? How were they dirty, Ash? What was on them?”
He closed his eyes, trying to recall the details of that moment. “Dirt. It was dirt… On her hands…and on the knees of her jeans.” And then he stood abruptly. “Shit… Oh shit… She was coming up from the basement. She didn’t hear me the first time because she was down in the basement.”
Dylan was flat on his back, staring at the ceiling, while his brothers were miles away, staring at the basement door.
“Do you store tools down there? Yard tools? Like rakes and shovels?” Nora asked.
“Yes,” Dylan said. “I was the kid who loved tools. I knew where every tool was, and where it belonged on the board where Dad hung them.”
“When you couldn’t find her the first time, she could have been outside burying the box, or in the cellar, burying a box,” Nora said.
“And when you came looking for her the second time, she could have already come back into the house and was putting up a shovel, or coming up from the basement after using it down there. And again…it’s just a theory.
But it does make all of your random facts fit, doesn’t it? ”
Gunner’s face was frozen in a grimace of disbelief, and Asher was staring at the kitchen clock above the stove. Dylan was trying to absorb the fact that the basement that had once been his best place to play, could have been hiding such a secret.
Nora couldn’t bear it for them anymore. “I can only imagine what you’re all going through, and I’m so sorry.
But you want to make the world safe for Jacob again, and being the ones to find that money first, removes every aspect of the danger it put Jacob in.
Forgive me if I’ve hurt you. Please don’t hate me for it. ”
“No hate for you ever,” Dylan said, but they could hear the tears in his voice.
Asher reached for her hand. “Nobody hates you. You’re freaking good at what you saw that we didn’t. And you’re right. We were too close to see the obvious.”
“No hate for you ever,” Gunner said. “But answer me this? Why would Brandt lie and say he hid it?”
Nora paused before answering, carefully measuring her words.
“Again, this is supposition, but if Brandt already knew your mother was dead before he was officially interrogated, and if he said he’d given it to her to hide, the Feds would have tracked the timeline and eventually found it for sure.
But since Brandt knew your dad was completely oblivious to their affair, if he stayed quiet, he knew Jacob would never even think it was on his property.
Nobody would ever think to look for it here. ”
Gunner got up. “You know we have to go down there. Let’s get it over with.”
“And you also know we’re not going see a damn thing, because all three of us played in that dirt, and it wasn’t covered with bricks until my senior year of high school.
And we’ve stomped all over that place countless times in the years since, carrying stuff up and down the stairs for Dad,” Ash said.
“Hell, I played down there, and I didn’t see anything. I was in and out of that place all through high school because I’m the one who kept Dad’s old truck running, until he finally traded for a new one,” Dylan said.
“I’m still going down there. Are you coming?” Gunner asked.
“We’ll all go,” Nora said.
Asher unlocked the door. It swung back into the kitchen as he reached inside the stairwell and flipped on the lights, instantly flooding the entire interior.
“I’m going down first. Gunner, you follow Nora.”