Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
CASEY – WEDNESDAY, AFTERNOON
To distract himself from the capital-T trouble Gabe was potentially getting into in Westfort that morning, Casey took a deep, calming breath and texted Mickie to ask if he wanted to meet for lunch. That was unintrusive, right? He was pleasantly surprised when the reply came quickly and was a yes.
Chenda’s place? Casey texted back. Noon?
M: Sounds Great.
“Wow, okay.”
“What?” Greta asked from where she was sitting behind her desk.
“Mickie agreed to meet for lunch.”
“That’s great! You’ll keep it casual, right? You’re not going to give him the third degree? Just brothers getting together.” She’d been on the phone all morning interviewing potential educators for the park’s summer nature program. Interfering in Casey’s life was much more interesting.
“Yes, thank you, oh Wise One. I’ll take it easy on him.”
“Because if you grill him today, he won’t say yes the next time you ask. If there is something going on with our gorgeous and independently wealthy veterinarian, he’ll eventually tell you. You just need to nod and smile. Or smile and nod.”
Casey turned and glowered at Greta. He knew he shouldn’t have told her about that. She just smiled back at him.
“Have I ever been known as a smile-and-nod kind of person?” Casey asked.
“It’s never too late to start.” She grabbed her shoulder bag from underneath her desk and rummaged in it. “Where the heck is that? Aha.” She brandished a twenty-dollar bill before holding it out for him. “Bring me back a large ph? soup, extra veggies and hot sauce. Please.”
Standing up, Casey accepted the cash and tucked it into his back pocket. “I’m just a tool for Chenda’s ph?.”
“Maybe? But I am happy that Mickie wants to see you. And I’d like an update on The Adventures of Gabriel Karne too if you happen to run into him.” She looked at her watch. “You should move it if you’re getting there in time. Bowie will stay here with me, won’t you, good boy?”
Bowie, the traitor, thumped his tail and didn’t even bother getting up. Casey suspected that Greta kept a stash of fancy dog treats in the top drawer of her desk, just like Gabe did in his cupboard.
“I should be back before three,” Casey said, heading out the door.
The Longest Noodle looked busy. Luckily, Casey had called ahead and asked for a table, and the restaurant just happened to be in Westfort. He wasn’t checking up on Gabe. Not at all.
He parked the Wagoneer around the corner from the restaurant and briefly considered texting Gabe anyway but decided against it. He also needed to learn how to talk to his brother without Gabe’s help.
Glancing up and down the street, he didn’t see Mickie’s van, and Gabe’s Honda wasn’t in sight either. Maybe he was already heading back to Heartstone. Casey hoped he’d learned something about his mother. And had stayed out of trouble.
“Casey!” Chenda exclaimed after giving him a tight hug. “It’s so good to see you. It’s always too long between visits.”
“Yeah, well, at least it’s not me delivering purloined fungi this time.”
Chenda smiled back at him. “We’ll have plenty of time for that later in the year. Follow me, we saved a table by the window.”
Casey followed Chenda to a table that looked out onto the sidewalk and took a seat. He still didn’t see his brother, but his watch told him it wasn’t quite noon yet.
“Thanks, Chenda.”
“Sure thing, I’ll try to come back and visit, but Mama insisted on coming in today, and someone needs to supervise her in the kitchen.”
His phone vibrated. Casey pulled it out of his pocket and checked the screen.
M: Something came up at the clinic and I have to miss lunch. Rain check?
Looking away from the text and trying not to let disappointment bring him down, Casey responded to Chenda, “Give your mom my regards.”
“I will. Bring that man of yours with you next time,” she said over her shoulder as she hurried off.
C: Sure. Just let me know.
Then he tucked his phone away again so he wouldn’t brood over Mickie’s text.
He told himself it was probably a good thing that Mickie had canceled on him. Casey always seemed to fuck up when he met with Mickie alone. Gabe had the art of casual conversation down pat. He had charmed everyone in Casey’s circle, even Mickie.
Casey glanced out the window, and a familiar figure caught his attention. There was Gabriel with his head down, looking a bit furtive. He was quickly passing by the other pedestrians lingering on the sidewalk.
“Speak of the devil.”
Casey surged to his feet, nearly knocking the chair over in his haste. By the time Casey got out to the sidewalk, Gabe had almost reached the corner.
“Hey! Gabe! Gabriel!” Casey yelled.
He watched Gabe hesitate before stopping and turning around. When he saw Casey waving at him, his face lit up, and he made his way back to where Casey waited. Having Gabe smile like that for him gave Casey a pleasant little shiver.
“Casey! Even though it’s only been a couple hours, you’re a sight for sore eyes. What are you doing here? I thought you were working today.”
“I was meeting Mickie for lunch, but he had to cancel at the last second. Care to join me?” Casey gestured to the entrance of the noodle house.
Nodding, Gabe brushed past him into the restaurant almost as if he was in a hurry. Or avoiding someone.
“Are you in trouble again?” Casey murmured, stepping around Gabe and leading him to the table with a small Reserved sign on it.
“Excuse me,” Gabe said to the nearest table of two as he squeezed behind them and took a seat. He did not confirm Casey’s suspicion that he was in trouble, but he didn’t have to. Casey knew Gabriel Karne.
“How did your trip to the library go? I’m surprised you’re still in town, figured you’d be on your way back home by now.”
Before Gabe could answer Casey’s question or come up with an outrageous lie that no one within fifty miles would believe, the server arrived and offered them menus.
“No need for that. I’ll have the yellow curry soup, thanks so much,” Gabe told her.
Casey ordered his favorite noodles, “plus a ph? to go,” and then settled back. He had a feeling this story was going to be good. Or bad. Again, he knew Gabriel Karne.
“The library went fine. I have my own card now. And I made it to the records building too. It was after I left there that I ran into trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” Casey demanded.
“The Randy Witherspoon kind. Ran into him when I was leaving Public Records, almost literally. It was almost as if he was waiting for me, but I don’t see how he could have been. And, yes, he chased me.”
“I take it he didn’t catch up with you.” Casey imagined Gabe escaping the Twana County Public Records Building like he was Matt Damon fleeing the super spies in a Bourne movie. It actually cheered him up a bit. Mickie didn’t know what he was missing by skipping out on lunch.
Evading Randy Witherspoon explained why Gabe had been walking fast and furtively.
“As if,” Gabe scoffed. “No, he did not. I snuck into the kite shop and talked to Greg for a few minutes, gave good ol’ Randy the slip.
I did worry that he was lurking around every corner on the way to my car.
But honestly?” Gabe eyed Casey again. “Why isn’t having Dirty Socks Randy chase me down Main Street not the strangest part of this week?
It just doesn’t seem fair. No way do I have more unknown-to-me relatives waiting to be discovered. It just makes no sense.”
He sat back and crossed his arms as if he’d finished the concluding argument in a major court case. Gabriel Karne vs. The World. The server returned to set their meals in front of them, and Gabe relaxed, picked up his spoon, and began to stir the fragrant liquid.
“So, both the library and Public Records were a bust?” Casey asked around a mouthful of noodle.
“Not entirely, but I might need to spend more time at Public Records, maybe head to Olympia. If, that is, I want to track down supposed long-lost relatives or, you know, my mother’s history.
Maybe Elton will come up with something because I haven’t been able to find any record of Holly Pritchard existing beyond that yearbook so far, and definitely not an explanation as to why my friend Juliet would know enough to have Pritchard on that paperwork of hers. ”
Gabe was fooling himself, Casey figured.
He did have more relatives he didn’t know about, and, like it or not, they could be living in Westfort.
The young woman, Juliet, might not be his daughter, but having that information meant she could be a cousin some number of times removed.
Gabe wasn’t ready to hear that yet, but Casey suspected the conclusion would come to him on his own.
Gabe’s arrival on Heartstone, and apparently by extension to the Westfort area, had stirred a hornet’s nest.
Some as yet unknown event had occurred back in the 1970s, causing Holly Pritchard to disappear and eventually reemerge as Heidi Karne.
Additionally, this event was big enough that Gabriel’s mother had waited until after her own death to send her son to the area to—to what?
Fix it? Solve it? Reveal something? Heidi had known her son well.
Gabriel wasn’t going to rest until he got to the bottom of this current mystery.
With a start, Casey realized that Gabe was still speaking.
“—but we don’t actually live in The Twilight Zone.
I mean, I suppose I could have a doppelg?nger wandering around.
That said, I’m pretty sure I’m it for this particular sequence of DNA.
” Gabe spooned soup into his mouth and moaned appreciatively, then continued.
“I did tell her to come back when she had real proof, remember. And I meant it. If she decides to come back and what she shows me makes some sort of sense, I’ll send my damn spit in, and we’ll go from there. ”
They were quiet as they continued eating, Chenda’s curry being one of the few things Casey knew of that had this effect on Gabe. Casey finished off his noodles, and his bowl was swiftly removed. Casey watched Gabe slurp his curry and make a “yum” sound of satisfaction.
“Any idea what happened with Mickie? And a reason why he bailed?” Gabe asked after he swallowed.
“No. But he said rain check, so I’m choosing to believe something really did come up.”
“This is true. So.” Gabe tried to look nonchalant and failed. “You haven’t been able to confirm if he and Pedro are an item or not?”
Casey, who’d raised his glass to his lips and was mid-swallow, breathed a mouthful of water into his lungs. He gasped and coughed hard enough that Gabe hopped up and came around to pound on his back.
“You okay?” Gabe asked him when he could breathe again.
Casey nodded and rasped out, “Yes. And also no.”
“Pedro’s a good guy. And cute as hell.” Gabe grinned, doing his best Charming Fucker. “If there is a thing going on, I wish them every happiness.”
Opening his mouth to say that, of course, he wanted Mickie to be happy, Casey was instead interrupted by the buzz of his cell phone. Frowning, he pulled it out and glanced at the screen.
TCSO.
He looked up at Gabe. “It’s the Sheriff’s Office.”