Chapter 4 #2
“Ma’am,” he said, and would’ve touched his brim, if he’d been wearing a hat, but he wasn’t quite as cowboy as his newfound little brother.
“What brings you out here?” she asked, looking from one of them to the other. Another woman came down behind her, white hair with black strands, brown skin and brown eyes.
Jeremiah said, “Willow’s helping me retrace my father’s steps when he was here. He was…Vincent de Lorean.
“Ohhh,” Cat said. “I wasn’t here then. Juanita was though, weren’t you?” she asked, turning to the woman behind her. Then she said, “Oh, Juanita, I’m sorry, this is Deputy Willow Brand and Jeremiah Thorne. You know, he’s Ethan Brand’s brother.”
“Oh,” she said, nodding at them.
“Juanita’s the owner. She inherited it from her mom, who passed recently.”
“I’m so sorry,” Willow said.
“Gracias. I appreciate that.”
“So then, you’ve decided to sell?” Willow asked.
“Yes. I have a little place out past Mad Bull’s Bend, closer to my daughter and her husband. This is way more house than I need at my age.”
“That seems like a wise decision,” Willow said. “Sheriff Brand’s file said Vincent de Lorean stayed at this address, but he called it the Bluebonnet Inn.”
“That’s right,” Juanita said. “It was once when I was young. When my mother got older, she retired here. She didn’t want to leave. And she never had to.”
Cat nodded, and said, “Oh, it was so pretty when I first moved down here. All the trim was blue, and there were blue shutters and blue flower boxes full of bluebonnets and violets and bluebells and something yellow, as I recall. Just so pretty.”
They were standing in the foyer and it was so empty their voices echoed. Jeremiah raised his head again. He was eager to get to the meat of the conversation. So he waited for a lull in the chitchat, then asked, “Juanita, do you remember any details about when de Lorean stayed here?”
Juanita nodded. “I only remember because I was so shocked to learn one of our guests had murdered someone. I remember when the sheriff came to tell Mamma and me, and he asked me the same things you’re asking me now.
But the man only came here to sleep. He didn’t take his meals here, even though they were included.
I barely exchanged two words with him the whole time.
” She was looking all around the foyer as she spoke, first at the chandelier high above, then the staircase, then the floor.
“What happened to his things?” Jeremiah asked.
She met his eyes then. “He’d taken everything with him and checked out before he was arrested,” Juanita said. “Sheriff Brand went through his room, but it was as clean as it had been when he’d arrived.”
Jeremiah lowered his head.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” she said. “I wish there was more I could tell you.”
Willow said, “That’s okay. I appreciate you talkin’ to us.” Then she turned as if to leave.
That didn’t suit Jeremiah’s goals. “Do you think I could take a look around?” he asked.
“Well, it’s not ready to show yet,” Cat said. “But I’ve got no objections to an early tour. If it’s all right with Juanita.”
Willow was frowning at him, curious, but she didn’t say anything. And so Cat led them through the place’s ground floor, while Juanita trailed behind. He got the feeling she was not enthusiastic about the tour and eager for them to finish their business and get on their way.
They went through the formal dining room, professional kitchen, and personal living space on the ground floor, and then one guest room after another upstairs, ten of them total, each with its own attached bath. The colors were boring and beige with carpet above and hardwood below.
“The place is like a blank slate,” Cat said, trying to spin the boring into a positive. “A person could do anything they wanted.”
“Is there much property with it?” Jeremiah asked.
“Decent sized back yard and garden area. Come on, it’s this way.
” She led them into the kitchen again and out a back door.
The lawn was mostly bare, with a few patches of scraggly weeds.
The garden was an untended and overgrown square of brambles with a dry fountain in the middle made of three saucer-shaped tiers, the smallest at the top, and a small, dry basin at the bottom full of weeds and debris.
Vines were trying to reclaim its concrete.
He walked away from Cat and Willow while they were chatting about Lily’s pregnancy and the shower being planned. Cat was dating Lily’s dad, so it was all in the family.
The “lawn” was in plain sight, but the garden had a few areas that would be hidden from the perspective of the house, even from some of the upper windows.
He moved around, keeping an eye-line back toward the house until he was all the way around to the back side of the fountain.
From there, no window was visible. There was a narrow strip of ground going back three or four yards where you could conceivably dig a hole and bury something without being seen.
Eight pounds of gold wouldn’t take up much space.
Yeah, he was going to have to come back here, preferably with a metal detector. He didn’t think his father would have hidden it inside the house, not for long-term safekeeping. People knocked out walls and remodeled all the time.
He’d have buried it somewhere, for sure. He’d heard the old man say a hundred times, “the safest place to hide loot is in the ground.” It was his second favorite refrain, right after, “the law is always the enemy.”
The ladies would be getting curious if he lingered much longer, so he continued around the fountain, pretending to inspect the concrete. “I don’t see any cracks. You could probably get this thing going again without too much trouble,” he said, like he knew a damn thing about fountains.
“Possibly,” Cat said. “Ethan has a guy. He did that water feature at the honky tonk.”
“I’ll get you the number when I see him later, if you want,” Jeremiah said.
“Thanks for the info, Cat,” Willow said. Then to him, “Ready?”
“Yeah. Thanks, Cat. Nice meeting you, Juanita.” He had to get a metal detector pronto. And not locally. Probably best to drive down to El Paso.
He fell into step with Willow and they walked back up the driveway toward their respective vehicles. She said, “Well? Did that tell you anything you wanted to know?”
“No,” he said. It had come out involuntarily, and it was true, and now he had to explain himself. He said, “I’m not sure I believed her.” That too, was the truth.
“What made you feel that way?” she asked.
He shrugged, and then continued with the honesty bit, because it seemed to be working.
She was getting drawn in. “Whenever she was talking about my father, she looked everywhere except at any of us.” And he knew just by Willow’s expression that she’d noticed it, too.
“Maybe we ought to know a little bit more about her.”
“Well, I can’t run a background check on her just because you think she’s lying,” she said.
“I wasn’t asking you to.”
“I feel like you kinda were.”
He had been. She didn’t miss a thing. “I didn’t mean for you to feel that way, Willow. Seriously. I didn’t, I was just thinking out loud.”
She nodded slow, her eyes on his. “What were you lookin’ for out back? You weren’t inspectin’ the fountain, that’s for dang sure.”
He’d planned ahead for this, at least, and the lines he’d come up with spilled as smoothly as water had once flowed from that water feature.
“I wondered if there was a bench and if maybe he sat on it and planned all the crap he pulled in Quinn. And I wondered if any of the older guys I worked with were out there planning it with him.” He shrugged. “Stuff like that.”
She met his eyes. He gazed right back, not even blinking. He was very good at lying to someone’s face. However, it had never given him such a sick feeling before. He almost had to lower his gaze from hers. It felt like he couldn’t hold the lie when her intense brown gaze was probing his eyes.
Then she blinked, and he was saved. He turned away and sighed, a little light-headed. What the hell was that about?
They were standing beside their respective cars on the roadside, neither in a hurry to leave. It was a warm day, but not hot. Autumn was full on, and while it didn’t cool much, the days got shorter, the nights downright chilly.
She said, “Can I ask a rude question?”
“Sure, ask away.”
“You said there was a snag with your inheritance. What if it doesn’t come through? Will you be okay, financially?”
He frowned at her a little. “I’m supposed to have a call with the lawyer tonight. Should find out what’s up then.”
“Yeah, but…are you worried?”
“A little. I’m not exactly a skilled laborer. What I have won’t last forever.” Unless he found the gold. “I kind of need the inheritance.”
“Or a job,” she said, eyebrows high, challenging him.
He shrugged. “Ethan keeps trying to hire me on at the honky tonk. Needs security, he says. Not sure I’m cut out to be a bouncer.”
“What are you cut out to be?”
“Independently wealthy.”
She rolled her eyes. He didn’t think she’d liked his response at all. And he needed her to like him. And maybe not just because he might need her help to find his treasure. Maybe not just because of that at all. So he said, “Nothing I’m ready to talk about it. Is that okay with you?”
“Well, of course it’s okay with me. It’s your thing, you don’t have to tell me ever. Unless you want to.”
He nodded. She looked like she was waiting for something, but he’d been about as honest as he could for about as long as he could. It felt off. Wrong. Vulnerable, like he was showing his belly, and he needed her to stop looking at him the way she was.
“What are you doin’ after your shift?” he asked.
“Gettin’ a shower, and a meal, and hittin’ the hay.”
“You want some company?”
“For which?” She shot him a mischievous grin.
“Well, we can start with the meal, and see where it leads.”