Chapter 6 #2
“I don’t expect you to understand. You barely knew our father. You were still a baby when your mother left you on the doorstep of the Texas Brand. But I did, even though he was in prison, he was my dad. I visited every weekend, and for a long time I thought he…”
“Loved you,” Ethan said. “That-son-of-a—”
“This is the last place he was free,” Jeremiah said. “He never made bail. He was convicted fast, sentenced faster, and he died in prison. I just…I want to walk his steps in those last few days. I want to see if I can figure out who he was, at the end.”
Ethan nodded slow, and there was a long stretch before he spoke. He said, “You want to find something that redeems him in your eyes? For pushing your mother to suicide and killing mine with his bare hands?”
“There is no redemption for that. Not for what he did to our mothers.”
Again, his brother nodded. “What, then?”
Jeremiah replied without any forethought at all. “I want to find some trace of decency in him. I think that’s what it is. I want to find one good thing. I think I need to.” It amazed him to realize it was the truth. He hadn’t even realized it himself until Ethan had asked.
“You know why you want to find it?”
“No. I got no idea.”
“I think I do,” Ethan said. “But I think you have to find out for yourself.”
His brother nodded slow. “Well, if I never do, enlighten me at some point, huh?”
“Deal.” Ethan sipped his coffee.
“I have one more thing, Ethan. But first, I need your word as a Brand that you won’t punch me in the face. All right?”
The big guy set his mug down slow and said, “All right,” in a slow, what-the-hell-is-this-now kind of a way.
“I want to say that…if there was anything between Willow and me—not that there is. Things couldn’t be more innocent here—but if there was, it would be between her and me, don’t you think? Her being a grown woman and a deputy sheriff and all? She might not appreciate you, getting—”
If you disrespect my cousin, Jeremiah, I’ll have somethin’ to say about it, and I don’t much care if she appreciates it or not. You watch your step with her. She’s a sister to me.”
He hadn’t grabbed him again, but he might as well have.
Jeremiah was shaken, not because he was afraid.
He was smaller, quicker, meaner, and had more experience fighting.
He was pretty sure he could take Ethan if he had to.
His brother’s size would slow him down as much as his inherent kindness and empathy.
But he didn’t want to fight his brother. Ethan was all the family he had in the entire damn world, and suddenly, that meant something to him. It hadn’t before.
It was probably good to be aware that his brother wouldn’t be on his side if it came down to a choice between him, his blood, and the Brands, his adopted clan.
Finding Ethan had briefly made him feel a little less alone in the world. But that feeling’s dark opposite had crept over him again when he’d seen the warning in his brother’s eyes.
Yeah. He was on his own. Just like always. He should’ve known better than to think otherwise.
“Hello again Miz Sinclair,” Willow said, entering the interrogation room where the Montroses’ elder neighbor was waiting. Drew came in close on her heels.
When she’d first arrived, Willow had handed her cousin a blazer from her locker and told her to transform her ponytail into a bun.
She’d done one better, with a sleek French twist, and from somewhere in her backpack, she’d pulled a pair of silver wire-rimmed glasses with lenses Willow thought were clear glass.
She looked downright professional by the time she walked into the room behind Willow.
“This is Drew Brand, and she’s assisting me today. Drew, meet Abby Sinclair.”
Drew smiled warmly. “Abby, can I get you anything? I’m sure there’s coffee somewhere.”
“Sure, if you want to kill me,” Abby said sternly.
Drew went blank and shot a did-I-blow it-already? look Willow’s way. Then the old lady slapped her thigh and laughed hard, and slapped it again, and then stopped laughing, took a breath, and said, “Lord, I love messin’ with the young’uns.”
Drew closed her eyes, shook her head. “You really got me, ma’am,” she said. And then she pulled out one of the two chairs across from Abby and sat down.
“Our sketch artist should be arriving any minute now, and then we can—”
The door opened behind them. A young man with sable curls, rectangular eyeglasses, and an oversized case in one hand looked around the room, then addressed Willow. “I’m Joshua Stone, lookin’ for Deputy Brand?”
“You found her,” Willow said. “This here’s our witness Abby Sinclair, and my uh—”
“Drew,” Drew said. She’d risen from her chair and turned, and was holding out a hand, even though the young man’s were already full.
“Oh, uh…” He handed his coffee to Willow without looking at her, wiped his palm on his pleated khaki pants, then closed it around Drew’s. “Nice to meet you. Drew, is it?”
“Named after Nancy.”
His smile was involuntary and wide. “That’s cute. You’re a deputy, too, or…?” As he asked, his gaze moved down, no doubt noting she wasn’t in uniform.
“PI,” she said. Then, “Almost.”
He laughed when she added the almost, and she laughed because he had, and dipped her chin low, a pretty pink blush creeping up into her cheeks.
Willow cleared her throat, turning both heads, holding up the coffee that wasn’t hers.
“Oh, gosh, sorry.” Joshua took his cup back, laid his case on the table and sat down in the chair beside Drew’s, which was, after all, the only one available.
On the other side of the table, Abby was grinning from one of them to the other, a twinkle in her eyes.
“All right, Abby, if you can describe the person you saw, Joshua will try to sketch it out. And I’ve got some paperwork so…Drew will text me when you’re done.”
Everyone nodded, so she left the room. She didn’t want to influence the artist or the witness with so much as a crook of her eyebrow. Not when she so hoped the drawing would show one of the Barker boys. Who the hell else in town would throw a brick through a gigantic window just for the hell of it?
But she was eager, and needed a distraction, so she spent time catching up on paperwork she’d been neglecting until eventually her phone pinged.
Drew: Ready
She headed back to the room, just as Abby Sinclair came out of it. And when she met Willow in the hallway, she elbowed her, tilted her head toward the two still in there, and wiggled her eyebrows up and down.
“Thanks for coming in, Miz Sinclair.”
“He did a good job. Seems like a nice young man. Drew’s your sister?”
“Cousin,” Willow admitted.
Abby nodded knowingly.
“Do you need a ride, or—”
“Drove myself here, can drive myself back They ain’t come for my keys yet.” And with that, she continued walking in her slightly bent stance, across the station and out through its pebbled glass doors.
Willow watched her out, then went into the interrogation room, where Drew and Joshua were leaning over his notepad, which was on the table. They rose when she came in, and parted to let her see.
She looked at the face and sighed in disappointment. “That’s the homeowner,” she said.
“No, no,” Drew all but whined. “She’d know the homeowner, wouldn’t she? She’s a neighbor.”
“Nope. Just in town visitin’ her daughter,” Willow said. “Man, I was so sure… But no, that’s Richard Montrose. I talked to him and his wife the day it happened.”
“Dang.” Drew seemed more disappointed than Willow was.
The young sketch artist was silent, waiting for someone to tell him he could go. Willow noticed the guy hanging there in limbo, and got over her own let-down. “That’s a dang good likeness, though. I knew who it was at a glance. Nice job.”
“Thanks.”
“Why haven’t I seen you around here before?” she asked, her gaze shifting briefly to Drew, who was hanging on every word.
“I’m new. Finishin’ up my masters in art. This is a side-gig.”
“It’s a side-gig at which you excel,” Willow said. “This department will be callin’ you again. That is, if you’re gonna be around.”
He nodded, smiling and trying not to look at Drew and looking at her anyway. “Yeah, for a while.”
“Good. Stop at the desk, they’ll pay you.”
He nodded, turned toward the door, and Drew looked a little bit flustered, so Will said, “Show him where it is, Drew.”
Nodding fast, Drew walked the young artist out, and when she beamed her killer smile at him, Willow was surprised the guy didn’t fall over in a dead faint.
Jeremiah was in town, at the WTD, a roadside diner out-of-towners called retro and locals knew had been that way the whole time.
It was shaped like a silver bullet, with three neon tubes—red, green, and yellow—above the front.
One neon tube was intact. The other two had sections that flickered and buzzed.
According to Garrett Brand’s scrupulous notes in the police file, Vincent de Lorean had a few of his meals there.
It was a hole-in-the-wall place, if ever there’d been one.
It sat alongside the state highway without any kind of warning, as out of place as a bird in a fish tank, about halfway between the Texas Brand and Quinn proper.
Jeremiah picked up his phone, opened his journal, and tapped new entry.
“Background info. Willow says the WTD’s owner refused to sell when the highway came through and has managed to keep the deed against all the state’s efforts.
After a while, the powers that be just gave up.
So here it sits, right where it’s been since the highway was a dirt road.
” He tapped the app to stop recording and pulled in.
It was lunch time, so he figured he’d grab a sandwich or something and ask if anyone there might remember his old man from that long ago.
But when he went inside, he lost track of his plan, because there was that same family.
The kid, Frank, along with his grandparents and the two rowdy little girls.