Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
“Hey Drew,” Willow said thrusting her thumbs into the waistband of her warmup pants and walking forward as if nothing untoward had happened.
“I’m done for the day,” she said. “And Mom doesn’t need me, so…I was gonna offer to take nursemaid duty and give Jeremiah a break. But uh, maybe you’d prefer I didn’t.” She wiggled her eyebrows toward Jeremiah.
He said, “Actually, I do have some things to tend to, if—”
“What sorts of things?” Drew asked.
“Beans has a play date with Frankie. Where is he, anyway? Beans!”
The dog came running from the cottage. Drew had left the door open.
“Sure, go ahead. It’s fine,” Willow said. “Thanks for stayin’ with me. See you at the bonfire tonight.”
“Yeah, see you there,” he said. “C’mon, Beans. Let’s go for a ride.”
The pup cocked his head, then launched straight for the Jeep and stood beside it, barking. Willow was grinning at the dog when she met Jeremiah’s eyes.
He’d been smiling, too. He touched the brim of his hat. “Ladies.”
And then went to scoop up his dog, set him in the Jeep, and got in after him.
“Well, now,” said Drew.
“Thank goodness you got here when you did,” Willow said.
“Looked to me like the worst possible moment.”
Jeremiah pulled out, moving past them slow and easy, giving them a wave, but not meeting Willow’s eyes.
“He’s hidin’ somethin’,” she whispered. “And I’m fallin’ for him.”
“Holy– Well, okay then. Maybe I did arrive at the right time.” Drew’s big blue eyes spoke full volume.
Sighing, Willow paced up the sidewalk to the cottage.
“It’s gotta be the bad boy thing, right?
I mean, that must be it.” She went inside and Drew came in behind her.
Willow closed the door, went past the sofa and turned back to offer Drew a coffee, but her gaze fell on Jeremiah’s big duffel bag on the floor, behind the sofa.
Its zipper was wide open and its contents were strewn everywhere.
“Ohmygosh!” Drew moved further in. “The puppy—oh, this is on me. I left the door open.”
“Well, we have to pick it up,” Willow said. And then she knelt carefully, paused for her head to stop spinning, then began picking things up and putting them back into the duffel.
Drew went to the kitchen and poured them each a sweet tea from the pitcher in the fridge. When she came back, she handed one to Willow. “Well?”
“Dog toy. Dog toy. Dog treats. A blanket, no doubt for the dog.” She was still gathering.
Drew laughed softly, and picked up some socks and boxer briefs, and tossed them into the bag. “Oh, yeah, he’s a big tough loner, stranger in town, man incognito for the better part of a year. But he’s apparently a puddle of goo over Beans.”
“Apparently.” But Willow said it absently as she picked up a stack of packets that unfolded in an accordion snake of condoms. “Confident, much?” she mused.
Drew snort-laughed, “At least he’s bein’ responsible,” then slapped her leg and laughed some more.
“What’s this?” Willow said, gathering up a folded paper square. “Wait, this is a map.”
Drew stopped laughing and turned to remove three magazines, two remote controls and their sweet glasses from the coffee table. Then she wiped up the moisture rings with her shirt sleeve.
Willow leaned over and spread the map open. Drew ran to the front window, looked outside, then closed the curtains. She repeated with the window on the other side of the front door, and locked the door for good measure. Then she returned.
“He’s got several locations marked here,” Willow said, noting the little stars Jeremiah had drawn. “This one’s the location of the former Bluebonnet Inn, and this one’s the WTD.”
“So they’re probably all locations connected to his daddy, the dead crime boss.”
“Probably,” Willow agreed. Then she frowned. “A few of them have slashes through ‘em,” she said. “The spots he’s already visited, I think.”
“Will, I don’t think this map is all that suspicious. He told you he wanted to retrace his father’s steps. This is just a map of exactly what he said he was doin’.”
“He said he hated deceiving me—to someone on the phone, I heard him.”
“I still think you should just ask him.”
“And expect him not to lie to me about whatever he’s lying to me about? Drew, this is huge, this is my life. I want to be sheriff someday. And if I let myself fall for him—”
“Because he’s an ex-con? Will, that’s—”
“No. No, not that. But if he’s an unrepentant ex-con who’s still up to something nefarious, then—”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because why else deceive a deputy?” She shook her head, looking again at the map. “And then there was the camera turning off at the Bluebonnet at the same time I expected him to go back there.”
“Are you sure he did that, though?”
She wasn’t sure. She couldn’t be sure. And when she thought of Jeremiah, all she saw in her head were those dimples when he smiled, those vivid blue eyes, and her stomach tied itself into knots.
“There are still a coupl’a stars without slashes through ‘em,” Drew observed, pointing them out on the map. “That one’s Thompson Gorge, where the big showdown happened between his old man and the elder Brands.”
“Well, he’s bound to visit all of ‘em,” Willow said. “That’s probably what he’s doin’ today, as we speak.”
“Well…why don’t we stake one of ‘em out,” Drew asked. “Spend the day and wait. Bring a book, plenty of water, some stakeout food.”
“There’s only wholesome, healthy stuff in the house,” Willow said. “Family.”
Drew rolled her eyes.
Will and her cousins often pretended to be irritated by their nurturing clan, when they were the farthest thing from it.
“Yeah, we’ll stop on the way.” Drew looked at the map, “The other three spots are in town. Easiest place to stay outta sight’ll be the canyon.”
“Let’s get there.”
“We might have to hike in. You up to it?”
“Nope,” she admitted. “But I think I could ride.”
Jeremiah had put his search on hold while Willow had been in the hospital. But she was okay—thank the powers that be, she was okay—and she was with her cousin. According to his journal, de Lorean had kept a safe deposit box at the bank. So that was the first place he went.
“Oh,” said the teller, after clicking keys for a while. “It looks like that was an abandoned box. Note says the owner’s information was fraudulent. Sorry.”
“What would’ve happened to the contents?” he asked. As if, had someone found eight pounds of gold, they’d have turned it in.
Hell, he wasn’t sure they wouldn’t, here in Quinn.
“And was there anyone witnessing whoever opened it? Because I have reason to believe there could’ve been valuable property in that box.”
The teller, a pretty Mexican-American, just blinked at him for a moment, and he realized she was waiting to see if his mini-rant had ended. He took a deep breath. “Sorry,” he said. “Can you help me?”
“Have a seat,” she said, and nodded toward chairs against one wall.
“I don’t have a lot of time.” As if she cared.
“Have a seat,” she repeated.
So he had a seat. Eventually, the bank manager emerged from his office, through the swinging wooden gate that served no purpose and headed toward him.
He was tall, white, bald, and Jeremiah didn’t know him.
But he rose, shook the man’s hand when he introduced himself, and immediately forgot his name.
“Follow me,” the man said, and walked him into a small conference type room. He gestured to a chair, and Jeremiah sat.
“So the belongings of any abandoned safe deposit box are put into storage. By bank policy, that can’t be sold or given away, they must be kept. Every effort is made to contact the owners, and there’s always hope they might one day return to the claim their things.”
“I see.”
“A three-person board supervises the opening of an abandoned box, and the items are catalogued in front of all of them.” He crossed the room to a pitcher of water, poured some into a glass, held it his way.
Jeremiah shook his head, so the guy sipped it himself.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but…who’s on the committee?”
“Myself, the bank’s attorney, and the sheriff.”
“Sheriff Brand?”
“Yes, he was sheriff then, too, yes.”
“Do you remember what was in the box?”
The man leaned forward and removed his glasses. “I’ll never forget it. We had established by then that Daniel Carr, the name on the box, was an alias of Vincent de Lorean. He was a big-time criminal, you’ll forgive me saying so.”
“I’m aware.” So the guy knew exactly who he was, Jeremiah realized. Everyone in Quinn knew he was de Lorean’s son. It gave him an uneasy feeling to be reminded of that.
“So naturally, we expected, I don’t know, cash or passports or weapons, something but the only things in the box were baby pictures.
Newborn, in the hospital bassinet. Either you or your brother, we figured.
There were no dates, nothing to identify the kid.
Well, Sheriff Brand, he made color copies of ‘em. Couldn’t just snap ‘em with your phone back then, you know. We put the originals into photo-safe sleeves and into storage they went. I can get them for you, though.”
He didn’t need baby pictures of himself or his brother. But he wanted to see everything all the same. “Yeah, could you get ‘em for me?”
“I can have them in an hour.”
Willow roped off a small area near a water hole for the horses.
It was shaded by an overhang, and there was enough sweet grass to keep them happy for a couple of hours.
Then she rejoined Drew on a high, flat rock formation that jutted out over the edge of the canyon the locals called Thompson Gorge.
Their flat stone angled upward, so they wouldn’t be seen from below.
They had binoculars, cell phones, soda, and potato chips.
They’d only been there two hours before the chips were gone, and about fifteen minutes after that, the sound of an ATV buzzed in the distance.
“Is that him?” Drew asked.
“Where would he get an ATV?” Willow asked, lifting her binoculars.
“Come on, all he’d have to do is ask. There are like six of ‘em on the ranch.”
“Where’s he going?”