Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
“ I did not steal any goldern car!” Billy Bob slur-shouted from somewhere in the back of the small adobe building.
Maria rolled her eyes, leaned up closer to the man beside her, and said, “Sounds like he’s drunk again.” Harry wore a light denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and she found her eyes kept getting stuck on his forearms. Had she ever found a man’s forearms sexy before? His were. They had the finest dusting of light hairs, and she wanted to touch them and see what they felt like.
She and Harry were standing just inside the double doors with the words SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT on the glass. The public-facing portion of the department was a large beige room with orange plastic chairs for waiting. A plexiglass partition with slots for speaking, separated the waiting area from the rest of the building. Behind the glass was a tall counter, and beyond it, desks, computers, and deputies going about their business. Beside the partition stood a single locked door.
“My dad’s the one who brought him in,” Maria said.
“Your dad, Lash, the chief deputy,” he repeated, as if to remind himself of the details.
“Right. He got a tip. Caught up with Billy Bob at a bar just over the county line. It was a few miles outside his jurisdiction, but Dad hauled his carcass back here anyway. “C’mon, this way.” She quickly texted her father to let him know they’d arrived.
Seconds later, her father popped out from the door beside the partition. He hugged Maria then turned to Harry. “I’m Lash, Maria’s father.”
“Harrison. Good to meet you, Deputy Monroe,” Harry said.
“Lash,” Lash repeated. “You can come on back.”
“Thanks for getting the guy.”
“Thank me after we recover your car. It’s not goin’ well.”
“Why not?” Maria asked, noticing the worry that appeared immediately in Harry’s eyes. “Billy Bob bein’ difficult?”
“Full on denial, and his lawyer’s on the way.”
They traversed a narrow hallway, passed the first door, marked INTERROGATION and entered the second door, which was right beside it. Inside, there was glass separating the two rooms. On the other side of the glass, Billy Bob sat at a table with his hands still cuffed behind him. Willow stood in front of the table with her back to the glass. Her hair was bundled up, her uniform shirt tucked into her uniform pants. She’d left her weapon behind.
“They can’t see us out here,” Maria explained.
Harrison nodded. “I figured.”
Lash pushed a button on the wall, and the sound came on. Then he said he had to take a call and left them.
“I’m tellin’ you, Willow—” Billy Bob slurred. His hair was a mess, and his eyes were bloodshot. Apparently, his buzz was fading, and the aftermath just getting underway.
“That’s Deputy Brand to you from now on,” Willow told him. “You ain’t family.” She pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down. “It’ll serve you well not to forget it. Now, tell me what happened at Manny’s.”
“I’ll tell you for a beer.”
“You’re already drunk.”
“I’ll tell you…” He paused for dramatic effect. “For a beer.”
“I’ll get you a beer. And then you’ll cooperate, or I’ll book you on every charge we can come up with.”
It startled Maria, the deeper, fuller tone of her cousin’s voice. “Wow,” she said. “I’ve never really seen Will on the job before. She’s different.”
“How long’s she been a deputy?” Harry asked.
“Couple of months. Ever since Uncle Garrett decided he plans to retire next year. He’s been sheriff since before I was born. My dad’s been chief deputy most of that time.”
“Huh.”
“What?”
“Just… that’s a long time for a town to have the same sheriff and chief deputy,” Harry said.
She felt herself bristle. “County,” she corrected. “And yeah, it is a long time, but it’s not like you’re thinking.”
Next door, Willow left Billy Bob alone in the interrogation room, allegedly to get him a beer. Maria did not think for one minute her cousin was going to serve alcohol to a suspect and wondered what she was up to.
“I wasn’t thinking anything,” Harry said.
“Sure you were. You’re an East Coast scientist.”
“You say that like an insult,” he said.
“Not an insult at all. It’s like telling a Martian newly arrived from Mars that he doesn’t yet understand Earth. I’m telling a newly arrived New Yorker that he doesn’t yet understand Texas. No insult intended. But you need to know that my dad and uncle are the most trusted men in Quinn County. Every election was fair, and to be honest, Uncle Garrett’s never had to do more than put his name on the ballot?—”
The interrogation room door opened, and closed hard, making them both come to attention. “Oh, shoot,” Maria muttered, because her dad had entered the room.
“I understand you tracked my daughter illegally,” he said to Billy Bob.
Her dad’s tone was as foreign to Maria as Willow’s had seemed, but in a different way. It wasn’t even the angry-dad tone he’d used when she’d messed up as a kid. This was something bigger. Something quieter and somehow more menacing. “You assaulted a young woman at your bachelor party.”
“Aw, c’mon, you know I wouldn’t?—”
“One of your friends shot a video, Billy Bob. I’ve seen it. It’s bad.”
The jilted groom swore a blue streak. Then he fell silent. At length he said, “Is the bimbo pressing charges?”
Maria clenched her fists and strode out of the small observation room, then through the next door into the interrogation room beside it. “You bet your backside she’s pressin’ charges,” she shouted. “She decided right after I told her I’d carry her to and from every day of your trial on my back, if that’s what it takes, you lowlife son of a— I can’t believe I almost married you.”
“Aw, come on now, Maria Michele, you know it din’t mean nuthin’.”
“What din’t mean nuthin’? ” She asked, mocking his lazy grammar. “Tryin’ to force my friend’s head into your lap or punchin’ her in the face when she fought back? Is that what din’t mean nuthin’ ? Or was it beatin’ the hell out of a decent, brilliant man who’s tryin’ to save the whole goldern world, and tried to keep you off me after you shoved me so hard I took out a whole table full of tacos? Is that what din’t mean nuthin’ Billy Bob?”
“He put his hands on you?” her father asked.
“I barely touched her! I barely touched you before your nerd boyfriend came at me like a maniac.” Billy Bob was scared. Finally. He was looking from Lash to Maria again, and then to Harry, who had come in behind her.
“Tell him,” Billy Bob shouted at Harry. “You were there.”
Her father looked at Harry.
Harry answered with calm, precise recall. “He came at me, she stepped in front of me. He grabbed her, jerked her around and she hit the table. She probably has a bruise on her ribcage. Right side. I shoved him back away from her, and then he decked me.”
Maria frowned and ran her hand over her right side, applied a little pressure, and winced. Then she lifted her blouse enough to reveal a pink and purple bruise on her rib cage. “I didn’t even notice that last night.” She met Harry’s eyes, but they were on her bruised skin.
Her father’s expression had gone blank and still. Maria knew him well enough to be worried.
“We’re gon’ need you to tell us where that car is,” he said, speaking real slow. “After that, you’re free to go. My brothers-in-law might want a word with you, but I really got no say in that.”
Billy Bob got out of his chair and took two steps back from the table. “They’re fixin’ to kill me?” Then he looked at Maria. “They’re fixin’ to kill me, Maria Michele!”
She saw the alarm in Harry’s eyes and tried to send him reassurance without giving up the game. There was no way her dad would let Billy Bob go.
Everyone who really knew her family knew they were good, decent people. But they also knew you didn’t mess with a Brand without incurring the wrath of the whole clan. It just wasn’t done. Not in Quinn, it wasn’t.
“You want me to stop ’em?” she asked. “Tell me what you did with Harry’s car.”
“I didn’t take the goldern car! I walked into the bar, had the fight?—”
“Assaulted two people, trashed the place,” she said.
“He hit me first!” Billy Bob argued. “Then I walked outside, got in my truck, and left! That’s it.”
Willow returned. She didn’t have any beer, and Maria realized she’d left to give her dad a shot at Billy Bob.
“You can take him back to his cell, Deputy, then come right back,” Lash said. And Maria found it odd to hear her father refer to her cousin that way. If it was strange to her, she wondered how weird it must feel to Willow.
Will gave a respectful nod and took Billy Bob by the arm while the suspect tried to talk his way to redemption. She returned seconds later, sans prisoner.
“What did the parking lot cam show?” Lash asked.
Willow looked blank, then alarmed. “Manny’s place has security cameras?” She pressed a palm to her forehead. “I didn’t even think to ask.”
Lash nodded slowly. “That’s okay. But you need to get over there and see to it. The system’s old enough that it only saves a day or two at a time, as I recall from the last bar brawl Garrett and I had to sort out over there. And if you want to see the footage, you’ll have to do it in person.”
“That’s pretty old,” she said.
“Part of it’s the user,” Lash said.
Willow had lowered her head. “I messed up.”
“You’re doin’ a good job, Willow.” Maria appreciated her dad’s reassuring tones to her rookie cousin. He wasn’t being her superior at that point; he was being her uncle.
“I want to be doin’ a great job,” she replied, lifting her chin and looking him in the eye.
“Well, that only comes with experience, which takes time. You’re puttin’ in the time, so… great is inevitable.”
“Thanks, Uncle Lash,” she said.
He left them. Willow turned to Maria and Harry, and Maria saw her notice how close they were standing. She hadn’t really noticed herself until that moment.
That wasn’t true. She’d actually been wondering if she could inch a little closer without drawing undue attention. What in tarnation was wrong with her? She’d just dumped a man yesterday!
Willow said, “We need that footage. I can’t believe I didn’t think to ask.”
“To be fair,” Harry said, “I’d have never guessed there were security cameras in that bar.” His tone was as kind as Maria’s father’s had been a moment ago.
“Yeah, well, you’re not a cop. But you are a genius, so thank you for that. You guys want to ride along?”
Maria said, “Sure, if it means more of Manny’s tacos.” She grinned up at Harry.
He smiled into her eyes. “You were right about those tacos,” he said. “Best I’ve ever had.”
“Well, you are from New York.” Then with a sassy wink, she added, “That was not an insult. Except to whatever passes for tacos up there.”
“Hey, my favorite customer’s back,” Manny said, smiling at Maria when they all entered the cantina. Then he looked at Harrison. “You look a lot better already.”
“Thanks for helping me out yesterday.”
“I don’t know you from Adam, mister, but any friend of the Brands is a friend of mine,” Manny said. “Besides, Maria’d do the same for me.”
Harrison glanced at Maria as she murmured, “Damn straight.”
Willow went on, “Is your parking lot camera working, Manny?”
“Workin’ fine.” He blinked then got it. “You need the footage from yesterday!”
“Yep,” she said. “Billy Bob’s denying he stole Harry’s car.”
Harrison almost said, “Harrison,” but bit it back. It was no use. He would forevermore be Harry in the state of Texas.
“Come on back, then.” Manny flipped up part of the bar to let them in and left it that way. With a quick glance at the patrons. The silent guy in the sombrero was there, and Harrison wondered if he’d been there all night, or had left and come back.
Manny went into his tiny office, but he left the door open, giving him a clear view of the cash register.
The room was the size of a closet with a desk and rolling chair, which Manny took immediately. He clicked computer keys as the three of them formed a tight half circle behind him. They all leaned in as Manny rewound the recording to the moment Billy Bob’s big black pickup had roared to a stop in the parking lot. Harrison leaned closer. Billy Bob got out, red-faced, slammed the door hard and stomped toward the entrance, vanishing from the camera’s eye.
Then there was quiet for a while. A semi passed, pulling a dust cloud behind it. And then a large black SUV pulled into the parking lot, but not directly in. Sideways, as if the driver planned to keep right on going. And that was what they did as soon as a man got out of the passenger side, walked over to Harrison’s little blue Volvo, got in, and after a moment, started it up.
“I must’ve left the keys in it.”
“No, no,” Manny said. “I found them under a table after you left.” He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a keyring, passed it to Harrison. Sure enough, his keys. “Must’ve hot-wired it,” Manny said.
As the car backed around sideways, Harrison said, “Stop it right there,” and when Manuel did so, “Can you zoom in on his face?”
“I’m not the FBI, son.”
“Can you send the footage to my phone?” Willow asked.
“Um…” Manny picked up a pen to write down the phone number she recited. Not a great sign.
“Doesn’t matter,” Maria said. “Harry knows who that is.”
“I don’t,” Harrison said. “He’s wearing a baseball hat and keeping his head down.”
“But there’s his shape, his stance, his walk. You recognized him, Harry. I saw it in your eyes when he first got out of the car. That’s why you asked Manny to zoom.”
Harrison blinked and realized she was right, but it couldn’t be. “At first, I thought it was Robert. Robert Phillipson, one of my research partners. But there’s no reason for him to do something like that.”
“It couldn’t be a prank, could it?” Maria asked.
“We’re scientists. We don’t pull pranks.”
Willow said, “Are you sure he’d have nothing to gain by stealing your… prototype? He couldn’t claim it as his own or sell the design or?—?”
“I don’t… I mean, I don’t think so. It’s patented in all our names.”
“Maybe you’d best tell me those names.” Willow was taking notes on her phone.
“Besides Robert and me, there’s Solomon Hadid and Carrie Sayre. I texted Carrie this morning, asked her to get the backup prototype and bring it with her to Silver Springs.”
“And they’re all supposed to be there?” Willow asked. “At the demo in Silver Springs on Wednesday?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know much about patent law,” Willow said. “But it seems to me, gettin’ your stake back if someone tried to claim it would probably take some time. A lawsuit, maybe. An investigation. Those things can take years.”
“Meanwhile,” Maria said, “Robert takes the solar tile, sells it himself, and flies off to someplace without extradition.”
Harrison couldn’t stop shaking his head. “I really don’t think that was Robert.”
Maria looked at him then shook her head. “I think you do. You just don’t want to think it.”
“I really don’t want to think it,” he agreed.
“I want another look at the drop-off,” Willow said. “Back it up and play it again, Manny?”
Manny backed up the video and played it again, his hand remaining on the mouse for rapid pausing.
“Stop it there.” Willow leaned in. Harrison thought the license plate was too small to read, though. Then Willow said, “Manny, do you care if I send my cousin Orrin over here to take a look at this footage?”
“He old enough to be inside a saloon?” Manuel asked with a smile.
“Twenty-four and gifted with tech. He can send me the pertinent section of video, if it’s okay with you.”
“Sure it is. Send him on over. I’ll make sure it doesn’t get recorded over. That much I know how to do.” He moved the mouse, saying aloud as he clicked, “File. Save. Done. Anything else I can do to help?”
“Well, since we’re here anyway…” Maria glanced at Manny and fluttered her lashes.
“I already have a batch-to-go for you, chica. I told Junior to start ’em up soon as I saw that wild red hair through the front winder.”
Harrison sat in the passenger seat, Willow drove, and Maria was crammed in between them in the middle. Harrison didn’t mind her pressed up beside him. He didn’t consider himself knowledgeable in the ways of flirtation, but he’d realized over the course of the day spent almost entirely by her side, that he was mightily attracted to Maria Michele Brand Monroe. He thought any heterosexual man would feel the same. It probably wasn’t abnormal. It was just abnormal for him.
He didn’t pay much attention to women. He hadn’t had time. And it was completely illogical to feel attracted to this one. It couldn’t go anywhere. He certainly wasn’t moving to Texas and she had her whole life planned out.
And there was no room in his life for a fling. His prototype was missing, his family was breaking up, his father was sick, and his deathbed promise to his dying mother was teetering on the edge of failure.
Harrison’s phone pinged. He frowned as he looked at the screen. “It’s Carrie’s landline,” he said, surprised.
“Your research partner?” Maria asked.
He nodded and took the call. “Hey Carrie. Everything okay?”
“Hey, Harrison,” said a man’s voice. Not Carrie’s.
“John?” Both women in the truck looked at him.
Carrie’s husband said, “Yeah. I’m calling everyone in Carrie’s contacts. They’re on desktop, you know. She’s uh… she’s… I don’t know where she is. I’m worried. Have you seen her? You spoke to her this morning, didn’t you? What did she say?”
Icy alarm chilled Harrison’s spine. He tapped his phone’s speaker icon so the others could hear. “We texted this morning,” he said. “She was going to the lab to get the backup prototype to bring with her to Silver City this coming Wednesday for the demo.”
John sighed heavily into the phone. “That much I knew. She left for Cornell, and I haven’t heard from her since. She’s not answering texts. Calls go to voicemail.”
“Did you call the university? See if she made it there to pick up the prototype?”
“Yes,” he said. “She did pick it up, apparently. Your department head checked the safe, and the prototype is gone. But Carrie’s car’s still in the parking lot.”
That was weird. What the hell was going on? “All right, okay, John, listen. I’m gonna have some people look into this, okay? I don’t want you to worry.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll call you later to check in. And please call me if you hear anything, all right?”
“Yes. Okay. Thanks, Harrison. Thank God you answered the phone. None of the others did.”
Harrison blinked. “You called Robert and Solomon?”
“Yeah. Glad I finally got through to one of you. Let me know if you hear from her, okay?”
“Of course I will. Please do the same.” He didn’t know if John Sayre had heard him before the call had ended. Harrison stared at the phone, blinking.
“What are you thinkin’?” Maria asked.
Harrison said, “Well, John can get… confused sometimes. I don’t think we need to panic.”
“I thought he sounded a little off. Dementia?”
He nodded. “Early onset Alzheimer’s. He’s only forty-nine.” As he spoke, he scrolled to the research group text, with just the four of them on it, and sent a message.
Harrison: REPLY. URGENT.
“Forty-nine,” Maria said. “That’s terrible.”
He kept watching the phone, but no one replied. “What if it is somehow connected?” A dark feeling was starting to take root in the base of his brain.
“Call someone else,” Maria said. “Someone you absolutely trust who’s up there and can go to the University and find out what’s really goin’ on.”
Nodding, he tapped his phone, pulled up his sister’s number, and hesitated.
Shamelessly, Maria leaned over and looked at the screen. “She’s pretty. Girlfriend?” He glanced at her in surprise. There was disappointment in her eyes, but she hid it quickly. “That silver-blond hair is stunning. Like your mom’s, isn’t it.”
“Just like my mom’s,” he said. “That’s my sister, Lily. But I’m feeling like I don’t want to get her involved in this.”
“I agree with that assessment,” Maria said. “Least not ’til we know what’s really goin’ on.”
“I’ll call the university directly.” He dialed a number, and when someone answered he said, “I need the maintenance department, please.”
He was connected and the phone rang multiple times before someone picked it up with an irritated and gravelly-voiced, “Yeah?”
“Bruce! Glad you picked up. This is Harrison Hyde. I’m working on the?—”
“I know who y’are, Professor Hyde.”
“I’m not a professor I— it doesn’t matter. My car was stolen, and the prototype for the project I was working on was inside.”
“Stolen?”
“Yeah, and I?—”
“Well, you got the wrong department, then. You should call the dean. And the police.”
“The police are working on it. But right now, I need you to do me a favor.”
“Sure, if I can help.”
“Can you run up to the lab and check the safe? I had a backup prototype in there. I asked one of my partners to pick it up, but I don’t know if she left with it yet. And I can’t reach her.”
“Sure, I can check that out. Give me a few minutes I’ll get right back to you. This number good?”
Harrison said it was and disconnected. Three minutes later, his phone chimed, and he read the text aloud. “‘The safe in your research lab is open and empty. Sending photo.’”
The photo appeared. It showed the open safe in the wall of the inner lab. Then he frowned and looked closer. “What’s that on the door, near the keypad?” You could only glimpse the red smudge from a sharp angle.
Maria leaned in as Harrison expanded the image on his screen. Then he shook his head in frustration and quickly tapped-out another message.
Harrison: Show me the front of the safe door, please.
Ellipses appeared immediately. Seconds later, a new photo popped up. It was a clear shot of the safe’s ten-button keypad, with a smear of something red across its face.
“Holy Moses,” Maria whispered. “That looks like blood.”
Willow offered to drive them back to the ranch, but Maria said her van was parked at her mom’s and they could just walk over and get it. So she and Harry were walking side by side through downtown Quinn, and Maria was trying to see it through his eyes, as if it were the first time she’d been there.
The buildings were one- and two-story structures of brick and adobe. The lampposts were evenly spaced. Their green metal bases supported curlicue arms from which the lamps were suspended. The sidewalks bordering Main Street were cracked but functional. They strolled past the diner, the bakery, the jewelry store, the bank. There was only one of each.
“No Dunkin’, or Starbucks, or Burger King here, huh?”
“Not a one,” Maria said. “We don’t let ’em into town. Quinn Chamber of Commerce has some muscle, and Quinn County backs ’em up. Every business in town limits is privately owned. No chains allowed.”
“I like it.”
“I love it here. I never want to leave.”
They reached the end of the sidewalk and crossed a side street. The house where she’d grown up was a red adobe cottage with a matching building beside it, bigger than the house itself. They sat side by side amid lush green lawns. There was one vehicle in the driveway, her white Ford Transit Van. “Brand Monroe Veterinary Clinic” was painted on the side, the words forming a circle around the X logo of the Texas Brand, also featured on the arch over the ranch’s driveway.
She pointed and said, “Mom and Dad live right there, in the house. The clinic used to be next door, but Dad’s been slowly converting it back into a garage ever since mom bought a bigger space out on Bluebonnet Lane— another reason I want to live there. I’ll be able to walk to work.”
“In spite of all this insanity,” he said, “I’m kind of dying to see the place.”
“The clinic?”
“Bluebonnet Lane,” he said. “I noticed the book you were reading with the same name.”
She laughed. “How could I resist that title?”
“You couldn’t,” he said.
She liked the way he smiled down at her when he talked to her. Something stirred in her belly. Billy Bob’s smile had never stirred anything in her belly.
“Did the story live up to the title?” Harry asked.
“So far, so good,” she said. And she wasn’t talking about the book. There was something going on here. At least she thought there was.
“Romance, huh?”
She jumped a little, like he’d asked the question because he was reading her mind. But then she remembered they’d been talking about a book, so she nodded. “My favorite genre. In the best ones, there’s always big trouble, but a plucky female lead finds her way through it, falls in love in the process, then triumphs over every challenge and winds up with the sexy male lead pledgin’ his devotion. They’re upliftin’.”
“That explains their popularity.”
“I think so. What do you like to read?”
“Non-fiction. Mostly articles and papers by others working in renewable energy research.” He took a breath, and said, “I’m restless. I feel like I should be doing something, but there’s nothing I can do. It’s frustrating.”
She put a hand on his shoulder. He must not spend all his time doing science. Not with such nice shoulders. “You’re doin’ everything right, Harry.” She unlocked the van and opened the passenger door for him, waved her arm and said, “Care for a ride, kind sir?”
He smiled, though his heart wasn’t in it. “I would, thank you.” He got in.
Maria went around and got behind the wheel, while her passenger checked out the interior. The back of the van held medical supplies and equipment, a lot of it mounted to the walls in customized holders, shelves, and brackets. She felt her chin lift in pride as he perused it. “Nice van.”
“Thanks. It was a gift from my aunts and uncles when I got my degree.”
“That’s some gift.”
“They bought me the van. All the customizations were on me and my cousins, DIY style.” The key fob was attached to the strap of her handbag. She started the van and pulled to the edge of the road. Then she stopped the vehicle, looked at him, and said, “How about a little side journey?”
“To Bluebonnet Lane?” he asked.
She hoped she didn’t look too eager when she nodded.