Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
“ H ere we are.”
Harrison undid his seatbelt as Maria pulled into the driveway of a white, two-story farmhouse with black shutters. “This is gon’ be my house,” Maria said.
He glanced at the house briefly, before looking at her. She gazed at the place with love in her eyes. “It needs paint.” And indeed, the paint on the clapboards was peeling. “And window boxes full of flowers. And I’m for sure changin’ out those black shutters.”
“The sign says a sale’s pending.”
“That’s ’cause I told the realtor we were fixin’ to buy it right after the weddin’. Billy Bob could well afford it.” She looked down at the ground. “He said it would be an investment; he’d sell it for a profit once he’d convinced me to move.”
“Where to?” Harrison asked.
“Dallas. He has a place there. I told him I’d never leave Quinn. He said I’d change my mind, in time.”
He opened his mouth, closed it again.
“What?”
He shrugged and said, “That was never going to work. You know that now, right?”
“Well, yeah. I think I had an inklin’ before. The notion to call off the weddin’s been naggin’ at me for the past month. Maybe longer.”
She led him around to the back door, which was painted a deep woodsy green. “This door should be stained wood, I think. With pretty glass insets. And the shutters… I don’t know yet, but I’m thinkin’ a lighter color, maybe with cutouts.”
“Maybe match them to the green on the little hillside behind it.”
There was a padlock with a keypad on the door. She entered the code and opened it.
“I um… it’s not yours, yet, is it?”
“I’ve made Cat Shaw show it to me enough times that I know the code by heart. And she wouldn’t mind.” She nodded at the sign and the curly-haired blonde with a winning smile beside the words CAT SHAW REALTY. “I’m fixin’ to apply for the mortgage myself— no help from my family— soon as we get you back on track.”
She’d pulled her curls into a band, around one side. The only place they stayed put was where the hair band was. He had the dumbest urge to run his fingers through it. “Come on in.”
He followed her, trying not to stare at her denim-encased backside and staring at it anyway, into a light-yellow kitchen. There was fresh stain on the cupboards. Each cabinet and drawer had a white ceramic knob with tiny yellow roses. They looked new compared to the white-with-gold-swirls Formica countertop. “Someone redid the cabinets?” he said.
“Realtor suggested it to the owner, that and the fresh paint on the walls.” She caught him looking at her. They locked eyes and his throat went dry.
“It’s a beautiful place. It’ll look like it came right out of a storybook, when you finish up. You… kind of fit here.” His gaze held hers, and there was a current that ran between them. He felt it tingling in the pit of his stomach.
“I feel like that, too.”
Everything in him was urging him to move closer. What was he thinking? There could not be a relationship here. This state, this town was not where he lived. His life was in New York.
Maria opened the fridge, but it was barren other than a six pack of pop. She took out two cans and handed one to him. “Cat keeps a few things around for potential buyers. I’ll restock for her, if I don’t get the loan.”
She opened a cabinet and grabbed down a bag of potato chips. “Livin’ here was the only part of my plan Billy Bob argued with me about. But it was a deal-breaker for me.”
See, he thought. Deal-breaker.
She led him through an empty dining room still bearing wallpaper from the previous resident. It was ivory with vertical stripes made of pale blue flowers. Oh, wait…
“Are those bluebonnets? On the wallpaper?”
“Yes! That’s why I don’t want to strip it.”
“You can’t strip it. It’s perfect.”
“I know.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the wall, then pressed his palm to the wallpaper. Her hand covered his, to move it slowly up the wall. “Feel that?”
“Yeah.” He knew she was referring to the satiny texture of every flower. He was not. She lingered a moment, and he almost turned around, knowing if he did, he was going to kiss her. And that would just be heartless. Why start anything with her? She was an amazing person; she didn’t deserve to get her heart broken. Again.
She sighed behind him and moved away, leading him into a fully furnished living room with overstuffed brown furniture, pale-blue walls, and sheer white curtains in its tall windows. “Furniture’s all new and comes with the place, if I want it. Cat thinks staging is most important in the living room. I’d say kitchen, but I’m no expert.”
He looked at her for a long moment. She looked back. “I want to ask you something personal,” he said. “If it’s okay.”
She nodded.
“Why’d you ever say yes to that guy? Your plan, I know, but… that guy?”
Sighing, she sank onto the sofa, but only on its edge. She opened the bag and handed it to him. He took out a few chips and handed it back.
Maria ate some potato chips and thought about her answer, but mostly she was still wondering if Harry had felt the way she had when their hands had been pressed together and their bodies so close a minute ago. Her heart hadn’t yet resumed its normal rate. But he’d asked a question, and she wanted to give him a real answer. For some reason it felt important to be real with him.
“Like I said, I’ve been asking myself that for a while now. There are expectations out here, you know? I got my license to practice. My career is set, the business is great, and it’s part of the fabric of Quinn. People depend on the clinic. Our patients are like family.”
“I’ve lost the thread,” he said, but he was paying attention. He looked at her when she spoke, with keen interest in his blue, blue eyes. Gosh , they were blue.
“Expectations,” she reminded him and herself. “So like I told you, my next steps were to choose a husband, marry him, and have a couple of kids. That’s what you do out here. That’s what’s expected. And the clock’s tickin’. I spent years on my education.”
He rolled his eyes. “You’re what, twenty-five?”
“Good guess. I want a husband and two kids within the next five years.”
“Five years?”
She could see he was doing math in his head.
“So including nine months for each pregnancy you’ll need to get the husband within three-and-a-half years.”
“Two-and-a-half. I’ll wait six months between baby one and baby two. And you don’t always get pregnant right away, so you have to allow a couple month’s worth of tryin’. So now we’re down to two years, give or take. And honestly, don’t you think there should be a honeymoon period for a couple before they reproduce? What if you aren’t compatible?”
“So that means?—”
“That means, the clock inside my head was tickin’ loud and messin’ with my common sense, I think. Billy Bob was more or less local. Grew up nearby. I’d never heard anything bad about him. We dated for a couple of months and seemed to get along okay. He’s gainfully employed, and agreeable to my plan, and, well, he asked.”
Harrison shook his head. “And yet you’re so smart about so many things.”
“Ouch.”
He held out his hand, and she tipped the bag his way. He took a handful this time.
“How are you holdin’ up with all this?” she asked.
“Ah, nice change of subject.”
“I thought so.”
He laughed and she liked the sound. And she liked how her house felt with him in it. With them in it, together.
“Thanks for asking,” he said at length. “I’m… I kinda feel like the ground just fell out from under me, too. I admire how you have your life all figured out, know exactly what you want. I feel like I’m in free-fall with no idea where I’ll land.”
“You hide it well,” she said, looking more closely at his face. “But no wonder you feel that way. It was your life’s work.”
“There are notes and plans. I can build it again, but if someone beats me to it somehow, despite the patent, there wouldn’t be much point. Either way, this has made me realize that I have no idea what I want my life to look like, long term.”
“No?”
He shook his head. “On her deathbed, my mother made me promise to keep the family together, and I’m failing. But I don’t think I can even process any of that until we find Carrie.”
“Oh.” She blinked. “Were you two?—?”
He looked surprised. “No. She’s devoted to her husband.” He pulled out his phone and turned it her way to show a photo of a plump-cheeked, fifty-something-scientist, in the arms of a smiling man. “That’s Carrie and John right after their late-in-life marriage. I was a groomsman.”
Maria looked at the photo and felt a surge of relief. He’d only ever mentioned three women, and none of them were a girlfriend. She handed the phone back to him, even though her thumb had been itching to scroll a little. How could he not have a girlfriend, a guy like him?
“I hope she’s all right,” she said. Then she blinked as the pink cloud cleared from her smitten brain and let in some sunlight. “Wait a minute. Wait just a minute. Yesterday in the afternoon, somebody stole your car. This mornin’, somebody broke into that safe. I mean, did they?”
“Well, yeah, you know they did.”
“No, I mean, did they break into the safe? Or did they open it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You should find out. But either way, it’s gotta be, what, a twenty-four-hour drive?”
“Thirty-three. But they could’ve flown.”
“Mmm, either that, or it’s more than one person. And, PS, Harry, how did they track us down at Manny’s Cantina? Seems like maybe they’ve been behind you since you left Florida.”
Harry nodded. “Or tracking me electronically. Hell.”
“How would you know?”
He pulled out his phone, checked its settings while Maria drove. “It’s not the phone. But it might be the car they’re tracking, or even the solar tile itself.”
Maria’s phone pinged. “It’s Willow,” she said, and answered on speaker. “Hey Will. What have you got?”
“Harry still with you?”
“Yep.”
“Tell him we’ve located his car out at Slap-Jack-Jimmy’s.”
Harrison looked at Maria for clarification. “It’s a junkyard,” she said.
“I’m heading out there now,” Willow went on.
“So are we.” Maria ended the call and surged off the sofa, rolling up the chip bag on the way to the kitchen. “I’ll have to show you the second floor another time.”
Maria pulled her van off the road near the junkyard, got out, and stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the view from the edge of a drop-off. Harry got out and went to stand beside her. It was hot, dry, and dusty. When the wind blew, you could feel the little bits of earth it carried. Everything was cast in red.
The junkyard was located in a vast, played-out gravel bed. Razed earth and rock walls formed the boundaries of a wide, flat area about twenty-five feet lower than road-level where they stood. It was acres in size and had an earthen driveway that curved down into it. Hundreds of cars in various states of rust formed crooked rows that made no sense to the unenlightened eye. On the far right, a blue and yellow car-crusher waited with its mouth open. A yellow forklift was parked nearby.
“No gate?” Harry asked.
“No need. Slap-Jack Jimmy and his cronies watch over it all day, and three Rottweilers guard it all night.”
“Slap-Jack Jimmy,” he said, monotone.
“Right.”
He nodded. “So, you just drive right in?”
“Not if you like your car,” she said. She watched him look at the downward sloping, curved driveway, and see what she saw, the crumbling edges, the steep drop on the open side, the broken bits of glass winking in the overripe Texas sun.
He nodded. “So, where’s the uh… office?”
Maria pointed at a cinderblock shack out past a pancake stack of flattened cars. “Shall we?”
“We shall.”
She liked that answer a lot but slapped his elbow away, laughing when he offered it. “You’re feeling better,” she said as they walked down the driveway.
“If the car’s here, the tile is here. I have hope.”
“Not if the tile is what the car-thief was after,” she said. “And it’s looking like it was.”
“He’d never find it. Not where you hid it.”
Maria bit her lip.
Harry said, “What?”
“I wasn’t tryin’ to hide it, or I’d’ve picked a better spot. I’m thinkin’ a tackle box sticks out like a sore thumb in the desert.”
“We’re only near the desert,” he said.
“Either way, let’s not jump to conclusions until we talk to Jimmy.”
They traversed a path between two rows of cars to the square, cinderblock building. Its door stood wide open. Two male Rottweilers and one female lay snoring side by side, in front of an electric fan, but there was no sign of Jimmy. “Guess he’s out,” Maria said, turning to Harry.
He was holding a finger to his lips going, “Shhh.” His eyes were on the dogs, and they were wide. The snoring had stopped.
Maria turned again, as the huge beasts spotted her, surged to their feet, and lunged.
“Maria, look out!” The next thing she knew Harry was pulling her behind him, and standing between her and the rotties, who had stopped in their tracks to stare at him.
“It’s okay.” Maria peeked around Harry’s shoulder. “Hey, Hoss, good boy. Hello, Little Joe. You’re a good dog, yes, you are. Hey, Lorretta. What a pretty girl.”
The dogs wiggled their stump-tailed butts and smiled, dripping drool as Harry finally lowered his arms, which he’d been holding behind him to either side of Maria.
She came around him and crouched to greet the dogs.
“You know them,” Harry said. “Of course you know them, you’re the town vet.”
The words were like warm honey. “Town vet,” she repeated. “That’s the first time anyone’s called me that. My mom’s been the town vet forever.”
A sharp whistle from off to the right sent the dogs running to where their human was making his way toward them. Jimmy wore his trademark bib overalls, no shirt, and a stained brown bowler hat. Maria waved, and Jimmy waved back, moving toward them slowly. He had a pronounced limp and swung his arms when he walked, to help himself along. It would take him a minute.
Maria brushed her hands together, releasing a dog-hair cloud, then she turned to face Harry full on and looked him dead in the eye. “You just got between me and five-hundred pounds of junkyard dog.”
“They’re like puppies with you.”
“You didn’t know that. For all you knew, you were about to be mauled.” She laid her palm on his chest, right over his heart. She didn’t know why she did that, but it felt right. “Color me impressed to heck and gone. Thank you.”
He looked away, and his heart beat faster against her hand, but she leaned around and caught his eyes with hers and held on. “Seriously, thank you.”
“ De nada. Maybe mention it to your father. He got a funny look on his face when I told him you stepped in front of me at the Cantina that day.”
She raised her brows. “What do you care what my dad thinks about you?” And then it occurred to her why he might care what her dad thought about him. Maybe he was feeling a rising tide of something for her, like she was for him. The notion startled her so much she stumbled backward, pulling her hand off his chest, but she tripped over a stray carburetor. Harry grabbed her by both arms. “Whoa, easy there.”
She got her balance. “Th-thanks.” Then she looked at him. She’d been doing a lot of that. She liked his face. She could spend a lot of time looking at that face.
Harry seemed to realize he still had his hands on her outer arms, and that they were standing pretty close to each other. Like they were about to kiss or something.
She really wanted to kiss him.
He let go, took a step back and the moment ended, but her head was spinning. Gosh, she’d only just jilted Billy Bob yesterday, and all of a sudden all she wanted to do was make out with Harry.
“Y’all’re here ’bout the Volvo, yeah?” Jimmy asked. He’d finally made his way to where they stood. The dogs were wandering on their own.
“Yes,” Harry said. “It’s blue, ten years old, and?—”
Jimmy turned and pointed. They both looked.
Harry’s little blue car was nose-down, at the bottom of a steep drop from the road, pretty close to where they’d been standing, surveying the place minutes ago.
“My car,” Harry said. “Oh, man, Ol’ Blue.”
“Really?” Maria asked, secretly delighted. “My mamma had a dog called Ol’ Blue when she was growing up. Blue Boy, at the ranch, is his great grandson.” She smiled into his eyes, and felt something there, for sure.
“Deputy Willa’s fixin’ to meet y’all here,” Jimmy said. “She said not to put a finger on it ’til she does.”
“How did it get there like that?” Maria asked. “It looks like somebody pushed it right over the edge.”
“That’s just what somebody did,” Jimmy said.
That seemed to snap Harry out of his stunned stare. “How do you know?”
“Tire tracks up top tell the story, plain as day. I figured that’s what y’all were lookin’ at up there.”
“Ah, hell.” Harry stared at the car for a full minute, and just when Maria was about to ask if he was okay, he shook his head like a wet dog and said, “It might still be inside.” He headed through the car maze, toward his gravity-defying hatchback.
“How is it staying up on end like that?” Maria asked.
“There’s a stack behind it,” Jimmy said. “G’on, you best git after him. Deputy Willa’ll be along.”
Harrison stood beside his car, trying to figure the best way to get inside. It stood nose-down, tilted slightly, leaning against a flattened stack of vehicles. The rear tires rested against the stack, but the whole situation was unstable. One wrong move could send it crashing down. But he had to know.
The impact had been so hard the rear hatch had popped open. Or maybe it had been open already before the car was pushed. Maybe it had been opened because the car-thief had opened it, and reached in, and stolen the tackle box and his entire life’s work.
He had to decide something soon. Maria would be along any minute, and so would her cousin the deputy, who’d left explicit instructions not to touch the car. He decided he could get the best view inside the car from the top of that multi-colored flattened vehicle pancake stack. He went to it, shoved it with his hands to see how wobbly it was. Not wobbly at all, but warm to the touch in the hot sun. He gripped a rusted yellow edge and started to climb.
When he reached the top of the stack, he looked down at his car. Its nose was on the ground, and its back-end was held up by the stack of flattened cars he had climbed. From the top, he could look right down into the open hatch.
Maria cried, “Jeeze, Harry, what’re you doin’ up there?”
“It’s fine, I’m not touching anything. See?” He held up his hands, turned them back and front. “I can see my duffel in there. Everything I packed for this trip.”
“Mine’s on the ground over yonder,” she said pointing. “Must’ve flown out. Can you see the tackle box?”
“No, but it might have flown into the front seat. Or it might be under the duffel.”
“Hold on,” she said from closer, and then the stack he was standing on wobbled, and he realized she was spider-climbing up the side after him.
“Holy— here, here.” He reached down, they clasped forearms, and he hauled her the rest of the way up. She turned to look into the back of the car, just as he had. It would be so easy, he thought, to climb inside and take a careful look around.
Maria heaved a sigh and said, “How can we not look?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
She nodded. “Go on, just try not to touch more than you have to.”
Harrison pulled his sleeves over his hands to grip either side of the open hatch, then eased himself in, feet-first, his back sliding along the carpeted cargo hold, or what he and his sister as kids would have called “the back back.”
He stayed right in the center and slid lower, toward the front seats, bracing his feet on the back of them to stop his progress. He almost groaned out loud when he saw his demolished laptop, bent in the middle, ruined. Then he grabbed the duffel and picked it up to see underneath and behind it.
“You see it?”
“Not yet. But I’ll be glad to have my own clothes again.” He hefted the duffel up toward her, felt when she clasped it, and then the car took a sudden leftward jog that threw him sideways, and pulled Maria right inside, head-first. She landed with her head between his knees, and his face between hers.
“What the hell are you two doin’ in there?” Willow’s shout was muffled because she was standing outside the car. Maria lifted her head, looked at her cousin through the side window, and gave a little wave. Harrison had to bite his lip not to burst out laughing and maybe tip the car over.
“Come on out of there,” Willow said. “You’re contaminatin’ evidence.” She pointed to the car’s front passenger side door. Harrison rolled his eyes. They’d approached from the driver’s side and hadn’t seen it standing wide open.
Maria, being on top, so to speak, went first, crawling lower, head first over the back seat into the front, rubbing every inch of her body over his on the way. He thought his eyes would pop.
Something had shifted between them. And it was dumb, because they wanted very different things in very different places.
“The tackle box!” Maria’s exclamation came from the front seat. “On the floor, driver’s side all tangled in my ruined weddin’ dress.” She whispered that part, probably so Willow wouldn’t forbid him touching it.
He dropped the duffel bag into the front seat, then turned himself around so he could go headfirst like Maria had. When he made it into the front, he tossed the duffel out the open door, then he used a fast-food napkin from the console to untangle the tackle box from the dress. “You want the gown?” he asked.
Maria shook her head. “Not in the least.”
He was unreasonably glad to hear that, and just as glad to see the tackle box. His dad would’ve been heartbroken if it had been lost. He climbed out of the car with his treasure.
“What part of ‘don’t touch anythin’ did you two not understand?”
“We barely touched anythin’,” Maria said. “Besides, he has to see whether the solar tile’s been stolen.”
Willow sent her a dubious look, and Maria shrugged, picked up Harrison’s duffel and moved it beside her feet. “This is going to the ranch, not the evidence closet. And so’s my bag, which is right over there.” She nodded at her bag, lying up against a rusty muffler nearby.
“You’re fixin’ to get me fired before my first two months are up,” Willow said.
Harrison appreciated Maria looking out for him, but he was more interested in opening the tackle box. He set it on the ground and looked up at Willow. “Can I open it?”
The newest deputy nodded. “Carefully. Yes, like that.”
Using his shirt sleeves, Harrison flipped the latches, touching only the very edges, and opened the lid. He expanded it fully, again touching only an edge with his sleeves, exposing all the interior trays and compartments filled with hooks, sinkers, rubber worms, and an array of lures. But there was no black box. He looked in the little compartments amid the tackle, in case the tile was loose among the tackle. He searched in between the trays in the bottom, where he moved items by tipping the box one way, and another.
“It’s gone,” he said. The words were heavy. It hurt to say them.
“Could it have fallen free?” Willow asked.
He glanced back into the car. “The tackle box was latched.”
“We’ll get it back.” Maria squeezed his upper arm. “We will, Harry. You don’t know my family. We can fix this. We can help.”
He looked into her eyes and knew she meant it.
“At least this tells us something. A lot, actually,” Willow said. “For one thing, to my mind, it clears Billy Bob. Not for the assault, but for the theft. This was somebody who knew exactly what they were lookin’ for.”
Harrison backed away and pushed a hand through his hair as Willow went on. “I’ve been in touch with the campus cops at Cornell about Carrie Sayre. Her husband had already called the Ithaca City Police so I contacted them. They told me who to contact at the FBI.”
Harrison came to attention. “The FBI?”
“State lines were crossed,” Willow said. “And I get the feeling they’re treatin’ this as a very big deal. Environmental Espionage, was the term they used.”
“They ought to take it seriously,” Maria said. “Harry’s invention will change the world.”
But Harrison wasn’t so sure. He paced, rubbed the back of his neck, and tried to put pieces together in his mind, but they didn’t fit. “This doesn’t make sense. There’s no way anyone could get away with this. We patented the device.”
“Who, specifically, filed that paperwork, Harry?” Willow asked. “Was it you?”
He looked up slowly. “No. Carrie took care of it.”
“Carrie,” Willow repeated, “who went to pick up the prototype from the University, vanished without her car, and stopped answering her phone.”
“Yes,” he said. Then he snapped his fingers. “There’s surveillance on campus. Some of it must have caught Carrie leaving.“
“No,” Willow said. “None of it did. Either she deliberately avoided the cameras or someone else made her.”
“My God,” he said. Then, “I haven’t had any luck reaching Solomon or Robert, either.”
“Neither have the cops up there.” Willow frowned, then looked around the junkyard, and suddenly Harrison felt exposed.
“I’ll stay here and see if I can get any prints from the car before we move it to the impound,” Willow said. “I think the best thing for you two is to head back to the ranch. We don’t know where this person is, the one who did this. What we do know is that they want your gadget, and that your other three partners are unaccounted for.”
Maria’s hand clamped onto Harrison’s forearm like a vise. “Willow, do you think Harry’s in danger?”
“I don’t know yet. But better safe than sorry, right? Best place for both of you is at the ranch. Lots of people around, just in case.”
Maria looked at Harry. “Are you okay with that?”
He didn’t think he had any other option. “Yes. Yeah. Thank you.”
“You take care with that tackle box, okay Will? It’s special to him.”
“I will.”
Maria nodded. “Come on, Harry.” She went and picked up her duffel, slung its strap over her shoulder and took his hand to start the trek back up out of the junkyard. He grabbed his own bag, then took hers as well.
When they’d gone a few steps, she leaned up and whispered, “We won’t sit around twiddlin’ our thumbs. We’re gon’ do some investigatin’ of our own.”
“From the ranch?”
“Trust me,” she said. “I’ve got resources .”