Chapter Eleven
The timer on the oven dinged just as tires crunched up the drive.
Alice slipped on an oven mitt and pulled out a pan of bar cookies, the caramel still bubbling at the edges.
Brady, asleep under the table a heartbeat ago, shot to his feet with a single sharp woof and tore for the door as if someone had shouted his name in a language only he knew.
“Hold it,” Alice called, but the dog was already there, quivering, tail thudding against the hard surface like a drum. The truck door shut outside. Another. Voices. One of them her boy’s.
So excited anyone would think he’d been gone for years, not weeks. She wiped her hands on a towel and hurried to meet them. The knob turned and there Kade was, tall and sun-browned, grinning like he’d never left.
“Hi, Mom.” Kade immediately dropped his duffel bag and closed the distance between the front door and his mother.
Grown son or not, he was still her boy. She threw her arms around him and squeezed hard, before stepping back to greet their guest. Looking up at the man, she extended her hand. “Welcome.”
“This is Josh.” Kade waved a thumb at his friend.
Alice squinted at him. “Welcome, Josh, Have we met?”
“You’ve heard me talk about him. We served together back in the days when Brady and I were a team.”
“It’s nice to meet you in person, Mrs. Sweet.”
The pieces finally fell together and she reached out and pulled the guy into a big old bear hug. “I can’t believe I finally get to meet you.”
Brady, who’d happily been circling Kade’s legs, waiting for his master’s attention, suddenly froze. His nose twitched, and he turned his attention to Josh. The dog let out a soft whine, then bounded forward with such excitement that he nearly knocked Josh over.
“Whoa there!” Josh laughed, dropping to one knee as Brady circled him frantically, tail wagging so hard his whole body shook. “Hey buddy! You remember me, don’t you?”
The dog pressed against Josh, licking his face and whining with pure joy.
“Nah, it’s that hot dog you had for lunch,” Kade teased.
“Now you know you are home.” Alice patted the dog on the head. “Okay, Brady. Let the man catch his breath.” The dog finally settled at her side, Alice waved for the boys to follow her. “Come on in, both of you. The cookies are warm, and I’ve got coffee ready.”
Moving very slowly, Kade glanced around. “Cassie home?”
Alice couldn’t help but smile. She loved the look in his eyes as he searched for his wife. Reminded her of his father.
“What’s all the commo—” Cassie’s mouth dropped open and she pretty much galloped down the stairs, flinging herself into Kade’s open arms.
“There’s a lot of that going on around here.” She tipped her head toward the kitchen and gestured for Josh to follow her. “That hello might take a while.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Josh smiled, and like a good soldier, did what he was told.
“Have a seat. You want something hot or cold to drink?”
“Cold would be fine.” He hadn’t sat yet. “I can help myself.”
She dipped her chin and finally nodded. “I suppose if Brady thinks you’re family, then so do the rest of us. There’s tea and lemonade in the fridge.”
The man’s eyes opened wide. “Fresh lemonade? The stuff that Kade spoke of as the elixir of the gods?”
That had her laughing. “I don’t know about that, but yes, fresh squeezed with a little strawberry too.” For a second she thought, Josh might start to drool.
As Josh took a seat and eyed the fresh baked cookie bars, Kade and Cassie sauntered arm in arm into the kitchen, whispering softly to each other.
Yep, her heart swelled at how happy her children were.
Not that they weren’t happy before when they were still single, but this was just a little different and made Alice’s heart sing.
“Okay, everyone take a seat. I’ve got a pie cooling if anyone prefers a blueberry sour cream.”
Josh let out a low moan, then immediately blushed. “Sorry ma’am, but Kade used to talk about you and your cooking so often, that we all wished we could teleport to Texas, but I never thought there’d be a day when I’d actually get to taste something you made.”
“And that, young man, will get you an extra large slice.” She smiled at him and patted his shoulder before indeed giving him a hefty hunk of her son’s favorite pie.
Sitting down between his buddy and his wife, Kade glanced down at Brady lying at Josh’s feet. “Traitor.”
The dog twitched one ear and Alice would have bet the ranch that Brady shrugged a shoulder.
Ready to settle in and listen to the free-flowing banter between her son, his wife, and his friend, her phone buzzed with a message.
She almost ignored it, but decided with all the chaos of the found money, the new cameras, and the search for Ray, she should at least check who it was.
She immediately recognized the Florida area code.
Brooklyn. Trying to reach Clint, any idea where I can find him?
When that man focused on a chore, a bomb could go off around him and he wouldn’t flinch. “If y’all will excuse me a minute, I need to check on something in the barn.”
Three heads nodded, but the conversation didn’t slow.
She really missed having a full house. Heading out the back door, she moved toward the barn, pleased to find Benny mucking stalls. “How’s it going?”
“Just fine, Ms. Sweet.”
She looked around, craned her neck toward the tack room. “Any idea where Clint is?”
Benny shook his head. “No ma’am. He said he had something he’d been putting off too long, but didn’t tell me what.”
“I see. Thanks.” What could he possibly have been putting off too long?
Making her way back to the house, she considered the possibilities.
For Brooklyn to reach out to her in search of Clint, he must really want to talk to her new foreman, but where to find him.
She’d made it halfway to the main house when she spotted Clint pushing a wheel barrow across the yard, disappearing around the side of the house.
Picking up her pace, she shifted trajectory to catch up with him.
When she reached the side and found him dumping dirt, she stuttered to a halt. “What the heck?”
The only way to make a surprise stick on a place where ten people crossed the yard every five minutes would be to start in the middle of the night.
That, unfortunately, had not been an option.
Instead, taking a few hours early every morning, he’d managed to work quietly along the side of the house without drawing attention to himself.
The trickiest part had been hauling the sand and compost from the opposite side of the house without anyone noticing. Until now.
The sound of Alice’s voice held more curiosity than anger, but either way, he’d been busted before he was completely finished.
Her mouth hanging slightly open, her gaze darted left then right before meeting his. “You cleared out all the weeds.”
Even though it was obvious, he nodded.
Immediately, her focus shifted to the piles of dirt and compost and sand to one side.
Now she was taking inventory. The mountain of overgrown weeds and vines had been cleared, the weatherworn picket fence had been replaced with fresh treated wood, a swing gate with oiled hinges, and lined with chicken wire to keep hungry critters from munching.
Turning the soil for the beds was the last portion of this project. A few more hours and it would have been ready. “I’m almost finished.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
He certainly hoped that was a good thing.
Shaking her head, she seemed to be searching for words. “You didn’t lose the bet.”
“No. But I figured it needed doing anyway. I mean if you were wanting to work the garden again it had to be done. Besides, homegrown always tastes better than store-bought.”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “That’s why I was thinking it was time to clean this up.”
“I hope you don’t mind.” It hadn’t occurred to him that she might not want him to do this.
“Mind?” Finally, a smile teased at her lips. “I’ve been putting this off for months. Couldn’t bring myself to even start. It was so… daunting.”
He found that hard to believe. Alice Sweet wasn’t the kind of woman to shirk hard work.
Bobbing her head, she seemed to be getting over her initial shock. Looking around, she spotted the pitchfork leaning against the wall. “All right. Let’s finish this up. You shovel the soil and I’ll turn it.”
Now this was the Alice Sweet he’d come to know and respect. Ready to roll up her proverbial sleeves and do the hard work. “That won’t be—”
Alice snapped her fingers and snapped erect. “I almost forgot why I came out here. Brooklyn has been trying to reach you.”
Brooklyn. The name sent a jolt through him. The investigator had promised to call with updates on his case, but Clint hadn’t expected to hear anything so soon. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his cell. Two missed calls. Not wasting another minute, he hit return call and listened to it ring.
“I’ll just go back inside.” Alice took a step in retreat and Clint reached out to grab her arm.
Shaking his head, he pulled his hand back, startled by the unexpected jolt that had struck him. “Stay. This is all your doing. Besides, we have no secrets.”
The phone rang twice before Brooklyn picked up. “Clint. I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“Sorry. Ringer was off.” He was tempted to dry his palms along his jeans, but didn’t want Alice to misinterpret nervous energy for guilt. To ensure she knew he wasn’t hiding anything, he put the phone on speaker.
“Been there, done that. I’m sorry it’s taken this long to get back to you.”
If he considered a week long, Clint wondered how fast did this man usually work?
“We’ve had a bit of a challenge gathering all the right information, but this morning we were able to reach your neighbor’s wife. We think we have enough pieces of the puzzle to see more clearly.”
Even though Brooklyn couldn’t see, Clint nodded.
“The first thing we were able to discover about your neighbor is that Frank Walker liked to place bets. On anything. The ponies, auto racing, the weather, you name it. The problem, of course, like any addicted gambler, is that he lost—a lot. Dear Frank owed some very not nice people a very whole lot of money. Did you know his house was in foreclosure?”
His gaze drifted to Alice. “Recently I’d heard it sold in foreclosure, but I didn’t know it back then.”
“Well, he was scraping bottom. His wife had walked out on him by then. She confirmed all of this when we finally tracked her down.”
“Does she know anything more?”
“No, but that was all we needed from her. You and Mrs. Sweet were correct in your suspicions that good old Frank didn’t die from carbon monoxide poisoning. We got our people to take a second look at the autopsy report.”
Clint waited for the other shoe to fall.
“There’s this little thing called blunt force trauma. If the carbon monoxide didn’t do him in, the fractured skull would have.”
When had his life become nothing more than a bad Hollywood movie?
“Here’s where we’ve connected the dots but still need to dot our ‘I’s and cross our ‘T’s.
If you keep in mind that your beat up blue pickup was in the driveway when you came home, and shortly thereafter your house is torched.
Then remember that your neighbor also drove a similar blue pickup truck, even though not the same make, from a distance, say across the street.
If a person is in a hurry, they may not realize the truck was a Ford not a Chevy. ”
Clint was doing his best to process all this info as fast as he could, and he wasn’t liking how it was adding up. “Are you trying to say that I was a mistake?”
“I think so. From what we’ve learned from our sources, we’ve more or less pieced it all together. The loan shark wanted to make an example out of your neighbor. Instead, they torched the wrong house.”
“Can you prove that?”
“Almost. Give us a few more days.”
Clint almost choked on his own laughter. He’d waited all these years, would it kill him to wait a few more days?