4. Grant
FOUR
GRANT
By Thursday the whole county knows.
I hear these versions the way I hear most things about myself in Briar County.
With a particular quality of tired amusement that I've had to work to develop.
Thursday afternoon, I'm replacing brake lines on a '14 Silverado when Mack appears in the garage doorway with the expression he wears when he's about to say something I won't like.
"Woman outside. Says she knows you."
"What woman?"
"Blond. Forties. Drives a Lexus."
I think. "Don't know her."
"She says you definitely know her. She says it like it means something."
I slide out from under the truck. Mack hands me a rag.
The woman in the parking lot is about forty-five, blond the way that costs money, wearing the kind of weekend-casual clothes that aren't casual at all. She's standing near the garage door looking at the salvage yard like it personally offends her.
"Help you?" I ask.
She turns. Studies me with the frank assessment of someone used to being able to read people. "You're Grant Vance."
"Most days."
"I'm Helen Holcomb. My husband is on the county commission."
"Congratulations."
She doesn't crack. "I wanted to speak with you about the situation at the Hills ranch."
"There's no situation."
"There's a woman back from Atlanta with her troubled daughter, staying at a property with significant debt and a family history of—" she pauses carefully, "—drama. And you've apparently involved yourself."
I look at her. "Who told you I was involved?"
"This is Briar County, Mr. Vance." She says my name with a particular inflection, the slight emphasis on Vance, like she's reminding me of something. "Word travels."
"Uh-huh."
"I'm asking you, as a courtesy, to consider the optics of this attachment.
" She shifts. The casual authority of someone who has never really been told no.
"Jessika Mills is trying to rebuild her reputation in this county after the situation with her brother.
You being associated with that family, given your own—" another pause, "—history, would not benefit anyone involved. "
I wipe my hands on the rag. Take my time.
"What county commissioner is your husband?"
"Dan Holcomb."
"Dale Holcomb who voted against the shelter funding last year?"
She blinks. That's not what she expected. "I don't see?—"
"Because I sit on the NA chapter that was running the shelter program." I fold the rag carefully. "The one that loses funding if that vote goes wrong. The one that helps seventeen people a year in this county stop using." I look at her. "But you're worried about optics."
Her jaw tightens.
"I'll think about what you said," I tell her, and walk back inside.
Mack is behind me before I'm through the door. "County commissioner's wife?"
"Apparently."
"What did she want?"
"She wanted me to stay away from the Mills ranch." I pick up my wrench. "Interesting timing, considering the vandalism out there yesterday."
Mack goes quiet in a way that means he's thinking. He's smart, Mack, smarter than the garage makes him look. Former Army, two tours, came home and found that working with his hands was the only thing that made his brain quiet. I understood that from the first day.
"You going to?" he asks.
"Stay away?"
"Yeah."
I slide back under the truck.
"No," I say.
That evening I drive out to the Mills ranch.
I tell myself it's about the fence, there’s another section on the south pasture that needs attention, I noticed it Monday when I was scoping the property. This is not a lie, not exactly. It's the honest part of a more complicated truth.
The truth is: Jessika asked me to dinner and I said no, and I've been thinking about that since I drove away Tuesday afternoon. Not with any particular ambition. Just the way certain things sit in the back of your mind and don't quite let go.
I pull up on the south side of the property and assess the fence without getting out of the truck.
And then I see it.
Tucked under the windshield of Jessika's truck, her dark blue Ford, recognizable now, is an envelope. Plain white. No address visible from here.
I get out.
The envelope is sealed. My name isn't on it, nothing is on it. I leave it and walk around the truck slowly, checking the ground. The gravel has been disturbed here, heavier footprint than mine, pressed in at the toe and light at the heel, someone who was in a hurry.
The barn door is propped open the way it usually is in the afternoon. Inside I can hear Jessika working, the particular sounds of horse care, the scrape of a stall being mucked, water buckets, a soft word said to one of the animals.
I knock on the door frame.
She appears from a stall with a pitchfork and a streak of something across her cheek and zero self-consciousness about either. Something loosens in the air when she sees me, quick, controlled, her expression smoothing into the professional neutrality she defaults to. Then it softens slightly.
"You came back," she says.
"There's something on your truck you should see."
She comes out and looks at the envelope. Something in her face goes careful. She pulls on a rubber glove from her jacket pocket, attorney habit, I realize, and picks it up and opens it.
Inside is a photograph printed on regular paper. Jessika at the co-op in Calwell, coming out the front door. Photographed from a distance, probably a car window.
On the back, three words:
LEAVE IT ALONE.
She stares at it.
"Somebody was at the co-op," she says. Her voice is very controlled. "I went there yesterday."
"I know."
She looks up at me. "How do you know where I was?"
"County commission's wife paid me a visit today. Told me to stay away from here. Mentioned your situation."
Understanding moves across her face. "Helen Holcomb."
"You know her."
"I know who she is." She looks back at the photograph. "This is the second threat in two days. Someone burned the barn and now there's this." She looks at me steadily. "This is about Morgan, isn't it."
Not a question.
"I think so," I say.
"Tell me what you know."
I look at her for a long moment. At the certainty in her dark eyes, the patience behind it, she’s not going anywhere, she's not going to let this go, and she is, I remember suddenly, an attorney. She makes her living knowing when someone is holding something back.
"Not here," I say. "Not like this."
"Then—"
"Dinner," I say. "You offered."
A pause.
Then she almost smiles.