Chapter Twelve
“I’ve heard of this place but never set foot inside.” Lil and Jordan crossed the street to the Wolf Den midblock.
They’d stopped briefly at the sheriff’s office, talked to Deputy Phil, and discovered that Gremlin had not given up a name, despite his claim that he knew who shot the cow. Phil’s assessment was that he’d just been trying to save his ass.
“How about the fight Gremlin had with Joe Whitney?” Jordan asked. “That might have something to do with it.”
“Who doesn’t Joe fight with?” Phil replied. “Honestly, if anyone was going to rat anyone else out, it would have happened by now.”
“Who is Joe Whitney?” Lil asked as they left the sheriff’s office.
“Joe is a really smart guy with a bad temper, who does odd jobs for money because he keeps getting fired from regular jobs.”
“Do you think that my cow was an odd job?”
“Let’s just say I’d like to eliminate the possibility. And for that we’ll go to Joe’s home turf.”
So it was that they headed to the roughest bar in Marietta.
When they arrived at the establishment, Jordan hesitated at the door. “You never know what you’ll come up against in here,” he said. “But midday ought to be quiet. I hope.” He looked down at Lil, as if wondering if he should have her wait outside.
Lil was having none of that. She gestured to the heavy wooden door, and he pulled it open.
The interior was so dark that it took a moment for his eyes to adjust as they stepped inside. A fan turned overhead, stirring the scents of beer and decades-old cigarette smoke that had permeated the walls during the days when smoking in public was legal.
“Hey, Ben,” Jordan said to the barkeep, a smallish man with a luxurious mustache, as he escorted Lil across the room.
Ben lifted his chin in acknowledgment. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Because I don’t go to town too often.”
“Heard you had a windfall.”
Jordan simply nodded. “An unexpected one. Two draughts.”
Lil and Jordan settled on stools and, after pouring what must have been Jordan’s usual since he never inquired, the barkeep went about his business of stocking glasses, wiping down bottles.
He tossed out a couple more questions about the Willow Creek inheritance as he worked and Jordan answered easily.
“You lost a cow,” the barkeep stated, and Lil glanced down at her beer so as not to telegraph her sudden interest as the man steered the conversation toward their objective.
“Looks like a varmint shooting gone wrong,” Jordan said flatly. “Gremlin said he knew who the bad shot is, but he’s not being too free with the information. I don’t suppose he told you?”
“Gremlin was in the process of being arrested when he said that. He’s full of shit.”
“Strike one,” Jordan muttered to Lil in a low voice as the barkeep disappeared into the stockroom.
They drank their beers, staring into the mirror at the back of the bar instead of talking.
The only other patron of the bar, seated near the pool table, scraped his chair back and Lil glanced over her shoulder at the noise.
He brought his glass to the bar and set it there, pulled a couple of bills out of his wallet in anticipation of the barkeep’s return.
“You know that Gremlin will say anything to cover his ass,” he said before giving Lil a quick once-over.
Jordan raised a warning eyebrow, and the guy had the grace to look sheepish.
Jordan lifted his glass. “Guess he didn’t do too good a job of that when Joe came looking for him.”
“Yeah. That was something.” The man rubbed his forehead. “Even for Joe. Guess that’ll teach Gremlin not to hit on Joe’s woman.”
“Who is she?” Jordan asked with genuine curiosity. “Anyone I might know?”
The guy frowned. “Dunno.”
Jordan nodded and faced the mirror behind the bar again as the barkeep came out of the stockroom and settled the man’s tab. “See ya,” he called after his patron.
The man raised a hand as he opened the door, momentarily flooding the room with sunlight.
Jordan cocked his head at the barkeep. “Do you know who Joe is seeing?”
The bartender shook his head. “He never brings her here.”
“Heard he’s doing all right, though. Better than Gremlin.” Jordan drained the last of his beer.
The barkeep laughed. “His face is prettier, but yeah. Whatever his last job was, it must have been a good one because he’s flush. Boy needs to learn to keep his temper, though.”
“That’s why I never hired him.” Jordan pulled out his wallet.
“Why didn’t you ask where we could find this Gremlin person?” Lil asked as they hit sunlight. She squinted and pulled her sunglasses down from the top of her head. “And why is he called Gremlin?”
“His name is Grimaldi. He got nicknamed in grade school and it stuck.”
“Didn’t find out much, did we?”
“We found out that Gremlin is full of shit, Joe is flush, and that no one in the Wolf Den has met his girlfriend.”
*
“Chased any cows lately?” Sara Crabbe, the woman behind the counter at the courthouse assessor’s office, stop number two of Lil and Jordan’s fact-finding mission, cracked up at her own joke. “That night was one for the books.”
“Perhaps you’d like to meet the man responsible,” Lil said, taking hold of Jordan’s arm.
Sara’s eyes widened. “No. I’d heard rumor that it was Burke Thurley who released the cows.”
“You heard correctly,” Jordan replied. “My brother and I were merely”—he glanced down at Lil—“bystanders.”
She nudged him and he grinned.
“We’re here for two reasons,” Lil explained. “We want to look at older plats, and I wanted to give you my business card.” She pulled one out of the upper pocket of her jeans jacket. “Aubrey told me that you might be interested in my services in the future.”
The shadow that crossed the woman’s face was barely noticeable. Unfortunately, Lil did.
“You heard?”
“I’m really sorry for what happened. Have you had any other issues?”
Lil shook her head. “To be safe, I moved my operations to Jordan’s ranch for the time being.”
Sara’s face cleared. “The Tree Fork, right? Wade Matthews’s place.”
“That’s the one.”
“Jim Reed subdivided the adjacent property recently.” She smiled at Jordan. “I recorded that map when I was in land services.”
Lil shot Jordan a sideways look. He was still waiting to hear on his mortgage that would allow him to buy that property, and even though it seemed like a sure thing, she knew he was still concerned about the off chance of being turned down.
“Can you tell us how to access archived property maps?” he asked Sara. “We’re trying to trace down an owner.”
“All you need is an address and you can do that online.”
“Except that there really was no address at the time. I’m wondering who owned the Willow Creek Property in the 1990s and before.”
Sara ran a hand over her face. “I might be able to just tell you that. Give me a minute.”
She disappeared through an archway that connected to the office next door.
When she came back, she said, “That would be R. F. Weston. Robert Frank. A nonresident owner. According to what we have on file, he sold the ranch to Mr. Jordan in the mid-nineties and then put the rest of the land into a conservancy. He passed away a few years ago. JoBeth managed the title change to the heir.”
“So the conservancy now belongs to …”
“R. F. Weston, an LLC based in Nevada.”
“An LLC?”
“Apparently Mr. Weston created an LLC at some point. The heir inherited.”
“At least we have a name,” Jordan said five minutes later as they left the building. “Not sure what good it does us, but I agree with Maya. We need all the information we can get.”
Lil stopped at the bottom of the steps. “I think that your last message to Connery got through and the weird stuff is over.”
“That would be perfect.” His mouth tightened. “I have a hard time with perfect.”
Lil made a noncommittal noise.
“What?”
“Have you looked in the mirror lately?” Because he was amazing, especially when his clothing wasn’t blocking her view of him.
He tapped the brim of her ballcap, and it fell over her eyes.
“Hey.” She pushed the brim back into place.
“What?”
“We’re on a city street. No roughhousing.”
His grin was slow and sexy. “You want to see roughhousing?”
She pretended to consider. “Maybe.”
“We’ll continue this later,” he said, taking her arm and hurrying her across the street to where they parked.
She hadn’t had this kind of easy fun with a guy in …
well, not ever. This was a whole new experience for her.
She and Jordan had sidestepped some things, jumped ahead in others because they’d made clear their boundaries.
She didn’t worry about him getting too invested after Aubrey’s account of his dating history and his own assurances.
But what if you get too invested?
She hated her killjoy inner voice sometimes, and she flashed on Maya telling her not to let fear rule. This wasn’t so much fear as caution, she assured herself. New territory and all. She’d be stupid not to be cautious, but she needed to trust herself, trust him, not to breach unspoken boundaries.
“Why are you scowling?”
Lil gave Jordan a startled look as he opened her truck door for her. “I was trying to remember something for my grocery list.”
He gave her a yeah-right look, then leaned down and kissed her. Right there on the street. She put her hand on his chest, not to push him away, but to feel the warmth of his skin through the cotton shirt.
“I was talking myself into being in the here and now,” she admitted.
“Good. Keep it up. I like the here and now.”
“But what if—”
He cut her off with another quick kiss, then gestured to the interior of the cab. Lil took the hint and got inside.
They went to the usual places where one went while in town—the grocery store, the hardware store, the feed store. They’d just got into the truck at the last stop when Lil’s phone rang. It was Sara putting Lil’s business card to good use.
“I have something else.”
“What’s that?” Lil asked. “Wait. I’m putting you on speaker.”