Chapter Thirty-five
Jake drained his beer and followed Tanner as he strode through the house to the back.
Tanner stopped in front of the door and examined the key.
Jake resisted the urge to pull the key from over the door and be a smartass.
Tanner obviously didn’t know about it, and Jake sensed he needed to let his brother have this moment to process what they were doing without him trying to lighten the mood.
“Dad would never let us go in here. I remember once he left the door cracked and I peeked in. I think I was what, seven? He was sittin’ at the desk, writing in a book, papers piled up on the desk, Jeopardy! blaring on the TV. He yelled at me to get the hell out.”
“You never went in, even if he wasn’t in here?”
“He was that kind of mad you don’t mess with. It scared me so I never did it again. If me or Brady even thought about tryin’ to go in, the threat of what he’d do kept us honest.”
Tanner inserted the key into the doorknob. He turned it with a click that echoed through the quiet house, and both men looked at one another at the sound. Tanner gestured in the doorway to him.
“He can’t yell now, can he?” he said, and Jake chuckled. No indeed, he couldn’t.
Tanner fumbled for the light switch as they entered the tiny room, and the lamps lit the interior. It was just as imposing as it was when he’d been in here with Peony, the stale cigar smell, the old furniture, the presence of his father looming in the air.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” Tanner said as he stepped in, and his eyebrows rose. “Thirty years ago, time stopped in this room.”
“Maybe he liked it this way. It was familiar, comfortable. The rest of the house is a showpiece, you know,” Jake said.
Tanner hmphed and gave Jake a look. “You’re not wrong. Dad renovated the entire place after Mom died, but I guess he didn’t want them touching his space. He didn’t like change much.”
No kidding. Like father, like son, Jake thought.
They stood just inside the door, neither of them moving into the room. Tanner obviously needed a moment, turning in place, eyes moving from one thing to another.
“We didn’t find anything in the desk, but I didn’t look too closely at the bookshelf. Maybe there’s something there?” Jake said finally, restless. “Peony looked a bit, but I think it overwhelmed her when we were in here.”
“Hard for her maybe, being where he wouldn’t let anyone else in, not even his wife,” Tanner said, looking around, and his eyes landed on the throw across the back of the desk chair.
“Hey, we had tons of those when I was a kid, all packed away in the back of the big linen closet in the hall. Mom gave ’em all to Peony and Liz the day they moved into the bunkhouse.
Said they were ugly and needed gone. Must’ve missed one. ”
“My mother made those,” Jake said. “I recognized the pattern when I saw it before. Maybe Dad rescued it as a reminder of her?”
“He was never sentimental like that, but who knows anymore.” Tanner grunted and turned to the bookshelf, cracking his knuckles. “There’s some binders on the end, let’s check those.”
He and Jake pulled each of the dozen or so hard-backed blue binders off the shelf one by one, leafing through random pages.
Jake found invoices from private detectives, neatly ordered and stamped paid.
Brett’s ranch paperwork was a mess, but in here everything was filed neatly, in order, years and years of fees and expenses, reports typed out, carbon copies of missing person reports slowly fading purple.
It was like two different men had inhabited the same place.
“Is this all from him looking for you?” Tanner asked, thumbing through grainy photocopies of pictures, notes and lists of what looked to be names in an old phone book.
“Maybe? I have no idea. Peony told me he did. Found me two years or so ago, from what he told her.”
Tanner closed the binder in his hands with a thump. “There’s nothing in here,” he snapped, obviously frustrated, and shoved it back onto the shelf. It wouldn’t go in all the way, and frowning, he gave it another push. “Come on,” he hissed.
“Hang on, there’s something blocking it,” Jake said, and fished in behind it.
A small notebook appeared, the black cover scratched and worn on the corner, a crumbling blue Tropicana banana elastic holding it closed.
Jake opened it to a list of what looked to be number codes running down the first page. They were in date format but truncated with dashes, almost like combinations.
“What the hell is that?” Tanner muttered.
“Safe combinations,” Jake muttered, and his head shot up to the painting on the exterior wall opposite the bookshelf. It was a print of the famous Cowboy painting by Frederic Remington. Very appropriate for the décor of the room.
He strode over to it and carefully lifted it off the wall.
Nothing behind it but some cobwebs and a rusty hook. “No safe,” he muttered.
“Mom bought that print for him. It used to hang in our living room,” Tanner remarked. “Maybe the safe isn’t in this room? I have no idea where it would be, though. Back den?”
“I bet it’s here, we just haven’t seen it yet.” Jake scanned the room again, hoping they’d find something to validate his hunch. His brother was right. More fucking secrets that his father had been hiding. Like a scavenger hunt but with no clues.
Tanner started tapping the exterior walls, and Jake tapped his foot along the floor. Nothing echoed back to them, and after a few minutes, Tanner gave up, his hands on his hips, frowning.
“Would there be a safe in the master bedroom maybe?” Jake asked, his own frustration growing. This was a wild goose chase. He looked down at the book in his hands, the numbers scrawled in faded pen, the pages yellowing.
“Peony would know about it if so. She’s cleaned every inch of this house for years. It wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.”
Tanner turned, eyes roving over the bookshelves, and strode over behind the desk. “There, maybe?” he said and pointed to the middle of the bookshelf nearest the desk.
A piece of stained paneling that matched the color of the shelves covered an entire section. A cover in plain sight. Jake joined him and grasped it with his fingertips, and with some wiggling managed to loosen the panel. Sure enough, underneath it was a black iron safe with a combination dial.
“What’s the last line on that list?” Tanner asked, and Jake thumbed a few pages in to find it.
“07-15-96.”
“Brady’s birthday, huh,” Tanner remarked. He spun the dial and then stepped through the numbers Jake read out, one ear cocked to it, turning it slowly as it clicked.
The door sprang open slightly, and they both stood back, looking at one another.
“Here goes nothing,” Jake said, and opened the door all the way.
A pile of envelopes and various file folders were stacked neatly inside, along with a couple of beaten-up cigar boxes.
On top of that, a 5 x 7 photo in a polished wooden frame was perched sideways.
Jake pulled the photo out first and dusted it off.
It showed a young child on a palomino, reins lifted in his hands, too-big cowboy hat on his head.
The child looked like he was laughing, and the man whose hand was clamped around his waist was grinning, a cigar clenched on one side of his mouth.
Jake studied the picture. That looked like his dad, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Who is that?” Jake asked, and tilted the picture so Tanner could see it.
“It’s not me or Brady, but that’s Dolly and Dad, I’m certain of it. Brady ’n me learned to ride on her, so did Liz when she got here,” Tanner said.
“Dolly, the ancient blind pony in the shaded pen at the front of the stable?”
“Yep. I’ve never known this place without her,” he replied. “She’s earned her retirement and then some.”
“How old is that horse?” Jake muttered, and looked at the picture again. A sudden hope that it was him, the one remembrance his father had hung on to before his mother had left, flitted through, but the picture looked too old, and he would’ve remembered that, wouldn’t he?
“Maybe there’s something written on the back. Dad used to do that to all the pictures we’d put up from rodeo wins and stuff.”
Jake pried off the backing, and Brett’s spiky handwriting appeared in faded black ink.
“‘Henry on Dolly, Spring 1993,’” Tanner read.
“Who’s Henry?” Jake asked, disappointed. It wasn’t him, but it was really odd that this was the photo his father had decided to keep in a safe.
“No fucking idea,” Tanner muttered.
Jake set the picture aside and reached in again, pulling out all the off-white file folders. Several envelopes slid out, and on each, in Brett’s trademark spiky cursive, were names. One for each of them. Tanner, Brady, and Jake.
A smaller one, more the size of a greeting card, slid out between them, and had Liz’s full name on it. Tanner peered back into the safe, and then fished farther back, producing two more. One for Peony and one for Jake’s mother, Heather, which was wrinkled and slightly yellow with age.
“What have we found?” Tanner murmured, looking at them.
They were standing in silence, staring down at the envelopes, when the square of light at the door darkened. Jake looked up over the top of the desk to see Peony was standing there, her hands firmly planted on her hips.
“So you found it. What was that old fox hiding?”
* * *
Liz looked at the letters sitting on the kitchen island counter, lined up in a row. No one had opened them yet. Jake stood, hands in his pockets. Tanner was in the dining room on the phone to Brady.
“You went into Brett’s yelling room?” she said, watching Jake as he shifted the letters with his fingers then stuffed his hand back into his pocket. He looked lost, unsure, a bit haunted.
“Yelling room?” Jake asked.