by Amy Isaman
Amy Isaman
Cold Hard Cache
Copyright © 2021 by Amy Isaman
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
First edition
Editing by Dayna Hart
Proofreading by Crystal Blanton
Cover art by Sara Oliver Design
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Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Thank You
About the Author
Also by Amy Isaman
Read on for an excerpt of The Overlander’s Daughter
Dedication
For Gary and my kids, Garet and Haley. Love you!
Chapter 1
I WALKED SLOWLY BEHIND my mom, my hands held low, ready to catch her in case her hip gave out and she couldn’t hold her weight with the walker. She shuffled along, pain and frustration clear in every audible breath as she worked her way down the hall toward the bathroom. I hated seeing her in so much pain.
We finally made it to the bathroom, and mom navigated the corner. I held onto her and pulled the walker out of the way, turning it so she could get herself up when she was done. I stepped outside to give her some privacy.
While I stood like a sentry outside the bathroom and waited, I studied the pictures from my childhood lining the hallway. My favorite was one where she kneeled by a stream with my baby sister on her hip. I stood next to her, maybe five years old, holding a miniature fishing pole with a teeny tiny trout dangling from the hook. A huge smile covered her young face which was now aged with soft wrinkles, many of which I knew my sister and I helped etch there.
The bang of the front door flinging open jarred me, and I heard my sixteen-year-old niece Madi, before I saw her. “Auntie Trish? You here? Where’s Grams?”
“She’s in the bathroom. We’ll be right out,” I yelled.
Madi was going to be her Grams’ sitter for a few hours while I met my childhood best friend for a glass of wine and dinner. I think my mom was looking forward to a few hours with her granddaughter as much as I looked forward to a break. Caregiving was rough, as my mom was in pain and more demanding than she normally was. But I could never vent my frustration to my sister who’d been taking care of her, getting her to all of her appointments, being the good daughter for years, which she managed to point out at least once a day for the past week.
For the past hour, Mom must have glanced at the clock or her watch every four or five minutes and commented about Madi’s arrival. Every week, they watched one of those talent-competition shows together and had since Madi was little. It was their thing, and obviously a highlight of my mom’s week.
My highlight was getting together with my high school bestie, Debbie. We hadn’t seen one another in person in well over a decade, though we exchanged the requisite Christmas cards, commented on one another’s social media posts, and chatted on the occasional birthday phone call, but no in-person hugs.
“I’m ready,” my mom yelled.
I opened the door to find her standing and gripping her walker, “You’re up!”
She laughed. “I almost feel like a regular adult. I sat down, peed, and stood up all by myself. I feel like I’m getting a little stronger.”
“That’s great. And Madi just got here.”
My mom smiled and moved slowly down the hall with her walker. I followed her to the family room and stood by as she got herself seated on her hard chair while she looked longingly at her comfy recliner. I hurried to the kitchen for my purse, which sat on the new shiny granite counter. My sister and mom had completely redone the front of the house a few years ago. Now, it was stylish and sleek, but I missed the country-blue and mauve kitchen that she loved so much when she redecorated it in the eighties.
I left the house and headed toward main street. It was only eight blocks to Shepherds, and little had changed since I’d been gone. Some of the houses had changed hands. New owners had repainted the Schmidt’s old house a bright turquoise and hung a variety of bird houses and wind chimes from the porch. The Wood’s house had also gotten a make-over. A stroller was parked on the front walk, so a younger family lived there now. I pulled my cardigan tighter as a cool spring breeze ruffled the just budding leaves on the trees, and I regretted not grabbing a heavier jacket from the hall closet. Instead, I sped up my walk and hurried to the restaurant.
Debbie waited for me by the bar, two glasses of red wine in front of her. We hugged, and she handed me one.
“Cheers! Let’s hope it’s not another twelve years before I see your face. Are you hungry? Our table is ready if you are. I’m starving.”
I laughed. She hadn’t changed. She was tall and thin, and her figure never seemed to reflect her love of a good meal like mine did. We walked across the bar to the dining room. This place hadn’t changed either. Maybe they’d added a few new photos of hunters with their trophies, smiling guys in baseball caps gripping the antlers of huge elk and deer, but other than that, it felt exactly like it did thirty years ago.
As soon as we sat, Debbie leaned in. “So, tell me about London. And Darius. Your life is so exciting, and I’m still here. I want to hear everything.”
I smiled and dove into sharing the biggest adventure of my life which happened last summer in London.
“Wow,” she said when I finished. “I’ve always felt safe here in Elk Creek. It’s a small town. Nothing crazy like that ever happens. But then I think back to what we did to entertain ourselves when we were younger. Do you remember?”
“Yeah, like blindfolding whoever was driving and navigating the streets of our small town, telling them to go faster, slower, and where to turn before we took off the blindfolds and drove the thirty miles to the nearest Dairy Queen where we could get a Dilly Bar? That?” I shook my head, unable to imagine my own kids doing that in San Francisco where we lived. I’d have a heart attack, but back then, I hadn’t given it a second thought. We thought that riding around with a blindfolded driver was fun.
Debbie laughed. “Yes, that. And drag racing. And 4-wheeling in the mountains. Nobody knew where we were or what we were doing. Drinking way too much beer that we stole from our parent’s garage refrigerators. I don’t know how many times I drove drunk because it wasn’t a thing not to. More than that, it’s a perfect miracle that we didn’t kill ourselves or somebody else. It terrifies me to think that our kids are as stupid as we were.”
“I wonder if those terrifying traditions have been passed down. Do you think they still d
o that? I’ll have to ask Madi. Then again, maybe not. I certainly don’t want to be the one to resurrect it, even though the streets haven’t gotten that much busier since I’ve been gone.”
“God, I hope they don’t do that anymore. My kids would lose all driving privileges forever if they are.”
“You know what’s crazy,” I added. “I always thought that raising my kids in the city was more dangerous than this small town, but I don’t think so. We were dumb, and I’m sure my kids were too.”
“I’m sure they are in their own way,” Debbie added. “And we probably do too much for them and protect them a bit much, too. We had so much more freedom.” And then we were off again, reminiscing about old friends and what happened to who.
Ninety minutes later, I leaned back in my chair and sighed. I felt stuffed. One thing I’d learned in my years away from home was that not many restaurants, even the finest steak houses in a metropolitan city, could beat the lamb at a local Basque house. Nor did other restaurants serve nearly as much food as a family-style meal at Shepherds. My face hurt too from laughing, and I tried to stretch out my cheeks.
As I set my purse on my lap, my phone pinged… again. It had gone off a few times during dinner, but I’d ignored it.
“Do you need to grab that?” Debbie asked.
I glanced at the screen and groaned. “No, I do not.” I slid my phone across the table toward her, and she began snorting with laughter.
I had nine missed notifications from the dating app that Laurel set up for me the day before. She thought that maybe a little online romance might make my stay at my mom’s more fun. Debbie read the messages out loud, and we howled, though not one enticed me to reach out to the sender. My whole face hurt from smiling.
“Oh, good lord. That’s funny,” she said. “Thanks for the laugh. Are you going to respond to any of them?”
“Not any of those. Would you?”
Debbie shook her head. “Probably not.”
I pushed open the door of Shepherds and gave Debbie one last hug. I waved at her husband, a man I’d known since the 4th grade who waited for her in front of the restaurant. He waved back as I turned to head home. Thankfully, it was close. Uber drivers could never make a living out here, so it was either walk, call a friend, or drive a little tipsy. I couldn’t remember the last time I ate that much food in one sitting. I welcomed the walk and the empty streets, happy that I didn’t need to worry about walking around at night with my guard up, like I did at home. It hadn’t even occurred to me to feel scared here, though out of habit I did have my purse zipped all the way up, worn across my body and tucked almost into my armpit.
Two blocks away, I could hear pounding music and shouting pouring from the propped open doors of Charlie’s Bar. A small group spilled onto the sidewalk, and I crossed the street to avoid the crowd. Getting off Main Street would be quieter and a bit more peaceful. My mom’s house was almost stiflingly quiet, compared to my San Francisco apartment where absolute silence never reigned. But peaceful wasn’t necessarily how I’d describe my mom’s either, not with my little sister popping in and out to make sure I was taking care of mom “right.”
I wrapped my cardigan around me in the cool spring air and gazed up at the stars, which I could see here. That was something I missed. It had been hard getting used to seeing a starless sky when I left and seeing them now made me feel at home in a way I hadn’t since I arrived.
I reached the end of the block and turned right at the Laundromat that looked exactly the same. The word “Laundromat” had always been painted in red across the white concrete block building. The words were faded a bit but still legible. The plate-glass windows on this side of the entry showed that the interior hadn’t changed much, if at all.
The building took up half the block, and I remembered hauling laundry there for two months one summer when our washing machine broke, and my parents hadn’t been able to afford the repairs. My mom refused to pay for the dryer when there was a perfectly hot and free sun hanging in the sky that could dry our clothes for us. We lugged super-heavy wet loads back home and hung them out on the lines to dry.
I passed the laundry’s entry and meandered slowly, my head cocked back, gazing at the sky and enjoying the quiet. A soft moan brought my attention back to the sidewalk. An old man sat leaning against the Laundromat. He grasped at his chest as if he were having a heart attack. My own heart leapt in panic. I knelt down, only to be immediately enveloped in a fog of alcohol fumes.
“Sir?” I yelled. He moaned softly and shook his head, his grizzled face scrunched up tight as if in pain. Was the old man just drunk? Or was he dying?
The old man was slumped over, just under the swirly red L painted on the side of the Laundromat. Why I noticed that I have no idea, but I did. He wore a rusty orange canvas Carhartt jacket, the kind every man in every small town seemed to own, jeans and ancient work boots. His face was lined and grizzled, with a gray scruffy beard. His legs jutted across the sidewalk, and his body slowly listed to the side.
I yelled again, hoping the sound of my voice would get him to open his eyes, and gently squeezed his shoulder.
Thank God it worked. His eyes fluttered open as he moaned. He looked vaguely familiar, but I wasn’t sure if that was because he sort of resembled Henry, a kindly homeless man that often camped out in my neighborhood in the city, or if I knew him from my childhood. I leaned in and squeezed his shoulder again, giving him a soft shake. “Sir? Do you need help?”
He held his left hand in a tight fist in front of his chest and with his right he grasped at my sweater, pulling me in closer. I tried to pull back, but he grabbed at my purse strap with a vise-like grip, surprisingly strong for someone who seemed injured.
“Get it out,” he mumbled and dropped his hand to his stomach and pulled open his coat. The handle of a Leatherman tool protruded from his stomach. A dark circle of blood stained his shirt.
“Oh, my God. Holy shit. Don’t move. I need to call 911.” I glanced up and down the street but didn’t see a soul to yell to for help.
His wiry arms pulled me in closer. “You need the key,” he said, his voice breathy and weak.
My eyes darted from his face to the blood that was spreading across his entire abdomen and dripping onto the sidewalk.
“The key? No, I need to call 911.” I tried to loosen his fingers but that wasn’t working. With my free hand, I reached into the outside pocket of my purse and pulled out my phone. His grasp weakened a bit and his hand fell onto my purse, which he seemed to clutch as a lifeline.
As I dialed, he loosened his grip on my purse and reached for the knife handle. A blast of wind hit us. He shut his eyes and moaned again, grimacing in pain as he wrapped his hand around the handle.
“Get it out,” he mumbled again.
“I’m calling for help. Just relax. Leave it there, I think.” I tried to reassure him. I only had to press three numbers, but the shaking of my hands made that task a challenge. I was not equipped to handle this. Should I pull the knife out? Leave it in?
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“An old man has been stabbed and is bleeding by the Laundromat in Elk Creek. Send an ambulance. NOW. Hurry.”
I tried to speak without screaming in a panic. He looked up at me and repeated, “You need the key.”
He closed his eyes and took a slow breath. Holy crap. He was dying. And he was worried about a key?
Chapter 2
“I THINK HE’S DYING. His breathing is really slow,” I told the operator.
The operator paused. “Okay. Paramedics are on the way. Keep him talking if you can. Keep him alert. How do you know he’s been stabbed?”
“Because there’s a knife handle sticking out of his stomach,” I yelled at my phone.
“Okay. Don’t touch the knife. If you pull it out, he’ll bleed out much faster.” I hadn’t intended to touch the knife, but now I was afraid of him moving it and making it worse.
“He’s holding onto the handl
e.”
“If he’s holding still, that’s fine. Try to keep him steady. If he’s moving, see if you can remove his hand slowly. He’s only making the wound worse.”
“Give me your hand,” I said. “Let go of the knife. They’re on the way and they’ll take it out, but you can make it worse.”
The man held his hand still but didn’t release the handle. “You need the key,” he repeated again in a low mumble.
“He keeps saying that I need the key.”
“Alright. Keep him talking about the key. Doesn’t matter what you’re talking about, just keep him awake. It’ll be a few more minutes. I’ll see if I can get a deputy there a little faster to assist. Ask him about the key.”
“A few more minutes?”
I could do this. I’d been in hard situations before. “Okay, okay, I’ll keep him talking.” I took a breath and leaned in a bit. “The key. Where’s the key?”
He closed his eyes, his breathing shallow, and I willed the paramedics to hurry the hell up. I reached out and gently squeezed his shoulder. “Hey, look at me. Stay with me.”
His eyes fluttered, and he whispered, “It’s my legacy… in the heart… of Iris.”
I leaned in. “Your legacy? Uh, is it a key?”
He closed his eyes and leaned back. “Carly?”
“No. I’m not Carly. Who’s Carly?”
He mumbled something again, but all I could get was the word Iris. And maybe ‘heart.’
“The heart of Iris? Do you want me to give a key to Iris? Is that your wife? Or Carly?” He sat silently, his eyes closed and breathing labored. “Sir?” I leaned in closer, trying to keep him alert. A figure bolted out from the laundry’s entry way.
I screamed.
“Ma’am?!?” The 911 operator shouted into the phone. “Ma’am are you there? Are you okay?”
I stared after the runner as they ran toward Main street, before veering around the corner and vanishing. I walked by that door, but it was recessed from the street by a few feet. With my stargazing, I hadn’t even noticed anyone in there. I hadn’t even noticed the old guy until I almost tripped over him.