by Mia Carson
“You know,” Detective Leven mused and turned Johnny so the light touched his face better, “the bruises you said came from a bat look an awful lot like the new bruises you’re sporting now from your friend. Huh, funny how that works out, isn’t it?”
Johnny yanked his face away from him and shook his head. “I’m not going to jail.”
“Oh, but I think you’ll find you are,” Harold said, grinning as he stepped forward. “I hope you have a damn good lawyer, too, because I’m going to bury you.”
“Why? Because you fucked purple-head over there?” Johnny seethed.
Harold’s jaw tensed, but he didn’t charge forward. He held Anna’s hand instead and nodded. “Might be because I love her, too.”
“Love.” Johnny’s eyes widened for a second. They narrowed when he rushed past Leven and the other officer and lunged for Anna. He never reached her. Harold decked him with a right hook, and Johnny stopped in his tracks as his eyes glossed over, dazed.
Harold shook out his hand and grunted. “I’ve been wanting to do that for the past week, you bastard. Stay away from my Anna.”
Anna’s heart warmed, and when he spun around, she leapt into his arms, kissing him fiercely.
Detective Leven cleared his throat, and she reluctantly let their lips part. “If you two would like to join us down at the station so we can get this mess sorted out? Then you can get back to your, uh, moment.” He and the officer dragged a yelling Johnny from the bar. “If you don’t shut your trap, I’m going to taser you,” Leven threatened, and Anna smirked. Seeing Johnny twitching on the floor would be a fitting end to this night.
“Ready to go?” Harold asked. “I’m sure you’d like to get this over with.”
“Yeah, I’ll lock up and then we’re good.” She closed and barricaded the back door leading to the stairs the best she could, but there wasn’t really anything in the bar to steal. The cash was safe at Harold’s place and the contract was with her. She scooped up her purse and flipped off the lights. “Time to go put a man in jail.”
Harold held her hand out the door and during the drive to the police station. She expected to be thrown in another interrogation room and have to wait, but Harold spoke quietly with Detective Leven and he allowed them both to stand in the observation room behind the two-way glass. Johnny was placed in the room on the right while his friend was stuck in the room on the left. His face was red and he spat curses the whole time. Anna cringed away from the glass. What would have happened that night if Harold hadn’t followed her? She would have come face to face with Josh alone. She could handle herself in a simple fist fight, but against a man who was a freaking UFC fighter? He could’ve put her in the hospital without even thinking about it.
“Hey, you don’t have to be in here,” Harold whispered, a worried frown scrunching his face.
“No, I want to hear why,” she insisted. “I can’t believe he did all this because I turned him down. And that I wouldn’t let him be my partner in the bar. Something’s off. I just don’t know what.”
“Your dad and his uncle, were they close?”
Anna set her purse down heavily and paced around the tiny room. “They were friends once upon a time. He came to the funerals and told me we could change the contract if needed but didn’t offer more than that.”
Detective Leven opened the door to Josh’s room and winked at the two-way glass. “Josh Green, correct?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“You waived your right to an attorney?”
“Yeah, I did. I know what I did and I’m not the only one going down for it,” he snapped. “That asshole promised me a hundred grand for doing this shit and he couldn’t pay up.”
“A hundred grand?” Anna whispered. “Johnny doesn’t have that kind of money.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty damn sure, and I definitely didn’t have that much lying around.”
Detective Leven slid over a pad of paper and pen. “Start at the beginning. What did Johnny Tory ask you to do?”
Josh draped his arm over the back of his chair and glared at the far wall. “He calls me up and says he knows where a few hundred-thousand dollars are stashed in this lady’s bar—Anna or whatever. He told me he tried to get to the money, but she won’t let him work with her at the bar and he couldn’t get close enough for her to tell him.”
Anna shook her head. “I have no idea what he’s talking about.” Harold tensed beside her but didn’t say anything.
“And he asked you to help him set up Anna Crawley?”
“He told me to come over and stage a fight. She comes in to save him and I knocked her out. I banged Johnny up to make it look like he was attacked and then bolted.”
Detective Leven nodded. “Anna Crawley never laid a finger on Johnny, then?”
“No. She burst in to save his poor ass, though. Kinda felt bad for her, but I needed the money, man, and she just got a bump on the head.”
Anna’s hand lifted to rub the spot, healed days ago, of course, but there was a different kind of pain settling in her chest now, mingling with the confusion of what Josh was telling the detective.
“What happened once Anna was arrested?”
“Johnny tore the place apart, but he still couldn’t find anything. He said there was no safe in her apartment or the bar, so I went back to check it out. He told me to make it look good and really mess her up, so I did. I still didn’t find a safe in her apartment, and I didn’t get a chance to hit the bar until a few nights later. I poked around and found the safe, but one of the bartenders worked late so I couldn’t break into it then.”
“And you didn’t go back because?”
“Johnny told me to wait. She would be in jail soon enough, and then we would have the bar to ourselves,” Josh explained. “Fucking idiot. He lied. There’s no damn money hidden in that building.”
“Write everything down for me, if you please, including what happened tonight,” Detective Leven stated and tapped the pad of paper. “Sit tight. I’m going to have a word with your friend and be back shortly.”
Josh scribbled down his story as Anna watched. Detective Leven joined them and leaned against the wall. “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” Anna told him. “There’s no money except what I took out of the safe, and it sure as hell wasn’t a few hundred-thousand dollars.”
“I believe you. I have a feeling once I speak with Johnny, I and the entire police department are going to owe you an apology, Anna,” Detective Leven sighed. “Give me a few more minutes and we can figure out what’s going on here.”
Anna nodded and he left. Harold wrapped an arm around her waist and drew her to his chest. “At least the charges against you will be dropped.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s good,” she murmured.
“What are you thinking about?”
“I’m not sure yet, but I’ll let you know,” she promised, and they watched Detective Leven enter the room with Johnny.
“I want a lawyer,” Johnny snapped before Detective Leven sat down.
“Is that so?”
“Yes. I’m not saying a damn word until I get one.”
Detective Leven nodded. “That’s your choice, but let me inform you of one thing first. Your friend has just told me everything I need to know to drop the charges against Anna Crawley. You, on the other hand, were caught breaking and entering, and that’s just to start. My boys have been doing some investigating on you, and they found you’ve been scamming your renters for quite some time. Seven years, to be exact.”
Anna swallowed hard. She knew it. She knew he’d raised the rates for no damn reason. He’d cheated her and the other renters out of their money and then had the gall to try and steal from her?
Johnny’s smug smile fell away. “You can’t prove any of that.”
“Maybe, maybe not. I’ll be sure your lawyer is called.” Detective Leven stood and left, though Anna wanted him to stay and figure out what money Johnny told Josh about. Her pare
nts were far from wealthy. No one in her family had money. Her grandma passed a couple of years before her parents’ accident, but all she left behind was enough to cover her funeral expenses. Her mom’s parents were long gone and neither had siblings, so where was this damn money coming from?
“He’s coming back,” Harold told Anna, and she tried to focus as Detective Leven opened the door. “She’s free and clear, right?”
“Yes. The charges will be dropped against Anna, and once this idiot’s lawyer shows up, we’ll figure out what he’s rambling on about. You’re sure you have no idea what he was talking about?”
“No,” Anna assured him. “If I had, we wouldn’t be in this mess. I would have used the money to buy out the bottom floor already. He’s not getting out of here tonight, right?”
“If he makes bail, he could, but I’ll try to have someone watching your bar once he’s out. It’ll take a few days, and if this goes to court, you’ll have to testify against him.” He held out his hand to Anna and she took it. “I am sorry for the grief we caused you. Your parents were good people, especially your dad. He’d be damn proud of you these past seven years.”
Anna smiled, unable to speak around the lump in her throat.
“If you don’t need her anymore, I think we’re going to get out of here,” Harold said.
“Please, get some rest. You’re going to need it.”
Anna let Harold guide her from the police station and back to his car. He started the engine, but she grabbed his arm before he pulled away. “Go back to the bar.”
“What? Anna, it’s three in the morning. You need sleep.”
“Just trust me. Go back to the bar, please?”
He hung his head but didn’t argue and headed for The Crawler. She unlocked the front door once they arrived and flipped on the lights. “What are you looking for?”
“I’m not sure yet, but if Johnny thinks there’s something here, then there’s got to be something.”
“What are you going to do? Tear the place apart? You’ve been in this bar every single day since your dad opened it,” he reminded her gently. “If he hid money somewhere, don’t you think you would’ve found it by now?”
She tossed her purse on the bar and planted her hands on her hips. “Dad was always good at hiding things,” she told him quietly as she scrutinized the walls around her. “He loved puzzles, and he was always making scavenger hunts for me and Mom, ever since I was little.”
“You think he left one for you?” he asked skeptically.
She couldn’t blame him. Her dad leaving behind a puzzle was farfetched, especially since he had no way of knowing he and his wife would be killed all those years ago. As she paced around the room, Harold drew out his cell, turning it back on, she assumed. They’d turned both of them off while they waited in the dark for Johnny to break into the bar. He put it to his ear and his eyes widened.
“Anna, I think you need to hear this,” he told her and held out his phone, putting it on speaker. “You remember I told you we were trying to get ahold of Johnny’s Uncle Terry? He finally called me back.” He hit play on the message and a familiar voice came through the phone.
“Mr. Jenson, I’m sorry it’s taken me a few days to get back to you. I’ve been traveling in the mountains and have terrible reception. As far as anything with my nephew goes, he’s a greedy little bastard who I hoped would turn over a new leaf. Since it appears he hasn’t, I’ll be headed home first thing in the morning to sort him out. If he’s coming after Winston’s bar and his daughter, it’s probably because he overheard Winston and me speaking one night. All I know is my friend was coming into a large sum of cash that would help pay for the bar. When he died and his daughter didn’t say anything about it, I assumed she’d used it to pay off their debts and for their funerals, but I’m afraid that’s all the help I can give. I’ll be in touch as soon as I reach Concord.”
The message ended, and Anna glanced at Harold, wide-eyed and her heart pounding. “A large sum of cash? I never found anything like that.”
“You said you’re parents never made a will?”
“No, nothing. If he had money like that, why wouldn’t he have just told me?” She spun around to stare at a photo of her parents on the far wall. “Why would he wait?”
“Their accident was a few weeks before you turned twenty-one,” he said slowly. “Was it possible he was waiting for your birthday?”
Frustrated, she rubbed hard at her face. “I don’t know, but I need a drink.”
She paced behind the bar for a bottle of tequila and set out a shot glass. The clear liquid splashed into it, and she shot it back, sucking in a sharp breath as it went down hard. Her eyes wandered around the bar. Since her parents’ deaths, she hadn’t moved a thing. Not a picture, not a trinket, nothing. She squinted across the bar at a photo of her dad pointing. She assumed he pointed at something behind whoever was taking the picture…but what if she was wrong?
“That photo,” she mumbled, walking to it. “Where does it look like he’s pointing?”
Harold joined her by it and turned around to face the bar. “Towards the back wall, I think. Why?”
She followed the pointing finger and hurried to the back wall where more photos hung. She searched each one for a sign, while in the back of her mind she told herself she was losing it. All of this could be for nothing and she was grasping at straws. But she spied the photo of her parents, taken out west somewhere on one of their bike rides. Both grinned down at her from the wall. They weren’t pointing, but her dad wasn’t looking at the camera. His eyes stared off to the left. Anna’s heart racing, she followed his gaze to the wall behind the bar where a few more scattered photos hung.
“Come on, Dad,” she whispered, bouncing on her toes. “Help me out here.”
“Are you sure there’s something here?” Harold asked.
“I don’t know…” She trailed off when her gaze landed on another photo of her dad and her. She smiled sadly at the image, remembering that day perfectly. They stood outside the bar. He’d just told her that one day, he would retire early with her mom and they would leave the bar to her if she wanted it. Keeping The Crawler going for her dad and carrying on his legacy was always her dream, and that day, she had been so close to having everything she could ask for. A month after that photo was taken, she lost her parents.
He told her about the bar and how special it was to him. How important it was she not change a thing, especially the bar itself. “Because it’s the most important part of the room,” she whispered, trying to remember exactly what he told her. “When everything else looks ready to fall around you, go back to the bar.”
“What?” Harold asked.
“What he told me that day,” she said and turned around to face the bar her dad had built with his bare hands. Over the years, he constantly reminded her how important taking care of the bar was, not the bar as a whole, but this particular piece of it. She walked around to the front of it, rapping her knuckles on the wooden front. She listened intently, and when the sound changed, she paused.
Harold hurried over and knocked his knuckles in the same place. “Do you have a hammer?”
Grinning madly, she rushed to the storeroom and found a hammer on the table. She brought it back and gripped it in her hands. “Step back.”
Holding her breath and praying she wasn’t about to destroy her dad’s beautiful handiwork, she swung the hammer hard into the wood. The panel popped out in the upper corner easily—too easily. This bar was supposed to be solid wood. She swung it again until another corner popped out of place. Prying the wood free, she tossed it aside and worked at it frantically with Harold until the panel fell away and she could see a gap that should have led into the back cabinets under the bar. She stuck her hand inside. Shaking, her hand slipped inside and felt around. There was a shelf of some kind, and when she reached farther in, her hand brushed against something that felt like paper bills. They were stacked and wrapped. She grabbed it and pulled it out in
to the light of the bar.
“Does…does that say ten thousand?” she whispered in disbelief, staring at the wrapped bills in her hand.
“Yes, yes, it does,” he replied. “Was it the only one?”
“I don’t know.” She set it aside and reached back in, feeling around. “Oh, my God. Harry…get another hammer.” She drew out two more stacks. “I think we just found my dad’s hidden stash!”
Anna had no idea how much time had passed as she and Harold tore apart the bar piece by piece. Her dad had turned it into one giant box puzzle, an intricate design that hid a large sum of money for seven long years. The sun came up, trying to poke through a dark clouded morning as more snow threatened to fall on Concord. Not that she cared. She lost track of how many stacks of bills they found in the bar as each piece was pried away. The more they dug into the bar, the more she realized that sometime over the years, her dad had replaced all these pieces as he hid the money away. When she came across his handwritten note, she finally found her explanation for it all.
Tears sprang to her eyes as she sat in Harold’s lap on the floor, bits and pieces of the bar scattered around them along with the stacks of cash. She hadn’t been able to read it, so Harold did the honors.
“He says, ‘Happy 21st Birthday, Anna. I can’t wait until you find what’s here. It’s not enough to fully purchase the bar from Terry, but if the bar keeps doing well, you’ll own it straight out in a few years. Your grandma had a number of bonds in her possession she left to me, and I’m leaving it all to you. Your mother and I are so proud of you, and I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to see you follow in your old man’s footsteps. This place is yours now. I’m sure it will treat you well and lead you to do great things, as it has for me. While you take over the bar, we’re going to get back on our motorcycles and take that trip we’ve been talking about. You’re going to do great, baby girl. With all our love, Mom and Dad.’ That’s all there is.”
Anna wiped her eyes and sniffed, taking the note back from Harold. She ran her fingers over the words. “I had no idea.”