by Tegan Maher
She pulled the picture off the wall and set it aside, then stood on her tiptoes to see the dial as she spun the combination lock. Counterclockwise, clockwise, counterclockwise.
"When you go to pull it open, will you use just the upper corner in case something's squirrelly and we need to dust for prints?" I asked as she spun it the last time.
"I guess you're probably right. I hadn't thought of that." She pulled on the door but nothing happened. She redid the combination and when it still wouldn't open, she stared at it, puzzled.
"That's the same combination we've used for everything since we were married. It don't make any sense that it's not workin'."
I stepped forward. "Mind if I give it a try?"
"Why do you think it would work for you when I've stood here and done it three times?"
"It probably won't," I said. "But I'll gladly give it a shot. No offense, but since I'm a little taller than you, it could just be that you didn't get the numbers lined up just right. Sometimes they're touchy."
I stepped forward and asked her to repeat the combination and she did.
I stepped forward and touched the combination, focusing on the tumblers inside as I spun the dial to the numbers she was rattling off.
I didn't know exactly how this one worked, but I had the general idea, so it only took a second before I pulled the door open by the top corner.
When the door swung open, there wasn't a red cent in there. The paperwork was there, but no cash.
She scratched her head, and Max popped in, shaking his head. "No. No, no, no," he said, wagging his finger. "There should be at least five grand in there, and for some reason, ten is the number stuck in my head."
I turned to see if Emily could see him. She was still staring into the safe thinking, so apparently not.
I raised my eyebrows and nodded toward Emily with my head, silently asking why he wasn't talking to her. I couldn't exactly come out and say, "Hey, your husband's ghost says there should be ten grand there." In my experience, that never worked, and usually got you thrown off the property.
"I'm trying. It won't work!" He was waving his hands in front of her face, floating up and down in front of her. She shivered, but just reached up to close the door.
A flash of color caught my eye and I stopped her before she shut it. Reaching in, I shoved the business paperwork to the side and pulled out the colored paper. It was just a travel brochure for the Grand Canyon.
"That's ... odd," Emily said. "The kids and I were just talking about the Grand Canyon the other day."
I turned to question Max about it, but he adopted his thousand-yard stare. Sure enough, he glanced at his watch and uttered the phrase I was getting sick and tired of hearing. "Gotta go see Darlin'."
Emily was holding the pamphlet and I wasn't sure whether she was going to smile or cry. Or maybe both. "Does that mean something to you?" Rae asked.
"I don't know what it means, sugar. I been wantin' to go that direction and see the stuff out west all my life, but we ain't never had the time to do any of it.
"Then lately, he's been actin' all odd, disappearin' and messing with the money." She shook her head. "Since Hank's not bleedin' us dry, we should be plenty in the black, but it's just not so." She wiped a tear from under her eye. "I wish I could tell you girls what was going on, but I don't know, myself."
We followed her back to the office. "I just want to grab the ledger and a couple of other things for now, so I'll just be a minute."
"Take your time," I said, looking around at the plain office. There were stacks of papers, but it was neat and there seemed to be an order to things.
"I feel like a complete fool for asking, but would you mind telling me how much he bid your job for?"
"Considering you own the business, I think it's okay to discuss money with you," I smiled and told her the amount we'd agreed upon.
She ran her tongue over her teeth. "The book shows he bid almost two grand less than that."
All I could do was shrug. "I just wrote the check for half down."
"Hopefully it won't be much longer than a few days before things are moving again. I just need to go through all of this and find a foreman."
She stuck a key into a lock on the left-hand drawer, opened it, and pulled out a couple of ledgers and an appointment book. When she did, something slid out of one of the ledgers and I bent down to pick it up for her.
It was a stack of receipts, and the one on top was for fifteen hundred bucks. It was only initialed D. Tenney and said Cindy Lou in the memo. I handed them back to Emily, and if the steam coming out her ears was any indication, there was trouble in turn two.
Chapter Nineteen
Needless to say, Emily didn't handle it well, though she held it together well on the outside. She snatched the ledgers up and strode out of the office. Rae and I barely made it out before she jerked the door shut and locked it. We had to trot to keep up with her as she rushed toward the front door, muttering under her breath.
I won't repeat what she was saying, but it's a safe bet if his mama was still alive, her mama's ears were burning.
After we were outside, she locked the door and gave it a solid kick, then dropped the ledgers and grabbed her foot, howling. I looked at Rae to see if she had a clue what we should do, but she was as deer-in-the-headlights as I was.
I picked up the ledgers and helped Emily to her car, then grabbed a bottle of water from the lunchbox cooler in my truck and shoved it into her hand. She twisted the lid off and took a gulp, then took a couple big breaths in through her nose and out through her mouth.
After a few deep breaths, her complexion went from beet-colored to just this side of rosy, so I was feeling better about her ability to operate heavy machinery such as, say, a Caddy.
Rae moved a little closer to her. "This may not be my place to say because I didn't know the man, but that receipt could be for a lot of things. I mean, to take it at its worst, like you seem to be doin' ... well, fifteen hundred bucks sounds awful high for anything like that. That's more Pretty Woman prices; I can't imagine the goin' rate around here is anywhere near that."
I glared at her. Not helping! I thought. She gave me the "what else can I say" look, then scowled at me and slammed her mental door on me. Emily was looking at us both like we'd lost our minds.
Things looked like they were heading in the right direction until a familiar voice said, "She's right.” Cheri Lynn said as she faded in. She’d been working on that because she felt bad making us jump when she just popped in all at once. “Pht. No man’s gonna pay that kinda money just to keep a woman. Too many cows willin' to give the milk away for free," Cheri Lynn said. Again, I looked at the widow, ready to apologize.
"Oh," Cheri said, waving a hand toward Emily. "Don't worry about her. She's not even a little receptive to me. Total denial. There's no way she'll see me." She floated over to look at the receipts on top of the ledgers that Emily had plopped onto the hood of her shiny new car.
She looked a hundred percent better. Her color was good and her breathing was back to normal. "Do you really think so?" she asked.
The three of us—me, Rae, and Cheri Lynn—looked back and forth at each other, wondering what she was responding to. "I think she's responding to your Pretty Woman comment," Cheri whispered, even though she didn't have to.
Oh. Yeah. "I really do," Rae said. "I think you may want to consider less ... scandalous options before you jump to conclusions."
Emily smiled, wiping tears from under her eyes. "Thank you. Again, I appreciate you girls coming out here. And it really was a silly thing to think."
"Our pleasure, and it's been a horrible few days for you; it's no wonder you don't know what to think," I said as she climbed into her car.
I offered Raeann a bottle of water when we got in the truck. "Do you really believe that money wasn't for another woman?"
She shrugged as she twisted off the lid. "I don't know. Honestly, I don't think so. I mean, it's not like those were jewelry or
hotel receipts. They don't make sense." She paused, thinking for a few seconds.
"But I do know that even if there was extramarital hanky-panky going on, there's no reason for her to have to think of that every time she looks at a picture of him from here to eternity. No good will come of it, so if she don't have to, I figure we should do what we can to give her somethin' nice to remember even if it isn't quite the truth."
And that, folks, is why she's my best friend as well as my cousin.
We'd just backed out of our spot when a big red work truck with a winch on the front blocked our way. A lumberjack of a man got out and approached my window, since we were in front of Emily. He turned his finger in a circle, telling us to roll the window down.
"What can we do for you?" Instead of answering, he looked inside at me and the Rae, then his gaze roamed over the inside of my truck. Finally, he stepped back and looked in the bed.
"If you're done snooping, I asked we can do for you," I snapped as I leaned my head out the window. "Answer or get out of the way, but either way, quit being nosy!" Man, what was it with people lately? I felt like I spent half my time reminding people of their manners.
He stepped back and touched the brim of his cap, unperturbed. "Yes, ma'am. I'm Robert Gilly. I live on the farm up the road. I know what happened to Max and I saw y'all drive up here and figured I'd make sure it weren't nobody messin' with the place."
"The woman in the car behind us is Emily Maxwell. She's here to get the ledgers and what not." I figured that was all he needed to know.
He stepped back to the Caddy and spoke to Emily for a few seconds, then came back to my window.
"I didn't mean to come across too strong. It's just, after all the traffic up and down this road on the day he was kilt, I figured it was better to start keepin' track. Wish I woulda that day, but me and the missus was gettin' ready to go visit her family for a couple nights." He pulled off his cap and ran his palm over his hair, then put it back on. "Max was good people."
I should have known it was something like that. The place was a little out of the way and neighbors tended to keep an eye out.
Rae leaned across the console. "I’m Raeann, and this is my cousin Noelle Flynn. What all traffic was up here the day he was killed?"
He shifted his weight and rubbed the back of his neck. "Usually a man's company is his business, but I reckon it won't hurt to say anything now. A beat-up green GMC pickup went through fairly early, then his foreman went through a half-hour or so later. Maybe twenty minutes or so after he left, there was a white SUV. Newer model, one of them foreign brands. Oh, and a late-'90s silver Impala. That was last. Oh, and I saw the dust from one leavin’ but I didn’t see the actual vehicle."
I held out my hand. "Thanks, Robert. And no hard feelings. Nice to know somebody's looking after the place until Emily can get things squared away."
He shrugged and turned his head to spit out tobacco juice. "Ain't no big deal. It's what neighbors do."
As we waited for him to back up into the grass and pull back onto the road, Raeann got all quiet. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Probably. I'm thinking we need to match those vehicles to some faces."
"And how are we going to do that?" she asked. The easiest way to find out would have been to ask Max, but I didn't want to wait for him to show back up.
We said at the same time, "Skeeter!"
I figured it was only right to call Hunter and let him know what we'd just found out, so I called him before we pulled onto the main road. His phone went straight to voicemail, so I ended the call without leaving a message, then sent him a text telling him to call me.
We decided to stop by Brew and make him a goody bag with a couple of sandwiches and pastries in it. When we pulled in, all we could see as a pair of legs sticking out from under a jacked-up Subaru.
"Skeet?" I squatted down and made sure it was him.
"Oh, hey, Noelle! What's doin'? Hand me that fifteen millimeter there, would you?"
I checked the numbers on the sockets scattered on the ground and handed him the right one.
"Thanks," he said. "Give me two shakes to finish this up and I'll be right out."
About one shake later, I cringed at the sound of a the tool slipping, then flesh hitting metal, followed by a string of what would have been fightin' words if the car were sentient.
He wheeled out from underneath it shaking his hand, then squeezing his forefinger. "Dang knuckle-busters!" he scowled, then saw the bag in my hand and grinned. "If that's for me, it's better than any Band-Aid."
I held the bag out toward him, but he held his hand up. "Lemme go wash this scrunge off my hands first. C'mon in where it's cool."
We followed him into the shop and he motioned toward his office. "I'll be right in. Make yourself at home."
The space was decent sized, and much more organized than you might expect. Of course, greasy fingerprints marked the edges of many of the folders and paperwork scattered across his desk, but I couldn't really hold that against him. If I had to walk around with icing or dough on my hands all day, everything I had would be ruined.
In a minute or two, he entered the office and plopped down in the chair behind his desk. The citrusy smell of the Gojo he'd used to degrease his hands wafted across the desk as he reached for the bag.
"You girls have no idea how welcome this is! I've been bustin' my hump all day. It must be somethin' in the air." He reached to a mini-fridge behind him and pulled out a Coke, then offered us one before he unwrapped the chicken salad sandwich and took a big bite of it.
"What brings y'all by," he asked around a mouthful.
The good think about Skeeter is that we're tight enough that it's perfectly okay to stop by just because you want something. No need to put a dress on it.
"We were out at Wheeler Construction with Emily Wheeler. Robert Gilly blocked us in with his truck when we were trying to leave." I gave him a quick rundown of the conversation.
"Yeah, Bob Gilly's all right but he does protect that holler." He finished off the sandwich and pulled out a peach fritter. "The white SUV and the Impala are tough. They're a dime a dozen around here anymore. I'd have to have a little more to go on than that. The beat-up green GMC's easy though. There's only one of them around. The feller who owns that's had it since high school and it's in worse shape than Bessie was." It’s hard to imagine anything worse than Bessie still being street-legal.
"That'd be Larry Huffman, the guy we talked about the other day. He works—"
"At the Walmart. We know,” we both said.
“Jinx,” again at the same time. Skeet rolled his eyes at us.
On a whim, I asked, "Do you know what Chet Malcolm or Joe Sneed drives?"
"Joe drives an old Jimmy, but now that you mention it, Chet Malcolm drives a white Subaru Forester."
What a shocker.
Chapter Twenty
THE FIRST MEETING OF the veterans' memorial planning group was at seven that night, so I pulled on a pair of jeans and a V-neck T-shirt and climbed in my truck, a box of mixed pastries and cookies on the seat beside me.
When I pulled in, Olivia's little foreign whatever car was already in the lot. I took a deep, cleansing breath, figuring it was better to clean my psyche than her clock in a public, grown-up setting.
Thankfully, she wasn't the only one in there. Kelli Kennedy, another girl we'd gone to school with, was there. If memory served, she didn't get along much better with Olivia than I did.
When I entered, she stared at me like I was a lifeline. "Noelle, sugar! I haven't seen you in a month of Sundays. How you been?"
I set the box on the table next to a box of expensive gourmet cookies that, unless they'd drastically improved, tasted like dog biscuits. Proof that if you slapped a high enough price tag on a turd and branded it as recycled filet mignon, there were people like Olivia who'd buy it.
"I'm good, Kelli. How you been? You and your mama still running the skating rink?"
When we were tee
nagers, that was the place to see and be seen, but I hadn't been there in years.
"We are, and it's pretty much the same as it was when we were kids. Had a new floor put in not too long ago. The salesman pushed us to go with that new blue rubber flooring stuff, but we figured wood's worked for us for sixty years. No need to fix something that wasn't broke."
I nodded. "I hear ya. That place is a landmark by now. It just wouldn't be the same with rubber floors." Though to be fair, I kinda wished it had started out that way, because I was even clumsier as a kid than I am now. It would have saved me hundreds of bruises.
Two more people, a man and a woman I didn't recognize, strolled into the room a few minutes later. They were discussing the cost of building permits and various code requirements, so my brilliant guess was that they worked for the city.
I couldn't imagine there was going to be many more of us. It wasn't a huge project, even though it was an important one. If memory served, Kelli's dad and brothers were all vets, which explained her interest. I didn't think Olivia had any military members in her family, but neither did I. Just because I couldn't stand her didn't mean she had no appreciation for the things that mattered.
The woman who'd entered last pulled the door closed. "Hello everyone. I'm Suzanne McKinley and I'll be the liaison with the city council so you don't have to come to meetings when we need approval for anything. My dad is a Vietnam vet and both my brothers served in Iraq, so this is personal for me. It's going to happen and it's going to be great.
The guy who'd entered with her introduced himself next as Marc Smythe. He was a local real estate agent who was like me: no family that had served, but mad respect for those who had. After the introductions were made, we took a seat around a small conference table and moved straight to business.