by Marja McGraw
The three men could put away a lot of food, so Aunt Martha and I took smaller portions. There was nothing left after everyone filled their plates.
“I have to admit, these green beans are delicious, and I don’t care for green beans. I’ll have to fix them this way for Pete.”
“Good mac and cheese, too,” Griz said. “There’s something a little different about it.”
Draper nodded and stabbed the last bite of green bean with his fork.
“As they say, the secret’s in the sauce.” My aunt looked quite proud of herself.
She turned to me.
“I know you’re busy, but would you help me take the plates into the kitchen? I found a pound cake in the refrigerator and drizzled an orange topping on it. You can help me serve it.”
While we ate desert, the room was quiet.
“I feel kind of guilty for sitting here and enjoying a fine dinner while Trap is missing,” I said.
“You’re right.” Griz stood and started for the living room. “We need to go outside and see if we can figure out how someone got onto the property and left another note without us knowing it.”
The men left the room with the dogs following. I felt left out.
Pete knows me well. He turned and motioned me forward. “Are you coming?”
I smiled. “Of course.”
I don’t know what we expected to find, but there weren’t even any footprints. There was nothing, that is, until Bubba caught a scent. He’d been sniffing around while we inspected the motorhome and the surrounding area, and all of a sudden he took off, through the trees.
Clem started to follow him but Griz snapped his fingers and she stopped near the trees. At least she’d had some training.
The four of us took out after Bubba, trying to keep up, but the only one succeeding was Draper. I could hear Bubba huffing and puffing, his full weight landing on dried leaves. All I could think of was a locomotive moving away from us.
Griz was huffing and puffing, too, but doing his best. Pete was right behind Draper. I fell back and stood panting, bending over and trying to catch my breath.
You really need to get more exercise, I thought to myself.
“Guess I’m not as fit as I used to be,” Griz said, startling me. I hadn’t realized he’d stopped and come back for me.
“Me either.”
We headed back toward the motorhome to see if we’d missed anything, but started running again when we heard Aunt Martha yell.
Clem and Griz got tangled up together and he fell when he sidestepped so he wouldn’t crush her, while she yelped and scurried off toward the house.
I kept going. For such a small dog, she was fast when frightened.
I threw open the front door and ran inside, finding my aunt sitting on the floor and mumbling every bad word she could think of. She was holding her head.
“What happened?” I asked, taking in the whole room at a glance.
I heard a door slam off in the distance.
She stopped mumbling and pointed toward the rear of the house. “That way! Go get him.”
I started to run toward the back, but she grabbed my ankle. “Not you. Him!”
She pointed at Griz and he took off. I hadn’t realized he’d picked himself up and come inside.
“Okay, now tell me what happened.” I helped her over to the couch.
“Give me a minute,” she said. She shook her head and I noticed a red blotch on her left cheek with a small cut.
“Aunt Martha, are you okay?”
“No. I was cleaning up the dinner dishes when I heard a voice in the other room. As quietly as I could, because I knew you were all outside, I crept into the living room. The voice was coming from Andrew’s office. There was a man in there talking on a cell phone, with his back to me.”
“Why didn’t you come get us?”
“Be quiet and let me finish my story.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So I picked up a vase from the hallway table and crept up behind him. I’d just lifted the vase in the air when he turned around, grabbed the vase, and hit me with it.” She rubbed her cheek. “I guess I don’t creep as well as I thought I did.”
I reached out and touched her cheek.
She flinched.
“Did you hear what he was saying?” I asked.
“He asked someone to find out where to look for a thimble drive.”
“Do you mean a thumb drive?”
“Yes, that’s it. A thumb drive.”
“And, when you sneaked up behind him, he hit you and ran away?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I think he was going to hit me again, but he heard you and Griz running up and took off.”
“Did you get a good look at him?”
“Oh, yes. He was medium.”
“Do you mean medium height or medium build?”
“Everything about him was medium, except for his build. He looked to be in very good shape. He had on a black shirt and I could see his muscles.”
“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”
“Of course. I’m a little dazed, but not that dazed.” She said that sounding almost as though she felt like she was talking to an idiot.
Blood ran down her face, even though it was a small cut.
“I’ll get something to clean your face and disinfect it.” I left the room and climbed the stairs, figuring the main bathroom might have the most medical supplies.
Talk about medical supplies; Trap seemed to have at least one of everything a person could possibly need.
I returned to the living room with a damp cloth, a bandage and some disinfectant.
Griz was sitting on the couch with my aunt, trying to catch his breath, but also trying to act like he was perfectly fine. He was examining my aunt’s face.
“Did you see the intruder?” I asked.
“Not a sign, other than he left the door open. I’ll look for tracks when it’s light out.”
“Here,” I said, handing him the supplies I’d brought downstairs.
He looked into Aunt Martha’s eyes and replied to a question I hadn’t heard asked. “No, you won’t need any stitches. It’s just a scratch. I doubt if it’ll even leave a scar.”
I sat down and took a deep breath when my aunt started to cry.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter. If it leaves a scar it’ll just look like another wrinkle.”
She had crow’s feet, but very little other wrinkling. Apparently she was self-conscious about her appearance.
“Now, now, Martha. Your face looks just fine,” Griz said.
“Fine? Just fine?” She took the damp cloth from him and started to wipe her face.
He took the cloth back and did it for her. After using the antiseptic, he unceremoniously plastered a small band-aid on her cheek.
Huh. So she didn’t cry over being attacked, but she cried about a possible wrinkle? This woman was full of surprises.
Clementine jumped on her lap and more or less climbed up her chest and started licking off the salty tears.
Aunt Martha gently took hold of her and set her on the floor before wiping the rest of her face with the damp cloth. She mumbled something about dog drool.
The front door opened and Pete walked in with Bubba following.
Bubba plopped on the floor and panted. Clementine turned her attention to him and started licking his face, since his head was now on the floor, at her level.
“Find anything?” Griz asked.
“Tire tracks, down the hill and on the other side of the trees. Bubba lost the scent when we found where they’d been parked. Draper will be back in a minute. He was going to check the security cameras. What happened to you, Martha?”
“That’s Aunt Martha to you. I was attacked while you were all out running around.” She leaned back and closed her eyes, making sure that her band-aid was facing Pete.
He looked at me, so I explained what had happened.
“Do you know if he found the flash drive
?”
Aunt Martha opened her eyes. “It was a thumb drive, and no, he didn’t find it. I interrupted him and saved the day.” If she thought a thumb drive was a thimble drive, she certainly wouldn’t know a flash drive was… Oh, who cared?
She closed her eyes again.
“She’s quite the little drama queen, isn’t she?” Pete whispered.
“I heard that.” My aunt didn’t miss much.
“We’ve got to figure out what’s going on and find Trap,” I said.
“That’s an understatement.” Aunt Martha was beginning to sound cranky. Beginning? Now that was an understatement.
Griz checked his watch. “It’s getting late. We need to get a fresh start in the morning. I mean, early morning. Let’s get some sleep.”
“Don’t you think you might want to look for the thumb drive first?” My aunt sighed like the whole world and all of its problems rested on her shoulders.
Chapter Nine
“Even if we find thumb drives, we won’t know if we’ve found the one the intruder was looking for,” I said. “If Trap is such a genius, they’ll probably contain information that’ll be Greek to us.”
Pete smiled. “We might not understand them, but I know someone who will.”
The lightbulb went on. “Stanley. He’s the most computer savvy person I know. Good idea, sweetie.”
“Right. I’ll call him right now.”
“No, Pete. Wait until morning. We need to find the thumb drives before we bother him and if I know Felicity, she’s not done babying him yet.”
“Right.”
Draper finally returned, and he looked angry. “They disabled the security cameras along that route. I’ll have to check the rest of them in the morning. I think I can fix the ones they monkeyed with.”
Thankfully, I was getting used to his high pitched voice. There was something endearing about the fact that this rugged looking guy had a voice like a woman.
I realized I was overthinking things. Sometimes the best answer is the easy one, and hopefully that would turn out to be the case in finding Trap.
There are several types of sighs. One demonstrates frustration, there’s one of disgust, and there’s one that denotes sadness, among many other sounds.
My aunt’s sigh was definitely one of frustration. “Why aren’t you out there looking for Andrew right now? What’s the holdup? Those nasty people could be hurting him.”
Pete fielded this one. “They need him. They’re not going to do anything to him until they’ve gotten what they want. If they’re looking for a thumb drive, then they don’t have everything they need yet and they’ll probably handle him with kid gloves.”
“Really?” Aunt Martha looked at Pete with renewed interest.
“Really.”
“Now let’s get some sleep,” I said. “Griz is right. We need to get an early start on things.”
“It’s a good thing there are plenty of guest rooms in the house.” My aunt stood and stretched.
“You only need two of them,” Griz said. “One for you and one for Pete and Sandi.”
“But…”
“I’ll sleep in my motorhome. I can keep an eye on the house from there. Draper has a trailer behind the house. He’ll sleep there for the same reason.”
The two men left for their respective portable homes and Pete headed upstairs. My aunt and I decided to talk for a few minutes, over a bowl of ice cream, our comfort food of choice.
We strolled out to the kitchen. I hoped Trap had some chocolate ice cream, and he did. My kinda man, eccentric or not.
“Sandi, I hope my being here isn’t an imposition.”
“Not at all,” I lied. “This gives us a chance to get to know each other again on a different level. You look good, Aunt Martha. I haven’t seen you in years, and really, you haven’t changed that much.”
“Are you aware that a lot of my attitude is just a bluff?” My aunt stopped her spoon midway between the bowl and her mouth, waiting expectantly.
“I’m learning that, yes.”
“You’ll keep it between us, right?”
“I will. I promise.” And I wasn’t lying this time.
“I feel safer knowing that Scott is outside the back door,” she said, eating that bite of ice cream.
“Me, too.”
We didn’t talk for too long. Both of us were tired. She asked about my mother and stepfather and their bed and breakfast. I told her how well things were going.
“I was afraid your mother was taking on too much, but it sounds like they’re having the time of their lives.”
“They are. When we’re done here, you’ll head on out to their place in Arizona. I promise, you’ll enjoy yourself. Mom can tell you all about the adventure we had while we fixed up the house.”
“I’m enjoying this little adventure,” my aunt said.
“Now you sound like my mother. It was a poor choice of words on my part. Please don’t think of this as an adventure. Trap’s life may depend on us.”
She looked contrite and she was quiet while she put our bowls in the dishwasher.
We finally said goodnight at the top of the stairs and headed for our bedrooms.
Pete was snoring softly when I climbed into bed. You know he’s tired when his snore doesn’t equate to the sound of a jack hammer.
Of course, the expensive and comfortable mattress might have something to do with it, too.
~ * ~
We were awakened around four-thirty in the morning by the sound of Griz yelling up the stairs. Pete and I jumped out of bed, thinking something was wrong.
“How about some breakfast down here?”
Aunt Martha yelled back at him. “Hold your horses, you grizzled old man.”
Pete and I ran out of our room.
My aunt was tying a belt around her robe. “Now I know why they call him Griz.”
She was smiling, but when she saw Pete she turned it into a scowl and trudged down the stairs.
Pete ran his hands through his hair, and without a word he headed for the shower.
I followed suit and took my clothes with me to a second bathroom.
We were downstairs within thirty minutes where we found Griz, Aunt Martha and Draper just sitting down to eat.
“Gotta get things rolling,” Draper said. “Breakfast and then we’ll search Trap’s office. I already checked the rest of the security cameras and repaired the ones they knocked down last night. They’re working again.”
Pete nodded, still looking drowsy. His hair was wet and slicked back. So was mine. Long hair comes in handy sometimes. I can brush it into a ponytail and forget about it.
My aunt had come up with scrambled eggs, bacon and toast within that half hour. She’d even managed to fry some sliced potatos.
She picked up her fork and daintily forked some egg, looking at Griz while she ate the bite.
“Are you happy now?” Her tone was sarcastic.
He nodded and kept shoveling the food in his mouth.
I saw the almost smile flicker across Draper’s face again. Like before, it was more of a twitch.
In nothing flat, Griz placed his knife, fork and a napkin on top of his empty plate. “Let’s get to work.”
Aunt Martha stood up, but Griz seemed to know how to get her goat.
“Uh, aren’t you the new bottle washer? Get to work woman.”
“Well, like I said before, you’ve got some nerve!”
She picked up his plate and her own and stomped out to the kitchen.
I rolled my eyes and took the other three plates out to her.
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Maybe I’d better rethink just how cute I think that man is.”
I patted her back and left the room before she could say more.
I passed Bubba and Clem who were sleeping near the kitchen. I realized that Bubba wasn’t sleeping when Aunt Martha dropped a fork and he lumbered over to see if there might be a bit of egg left on it.
I met the men in Trap’s offi
ce. Pete was on the phone with Stanley, asking for his help. He told him we could forward everything we found to him to download, thanked him and hung up.
“Stan says you’ll have to do the loading and forwarding,” he said. “He thinks I’m too dumb to do it. He’s right, you know.” Pete isn’t a computer geek, or even a computer nerd, but he’s smart in other ways.
There were already five flash drives sitting on the desk.
Draper added one more while I sat down and turned on the computer. “The ol’ man’s got flash drives all over this office,” he said.
I stuck a thumb drive into the USB port. “I’ve been thinking. I’ll bet if the one we’re looking for is important enough for someone to come looking for it, it’s probably hidden.”
Without a word the men started opening drawers and feeling underneath them. They didn’t find anything and they started pulling books off the shelves and flipping through them, looking for a hollowed out space that could hide a drive.
Griz even felt along the hem of the drapes.
“You’re looking in all the wrong places,” Aunt Martha said from the doorway. She’d gone upstairs and cleaned up, putting on her jeans and a shirt along with athletic shoes.
“I suppose you know right where to look,” Griz said, continuing to feel along the seams of the drapes.
“I’ve been thinking about it, and I think I do,” she replied.
A pair of men’s slippers sat on the floor in front of a coat tree where a smoking jacket hung.
Ah, the pocket of the smoking jacket, I thought.
Aunt Martha approached the coat tree and shook her hands as though trying to loosen them up. She reached toward the smoking jacket, but at the last minute she stooped and picked up the slippers. Slipping her hand inside, she slowly and dramatically pulled out a thumb drive that had been taped inside the toe and held it up for everyone to see.
“You see, I have a very nice diamond ring. Rather than hide it in the freezer or the cookie jar, I hide it in the toe of an old pair of shoes.”
“Martha, I could kiss you.” Griz took the drive from her and handed it to me.
My aunt turned three shades of pink before turning her head away from us.
Griz looked at her back and grinned.