“Anything new on the John Doe?” Garrett immediately asked him.
“Not really.” Clay stood, poured Garrett and himself some coffee. “It might be a week before the CSIs can go through the whole place. Did you know there were secret rooms?”
“Yeah. There’s one off the library. Another in the master bedroom.” Garrett was about to take a sip of the coffee, but he got a bad feeling. “Please don’t tell me you found another body.”
“No, but it just means there are more places the CSIs will have to examine and maybe process.”
“Process? You’re not talking about collecting fingerprints, DNA and things like that?” Garrett’s mind went straight to a bad place.
He’d obviously seen too many crime shows, and a little porn, because he thought of all the possible DNA in the place. His DNA and Nicky’s. Of course, it wasn’t as if everyone didn’t already know that Nicky and he had been together like that. Still, he doubted she would want that old water, old bridge brought up again.
“They’re looking for the John Doe’s clothes and anything else that will help us identify him,” Clay explained. He lifted his eyebrow as if he’d known what Garrett was thinking. “If he was murdered, the killer could have removed them. But if something else happened, the clothes might still be around.”
“Right. Of course.” And Garrett hated that he sounded relieved about it.
“They’ll collect DNA from the body. From his boxers, hat and wedding ring, as well. And his clothes, if they’re found. Here’s the report,” he added.
Clay slid it in front of Garrett, and Garrett sat down so he could look it over. Everything was there. Everything that they knew so far, that is.
“By the way, Nicky seemed upset when I mentioned the guy might be married,” Clay told him. “I think all of this might be getting to her.”
Clay seemed to be asking Garrett to check on her. Which he had when he’d seen her SUV parked at her old house. Judging from what he saw there, she might need to be checked on again. First though, he’d like to know what he was dealing with.
Garrett read through the report, signed it and passed it back to Clay. “You don’t happen to have any old files on Nicky’s folks, do you?”
Clay pulled back his shoulders. “Not that I know of. Why? You think they could be connected to our John Doe?”
“No. It’s not that.” But he couldn’t say what it was exactly. “It’s just I remember some rumors about her father getting drunk, maybe even arrested. And her brother, Kyle, ran off when he was just a teenager. I figure that couldn’t be a sign of a happy household for him to have done that.”
Clay stayed quiet a moment, but Garrett could almost hear the guy thinking. And he was thinking like a cop. “Are you looking for something to help you evict Nicky?”
“No.” Garrett huffed. The truth wasn’t going to make this sound any better, but he went with it anyway. “I just saw Nicky out at the old house her folks once owned, and it seemed as if she didn’t have good memories of the place.”
Nope, the truth didn’t sound better, and that’s probably why Clay gave him a cop’s stare. One where he was no doubt trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
“She was crying,” Garrett added.
That got rid of the cop stare and, cursing under his breath, Clay sank down into the chair behind his desk. “Am I going to need to be concerned that Nicky’s come back to dole out some kind of payback to her parents?”
Garrett had to answer no for a third time. “Her father’s dead, and her mother doesn’t live here so no payback. Could you please just check and see if her dad, Walt Henderson, had a police record? Since the guy’s dead, you wouldn’t be violating his privacy.”
Of course, Clay would probably be violating other things like rules about sharing official information with someone whose argument was that Walt’s daughter had been crying. Still, Clay started typing on his computer keyboard.
“Not all the files have been digitized,” Clay explained. “So, even if he had a record, it might not be...” He stopped, started reading something he’d pulled up on the screen. “It’s here. Drunk and disorderly.” He made some more key strokes. “DUI. Two of them,” he added. “He also had his driver’s license revoked.”
This certainly wasn’t painting a pretty picture, but Nicky hadn’t mentioned anything to him about it. They’d only dated for a month, though, and while that had been enough time for sex, it apparently hadn’t been enough for her to share with him the junk going on in her life.
“There’s more,” Clay continued a moment later. “He was brought in and questioned about a domestic violence situation after the cops were called to his house. That happened about seventeen years ago.”
Even though Garrett had just taken a sip of hot coffee, he felt the chill go over him.
“Nothing came of it,” Clay added, “because the person refused to file charges against him.”
“Nicky’s mother,” Garrett mumbled.
“No.” Clay looked up from the screen and met his gaze. “The person he assaulted was Nicky.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
GARRETT READ THROUGH the monthly financial report on the ranch that their bookkeeper had just emailed him. It was important because he needed to know if the changes he was making to the livestock inventory were causing the ranch to grow or if he was sending profits in the other direction. Normally, he scrutinized each line of the report, made notes, calculated adjustments that needed to be made.
Not today, though.
He’d read the report twice now, and the info just wasn’t sticking in his head. That’s because he had a distraction.
Nicky.
Not only because he was thinking about her and what he’d learned from Clay, but also because he could see her. She was sitting outside the loaner RV, working on her laptop while watching Kaylee play. It was something he’d watched her do for the past two days. What he hadn’t done was talk to her. That was because he felt like a dick.
Hell, he was a dick.
Here, she’d almost certainly come home to deal with a shitload of old baggage. Some newer baggage, too, since her husband had died and left her a single parent. Dealing with all of that wasn’t easy, and he’d made it hard on her.
“Are you aware you’re mumbling?” Lawson asked.
Garrett had known his cousin was there, of course, since he was using his laptop to read the same financial report that Garrett had been. It was something they did together every week, but Garrett figured he was usually more attentive and not prone to mumbling.
“You said dick and hard,” Lawson went on. “Two words that usually work well together.” He turned, peering out the window that was in Garrett’s line of sight. “Especially when you’ve got a view like that. Nicky’s a looker.”
Yeah, she was, but in this case hard and dick weren’t because that was his physical condition. It was because he owed her an apology. Or two. It turned his stomach to think that her father had assaulted her around the same time that Garrett and she had been dating. And he hadn’t had a clue.
“Is Roman starting something up with Nicky?” Lawson asked.
And it caused Garrett’s gaze to slash to him. “Why would you say that?”
Lawson shrugged, but there was nothing casual about it. His mouth was twitching a little. “Roman only comes to the ranch for emergencies or when Sophie or you browbeat him into coming. Yet, he showed up here a couple days ago with that RV without so much as a prompt. When Roman gives a woman that kind of attention, it’s usually because he wants to fuck her.”
Garrett had never objected to the F-word, but it suddenly seemed vulgar. And possibly true. Roman might be a single dad, but he was still a bad boy at heart, and that drew some women to him. Probably not Nicky, though.
Probably.
&n
bsp; “I need to take care of something,” Garrett grumbled. “Let me know if there are any questions about the financial report.”
“Will do, and say hello to Nicky for me.”
Garrett considered punching that twitchy little smile off his cousin’s face. Strange, since violence wasn’t usually his go-to reaction. But it riled him that Lawson or anybody else for that matter thought that Nicky was ready for the taking. Anyone’s taking.
He made his way across the yard, but before he reached Kaylee and Nicky, one of the widows walked past him.
“Asshole,” she snarled and went on her way, not even making eye contact with him. Apparently, the woman knew he’d been a jerk to Nicky.
Loretta came out of Gina’s camper and made a beeline toward him. “Don’t take anything she said personally. That’s D.M., surgical complications. She has tourniquets and says things she doesn’t mean.”
“You mean Tourette’s?”
“Yes, that’s it. I’m always mixing up those words. Anyway, D.M. is really shy, but she talked to me about it, and she said sometimes she can’t control what she says. But she admitted she has some go-to words that she often uses whenever certain things happen. Like she’ll say A-hole when she’s mad at somebody and BS when she thinks they’re lying. For example, there was the time when Lady said she didn’t notice that the janitor who cleans up the building for our support group was well hung, and D.M. said BS but she didn’t just use the initials. She said the actual words.”
Garrett always felt as if he were enduring some kind of karma punishment whenever he talked to Loretta.
“Sometimes D.M. says donkey wankers,” Loretta went on. “Except she uses another word for wankers, and she told me she says that when she’s surprised. So, if she ever walks past you and says donkey wankers and BS, that means she’s surprised that you’re not telling the truth.”
Well, at least he’d only gotten the A-hole.
“I don’t know what D.M. means when she says cocksucker,” Loretta went on. And she was serious, too. Maybe because she genuinely didn’t know what it meant. “But I’m not one to judge.” She leaned in closer. “Is there any news on the dead man?” She whispered those last two words.
“Not yet. The CSIs are still going through the place, looking for the man’s clothes.”
“Oh, dear.” She wasn’t wringing her hands, but it was close, and she was biting on her bottom lip. “It’s just all so unsettling, you know?”
Garrett nodded and, because he didn’t know what else to do, he gave her arm a pat. “Clay will get to the bottom of this. Who knows, it might turn out that the guy was just some homeless person who went into the closet and died of natural causes in his sleep.”
“Yes,” she said and added another, “Oh, dear. But he’ll still be dead, no matter how it happened.”
He couldn’t argue with that. Nor could he stay and chat. That was because Kaylee spotted him.
“Gare-if,” she called out, running to him. Garrett excused himself from Loretta and went to the little girl. The moment she reached him, she took hold of his hand.
Like the other times she’d done that, the punch came. Not a good punch, either, but her smile sure helped. It was hard not to smile back at that little face.
“There’s a party on my head,” she proudly announced, and she bent down to show him.
“A part,” Nicky corrected. She motioned toward the part in Kaylee’s hair. It was crooked, but he was relieved that the little girl didn’t have head lice or something.
“Parted,” Kaylee tried again. “I show you,” she added and went running into the RV.
“Thank you for not laughing at her,” Nicky whispered to him. “She’s a little behind in her language development, and it embarrasses her when people laugh.”
Well, hell. Of course, it would. And Garrett suddenly wanted to punch anyone who’d ever laughed at the kid.
“I’ve had her tested,” Nicky went on, “and she’s working with a tutor in San Antonio so she can catch up before preschool.”
This was yet something else on Nicky’s plate, and he was about to try to clear his own plate of guilt, but Kaylee came back out of the RV, and she was carrying a comb.
“Like dis,” she said, and she proceeded to show him how she parted and then combed her hair. She only made her hair messier, but Garrett gave her a nod of approval anyway.
“It looks beautiful,” Nicky told her, and she scooped her up for a kiss. Kaylee giggled like a loon when Nicky added a raspberry-kiss to her neck.
“Again,” Kaylee pleaded, and Nicky gave her two more.
“I love you more than...” Nicky told her.
“Choc-it,” Kaylee finished. “I wuv you more than...”
“Popcorn,” Nicky answered.
They went through two more rounds with food answers—peanut butter and pizza. Clearly, this was a game they liked to play because Kaylee giggled through it all, and Nicky smiled. Not an ordinary smile, either. This one could light up a total eclipse. Motherhood definitely suited her.
“You always wanted to be a mom?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered without hesitation. But then something went through her eyes. Something sad, and Garrett was sorry he’d brought it up. Maybe because his question reminded her that she hadn’t planned on having to raise her daughter alone.
“Kaylee?” someone called out. It was one of the widows, Gina, who was standing at the back door of the house. “Come on in for your lunch.”
“Lunch,” Kaylee repeated, more or less getting it right, and she handed her mom the comb and took off toward Gina, leaving Nicky and Garrett alone.
Garrett didn’t think that was an accident. Nope. Gina smiled that quivery smile that Lawson had just given him. A red flag to let Garrett know there was more matchmaking going on. Normally, that would have bothered him, but this gave him a chance to talk to Nicky.
“I’ve only got a minute,” Garrett explained. “I need to send Roman a financial report.” One that Roman would immediately delete, but he’d still send it.
He watched Nicky’s face, looking for any sign that she wanted to discuss Roman. Any sign that she wanted to have sex with his brother, as well. Nothing.
“Okay,” she finally said. She didn’t motion for him to continue. Not physically anyway, but he could tell she was confused by this visit. Nicky continued to stare at him and then huffed. “Do you have any idea how many people are watching us right now?”
“Two,” he quickly answered. “Lawson and Gina. Maybe Loretta, too.”
“Seven,” she corrected. “The Ellery sisters are in the second floor corner window, and your mother is hiding behind the curtain in her bedroom. And yes, Loretta is watching from the camper. Probably listening, as well.”
Garrett glanced around and spotted all of them. Way easier than finding Waldo, too. Sheesh. Some people, including his mother, clearly had too much time on their hands.
“Why don’t we step inside, and you can tell me why you really came to see me?” Nicky suggested. “The gawkers will assume we’re going to kiss or something, but that’s better than having them watching our every move.”
He agreed, especially since he wasn’t sure what he was going to say to Nicky. Or how she would react if he brought up anything unpleasant.
The RV was a lot bigger than it looked, and when he went inside, he stepped out of the doorway so he couldn’t be seen. Nicky went into the kitchen, took two bottles of water from the fridge and came back toward him.
“So, you’ve spoken to Clay?” she asked.
His hand froze for a second when he was in midreach for the water bottle. Garrett nodded. “Day before yesterday when I went in to sign the report.”
“But not today?” She didn’t wait for him to confirm that. “I just got off the phone with him so
he’ll probably be calling you soon. Anyway, the CSIs have cleared the first floor of Z.T.’s house, and they’re going to let the cleaning crew get in there tomorrow. Once that’s done, the widows can move their things to the bottom floor and some can start staying there.”
That was good news. There were only two bedrooms on the bottom floor, but it would get some of the women out of the house.
“What ever happened with your work crew?” she asked, gulping down some water.
“They’re still on hold for now, but once we get the okay from Clay, they’ll go in and expand the pond. Not to the width that I wanted it—I’ve made some adjustments. Not just with the pond and the pasture but with the size of the new herd I’ll be bringing in.” That had involved plenty of paperwork. Garrett tried not to look too sour about it.
She sipped more water, did more staring. “Why did you really come over here?” Nicky sounded like a lawyer. Or a cop. Maybe she was sensing his guilty conscience.
“I also wanted to apologize. I was too hard on you that first day at Z.T.’s house. In fact, I was a jerk.”
She didn’t confirm or deny that. “I accept your apology, but I’d like to know what brought it on. I hope it wasn’t what I just told you about Kaylee.”
“No.” Garrett answered that really fast. Which meant he now needed to do a follow-up. Hell, he might as well just spill the beans. “I heard some things. About your father.”
There wasn’t a huge change in her expression. Not at first anyway. Then, he saw a glimmer of that look in her eyes. The very one that’d been there when he’d seen her at her parents’ old house.
“How much did you hear?” she asked.
How much wasn’t a good sign. It meant more had happened than just what Clay had told him. “Your father was a drunk, and he hit you.” That was a little easier to stomach than the word assault.
“I see,” she said. She had some more water, repeated her comment, then nodded. “He did. My father was an alcoholic.”
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