When she heard his truck, she went to the patio and stood with the screen door ajar. Watching him climb out of the vehicle, Matty could tell the night did not end as they had hoped for the sick mare and Dash’s movements looked tired and a bit heavy.
But that didn’t stop the small smile that touched his lips as he approached her. “You’re wearing my shirt,” he noted
”Yes, I am.” He’d left one of his button-down shirts in her room that morning and she’d decided to put it to good use. She held out a hand to him and he walked straight to her, wrapping his arms around her waist.
“I like the look,” he added.
Smiling up at him, she took his right hand in hers, dropped it to her thigh, then slid it up.
“You’re not wearing anything else,” he commented as his eyes got that look.
Her smile widened. “No, I’m not.”
CHAPTER 11
MATTY KNEW SHE WAS DREAMING but, even so, she was stuck; she couldn’t end it. She was driving in her convertible, the top down, the wind blowing through her hair, Dash beside her. They were laughing, but there was something about the colors or the tone or the persistent weight on her body that hinted at something darker to come.
Her eyes skirted to her side mirror and then back at Dash, only it wasn’t Dash anymore, it was her mother.
“Don’t let them see your fear, Matty,” Carmen said.
“What fear, Mama? I’m not afraid.”
“They’ll use it against you, Mija,” her mother said, using her Spanish term of endearment.
“What are you talking about, Mama?” Matty asked. She was confused but she was also beginning to feel unsettled, her heart rate picking up in an erratic rhythm.
“You know what I’m talking about, Mija. You know. I know you haven’t forgotten.”
Matty glanced in her rearview mirror as if she might find the harbinger of the threat her mother was so worried about behind them. But when her gaze returned to the passenger seat, her mother was gone.
And then the body hit her car again. That same sickening feeling of having something slam into her car as she sped along assaulted her body and her senses. Her heart raced and she could feel her hands shaking against the steering wheel as her stomach churned. “Don’t let them see your fear,” her mother had said. But how could she not?
In the dream, she pulled her car to a stop and tried to heed her mother’s warning. She took a few deep breaths and flexed her fingers, loosening them from the steering wheel. Once she felt a little more composed, a little more in control, she settled her hands in her lap and focused on preparing for what she might see when she turned around.
She forced herself to remember the body in the truck. If she could remember the details, maybe when she saw him again, she wouldn’t be so shocked. And if she wasn’t so shocked, maybe she could hide her fear. Like her mother told her to. When she felt a little more confident in her own control, she turned around, slowly.
Feet were the first thing she saw. Only neither of these feet were bare and rotted. They were clad in well-kempt shoes and were at the ends of legs dressed in pressed khakis. Matty twisted her body around and let her eyes travel up the form to a striped polo shirt. She could see a man’s forearm, well muscled and covered with fair hair. Confused because this was not the body she’d seen before, she took a moment to debate with herself what she should do—turn to look at the whole figure or do something to force herself awake?
She paused, tempted to try to rouse herself. But a small part of her, the part that kept reminding her it was just a dream, was urging her to turn around and look. Her heart beat a heavy rhythm in her chest and she knew she didn’t have much time to make her decision before her body made it for her. So, with a deep breath, she pulled herself all the way around.
And her eyes landed on the face of her half brother.
***
Matty bolted upright in bed, her heart hammering in her chest. Dawn light was seeping through her windows and Dash was breathing softly beside her. Bob, who lay at the end of the bed, glanced up to see if she was okay, while Isis came over to her bedside and nudged her leg with a cold, wet nose.
Absently, Matty reached out and stroked Isis’s head, the motion and the feel of the dog beneath her hand slowly lowering her heart rate and steadying her breath. Within a few minutes, she was feeling less shaken up, but still unsettled by the dream—by the things her mother had said and by the look she’d seen on Brad’s face, a combination of confusion and disappointment.
Rising quietly from the bed, she pulled on her robe and padded downstairs. Bob and Isis followed, but the other dogs remained in their beds when she gave them the signal to stay, not wanting to wake Dash with the clamor the dogs made when they all descended the stairs at the same time. After putting some coffee on, she entered the office and pulled out the computer she assumed was Brad’s. She was pretty sure it would be password protected, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her.
Matty booted it up and even though she’d been expecting it, she was disappointed when the password request window popped up. She sat back for a moment debating about what to do. Based on what little she knew of Brad, she would guess he would have a password that contained the name of one of his animals. But in what format and which pet, she couldn’t begin to fathom.
She knew coffee wouldn’t really help her solve this problem, but she felt the need to hold a cup in her hands, feel the comforting heat, and smell the familiar scent. Once her mug was full, she came back to the office and looked around, hoping to find some hint of what his password might be. He’d left her clues before—if he’d wanted her on his computer, maybe he’d left more.
She spent a few minutes letting her eyes wander around the room; they eventually landed on the file cabinet. She had been through it before, and then again when Alex Traynor was standing in the room, but she hadn’t really gone through each folder, she’d just read the file names. Still, something nagged at her memory.
Walking to the files, she pulled open the same drawer she’d opened the day before then stood back and looked at all the labeled tabs. Most were basic files with straightforward names like ‘Taxes’ and ‘Bills.’ But two-thirds of the way back there was a file called ‘Betty.’
Frowning, she set her mug down and pulled the file out. Inside was a picture of a horse, two pictures actually, one where the horse was emaciated and looking extremely neglected and the other where she was well rounded with a shiny coat and proud stance. Matty turned them both over to see that each picture was marked with a date—dates that were approximately nine months apart. Sliding them back into the file and the file back into the cabinet, she closed the drawer.
Opening the second drawer, she found more generic files about the appliances, house plans, gardens, and all sorts of things one would expect to find in a file cabinet. But the folder labeled ‘Rescues’ was what caught her attention; it was much thicker than the ‘Betty’ file. She pulled it out and sat down.
The folder contained pictures and documents of dogs, cats, horses, and all sorts of other animals. Based on what she could tell, Brad was involved in several rescue societies for animals of all kinds. It didn’t look like he actually sponsored all of the animals, but it did look like he helped the organizations find them homes, and then he kept track of them and their welfare.
It shouldn’t have surprised her, knowing what she knew now about how well he treated his own animals, but for some reason it did. It was one thing to see her half brother, the legitimate son of a man who had all but left her and her mother to languish in the hells of the projects, taking care of his own pets. It was another to see a man so obviously committed to the care and welfare of all animals.
This insight into Brad unsettled her almost as much as the dream and she was just about to close the file when the last record caught her eye. At the bottom of the pile was more information about Betty, the horse. It was clearly the same horse and, judging by the date on the paper she was looking a
t now, which lined up with the dates on the photos, she might have been Brad’s first rescue project.
Knowing she had to at least try to gain access to his computer, she set the file down and typed in the date Brad had received Betty as the password. It was rejected.
Unwilling to give up, she tried Betty’s name and then the date, but this was also rejected. She gave a fleeting thought to how many tries she might have left before the computer locked her out altogether and changed her tactic. She typed in Betty’s name and a second date Brad had written on the paper—the date a healthy, rehabilitated Betty had been given to a little girl.
And the laptop’s desktop came to life.
The sun was well up when Dash walked into the office and startled her. Lost in the minutiae of what she was reading, time had gone by unnoticed. Instinctively, she stood and turned her back on the screen in an effort to keep him from seeing what she was doing. She knew she shouldn’t feel guilty for going through Brad’s things; after all, he’d all but asked her to when he’d left her his cookie-crumb trail. But still, hacking into his computer felt different than looking through his liquor cabinet.
“You’re dressed.” She frowned as she noticed Dash’s clothes. He was supposed to have the day off, but judging by his expression, that was no longer the plan. Which, in all honesty, left her feeling a little relieved. And even guiltier because she felt relieved.
His eyes traveled behind her, then back to her face. “There’s a problem out at one of the farms. I need to go check it out. It might be a while. Is everything okay?”
“Everything is fine,” she answered quickly. “Do you know what’s going on or how long you’ll be?”
He shrugged, still looking at her curiously. “Hard to say, I won’t know until I get out there.”
“Your job is almost like being a cop, isn’t it? You have to go when called?” Reaching behind her, she closed the laptop and headed toward the kitchen.
Dash followed her. “A bit, although it’s not usually so bad. My part-timer will be back soon and then my schedule will be more predictable.”
Matty opened a cupboard and pulled out a travel mug. “Here, I don’t have any breakfast made, but I can at least get you some coffee to go.” She cringed at the eagerness in her voice. She didn’t want him gone just to have him gone and she wasn’t kicking him out. She just had some things she wanted to do that she needed to do on her own.
“Matty? Something was bothering you yesterday and clearly something is going on right now. I don’t think it really has anything to do with your writing, any interest in telling me about it?”
She didn’t like the sardonic tone in his voice, mostly because he was justified. “I told you last night, I just have a lot on my mind, that’s all. I’ll spend the day writing, catching up, and maybe even getting ahead. By tonight, I’ll be back on track. One of the pitfalls of being with a writer, I suppose, is that our minds are often somewhere other than where we are physically,” she said, handing him the coffee.
“Is that why you were looking at Brad’s computer?”
For a split second, she froze. And then the words her mother had spoken in her dream came floating back, “I know you haven’t forgotten.” And, for good or for bad, she hadn’t. She hadn’t forgotten how to bury everything she thought and felt so deep down that she was almost able to lie to herself. She hadn’t forgotten how to hide her shame and guilt and use apathy as a weapon of self-defense. She hadn’t forgotten how to lie about who she was.
She shrugged. “I’m nosy. I was putting off my own work,” was all she said. She knew it didn’t cast her in a positive light. But right now, with the dream lingering in her memory and the pleas of her mother ringing in her ears, she simply wanted to be left alone—if only to figure out how to handle the unwanted intrusion of her past into her present. And maybe her future.
Dash’s eyes narrowed and she could see the tension in his jaw, but just then Lucy, the crazy terrier with, as far as Matty was concerned, perfect timing, came bounding into the room. In the commotion, Dash’s eyes went to the clock on the wall behind Matty.
“I need to go,” he said.
She nodded.
“I’ll call and let you know when I’m done.”
Again, she nodded. And as he walked out the door, she ignored the little pang she felt in her heart when neither one of them made any plans or promises for the future.
***
Ruthlessly shoving down the almost vertigo-like feeling that had overcome her when, with the memories her dream evoked, her past had crashed into her present, Matty didn’t bother waiting for the sound of Dash’s truck to fade into the day before heading back into the office and opening the computer again. Over the next hour or so, she found almost nothing, but every now and then there were obscure references to people or places that stood out, primarily because they didn’t fit in. But even those held nothing that pointed one way or another to her half brother’s involvement in any wrongdoing.
Leaning back in her chair, she stared off at the valley sloping away from her and wondered why she hadn’t just told Dash about Alexander Traynor’s visit, or for that matter, told Vivi. She wasn’t a child; she wasn’t living in that world anymore. Keeping things to herself—handling them herself—might not be the best solution. But still, old habits died hard and she felt like she needed more information before she decided if she could, or should, say anything to anyone. So in her mind she went through the facts, again, and everything Brad had left her—from the welcome letter, to the newspaper with the braille, to the pictures.
The pictures.
Rising from her seat and jogging up the stairs, Matty chastised herself for not thinking of them sooner. Returning to her seat in the office, pictures in hand, she flipped them over revealing the names Brad had written on the back. Taking a deep breath, she typed the first one into the search engine and waited to see what, if anything, came up.
Five hours later, she was more confused than ever. Well, about Brad anyway. She’d run a search on each of the names and what she’d found wasn’t good. The names listed on the pictures from Haiti were people who were charged and convicted of fraud, having provided sub-standard water filters to the United Nations and various other relief agencies in the wake of the massive quake.
The people noted on the back of the photos from New Orleans were also charged and convicted of fraud. Acting as intermediaries between people needing FEMA trailers and FEMA itself, they’d stolen money, provided false invoices to the government, and offered hollow promises to the people in need. None of the names were well known as all the cases, from what she could tell, were kept as quiet as possible—she assumed for political reasons.
That people could take advantage of such horrible situations didn’t come as a surprise to Matty, but still it made her stomach churn to be reminded of just how awful and unethical people could be. Even so, even knowing now what those people were involved in and what they had been convicted of, that wasn’t the worst of it.
When she’d first begun to see the pattern in what her research was revealing, she’d felt a sense of relief. Brad was a banking guy, how could he be involved in FEMA trailers and water filters? But as she dug deeper and deeper into the results that popped up on her screen, her heart had sunk.
In all her research, there’d been a consistent piece of information she hadn’t liked one bit. Each of the people named in the photos had also been accused of stealing money and secreting it away in foreign bank accounts. The reports she found, which consisted of short newspaper articles and a few scattered court documents, noted the missing and unaccounted for amounts, presumably the convicted felons’ ill-gotten gains, but each defendant steadfastly denied having any knowledge of the missing funds.
Making funds go missing was something a banking guy could do. Had Brad been their accomplice?
She ran a hand over her face and through her hair. What she needed to do was find out what bank the convicted offenders might have used and then
figure out where Brad had been working at the time of the crimes. From there, maybe she’d see a connection between Brad and the people in the photos, if there was one.
But she knew she wouldn’t be able to do that. The information was too obscure for the general public and there were too many possibilities. It was possible that, if she had the entire case file, she could come up with some ideas, but not with just what she’d found online; though it was a lot, it wasn’t enough. She was beginning to realize that there were really only two options to the scenario. Either Brad was involved in the illegal behaviors or he wasn’t. If he was, he was probably either dead or on the run. And neither of those options sounded all that great.
But if he wasn’t involved, where was he?
She didn’t have an answer to that. Nor did she know just what to do with the information she’d discovered. If Brad was involved in something illegal, what she’d found might help with an investigation into him. In which case, she should hand it over to Vivi and Ian.
But if he wasn’t, what then? She knew all too well how dangerous information, especially incomplete information, could be if placed in the wrong hands. And despite not having a relationship with her half brother, she didn’t want to see him caught up in something that could very quickly spiral out of control given the political sensitivities of the crimes. At least not if he didn’t deserve it.
She needed to know what, if anything, Vivi might have found in her investigation of Brad’s financial transactions before she made any decisions. She picked up her phone and dialed Vivi’s number.
It barely rang once before Vivi picked up. “Matty, how are you?”
“I’m doing well, thanks. And you?” Matty asked.
“Fine, inundated with evidence at the moment from a couple of car accidents and murders from various places around the state, but other than that, I’m okay. What can I do for you?”
These Sorrows We See Page 15