Family Jewels: Rose Gardner Investigations #1

by Denise Grover Swank

  James hand clenched at his side. “I want the names of the ones who are loyal to Wagner and Reynolds.”

  Raddy’s mouth twisted. “If I tell you, I’m a dead man.”

  “Without the necklace, you’ll be a dead man without my protection, so you better start talking.”

  “But if Rose and Neely Kate find it—”

  James looked like he wanted to throttle Raddy with his bare hands. “Rose and Neely Kate aren’t looking for shit for you. You got it? Now start naming names or I’ll shoot you and be done with it.”

  Raddy nodded, then listed off a string of names, none of which I recognized other than Buck Reynolds and Kip Wagner.

  “What about Hugh Wagner? Is he involved?” I asked. James gave me an odd look. I wasn’t supposed to know much about the Wagners, let alone know them.

  “No.” Raddy shook his head. “Hugh stays out of it. He doesn’t want to be involved.”

  For some reason, that made me feel relieved.

  “Anything else you can think to tell me?” James asked Raddy.

  “No.”

  “James.” I hoped he understood the meaning of the message I was about to give him, because there was no way I was going to come right out and say I wanted to have a vision. “I’ve ensured the negotiations,” I said when he shifted his gaze to me. “Now I want to do the other.”

  James gave me a long hard look before he gave his head a small shake and turned to Raddy. “Do you still want protection?”

  Raddy started to cry. “Yes.”

  James reached for his phone and then held it to his ear. “I’m sending you a package. Put him in a safe house for a few days. I’ll send him to the usual spot. Meet him in half an hour.” He stuffed his phone into his pocket and gave Raddy a hard stare. “One of my men will meet you at the Atchison parking lot. The code word is Atlanta. Get anything you want to take and meet him there in thirty minutes.”

  “Thank you, Skeeter,” he said between sobs. “You saved me.”

  “Don’t thank me,” James said in a gruff voice. “You should be thanking Rose. If it was up to me, you wouldn’t be walkin’ away in one piece. You held a gun on her and threatened her multiple times. But she’s set on following through with the original agreement, so make no mistake about it—I’m doing this for her. Not you.”

  Raddy’s head bobbed up and down as he reached for his gun.

  “You’re gonna leave that right where it is,” James said. “You’re lucky enough to be leaving of your own accord. Don’t push it.”

  Raddy didn’t answer, instead scrambling to get into his car. The moment the engine sputtered to life, he made a tight U-turn and drove toward the road.

  James stood in place, wearing his poker face. I couldn’t tell if he was angry with me or if he was pissed at Raddy. Most likely both.

  “James,” I said softly. “Thank you.”

  He looked like he wanted to cuss me out, but then he stooped and picked up his gun and Raddy’s. Stalked over to his still-running car and opened the door. “Let’s go.”

  “What are you talkin’ about? My truck’s right over there.” I thrust my hand in that direction.

  “I just let Dyer drive away. Rose, that fool has the ability to spread the word to half of Henryetta that you have me on speed dial. I’m not letting you out of my sight until I know it’s safe.”

  “You just offered him protection. Surely he knows that will negate your offer.”

  “I’m not taking any chances. For all I know, he’s running off to Wagner and seeing if he can get a better deal. Until I can figure out the fallout, you’re staying with me.”

  “At a safe house?” I cringed. I’d stayed in several, and their accommodations were lucky to rate two stars.

  “No, my place. Now get in.”

  “Your place?” I asked in disbelief.

  “You say that like I just announced I was bringin’ you to the county dump.”

  “I’m just surprised.” In the entire time I’d known him, I’d never been to his house. I didn’t even know where he lived. My stomach fluttered with excitement at the thought of seeing his personal space. Whenever I thought about Skeeter’s home, I envisioned the pool hall, although I knew that didn’t make much sense. Still, I had to wonder what I’d find.

  Had he left a woman in his bed?

  “You know,” I said, my stomach churning. “On second thought, I think I’ll just go home and sleep in my own bed.”

  His jaw tensed. “That’s not an option.”

  I blinked and glared at him. “Excuse me?”

  “I let you have your way with Dyer. I followed your rules, and now you’re going to follow mine.”

  It wasn’t that I disagreed with his request—given the circumstances, it wasn’t a bad idea to stay with someone who could protect me. But staying with James . . . at his house? I suddenly appreciated his reluctance to come to my own home. It was just so personal, so intimate. After everything that had happened between us these last few days, I wasn’t sure I could handle it.

  “Maybe I could just stay with Jed.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Jed’s busy doing something else.”

  “At three in the morning?”

  “He’s digging into what happened at the Trading Post.”

  “Merv?” While Jed was James’ right-hand man, Merv was a close second. But Jed actually liked me. At best, Merv tolerated me, and he liked me even less after he’d gotten shot helping me back in February.

  James’ face hardened and he pointed to the open door. “Get in the damn car.”

  Part of me rebelled at the command, but he was right. He’d played by my rules with Raddy; it was time for me to bend to his. “I have to get my purse out of the truck.”

  Looking leery of my sudden agreeableness, he said, “Get in. I’ll get it.”

  I squatted and picked up my cell phone, then pulled the gun out of the back of my jeans and got in the car. James was back in a matter of moments, handing me the purse as he climbed behind the wheel.

  “I hid your keys. I’ll have one of my guys pick up your truck tomorrow.” He shifted into drive, pulled a U-turn, and headed toward the road.

  “Just how long do you expect me to stay with you?” I asked with a bit of attitude as I stuffed my gun in my purse and set it on the floor in front of me.

  “As long as it takes, Lady,” was his terse reply.

  “I have jobs I need to work on tomorrow.”

  He shot me a glare. “Then I’ll send someone to watch over you.”

  “Jed?”

  He hesitated. “No. I’ll send Miguel. Brett handled the Homer Dyer situation well enough, but he’s still too green. I don’t trust him with this.”

  “Why not Jed?”

  James slowed down when we got to the road, then turned right and headed south of town. “The truth?”

  “Of course.”

  “Earlier today, he asked to be pulled off as your backup.”

  I sucked in a breath. It hurt that Jed didn’t want to be my guardian anymore—we’d been through so much together, and he was as much a friend as he was a protector—but I had a sneaking suspicion his request didn’t have anything to do with me.

  “What’s going on with Jed and Neely Kate?” I asked.

  He shot me a sharp look. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “When Jed saved us from Homer Dyer the other day, he and Neely Kate were at each other’s throats, not to mention the repeat this afternoon. What’s goin’ on?” But I had a feeling I knew.

  “How would I know? You’re with them a hell of a lot more than I am.”

  Was Jed’s attraction to Neely Kate new? Before this mess with the necklace, Neely Kate and I had last seen Jed in April, the week before my trip to Houston to donate my bone marrow to Violet. I’d seen him a few times since my return, but never with Neely Kate. Had they seen each other when I wasn’t around?

  I wanted to solve the mystery of Jed and Neely Kate, but I also wanted my fr
iend and protector back. Jed was someone I trusted, literally, with my life. The look James was giving me told me that he understood. “Is this going to be a problem?”

  “You trust Miguel?” I asked.

  His eyes narrowed.

  “Okay,” I conceded. “Stupid question.”

  “But you might not be going out in public at all tomorrow. I need to assess the situation.”

  “So you expect me to hide out indefinitely?”

  “You’re the one who decided to give Dyer the proof he needed that . . .”

  His voice trailed off, and I wondered what he’d intended to say. That I meant something to him? It was the reason he refused to be seen with me in public now that I’d retired my Lady in Black veil. “He would never have tied us together if you hadn’t found him in my barn. What were you doing there, anyway? You never come to my farm.”

  “It’s like I said. I was checking up on you. Jed told me about your run-in with Homer.”

  The pieces fell into place. “Jed didn’t want to come, and you were afraid that it would scare the bejesus out of me if you sent someone I didn’t know.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “No. I wanted to check on you myself.”

  I had to wonder if it was partially because he’d missed me. Sure, we’d seen each other on Tuesday, but there’d been no chance for us to talk like we usually did. But the last thing I wanted to do was chat about my behavior that night in the barn. “Why wouldn’t you let me have a vision?”

  “There was no reason to take the risk.”

  “What risk? How many visions did you ask me to have last winter when I worked for you? Dozens.”

  “That was different.”

  “How was it different?”

  “You know why it’s different. You wore a damn disguise back then. You could spout off about whatever you’d seen, and it wouldn’t matter—they didn’t know who you really were. But Raddy knows you plain as day. If you’d said anything to spook him, our agreement would never have worked.”

  “Jed and I explained away tons of visions. Neely Kate too. And you said knowledge is power. It might have given us information we need.”

  “No.” He shot me a quick glance, his jaw tight. “Do you know how I got in this position as the king?”

  “You’re forgetting I was there at the auction where you won your position, Skeeter Malcolm, watching you bid,” I said, pissed at his condescending tone. “I was the one who kept you alive. Because of my visions. I saw you die every which way before we got it right.”

  “Yes, you kept me alive, but you didn’t get me a seat at the table.” He shook his head in frustration. “It took a lot of planning. A lot of biding my time. Knowing when to pursue something and when to let it go. Even when it goes against everything you want.” He paused. “You do it for the greater good.”

  Was he talking about me? On second thought, it was pretty narcissistic to think so. He’d lived in the criminal world for over fifteen years. Despite the trials and tribulations he’d faced in his new role, he’d prospered. Then I reminded myself that he’d prospered as a criminal. It wouldn’t do to forget that. James Malcolm had killed men. But had he done it in self-defense or cold blood?

  Everything I’d seen of James told me it was the former. But did it really matter? Dead was dead.

  “The fact is that one more group of men is gunnin’ to take you down,” I said. “They want to kill you, James. You said it yourself: you make more money with your legal ventures than your illegal ones. So stop the illegal ones and become a regular law-abiding citizen.”

  He ignored my statement and asked, “How do you know Kip and Hugh Wagner?”

  I almost played dumb, but it would be a waste of time. “When we were looking for the necklace, we went to both pawn shops after we found out that Rainy Day doesn’t sell jewelry. We met Hugh at Ripper.”

  “And Kip?”

  “I never met him, per se. But a man was watching me from the doorway after I forced a vision of Hugh. My gut tells me it was him.”

  He held his tongue for a moment. “You forced that vision because of me.”

  “Well, yeah. I was confused. You’d hinted that Wagner works in retail, which would fit with a pawn shop, particularly one with a rough reputation. But Hugh hardly seems ruthless. So after I bought the brooch—”

  “What brooch?”

  “The owl I asked him about. It’s gold with red rubies for eyes. It fit Raddy’s description of one of the pieces that he said belonged to his grandmother. When Hugh handed it to me, I grabbed his arm and forced a vision of what he was doing Friday night. I heard Hugh talking to someone named Kip. They didn’t say anything you could use, but it confirmed that Kip was ambitious—and he acknowledged people were gonna get hurt.”

  “And what did you say when it was over?”

  “That there would be casualties of war, a phrase he used. But Neely Kate smoothed it over by saying I was talkin’ about a Civil War book I was reading.”

  “You said you heard Hugh and Kip talking,” he said. “Why didn’t you see him?”

  I wasn’t so sure he’d be happy to hear I’d been preparing for battle with Neely Kate, so I’d hoped that part would slip past him. I should have known better. “When I started to force the vision, Neely Kate put her hand on my shoulder too. So I had two visions at once—I saw hers; I only heard Hugh’s. It was the first time that’s ever happened, and I felt like crap afterward.”

  “But you blurted out something related to your vision of Hugh.” From the way he muttered it, he was talking more to himself than me.

  “Yeah. Although I’m not sure what I would have said about Neely Kate’s vision. We were standing in my kitchen.”

  He was silent as he drove. It took me awhile to realize we were going around in circles, though it was obvious why—he didn’t want to draw anyone to his home. It only made it more surprising he was bringing me there willingly. He finally turned off the county road onto a drive that I could barely make out in the dark and thick vegetation. I considered offering him a free landscaping consultation, but he probably kept it that way purposefully. After we drove for a couple of minutes, a two-story house came into view, with a single light glowing in a downstairs window. It was fairly new—much newer than my farmhouse—with river rock siding, wood accents, and a small front porch made of raw timber. A large four-car garage sat to the side, but he parked on the circular drive in front of the house. The large lawn was neatly trimmed, but I noticed that other than the grass and the woods surrounding the house, there was absolutely no landscaping.

  This was definitely not what I’d expected. While I’d known better than to assume he actually lived in one of his rat-trap safe houses, I hadn’t expected something so civilized.

  “This is your house?”

  He turned the car off and opened the door. “Yep.”

  I opened the car door and followed him to the front door. Two Adirondack chairs sat facing the gravel driveway. He punched a code into a keypad on his seven-foot-tall wooden front door, then swung it open and waited for me to walk in first.

  My mouth dropped open. The living room was two stories tall. A river rock fireplace stood on the opposite wall, flanked by two sets of double French doors. Comfortable leather furniture was arranged around it, but I didn’t see a TV.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked as he set his alarm system.

  I hadn’t been until he asked, but my stomach broadcast a loud growl at the reminder of food.

  The grin he gave me wasn’t his bad-boy grin; this was more real. “I’ll make us sandwiches.”

  I followed him into the fanciest kitchen I’d ever seen, full of natural wood cabinets with a shiny gloss, dark granite counters, and stainless steel appliances.

  Definitely not what I’d expected. This kitchen looked like it belonged to a chef.

  He opened up the right side of the double-door refrigerator and pulled out packages of turkey, cheese, and a loaf of bread, all of which he arranged on t
he island.

  “You shouldn’t keep bread in the fridge,” I said as I opened cabinets and found two plates.

  He laughed. “Is that right?”

  “It gets stale faster.”

  I grabbed the bag and opened it, then pulled out four slices and put two on each plate.

  “I can do it,” he said.

  “We always work better as partners, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice rough. “We do.”

  I looked up at him, but his face was devoid of expression. While I could see how his poker face would serve him well in his life as a criminal, I found it extremely frustrating. “How long did it take you to learn that?”

  His brow wrinkled. “Learn what?”

  “To hide what you’re feeling?”

  His mouth quirked to one side. “I learned that skill long before I started my apprenticeship with J.R. Simmons.”

  “From your father?”

  He nodded.

  James told me once that his father had been a cruel man who’d abused him, his younger brother, and their mother. His daddy was the one who’d given him the nickname Skeeter—an insult he’d worn as a symbol of his guilt. James thought he deserved it. He’d been forced to watch his father’s abuse, but had been too young to stop it. Ever since I’d learned the truth, I’d called him only by his given name.

  “Where’s your mother now?”

  “Dead.”

  “And your father?”

  “He got what he deserved.” He looked away, making it clear he had no intention of explaining the how of it. I suspected he might have had a hand in meting out that punishment.

  “Does Scooter live with you?”

  “No. He lives in town.”

  I glanced around and wondered how many women he’d made sandwiches for in this kitchen. The thought made me queasy.

  He arranged the plates in front of two stools on one side of the island, then grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge.

  I slid onto one of the bar stools, and he sat down next to me. I took a bite, surprised by how hungry I actually was. Apparently negotiating with criminals worked up an appetite. I took in the fancy stainless steel appliances and asked him, “Do you cook much?”

  He laughed. “No. I can feed myself the basics, but every Monday and Thursday Sandra leaves me something to heat in the oven, when she comes to clean.”