Nathan was waiting for me on the porch while everyone else had disappeared. Amanda jogged passed him and patted his arm. “I like this one. You should keep her.”
His brows rose, and I chuckled. “I offered girl-talk.”
Nathan pulled me into his arms and stared down into my eyes. “You know you’ve opened a can of worms. She’s not a typical girly girl.”
“Maybe not, but she still has crushes and boyfriends.”
Nathan plugged his ears. “I don’t need to hear anymore.”
“Funny,” I said, opening the screen door. “Do you still have the evidence bag that the money was in?”
“Yeah.” Nathan’s uncertainty was clear.
“I need to test out this crystal. I didn’t need it to find the pin. I used my powers of deduction.” I climbed the stairs.
Nathan rested his palm on my arm, stopping me in my tracks. “You want to see if you can track the stolen bill back using the bag.”
“That’s the plan. The money has been sitting in that bag for over a week. That should have been enough contact for me track that single hundred-dollar bill to its current location.” I gave him a quick smile. The bag wouldn’t take us to the heist money, but it should take us directly to the guy who’d robbed us and right now that was all we needed. “I need to test this crystal and find my other one and that money. Only this time, we won’t be caught off guard.” I raised my brows. “So, you, Mr. Murray, need to keep your hands to yourself.”
I spun around and jogged up the stairs.
“Easier said than done,” Nathan said from behind. I glanced over my shoulder to find his gaze glued to my backside.
“You do have an extra gun or two hanging around, right?” I asked.
“You aren’t getting a gun, but you will go armed,” he answered, walking past me.
We headed up to the third floor.
“You should have named the horse Yoda because you’re talking in riddles.”
He knocked on a bedroom door. The sign hung that read, Keep Out. “Amanda’s room?”
“Come in,” she yelled through the closed door.
He twisted the knob and opened the door, taking a step into the room.
Amanda had her cell phone pressed against her ear.
“I need to borrow your stun gun, squirt.”
“I’ll call you back,” she whispered into the phone and hung up. “Why do you need my stun gun? Did you forget where you hid your bullets?”
“It’s not for me; it’s for Cassie. We’re going hunting.”
“And you want to kill Bambi with a stun gun?” she asked. “That’s just wrong on so many levels.”
“We’re hunting robbers,” I corrected as Amanda handed me the pink-stone-embellished stun gun.
“Oh well then, hooyah, go get ’em, and happy hunting,” Amanda said, holding on to the doorknob in a not-so-subtle way of telling us to get lost.
Chapter 17
Nathan borrowed Mildred’s four-door sedan in an attempt to be less conspicuous. We’d driven up and down each street, and I’d held on to the crystal in one hand and the evidence bag in the other. I could feel the tingling as we neared even without a vision of where the property was.
It vibrated hard in my hand as we neared the library. I rested my hand on Nathan’s arm. “Stop here.”
He did, and I climbed out with him following behind.
He walked with me up the street before I turned back around and walked to the car. I glanced up and down the street, only taking a step in each different direction until I stared up at the library.
The red brick building was dark. A closed sign was hung on the door. There was nothing suspicious. Maybe my wires had gotten crossed.
“Let’s check it out,” Nathan said as he took my hand and led me down the alleyway. The building next to the library was the historical society. Those windows were dark too.
We crept down the alley, Nathan releasing my hand as we neared the end of the building.
The movement of the crystal vibration prodded me to go running around. I could feel it; we were near, and that meant trouble. I pulled out the stun gun and waited with my finger on the trigger as Nathan peered from around the corner.
He nodded and held his finger to his lips.
I stepped around him and peered with him. The man that had robbed us was carrying a basket filled with fruit as he pulled open the door to a storm shelter. He gave one look around before he was about to descend the steps.
Nathan sprang like a tiger and held his gun to the man’s head. “You don’t get to disappear this time.”
The man stood stock-still. His gaze widened as I approached.
He had fresh peaches, apples, and a slew of other fruits and veggies in his hands.
“Daddy, I’m hungry,” a small voice called out from the darkness below as he stepped into the light.
The man slowly lowered the basket of food to the ground and held up his hands. “Arrest me, but don’t hurt my kids.”
“What is this place?” I asked, stepping around them both. I eased down the stairs before Nathan could stop me.
“Cassie, get back here,” Nathan growled as I reached the last step.
Light danced shadows off the brick walls. There was a group of people, fifteen without counting the kids sitting on blankets on the floor.
“We don’t want any trouble,” a woman whispered. “Please, just leave.”
“I can’t do that,” I said as I moved farther into the room, stepping through the maze of people. With each step I took, I could feel the draw and knew I was closer. I opened an ancient-looking cabinet. My purse was nestled inside. The money from my wallet was gone, but the credit cards, ID, and crystal were perched on a shelf inside the cabinet.
“Thank God,” I said, pulling it free. I slid it around my neck and grabbed our things, including the ruined hundred-dollar bill. There was a stack of identical red-dyed hundred-dollar bills sitting next to it.
“Nathan, you need to get down here,” I called out.
A child across the room moaned and violently coughed. I took a step in that direction out of habit, and a woman pulled a little girl against her chest and rubbed her back. “It’s just a bad cough.”
Nathan stepped into the room with the man in handcuffs. He eased him to sit on his butt in the corner of the room as he gauged the current threat.
“Nathan Murray, when did you get back into town?” a man asked, stepping out of the shadow. He held his weathered cowboy hat against his dirty clothes.
“Pastor Bigsby?” Nathan asked.
The man stepped forward and shook Nathan’s hand.
“Pastor?” I asked.
“These are good people, Nathan. They’re God’s children, just like you, but they fell on hard times. We all did.”
“So, let me guess, you send a scout out every night to rob people?” Nathan turned his glare on the man in cuffs.
“No, son. We don’t do that. We take what’s given to us.”
“He didn’t ask. He held us at gunpoint,” Nathan said, gesturing to the man on the ground.
“Michael, what have you done?”
“I didn’t hurt them, Pastor. Neither of them. I just needed some money for Mary since the bills covered in red wouldn’t work.”
“His daughter,” the pastor clarified and gestured to the kid that had been coughing.
“I’ve made a list of everything I took. I planned to pay everyone back,” Michael, the handcuffed man, whispered in the dark.
Nathan’s scowl grew in intensity, and I rested my palm on his arm. “We understand.”
“No, we don’t,” Nathan growled.
“You’re all homeless, right?”
“That’s not an excuse for breaking the law, Cassie,” Nathan said as he glanced around the room.
“Yes, ma’am. The bank called our mortgages, and we couldn’t pay. It included the one on my home, or these people would be living there,” the pastor announced.
My he
art shattered into a million little pieces as I glanced around the room. These people had dirt covering the faces, their clothes were old and in need of repair. Jugs of water sat in the corner. Each person had a piece of fruit or vegetable they’d been coveting.
“How long have you been like this?”
“Three months,” the man sitting in handcuffs answered.
Nathan finally lowered his gun. “Our town has resources. Why didn’t you go to the city?”
The pastor dropped his head. “The resources were used up. These good people aren’t the first that lost everything to the bank.”
“I don’t understand,” Nathan said, and his brows dipped. “Uncle Dan would have helped you.”
The man wearing handcuffs tsked. “That no good piece of—”
“Michael, there are children present,” the woman clipped from across the room, shuffling the sick girl in her arms.
I touched Nathan’s arm and gestured to the cabinet. “You need to go take a look at what Michael has hidden inside.”
He walked off while I jogged up the stairs and carried the basket of food to the others. I laid it at the pastor’s feet before moving next to the woman with the sick child.
“What’s her name?”
“Mary Ellen,” the woman answered with a smile.
“What did the doctor say?”
Mary Ellen held up two prescriptions in her hand. “She has a respiratory infection, and he gave us these.”
I took them and looked at the scripts. “Why didn’t you get those filled?”
“No money,” Michael answered from across the room. “We could barely afford the doctor bill with the money I took from you.”
“You told me you found it, Michael. What good is it going to do us if you’re in jail?” the woman asked.
“Janet, I’d do anything for Mary.”
“Not if you are behind bars. Now apologize to these people.”
“An apology isn’t going to help,” Nathan said, turning with the new hundred-dollar bills in his hands. “But telling me everything you know about this might.”
“I found those,” Michael blurted out. “Had I known they were useless; I wouldn’t have tried to use them. I would have left them in the gutter where I found them.”
“Gutter?” he asked.
Michael shook his head. “I’m not saying another word unless you promise not to press charges for robbing you.”
Tension thickened in the air. Nathan had tipped his hand, and they were at an impasse.
“Nathan, give me your keys.”
Nathan tossed me his keys. “Where are you going?
“I’m going to take Janet to the all-night pharmacy and get these prescriptions filled, and then I’m going to go rent some hotel rooms for these people.”
His mouth parted. “We’re kind of in the middle of something here.”
“You are,” I answered.
“There won’t be any rooms,” the Pastor answered. “Not with the competition that kicks off this weekend.”
I looked around the room at these kind faces. “We’ll figure something out. I promise.”
“Why would you help us?” an older gray-haired woman asked from across the room.
“Because it’s the right thing to do,” I answered as I held back the tears that had gathered in my eyes. I wouldn’t cry in front of these people, but I would when I was alone. My heart was breaking, and no way could I just walk away knowing what I knew. No way would my conscience let me.
“I don’t have a car seat. Can we leave Mary with someone?”
Janet nodded and crossed the room, handing her daughter to the other older woman. “Momma, you take care of her, and I’ll be back soon.”
Chapter 18
I drove across town to the all-night pharmacy with Janet pointing out the directions. She reluctantly got out of the car with me. Pink tinted her cheeks as she ran her hand over her clothes, as if trying to hide her appearance.
We walked inside, and I led her toward the back of the store, past all of the people giving us weird looks, and straight into the bathroom.
“You can wash your face and hands if it will make you feel better. I’m going to step out and see if they have any clean clothes.”
“You don’t have to do that. I just need medicine for my daughter.”
I rested my hand on Janet’s arm. “Let me do this for you and your daughter.”
She reluctantly nodded, and I left her just as she turned the water on in the sink.
I stepped out and hit the tourist aisle in search of T-shirts and lounge pants. The pharmacy was equipped with everything a tourist might need. I grabbed a few items, including some hand wipes, and took them to the register and paid, handing over my credit card.
I signed, and when the cashier went to put the items in the bag, I stopped her. “That’s not necessary.”
I pulled the tags free and dropped them in the bag and carried all the items into the bathroom, where Janet took her time cleaning herself and changing into clothes.
“We weren’t always like this,” she said from behind the closed bathroom stall door while I sat on the sink, dangling my legs over the counter.
“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Our crop got ruined, and we were having a hard time making ends meet, and then things turned worse when the cattle somehow got out and disappeared. It was as if we were struck by bad luck, and it all started when some developers showed up in town wanting to buy our land.”
“You think they sabotaged things?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” Janet appeared from behind the closed door. She ran her fingers through her hair, trying to comb the knots free. “I would hope not, but it was soon after that we missed some payments, and the bank came calling in our mortgage note. We weren’t the only ones, either.”
“Is that when Michael started stealing?”
“He didn’t always steal. He’d come home with fresh fruit and vegetables our old neighbors and friends supplied him with. They didn’t mind if he took from their fields. Then he filled water from faucets. He didn’t take much, just enough to try and support us to get by. But when Mary got sick, I think that must have scared him into stealing from you. I’m so sorry he did that.”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures. If it had been any of my sisters and we were in the same predicament, I might have done the same.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” she answered. “You have a kind soul.” Janet put her dirty clothes in the bag, and we gave the pharmacist her script to fill. We were told it would be forty-five minutes, so we walked across the street, and I fed her hamburgers and French fries too. She scarfed them down, trying not to look like a woman on the verge of starvation.
“We’ll get some to go and take it to the others. When was the last time you had a decent meal?” I asked.
She shrugged. “We’ve been surviving on fruit and vegetables, so I can’t complain. Homeless people in bigger cities wouldn’t even have that to eat.”
A plan started forming in my head. It took hold of my heart and wouldn’t let go. “I’m going to help you and all of the others. I just need a little time to get my plan into action.”
“You aren’t a local. Won’t you leave after the competition?”
“I’m not here for the competition.” I smiled. “I was trying to help Nathan locate some missing items, but I failed.”
“Why is that?” she asked while taking a sip of her chocolate milkshake to wash down her French fries.
“I needed a map, and this town doesn’t believe in street maps when cell phones are so handy.”
Janet swallowed hard. “Why not just go to the property appraiser’s office? I’ve had to go there a bunch checking boundary lines and deeds.”
Why in the world hadn’t I thought of that? A smile formed on my lips. “Thanks, I’ll do that.”
“My momma used to work there before she retired. That’s how she knew every city office buildin
g in town had storm shelters. She still had a key to get in,” Janet said.
I bought the store out of all their blankets, wet wipes, toiletries, and everything else I could think of that these people might need. I’d ordered a ton of food and picked it up before returning to the library.
Nathan still hadn’t gotten anything useful from Michael by the time we’d unloaded all of our goodies. Both just pure stubbornness.
“Take his cuffs off. He needs to eat,” I said.
“Cassie, I’m not removing his handcuffs.”
I rested my hand on my hip. “He’s malnourished, he was trying to help his baby girl, and he needed money. Can’t you just for once give the guy a break?”
“And if Michael does it again and then someone gets hurt?” Nathan asked.
“He won’t. Will you, Michael?” I asked, unwrapping a burger.
“I won’t. I’ll figure something else out, I promise.”
“See.” Cassie smiled. “He won’t do it again, and if he does, then you know where to look.” I held the burger up to his mouth, and he took a bite. “If not for me, do it for Janet and Mary, please.”
Nathan sighed, rubbing at his temple and held up the hundred-dollar bills. “Why should I give him a break when he won’t tell me about the bills?”
“Nathan has a point,” I said, holding a drink cup up to Michael’s mouth. “Quid pro quo. You should tell him what you know if he promises to drop the charges and not haul you in.”
“Does he?” Michael turned to Nathan.
“Do you?”
“Fine.” Nathan sighed. “But it better be worth it.”
“I found them in a New Orleans gutter.”
Nathan’s brow rose. “If you’re homeless, what were you doing in New Orleans?”
“I found work as a ranch hand, and there was a competition two weeks ago. I traveled with the horse.”
Nathan unlocked Michael’s restraints, and I handed him the burger, which he scarfed down. I handed him three more.
“And the money was just lying in the gutter?”
Pay Dirt (Bennett Dynasty Book 2) Page 8