by Dale Mayer
“The puppy food’s just fine for them,” he said. “The last thing you want is to teach them to want beef too.”
“So one rule for Hershey and another for the babies?”
“Only when they are puppies,” he said. “Then they start their training, so that you can have well-behaved dogs.”
“Says you.” But she didn’t argue much on this point. She looked at him and said, “We are all going for a walk?”
“Why not?” he said. “You look like you could do with getting out again.”
“Good enough.”
By the time they got everybody leashed up and outside—giving the pups a chance to run around, to take a leak—they led them back toward his motel room.
“Did anybody here at the motel say anything to you about the noise, about the puppies?”
Rowan shook his head. “Not yet. It could be coming. I don’t know. I’m not borrowing trouble until it happens.”
“Seems like we have more than enough trouble right now,” she said. “It just completely angers me to think that somebody tossed my apartment.”
“Somebody knew it was your place.”
That shut her up. She glanced at him and whispered, “Does that mean they are following me?”
“They are,” he said, “but we already knew that. It’s just, this time, they acted on it.” They arrived back at his motel room, fed the puppies and Hershey, who was very well-behaved, while the humans sat and had tea. When that was done, he asked, “Are you okay to sleep in the bedroom?”
She looked at him in surprise. “I would rather sleep on the couch,” she said. “To be honest, I don’t want to put you out for the night.”
He just glared at her.
She raised both hands. “You know something? Being the honorable protector all the time has got to be wearing.”
He grinned and said, “Not really. In a bed or on the couch, neither will let me sleep. This way is the best for you.”
She took her suitcase into the bedroom, opened it up inside, and said, “Thank you for bringing everything you could find.”
“I’m sorry it’s a bit of a mess,” he said. “If you can go through it and see if anything is missing, that would be good too.”
“I never thought of that,” she said, as she went through everything. “I think that you left my bathrobe and my nightie, hanging on the back of the bathroom door.”
“Sorry,” he said with a wink. “I didn’t see that.”
“Everything else appears to be here though,” she said. “So they weren’t there for anything of mine?”
“Not that they found,” he said. “You take a second look and may realize that something is missing after all.”
“I don’t think so,” she said, “but I will keep thinking.”
“No jewelry, no passport, any of that stuff?”
“It’s all in my purse,” she said. “And I don’t have any jewelry except the earrings I have on. I had a bunch of nice jewelry, but it all went down in the fire.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She shrugged. “Mementos from my grandmother and my mother. They are irreplaceable, but they weren’t worth a ton, no real monetary value.”
“You don’t seem to be swayed by money as much as you are by the memories.”
“Everything else can be replaced,” she said. “And, of course, losing my grandmother to boot just makes it that much harder.”
“And again, I’m sorry for that,” he said.
She gave him a misty smile and said, “Do you mind if I have a shower before I go to bed?”
“Absolutely not.”
He ordered Hershey out of the room, and she said, “What about the puppies? Until they are potty trained, I don’t think it’s a good idea for them to share the bed,” she said.
“I suspect they will get on the couch on their own.” He chuckled as the two roly-poly puppies followed him back out again. He said, “Remember. You need to come up with names.”
“I will,” she said, as he closed the door firmly between them.
Chapter 12
Brandi slept on the bed, feeling the tears that she’d been holding back threatening to spill. Ever since she had seen that her apartment was unlocked, she realized just how out of control her life had gotten. That Rowan had brought her clothing and stuff was important but also just showed how much of a stark contrast her life was right now to what it had been when her grandmother had been alive. The house they had shared had been full of memories and happiness. The furniture was old and worn but comfortable. She knew exactly how to sit on the couch because it would fit her butt perfectly. Everything now just felt hard and cheap.
She quickly sorted through the suitcase and left all the clothes in it but pulled out a large oversize T-shirt that she sometimes used as an alternative for sleeping in. Taking a clean pair of underwear, she headed to the bathroom, where she had a long hot shower and scrubbed down her hair. She dried herself off, brushed her teeth, and dressed. She returned to the bedroom and crawled under the covers. She didn’t know if she could sleep tonight or not, but she needed to try. This was just all too much psychological stress for her. She had no options when it came to the death of her grandmother, and, while she would end up living somewhere, the loss of the only home that she’d ever remembered could never be replaced.
Yet this latest event too had to be dealt with. She wouldn’t lose any sleep over the loss of that apartment. In an uninhabitable part of her mind, it was a temporary lodging place, but this motel? Well, it was even more temporary. Also, it wasn’t even hers. Shaking her head determinedly, she closed her eyes and tried to drift off to sleep. She heard the whispered murmurs of Rowan as he spoke to the pups and to the dog. She thought she heard him make a couple phone calls. But then, of course, he was trying to piece together what was happening in her life and where she should live. She thought about it a lot through the night and, as she woke up the next morning, hadn’t come to any conclusions.
When they arrived at the bank, he looked over at her. “You seem tired and quiet.”
“I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do from here.”
He nodded and said, “First we will take a look at the bank accounts and the safe deposit box.”
“Then what?” she asked. “I already know there is some money, and I have some money saved myself.”
“Maybe it’s time to talk to your boss to see if there’s an option for a transfer, unless you want to stay here. In which case, it’s time to find the next home for you.”
“Everything inside me rebels at the idea of staying here,” she said. “A part of me wants to get as long and as far away as possible. So I don’t have to deal with this anymore.”
“It still has to be dealt with,” he said, as he reached out, linked his fingers with hers, pulling her hand a little bit closer. “Some of this is easier to face when you’re not alone.”
As they walked inside the bank, the teller called them over and led them to the manager’s office. The detective was already sitting there. He stood, shook her hand, and said, “Let’s get this done.”
“Not exactly sure what is to be done,” she said. She handed over a copy of the will to the bank manager that she had made at a local office supply business.
The bank manager nodded and said, “I also understand you are the executor.”
“That’s on the second page,” Rowan said.
He looked and flipped to the page. “Okay, the other two bank accounts.” He clicked through the computer on his desk, brought them up, and wrote down the balances. When she heard the numbers, she stared at him in shock. “You had no idea your grandmother had money?”
She shook her head. “How is that even possible? The furniture was comfortable but broken and all twenty years old. She needed a new mattress and yet refused to buy one, just saying it was fine.”
“A lot of people of her generation are like that,” the bank manager said. “Anyway you have—without adding in any money
that you may receive over the current property dispute—close to three-quarters of a million dollars here. And it’s all yours. Now the safe deposit box.”
Immediately Rowan stepped in and said, “To avoid any kind of conflict here or any question of the transfer of property from the bank to Brandi, why don’t you just pick it up, bring it back here, and we can all see what’s inside it.”
The bank manager looked at the detective, and he nodded. The manager said, “That’s fine too.” He got her signature, disappeared, came back, and brought the huge locked box in with him. “This is highly irregular.”
“The whole thing is highly irregular,” Brandi said.
They opened the box, and inside on top was a 9” x 12” envelope. The manager pulled it out and put it on the desk, so that they all could witness everything as it came out. “The envelope covered up cash beneath it.”
She leaned forward, stared inside the box, and shook her head. “She couldn’t put it in her bank accounts or something?”
“A lot of people keep a certain amount of cash in their safe deposit box,” he said. “I need to count this.”
“Yes, you do,” the detective said.
The bank manager hesitated. “You want me to do that first?”
He nodded.
The manager dug out the cash, all bundled up. “These are $10,000 bundles. So this is $50,000.” He slid that off to the side with the envelope.
She asked, “What is in the envelope?”
He opened it and said, “This looks to be letters, photos.”
She smiled. “I will be glad to have those.”
He went back to the safe deposit box, then brought out a long jewelry box and a velvet pouch and … a weapon.
When that came into sight, everybody gasped and fell silent. She stared at the handgun. “Dear God, why would my grandmother have that?”
“It doesn’t have to be for any necessary reason,” Rowan said quietly. “For all you know, it was your grandfather’s, and she didn’t even know what to do about it when he passed away.”
“I’ll run a trace on that,” the detective said. He held up his hand for it. The bank manager placed it in his hand, and the detective quickly wrote down the serial number and the manufacturer. “Do you know if your grandfather had a weapon?”
“Honestly, I don’t,” she said. “When I went to live with my grandmother, my grandfather had already passed away.”
The detective said, “I will need to take this to the station.”
“Do you need to?” Rowan asked. “We can put it back in the safe deposit box until you figure out where it came from, who it’s registered to.”
The detective hesitated. “We don’t know that it’s been used in any crime.”
“You can come here and get it if it has.” She looked over the manager. “I give my permission for that to happen. May I take a look at the velvet pouch?” she asked.
“Yes.” He nodded.
She reached out in front of everybody and opened up the tie at the top and out dropped a beautiful set of pearls. “Now these I remember,” she said. “My grandmother wore them in several of her photos. They were probably the pearls that she got from her husband for a wedding gift,” she said sadly. She put the pearls back in the bag and put the bag off to the side with the letters and the cash. She looked at the manager and said, “I would like to open the jeweler’s box.”
“Go for it,” they all said.
With everybody watching, she undid the clasp and opened the top. Inside were coins, all in special little pouches, all in an array.
She looked at Rowan and said, “Well, look at that. There was a coin collection.”
The bank manager made a note on his inventory and said, “Something else is here too.” He held up a note and read it. “To my beautiful Isabella, I hope this will be the nest egg that you never need to use. Signed, Robert.”
“Isabella is my grandmother,” she said. “Robert is my grandfather.”
“So he bought these and arranged for them to be left for her, as a nest egg, in case she ever was broke,” Rowan said.
“That was a nice gesture, but who else would know about this?” the detective asked. “Because somebody cared enough to take her life over them.”
“I don’t have any other family,” she said, looking at him.
“What about that third person on the previous will?” Rowan asked. “Two of them were deceased and the third?”
“I looked it up this morning,” the detective said. “Steve. He’s in jail, for murder.”
She stared at him in shock. “Who did he murder?”
He looked at her grimly. “Your grandfather.”
Rowan watched the shock hit her as she sank into the chair between him and the detective. Rowan glanced at the detective. “Not exactly said with any finesse there.”
“I had no way to know she didn’t know this either,” he said.
Rowan reached across, picked up her hands, and whispered, “It’s okay. It happened a long time ago.”
She stared at him in shock, shaking her head. “My grandmother obviously knew this Steve who ended up killing my grandfather. I’m having a hard time believing this. And Steve is still in jail?”
The detective nodded yes.
“So maybe the question here is, at this point,” Rowan said, “does that Steve person who murdered her grandfather have any family?”
“I have already got traces happening,” the detective said. He gave Rowan a grim smile. “Remember that part about we know how to do our jobs?”
“I hear you,” he said, “but how long ago was the murder of the grandfather?”
“Twenty-one years ago,” he said.
“I came to live with her when I was ten,” she said. “I’m twenty-nine now, so that was nineteen years ago.” She thought about it. “That’s probably about right.”
“So, your grandfather gets murdered. Nobody knows anything about this coin collection, at least as far as you know, except for your grandmother obviously.” The detective cocked an eye her way.
“I can say this, Grandmother never mentioned it,” she cried out. “However, she didn’t mention a lot of things, including the fact that Grandfather was murdered. She never talked about him, once we came together. It was as if we had just our life together, from that point on. I was dealing with the loss of my parents—and that was also her son who had died. She lost her husband, and then a couple years later her son, and she inherited a granddaughter at the same time.”
The detective asked slowly, “And your parents, how did they die?”
“In a car accident,” she said. “My father decided to take me along on a business trip. We all were driving across the state in bad weather and had a head-on with a semi-truck. It was deemed accidental at the time.” She looked at the detective and said, “I looked up all the details when I was sixteen, just in case. Plus my memory wasn’t as clear as I’d have liked from my own trauma at the time.”
“Just in case of what?”
Her lips kicked up. “Just in case they may have run off and faked the accident. I was having an identity crisis and was looking to see what happened to them. Although I loved my grandma to death, I wondered if there was another answer—but they were dead.”
“Is the information that you found back then enough to satisfy you?” Rowan asked.
“Yes, and so did my grandmother’s information. She filled me in with the details. My dad had a business trip planned. Normally he would fly, but my mother wanted to go with him this time, taking me along too. So my father drove instead. That decision killed them.”
She stared down at his hand that somehow had entwined with hers. She looked over the bank manager. “Is anything else in there?”
He stood, took a look, lifted the safe deposit box, and showed her. She noted that the deposit box was, indeed, empty. “Then everything here, I would like to leave here,” she said. “At least for the moment.”
Rowan looked at her. “Do you
want to take the letters and the photos with you?”
“Not yet,” she said. “I am a little too emotional to handle that.”
He looked at her but hesitated and gently said, “I think that we need to look at them closely. Just in case it sheds any light on … what’s going on now.”
Her shoulders sagged. “I suppose that’s possible.” She groaned. “Fine then.” She reached across, picked up the envelope, and said to the detective, “Do you want to see what these are too?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “Maybe we can scan them in.” He looked to the manager. “Is that something we can get done here?”
“We can,” he said. He opened the envelope, placed the pictures on one side and the letters on the other. There were ten letters, each one-page long inside; he straightened them out, gathered them and the pictures, and walked away. “I will be back in a minute.” When he returned a few minutes later, he had a printed copy of them and the originals. He said, “If you give me your emails, I will email you all a digital copy.” With that done, he clicked on his email program and sent the scans to them. “Now you have digital copies too,” he said with a smile.
She looked at the originals and tucked them back into the envelope.
Rowan knew it would hurt to deal with both the photos and the letters. He just didn’t think she realized that, in a way, it would be a good hurt.
They stood. Rowan reached across and shook the manager’s hand and said, “Thank you for your cooperation.”
The manager nodded and said, “Thank you guys for being good about this.” He looked at the rest of the stuff. “We will keep all this for the moment.” He looked at her and asked, “What about the money?”
“Just put it back for the moment,” she answered.
He hesitated and said, “I would rather put it into your account, so that you can access it anytime.”
She nodded her agreement and said, “Go ahead and do that. It’s probably safer that way.”
He quickly wrote up the slips and had her sign them. He deposited the $50,000 into the joint account that she had had with her grandmother.
As she walked out of the bank, the detective at one side, Rowan on the other, the detective said, “Now remember. You are a wealthy woman. I don’t know if you have a will made up or not. But what happens when you go?”