Page 27 of Caleb's Cause
“Or,” Caleb said, and looked at Katherine with a worried look. “I’m playing devil’s advocate here. What if they have someone on the plane following your mother, but decides to take her out while in flight? I know that might defeat the purpose of following her in the hopes of getting to Katherine, but that’s also a possibility. You said yourself, Duane, that your boss doesn’t know how high up in this organization anyone is. What if what’sgoing on in Los Angeles is only one branch of this thing.” Everyone was so silent, that the only thing that could be heard was the second hand on the clock on the wall. Caleb broke it. “I’m sorry, I like to watch and read a lot of who-dun-it stuff, and this is just the way my mind works.”
“No, don’t be sorry. These things need to be addressed.” He turned to Katherine then. “Without revealing gross secrets, how well do you think Ilsa and Larry’s marriage is?”
“Over, and it’s been that way for a long time,” Katherine snorted a laugh. “I know this isn’t a laughing matter, but they’ve only been together for roughly six years, married for three. I think she only married him because she was lonely. While I was still little, and in school, it was just the two of us, then I left for college, and after that, she mentioned him. I can’t say I hated him the first time I met him, but I can say I tolerated him.” She shrugged as she looked off to the side. “I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something about him that always rubbed me the wrong way. It was like he sat back and studied both Mom and me, like we were specimens under a microscope.”
“Okay, we’ll get into that, but what about their day-to-day marriage?”
“Oh, Mom worked as a lawyer, Larry would say he worked, but he had nothing to show for it. However, I do remember I walked into one fight when Mom said if he didn’t contribute to the bills he made there, then he could get the hell out of her house. He looked up, saw me standing there, and told me that is was disrespectful walking intohishouse uninvited. I laughed at him, and Mom told him that I had more rights to be inherhouse than he did. He got pissed and stormed out. Mom then cancelled the cable service.” She shook her head as she remembered. “As she did, she shoved the bill in my hand. It turned out that Larry had signed up for every single pay channel there was. HBO, Netflix, you name it, he had it, oh, and there were severalcharges of pay-preview boxing fights. The bill I saw was almost six hundred dollars.”
“Damn, that’s a lot.”
“Yeah, and all Mom was asking was for him to pay for what was his.Heordered all of those. Mom never watched TV and if I wanted to watch something, I had the apps on my iPad.” She shook her head and got up to get more coffee for everyone. She sat back down and looked directly at Duane. “Again, probably too much information, but that was the weekend that Larry moved into one of the spare bedrooms, and from that point on, they were cordial to one another. I would say more like roommates but without any benefits. Before she sent me away, I asked why she stayed. She said that she’s trying to gather more information. I told her not to do anything stupid. So, to answer your question, I believe, deep in my heart, it was more of a marriage of convenience than anything else.” She sipped her coffee and looked at Duane over the rim of her cup. “However, I wouldn’t put it past Larry to somehow put a tracker on Mom. Whether on her car, or in her purse or briefcase.”
“Holy shit,” Duane said and immediately pulled his phone, and rushed out of the cabin. He returned ten minutes later and nodded. “I contacted Grayson about that possibility, and briefly discussed what you said about the plane. We’re going to meet him Sunday afternoon up in Colorado Springs. He wants to talk to you personally.”
“We who?”
“You, Laurie, and me. We will be a family going shopping.” He wrinkled his nose at Laurie when he laughed. “She pointed out to me that you need clothes. I know you have the cash, but I don’t want to bring unwanted attention to us by flashing all of that around. Laurie and I agreed she would use her credit card, and you can pay her back when we return.”
“I don’t want to put anyone out.”
“Trust me, you won’t.”
“I’m going,” Caleb blurted out and shrugged at their looks. “Family outing, meeting the daughter’s boyfriend.”
“Ah, got it.”
They made plans for that day, and once they left, Caleb looked at her intently. “How do you feel about all this?”
“I just want to make sure Mom is safe.” Before she could continue, the door opened, and Duane stood there with a gigantic grin on his face.
“What?”
“You were right. There was an agent already in the office talking with Lyle, he went to your mother and explained what we said. She immediately handed over her purse and briefcase to the agent. He found a bug in the briefcase, it was like someone just dropped it in. Wait, sorry, it was her laptop case.”
“Great, but why the grin?” Katherine asked in confusion.
“Grayson is sending a female agent to your mother’s office to retrieve it, and her orders are to go shopping all over Los Angeles.” He shook his head with the grin. “This agent will be made up to look like your mother from a distance.” The three of them laughed and he quickly left.
“Now what?” Katherine asked with a heavy sigh as she rose from the table and quickly dispensed with the dishes into the washer. She wiped her hands and turned to Caleb.
“Now, we go over to the barn, and I pass you off to Naomi.” He grinned when she gave that cute wrinkle in her nose again. “Not a fan of barn work?”
“No. Don’t get me wrong, I won’t not do as I’m told, it’s the least I can do in order to hide out here, but I’m really an inside girl and I really miss my job.”
“What did you do?”
“I was the manager for a local business. I did the books, made small reservations, made sure everyone was doing their job, andput out any fires that might crop up. There wasn’t any one thing I did all the time. It was a little bit of this, and a little bit of that.”
“Okay, I understand.”
“What can you tell me about what I’m going to be doing?” she asked as she sat on the chair to put her own shoes on, then looked at him in shock. “Remind me to purchase some boots while we go shopping on Sunday.” As she finished getting dressed, Caleb grabbed the pad of paper from the center of the table and wrote down a few things, then left it there. When they went outside, Caleb almost ran into her when she stopped suddenly at the top of the stairs. “Holy shit, is this a town?”
Caleb laughed as he helped her down the stairs and to the car. “No, this is Broken.”
“Broken?”
“The Broken Wheel Ranch. We’re five miles from the main house, and as you just saw, those cabins are where the men and women you met the other day, live. That large cabin and this one are the only ones that have four-bedrooms each. These are used for guests.” Before he opened the car door for her, he took her hand, and tightened his grip when he felt a tingle, and pulled her along beside him. They were on the backside of the cabin, and he used his arm to point out over the area. “Scott and Manny are in charge of building more cabins for everyone. Over at New Double, that’s where Uncle Ry, sorry, Ryan is building more cabins for the workers there.”
