Page 15 of Deputy Brand Gets Her Man
Then she walked into her bedroom again.
Man, this was going better than he had ever expected. He grabbed the box and hurried out the door. His Jeep was at the head of the driveway, off to one side, since he’d followed Garrett there to prove his alibi.
It bothered him that someone had named him as the vandal who’d busted out the drug store window. He assumed it must’ve been someone who resembled him. Still, calling it in anonymously seemed odd. It had really bothered the clan patriarch to question him, though, he could tell.
That Garrett Brand was strange. Sometimes it seemed as if his decent, upright citizen persona was real. But he couldn’t’ve been a lawman for twenty-some odd years if it was, could he?
He’d been raised to believe lawmen were as corrupt as anyone, that people were the same on either side of the badge. It was just that the ones behind it got away with shit the ones in front of it didn’t.
He could not wait to delve into the files. He wanted every detail he could get about his father’s time in Quinn, everywhere he’d gone, everywhere he’d stayed, everyone he’d met. Somewhere in the files was a clue to a half million bucks, tax-free. Whatever was going on with his old man’s will wouldn’t matter if he found the gold.
He sped to the diner, a small square building with a flat roof higher in the front than in the back. There were seven picnic tables outside, four of them a few yards away, near where Burr Creek thundered through one of its narrow, rapid passages.
He parked the Jeep, and slid his police band radio out of its slot in the dash to stick it in the glove compartment. He kept the thing out of habit. Knowing what the cops were up to at all times could save a criminal’s freedom or even his life. The radio was a tough habit to break, but he didn’t think the deputy or her family would understand that, so he tucked it out of sight whenever they were around.
He locked the glove compartment, then walked up to the window with a file box tucked under this arm. He ordered Willow’s grilled tomato sandwich with pickle on the side, extra potato chips, and a Diet Coke. For himself, he ordered a burger and fries, then asked the teenage boy manning the window if he’d have someone bring the food down to his picnic table when it was ready, and whether he could borrow a pen.
Then he headed around behind the building and across its grassy lawn to one of the tables near the stream, sat down, and began flipping through the topmost folder. He was going to read every word of it and study every smudge on every page, but first he’d skim through it to see what jumped out at him.
He used the pen to underline anything that looked promising. Red ink. He hadn’t realized when the kid had handed him the pen. Oh, well.
He heard someone coming and looked up, but it wasn’t Willow. A noisy family, two little girls who must’ve been twins, three or four years old, and a slightly older boy carrying a long, leggy pup who couldn’t stop licking his face. Hey, wait, that was the kid he’d met at Two Lilies getting tacos to surprise his grandma. Frankie. That must be the pup the kid had been so excited about.
He waved, and Frankie recognized him, grinned, and waved back.
The smaller kids converged on a table way too close to his, with a couple who must be their grandparents. The man used a walker, the woman a cane, and neither moved very fast.
He glanced out at the parking lot, but there was no sign of Willow yet. The teenager came down with their meals in baskets, set them on the table, and headed back. Jeremiah returned his attention to the folder.
De Lorean spent time at the Bluebonnet Inn, 27 Brackle Rd. I spoke to the owner, Sara Lopez. She claimed she barely spoke to de Lorean during his time there. He mainly just slept there and didn’t interact with her or her teenage daughter, Juanita. She seemed upset when I told her he was a criminal on his way to prison for murdering the mother of his baby son, among other things.
Jeremiah underlined that section and kept reading, but the kids were so noisy it was tough to concentrate. And then one of the twins, yelled, “Doggy SWIM!” and Jeremiah looked up just in time to see one of the little girls hurl the gangly pup into the fast-running creek.
He swore in a way that was not appropriate around kids, lunged off his bench, and ran to the water’s edge. The pup was caught in the current, dunking and emerging while speeding downstream.
Chapter Four
Willow was just getting out of her SUV, when she saw the Gringo running along the creek shore like his life depended on it, and before she knew it, he was in the water, and she couldn’t see him anymore.
She ran across the lawn, saw an old couple pointing and a young boy shouting, and two little girls looking like they were in big trouble. Jeremiah’s file box was on the picnic table, one file folder open, and sheets were blowing all over the place. Before she could even figure out what the heck was going on, Jeremiah came trudging up the bank, soaked to the skin, holding his arm funny. Maybe he’d injured it.
Since he was apparently in no danger, though, she started gathering up the pages from the grass, noticing several of them had passages underlined in red. As she gathered, she skimmed those passages, wondering what he’d found that so interested him. Witness interviews. Mainly, the witnesses’ names were underlined. And not all of them. In each statement one or two lines were also marked. “Suspect ate there four times and witness waited on him each time,” in one. “Suspect spent time at the Bluebonnet Inn,” with the owner’s name in another. “Suspect purchased ammo from witness’s gun shop,” in a third.
She gathered the last few sheets and was tucking them back into the folder as Jeremiah walked back, so her back was to him, until she heard the odd little whimpering sound, and turned, puzzled.
The Gringo held a sopping wet puppy cradled in one arm against his chest. And the look in his eyes as he stroked the shivering little thing was the most honest expression she’d ever seen him wear. It struck her like a clapper strikes a bell.
The little boy, maybe ten or eleven, blew past Willow so fast he almost knocked her over. “You saved him! Man, you saved him! Thanks, Jeremiah!”
He scrambled the puppy from Jeremiah’s arms into his, and it licked his face happily.
The couple made it to them then, moving much slower than the little boy had. The two little girls walked along beside them, heads down.One of them looked up at Willow and she thought if her eyes got any bigger she’d fall in.
“Are you gonna arrest us?” she asked, reminding Willow that she was in uniform.
“For throwin’ the puppy in the water?” added the other.
“We thought he’d like swimmin’,” said the first.
