Page 32 of Deputy Brand Gets Her Man
Everyone nodded, so she left the room. She didn’t want to influence the artist or the witness with so much as a crook of her eyebrow. Not when she so hoped the drawing would show one of the Barker boys. Who the hell else in town would throw a brick through a gigantic window just for the hell of it?
But she was eager, and needed a distraction, so she spent time catching up on paperwork she’d been neglecting until eventually her phone pinged.
Drew: Ready
She headed back to the room, just as Abby Sinclair came out of it. And when she met Willow in the hallway, she elbowed her, tilted her head toward the two still in there, and wiggled her eyebrows up and down.
“Thanks for coming in, Miz Sinclair.”
“He did a good job. Seems like a nice young man. Drew’s your sister?”
“Cousin,” Willow admitted.
Abby nodded knowingly.
“Do you need a ride, or?—”
“Drove myself here, can drive myself back They ain’t come for my keys yet.” And with that, she continued walking in her slightly bent stance, across the station and out through its pebbled glass doors.
Willow watched her out, then went into the interrogation room, where Drew and Joshua were leaning over his notepad, which was on the table. They rose when she came in, and parted to let her see.
She looked at the face and sighed in disappointment. “That’s the homeowner,” she said.
“No, no,” Drew all but whined. “She’d know the homeowner, wouldn’t she? She’s a neighbor.”
“Nope. Just in town visitin’ her daughter,” Willow said. “Man, I was so sure… But no, that’s Richard Montrose. I talked to him and his wife the day it happened.”
“Dang.” Drew seemed more disappointed than Willow was.
The young sketch artist was silent, waiting for someone to tell him he could go. Willow noticed the guy hanging there in limbo, and got over her own let-down. “That’s a dang good likeness, though. I knew who it was at a glance. Nice job.”
“Thanks.”
“Why haven’t I seen you around here before?” she asked, her gaze shifting briefly to Drew, who was hanging on every word.
“I’m new. Finishin’ up my masters in art. This is a side-gig.”
“It’s a side-gig at which you excel,” Willow said. “This department will be callin’ you again. That is, if you’re gonna be around.”
He nodded, smiling and trying not to look at Drew and looking at her anyway. “Yeah, for a while.”
“Good. Stop at the desk, they’ll pay you.”
He nodded, turned toward the door, and Drew looked a little bit flustered, so Will said, “Show him where it is, Drew.”
Nodding fast, Drew walked the young artist out, and when she beamed her killer smile at him, Willow was surprised the guy didn’t fall over in a dead faint.
Jeremiah was in town, at the WTD, a roadside diner out-of-towners called retro and locals knew had been that way the whole time. It was shaped like a silver bullet, with three neon tubes—red, green, and yellow—above the front. One neon tube was intact. The other two had sections that flickered and buzzed.
According to Garrett Brand’s scrupulous notes in the police file, Vincent de Lorean had a few of his meals there. It was a hole-in-the-wall place, if ever there’d been one. It sat alongside the state highway without any kind of warning, as out of place as a bird in a fish tank, about halfway between the Texas Brand and Quinn proper.
Jeremiah picked up his phone, opened his journal, and tapped new entry. “Background info. Willow says the WTD’s owner refused to sell when the highway came through and has managed to keep the deed against all the state’s efforts. After a while, the powers that be just gave up. So here it sits, right where it’s been since the highway was a dirt road.” He tapped the app to stop recording and pulled in.
It was lunch time, so he figured he’d grab a sandwich or something and ask if anyone there might remember his old man from that long ago. But when he went inside, he lost track of his plan, because there was that same family. The kid, Frank, along with his grandparents and the two rowdy little girls.
He glanced outside as he slid onto a stool at the counter, and spotted their car, now that he was looking. It was running, and he wondered why for a moment, then saw the pup. He was standing on his hind legs looking back at him. Then he realized the car was running for a reason—air conditioning for the dog. He looked bigger. A lot bigger. That wasn’t possible, was it?
Frankie was too busy to even look at him, though. He was bent over a notebook, writing. Homework in August? He didn’t think school had even started back up yet.
