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“Well, the last time Jesse went missing for almost a month and I was about to go file a missing person’s report, he showed up. I told him about it and he got really sad, asked me never to do that. So this time the sheriff said to give Jesse time. I was going to wait till I heard from his family before I did anything, um, rash. For all I knew he was home in Illinois.”
The man looked out over the mountains rising beyond the town. Then he looked back at her and almost drilled through her with his dark eyes. “I’d like to check out his apartment.”
She involuntarily took a step back, her heel coming down in a clump of white yarrow releasing the stringent, musty smell of the injured plant.
“I don’t think I can let you in without Jesse’s permission,” she said as she stepped forward to take back the ground she had given.
He must have realized he was coming on strong, because he put up a hand in a conciliatory gesture, an uncalloused hand that had never held a rope or the reins of a workhorse. “I don’t mean to cause trouble. I’d just like to find my brother. How much back rent does he owe you?”
“Why do you think he owes money?”
“Some things don’t usually change much over time.”
“Three months.” And the edge of financial oblivion lived a constant threat right under her toes as compounding interest worked heavily against her. The last three weeks…
“I’ll pay the three months and I’ll pay for next month. Will that buy me entrance?” He reached in his pocket for his wallet. Not a wallet, a money clip, of course.
She couldn’t meet his probing gaze without a chance to think. She turned away to study an old red pickup passing slowly in the street. She had no idea how she planned to find the mortgage payment due three weeks ago, and her SUV was also late for an oil change. The house needed work and Kyle needed clothes that would fit, and soon. School started next month.
“It feels mercenary,” she said quietly. Or worse, she thought. Their mother had said again and again that taking money from a man without good reason was wrong. On top of a winning personality, Delanna Fairbanks did have some morals. “With Jesse missing.”
“And you need the money.”
She swung back to face him. “What makes you think I need…”
He pointed at the sagging corner of the porch roof.
Abby pushed the blowing curls from her face again.
“My sister promised to live here and to pay rent.” Now Abby had only the income from her nurse’s job at the town’s one medical clinic. “And Jesse was never very good at paying rent on time.”
She could turn him down, or because she had always cared for Kyle and seen to his needs, she could swallow her pride and do what needed to be done.
“You can get Jesse to pay me back,” he offered.
She looked into his eyes and thought she saw a hint of amusement. They both knew Jesse wasn’t going to pay his brother back.
“Okay,” she said, feeling as if she was betraying Jesse while Jesse’s brother peeled hundred-dollar bills off the wad without even asking what she charged.
When she took the cash she realized it was more than she thought. “This is too much.”
“I’m sure Jesse has cost you more than what I’ve given you.”
She found herself smiling. “He does have a way of making his problems seem like mine. And he has such an innocent way of doing it.”
The man’s expression lightened again. Maybe he was remembering the delightful, funny way his brother had of being irresponsible.
“Um, the door’s not locked,” she said. “You can let yourself in.”
“So I could have walked in and you’d have had to get the sheriff to stop me if you didn’t like it.”
“You could probably walk into many places here in St. Adelbert—” he gave her a skeptical look and she continued “—but you would not want to cross our Sheriff Potts.”
He nodded and turned toward the garage located on the other side of her side yard.
Abby watched his confident stride. He walked as if he were used to getting what he wanted. He probably never disappeared for weeks at a time and never in his life let his hair and beard grow long like Jesse’s—though he might look good with longer hair. In fact, he’d make a great wild mountain man. She imagined him wearing buckskin pants and maybe one of those shirts made of rough cloth with an open V-neck, open down to his navel. Instead, even a bit disheveled, he looked sleek, smooth and, she’d wager, was totally out of his element in Montana. Wild mountain man…
Ridiculous. He probably followed rules and regulations all day long. Heck, he probably made those rules, but was he really a snob who didn’t give a rat’s behind about his brother? He must care a little. He was in St. Adelbert searching for him.
Abby let herself back into the house. He could check the apartment and then there would be nothing to keep him here. He’d go to Utah. Maybe he’d find Jesse and let her know. She liked Jesse. It was more like she had a younger brother as well as a younger sister when Jesse and Lena were around.
She wondered, as she picked up a pair of Hot Wheels cars, if there was anything in Jesse’s apartment to find. Jesse may be a wayward fellow, but he always seemed so open, a no-secrets kind of guy. And she’d never found anything odd or even telling lying around when she tidied his apartment and put away his clean laundry. Jesse Maxwell had no secrets that she knew of anyway.
REED HURRIED UP THE STEPS to Jesse’s apartment two at a time. He had been trying to find his brother for six weeks, first on the internet and by phone, and last week he started in person, and now he had a real lead.
The apartment door opened into a kitchen, with a dining and a living room area as one continuous room, one continuous small room. He could see a bedroom and bathroom through the open door off to the left.
Everything was in order and clean. Not a thing out of place. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but neatness was not it.
So not like the drop-it-anywhere Jesse he had known. The place was as orderly as his own condo, and he couldn’t imagine living any other way. Jesse could and did. Helter-skelter best described the life the Jesse he knew led. Maybe miracles did happen.
Reed pulled out his mobile phone and ran his finger across the screen to boot it up. Two bars. Good enough.
He needed to speak to his business partner. Corporate investing seemed to go better when his and Denny’s complementary brains studied the deals together. Denny looked at things more from the people angle and Reed from the logistics side. Together they understood better than most the motivations and financial implications of buying businesses and real estate for their business clients.
But right now, Denny was also working on a personal issue for Reed.
Reed placed the call.
“You found civilization. Impressive,” Denny said instead of hello.
Reed laughed. “I wear my battery out checking for service.”
“Find anything out there, and where is there anyway?”
“I’m in St. Adelbert, Montana. Cheery little burg buried in the mountains where my brother has an apartment.”
“But no pay dirt?” Denny was perceptive.
Reed looked around and then decided the bedroom might be the best place to start searching. As he neared the bookcase along one wall, he stopped for a moment. On the top shelf sat the photo of him and Jesse with their parents Abby had mentioned. That Jesse had it was a wonder. That he displayed it made him think Jesse might not hate his family as much as he pretended.
“Reed?”
Reed moved on. “But—he’s not here. Hasn’t been for a while, a couple months.”
“Then you won’t want to hear that your mother has been in again asking if you found anything.”
“I wear out the rest of my battery listening to her voice mails.” He opened the top drawer of the beat-up old dresser and picked up a paltry pile of cancelled checks from the local bank.
“I told your mother I’d call her if I heard anything from you.”
“Thanks, I know it won’t stop her from coming into the office and I promise I’ll make that up to you some day.” The checks were mostly to Abigail Fairbanks in nice, neat penmanship, only the signature was Jesse’s. The memo lines said rent, cleaning and laundry. That explained why the apartment was so neat.
“Don’t think I haven’t got things figured out, buddy.” Denny’s tone held a mock challenge.
“What’s that?” Reed played innocent.
“Your mother is the reason you went out there instead of hiring someone else to do the legwork.”
Reed gave a gruff sound that probably passed for laughter. “Might have been. I need you to see what you can find on Abigail Fairbanks. She’s renting an apartment to Jesse.” He gave Denny the address listed on Abby’s checks and then moved around the things inside the drawer to look under them. A few pairs of new underwear and some unmated socks, one with a hole in the toe. Nothing else.
“Related to Angelina? Oh, and I know it’s a little late, but I found Angelina. She’s in the army. Apparently, she was given a strong recommendation by a judge to find some meaning in her life.”
“Sounds like Jesse’s type. Abigail is Angelina’s sister.” Angelina was apparently a wild woman. He wondered what Abby was like. Her mass of dark curly hair, warm brown eyes, snug-fitting flowered shirt with its seductive V of buttons and jeans said she had a figure that probably drew a crowd of men. People in Denver had been happy to regale him with stories about Angelina, whom they called Lena. None of the neighbors knew much about Abby, not even her name.
“From what I can tell, Angelina hasn’t been in any trouble since she left for Fort Jackson, South Carolina.
She’s in the Middle East right now.”
“Do they have any other siblings?”
“Not that I’ve found.”
“Angelina might have a child. A little boy came to the door when I was talking to the sister. He called her Aunt Abby and she called him Kyle.”
Denny laughed. “Are you sure the child is a boy? Many gender related names are crossing over to the other side these days.”
Reed made an exasperated sound. “Who am I to know? I’ve paid so little attention to kids in my life, it could have been either, and I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell even if I had seen the kid’s face.”
Denny shuffled papers. “Wait. I think I have info about a child, but the sources, apparently a bit on the drugged-out iffy side, said—yeah.” The paper shuffling stopped. “They thought the kid was a little boy and might even have belonged to the sister. They rarely saw him. The sister took care of him anyway.”
Reed pulled on the handles of the second drawer. The drawer stuck, but when he pulled harder it opened only to contain a very old pair of jeans and a couple T-shirts, each with a rude saying.
“Maybe the kid lives with the aunt because Angelina isn’t mother material.” Much like Reed’s own family. One brother stayed and made something out of himself, turned the family misfortune around. The other brother couldn’t be bothered with responsibility, family or otherwise, and just disappeared into the West. And then there was their mother…
“There’s more.” Denny rustled more papers. “Seems to be some confusion because they are both A. Fairbanks.”
“Go on.” The next two drawers were empty. Again a reflection of his brother’s life.
“Apparently their Denver departure was rather abrupt and it might have had to do with the sister and not Angelina.”
Reed put his free hand flat on the dresser top. “Any details?”
“I’ll see what I can find out. I assume you don’t want me to tell your mother anything.”
“That’d be correct. Thanks, Denny.”
Reed hung up and crossed the room to where a wood-framed picture sat on the bedside table. The photo was of Jesse, Angelina, a toddler and Abby and it looked to be a few years old. Abby looked serious and the others were grinning. The kid was probably the child on “Aunt” Abby’s porch. He picked up the snapshot. The boy looked familiar, but maybe that was because all kids looked the same to him, they just had different colored hair.
He placed the picture back on the table and continued searching. There was nothing in the bathroom except a dry, cracked bar of soap and a neatly folded towel. On top of the refrigerator in a basket was an old letter from their mother ranting and raving in the tone of a chronic alcoholic. This would be the address Abby had used. It was their summerhouse in the Chain of Lakes area and no one was there this year. The letter would probably arrive in Evanston soon and the housekeeper would forward it to Reed’s office in Chicago with any other mail that might upset his mother and contribute to a relapse into the bottle.
Where the hell are you, Jesse?
ABBY TOSSED TOYS INTO the wooden “pirates treasure” box while Kyle ran to get a new game, undoubtedly leaving another mess on the floor outside the game cabinet as he tried to decide which one. There was nothing left of the cookies but crumbs and Kyle had beaten her at most of their half dozen games of Candy Land.
All the time they played, she wondered if she had done the right thing, letting Jesse’s brother into the apartment. Legally, she supposed the apartment wasn’t Jesse’s anymore. He hadn’t paid the rent due before he left, he kept meaning to and now his brother had.
Maybe Reed would find something she didn’t know about and get a clue as to where Jesse had gone after Utah. A stab of dread hit her as she thought of something happening to Jesse.
She picked up a picture of the four of them. It had been taken at the zoo in Denver and she’d had a copy made for Jesse. They were so young in the picture. Lena had just turned eighteen when Kyle was born and he was barely two in the picture.
Abby always wondered about Jesse and Angelina, how their relationship went.
“Is Mommy scared?” Kyle stood, holding the Shoots and Ladders game.
Abby put the picture back and smiled at Kyle’s sweet face.
“Maybe she is sometimes.” She handed the photo of his mother in uniform to Kyle and he left a kiss print on her face where he’d placed so many others. “But she’s in a place where there are a lot of people to make friends with. I bet she misses you a lot, though.”
“She left her bunny slippers. Do you think she misses them?”
On Kyle’s feet were large pink bunnies with floppy ears and black button noses.
“I think they look great on you,” she said, and smiled.
He grinned and then his expression grew serious enough to wrinkle his forehead. “I’d be scared.”
What did she say to that? She couldn’t tell him not to be scared, but she could listen.
“You’d be scared?”
“If I had to go and live with strangers.”
She reached for him and pulled him into a hug. “I don’t think you’ll have to worry too much about that, you rascally rabbit slipper wearer. You’ve got me and your grandma here.”
She tweaked his nose and he grinned again.
“Do you promise, Aunt Abby?”
“I promise,” she said with as much animation as she could stuff into her tone.
The doorbell rang. In the reflection in the hallway mirror, Abby could see Reed Maxwell silhouetted in the sheer lace curtained window of her front door.
“Is that the man again?” Kyle wiggled out of her arms. “Can I see him this time?”
“I want you to stay in the house. I don’t really know this man. He’s a stranger.” And he’s poking and prying. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to know how he found out that Lena and Jesse were friends. And if he found that out, how much else did he know? And what did he plan to do with that knowledge?
“We don’t like strangers. Do we?” he said in a serious little-boy tone.
