Friday
Agatha made sure to wrap up before she left the house to head to the café. The days were getting cold enough that she’d dug out the North Face jacket she’d bought to go snow skiing several years before. The jacket was the only good thing to come out of that adventure.
A realtor was coming by later to look at her home. It was time. She still wasn’t a hundred percent sure about selling it, but she’d never know for sure unless she dipped her toe in the water. Maybe November wasn’t even a good month for listing a house, but who knew?
She hadn’t talked to Hank about it, but she didn’t want to say anything until she was completely sure she was going to sell it. Hank had talked about her moving in with him, but it hadn’t been brought up since the month before. And to be honest, she really wasn’t in favor of shacking up. She was still very much an old-fashioned girl, and living together wasn’t something she saw in her future.
She got to the café first and thought about her choices as she drank her first cup of coffee. She flipped through the emails that cluttered her inbox until she came upon one from her literary agent. Agatha had only been answering things that had been time sensitive or absolutely necessary, and she felt guilty about it because her agent was a good woman. The email headline read, Hollywood here we come! She just wasn’t as excited about things as her agent was.
“Mind if I sit?”
The voice startled her, and Agatha looked up. It was Jakes.
“Sorry,” she said. “I was lost in work emails. Please, sit.”
She looked to see if the others were behind him, but he was alone. He was so tall he had trouble wedging himself in the booth across from her, and he ended up sitting at an angle with his long legs propped up so he could see her and the door.
“I want to apologize to you,” Jakes said.
“For what?” she asked, surprised.
“He’s coming back,” Jakes said somberly.
Her heart stuttered in her chest, and she felt the air leave the room as fear took over. “Salt?” she asked, her voice weak.
“Who?” Jakes asked, confused, and then the lightbulb clicked. “Oh, no,” he assured her. “You made sure he’s never coming back. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She let out a shuddering breath as her lungs started working again.
“I meant Lawrence,” he said. “I know he’s been bothering you. Hank told me y’all have a history.”
“We were engaged,” Agatha said. “And Lawrence is at best an annoyance. But he’s brilliant at his job. Besides, I’ve got Hank, and Hank has a mean right hook.”
Jakes laughed. “Yes, he does. He clocked him cold. We got Lawrence settled in at the motel and let him sleep it off for about twenty hours. So, he’s fresh and back on duty. I just wanted to give you the heads up.”
“I appreciate it,” she said. “But I’m good.”
“Hank’s a great guy,” Jakes said. “A good cop and a good friend. He looks happy around you. I’m glad for it.”
Agatha knew Jakes connection to Hank’s wife being murdered, and she could appreciate the emotional past they had together.
“I’m glad for it too,” she said.
“There room for two more?” Hank asked, coming up to the table.
“No, but we could move to a table,” Jakes said, pointing toward the front of the café.
They all shuffled to the new table and the waitress brought their drinks and menus.
“I hear the two of you had a very interesting conversation last night,” Coil said once they’d ordered.
“That we did,” she said. “Mr. Shepherd had been waiting to unload for years, but there was never anyone willing to listen to him.”
“Think it was legit?” Jakes asked.
“As accurate as memory can be,” Agatha said. “But fortunately, he had the written records. In a nutshell, Fredericksburg in the twenties was nothing more than hard land to farm. The area wasn’t optimum for plowing, and although the Great Depression was still a few years away, the town lived in a state of economic turmoil.”
“Shepherd said they were so poor that no one in the town knew there was a depression going on in the rest of the world,” Hank added.
“Apparently the Gurtz family—that would be Emma’s parents—had oil men sent by the church scouting everyone’s property on the sly. They discovered oil across that huge swatch of land, and that’s when the plan started to form. Emma Gurtz began to swindle everyone into signing over their mineral rights.”
“Why would anyone agree to that?” Coil asked.
“They didn’t at first,” Agatha said. “But then things got aggressive. Livestock started being slaughtered, then a family pet or two. Then one of the farm houses burned to the ground with a family of five inside. None of them made it out, and neighbors described the fire as having started everywhere at once. People were scared and they eventually did what they were told.”
“The key is in that empty coffin,” Jakes said.
“Bingo,” Hank said, touching his nose. “And I think we’re going to need Lawrence if we’re going to figure it out.”