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MORGAN STARED AT THE boxes sitting on the living room floor. Her sole ties to an uncle she’d never met. One who’d apparently not mentioned her existence at Willamette Valley Villas.
Then again, he wasn’t really her uncle, not when she got down to it.
Of course he was. Just because there were no blood connections, she’d always regard her parents as her real parents. Except for not contributing any genetic components, they’d loved her, raised her, and she’d never known any others.
“Are you going to open them?”
Cole’s voice summoned her back to reality.
“Not sure I’m ready,” she said, remembering the pain going through her parents’ things had brought. She was nineteen then, and she’d had a close relationship with her parents. Uncle Bob was a virtual unknown.
Ready to open them, or ready to reveal potential secrets in front of a relative stranger?
Her life had been filled with strangers. Never time to make friends. She’d bricked herself behind a wall, keeping everyone at a distance. Easier than having to say good-bye, knowing you’d never see them again.
Yet Cole, in just a couple of days, had crossed from stranger to potential close friend. She couldn’t let him get any closer. If she asked Cole more about his life, he’d want the same from her, and she’d given up her old life. It was a secret she worked hard to keep buried.
As if he’d sensed her hesitation, he said, “As long as I’m here, I can do a basic inspection of the house, make a list of what needs to be done. No obligation to have me be the one to do it. You have something I can write on?”
She dug through her purse and brought out a pocket-sized notepad. “Will this be big enough?”
He grinned. “I’ve been told size doesn’t matter, so sure.”
She couldn’t help but laugh. Why didn’t she feel his remark was inappropriate for somebody she’d known two days?
Get behind your wall.
She flipped through the first few pages where she’d tracked her expenses, started a to-do list, and made notes of things to take up with Austin. She ripped them out and handed the notebook to Cole, along with a pen. “Go for it.”
“I’ll start upstairs.” He left, and she heard strains of heavy metal and classic rock drifting down from above. Music genres that had been forbidden to her as a child. She’d embraced them after her parents had died. She’d made a point not to deny Austin the music his peers listened to, and she thought showing him how today’s music could be connected to classical helped hold his interest as well as motivate him.
Telling herself she was stalling, she lifted the first box onto the ratty green couch and tugged it open. A folded red cardigan sweater topped the contents.
Morgan had a quick flash to Mr. Rogers, although from what she’d heard about her uncle today, the two men had nothing in common.
She moved the sweater onto the couch. More clothes. Sweaters, tank style ribbed undershirts, polos, a few dress shirts, ties, and underwear. Six pairs of boxers. Morgan put everything back into the box and set it on the floor. She’d arrange to have them donated to a local charity.
The second box held pajamas, slippers, a plaid flannel robe, socks, shoes, and four pairs of slacks, shiny with age. Two belts—one black, one brown. A dozen neatly folded white handkerchiefs. She was putting all the items back into their carton when Cole reappeared.
“Anything interesting?” he asked.
“Not yet. Just clothes. Very old man clothes.” She picked up the slacks.
“Did you check the pockets?” he asked.
She hadn’t thought of that. “You’re thinking like a cop.”
He snorted a quiet laugh. “More like a kid who was allowed to keep any change I found in pockets when I was sorting the laundry. One of my Saturday morning chores. Now and then, a lucrative one—like the time I found a ten-dollar bill. A nice supplement to my meager allowance.”
She picked up the first pair of slacks with a feeling of trepidation—who knew what an old man kept in his pockets?
Gingerly, she reached into a front pocket.
“Want me to do that?” Cole asked. “It’s something I was trained to do as a cop, but normally, the pants are occupied.”
Morgan thrust her hands deeper into the pocket. Empty. “I’ve got it. My uncle, my search. You can’t be finished with your checklist already, can you?”
“Figured you’d want the news about the upstairs bathroom first.”
Dread curled in her belly. He wouldn’t have come down to tell her everything was all right. “I thought you said it looked okay when you were here before.”
“That was before the water was turned on, and I only checked under the sink. You’re going to need some parts for the toilet. I assume you’ll be sleeping up there, and you’ll want it to work. Or did whoever hooked up your water already tell you?”
“No, they didn’t. I ran water in all the faucets, flushed the toilets, but didn’t notice any issues.”
“You wouldn’t, not right away. It’s the flush valve assembly system.”
Knots twisted in Morgan’s gut. “Is that bad? Do I need a new toilet?”
“No.” Cole shook his head. “It’s an easy fix. I can zip over to the Tool Shed and take care of it.”
She reached for her purse. “How much will it cost?”
“Lunch will cover the labor. The parts aren’t expensive.”
She realized she was hungry, her chocolate croissant digested hours ago. “Let me finish going through Uncle Bob’s pockets, and I’ll go with you. I should put everything related to the house onto my credit card so I’ll have a record of what I’m spending. Receipts and I have a tendency to wander off in different directions.”
Cole grinned at her. “I’ve found a large envelope works well.”
“Might do that, too.” She returned to her task, patting each pocket before delving inside. When she got to the fourth pair, a crinkling sound came from the front pocket.
A folded piece of paper, ripped out of a spiral notebook. Cole leaned in, and she inhaled his spicy aftershave. For a reason she couldn’t explain, it untied some of her belly knots. She unfolded the sheet and smoothed out the wrinkles.
Blue ink, faded. Shaky writing. Numbers. Lots of numbers. At the top of the page, a five digit number. Below that, more numbers in a column.
She handed the paper to Cole. “Do you have any idea what this could mean? Some kind of code?”
Cole studied the sheet with its array of numbers. “What say we consider it over lunch? Maybe something will pop.”
Morgan grabbed her tote.
~~~
AFTER ORDERING SANDWICHES at Sadie’s, Cole set the paper on the table so both he and Morgan could see it. “These seem to be a list.” He pointed to the numbers in a column.
“When most people make lists, they number each item. These aren’t numbered that way at all.”
Cole agreed. “They all start with either two or three digits, separated by periods.”
“Those could be decimal points,” Morgan said. “Or part of a code. Like where words start and end?”
He perused the numbers again. “I doubt it. I’d expect some longer sequences. Most of these are under seven digits.”
“What do we use numbers for?” Morgan asked, as if she was thinking out loud. “Phone numbers, social security—”
“Driver’s licenses, passports, addresses, bank accounts,” Cole added.
“Financial investment accounts? Uncle Bob was a financial advisor. Maybe he was keeping notes on investments.”
Cole rolled that around. “Do we have an idea how long this was in his pocket? I’m thinking it couldn’t have anything to do with his work unless he put it there around the time he went to the villas. He’d retired, so he wasn’t handling people’s money anymore.”
“What if these were his own accounts?”
“You said you have a financial advisor, so you have investments, right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Do your statements have numbers that look like these?”
Morgan took the paper back, stared at it, tugged at a curl that had escaped from her scarf. “They don’t ring a bell. To be honest, I check the beginning and ending balances on my statements and if there’s more at the end than at the beginning, I’m satisfied. My advisor lets me know if things are dropping, and he suggests changes. That’s what I pay him for.”
Cole wondered if he’d ever see the day where someone would be in charge of his money. Not while he was a cop. Not unless he won the lottery. Or had a long-lost relative who left him a trust fund.
He wasn’t holding his breath.
Their server brought their sandwiches, and Cole set the paper aside. He’d had coffee and a piece of toast with the last of his peanut butter for breakfast, and he was hungry. Stranded on a desert island hungry. He ate the first half without further conversation, washing it down with his Dr. Pepper. The worst of his hunger pangs done away with, he glanced at Morgan.
She ate her sandwich slowly. Methodically. Between bites, she sipped her lemonade. Her lips wrapped around the straw, her cheeks moving in and out as she sucked up the beverage. His imagination took those lips somewhere else entirely, creating pleasant stirrings below.
He forced his eyes—and his mind—elsewhere.
“Did you know your uncle’s middle name was Morgan?” he asked.
Her eyes popped. She moved her glass aside. “No. When did you find out?”
“When I looked him up. I forgot to mention it last night. Do you have any idea why you might have been named after him?”
She bounced her straw in her lemonade. “None whatsoever. Although, if I was really named after him, wouldn’t I be Roberta?”
“Maybe he was slighted because your parents chose his middle name instead of his first name and that’s why the two brothers didn’t get along.”
Morgan pulled a face. “That makes no sense. He stopped sending cards when I was ten. If the name thing was an issue, he’d never have sent them at all. Either way, I don’t see how it’s important.”
“It probably isn’t. I like digging up facts and seeing how they might be connected.”
“I think the numbers are better facts to work on. At least we have something written down.”
“Something that might have been written years ago and be totally meaningless now. Or the ramblings of a man living in another world. Unless you find a magic decoder ring in the last carton, I think we’re at a dead end here.”
“Or a codebook with a key.” Morgan returned to her eating and straw-sucking.
Cole fidgeted in his seat, trying to quell the stirrings that returned. He was in charge, not his dick. So he kept telling himself. His social encounters with the female kind were few and far between lately.
Very few. Very far between. As in not since he’d arrived in Pine Hills. A year with nobody but himself for company.
Losing Jazz had messed him up. Bad. They’d had their lives planned, down to the color they’d paint their house. Losing her had changed his life plan, turned him toward the law enforcement track. College, then the academy left little time for relationships, and he wasn’t willing to risk giving his heart away again.
There were plenty of badge bunnies here, but he couldn’t get into that game, either. They didn’t care about him, only his job. He couldn’t have it both ways, so he left them alone. Why was Morgan different?
She wiped her mouth and motioned for the check. Once she’d paid, they drove to the Tool Shed where Cole found the requisite parts. Morgan’s brows lifted when she looked at the price. “That’s all? I thought it would be a lot more.”
“Nah,” Cole said. “These things wear out with time. As a precaution, I’d suggest you buy them for all the bathrooms. I can show you how to replace them so if your other toilets develop the same problem, you’ll be ready.”
“Do it,” she said.
Cole grabbed three kits and brought them to the register.
Bag in hand, they went to the house, where Morgan watched as he installed the new assembly.
He straightened. “There you go. Good as new.”
“Can you do the other toilets, too? I imagine they were all put in at the same time, so if this one’s lived out its life, the other ones might be on their last legs. I prefer the ounce of prevention system. I’ll buy you lunch again.”
Happy to spend a little more time with Morgan, Cole repeated the repairs in the other two bathrooms. “No extra charge. It’s a simple procedure, as you can tell from the speedy and efficient way I handled it.”
“You sure it’s smart to tell me how easy it is? I might dispute how much you’re charging me.”
“I’m an honest contractor. Dad pounded that into us.”
She headed for the living room and yanked the scarf from her hair. Shaking out her curls, she said, “Guess I should tackle that last carton. See about an internet hookup, bring my stuff over from the inn, and deal with living here.”
Cole’s heart twisted at the misery etched on Morgan’s face. “Is there a way the lawyer would know whether you’re living here? He’s not outfitting you with an ankle bracelet, is he?”
Had he just suggested she cheat?