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MORGAN CLAPPED A HAND over her mouth. Had she just screamed like a ... girl? Heat flamed her face as Cole rushed to her side. Carrying a gun?
She struggled for composure as she pointed to the open carton. “I don’t think that will be necessary. It’s too late for them.”
Cole slipped the gun behind his back. Why hadn’t she noticed he had one?
“You always travel armed?” she asked.
“Yep. Technically, I’m never off duty, although this is my personal backup weapon, not my official one.”
Morgan mulled that over for a moment. When Cole had been in uniform, his weapon had been conspicuously holstered at his hip. When she’d met him at The Wagon Wheel, or when they’d gone to the cantina and to the Villas, she’d never noticed. Never even considered she was out with someone ... armed.
“Sorry I screamed,” she said. “I was surprised more than scared. I should have expected there would be ... creatures ... taking up residence in the basement and the boxes. I wasn’t expecting to find a bunch of dead rats when I opened this one.”
Cole leaned closer. “They must have been dead when they were put in here. Otherwise, they would have chewed their way out.”
Morgan grimaced. “Gross. What am I supposed to do with these? Could they be carrying the plague?”
“I don’t think fleas—which is how the plague is transmitted—can live on a long-dead rat.”
She’d had enough of the house for one day. “Are you done with your analysis?”
“I have enough for starters,” he said.
“Then could you do me a favor and take those boxes back to the basement? I’m not ready to deal with whatever else might be in them.”
“I’ll get rid of the rats, too.” Cole stacked the boxes and carried them out.
Tempted to call a trash disposal company and have all the boxes hauled away, contents unseen, Morgan decided she’d ask Mr. Hathaway. According to the trust, she’d inherited the house and all its contents. What if the contents of those boxes had been put in the basement after Uncle Bob had left, and they weren’t his? Would they still belong to her?
As they drove, Morgan couldn’t stop thinking about Cole and his gun. On the one hand, it was nice to know someone would rush in, ready to protect her from an unknown source of danger. On the other, she didn’t feel comfortable needing protection. Guns were dangerous. True, Cole was a trained law enforcement officer, but accidents could happen. What if he’d come running because there was an armed attacker threatening her, not because of her over-the-top reaction to dead rats? An attacker who saw Cole had a gun and reacted by shooting?
He stopped at the curb in front of the inn, and she said, “Thanks for everything.” She opened her door and climbed out of his car, rushing up the walkway before he had a chance to escort her. It wasn’t the gun as much as not knowing he carried one off duty. And hadn’t mentioned it.
Why would he? She didn’t tell him everything she carried in her purse.
Inside, she nodded at Mrs. More Cheerful and detoured to the coffee station before heading to her room. There, she set up her laptop and plunged into following through with what she’d told Cole she had to do.
After twenty minutes of browsing couches, end tables and the like, she decided sight unseen wasn’t going to work. She’d need to make a trip to a real furniture store, but she could order a bed. If she didn’t like it, it could go into one of the other bedrooms.
The boxes in the basement—assuming they weren’t housing little animal corpses—could work as end tables or coffee tables for the time being. She was determined to go through them. Having Cole move them from the basement avoided her having to deal with going into that space. She’d gotten over the full-blown panic attacks years ago, but it had been a struggle to walk through the basement.
Had Cole noticed her fear?
She could do it. She would do it.
Morgan checked her phone for a reply from Austin. She tried to stay in I’m keeping in touch mode rather than I’m checking up on you. A typical twelve-year-old, he resented adults interfering in his life, although the two of them had a strong relationship. Stronger than the one Austin had with his parents.
Would this be a good time to broach her plan with them? No. Too soon. First, the house.
If she was serious about fixing the house, would Cole be the best choice? He worked four days a week, and once she got things going, she’d want the workers to show up five days a week, not three. That would assume Cole would be willing to spend all of his days off working on the house. He had a life of his own and might not be able to give that much time and attention to her project.
Would he be slighted if she used a local contractor?
Even if he was, he’d understand she wanted the job done as soon as possible. Personal feelings—assuming there were personal feelings—couldn’t get in the way.
The woman who lived behind Uncle Bob’s house said her husband was a firefighter who had colleagues who did construction. Didn’t cops and firefighters run in the same circles? Cole might know them. Could she figure out a way to get them working together? Maybe they had different days off and could be here more often.
Project New Life on Elm Street was underway. She called Mr. Hathaway.
~~~
COLE WATCHED MORGAN’S purposeful stride as she marched to the Castle’s entrance. A woman with a mission.
He drove home. While his laundry cycled, he went to his desk. Armed with paper, pencil, and a ruler, he made better diagrams of the rooms in Morgan’s house, then began a more comprehensive list of supplies, breaking things down into must have and wish list categories. He’d deliver it to Morgan, then see what she said about getting the work underway. He hadn’t been joking when he’d said he’d work for food, although that was for minor repairs, not a full-blown construction project. Maybe Dad would be willing to ballpark an estimate. For all its shortcomings, the house did have what his father called a sturdy skeleton.
Cole smiled when he thought of what Morgan had named the project. New Life on Elm Street. It showed she was serious about staying.
Should he suggest that she come over to review his lists? Was it too soon to have Morgan see his place?
He glanced around, considered the condition of the bathroom, the dust on the shelves. The unmade bed.
He’d let her know when he finished his lists, let her decide when she wanted to see them. He needed to clean anyway and went to the kitchen closet for his cleaning supplies.
Just in case.
The apartment cleaner, Cole finished his lists and looked at his sketches. Without measurements, his lists were things she’d need, not how much of them. Would she be willing to go back to the house so he could finish his task? She’d said she needed an internet connection, which tied her to the Castle.
Worth a shot. He called Morgan but got her voicemail. Most likely, she was still busy calling people and making arrangements. He left a brief, noncommittal, have partial materials list suggesting they get together to discuss them and tried to pretend he didn’t care whether she called back.
Her response came fifteen minutes later in the form of a text.
Good. At the house tomorrow 9 AM?
He sent back a thumbs up emoji. Somehow, even the basic happy face seemed too ... intimate.
He checked the time. Almost end of shift. He could head over to The Wagon Wheel, see if anyone from the gang was unwinding, have a beer.
And, given the dearth of dining choices in Pine Hills, maybe he’d run into Morgan.
While he waited for the dryer to finish so he could move the next load from the washer, Cole went back to his searches on Robert Tate. Following links from the hits gave him no new information. Everything pointed to Uncle Bob being a model citizen.
Even model citizens had secrets.
As Morgan had pointed out, something had triggered the housekeeper’s reaction. If he knew her name, he could plug them both into the search engine, see if that narrowed his results and provided a lead.
The dryer dinged. Cole dumped the dry clothes into a laundry basket—folding could wait—and shifted the wet ones into the dryer. He grabbed a jacket and headed out.
At The Wagon Wheel, Cole spotted Brody, Whelan, and Connor at their usual table. A quick glance through the dining room confirmed Morgan wasn’t there. He nodded to Dina at the hostess station as he strolled over to join his colleagues.
A pitcher of beer and spare glasses sat in the center of the table, along with plates, half a pizza, and a platter of wings. Cole grabbed a glass, poured himself a drink, and waited to see who’d be the first to rag on him about Morgan.
“Riding solo tonight, Patton?”
Brody took the prize.
Cole scowled. “Told you, she just needed advice about fixing the house she inherited. It’s going to take a lot of work. There’s nothing else between us.”
“If she wants someone more experienced—” Brody waggled his eyebrows— “you can send her my way.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Cole turned his attention to Connor, the department’s lab wizard. “Do you have magic spells for judging the age of paint?”
“Depends,” Connor said. “You’re talking about the graffiti at the Elm Street house, right?”
Cole snagged a plate and a couple of wings. “Yeah.”
“You have a window of opportunity?” Connor asked.
“Best guess, sometime between when the last renters moved out five years ago and a few days ago,” Cole said.
“Then I’d say it was painted sometime in the last five years.” Connor worked on his pizza slice.
“Big help,” Cole muttered.
“Hey, I’m a lab tech, not a psychic,” Connor said.
Cole gnawed on a wing. “What I don’t get is why the neighbors didn’t notice if people were squatting at the house.”
“You talk to them?” Brody asked.
“I didn’t, but Morgan did. Said nobody saw anything, knew anything. At least the ones who were home when she did her impromptu canvass.”
“What do you think, Whelan?” Cole asked. “You were a big city homicide detective. How would you go about investigating this?”
“This what?” Whelan said. “Graffiti inside a vacant house?”
“Not the painting as much as what the message said.” Cole recited the words on the wall.
Whelan put down his beer. “An interesting puzzle, but until you connect it to a crime, it’s just words on a wall.”
“That’s what Detweiler said.” Cole worked the last shred of meat off his wing. “We couldn’t come up with anything. If I was going to live in a house and found that, I don’t think a fresh coat of paint would satisfy my curiosity or let me be comfortable living there. I’d need to know what it meant.”
Brody glanced toward the door. “Don’t look now, Patton. The new owner just walked in.”