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They’d always been close, the three of them. Her mom was better at talking to Brandy about boys—well, he supposed men now, but how would one start a conversation about a man that you’d basically been married to because of him not being a human. Shaking his head a little, he looked at his baby girl.
“Honey, I’m worried about you.” She turned away, but not before he could see the hurt in her eyes. “Want me to have a talk with Lica? Figure out what’s going to be going on with the two of you? I don’t know what is wrong, but you being sad all the time is really breaking my heart.”
“I’m all right, Dad. Really. And no, I don’t want you talking to Lica. If he has something to say to me, I know that he’ll come to tell me. Thank you, but we’re doing just what needs to be done. We’ve not had sex, I guess that will mean that we’ve bonded or something and make us stronger, but I have no intention of doing it the one time for that to happen. I told him that, too. He seemed all right with it as well.” They’d always been able to talk to Brandy about a lot of things, sex, however, knowing that she was mated to the big wolf embarrassed him like it never had before. “I guess you could say that we’re coexisting. Not really, since he’s staying at the ranch house and I’m at my home, but it’s working out for us. I just wish he’d get it over with so that I can move on. I’m as nervous as a cat in a room of rockers. I got that from Brogan.”
Alan laughed when she did. There wasn’t anything funny about what she’d said. He knew more than most that knew his daughter that she had always been good at covering up her feelings better than most. Even her happiness, short-lived as it was nowadays, was something that she didn’t share with many people.
“Brandy Conner-Fraizer.” He’d forgotten that she was calling herself Fraizer now. It startled him that she would be so casual about it, too, when the phone rang and she answered it that way. When she asked who was on the other end of the call if she could put it on speaker phone, they must have agreed. “My dad is here now. Go ahead, Edmond. Tell us what you think of the new shop that is going in town. Wait, let me give him a little bit of back history with it.
“A place that I was looking at for some office space has been rented out. The man at the downtown offices of land transfers said that he didn’t know what they were doing but they’re saying that it will bring in five thousand new jobs. That seemed odd to me because the building can’t hold five hundred people, much less five thousand. So Edmond said he’d go and check it out for us.” She asked her dad if he needed more. “Okay, Edmond, we’re both ready now.”
“It’s a scam. Everything about the place is a red flag. I tried the phone number to call in for jobs, and they wanted my bank account information so that they could prove I was a real person. I hope no one here falls for that. I went by here today, and all the doors and windows are papered up so that you can’t see inside the place to see what is going on. But I didn’t let the ‘no trespassing’ signs give me too much trouble and I got inside. There is nothing going on in here that would have me thinking they’ll be ready for their grand opening in four days. The entire first floor looks like it did ten years ago when the shop closed down. The boxes that we noticed coming off the trucks are just stacked up in one corner like they’re waiting on someone to open them.” Alan asked if there were any names on the boxes. “Good point. Let me look. Hang on, Lica’s here too. He’s got a knife we can use.”
Just a glance at Brandy made him realize that she had tensed up. She laid the phone down on the desk and got up to go to the fridge. It was very telling to him that she was getting as far from the phone as she could, and thusly, Lica. He told them the name on the boxes.
“It sounds as if they were just taken out of random trash bins. Wait. They’re full of some kind of merchandise. Here’s one that’s for the ranch that has lubricant in it for the cattle.” They could hear boxes being wrestled around and it made him nervous a little that they were in a building that didn’t belong to them. “Is Brandy there with you, Alan?” He said that she was. “Brandy, did you order something from a catalog and it didn’t turn up at your home?”
“Yes. It was supposed to have…let me look.” She went to her desk and opened her computer. “Yes. It’s signage that goes out front of the property that we’ve just closed up. Not the Rodeo but a diner that had been losing money for decades. Is the box there?”
“There are several full boxes here for different addresses around town. Two for you. One for the ranch. A couple for a couple of neighbors. All of them are open, but the items are still in the box. I think I’ve figured out what’s going—”
“What the fucking hell are you doing in here? This is private property.” Lica told them to call the police. The people had shown up with guns. As soon as he hung up, Brandy did just what she was told. Sending them to the building, saying that there were guns involved, she grabbed her jacket and asked him if he was going.
“Yes. Of course.” They were out the door and running across the street, arriving before the police arrived. Four cruisers pulled up just as there was gunfire. He didn’t want her to go inside, but she was nearly in the doorway when the gunfire sounded. Alan directed the police inside and told them who was inside. Christ, this was going to be trouble for someone.
The talking to him link thing made him jump every time someone used it to talk to him. His wife said the same thing. It was as if someone had snuck up behind them to scare you. But this time, he knew the voice. Lica told him that he and Brandy had been walking along to the store and heard the noise. Nothing more but to keep their mouth about anything else unless he tells them.
They were both asked the same question, why were they there. He might well have said that they were looking around, but he said just what he was told to say. It was Lica who started talking that, making it sound like they were just passing by, and he heard his wife.
“Some of these boxes are hers, and I was just wondering about that.” The man in cuffs, down on his knees with two other men, asked why he thought they’d be in this building. “But they were in here, weren’t they? You can’t dispute that. Even something from the ranch. I’ve called the company complaining about not receiving it when it’s been just sitting here all this time. This isn’t the address that I gave them to send me my things. I doubt very much if any of these people’s merchandise had been shipped here. I’ll have to go home and look, but I have cameras there. I’d like to see how they—”
“He’s lying. We looked hard. There ain’t no cameras anywhere around that ugly farmhouse. Not her business either.” The officer asked his daughter if she had cameras. “I just told you that she didn’t.”
“We have cameras all around the building. Remember when I came to you last month and had our company set up in a specialized room for you to watch over after hours? While I don’t know when my boxes were taken, you can bet that there is a recording of it on the back cameras to see what happened.” The man on the floor just started cursing. It was hilarious to him that the man, even with all the evidence they had on him, kept telling Brandy that he’d looked for cameras while he’d been stealing and hadn’t found any at all. Finally, it was Lica who told him to shut his mouth.
After that, all three of the men were arrested. Lica and Edmond were admonished about entering buildings where they weren’t supposed to go but also thanked for finding the porch pirates that had the police baffled for the last several months. He thought it was a good day all the way around.
Alan said that he was hungry and would buy them all lunch, even the two cops if they joined them. The officers declined, as he knew they would, but Lica and Edmond said that they were hungry, and his daughter said she’d come too. He thought that it was a win-win for all of them.
~*~
Lica hadn’t been able to eat out as much as he was since he and Brandy had found each other. It was a blast also for him to be able to just go into any place and order whatever was on the menu. He didn’t do that, of course. Even with her having billions and billions of dollars, he knew that in order to keep that much coming in, they’d have to cut corners even now. He cleared his throat to ask about the cameras that he didn’t have around the ranch.
“Cost? Well, if we find someone to come out and put the system in for us, and one cow or whatever it is you’re worried about gets stolen, then it will make the cost worth it, correct? I mean, how much do you lose if one, dollars to dollars when something comes up missing…I don’t know what you do, so I can’t figure out a price per whatever.” He told her, thinking it was funny that she was willing to tell him she didn’t know anything. “Okay. So, a standing on the hoof cow would weigh in at about twelve hundred pounds. Christ, that’s a lot of steak.”
“We sell on the hoof. Which means that they weigh the steer while it’s still alive and standing on its own. Each one will cost per pound that way. One of the reasons that we’ve never butchered our cattle for the public is that you have to have a slaughterhouse that is inspected every few months. Not that we’re not clean where we sell our meat, but this was an inexpensive way for us to raise our cattle and then make a profit, too.” She asked him if they made any profit at all in doing this. “Yes. Not as much as most jobs, but it kept us in food and a roof over our heads for the last few years. Here, let me explain it to you the way that I learned it. Say your dad came to buy a steer, take it to his own butcher and have it cut up to suit his needs. But, and this happens no matter who does the butchering on a twelve hundred pound steer, your dad is going to lose weight. About four hundred and fifty pounds of the weight will be skin, some bones, and hoof.”
“That’s a great deal. I had no idea that you’d lose so much after the work is done. Then, what do they do with…I don’t want to know, I don’t think.” Alan laughed and asked him if he’d someday like to get into butchering cattle. “I mean, if the opportunity came along, would you do a few cattle a year for family and whatnot.”
“I can do it for our family. That’s how we get our own meat. But since I’m not selling it to anyone but for our own personal use, then it only needs to have the meat inspected, not the place…I’m sure they have standards that they want things to be but they’ve never said anything to us about it.” Alan asked if he could have a tour when Brandy apologized about having to take a call and left them there. When she stepped outside, he said he was going to make sure she was all right. He heard his brother explaining about what had happened to them early this morning.
Lica didn’t go far just outside the door to keep an eye on her. Leaning against his truck, he just watched her. He could tell that she was frustrated. Whether it was about him or the call, however, he didn’t know. But he wasn’t going to leave her out here alone. Once she hung up, she was pissed. He could see and then heard it in her voice when she spoke to him.
“What the hell are you doing? That was a private call.” He said he was keeping an eye on her. “You don’t think that I can take care of myself? Am I going to have to expect you to—”
“The young man that you saved us from, David James, is making noises about finding you and killing you.” That shut her up and had her looking around. “He’s out of jail, as are his two buddies. They’re looking for you so that they can get revenge for what you did. Did anyone explain to you that his wrist will not heal until he apologizes to you? He has to mean it, too.”
“No. I mean, someone might have said that when he…I wasn’t exactly listening very well after I removed his hand. I wake up in the middle of the night screaming when I think about what I did to him.” He told her that she was justified in what she’d done. “Then why do I feel so horrible for doing it? I do, just so you know.”
