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Remmi absorbed that. “Do you know where Uncle Milo is now, specifically?” Remmi asked.
“Of course, I do!” Vera acted as if Remmi had impugned her somehow. “For the most part, he has a schedule. It’s pretty routine, only changes a little around the holidays and sometimes in the summer. This week he’s in Montana.” She got out of the rocker in a hurry and bustled through an open archway to the kitchen. She paused near a calendar hanging on the wall next to the back door. Muttering under her breath, she leaned closer, then snagged a pair of reading glasses from the windowsill over the sink and plopped them onto the end of her nose. “Yes. Western Montana and Idaho.”
“Still selling farm equipment?” Remmi asked.
“Is the pope Catholic?” Jensen responded, finishing his beer and squashing the can in a meaty fist. “But that’s the kicker, isn’t it? He’s never farmed that I know of.” He tossed the can over his shoulder, and it landed in a trash can. “Another trey!”
From the kitchen, Vera said, “Milo knows farming inside and out. Grew up with it, long before you were born, Jensen. He worked his dad’s place before going into the service.”
“That’s in Anderstown, Missouri,” Noah said.
“Well, near there. Milo’s family lived to the south of town, my parents’ place was to the west.” Folding the reading glasses, she returned to the living room, stopping to pick up a red block and toss it into an overflowing basket of toys. “I don’t know what this has to do with anything.” She focused her judgmental gaze on Remmi. “You know what your uncle does for a living. You lived with us. We put a roof over your head when that fly-by-night mother of yours bailed on you.”
Remmi couldn’t help but feel a sting at that barb, and she saw the anger, maybe even pain, in her aunt’s eyes, the same emotion that was always there just under the surface whenever Didi’s name came up. Of course, Remmi understood how Aunt Vera felt about her younger sister; Remmi had been told enough times. Vera saw herself as the responsible daughter to her parents, while Didi, who was slightly prettier and sexier and a lot more hedonistic, had left her parents and Anderstown to seek her fame and fortune under the bright lights of Hollywood, and it had all devolved to a sad and tawdry tale of another fame seeker whose big dreams had never been fulfilled.
* * *
“What the hell’s going on?” Buzz O’Day demanded as he climbed out of his truck, jammed his hard hat onto his head, and crossed the gravel lot to the construction site. The wind was kicking up, sand and dust swirling, the winter sun beating down. Nevada in winter. That was the trouble with this place—warm enough during the day, for sure, but cold as a witch’s tit at night. Freezing. But he could deal with the weather; it was the other stuff that got to him.
He’d had a bad night at home, his teenage daughter sneaking out to be with her boyfriend and showing up at five-damned-o’clock in the morning, rumpled, her top on inside out, looking like she’d been making out all night. Did she even know about condoms? Would he have to be the one to offer them up? O’Day’s wife was a wreck about the whole thing
and looked to him for help, for God’s sake, so he sure as hell didn’t need any problems today at work.
But it looked like he was getting his fair share.
“We struck something,” his assistant, Ramon Valdez, said. “In the pit. Something big.”
“Big like a boulder? Big like an elephant? Big like a casino? What?”
“I think you need to see for yourself.”
“Just tell me. Don’t keep me in suspense, for crying out loud. I’m not in the mood today, Ramon.” He’d had enough melodrama for one twenty-four-hour period, catching his daughter trying to sneak back into the house while that douchebag of a dropout boyfriend had driven off. God, what a scene. His wife had never quit crying, nor had his daughter.
That’s what he got living with two females, he told himself as he passed through the makeshift fence surrounding the excavation. The job was already behind schedule, and he didn’t need any further delays on this project about a mile from the outskirts of Las Vegas. A new “planned community” was in the making. Three hundred homes in five “unique” models, two clubhouses, a golf course, a spa, and three restaurants. Just what Las Vegas needed.
If they could ever get the project moving. Right now, the backhoe was idling loudly, the operator appearing frozen at the controls, the scoop of the articulated arm filled with debris that slowly trickled from beneath the bucket’s teeth.
O’Day was already sweating as he reached the edge of the area where the machinery had scraped the land, a layer of raw earth exposed in a deep hole.
“What the hell is that?” he asked as he squinted against the sun glinting on what appeared to be the metal fender of a huge car.
“I think it’s a 1957 Cadillac,” Ramon told him.
“A Caddy? And you can tell the year?”
Ramon shrugged. “I’m a classic car buff.”
“For the love of Christ, I don’t care what it is. What the hell’s it doing there?”
“Beats me.”
“Well, get it out of there.” He hooked his thumb and thrust it over his shoulder, to indicate yanking the car out. Classic or not, it had to go.
“That’s another problem. I don’t think we can.”
For the first time, O’Day noticed that the younger man seemed worried, his dark brows drawn together, the edges of his mouth curved down. “Why the fuck not?”
“Because I went down and dusted off the windshield. The car’s not empty.”
