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“You can call your parents and see if they have a spare. Or maybe the realtor who sold them the house still has one, since they bought it so recently.”
That was probably the easiest solution. If anyone still had a key, it was Josie. However, I didn’t think it would be kosher to pick up a key and go barging in there without permission from Tom and my mother.
“Let me call my mom first,” I said.
Sasha seemed content with that; she leaned against the counter while I got out my phone and made a quick call. To my relief, it went through at once. Service in and around Globe wasn’t always the most reliable thing in the world, and it was entirely possible that the two of them could have been out driving around in a cellular dead zone.
“Selena!” my mother said, sounding surprised. “Is everything okay?”
Depends on your definition of “okay,” I thought, but I only said, “Brant’s girlfriend is here. She wants to take a look at the house. Is that okay?”
“Brant had a girlfriend?” my mother asked, her tone even more startled at that particular revelation.
I held back a grimace. “Yes. She’d really like to go to the house and take a look around, but I thought I’d better check with you first.”
“It’s fine.” Her voice sounded full of questions, but apparently she realized it would be better to ask later, because she went on, “There’s a spare key under the stone frog by the front porch. And actually, it’s good that Brant’s girlfriend is here — the police took his mini recorder and stethoscope and phone, but they left behind his bags. Tom and I were wondering what we should do with them.”
Right. I’d completely forgotten about the overnight bag and the suitcase Brant had brought with him. It had seemed a lot for a quick trip, but maybe he’d over-packed because he didn’t know for sure how long the investigation would take.
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll make sure to get them. Thanks, Mom.”
“Oh, it’s fine.” Just the slightest pause, and then my mother added, “Please tell her we’re sincerely sorry about what happened.”
“I will.”
I ended the call to see Sasha watching me expectantly. “We can go on over,” I told her. “There’s a spare key hidden by the porch.”
Some of the tension in her face eased. “Oh, good.”
“And you can get Brant’s bags. They’re still in one of the guest rooms.”
All she did was nod, but I could tell she was glad that she’d be able to retrieve some of his belongings, even if the Globe P.D. was hanging on to those items they thought were most relevant to the investigation. I hoped they’d release them at the same time they sent his body to the funeral home, but I supposed that was up to Chief Lewis.
I asked Sasha if she wanted to drive with me or follow me to the house, and she said, “I’d better drive with you. Brant’s car is still there, isn’t it?”
Right. The police had left the Subaru sitting in the driveway, probably because it didn’t have anything directly to do with the investigation. It wasn’t blocking the bay where Tom had been parking his Porsche Cayenne, so it had probably escaped his mind that they’d have to do something about it eventually.
“It is,” I said. “But won’t that leave you with two cars here in town?”
Her thin shoulders lifted. “It will, but I’ll just leave Brant’s car in the hotel parking lot until I can come back with a friend to drive it to Sedona. That would be a lot cheaper than having it towed a couple of hundred miles.”
That was for sure. Sasha seemed a little steadier now, maybe because we were discussing logistics, something concrete and manageable to focus on.
“My car’s out back,” I went on. “We might as well head out.”
I locked the shop door and returned my much-used “be back at” sign to the front window, and the two of us went through the back door and out to the parking lot. The day had heated up, although thunderheads were building to the east, and I had a feeling we’d have another round of monsoon storms later that afternoon and possibly into the evening.
Right then, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than to go back to Calvin’s house and sit in his comfortable living room, snuggled together on his beat-up leather couch while the rain pounded down outside and we shared a bottle of wine. I’d sent him a couple of texts to let him know what was going on, but he hadn’t been able to do much more than respond with brief, sympathetic replies. It sounded as though he was caught up in his own troubles on the reservation. Not a murder, thankfully, but the discovery that some squatters had decided to set up a meth lab in an abandoned house near the eastern edge of the San Ramon tribe’s territory. He’d said he’d try to make dinner the following night, but a lot depended on whether the squatters were acting alone or whether they were part of a bigger supply chain that would require further investigation.
I held back a sigh, and told myself that missing an evening with Calvin wasn’t the end of the world. I still had him, and I wasn’t grieving the loss of the man I’d loved, unlike the woman in the passenger seat of my Beetle.
She didn’t say anything on the drive out to the Bigelow mansion, only watched the buildings and streets pass by as we left downtown and headed up Globe’s hilly roads to our destination. As we pulled onto the long lane that wound its way toward the house, however, she let out a brief sound of surprise.
“What is it?” I asked, allowing myself a quick glance over at her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose I didn’t expect it to be so beautiful.”
It was a stunning house, that was for sure. I had to hope that one day it could be appreciated again for its architectural beauty and not because of what had happened inside.
