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I give her a kiss on the lips. “All right. You call me if you need anything, okay?”
“Thank you, Brendan. I will. I love you.”
“I love you too, baby.”
After a shower and some quick inventory at the bar, I open. My father used to close the bar on Sundays, but I changed that, and it’s done well. The townies especially like their last hurrah before going back to work on Monday.
Two employees specifically help me on Sundays—Darby and Shaw Peterson. They’re a husband and wife who run a small liquor store in town, which is closed on Sundays. They like to make some extra income by working at the bar on their one day off, and it allows me to give my other employees Sundays off no matter what.
I get the bar stocked and am wiping down the counters when Darby and Shaw walk through the front door.
They’re a middle-aged couple, but they stay young with exercise and a good diet. Neither of them drink, which I always found interesting since they own a liquor store and spend their one day off working for me in a bar.
“Brendan.” Shaw removes his cowboy hat.
“Good afternoon,” I call to them.
“Do you have any news on Ryan Steel?” Darby removes her jacket and sets it behind the bar.
“He’s supposed to be coming home today. I’m sure you heard that it wasn’t a heart attack after all.”
“Actually, we haven’t heard that,” Shaw says.
“Yeah. He’s going to be fine.”
I specifically don’t mention a panic attack. I’m not sure if the Steel family wants that known, although I’m not sure how they can keep it quiet. Gossip runs rampant in a small town like Snow Creek, and God knows I’ve been the subject of it myself more than once. But no one inspires gossip like the Steel family.
“I heard he has cancer,” Darby says.
“And that’s so sad, after Ruby just had breast cancer three years ago.” Shaw frowns.
“You’re dating Ava, Brendan,” Darby says. “What’s really going on?”
“I’m afraid I don’t have any more information than you do, but I haven’t heard anything about cancer.” I begin to slice a lemon, purposefully not meeting their gazes.
Darby and Shaw continue to chatter—mostly Darby—as they don their aprons and get ready for the bar opening.
I turn the sign to Open at two p.m.
And customers arrive.
We’re decently busy, which means Darby and Shaw are busy and they’re not peppering me with questions. Good.
At five o’clock, I leave the bar in their capable hands and run up to my apartment to make myself a sandwich. The papers Ava found hidden in my copy of Tom Sawyer still sit on my small table. I take a quick look at them. The lien on the bar property held by the Steel Trust. The deed transferring the bar from Jeremy Madigan to my father, Sean Murphy the second. And the birth certificate of William Elijah Steel.
I pull out my copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, where I keep the printouts of the emails we received at Hardy’s office.
Darth Morgen is alive.
Grandmother is alive.
Ava’s grandmother.
Her grandmother on her father’s side.
Daphne Steel.
I adore Ava, and I believe she has amazing intuition, but…I believe she’s wrong here. Daphne Steel is not alive. And Ava’s feeling that she has no connection to Daphne? I believe she’s wrong there as well. I respect her convictions for sure, but how can you feel an ancestor you’ve never met?
I look at the other paper.
When echoes navigate down yonder, many anchors destroy ideas generated about neglect.
What in the hell could this possibly mean?
There’s no doubt in my mind, though, that Ryan and Ruby Steel know what it means. There’s also no doubt in my mind that Ruby already knew that Darth Morgen unscrambled to grandmother.
Why would they keep this information from Ava?
Perhaps Ava is finding out at this very moment.
I grab my laptop. Darth Morgen was an anagram. Maybe the long message is one as well, but man, it will take forever to figure it out. I don’t have a lot of time, but I search for an anagram maker online and plug in the message.
And I wait.
The anagram generator is taking forever, so I stop, reload with Darth Morgen, and—of course—the first word is grandmother. Clearly the second message is too long to be an anagram, but it’s some kind of puzzle.
But what kind?
Each letter could refer to another letter. I search for a codebreaker online, but I end up frazzled. I’m no cryptanalyst. That’s for sure. There has to be a simpler solution.
If only I were a detective, like Ruby. She knows what this means. Damn it. I know she knows.
I regard the first word, When. Then I widen my eyes. I saw a detective show once where a kidnapping victim was forced to write a note telling everyone she was fine, and she managed to begin each line with a letter that—if read vertically—spelled out Help.
