She chuckled.
“What?” I asked.
“He wants to know if I’d like to own a sex shop.”
“Come again?”
Gail started typing again. “He says the ownership was hidden in transactions through a dummy off-shore corporation. He wasn’t able to get to the actual owner, but he can transfer the property title to me, if I want it.”
“What are you going to do with a sex shop?” I asked.
“Not keep it, that’s for damn sure,” Gail responded. “However, we can sell the assets and property for capital.”
I chuffed. “You can’t steal a building and sell it. Wait, can you?”
She laughed again. “I can’t, but Leonard sure can. I told you he helps fund my hunting, didn’t I?”
“By stealing property?”
“It belongs to that bastard werewolf that bit me. He will have to surface if he wants to stop the sell. If he doesn’t, well let’s just say that I’m going to take his life and anything else I can get my hands on. I think he owes me.”
“Sheesh. You’ve done this before?” I asked.
“Once or twice, since Leonard teamed up with us. Before then we scraped by, but now I have a tidy nest egg and can afford whatever equipment I need.”
“And you didn’t mention this earlier because …”
Gail gave me a sly smile. “Because you hadn’t said you were going to partner with me before today. You didn’t have a need to know.”
I laughed. “Touché, Gail. Just how large a nest egg are we talking?”
“Hah, now that I think you still don’t need to know.”
“I think I should be insulted.”
“Don’t be. I’ve told Leonard about you partnering with me. If anything happens to me he’ll make sure you get the remainder of whatever is in the nest egg.”
I frowned and shook my head. “I don’t need your money, Gail.”
“If you’re going to keep hunting after I’m gone, then you’ll need it.”
I looked at her, but she had turned to face the window. “Damn it, Gail. I told you, I’m not letting anything happen to you. So just stop thinking about what I’ll do if something does happen, because it won’t.”
“We’re hunters, Jesse. Retirement is rare. Mom is one of the few hunters I’ve known to ever get out of the business.”
I didn’t have a response for that and while I wanted to say something comforting, I was at a loss for words.
A few minutes later, we dropped off Interstate 20/59 onto a state road leading north into dense forest. I checked the mirrors to make sure the Morenos had made the turn and then accelerated onto the asphalt road that ran through hardwood forest on one side and open fields on the other. Near the end of May, the fields were lush, green, and dotted with newly born calves and their mothers.
“If we’re going to do this right, we need to be through before dark,” Gail said as I pulled the van off the road and onto a cobblestone drive that led between tall brick columns. A massive iron gate blocked our progress. In the outside mirror, I noticed the Moreno’s truck pulling to the side of the road, out of sight of the gate.
“As long as we get it done before the spirit shows up,” I countered. I took out my electronic earplugs and inserted them.
“If we take that long there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to get the ring and save the professor.” Gail copied my actions.
There was a speaker box on my side of the drive and a wide-angle camera watched it. I let down my window, leaned out, and pressed the call button. Immediately, a man’s voice said, “Yes?”
“Drexler and Weaver to see Mr. Montgomery,” I said.
“You’re expected.” There was a click of a latching mechanism and then the whirl of a motor as the gate began to swing back. “Park by the front steps and someone will escort you inside.”
“Thanks,” I said cheerfully.
When the gate was all the way back, I started forward. “So, he has a staff. Were you expecting bystanders?”
“A reclusive philanthropist? Sure, he must be filthy rich,” Gail responded.
“Won’t that complicate things if the spirit shows up?”
“Only if they get in the way.”
The drive was at least half a mile and I was wondering if the Morenos would even hear gunshots from inside the house. Maples, massive sycamores, and pines shaded the drive and here and there, wild dogwoods still flowered between the larger trees. Yellow, white, and hybrid daffodils bloomed in flowerbeds that surrounded the trunks of many of the maples. The cobblestone drive widen into a large circular parking space when we reached the front of the antebellum home. A three-tiered fountain spouted water in the center of the circle. The two-story white home had four massive columns supporting a two-story roof over the front porch. An ornate metal guardrail surrounded the second-floor balcony.
I pulled the van to a stop between a couple of other vehicles a dozen feet in front of the wide cement steps leading to the porch. A man in a gray suit leaned against one of the columns. I put the van into park and killed the engine.
“Well, I guess this is it,” I said.
Gail swiveled her tablet so I could see the screen. “How fast can you memorize a floor plan?”
“Hell, not in a second or two, but I can remember the rough layout,” I said as I studied the three floors of the house. The main floor was mostly large rooms with everything but a bedroom. The top floor had six bedrooms and one of them occupied nearly a quarter of the left side of that floor. The basement was more complicated. There were at least twelve rooms down there and included the furnace or heat pump equipment and water heaters and the such.
“Okay,” I said after a minute. “I think I can get around. The basement looks like a damn maze, but we probably won’t end up in there anyway.”
The suited man must have gotten
