“Living in a barn out back of your grandma’s farmhouse.”
“It might’ve been a barn,” Jay muttered, “but I’ve put a little money into it over the years.”
“Because you knew you’d need an escape hatch sooner or later?”
He exhaled. “Maybe. Jett Carr did earn me money over time. I worked my ass off for it, too. But I never really cracked the ice until that video.”
“Well, hiding out after the fact seems like it was the best way you could have found to ensure even more interest in it. If you’d have just told me all this from the start, it would’ve saved the department a lot of time and money.”
Jay threw himself down on the chair he’d vacated. “If I make a donation to the policeman’s fund will that help?”
Teas smiled slightly. “How big a donation?”
Jay pulled out the checkbook he’d brought with him, because he’d figured one way or another he would be paying for the visit. He wrote out several digits and signed his name. His real name. He tore out the check and slid it across to the detective. “Will that do?”
Teas gave it a considering look and then nodded. “So if it’s not you tinkering with things over at Hotel Fortune, who do you think it is?”
Jay grimaced. “Who the hell knows? Someone who’s got a gripe against the Fortunes. The ones who built the place, I mean.” He couldn’t stand the thought that the vengeance might extend to Arabella.
“Yeah.” Teas scratched his chin. “Only thing is, we can’t seem to find anyone with a real gripe. That Callum fella and his brothers have done a lot of good things here in town. First they built that pediatric center. The veterinary clinic. Provisions has the best food in town. Took my wife to Roja and that’s gonna be just as good. Retail shops. A fancy spa where my wife is constantly begging me to send her. They’ve brought in new money. Created jobs.” He drummed his fingers against the table. “Even checked into that lady who went off the deep end a few years ago. Charlotte Robinson? Ex-wife of that Robinson Tech guy? Her permanent address is still the fancy sanitarium place she got checked into after she tried her hand and failed at kidnapping.”
Jay vaguely remembered his mother recounting the sensationalistic story several years back. But he’d been in California then and couldn’t have cared less about a bunch of people he’d never met, much less heard of.
“It’s gotta be an inside job. But the only one who didn’t have a good alibi has been you.”
“I still don’t have a good alibi,” he pointed out. “You just know now what I was doing in the years between insurance and showing up here.”
“You saying you tampered with the balcony?”
His lips thinned. “To what end?”
“Exactly.” Teas slapped his hand down on the table. “I just need one thing from you.” He flipped the pages on his yellow pad to one that was empty and sent it skidding across the surface toward Jay. He followed it with a pen from his lapel pocket. “Sign an autograph for my daughter. Her name is Keisha.”
Feeling relieved, bemused and pretty much spent, Jay picked up the pen and scrawled out his autograph.
To Keisha.
All the best.
Jett Carr.
Then he set down the pen and pushed to his feet.
Teas stood as well. He carefully pulled off the sheet of paper and folded it in fourths to tuck into his pocket. “What’re you going to do now?”
“About what?”
“Half the world’s still looking for you, bud.”
Jay unlocked the door and pulled it open. “Long as I can trust you not to out me now, they’ll just have to keep looking. Far as I’m concerned, Jett Carr’s dead and gone.”
“And Jay Cross is happy being a hotel trainee in small-town Texas?”
Arabella’s image danced in Jay’s mind. Without Teas in his rearview mirror, looking into her beautiful eyes would be a lot easier. “Happier than he’s got a right to be.”
Teas clapped him on the shoulder. “Good luck with that, then. Just have t’say that I’ve learned one thing in all my years of police work. Secrets tend to come out.”
Another thing on which the detective and Jay’s grandmother would agree.
He pulled his hat down over his eyes as he walked out into the morning sunshine.
He was surprised at how much time had passed with the detective. But then he hadn’t intended to treat the meeting like the confessional it had become. He’d just planned to tell the cop the basics about his history in California, buy his silence if it became necessary and get on with his day.
Petunia’s flower shop was down the street and on the spur of the moment, Jay pulled over and parked in front. Inside, he picked a pot of geraniums off the shelf only because the small clay pot wore a pair of pink sunglasses above a pair of equally pink painted lips. Then he added another fern to his choice because he couldn’t seem to pass one without feeling he ought to buy it for his grandmother.
He’d inherited the habit from Herb. Because as many times as Jay had come to town with his grandfather to pay those parking tickets, when they drove back out to the farm, Jay had invariably been holding a potted
