âSuch as?â
Such as a white utility van. But I didnât say it.
âBrandy, are you holding something back?â
I just shrugged.
A guy Brianâs age shouldnât have been able to summon such a weight-of-the-world sigh. âBrandy, for Godâs sake ... for your own sake ... please, please stop playing detective. Let the professionals handle it. Please?â
He was begging. This is a place where Tony wouldnât have gone, and it wasnât particularly attractive, cutie-pie or not.
But it worked on me, at least a little.
âOkay,â I surrendered. âIâll try.â Then, âIs there anything else?â
âNo, Brandy.â Another sigh. Merely weight-of-Serenity this time. âThatâs all.â
I stood.
Brian left his chair, came around the desk, and faced me.
âActually,â he said, âthere is one other thing... .â
I raised my eyebrows.
He gave me that boyish smileâthe one with the dimples. âWhat would you think about having dinner with me sometime?â
I thought it over.
âHow about it, Brandy? Old timesâ sake?â
âJust dinner? Nothing more?â
âNothing more.â
But I knew what would happen. Iâd drink too much wine, and then weâd go back to his place, where I wouldnât be able to resist those dimples, and ...
âWhen?â I asked.
Â
I got home around noon, finding Mother in the kitchen making egg-salad sandwiches.
I sat on a red 1950s step stool and told her about my meeting with Brian (but not our as yet unspecified dinner date, knowing she would view that primarily as an opportunity for me to wheedle info out of the acting chief).
Mother said thoughtfully, âYou were correct to wonder about Big Jim Bobâs past, my dear. Why did he come back to Serenity? Perhaps he was running from something.â
âOr someone. Maybe someone who caught up with him.â
Wiping her hands on a dish towel, Mother said, âCome ... I want to show you what I found.â
I followed Mother to the music room, where in my absence she had repacked the storage unit items, except for the stack of correspondence, which she now held in her hands like a devout churchgoer with a hymnal.
âYour instincts were correct, dear,â she said, underplaying for once. âThese have proved most interesting reading.â
âReally? What are they, letters?â
âGot it in one, dear. Mostly love letters, yesâwritten during the Vietnam war ... to âAnnaâ from âStephen.â But thatâs not the most important discovery.â
She wanted me to ask.
So I did. âOkay, Mother, what was the most important discovery?â
âThank you for asking, dear. Among the missives was a contract for a storage unit.â
That perked me up. âA storage unit? Her storage unit? Our storage unit?â
She nodded, smiling in that cat-that-ate-the-canary way of hers.
âSo do we have a last name, to go with Anna?â
Mother nodded again, eyes and nostrils flaring. â And an address.â
âIn Serenity?â
âNo. But nearby.â
âWhere?â
Why was she dragging this out? But I knewâMother was an unbridled ham, and I was her audience.
âThe Quad Cities, dear. Weâll leave right after lunch.â
Â
Anna Armstrongâs address was in Davenportâone of the five large burgs that made up the Quad Cities (donât ask). Specifically, we were heading to an area just east of the downtown, known as the Gold Coast.
On the half-hour ride, Mother gave me chapter and verse regarding this historic neighborhood of once-grand homes with magnificent views of the Mississippi River, established during the Civil War by wealthy German immigrants who had played such a large part in shaping the city.
During the 1970s, this fabled area began to lose its luster as the wealthy moved to greener pastures in the