Chapter 36

CHAPTER 36

T hat had turned out better than I had hoped. Rose got the truck, the house, and everything in them. I suspected Ozzie had put some of his money in there; it would just be a matter of finding it. I had no idea how much he'd stashed in the house after buying up the town with Pike, but we'd look. As far as the microfilm, that hadn't been addressed unless it was in the box that Pike had gotten. But if it had been, I think he'd have told me. After all, I had a badge.

The downside was that Rose was back in Serena's line of fire and we had no idea where the microfilm was or if it even existed after all this time.

And Norman had fathered Junior. I wondered how that would go over with Serena. She should have been more careful.

Rose took me to the grocery in Bearton, and I spent some time following her around while she bought things. It was perversely normal. Rocky Start was a powder keg and Rose was buying mustard and chicken thighs. Then I noticed the longer she pushed the cart, the calmer she became. Evidently shopping for food was Valium for her, so I approved. Also, I'd be getting mustard chicken for dinner, whatever that was.

She turned and smiled at me, her dimples back.

A lot better.

I liked Rose happy. Well, I liked Rose, but happy Rose was a vibrant presence, and I liked her vibrating in my presence. And in my bed. "You ready to go?" I said finally, trying not to grab her by the sour cream, and she nodded, calm at last.

When we got back to Oddities and had put the groceries away, which was another normal thing that kind of freaked me out, a couple of vehicles were pulling up in the alley. I recognized Darius's Jeep, and there were more kids in the other car, an old Mustang in excellent shape.

"Congratulations on your inheritance," I said to Rose. "You need to give Poppy the good news. I'm going to take a look around upstairs, if that's all right with you."

She nodded, smiling at me. For the briefest of moments, I felt alarm at how easily she trusted me.

"When you're done with Poppy, come up and help," I added, and she smiled at me again, and this time there were dimples. That was a smile that said she knew what I wanted help with, and that was fine with her.

Helluva woman, that Rosalie Malone.

Maggs, who'd been guarding the shop, wagged her tail, picking up the happiness vibe. She trusted Rose and Poppy. Maybe I was the one with trust issues?

Leaving Maggs with Rose in the kitchen, I walked up the stairs slowly. I was looking at everything around me differently because I was betting that Oz had caches all over the place.

Caching things is something you're taught early on when you're on the path to being what Oz and I had been. You had to hide whatever it was so that no one else could find it. You also had to secure it so that time wouldn't degrade whatever it was. And, just as importantly, you had to be able to recover it. That usually entailed a cache report. There's a format for that. You always filled one out because no matter how sure you were that you were going to remember where you put that valuable thing, you could get confused—sort of like remembering passwords—and, as importantly, you had to have a means to let someone else who didn't know anything about it find it if need be, just using the cache report.

Oz would have wanted Rose to find any cache he put in. The will had been clear about that. The problem was, Oz wasn't going to make it easy. Otherwise, he'd simply have included an envelope with the cache reports in the will. Nope, he was having his last laugh from the grave. "Go fetch, kid."

At least it was a laugh, though.

I halted at the top of the stairs. This house, which was two dwellings side by side joined by a hallway made from the space in between with a blue line painted down it, had a lot of places to hide things. There was also the possibility that Ozzie had double-secured things; that he'd hidden the cache reports here and then put the actual caches out in the forest. That's what I would have done. The house could catch fire and burn down. It could be torn down. Aliens could invade. Termites. Wildfire. Serena. You put things in places that would be there for a long time.

I remembered one thing that had been made very clear. I went over to the desk and opened the top right-hand drawer. Right on top was a bank book. I opened it. It was a very nice sum and in Poppy's name. I didn't know what college cost these days, but I didn't think she'd have to take out any loans. I imagined Barry had laundered cash into that account in trickles for Oz, small enough not to attract the IRS, over a period of years.

Which made me think. Who the hell names their kid Poppy? I'd thought it was a nickname, but no, this account, which had a lot of money in it, was made out to Poppy Rose Malone.

Rose. That's who'd name her kid Poppy. I smiled and put the bank book in the center of the blotter, which I noticed had a new cover. So Rose had cleaned up.

Then I went for the obvious: the locked room Rose had never been in.

The lock wasn't hard to pick. I figured lock picking was part of Rose's repertoire, but Oz had indicated he'd trusted her never to look at anything he didn't want her to. That's a lot of trust. And I was sure she hadn't.

I checked the frame of the door for booby traps before opening it. One never knew.

The room was dark, the windows covered with blackout shades. I turned on the overhead lights. The first thing I noticed was two walls completely covered with 1:25,000-scale topographic maps. Stepping closer, I saw that they were of the local area on a swath northwest from Rocky Start all the way to where the mountains ended at the Tennessee River Valley. It covered a lot of territory.

There were different colored pins in the map and lots of markings with highlighters. Had Ozzie cached things out there? But he wouldn't mark a cache so that anyone could find it. Unless he trusted that Rose would be the first to see this? It was just weird.

The next thing I noted was the weapons. Oz had a nice collection lined up in a gun rack along the third wall not covered by the map. There were some classics there, including a Swedish K submachine gun. Hell, Rose could sell some of these guns and make a pretty penny. Then I remembered Serena and figured we'd better hold on to them. Plus, several were illegal because they were automatics.

There was an old Alice-frame backpack leaning against a large, flat table. On the table were large-scale maps. A grid pattern was laid out on the acetate over the maps. Oz had definitely been searching. I'd have to look more closely at it later.

I opened the ruck. It was a go bag, based on the contents. The biggest tell were passports in various names with pictures of Oz, Rose, and Poppy; the four passports for Poppy had pictures at birth (a fat, laughing baby), six (a round, smiling face), eleven (a thin, scowling girl), and a relatively new one that looked like Poppy today (beautiful and sharp). Weapons, some clothes, and several narrow blue bank bags. I unzipped each. Cash. In various currencies. US dollars. Euros. Yen. And several from countries with no extradition treaties.

I counted the US currency. Fifty grand. Maybe not as much in the others but still a tidy sum .

A good start, and Rose could pay Barry right away. I took that and Poppy's bank book with me to make her day even better.

I also took away a better understanding of how Oz had felt about Rose and Poppy. If he'd had to go on the lam, he wasn't going to abandon them. They were family. He'd have kept them with him, protected them for as long as it took.

I was starting to like Oz.