Pepper, the Highlander & the Dead Guy

“Anything I can do,” Ian offered.

My mom grabbed her sweater jacket and her purse. “I have a book club meeting tonight and I don’t want to miss it, so you don’t mind staying with Pepper, do you?” she asked on her way to the door.

“No’ at all,” Ian said.

My mom stopped after opening the door. “Hope you don’t mind spending the night. My book club serves a lot of wine, and I don’t think I’ll be in any condition to drive, let alone stay awake to look after Pepper. Toodles.” And out the door she went.

Ian turned a huge smile on me. “At least your mum likes me.”

“That I can definitely confirm,” I said and silently blessed my mom. “I’m sorry they wouldn’t let you in to see me at the hospital.”

“It made me a bit crazy when I couldn’t get in to see you for myself, but I appreciate you sending Amy to the waiting room to update me.” He kissed me lightly on the lips before joining me on the couch. “All is okay with you, right, Pep?”

“All is good,” I assured him. “The doctor ruled out a concussion, but my mom insisted that he could be wrong. That I should be watched throughout the night and, of course, she volunteered, and she made my dad promise not to disturb us, and HOLY COW!” I almost shook my sore head but stopped. “My mom set this whole thing up so you could spend the night with me without any interruption from my dad.”

Ian laughed. “Your mum’s a gem. But what will happen when he finds out since I’m learning little goes on in this town that your dad doesn’t know about.”

I dismissed his concern with a wave. “My mom will ignore his protests and he’ll mumble and walk away, and all will be forgiven, since he can never stay mad at my mom for longer than ten minutes.”

“Precisely ten minutes?”

“Precisely,” I confirmed. “I’ve timed it through the years, and it’s been a precise ten minutes every time.”

He laughed again and it surprised me how glad I was that he was here with me.

“Did you hear anything more about the missing letter?” Ian asked.

“No,” I said, and a twinge of guilt hit me for not having given it a thought.

“Don’t you find the letter odd?” Ian asked. “Who writes letters today? Everything is e-mail or text.”

I got annoyed at myself for not thinking of that, but it did jog my thinking juices. “Maybe the letter was older.”

“And had something in it someone didn’t want anyone to see.”

“Those boxes in that room, what’s in them?” I asked.

“Some of my uncle’s things that were found when his private quarters were cleaned out. The boxes they were in were falling apart so I had the stuff put in new boxes until I have a chance to go through them.”

“Who knows about that?”

“As far as I know, the crew I hired to box the stuff.” His brows shot up like a lightbulb had suddenly gone off in his head. “I had the two boxes marked—Uncle Max’s stuff.”

“Then anyone looking for something of his would know where to search once they found out where Uncle Max’s stuff went.”

I scrunched my brow trying to visualize the room and I suddenly realized what it was that I hadn’t seen when I was there. “There were no markings on the boxes. Whoever searched them turned them around so no one would see it was Max’s stuff.”

“If anyone else came looking, they’d walk right past them.”

“You need to go get those boxes before someone else does,” I said.

20

Ian had a full day of shoots starting shortly after dawn and didn’t even have time for coffee the next morning. I sat on the couch, coffee cup in hand staring at the boxes on the floor beside the coffee table that Ian had gotten from his place last night. They had been disappointing. Ian and I hadn’t found any letters, both of us thinking if there had been letters the would-be thief had stolen them all. One box held some old receipts and bills pertaining to the lodge. The other one held old matchbooks from various places around the world, post cards from a friend named Yank, Broadway billboards, some autographed, and a box that held one diamond cufflink.

Ian and I surmised the other had to have been lost and the one possibly kept for sentimental reasons. It also proved that the thief wasn’t actually a thief, or he would have swiped the diamond cufflink. He’d been looking for something specific and he’d found it.

As much as I wanted to linger in the mystery and the doctor had instructed me to rest for a day or two, I had work to do. Updates were needed to different areas of my website and a book to work on, the proposal that Sylvia wanted pronto, and countless other things. I went to my office with Mo trailing behind me and planting himself down near my feet as soon as I sat. Roxie entered as well and jumped up on my desk to curl up and go to sleep on my notes for a number of things that needed doing.