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Especially if I keep eating brownies for breakfast.
“Look at how she took out Wolfgang on her own,” he added.
My cheeks warmed. Not entirely on my own. The duvet deserved most of the credit, I just delivered the knockout blow.
Harvey patted my head as though I was a good bluetick hound who’d treed a raccoon. “And Doc Nyce told me that she was about to jump out the window when he found her.”
More like dangle from the sill and scream bloody murder until the neighbors came running, but I liked Doc’s version better.
“Speaking of Doc.” I set my empty cup on the table. “How did you two know where to find me? Or to even come looking?”
“That was Layne’s doing,” Aunt Zoe said.
“Layne?”
Harvey nodded, grabbing the penultimate brownie from my plate. “That’s one smart kid you got.”
I’d known that since back when he’d asked Santa for a thesaurus and a set of training wheels, but, “How didheknow?”
“When you didn’t show up by nine,” Aunt Zoe explained, “he called me at the gallery, insisting something was wrong. By the time I closed up and drove home, he’d phoned just about every restaurant in Deadwood and Lead looking for you.”
“There was no talkin’ the kid out of it,” Harvey added. “He insisted you were in trouble. Turns out the little shit had been spying through the curtains with a pair of binoculars earlier when Wolfgang arrived and he’d seen a padlock fall out of Wolfgang’s pocket when he’d crawled out of the car.”
“A blue padlock,” Aunt Zoe continued. “Layne remembered it from the root cellar door in Wolfgang’s backyard.”
I remembered talking with Layne about that root cellar door—and the padlock. It all made sense now. The memory of Wolfgang standing in this very kitchen and talking to my kids with that padlock in his pocket made me shiver.
“By that time,” Harvey said, “Layne had Addy all buggered-up about you being in danger and she begged me to call Doc.”
“Doc?” I asked, sitting forward. “Don’t you mean Natalie?”
“No, she insisted on Doc. Said he would rescue you. Even knew his cell phone number.”
My eyes narrowed. Somebody must have nosed through my purse when I wasn’t paying attention. Little Miss Matchmaker and I were going to have to have a talk about boundaries again.
“Lucky for me, Doc had his cell phone turned on,” Harvey continued. “He picked me up and we cruised by the Hessler house. The place was dark, but we’d promised Layne we’d check out that root cellar door. While we were monkeyin’ around in the back, we heard glass break out front. By the time we got around the house, you were up there squealing like a half-castrated pig.”
I scowled. He could’ve come up with a more flattering simile.
Harvey stood and grabbed a beer from the fridge. “You should have seen Doc go at Hessler’s front door. His shoulder is gonna hurt for days.”
I’d be happy to kiss it better. It’s the least I could do.
Aunt Zoe looked at me, her brows raised, suspicion glinting in her eyes. I hurried to change the subject. “What did Coop have to say about the ear?”
I’d filled in Aunt Zoe about Harvey’s creepy visitor yesterday. Her gaze flew back to Harvey. “Surely somebody missing an ear has shown up at one of the hospitals around here by now.”
“Nope, not a one. Coop mentioned that the ear had been sent off to some lab to be looked at.” He cracked open the can. “He and some of the sheriff’s deputies checked out that mine up behind my barn. They found a few things. Something made a nest.”
I shivered clear through my toes. “What kind of things?”
Shrugging, Harvey said, “Broken glasses, an old boot, dirty skivvies, a half-eaten possum. Oh, and teeth.”
“Teeth?” Aunt Zoe asked, reading my mind.
“Coop says they look human. He mentioned something about bones, too. Didn’t say from what.”
“Jesus, Harvey.” I sat back, feeling a bit winded.
