Right Brother (3 page)

In order to anticipate, he had to study. In order to study, he needed the right information.

He closed the flimsy door and headed for a return trip to Drago.

Might as well get started with uncovering the right information.

T
rent had been gone from Drago a long time—long enough to rate as an outsider, if he hadn't always been one.

He supposed an insider would accept it as business as usual that word of his return got around so fast—as evidenced by the arrival hard on his heels of half a dozen people at the surprisingly full café.

But even he was not entirely surprised when Darcie Barrett strolled in, giving him a narrow-eyed nod. He doubted he'd been here five minutes before someone called her.

Darcie sat at the counter while he finished his dinner of fried chicken—real fried chicken, with the skin on and more than a passing acquaintance with oil—green beans, tomato slices and early season corn so fresh he barely stopped himself from moaning with pleasure at each bite.

No one would have heard, because two of his high school football teammates, among the first to arrive after him, sat
opposite, talking and laughing over old plays, old jokes and old triumphs.

He remembered the good. He also remembered the bad of those years. But then most of the bad had been in private, away from the public eye.

With his dinner plate empty and first Fred, then Bobby saying it was time to head home to their families for their own dinners, Darcie moved in.

“You want some pie?” she asked, sliding into the bench opposite him as Loris cleared his plate.

“You angling for my tip, Darcie?” demanded Loris. “I was about to ask the boy.”

Darcie's gaze traced his neck and shoulders, both showing the result of long, hard years of training. “Boy?”

“He's a boy to me. I remember him comin' in here in diapers.” Now that was one effective way to prick a man's ego. “Yup, him as dark as Eric was fair. Just goes to show, doesn't it? Peach or apple pie, Trent?” she demanded before he could consider what it might be going to show.

“Peach. Do you have any—?”

“Cinnamon ice cream. Yes I do. It's gotten to be a favorite around here, and I tell everyone you're the reason it's on the menu.”

She bustled off to another table.

“That's true, peach pie and cinnamon ice cream's a specialty because of Trent Stenner—that's what she tells everyone,” Darcie said. “So I've got to believe she was telling the truth about the diapers, too. I wonder if ESPN would be interested in a we-knew-him-when piece that included that tidbit.”

His mouth quirked. “I wasn't exactly a darling of ESPN when I was playing. If you'd offered them a we-knew-him-when piece then, they would have said, ‘Who?' And now I'm
not even playing. So you'll have to content yourself with trying to embarrass me to the home crowd.”

“And don't think I won't,” she said cheerfully. Then her tone changed. “What are you going to be doing now that you've retired?”

He smiled at Loris, who delivered his pie, turned it so the point faced him, then dug in and enjoyed the first sweet, spicy, warm, cold pleasure.

“Now, why did that sound like an official question?”

“Not official. Professional, maybe, but not official. And it's natural to have some professional curiosity, because it sounds like you've been practicing to go into my line of work. I heard you started off asking questions the minute you walked in the door.”

He kept eating his pie.

“Plan on becoming a detective, Trent?”

“Strictly amateur.”

She sat back in the booth, contemplating him. She made no effort to hide that she was trying to decide about him. When she started talking again, he had no idea what decision she'd made.

“The only reason she won't hear that you've been asking questions about her finances is that nobody would want to make her feel bad that her ex-brother-in-law was nosing around her business.”

Okay. They were going to be honest. Even if they didn't mention Jennifer Truesdale by name. A wise precaution since Loris's Café clearly still ranked as Gossip Central.

“You don't think her having the listing on Stenner Autos makes it Stenner business, too?”

That would make her the only one benefiting from the dealership at this point.

And wouldn't his father love to hear that.

“No, I don't,” she snapped.

She went on almost immediately, talking all about how Drago was a strange mix of everybody knowing everybody else's business and respect for people's privacy. A flow of words meant to cover that initial, blunt response.

He only half listened. The three words—
No, I don't
—had coalesced fragments he'd been picking up into a whole he didn't like.

He swallowed the last bite of peach pie. It didn't taste quite as sweet as its predecessors.

“Remember Zeke Zeekowsky?” Only when Darcie asked that abrupt question did he realize they'd fallen into a silence.

He knew it was a different question from whether he recognized the name. Most people who kept up with technology at all would know the name. But
remember
keyed the question to here in Drago.

“I remember him. And I hear you're to be congratulated. Wedding's soon, isn't it?”

Her smile nearly blinded him. “Not soon enough—and thanks.”

In the interests of cutting to the chase, since she must have asked the question with an eye to heading somewhere, he added, “I also heard Zeke's starting a computer lab in town, and signed a license for a hot new program with a Drago kid and he's moving a division of Zeke-Tech here.”

“Yes, he is. But moving a division of a company isn't easy. It's going to take a while. It's going to take a while to get to the point where Drago feels real benefits. It's started—a trickle here or there, spurts when the media descends—but the steady, reliable flow, that won't come for a while yet.”

“I can see that,” he said slowly.

What he didn't see was what it had to do with his brother's ex and his questions.

“The café here has more business with all the Zeke-Tech folks coming through town. And a few people are starting to rent rooms and such to the Zeke-Techers planning the move. But the big influx of folks, the ones who'll stay here permanently, put their kids in school, and—” she looked into his eyes “—buy houses, they won't come for another year or so.”

And Jennifer sold homes, so her hopes for good times were another year off.

But that didn't necessarily mean she was going through bad times now.

“Are you saying—?”

Darcie held up her hand. “I'm just catching you up on the big news in Drago. That's all any of us have to tell you.”

Some might have taken that last part as almost a threat. But having failed to get much concrete information about Jennifer's finances out of anyone he'd talked to, he chose to accept it as a statement of fact.

On the other hand, words didn't necessarily tell the tale. The quality of discomfort with the topic, the furrows in foreheads when he broached his parents' contention that Jennifer had come out of the divorce in the lap of luxury, the down-turned mouths whenever Eric's name came up—that all came together to form a message.

But whether that message was the truth or not depended a whole lot on the messenger. The town would be hearing only Jennifer's side of the story, and one side of a story was never enough.

He took a final swig of water, wiped his mouth with the paper napkin and put it down beside his empty pie plate, then slid out of the booth.

Darcie mirrored him, standing face-to-face with him.

“I'm just telling you— My God. You used to be a runt. Did you grow or something?”

He couldn't help but grin at her, though it twisted a bit at the ends. “Since my freshman year in high school? Yeah, I grew. Or something.”

 

“Oh, dear. Your father's at the town council meeting about the streetlights, Trent. I'm sure he wanted to talk to you about the dealership.”

“No problem,” Trent said, as if he hadn't remembered his father's plan to take on the town council. “I haven't seen the dealership yet anyway.” Not officially. “What do you know about Eric and Jennifer's divorce?”

The hum of silence came through his cell phone.

“Mom?”

“I don't know what to say, dear. Why would you ask?”

“What sort of settlement was there?”

“Oh, I have no idea about that.”

Trent rubbed his neck, then down his shoulder. “Do you know if Eric's been to see Ashley since the divorce? Word is that he's got visitation, but doesn't use it.”

Another silence confirmed the truth of that tidbit from Loris.

“The children are always hurt most by a divorce,” his mother finally said. “There is no arguing with that. Poor Ashley. It breaks my heart.”

“You don't think Jennifer's a good mother?”

This time the hesitation was briefer. “I have never seen any sign that Jennifer wasn't doing her very best for her daughter.”

Trent turned those words over. They could be high praise. Or damning with faint praise, depending on what Jennifer's “best” was.

“Okay, Mom.” He wasn't getting anywhere, and he was making her uncomfortable. “If you need to get in touch with me, leave a message on my machine at home and I'll call back.”

No way was he letting his father know where he was staying
or giving him the cell phone number. His life wouldn't be his own, not with Franklin's beloved Stenner Autos at stake.

“Trent.”

He waited. Then nudged, “Yeah, Mom?”

“Don't get caught up with trying to understand what went wrong. It can paralyze you. And when the paralysis finally wears off, it can be too late. I don't mean too late to fix what went wrong, because some things can't be fixed, but too late to change. To make a change. To go on.”

Was she talking about the dealership? His relationship or lack thereof with his father? Eric and Jennifer's divorce?

The last option went to the head of the line when she spoke again.

“No one truly knows what goes on inside a marriage. Sometimes,” Ella Stenner added softly, “not even the two people who are married.”

 

Trent couldn't pretend he wasn't surprised.

An apartment over a store.

That was where the phone book listing for J. A. Truesdale led him. Though when he'd tried calling, the phone had been disconnected.

Three businesses occupied the building's first floor. A Warinke Hardware Store on the corner, Hair Today in the middle and on this end Bulton's Antiques, with a sign that read Gifts, Jewelry, Crafts. Trade, Barter, Buy, Sell. That pretty much covered it, Trent thought.

Having examined the three store windows, he had nothing left to look at except a door tucked in next to Bulton's Antiques. Its adornment consisted of the address in those stick-on angled rectangles with reflective numbers, a doorbell buzzer, a mail slot and a peephole.

Definitely not what he'd expected.

He rang the bell.

Nothing.

Rang again.

Still no response.

He hadn't achieved what he'd achieved by giving up easily. He tried the door. And damned if the knob didn't turn under his hand.

The door opened to a miniature landing with a steep stairway straight ahead. He had to take a few steps up before he could pull the exterior door closed behind him. At the top of the stairs an equally miniature landing presented a single door at a sharp right angle. It was painted a glossy, fresh green. Wooden letters painted with flowers and strung together by rope to spell out “Welcome” hung from a spindly knocker.

Not trusting that piece of hardware, he knocked loudly with his knuckles. He tried to imagine Eric living here. Not a chance.

He knocked again.

So Jennifer must have moved here with Ashley after the split. But what about his father's declarations about Jennifer getting all the money?

This doorknob didn't turn when Trent tried it. Locked.

As he turned to start down, the exterior door abruptly swung open.

A girl—a young teenager, Trent guessed—started up at a good clip. Halfway, her head snapped up and she stopped dead, staring at him, with one foot on the next step and the other trailing behind.

He saw Jennifer in the girl. The coloring, sure. That blond hair that was so much more than yellow, because it had depths and shadings like finely polished wood. Only wood that swayed and swung. Also the hint of slender curves to come.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice rising.

Her attitude appeared undecided, open to a number of
options, including flight. But some reluctance seemed to offset the urge to run.

“That depends on whether you're who I think you are,” he said.

She jammed her fists on not-yet-there hips. “What's that supposed to mean?”

And now he saw his brother in her. In the cast of the jutted chin. In the sureness of the stance. In the curl of the lip.

Damn
.

Before Trent could explore what had pushed that word to the upper level of his mind—or perhaps so he didn't have to explore it—he decided he needed to deal with the girl in front of him.

“It means that if you are Ashley Stenner, I'm your uncle. Trent Stenner.”

For a moment, her eyes widened and her face softened. She looked almost as she had the last time he'd seen her, a chubby-cheeked toddler in coveralls that bulged out in back with diapers that also provided padding when her adventures in walking ended in an abrupt seat on the floor. Each time, she'd hauled herself upright, using whatever prop was handy. Then she'd stand clear, wide-eyed and pleased with herself when she found her balance, and head off, fast and unsteady.

“I know who you are.” She made it an accusation. Any resemblance to the remembered child disappeared.

He ignored her declaration. “How long have you lived here, Ashley?”

“Awhile.”

“Did your father live here with you?”