Show Me (Thomas Prescott 4) by Nick Pirog (best ereader for textbooks .TXT) 📗

I said, “So he runs out on the lake, jumps in the water, and saves this girl.”

“Who turns out to be your grandma?”

“Well, not for a while. She was like fourteen years old at the time.”

“Right. Continue.”

“Harold pulled her out, wrapped her in a blanket that was in the car, and carried her up to the house. Instead of thanking him for saving his daughter’s life, the father threw rocks at Harold and told him to get off his property.”

“You’re kidding?”

“I wish.”

“What did Harold do?”

“He left, got in his truck, and joined the army the next day.”

“What about the girl?” Wheeler exclaimed. “If this doesn’t have a happy ending, I’m never talking to you again.”

“Remind me never to watch The Notebook with you.”

She said, “It doesn’t have a happy ending, does it?”

“Just listen to the story.”

“Dergen!”

I laughed and said, “Just listen.”

“Fine.” She took a drink of beer.

“He joined the army. Then when he’d been in for about two years—I think he was stationed in Poland or somewhere—he gets this huge stack of mail. Turns out, the young girl, Elizabeth, had been writing him a letter every day for over a year.”

“Holy shit,” Wheeler shrieked.

“Harold wrote her back, and they fell in love. When his enlistment was over a year later, he came back to Tarrin. Elizabeth said she would be waiting at the train station for him, but she wasn’t there. Turns out her dad found out she’d been writing to Harold, and that’s when they just up and left.”

“What an asshole.”

“The only good news was that after the Kings left town, they stopped paying property taxes, and after a few years all their land was turned over to the county. Harold’s father was able to buy the acres he’d been leasing for well below market value. If the Kings hadn’t up and left, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

“No one cares about you,” she said with a forced sneer. “Get back to the story, Dergen.”

“Right. Well, the Kings moved to Seattle. Harold found that out and he moved there as well. He took a job with Boeing and spent years looking for her. Then, one day, he finally found her. He spotted her leaving the movie theater with a big group of girls. He followed them in his car back to an all-girls university.”

“This is getting good.”

“Just wait. It gets better. Sometimes the girls went weeks without leaving the campus, but Harold needed a way to get a message to Elizabeth. So he quit his job at Boeing and he joined the gardening crew that tended the grounds. Took him about a month, but they finally came up with a plan. They let a bunch of mice into one of the classrooms, and all the girls came running out. That’s when he slipped her a note.”

“What did the note say?”

“To meet him behind the school later that night.”

“Did she come?”

“She did.”

“Yay,” she said grinning. “And they lived happily ever after.”

I sighed.

“What?” she asked. “What now?”

“The dean of the school found out about their romance.”

“So what?”

“The dean of the school was her father.”

“The asshole who threw rocks at him?”

“Yeah.”

“What did he do?”

“He forbade Elizabeth from seeing Harold. Said that if she ever saw him again, she would no longer be part of their family.”

“What did she do?”

“She chose Harold.”

Wheeler grabbed my wrist.

I let out another sigh.

“Oh, no,” she said.

“They got married, and Elizabeth got pregnant. But then she died during childbirth.”

“Oh my God.” Wheeler’s eyes began to glass over under her hat. It wasn’t just animals.

I said, “Harold didn’t know what to do so he put the little girl, my mom, up for adoption. He got remarried, had two more kids, but he never told them about Elizabeth. In fact, I was the only person he ever told.”

Wheeler wiped the tears from her eyes and asked, “What about your mom?”

“He kept tabs on Lily, that’s my mom, over the years.”

“When did he finally tell you he was your grandpa?”

“We were actually on a ferry ride when he pulled an old tattered piece of newspaper from his sock and showed it to me. It was a news article about when my parents died.”

She rocked back lightly, then said, “That’s crazy. And then after he died, he gave you this farm?”

I nodded.

She took a long swig of beer, then said, “Now let’s hear about this governor of Washington murder.”

“Maybe some other time. I want to hear more about you.”

“Okay.”

I asked, “What did you do after vet school?”

“I stayed out east.”

“Why did you come back here? Didn’t like city life?”

“I was three months into my first job when my dad was murdered. I came back for the funeral and decided to take over his practice.”

“Is it just you that works there?”

“Mostly it’s just me. My dad’s old receptionist comes in for a few hours a week to tidy up and to help file. If I need help with a surgery I usually call one of the other vets to assist.”

I nodded, then said, “That was actually my first time in a vet clinic.”

“Really? You’ve never had any pets?”

“I had a hamster for two weeks when I was little, but he ate his leg off and then died. And then I won a fish at the fair once, but I think he was dead by the time I got him home.”

“That’s too bad.”

“My sister though, she has a little pug named Baxter. He has narcolepsy.” I began laughing. “He once fell asleep with his head in a gopher hole.”

“That’s not funny,” she said, giving me a light slap on the shoulder.

“I beg to differ.” I asked, “You have any pets?”

“I have a little shih tzu named Margo. She’s twelve. She was asleep on the ground behind the front desk when you came in.” Her eyes fell to the ground. “She was my father’s.”

I decided now was as good a time as any and asked, “You mind if I ask you a couple questions about the murders?”

She bit the inside of her