All Rhodes Lead Here Page 11

  “I was worried if I was a minute late, you wouldn’t open the door,” I told him honestly.

  He slid me a long look with that stony, hard face as he went around and headed down the hallway. I was pretty sure he even went “hm” like he wasn’t disagreeing. Rude.

  I eyed the house again as we moved, and it was just as clean as last time. There wasn’t a single coffee cup or glass of water lying around. Not even a dirty sock or napkin either.

  I should probably clean the apartment before he had an excuse to come over and saw the war-zone reenactment that was going on across the driveway.

  Mr. Rhodes ended up leading us toward the table in the kitchen that was so scarred, I knew from enough Home Remodel Network that it needed to get sanded and a layer or two of stain. Don’t ask me how it would be done, but I knew it needed it. But what caught me off guard was the way he walked around the back of it and pulled a chair out before taking the one next to it.

  I plopped down on it and realized this was the steadiest chair I’d ever sat in. I peeked down at the legs and tried to wiggle; it didn’t move. I knocked on a leg. It didn’t sound hollow.

  When I sat back up, I found Mr. Rhodes watching me once again. His raccoon face was back. I bet he was wondering what I was doing with his furniture.

  “This is nice,” I told him. “Did you make it?”

  That snapped him out of it. “No.” He scooted the chair closer, set two big hands with long, tapered fingers and short, trimmed nails on top of the table, and leveled me with a heavy, no-nonsense gaze. “You’ve got twenty-nine minutes. Ask your questions.” His eyebrows went up about a millimeter. “You said you have a million. We might get through ten or fifteen.”

  Shit. I should’ve bought a recorder. I pushed my chair in closer. “I don’t really have a million. Maybe just about two hundred.” I smiled and, like I expected, didn’t get one in return. Worked for me. “Do you know a lot about fishing?”

  “Enough.”

  Just enough that friends and family posted about fishing stuff on his Facebook page. Okay. “What kind of fish can you catch around here?”

  “Depends on the river and the lake.”

  I didn’t mean to say, “Oh shit,” but I did. It depends?

  His eyebrows went flat. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  “Nope, that’s why I’m here. Any information is better than no information.” I smoothed my hand across the blank page. I tried to give him my most charming smile. “So, uh, what kinds can you get in the rivers and lakes around here?” Time to try again.

  It didn’t work. Mr. Rhodes sigh then told me he was wondering what the hell he’d gotten himself into. “We had a dry winter and water levels are very low, which makes fishing conditions not that ideal already. That and the tourists have probably fished out most of the rivers. Some of the lakes are stocked, so that’s most people’s best bets—”

  “Which lakes?” I asked him, sucking up his information.

  He rattled off the names of a handful of lakes and reservoirs in the area. “What are they stocked with?”

  “Large-mouth bass, trout. You can find perch….” Mr. Rhodes named a few other different kinds of fish I’d never heard of, and I asked him how to spell them. He did, leaning back against the chair and crossing his arms over his chest, the raccoon-watching face back on his features.

  I smiled, feeling a little too pleased with myself for making him wary, even though I didn’t want him to think I was some weirdo creeper. But the truth was, it was good when people didn’t know what to expect from you. They can’t creep up behind you if they don’t know what way you’re going to look.

  I asked him if there was still good bass fishing and got a lengthy answer that was way more complicated than I’d anticipated. His eyeballs were lasers aimed on my face the entire time. His shade of gray was pretty incredible. The color looked almost lavender sometimes.

  “How much are licenses and how can people buy them?” I asked.

  I ignored the way his eyes widened like this was common sense. “Online, and it depends on if they’re out of state or residents.” He then told me the prices of the licenses… and how much the fines were if someone was caught without one.

  “Do you bust a lot of people for not having licenses?”

  “Do you really want to waste this time asking me about work?” he asked slowly and seriously.

  It was my turn to blink. Rude. What was that? Three for four times now? “Yeah, otherwise I wouldn’t have asked,” I muttered. I really did have better things to ask but fucking attitude. Jeez.

  One of those dark eyebrows rose, and he kept his response simple. “Yes” was his informative answer.

  Well, this was going well. Mr. Friendly and all that.

  Too bad for him I was friendly enough for both of us.

  “What are the different kinds of line you use for fishing?”

  He instantly shook his head. “That’s too hard to explain without showing you.”

  My shoulders dropped, but I nodded. “Which of those lakes would you still recommend?”

  “Depends,” he started as I jotted down all the information I could handle. He was in the middle of telling me what places he didn’t recommend when we heard, “Hey, Dad—oh.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at the same time Mr. Rhodes looked in the same direction to find Amos standing halfway into the living area, holding a bag of chips in one hand.

  “Hi,” I greeted the kid.

  His face turned red, but he still managed to say, “Hi.” His hand slid out of the bag and hung at his side. “Uh, I didn’t know anyone was here.”

  “Your dad is helping me with some fishing questions,” I tried to explain. “For work.”

  The boy wandered closer, rolling the top of the bag up to close it. He looked really good. He seemed to be walking just fine, and his color was back to normal.

  “How’s your missing appendix?”

  “Fine.” He came to stand beside us, eyes going straight for the notebook I’d been in the middle of writing in.

  I angled it toward him so he could see what I’d written. “I meant to tell you that you could play... music… in the garage any time you want. It won’t bother me at all,” I said.

  The teenager’s gaze flicked toward the man sitting there. “I’m grounded,” the teenager admitted. “Dad said I can start going into the garage again soon if it’s okay with you.”

  “It’s totally okay.” I smiled. “I brought some muffins if you want one.” I gestured to the container in the center of the table.

  “You got five minutes left,” Mr. Rhodes interjected suddenly.

  Shit. He was right. “Well… just finish telling me what you don’t recommend then.”

  He did.

  And I wrote down just about everything he said. Only when he’d stopped talking did I set my pen down, close my notebook, and smile at both of them. “Well, thank you for helping me. I really appreciate it.” I pushed back from the chair and stood up.

  Both of them just kept on watching me silently. Like father, like son, I guess. Except Mr. Rhodes didn’t seem shy—just grumpy or guarded, I couldn’t tell yet—and Amos did.

  “Bye, Amos. Hope you keep feeling better,” I said as I backed away from the table. “Thank you again, Mr. Rhodes.”

  The stern man undid his arms, and I was pretty positive he sighed again before muttering, sounding so reluctant his next words surprised the shit out of me. “Tomorrow, same time. Thirty minutes.”

  What!

  “You’ll answer more questions?”

  He dipped his chin, but his mouth was pressed down on the sides in a way that said he was already second-guessing himself.

  I backed up some more, ready to run before he changed his mind. “You’re the best, thank you! I don’t want to wear out my welcome but thank you, thank you! Have a good night! Bye!” I shouted before basically running toward the door and closing it behind me.

  Well, I wasn’t going to
be any kind of expert at anything any time soon, but I was learning.

  I should call my uncle and dazzle him with everything I’d learned. Hopefully tomorrow someone would come in and ask something about fishing so I could answer them correctly. How great would that be?

  Chapter 7

  It was during one of our rare slow moments at the store the next day that Clara finally saddled up next to me and said, “So….”

  I tipped my chin up at her. “So?”

  “How do you like Pagosa so far?” was what she decided to ask.

  “It’s good,” I answered, carefully.

  “You gotten around? Seen some of the sights again?”

  “I’ve driven around a little.”

  “You been to Mesa Verde?”

  “Not since that field trip half a century ago.”

  She rattled off the names of a couple more tourist activities that we had pamphlets for in the corner of the shop. “Been to the casino?”

  “Not yet.”

  She frowned and leaned a hip against the counter. “What have you been up to on your days off then?”

  “Not going anywhere fun, apparently. I’ve done a little hiking”—not enough—“but that’s about it.”

  Her face went a little pale at my mention of the h-word, and I knew her mind had gone to the same place mine had. My mom. Once we’d reconnected online, we had never actually brought up… what happened. It was the elephant in the room in most conversations that could be turned around and tied into her disappearance. It always had been. When I’d lived with my aunt and uncle, they had purposely avoided any movie or show about missing persons. When that movie about the man who had gotten his arm stuck had come out, they had changed the channel so fast, it had taken me a couple days to figure out what they’d been doing.

  I appreciated it, of course. Especially for probably the first decade afterward. And every time I’d had a bad day in the time after that.

  But I didn’t want the people I cared for having to walk on eggshells because of me. I was doing better dealing with it all, for the most part. I could talk about it without the world falling out beneath my feet at least. My therapist had helped me get there.

  But she seemed to realize she’d reacted because her expression lasted about a second before she said, “I’m not much of a hiker or a camper anymore, but Jackie is when she’s in the mood. You need to get out while the weather is good and see some things.”

  “I just started hiking again, and I haven’t gone camping in twenty years.”

  Her expression changed once more, and I knew she was thinking about my mom again, but just as quickly, she recovered. “We should do something. What are you doing on Monday? I haven’t been to Ouray in a while.”

  Ouray, Ouray, Ouray… It was a town not too far, I was pretty sure. “Nothing,” I admitted.

  “It’s a date then. As long as I don’t have to cancel on you. Want me to pick you up or meet here?”

  “Meet here?” I couldn’t see Mr. Rhodes being happy with me having her come over to his property, and I wasn’t willing to piss him off, even if I wasn’t going to be around too much longer.

  She opened her mouth to tell me something before she leaned forward and whistled.

  I turned around to see through the big windows I’d peeked through weeks ago, too.

  “You see that?” she asked as she made her way around the counter and headed toward the front.

  I followed her. There was a truck out there, a truck that looked awfully familiar… And beside it was a man on a cell phone, and there was another man standing beside him in the same uniform.

  Clara whistled at my side again. “I’ve always been a sucker for a man in uniform. Did you know my husband was a police officer?”

  Sometimes… sometimes I forgot I wasn’t the only person to have lost someone they really loved. “No, I didn’t know that,” I said.

  A wistful expression came over her face, and it made my heart hurt only imagining what she could be thinking of. Hoping it wasn’t the what-ifs. The alternate realities. Those were the worst.

  “Police officers are cute, but I’ve always had a thing for firefighters,” I told her after a second.

  Her mouth formed a little smile. “With their little pants and hats?”

  I looked at her. “I like their suspenders. I’d give them a snap or two.”

  Her laugh made me smile, but only for a second because the man on the other side of the glass had turned, and I finally got my confirmation that Mr. Rhodes’s butt was fantastic in his work pants. “Did you meet him the other day when he was here?” Clara asked.

  “Which one?” I knew exactly who she was referring to even as I eyeballed the other man in the same kind of uniform. He was about the same height as my landlord but leaner. I couldn’t see his face though. I could see his butt though, and it was a good one.

  “One on the right. Rhodes. He comes in sometimes. He was just here yesterday. He used to date my cousin a million years ago. His son is best friends with Jackie.”

  No shit? I wanted to tell her the truth, but she kept on talking.

  “Dad said he moved back here when he retired from the Navy to be closer to his son and—oh, he’s about to get into his truck. Let’s move before he sees us and things get awkward.”

  He had been in the Navy? Well, that was another piece of the puzzle. Not that it mattered.

  And actually, the way he talked now made total sense. That bossy voice. I could totally picture him bossing people around and giving them the stare down he’d given me. No wonder he was so good at it.

  “He’s my landlord,” I told her as we moved away from the window before getting caught spying.

  Her head whipped around so fast, I was surprised she didn’t end up with whiplash. “He is?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s the garage apartment you’re renting?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He let you rent it?”

  “You’re not the first person to ask me that that way. But no, it was more like Amos did behind his back. Why?”

  “It’s okay. He’s a good dad. He’s… quiet and private is all.” Her eyes widened. “This suddenly makes so much sense. That’s why Amos got grounded.”

  So she’d heard from Jackie. Was that why she had been giving me funny looks when she thought I wasn’t looking? “Yup.”

  It wasn’t until we made it back around the counter that she asked really quietly, “Have you seen him without a shirt on?”

  I grinned. “Not yet.”

  Her smile in return was pretty damn sly. “Take a picture if you do.”

  * * *

  I was early again that night. Two minutes ahead of schedule and holding a plate with a few Chips Ahoy cookies I was going to try and pass off as homemade unless one of them asked. It was the thought that counted, right?

  My notebook was tucked under one arm, the beautifully wrapped crystal that Yuki had sent Amos was under my other arm, and I had a pen shoved into the back pocket of my jeans alongside my cell and key. I’d written out a bunch of questions while I’d eaten dinner and marked them in order of what I should ask, depending on how much information we could get through.

  Hopefully a lot.

  I’d only gotten one chance that day to use my newfound knowledge, and I’d been so damn proud. It had helped curb the edge for every other time I had to go bother Clara or pass a customer off on her. She was a fountain of information, and I admired her so, so much for it. Sure, she’d grown up in this business and lived in the area way longer, but it didn’t make it any less impressive. She had moved away; anyone else would have forgotten most of what they knew.

  In my dreams, Mr. Rhodes would do me another solid and invite me over tomorrow too, but I wasn’t holding my breath. I thought about the way Mr. Rhodes had looked in his uniform earlier when he’d been across the street.

  It sure wouldn’t be a hardship.

  Was he divorced? Did he date a lot? I didn’t think he
had a girlfriend since no one ever came over other than the Johnny/uncle figure, but you never knew. From everything I’d gathered about him, he was really overprotective of his half-grown son. Maybe he had a girlfriend but never brought her over.

  That’d be a bummer.

  Not that it should matter.

  I really did need to start getting around to possibly dating. I wasn’t getting any younger, and I missed having someone to talk to in person. Someone who was... mine.

  Being single was cool and all, but I missed companionship.

  And sex.

  Not for the first time, I wished I had an easier time with one-night stands or friends with benefits.

  For one brief second, my heart longed for the easiness and effortlessness that had been such a staple in my relationship with Kaden. We’d been together so long and knew everything about each other, I had never thought for a second that I’d ever have to find someone else to become my new best friend. Someone else to get to know me and love me.

  And I missed that a lot.

  But we weren’t together anymore, and we were never going to get back together.

  I missed having someone in my life, but I didn’t miss him.

  Sometimes, maybe even more often than just sometimes, you were better off alone.

  Sometimes you had to learn to be your own best friend. To put yourself first.

  One tiny tear pooled up in my eye at yet another reminder that I was starting over again—at the magnitude of what lay in front of me—when the door swung open. I hadn’t even realized the hallway light hadn’t gotten turned on. Mr. Rhodes was right there, one hand gripping the door, his frame filling the rest of the doorway. His gaze landed on my face and he scowled, lines etching their way across his broad forehead.

  I left the tear where it was and forced a smile onto my face. “Hello, Mr. Rhodes.”

  “You’re on time again,” he stated before taking a step back.

  I guess he was letting me in. “I didn’t want to get in trouble with the principal,” I told him with a side look, joking.