Page 37 of Missing Pieces (Brantley Walker: Off the Books #12)

Brantley leaned against the kitchen counter, sipping coffee and trying to work through the day in his head.

They were meeting with the team to discuss the case, and he wanted to be ahead of the game.

As it was, he was still mentally digging through the information they received yesterday and getting nowhere.

Which meant he needed to get ahead of this, and there was only one way to do that.

“Did you get a chance to look at the information Darius digitized?”

Reese closed the dishwasher and pressed the button to start it. “Not in depth, no. I glanced at what Becs sorted. She won’t be able to map it out until she understands the objective.”

“Did she ask what it was all about?”

Reese shook his head. “I could tell she wanted to, though.”

He appreciated that about her. Becs was very professional and, for the most part, she stayed in her lane until she needed something to accomplish her task.

He wasn’t sure how he was going to relay this to the team just yet, so he was grateful that she wasn’t asking questions.

It was one thing to ask them to locate Meredith Prescott.

That was their job. They were a missing persons task force.

It was something entirely different to go down the road of a conspiracy theory.

Only one case had they taken that required them to understand the why, and that was when Dante Greenwood, JJ’s ex-boyfriend, staged his kidnapping and dragged JJ into the plot. They generally left the why of it to the police.

But a conspiracy theory … that was a whole other beast.

Regardless of how he presented it, Brantley wasn’t sure any of them were going to be professional once they sprang this on them.

Maybe that was the issue. Perhaps they shouldn’t be bringing the team in on this.

They could deal with it on their own until they had more information.

Since he wasn’t prone to conspiracy theories, it made sense.

He could look for actual proof that there was a case before wasting their time with something that might be nothing.

He exhaled heavily, remembering what Reese had said about information they’d obtained but held back because they didn’t want to disrupt the wedding.

They’d kept information from him because they didn’t trust he could handle it at the time.

No, holding back from the team wasn’t an option.

He hated that Reese had done that to him, and while he understood—at least on some level—he didn’t care for the feeling of being coddled like he wasn’t capable of handling the information during a stressful time.

Brantley snorted. “If only.” Shaking off the thought, he turned to face Reese. “Before we meet with the team, I want you to walk me through everything you found.”

“It wasn’t so much what I found,” Reese said, his tone somewhat defensive. “Luca found the information, although he didn’t put it together at the time. JJ did.”

“Put what together?”

“I honestly don’t know. Not yet. I can show you the folders and files, and you can see the anomalies that JJ identified. But that’s all they are at this point. We didn’t dig into it.”

“You’re sure she didn’t?”

“She promised me she wouldn’t until after the wedding. Baz wanted her to wait until after the babies were born. There was a lot goin’ on.”

“You don’t have to defend your decision,” he told Reese. “I get it.”

“Are you sure? Honest to God, I wasn’t tryin’ to cut you out of the loop.”

“I know.” And he did. It hurt a bit, but he trusted Reese would never betray him like that.

Reese still didn’t appear convinced.

“I get it,” Brantley continued. “There was a lot goin’ on. And I know you. If you’d found a legitimate lead, you would’ve dealt with it then. So where’s the information?”

Reese pointed toward the ceiling. “I’ve got it on my computer. I can send it to you.”

“No need to do that. Just show me what you’ve got.”

Slade could feel the curious glances before he ever reached the door to Hank’s Towing.

The place was small. Little more than an old converted gas station with the pump still in place, although listing a little to the left.

The white awning overhead had seen better days.

One good windstorm like they’d seen back in 2018, and the thing would be in their neighbor’s lot along with half a dozen beat-up old junkers Hank had lining the perimeter.

Before he could reach the main door with the little plastic sign that said they would be back in fifteen minutes, a man wandered out from the single-bay garage, a red rag in his hands.

“What can I do you for?” The man’s voice was rough, likely from the Marlboro Reds he pulled out of the bib of his overalls.

“Are you Hank?”

The man adjusted his grease-stained trucker cap. “Could be. Depends.”

Slade fought the urge to roll his eyes. As amusing as this could be, he wasn’t really in the mood.

“Any chance one of your tow trucks went missing on Monday night?”

The guy looked around like he was expecting someone to jump out and tell him he was being punked.

“Seriously, boy?”

“Slade,” he corrected the guy. “And yes, I’m serious. The statue at Coyote Ridge High School went missing on Monday night, and we’re lookin’ to see if someone might’ve relocated it with one of your tow trucks.”

The guy’s thick, dark eyebrows angled down. “Naw. My boys run calls on Monday and Friday nights. We didn’t have any trucks left on the lot.”

Although he couldn’t be positive Could-Be-Hank wasn’t blowing smoke up his ass, the man sounded honest.

“That’s all I needed to know. Thanks for your time.”

Slade headed back to his truck. He climbed in and turned on the A/C before checking off another shop on his list to visit. This was the third one he’d been to, none of which had been any more helpful than Could-Be-Hank.

Now he was wondering whether this was a waste of time. What if they hadn’t used a tow truck? But how else would they move it?

As he stared out the windshield, he tried to envision various scenarios.

A flatbed with a wench? That seemed like the most logical way.

Unless they had access to a crane. That would’ve done the job in no time at all.

But who had a crane besides Walker Demo?

And if they got a crane, who would operate it?

It wasn’t as simple as it looked, he was sure.

Did they do it alone? Were there adults around to help?

And that was assuming some of the kids had done it as a prank.

Or hell, maybe his cousin Callie was pranking him. It didn’t seem like something she would do, but who knows anymore?

When Slade didn’t come up with an answer to any of the questions, he decided to drive over to the high school. Maybe he would see things from a different perspective if he went back to the scene of the crime one more time.

Ten minutes later, he was walking toward the empty space where the statue once stood.

Once he reached it, he did a three-sixty, noting the neighbors across the street on three sides and the school behind him.

Whoever took the statue had brass stones; that much was for sure.

There wasn’t an inch of space that wasn’t visible from at least one of those houses.

Which meant there was likely a witness. Or perhaps one of those homeowners was responsible.

How else could you haul off a half-ton brass statue and no one be the wiser?

Slade had considered heading over to Walker Demo to talk to his cousins, see if they could help make sense of how someone could move the statue, but paying a visit to each of those residents was probably a better place to start.

He could canvass the area, talk to people, and see if anyone saw anything out of the ordinary.

Surely if there’d been any heavy equipment used, someone would’ve heard something.

As he headed for the sidewalk and the row of neatly kept houses opposite the school, he found himself wishing someone would run out and say, “Oops. We forgot. We sold the stupid statue. Our bad.”

Unfortunately, no one came out, so he kept going.

He started from the end and worked his way down.

Eighteen houses total faced the school directly.

Fourteen of those houses had no answer. Made sense.

Mid-morning on a Thursday. They were likely at work.

That, or they ignored the doorbell because they thought their no solicitation sign spoke for itself.

At house number three, he was greeted by a grumpy old man who had no comment. That was what he said. Verbatim.

At house number six, he was greeted by a teenage girl who claimed she was just home to grab homework for third period and was going right back. And no, she had no idea who might’ve taken the statue.

At house number eleven, Slade thought he hit pay dirt when the elderly woman wandered outside, claiming she knew exactly who took the statue.

His hope dwindled when she insisted it was one of the sheriff’s deputies because he was secretly an alien in disguise.

Slade thought he smelled whiskey on her breath.

Last but not least, at house number seventeen, the one directly across from where the mustang usually stood proudly, he spoke to a man who looked to be in his late twenties, maybe early thirties, and tired from a strenuous workout. “Sorry, man. I honestly thought it was still there.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Story of his life.

“Thanks,” he told the guy as he started back down the driveway.

“Hey! Are you related to Spencer?”

Slade stopped and turned. “Yeah,” he admitted grudgingly.

The guy smiled. “Cool. I haven’t seen him since high school.” His grin widened. “We kinda had a thing back then.”

A thing? Slade was about to tell him he was likely one of a few dozen, but he refrained.

“If you see him, tell him I said hello.”

“Will do,” Slade lied, waving a hand and continuing toward his truck.

The morning had been bad enough, the last thing he wanted to do was think about his backstabbing asshole of a brother.