“Did they know you were down there?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I could hear them talking,” Brendan said. “They didn’t know I was there. My plan was to incapacitate whoever came to check on the place in the morning, and just hope only a couple of them came down.”
Spee tidied up her pages of notes and slid them into a manila folder. Very deliberately, she closed the folder and brought her gaze up to Brendan.
“Who did you follow out there, Mr. Rhodes?” When Brendan said nothing, she asked, “Was it your brother, Grant?”
Against his better judgment, a sense of brotherly loyalty held Brendan’s mouth shut.
“Would it surprise you to find out you’re the deed owner for that property, Mr. Rhodes?”
“Yes, ma’am. It would.”
“In that case, you should read this.”
With that, she opened her folder back up and leafed through it to find the document she desired. She turned it Brendan’s way on the table and slid it to him.
“As you can see, your name is featured prominently here, and has done since last year, about this time.”
Brendan didn’t bother looking at the piece of paper.
“That’s impossible,” he said flatly. “I was still enlisted.”
Spee retrieved the document and replaced it in her files.
“I’m well aware of that, but if we can’t come to some consensus on why your name is on the deed, I’m going to hold you in a cell until the answers magically appear.”
Brendan stared her down. “You don’t think I have anything to do with this.”
“And why is that, Mr. Rhodes?”
“Because if you did, you’d have arrested me already, or at least kept the cuffs on me.” He pointed at her files. “To a stupid person, this little detail would look like evidence, but anyone with two working brain cells could figure out I had nothing to do with this.”
“Mr. Rhodes, we found you locked in the basement of your own property, a property that we removed two unsavory characters from moments before finding you,” she explained. “What am I supposed to think?”
“You only caught two guys out there?” he asked.
“Yes, how many should we have caught?”
“I counted seven leaving the barn before I entered, but none of them were—”
He stopped talking before implicating Grant. Spee wasn’t about to let that end stay loose.
“None of them were what?” she asked. “But none of them were your brother?”
Still Brendan couldn’t answer that question. Spee sighed in response.
“Mr. Rhodes, your brother bought land in your name and built a meth lab on it,” she stated, much more aggressively than before. “That is what this looks like to me, because I’ve been investigating him for a while now. I don’t know what more motivation you need to wake up and accept your brother is a criminal, but I suggest you come to terms with it soon.”
Chapter 36
The situation was far from clear, but Brendan now had a sneaking suspicion that if Grant had doctored one legal document with his name, more were sure to follow. The bastard had probably plastered Brendan’s name all over the place either as a poorly thought-out decoy, or to implicate Brendan in everything and make his life that much more difficult. And he did it all with a brotherly smile on his face.
“How are you so sure Grant’s involved?” he asked.
“I’m not at liberty to discuss those details with you here,” Spee said, suddenly telegraphing all kinds of signals.
“Fine. I followed Grant out there.”
“What made you do that?”
“I spoke with some people in town,” he replied. “Some people who’ve had suspicions about Grant for a while.”
“I’ll need their names.”
“You already talked to Kim.”
Spee made a note. “Who else?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I need to talk to them.”
“I don’t care.”
“We’ll come back to that. What kinds of things are suspicious about Grant?”
“Same stuff Kim talked about at her apartment: The expensive vacations, all the nice stuff in their double wide.” Brendan sighed. “I know that doesn’t sound like hard evidence, but Michelle doesn’t work and Grant sells chemicals to farms. There can’t be that much money in it. Oh yeah, and he drives a damn nice new truck, too.”
“What do you know about Michelle?”
Brendan paused. What didn’t he know about Michelle? Thankfully his unfortunate love life wasn’t on trial here.
“Just that we were friends in high school and then she married my brother,” he said guardedly. “Not much other than that. I haven’t really seen her for the last nine years.”
“Okay, Mr. Rhodes. You suspect your brother because he lives beyond his means, basically?” Brendan had nothing to say to that. It was thin reasoning, to be honest, but deep down he knew he wanted Grant to be into illegal shit. He wanted to bring his brother down. “Lots of people rack up large amounts of credit card debt to live a lavish lifestyle,” Spee suggested.
“At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter why I checked him out, ma’am. He was there, and that’s enough justification for me.”
Spee regarded him for a moment. “One problem with your story is that Grant wasn’t at that farm,” she said. “And neither of the two men we picked up claim to have any knowledge of your brother.”
“You’ve already played the Grant card,” Brendan said evenly. “You suggested him as my target earlier, so you know he was there.”
“Very good, Mr. Rhodes,” Spee said with a nice smile. “But he still wasn’t there when we arrived.”
“Maybe someone tipped him off.”
She watched him closely, her eyes more grave now. “Maybe someone did. Like his little brother who showed up right before the cavalry rode in?”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it.”
“Do I?”
“Quit playing games. Why would I warn Grant? How would I even know the police were coming down on him last night?”
“Deputy Armstead is an old friend of yours, correct?”
“Marcus didn’t tell me shit about this. He’s the one who told me to quit snooping around and leave it to the DEA.”
“I’d take his advice, if I were you.” Spee shifted gears. “Why would your brother want to, allegedly, falsify titles under your name? Do you guys have a history?”
“How long have you been in town, Agent Spee? A month?”
“Long enough to hear some stories about the kid who ruined the town’s only shot at a State Championship run.”
“You spent much time in Texas?”
“That’s none of your concern.”
“Do you know how much high school football means to a little place like Shallow Creek? There’s not a hell of a lot else going on around here.”
“I get the gist of it,” she said.
“Then you should understand why my brother hates me.”
Someone rapped on the door and Spee went to answer it. Another plainclothes cop stood on the other side and beckoned her out. Without another word to Brendan, she went into the hallway and closed the door behind her.
What a joke this was. They obviously had nothing solid on him, he knew that much, but her mention of Marcus struck him as odd. If they were worried about a leak, he guessed the DEA would first look at the local cops assisting in the investigation. It was too easy to pin the blame on the other guy.
Spee marched back into the room, but didn’t take a seat. Brendan took this to mean he was about to be escorted from the room, either to a cell, or to the street as a free man.