Fake Names with Me Love Bombs for Her? Screw This Secret CEO Wife Is Done novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Man in the Garage

Maisie swings her father's wrench at an intruder who gives his full name, Jerome Werner, says Frank was his godfather and that he is Gregory's half-brother.

I took my father's pipe wrench off the kitchen hook before I opened the back door.

It weighed about six pounds. He had used it for forty years.

The garage side door stood open, and the light was on over the workbench.

A man was bent over Dad's red toolbox with a flashlight in his teeth, and he had pulled every drawer out and lined them up on the concrete.

He was tall, in a gray coat, with dark hair going gray at the sides.

I came in swinging.

He turned fast and took it on his forearm instead of his head, and the flashlight hit the floor and rolled.

"Ow," he said. "Okay. That's fair."

I swung again.

He caught the wrench in one hand and held it still, not hard, and looked down at me.

"Frank's daughter," he said. "Maisie."

"Let go of my father's wrench."

"My name is Jerome Werner. I'm going to say it out loud before you hit me again, because I think it's going to matter."

Werner.

The word went through me.

His mother had stood in my kitchen ten minutes before, and her name was Werner.

I let go of the wrench, backed up to the doorway and got my phone out.

"One more step and I call the police," I said. "They're already looking for somebody. They can have two."

"Call them." He set the wrench on the bench, gently. "But tell them I didn't take anything. Look at the drawers."

I looked.

He had emptied the toolbox and put every drawer in a row, face up, with every socket and screwdriver sorted by size.

Nothing was thrown. Nothing was broken.

"You searched it neat," I said.

"Your father taught me to put things back where I found them." He rubbed his forearm. "I was nine. He was rebuilding a carburetor on a card table in my father's driveway, and he handed me a rag and said, hold this, and don't lose any bolts."

"My father didn't know any Werners."

"He knew one. He knew my father better than anyone alive."

He said it quietly, and I didn't have an answer.

He bent, picked up the flashlight, and clicked it off.

"I was at the funeral," he said. "At the back, under the oak. You didn't see me. I left before they closed the lid."

"Why?"

"Because I'm a Werner, and I didn't think you'd want one at your father's grave."

"You're right," I said. "I don't."

"I know." He didn't move closer. "Somebody dug that grave last night. I drove out at dawn to see it for myself, and I watched you leave. Then I followed my stepmother's car here."

"Your stepmother."

"Odile."

My hand tightened on the phone.

"She was here," I said. "She brought a casserole and a cheque for fifty thousand dollars."

"She would." His mouth went flat. "What did she ask for?"

I didn't want to tell him.

But the casserole sat in my kitchen with its foil still on, and the back of my neck still prickled, and he was standing in my father's garage saying her name like it tasted bad.

"His papers," I said. "And his watch."

Jerome closed his eyes.

"The watch," he said. "Of course."

"What about it? What's in a watch?"

"I don't know yet." He opened his eyes. "That's what I came to find. Your father called me the week before he died. He said, if Odile comes after the watch, she's too late, and it's not where she thinks."

"He called you? He never said your name."

"He wouldn't have. He kept me out of his house to keep me out of trouble." He rubbed his eyebrow. A thin white scar ran through it, pulling the hair crooked. "He asked me to keep an eye on you. I should have started three years ago. I didn't know you'd been married to my brother until two days ago."

The garage was very quiet.

A car went by on the road, and the sound of it faded.

"Your brother," I said.

"Gregory," Jerome said. "My half-brother. Gregory Werner."

I thought of Gregory's arm around my head at the cemetery.

I thought of his mother, her warm dry hand, her cheque.

And I thought of every dinner where the waiter had called him a name that wasn't his.

"I don't have a brother-in-law," I said. "I've been told for three years he doesn't have any family."

"He has a mother, a fiancée and a half-brother he hasn't called in nine years."

Jerome turned his palms up in the dim light.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm Gregory's brother, and I came here to warn you about him."

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