Money, Guns, and a Merry Christmas novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Trunk

Nobody in the diner said a word while Deena walked out.

Spence held the door for her this time.

Celine went last.

At the door she looked back at our booth, at her grandmother, and her mouth moved.

Then the bell rang over her head and she was gone.

My grandmother cut a piece of pancake and ate it.

"Sold as land," she said. "That means a bulldozer."

"It isn't sold yet," I said.

"Alana."

"It isn't sold, Grandma."

She looked at me for a long moment, and then she nodded and finished her coffee.

Sunday afternoon there was a man in my Pittsburgh apartment I had never met.

He was in his fifties, with a grey buzz cut and a black overcoat, and he'd walked through every room before he took his gloves off.

He checked my windows.

He checked the fire escape.

He looked at the lock on my front door and made a small unhappy sound.

"Your head of security," I said to Bennet.

"For eleven years."

The man didn't introduce himself.

He stood by my kitchen counter with his hands folded and spoke only to Bennet.

"Two thousand people Tuesday night," he said. "Phones in every hand. I can't stop a photograph, sir. Nobody can."

"I know."

"You've kept your face out of every paper since you were twelve."

"I know that too."

"Then sit at a back table. Let the vice chairman read the remarks. Same as every year."

Bennet looked at me across my little living room.

I was on the couch with my feet under me and a mug of tea I'd forgotten to drink.

"Give us a minute," Bennet said.

The man went out into my hallway and shut the door.

I could see his shadow under it.

He didn't leave.

"He's right," I said.

"He usually is."

"You don't owe Pine Hollow your face, Bennet. You don't owe my aunt anything."

He sat down on the other end of the couch.

He didn't touch me.

He took the dented black case off my coffee table and opened it.

His father's scope lay inside on old grey foam, the tube scratched, one turret cap missing.

"My father hunted with this every November," he said. "He took me when I was ten and eleven."

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