Shadows Reel (Joe Pickett #22)(32)

April crossed the room and kissed him on the cheek and gently bear-hugged both Joe and Kestrel.

“You’re here early,” Joe said.

“Wait’ll you see my new truck,” she said.

“I think I’ve already met your new dog,” Joe said. “Or was that a heifer?”

“Very funny,” April said with a roll of her eyes.

Wine bottles were open on the counter and Marybeth, Liv, and Sheridan had a glass. He loved how good it smelled inside and he guessed Marybeth was baking rolls or pies.

“It’s good to see you,” Joe said to April. “What’s with the pink and purple hair?”

“It’s a statement,” she said, drinking from a long-necked original Coors straight from the bottle.

“A statement about what?” he asked.

“A statement that I have pink and purple hair, silly.”

He lowered Kestrel to the floor and the little girl immediately scooted to the cabinet drawers and started pulling out pots and pans. Without being asked, Marybeth handed her a wooden spoon to beat on them with.

Joe winced. He’d gotten used to the quiet since he and Marybeth had moved in.

Like Liv herself, Kestrel was a natural beauty. Both had smooth and flawless mocha skin, perfect teeth, and full mouths. The only feature Joe could see of Nate in Kestrel were her piercing eyes. They were the eyes of a falcon.

Liv was a fierce and regal woman who came off as preternaturally calm. It was her inner strength, Marybeth had speculated to Joe, that made Nate fall for her in the first place. The cut above her right eyebrow was no longer swollen and the bruises on her jaw and cheek were starting to fade. Joe got angry even thinking that someone could lay hands on her as they had. He didn’t blame Nate for going after her attacker.

While Joe filled a tumbler with ice and poured a light Buffalo Trace bourbon and water into it, he overheard April good-naturedly challenging Sheridan to a wrestling match.

“I could always pound you,” April said. “Nothing has changed.”

“That was the old me,” Sheridan responded while she flipped her hair, welcoming the challenge. “Back when I was soft. Now I’m a falconer and I rappel from cliffs and do all kinds of physical labor. It’s not like retail. I’m afraid I might hurt you.”

She demonstrated her belief by posing like a bodybuilder. It made Joe smile.

“No chance of that ever happening,” April said as she cracked open another beer.

“Better take it easy on that,” Marybeth cautioned her.

“You brought more beer, right?” April asked Joe.

“Yup.”

“It’s Thanksgiving, isn’t it?” April asked rhetorically. “I’m thankful that Dad brought more beer.”

“It’ll make it easier to pound on her later,” Sheridan said.

Joe took a long pull on his bourbon and water and felt it warm him up inside. When the women in his life were going back and forth, he’d known for years that the best thing to do was to step aside.

“So,” April asked with a sly grin, “are you guys rich or what?”

“We don’t know,” Marybeth answered.

“How can you not know?” April asked.

“It’s complicated,” Joe added. And it was.

Joe still couldn’t quite wrap his head around the financial situation he and Marybeth had found themselves in. After a lifetime of existing from paycheck to paycheck and barely supporting the college education of three daughters at the same time, Joe had been given a very unexpected gift.

After his elk-guiding adventure in the mountains that had gone absolutely pear-shaped, his “client,” a tech giant CEO named Steve-2 Price, had repaid him with a handwritten IOU, bequeathing him one hundred thousand shares of first-class stock in ConFab, a subsidiary of Aloft Corporation. Before that, Joe and Marybeth hadn’t owned a single individual stock and had squirreled away a laughable amount in mutual funds. Both had depended—until very recently—on his state retirement pension and her county retirement for their old age. Neither amounted to much.

Marybeth had told him long ago that she wasn’t counting on an inheritance from her mother, Missy, if she passed away. Marybeth assumed Missy would squander away her fortune to the last penny. Joe simply assumed that Missy was too mean to ever die.

Ever since the IOU had been given to him, Joe had tracked the value of Aloft. It was now selling for $45.86 per share, although it had gone as high as $52 and as low as $39 within the previous year.

Which meant, as of today, they might be worth four and a half million dollars. It was incomprehensible.

Of course, the paperwork to back up the IOU had not come through yet. They didn’t have stock certificates or even a formal letter from Price confirming the gift. No one knew about it except Marybeth and therefore the girls as well. Marybeth had confessed to him that she’d started watching the stock market on a daily basis.

Would his client come through? Would he renege on his impulsive promise?

Joe didn’t know the answer to those questions. He assumed a stock transaction of that magnitude would take time to implement. The last thing Joe wanted to do was to contact the CEO and ask what was going on. The very idea made him queasy.

Marybeth had also mentioned that stock transactions often have conditions attached. For example, she said, they might be prohibited from selling the stock for a period of time. There were other potential provisions that would complicate things. Just because they appeared wealthy on paper, it might not translate to actual hard money in the bank.