Galen's Gemma - Dale Mayer Page 0,16
Becky,” Gemma said firmly.
She sighed. “Of course, me and Becky. Why do you always see me in a bad light?”
“I don’t,” she said, “but I always see you as being you.”
“And somehow that came across as very insulting,” Rebecca snapped.
“Listen. I’m not trying to be difficult,” Gemma said with a long-winded sigh. No matter what she said, her sister would take it as a criticism. She handed her sister the key. “This is the key to your cabin.” She walked back over to hers and stepped inside to find Galen here. “I wasn’t aware of you when I made these arrangements.”
“I’m staying in here,” he said firmly.
She studied him for a long moment, shrugged, and said, “That’s fine.” She could tell from the look on his face that she’d surprised him. “Did you expect a fight?”
“No,” he said, “but I didn’t expect you to give in so easily though.”
“If trouble comes,” she said, “I’ll be glad to have you on my side.”
“Are you expecting trouble?”
“I don’t know. I hope not,” she said. “I really don’t want to bring it to these quiet folks around us.”
“So, are we putting up guards overnight?” he asked.
“I was planning on it,” she said. “I do need some sleep though.”
“Some sleep?”
“I’m one of those weirdos who don’t sleep much,” she said with a dismissive shrug. “Four hours is plenty for me.”
“I need at least six,” he said, studying her in an odd way.
But then she was used to that. Everybody thought she was odd, different, or unique, but usually just weird.
The two of them stood, comfortably staring at each other, and then he motioned outside and asked, “Now what?”
“Now,” she said, “we need to check up on Joe’s cabin that we just left, and on Joe’s house, and see if anybody’s been there.”
Galen tilted his head. “You could leave that to us.”
“I could,” she said. “I’ve been around guys like you before. Some of them are good, and some of them aren’t.”
“That’s like everybody in the world. So what do you mean when you say ‘guys like us’ anyway?”
She gave him a hard look. “My fiancé was ex-military.”
“Ex-fiancé or ex-military?”
“Both.”
“So you don’t trust us anymore?”
“I trusted him implicitly—until I didn’t trust him anymore.”
“Sounds like a story in there. Are you always such an enigma?”
“Nothing’s mysterious about me at all,” she said with surprise. “But when I love, I love deep. And when I’m loyal, I’m loyal forever. But apparently that’s not the way the rest of the world is.” With that, she turned and headed toward the front door.
“Gemma, did you have anything to do with Joe’s death?”
She turned and looked at him in surprise. “Hell no,” she said. “Joe was a good guy.”
“So why do you think he was killed?”
“The easy answer is, he was killed entirely due to the mess he created at work with the changes he implemented. He also cut back the amount of free beer each employee could take home a month. That might have gotten him killed alone,” she said with a small smile. “But he wasn’t easy to work with or to live with. In spite of that, I liked him. He was a simple person with very high ideals and expected the rest of the world to be the same. But this is just my guess. I don’t know anything about that. It’s only what I’m assuming.”
“And your sister?”
Gemma stopped at that but made no pretense about not understanding. “I would like to think she had nothing to do with it. That’s the premise I’m operating on. It would be devastating if she had. But I also think that, if she had, it would have only been to further her own purposes.”
“Is she that selfish?”
“We’re all selfish,” Gemma said, “but, in her case, I wouldn’t have thought she could be so incredibly selfish as to kill Joe.”
*
Galen watched her closely. “And why do you expect the killer to come out this far?”
“Because, if they already killed once,” she said in exasperation, “what’s to stop them from killing again? I would do a lot to keep my niece alive.”
“And your sister?”
“I’ve already done a lot to keep her alive,” she said sadly, “but my sister has a mind of her own and doesn’t always listen to what’s best for her.”
Just then a voice from outside the cabin door snapped, “You mean, what you think is best for her.”
Gemma waved her hand. “Let’s take Becky to see the animals,” she said. “It’ll keep her happy for a while.”
“True enough,”