he answered, and seconds later he appeared in the kitchen doorway with a shotgun in his hand. “What’s wrong?”
I placed my hand on my chest. “Oh, my God. You scared me half to death.”
“You’re the one bustin’ in shoutin’ my name,” he grumbled. “Why do you sound so terrified?”
“You weren’t on the porch. I thought something had happened to you.”
He snorted. “I’m makin’ my breakfast.”
“With a shotgun?” I said. “And you usually eat earlier than this.”
“Since when did you become the breakfast police?” he grumped, then headed back into the kitchen.
“Am I safe in assuming you greeted me with a shotgun because Louise Baker is back in town?” I asked sarcastically, following him.
The kittens were under the table, playing with a cat toy. Letty looked up when I walked in, and I thought she might come to me, but she decided her toy was more interesting.
Hank stood at the stove, flipping sausage links. I couldn’t help smiling because they were the chicken sausages I’d bought for him rather than the pork ones he preferred. He’d practically refused to eat them in the beginning, but he’d grudgingly said they were okay. Now he was cooking them on his own.
My grin must have irritated him because he said, “Yeah, so I’m eatin’ that stupid sausage, and how do you know Louise Baker’s back in town?”
“Because she’s paid me a couple of visits.”
His eyebrows shot up his forehead. “What did that witch want?”
“She wants me to help her find something. She claims she has proof that Bart had Jerry killed.”
“She’s lyin’,” he snarled, turning his back to me as he tended to the skillet. “She’s tryin’ to get to me through you.” He pointed a spatula at me. “You stay far away from that woman.”
“She told me she stole your fortune, Hank. Is that true?”
He froze for a couple of seconds, then said softly, “Just the other day, you told me you didn’t give a shit about my money.”
“I don’t. Your money is your money, but if she took it, then I have no qualms trying to find it and return it to you.”
“She’s usin’ you, girlie,” he said, sounding exhausted. “You need to stay away from that woman.”
“Did she take your money, Hank?”
He dumped his sausage on a plate with scrambled eggs that were a pale yellow. He’d thrown some of the egg yolks out, just like I always did.
Hopping, he carried the plate to the table, then motioned for me to take a seat.
“You eat yet?” he asked, sitting down.
“Marco fed me.”
He kept his attention on his plate as he picked up a fork and sawed into a sausage link. “He’s a good man, that Marco Roland. You can’t do much better than him.”
“I know, but we’re talking about you right now. Did Louise take your money?”
“No,” he said, then lifted his eyes to mine, looking older than I’d ever seen him.
“She stole my gold.”
“What?”
He turned his gaze back to his plate. “I didn’t keep cash. Too risky. And I couldn’t put it in the bank, so I bought gold.”
“She stole your gold?”
“She had help. A guy named Abernathy helped her. He worked for me, and the two of ’em must have plotted it together. The damn pile weighed a few hundred pounds.”
I stared at him in shock. I couldn’t believe he’d had that much gold, let alone that he was admitting to it. “How much was it worth?”
“In today’s money? About twenty mill.”
My mouth dropped open, and it took me a few seconds to recover enough to ask, “How in the world did they get their hands on it?”
“I don’t know how they found it, but Mary had hired that bitch to clean. Gave her too much free rein in the house. Still,” he said, sawing off another piece of sausage, “it wasn’t in the house. It was hidden in the garage.”
“You kept twenty million dollars’ worth of gold in your garage?” I cried.
“Yep, in three forty-gallon barrels. The question is how they found out it was there. If you popped the tops off them, they looked like they were full of used tools.” He shrugged. “Mary wanted to use china, but I told her no one would buy a barrel of china that heavy, so she relented.”
I could hardly wrap my mind around it. He’d had twenty million dollars. In gold. In his garage. In barrels. “Couldn’t you have put it in a safety-deposit box or something?”
“That much gold?” He shook his head, still focused on his breakfast. “Seemed