Reese nodded.
When he didn’t move from the spot, Brantley smiled and said, “We should start in the office.”
***
Reese was still staring at the pictureof his mother and Toby when he responded to Brantley with an unenthusiastic, “Yeah.”
He wasn’t sure what they expected to find here, but he doubted it would net them much. He got the feeling there was a lot more to this situation than Z was letting on. That or his brother didn’t know the entire story, and he was expecting Reese to do the heavy lifting. Now that he’d seen the picture of Toby and his mother, he knew he had no choice but to see it through. If there were even a remote chance his mother was in danger because of something Toby had done, he would get to the bottom of it.
With a resigned sigh, he set the picture down and headed in the direction Brantley had disappeared.
Toby’s office looked much the same as the rest of the house. In a word, it had been destroyed. The bookshelves were empty; everything that had once been on them was on the floor. If it was glass, it was shattered. If it was paper, it was tossed about, most of it torn in two. There was a four-drawer filing cabinet that was no longer intact. The frame had been toppled, and the drawers were on the floor, everything in them dumped in a pile. Reese squatted down to sort through the folders lying haphazardly in the rubble.
“Looks like he had a computer,” Brantley said from behind him. “Either he took it or whoever tossed the place did.”
Reese glanced over, saw he was holding up miscellaneous cords with nothing connected to them. “Not a laptop, then.”
“Not in here, anyway,” Brantley noted. “What does the guy do for a living?”
“Some kinda high-paid sales rep.”
“What does he sell?”
Reese shrugged. He figured he should probably know that little detail, but he didn’t. Truth was, he hadn’t given Toby much thought in years. The man had been a part of his life as a child, but not much after that. And once he’d discovered the relationship between him and his mother, he’d forced the man out of his thoughts entirely. Hard not to considering whenever he’d thought about the man, Reese remembered Toby kissing his mother that day.
A shiver ran down his spine, and he shoved the thought from his mind, picking up one of the folders and skimming what was left of the papers inside. It appeared he kept only essential things like tax documents and whatnot. Nothing related to a business.
“You might call your mother,” Brantley suggested. “See if she can give you some insight into his job. Not sure it’s related, but it could be.”
Yeah, at this point, he figured anything was possible.
Reese spent a few more minutes rummaging through the remnants of the file cabinet. He was about to give up when he felt the edge of something bump his finger as he reached in to pull out a sheet of paper. Taped to the side wall was a large manilla envelope. Inside, he found a passport and social security card, bank statements, the deed to the house showing it was paid for, as well as finalized tax filings. You wouldn’t know it now, but the guy appeared to have been organized.
While Brantley continued to root around at the desk, Reese ventured into the other rooms. A guest room held nothing personal, so he moved on from there. The guest bath resulted in the same.
He headed to the master bedroom but didn’t linger too long. The dresser was empty, all the contents on the floor. Among the shredded clothes, he found a watch case. It was one of the big ones that people bought to store expensive watches that required movement to keep them functioning. It was empty. Had Toby taken the watches, or had the intruder stolen them? Considering the circumstances, he figured it was the latter. Although, now that he thought about it, there were plenty of expensive art pieces that had been destroyed rather than stolen, so who knows.
He peeked in the bathroom before moving through it to the closet. Again, nothing of value and nothing that would tell them what Toby had been up to recently.
With a sigh, Reese returned to the living room. He hadn’t expected to find anything that would lead them to where Toby was hiding, but he wouldn’t deny he’d been hoping. Maybe a deed to a cabin in the woods or a lake house. Somewhere Toby could go to hide out. Then again, there could’ve been something and whoever got here first had it, but he would never know.
He heard Brantley in the kitchen, so he headed that way, again hoping the man had better luck. When their eyes met, he saw the disappointment instantly and knew they wouldn’t be finding Toby the easy way.
“Call your mom,” Brantley urged, turning to face him. “Maybe if we can check out his place of business, we’ll find something that’ll help.”
Reese nodded, pulling out his phone. He dialed, then moved to the back door and peeked out the blinds covering the small window.
“Hey, honey,” she greeted kindly. “Two calls in one day. I’m starting to feel special.”
“Where does Toby work?” he asked, forgoing the pleasantries.
She cleared her throat, then said, “Last I talked to him, he’d started his own travel agency.”
Reese frowned. “I thought he was a sales rep.”
“At one point in his life, sure. Toby’s never been … what’s the word? Loyal, I guess, to any one profession. Your father called him a wandering entrepreneur. As long as he could work for himself, he was willing to give it a try.”
“Did he rent office space?”
