“Just keep them there for another hour, Dez,” Fenway said into her phone as her Accord bumped over the dirt trail, wide enough for a large pickup. “I got another lead.”
“You said you were looking for physical evidence,” Dez said. “I didn’t think it would take you this long.”
“I had to go where I thought the evidence was.”
“Where’d you go? Tijuana?”
“No, no. I’m just north of Puerto Avila beach, near Vista del Rincón.” The road pitched down toward the beach, and a break appeared in the ironwoods and scrub brush about twenty yards on her left.
“That’s forty minutes away.”
“And I’ll be back in an hour.” Fenway slowed the Accord to a stop and put the car into Park. “Looking more and more likely that Seth Cahill was involved in drug trafficking.”
“What?”
“That’s why the squatter’s belongings were in Unit 112. Someone stayed Monday night. They always stay with the morpheranyl shipment before they get it packaged for use and distribution.”
“I’m sorry—what? Did you uncover additional evidence?”
“I had a talk with Zoso.”
Dez scoffed. “Zoso? Are you serious? Look, you’re the boss, but he’s doing his level best to get Norco and Oxy to every anxious student and depressed housewife in a hundred-mile radius—”
“Zoso knows how the operation runs,” Fenway said. “Or at least how it ran a year ago. One of the whale-watching boats out of Estancia Harbor, the Ariel, was running drugs. Picking up a hundred kilos of morpheranyl in Mexico and dropping the shipment near Estancia. Then a car takes the drugs from the shoreline to Cahill’s storage facility. Other people—maybe like the squatter in Unit 112—process the morpheranyl and get it to distributors. Millions of dollars in morpheranyl every shipment.”
Dez was quiet for a moment.
“You still there?” Fenway popped the trunk, got out of the car, and shut the door.
“I’m here,” Dez said softly. “Is this a conclusion you jumped to, or do you have any evidence?”
“That’s why I came to the beach,” Fenway said. “To gather evidence. But everything fits. Seth’s secret ledger book in that safe. The timing of the payments makes sense with the story that Zoso told me. That’s something we can have Sarah research.” She opened the trunk and got gloves and three evidence bags from her toolkit.
“Or Patrick Appleby. That’s his job.”
“Right.” Fenway shut the trunk. “Or Patrick. And we have the name of the boat—oh, and the name of one of the smugglers. Calvin Banning.”
Dez clicked her tongue. “We can run his name through the system. What’d you say was the name of the boat?”
“The Ariel. Like the mermaid.”
“A whale-watching boat?”
“Yeah, a catamaran docked at Estancia Harbor. The boat runs from All Saints Bay near Ensenada. Zoso thought it might unload its shipment here in Dominguez County near Vista del Rincón near Puerto Avila Beach.”
“Zoso ‘thought’?”
“He’s never failed me before.” She cleared her throat. “Besides, it’s not like he’s trying to protect his business interests. He doesn’t touch morpheranyl. Killed one of his friends last year.” She took a few steps toward the sand, then kicked off her flats and picked them up, feeling the dry sand between her toes. “I did his friend’s autopsy, right before Thanksgiving.”
“Oh.” A sharp intake of breath from Dez. “I remember that. Nyllie overdose. Kid, about twenty-two?”
“Right. Scott Behrens.”
“I remember.” Dez cleared her throat. “You’d think I’d have gotten jaded enough by now. But yeah, his death. Sometimes you see a kid like that, it gets under your skin.”
Fenway closed her eyes. Scott’s tawny skin had been pallid in death. His teeth had been crooked and riddled with cavities—he obviously hadn’t been taken care of as a teenager. Product of the foster system. Dr. Yasuda had pulled the sheet over his face and told Fenway she’d already contacted someone to make a positive identification.
“Seth Cahill might have pissed off a few people if he used his property to store morpheranyl,” Fenway said. “Mark thinks if Tyra wouldn’t store the morpheranyl any longer, that Seth’s trafficking partners wouldn’t like it.”
“We need to figure out where he was killed,” Dez said. “I’m sending Deputy Salvador over to Seth’s girlfriend’s house—”
“Mark already spoke to Miranda Duchy.”
“Yep,” Dez responded. “But he didn’t ask her if she’s missing a Persian rug.”
“Neither you nor Mark brought Duchy in for questioning?”
“We’re doing it now, Fenway. If you’re so concerned about questioning suspects, then get your ass off the beach and come back to the sheriff’s office.”
“Ten more minutes here, tops.” Fenway walked a few feet out onto the warm sand. An untouched, pristine beach, with no sunbathers, surfers, or body-boarders. The waves came in unrushed, unhurried. “Beautiful,” Fenway murmured.
“What?”
“The beach. It’s gorgeous.” Fenway scanned the sand. She’d hoped she could find something to prove that a drug-smuggling boat had been here. Maybe a discarded plastic container that might have held the morpheranyl, marks in the sand from dragging a couple hundred pounds of contraband over the sand. If a catamaran had been up on shore, there could still be two parallel ruts in the sand where the double hull had been.
Or it might be a waste of time. Was it the right beach? Zoso only said that if he were the smuggler, this is the beach he would use.
As if reading her mind, Dez spoke up over the clacking of her keyboard. “What exactly are you looking for?”
“I’m not sure,” Fenway said. “I thought there’d be signs of the Ariel dropping anchor here.”
“At least I found the name of the person who rented the dock at Estancia Harbor,” Dez said. “Stephan Butler.”
“Evan?”
“With an S-T at the beginning. S-T-E-P-H-A-N.”
“How very European.”
“Arrested for intent to distribute two years ago,” Dez said. “Charges dropped. Lack of evidence. He’s the majority owner of Trinculo Tours, L.L.C. It’s based in Estancia.”
“Age?”
“Sixty-one.”
“That fits with what Zoso told me.” Fenway took a few more steps onto the beach. “How about the other guy—Calvin Banning?”
“Yeah, I entered his name into the system, but it looks like Cal isn’t a California resident.”
“Heh.” Fenway smiled at Dez’s wordplay. “Doesn’t look like there’s much to see here. I’ll do a quick sweep of the beach and then head back.”
“You better hurry. There’s only so much I can do with a bag of chips and a can of soda.”
“Will do.” Fenway tapped End and looked out onto the stretch of beach. Not a large beach—the sand only stretched about a hundred yards on either side of where she stood. The fire road began about thirty yards from the surf here—it was close to high tide—but about fifty yards further south seemed like a better location for a catamaran to drop anchor.
She walked along the shore, her feet sinking into the wet sand, and hoped she’d get lucky. Maybe there would be a hidden toolkit for getting the blister open. Or a dropped kilo of morpheranyl.
She visually divided the beach into sections until a grid formed in her mind. Up and down the beach: two hundred yards, give or take; thirty yards across at its narrowest point.
Fenway pulled on her gloves—she’d found a new pack in the Accord's trunk—and started walking up and down the beach, trying to be thorough and hurry at the same time. A ticking clock in her head of when Tyra Cahill and her lawyer would walk out of the sheriff’s office.
A metal detector would be nice, although maybe it would bias Fenway toward metallic objects when plastic might be—
Hang on.
Halfway buried in the sand, a cigarette butt. Fenway walked over and crouched. She brought her face close to the sand. Very tiny letters in stylized script, almost like the Hindi alphabet.
Sampuriso A.
What had Zoso told her? My buddy said he smokes these weird Indonesian cigarettes. The clinic in Seattle sat in the heart of the Indonesian neighborhood, and Sampuriso was a popular brand of kretek cigarettes with the locals. If Stephan Butler were carrying two hundred pounds of morpheranyl in a few blisters under the double hull, he’d be okay with carrying a couple of cartons of illegal clove cigarettes.
She put the cigarette butt in one of the evidence bags. Out here buried in the sand, with the sun beating down, perhaps no DNA would be found on the kretek. But from what Zoso had said, Fenway thought this beach was possibly where the morpheranyl drop could have happened. If she could get the sheriff’s office to approve a stakeout, they might get millions of dollars of morpheranyl off the streets. Maybe a few of the dealers, too.
“I appreciate you coming down here to talk with us,” Fenway said, shutting the door of the interview room behind her.
“Not enough for you to show up on time,” Tyra Cahill said. She wore the same outfit she’d had on at the storage facility: a cream-colored blouse under a faded denim jacket. She wore her hair down now, instead of in the earlier ponytail. “And I’m paying my lawyer by the hour.”
The lawyer sat in a black pinstripe suit with a bright white dress shirt and a red tie, and gently laid his hand next to Cahill’s on top of the table, almost but not quite touching. “I must insist—”
“Right, right,” Cahill murmured.
Fenway set down her notebook and file folder on the table and sat across from Cahill and her lawyer.
“Ms. Cahill is distraught by the loss of her ex-husband,” the lawyer said.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Fenway said. She opened her notebook to a blank page and tapped her pencil on the table three times. She’d have to tread carefully. “Ms. Cahill, who would want to hurt your husband?”
“I—” Tyra Cahill stopped, glanced at the lawyer, then when he nodded, she went on. “I’d heard he and Miranda weren’t getting along too well anymore.”
“Did you see evidence that Miranda was angry enough to hurt him?”
Tyra bit her lip. “I’ve heard stories.”
Fenway scribbled in her notebook. “What kind of stories?”
“I heard she threw a dish at her ex.”
Hearsay, and lack of foundation. She couldn’t use that. “Anything else?”
Tyra hesitated. She wanted Miranda to be a suspect; Fenway could see it in her eyes. But Tyra shook her head.
“Was Seth seeing someone behind Ms. Duchy’s back?” Fenway asked. “Or was she seeing anyone else?”
Tyra considered this for a moment. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Once a cheater, always a cheater, right?”
“Your husband—”
“Ex-husband,” Tyra corrected.
“He ever get violent?”
“Not with me. He wasn’t a large man, either. Fit, funny, charming, good taste. But Miranda could bench-press him.”
Fenway glanced at Tyra, who could also bench-press Seth. For that matter, Fenway could have too. Tyra was still throwing suspicion onto Miranda. “You won the business in the divorce?”
“That’s right. He got the Corvette, I bought him out of the house, and he gets alimony from me.”
“Really? You’re paying him?”
“I’m getting the business that we both started, so he’s getting a percentage.” She narrowed her eyes. “I know what you’re thinking, but that’s what we agreed to so I wouldn’t drag things out. Apparently, he and Miranda wanted to get married right away.”
From his briefcase, the lawyer produced an ivory-colored card, embossed with fancy lettering. “Save the date” across the top in an elegant script.
“August,” Fenway said. “That’s soon.”
Tyra grunted. “I told you he wanted to get married quick.”
“Right.” Fenway cleared her throat. “Any issues with the business?”
Tyra cocked her head. “What do you mean?”
“Well, sometimes divorced couples can do things to each other to, uh, maliciously comply with the agreement. Maybe he sabotaged some client relationships—”
“Hey, now if you’re implying—” the lawyer began.
“—and a client might not have taken too kindly to it,” Fenway finished, raising her voice.
He clamped his jaw shut.
“For instance,” Fenway said, “the squatter in Unit 112. You said you thought Seth had taken care of them. So you knew about them?”
“I knew Seth had been in charge of securing the premises when he and I co-ran the business,” Tyra said. “He still had an office onsite. So, yeah, the squatters were still his problem.”
“When did his employ at Cahill Warehouse Storage cease?”
“Two weeks ago,” Tyra said. “I still had him finishing up a few things around the property.”
“Were you paying him?”
Again, a quick glance at her lawyer. Ah, so she was paying her ex-husband cash and not reporting it.
“Did any of the other employees get mad that he wouldn’t leave?” Fenway asked, before Tyra’s lawyer could shut down the previous question.
“Who—Mathis and Isabella?” Tyra chuckled. “Isabella is just glad to have a full-time job. If Seth is doing anything around the property, it’s one less thing Isabella has to do.”
“What about Mathis?”
“Mathis is full-time too.” Tyra paused. “Though he and Seth were, uh, maybe I wouldn’t say ‘close,’ but the two of them were sort of like work best friends.”
Fenway cocked her head.
“I mean,” Tyra said, putting her hands flat on the table, “like they covered each other. If Seth had to leave early, Mathis would take his tasks on. And vice versa. They stayed late, making sure the security systems were up to scratch. Would go out for beers when they were done.”
Huh. That’s not what Mathis said. Fenway would have to ask Mathis about that. “Did you hire Isabella and Mathis?”
“I hired Isabella. She dropped out of UC Riverside last year. We pay better than most of the entry-level positions around here, and the hours are flexible enough for her to go to community college.” Tyra leaned back in her chair. “Not that she ever signed up.”
“What about Mathis?”
“Hah. He was Seth’s scuba instructor.” Tyra pulled a hair tie out from her purse. “The training school was in financial trouble. Mathis hadn’t been paid in a couple of weeks. I think Seth admired his dedication to the customers. Hired him as soon as the class ended.”
That fit with what Mathis had told Fenway. “Did Seth or Mathis ever mention a man by the name of—” She flipped in her notebook. “Calvin Banning?”
Tyra frowned. “Not that I can remember.”
“How about Stephan Butler?”
“No one named Stephan that I know.”
Fenway tapped her fingers on the table. “How about the name of a boat called the Ariel?”
“You mean the whale-watching boat?” Tyra asked. “Seth said he was part investor in it.”
Fenway nodded. “Part investor. Interesting.”
“Are we almost done here, Coroner?” the lawyer asked. “We waited two hours for you, and now we’re discussing whale-watching.”
“Almost,” Fenway said. “Ms. Cahill, did you recognize the Persian rug in Unit 176?”
“I—uh…” Cahill said, glancing at her lawyer. “I didn’t pay much attention to the rug, to be honest.”
“Were you aware that Seth kept a separate ledger in a safe in his office?”
“My client still declines to answer that question,” the lawyer said.
“Would you like to tell me where you were last night?” Fenway asked.
“My client declines to answer that question as well,” the lawyer said, then he stood. “I think we’ve given you enough of our time. Is my client free to go?”
“Just to be clear, Ms. Cahill, you told me earlier that he came by your place about nine o’clock. Do you have anything to add to that statement?”
“My client,” the lawyer said, “told you that he agreed to come over at nine o’clock. She never said whether or not he came over.”
“You absolutely said he was there at nine,” Fenway said, leaning forward in her seat toward Tyra Cahill. “You said he showed up in his Corvette. You made a joke about his midlife crisis. I said it would be hard to fit boxes into the Corvette, and you agreed. Now, maybe that wasn’t exactly at nine o’clock, but if you won’t give me any more information, I’ll be putting those notes into my report, and any reasonable person would conclude you were lying to the police—either then or now.”
The lawyer took Tyra Cahill’s arm and gently encouraged her to her feet. “We’re done here,” he said.
“Unfortunately,” Fenway said, “I’ll need to look into your ex-husband’s past. His financials, that kind of thing. I’m apologizing ahead of time—it might feel intrusive. Please understand, we have to do it to find the person responsible.”
The lawyer held the door open for Tyra Cahill.
She was halfway out the door when she turned to Fenway. “Speaking of Seth’s financials, you might want to see who gets his stuff if he’s dead.” She spun on her heel, and the lawyer followed her out the door.
Fenway sat at the table, flipping through her notebook.
A moment later, the door opened, and Dez popped her head in. “You okay?”
“Yep. Just thinking. Tyra was lying, holding a lot of information back.”
“She was with her lawyer. Of course she was lying.” Dez paused. “Do you want us to see if Seth Cahill had a will?”
“Yes.”
“My money’s on Miranda Duchy getting everything.”
Fenway grunted. “Yeah. Tyra said as much.”
“This is a lead, Fenway. Why are you so distracted?”
“I need to figure out why Tyra Cahill isn’t answering some of my questions.”
“I’d think it was obvious.”
“Because she killed her ex?”
“Because the wife is always the prime suspect.” Dez sat down on a corner of the table. “But she already has the business, which makes it less likely that she has a financial motive.”
Fenway chuckled. “Hatred between ex-spouses goes a lot deeper than money. Maybe Tyra was angry about being cut out of the drug business—or angry that it was happening under her nose. That could be why she came in with her lawyer.”
Dez nodded. “Then Tyra is lucky that the ledger only has our victim’s prints on it.”
Fenway looked up. “That was fast.”
“We had a direct means of comparison. Still has to go to the lab to be official, but even I could tell after comparing his prints to the ones we lifted from the ledger.”
“So, what does that mean?”
“We need to figure out what those payments were for.”
“I’d be shocked if they weren’t for the storage and distribution of the morpheranyl that the Ariel was ferrying to Estancia.” Fenway hooked her thumb over her shoulder. “I found a clove cigarette on the beach north of Puerto Avila. Zoso said that the old guy who drives the boat smokes them. I’d bet anything that’s where they do their exchange.”
“Let me see if I follow,” Dez said. “This whale-watching boat—”
“The Ariel.”
“It goes between Mexico—”
“I’m thinking Bahía Todos de los Santos near Ensenada,” Fenway said. “Though that’s mostly an educated guess.”
Dez nodded. “And picks up a couple hundred pounds of morpheranyl.”
“Right. And stores it in a few blisters.”
Dez frowned. “A few what? Blisters?”
Fenway held her right hand out, palm up, then curled it into a cup. “Storage containers attached to the bottom of the hull.” She put her right hand flat, palm down, over her cupped left hand. “Or both of the hulls, in the case of a catamaran.”
“Then it comes by sea to Estancia.”
“Right—to a secluded beach only accessible by a fire road.”
“How do they get the drugs out of the blister?”
“You go into the water, swim under the boat, and open the storage container. The drugs are in waterproof bags.”
“Sounds like you need to hold your breath for a long time.”
“Mathis Jericho was a scuba diver. Maybe he taught Seth how to use the equipment. Either of them could have done it.”
“Then they carry two hundred pounds of this stuff up to the car parked on the fire road.”
“And drive to Cahill Warehouse Storage. Store it until other people pick it up for processing.” Fenway tapped her foot. “Here’s what I think the process is. The Ariel drops off the morpheranyl in the middle of the night. One of the boat workers goes with one of the storage workers to drive it back to the facility. The worker stays in an empty unit that night, probably with the drugs, to make sure nothing happens to it. Then a third party shows up, maybe someone from the packaging and distribution part of this whole thing, and they complete the transaction with Seth Cahill moderating. And taking his cut.”
“Okay—that might be a possibility.”
“And as Mark said, if something went wrong with the transaction, the person who stayed in the empty unit—the ‘squatter,’ as we’ve been calling them—could have had reason to harm Seth Cahill. And if it was someone else, the squatter could be a witness. We figure out who was on the Ariel, I bet we get closer to finding our killer.”
“Maybe.” Dez rubbed her chin. “I’m thinking in another direction.”
“What?”
“It’s pretty obvious why Tyra Cahill was so evasive.”
“Why?”
“Because she probably recently found out about her husband’s agreement to store and transport the morpheranyl.”
“Why do you say she ‘recently found out’? She could have known the whole time.”
Fenway shook her head. “With the ledger in Seth’s safe, I think he was hiding it from his wife. And as the business owner, she’s legally liable.”
“This is one of those ‘known or should have known’ things?” Dez asked.
“Probably. I guess she could argue that since she recently assumed control of the business, maybe she shouldn’t have known. But no matter what, Tyra’s dealing with a Pandora’s Box of legal nightmares.”
“And it’s Seth’s fault.”
“So the question is, would she have been angry enough to kill Seth?”
Dez shrugged. “People have killed for less.”
“That’s one theory, anyway. But let’s not get carried away.” Fenway scratched her head. “Seth was supposed to marry Miranda Duchy, wasn’t he? Let’s see if he made any other changes in his life that might give someone else motive to kill him.”