Jacob
Fuck.
I watch Rajani walk away from me. She came in after we ended the call to tell me in no uncertain terms she would not put up with my authoritarian attitude. She didn’t even give me a chance to defend myself.
This is ridiculous. I’ve kept it together for years, and now I’m so close I can taste it, I end up hindering my own cause.
Luckily, Opal was able to steer the call back on track after I overreacted and Lee called me out on it. She crisply went down a list of updates we needed to cover, giving me time to pull myself together.
Pearl reported she’d made a start doing a more thorough background check on Jose and Joey, but was pulled away because of the developments at Grandview. I told her if she could send me what she had, I’d take over.
Opal was able to tell us she’d been in touch with the Kentucky State Police to get an update on their investigation of the crash. The Lincoln had been towed to their compound and would be processed for fingerprints and signs of tampering.
I’m still waiting for Lee to get back to me on the catering company that was seen entering the Grandview property. He got the name of a caterer from one of the neighbors and was supposed to meet with their event manager this afternoon.
Part of me wants to smooth things over with a clearly upset Rajani. However, the loud slam of her office door a few minutes ago suggests it might be wiser to give her a chance to cool off before I attempt an approach. Instead, I check my email, discovering Pearl has already sent me the information she has on Joey Vernon and Jose Cantu.
There isn’t a whole lot, a few social media links and some family history on Joey, whose background isn’t that difficult to piece together and fairly uneventful. I can’t find anything that raises a red flag.
The only thing I have for Jose Cantu is a record of entry into the U.S. dating back to 2008 when he was just fourteen years old. He arrived here alone, which strikes me as a little odd, since generally for immigration purposes eighteen is the age of consent. I can’t find any records of him from before he landed in the U.S., except he’s originally from Colombia. The only way a young kid like that could’ve entered the country by himself is for the purposes of reuniting with relatives, or if he was adopted into an American family.
I run his name through several different search engines and am still not able to find any concrete information on Cantu. No school records, no evidence of any kind of memberships to sports clubs, but I do come up with an old address along US Hwy 41A in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.
Before I have a chance to pull up a map, my phone rings.
“The Posh Palate,” Lee announces when I answer his call. “They’re basically on retainer for any and all events taking place at Grandview Estate.”
“Good. Any particulars?”
I jot down the name of the catering company on a scrap of paper.
“Their event manager was pretty talkative. Apparently, he’s not a fan of those repeat jobs. They’re only allowed a skeleton kitchen crew on the premises, while Grandview has their own serving staff they prefer to use. They’re also restricted to the use of the kitchen only. They cook, plate, and load everything on carts they leave just outside the kitchen. Other than the security person who shows them to the kitchen and out again once they’re done, they don’t see a single person while at the lodge.”
“Sounds a little paranoid,” I observe.
“Yes, it does. It makes you wonder what the hell goes on there to require such strict security. Especially since Posh Palate is scheduled to work the event there this coming Friday night,” Lee announces.
The event Raj plans to attend, with or without my support, as she has made perfectly clear. Maybe there’s a way to use this knowledge.
“I need you to get me on that skeleton crew,” I inform Lee.
He scoffs. “Do you have any kitchen skills I could sell them on? Otherwise, that might be a tall order.”
“Get me the owner’s information. You try with the manager; I’ll see if I can exert pressure from the top.”
If need be, I have money to make the proposal a bit more attractive. I’ll pay whatever it takes to get me inside that lodge. I’ll feel moderately better about Rajani attending this thing, if I know I’ll be under the same roof.
I jot down the name of the owner Lee mentions and assure him I can find a number for the guy.
“One more thing,” I add. “I’d like you to keep this to yourself.”
“I was wondering if you were going to ask me that,” he remarks. “You realize you’re asking me to lie to my wife?”
“No need to lie, when you can just avoid the subject,” I point out.
“I must’ve been close with my earlier guess,” he continues. “You care enough about Raj to finally come out in the open. It makes me wonder why it was necessary to hide your identity in the first place.”
It doesn’t really surprise me Lee brings it up. Especially not after his comment earlier today.
“You’re going to have to curb that curiosity a little longer,” I inform him. “And as for my request to keep this to yourself, I don’t want any distractions on or before Friday, because you’re right, I care a great deal about her.”
“Fair enough.”
I breathe a sigh of relief he’s letting it go. I really don’t want to waste time trying to explain my motivations, when we should be focusing on getting safety measures in place for Friday night.
“Good.”
I’m about to end the call when Lee obliterates my cover.
“Oh, tell Raj I said hi, Jacob. Or should I call you Hamish?”
That fucking guy.
I don’t bother to respond and end the call. Then I go in search of Rajani, she should probably know I’ve been found out.
The door to her office is still closed, so I knock, only to be left waiting for a few minutes. I’m annoyed, and about to show myself in when the door opens.
Her eyes are suspiciously shiny.
“You’ll never guess what I just found.”
Onyx
Whatever annoyance I may have felt has disappeared when I pull Jacob into my office.
“Check that out.”
I point at my screen, which shows the address on a hospital bill.
“Help me out here,” he says, confused. “What am I looking at?”
“That’s the address Britta Olson listed at the time she gave birth to Jesper.”
“Okay…”
I drag the image of the invoice to the side to reveal a map of Somerset. One of its more affluent neighborhoods, in fact. I switch to street view to show the actual house Britta listed as her residence.
“Seems a big house for a young, single mom,” Jacob comments.
“Considering she was barely eighteen when she had him,” I fill in. “Which had me look into the actual ownership of the house at the time Britta lived there.”
I pull up the property’s history and Jacob leans over my shoulder to see the document up on the screen.
“GLAN Industries,” he reads out loud. Then he turns to me, a half-smile on his face. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“That Jesper may well be related to Wheeler? Yes, I am,” I admit. “It fits. Olson was being groomed to follow in Daddy’s footsteps.”
“Isn’t Olson’s hearing in front of the circuit court this coming Friday morning?” Jacob brings up.
“It is.”
“What if this impromptu party at Grandview is somehow connected?”
When it hits me, I grab Jacob’s arm.
“You mean like a father celebrating the homecoming of his prodigal son?” I conclude.
He confirms with a nod.
“This is crazy.”
I watch Jacob pull out his phone and make a call.
“Lee? Listen, I want you in the gallery of Judge Severino’s courtroom for Jesper Olson’s hearing on Friday.”
I listen open-mouthed as Jacob explains to Lee what we discovered.
Without using his voice distortion app.
His eyes are on me when he ends the call with Lee.
“He knows.”
“He knows?” I parrot. “How?”
Jacob shrugs. “He’s a journalist, figuring stuff out is what he does. I was actually just coming to fill you in.”
“You already talked to him?”
“He called me earlier to let me know he found the catering company, but I don’t want to talk about that right now.”
I don’t resist when he reaches for me and pulls me close.
“I made you angry,” he states matter-of-factly.
I don’t see the point in lying about it, especially when he brings it up himself.
“You did. Although perhaps angry isn’t the right word. You can be annoyingly confusing. One moment I feel like you trust me, and the next you say or do something to make me think you don’t. And yet you expect me to put my faith in you. It’s infuriating and frankly, a bit hurtful.”
When I look up, I notice his gaze has drifted off somewhere over my shoulder, and he almost appears to be struggling with something.
“I’m going to try and get into the lodge as part of the catering crew,” he suddenly announces, his eyes locking on mine. “And I wasn’t going to tell you.”
“Why?” I blurt out the first thought in my head.
I’m not quite sure how else to respond to that.
“Because I don’t want you distracted, thinking about what I might be doing when you should be paying attention to what’s going on around you.”
“If that’s the case, why tell me now?”
“Because you’re right. I—”
Jacob is interrupted by the doorbell.
“I’ll get it,” he announces, as he releases me and moves into the hallway, but I follow on his heels.
It’s Joey.
“Hey,” I bump Jacob aside. “Is everything okay?”
She gives me a little smile but it doesn’t reach her eyes, they look concerned.
“I was wondering if you’d seen Jose,” she asks, her eyes darting between Jacob and me.
“Jose?” Jacob echoes. “I was talking to him a couple of hours ago, while you were grooming Moon, right before I came to talk to you.”
“I know, but he left the barn right after you did. It’s funny because I spent most of the afternoon thinking I should’ve just mentioned something to you, but decided I would ask Jose about it first.” She glances at Jacob a bit sheepishly. “I checked the grounds and he’s nowhere to be found. His truck is gone, and when I checked the staff quarters just now, I noticed all his stuff is gone too.”
I feel tension radiating from Jacob.
“What were you going to ask him about?” he asks sharply.
“When you asked me earlier if I remembered seeing anything or anyone out of place, it honestly didn’t register at first. Not until I had some time to think about it, but I wanted to give him a chance to explain before I mentioned anything.”
“Explain what, Joey?” I prompt her, before Jacob loses his head.
I can hear him grinding his teeth beside me.
“It was Saturday morning; you had been gone for a couple of hours. I’d been into town to pick up a few supplies. When I returned, I could’ve sworn I saw him ducking around the side of the house. I kind of dismissed it. Then after I’d put my groceries away, I walked to the barn and that’s when I saw him stuffing some kind of burlap sack in the toolbox in the back of his truck. It seemed a bit odd, but didn’t make too much of it. Not until I started thinking about what you asked this morning.”
Jacob turns to me.
“I need you to pull up—”
“I know,” I interrupt him, already in motion.
I rush back to my office and open the security software that allows me to check the individual cameras. Now we have seven, thanks to Jacob’s vigilance, but back on Saturday there were only three cameras. One of them aimed at the front of the house, one pointed down the driveway, and a third one in the rear, directed at the paddock and the stables.
That last camera is the one I’m interested in. I access the file for last Saturday and pull up the archived feed, fast-forwarding until I see Jacob’s truck pull the horse-trailer away from the stables.
“Slow it down,” Jacob says behind me.
I resist the temptation to roll my eyes. The man can’t help himself.
I play the video at regular speed until I see Joey get into her old RAV4 parked on the far side of the barn, where I can just see the rear of Jose’s truck. Once the SUV is out of the image, I pay even closer attention.
We don’t have to wait long before Jose comes walking out the barn doors and goes around the side toward his truck. Barely a minute later, he appears again with a burlap sack in his hand. It looks heavy.
“Son of a bitch,” I hear Jacob mumble.
On the screen, Jose walks out of view of the camera when he gets close to the house. Five minutes later he reappears, running, the sack clearly empty in his hand.
It doesn’t take us long to confirm that yesterday, shortly after Jacob came into the house, Jose loaded up his truck and hightailed it out of here. He’s not even trying to hide anything, which tells me he’s not planning on coming back.
Warm lips brush my ear.
“Call the state police, sweetheart. Give them what we’ve got. They can pick him up.”
“And what will you be doing?” I ask, tilting my head back so I can look at him.
“I’m gonna talk to Joey. See if she has any connections.” He presses a hard kiss on my lips before straightening up. “Looks like we’ll need another stable hand.”