Chapter Eleven
Sam strode down the main hall of Sea and Sunset Retirement Living to his dad’s apartment. He knocked on the door and tried the handle. Locked. Knocking louder, he called, “Dad? It’s Sam. You in there?”
There was no answer, so he waited a couple of minutes, wondering if his father was in the bathroom. It was barely seven a.m., a little early for a visit, maybe, but Sam didn’t have time to waste. He was heading to the hospital next, though he knew discharges tended to take a while. No one had given him a time to pick up Jules. For that matter, no one knew he was going to be the one to fetch her.
“Dad?” He rattled the handle.
An older woman with a walker was just coming out her door, and she looked at him askance. “Who are you?” she warbled.
“I’m Donald’s son. Sam.”
“Donald said his son died.”
“His other son. He has two.”
“No, he only has one.” She slowly wheeled herself past him, heading down the hall where he’d just come.
“Dad?!”
“Hold your horses,” came the irked and muffled voice from Donald’s room. About a decade later his father opened the door and Sam stepped inside, closing it behind him.
“What’re you doing here?” Donald asked. “You know what time it is, son?”
“I need to talk to you about Joe, Dad. About his business. What he was doing. You know the financial end of things. You’re the one who got Joe interested in the business in the first place. . . .”
“Hang on there. Don’t blame me. He was always interested in making money.” He trundled back to his chair, throwing over his shoulder, “Can’t say the same for you.”
Sam paced past his father to the far end of the room and looked out the window, struggling to get a handle on his composure. He normally wasn’t so undone, but Joe’s death was a bolt of lightning that kept striking from the sky, catching him unawares and reverberating through him long after he thought the chance of getting hit was over.
In the presence of his father, Sam felt the grip on his emotions start to cave. He bore down on his feelings, aware that if he succumbed he could break down completely. Only the desire to find out the truth kept him from being overcome by grief. Still, he thought of his brother’s smile, one that had become rarer over the years, and his heart ached. When had that happened? When Joe broke away from the huge firm he’d worked for and went into business for himself? Or was it something else?
“Breakfast is at eight,” Donald let him know.
Sam sat down in the only extra chair in the room as his father worked to adjust his La-Z-Boy recliner. Once Donald was settled, Sam pulled his chair up closer so they were looking at each other, eye to eye. “I need some help, Dad. I need to find out about Joe.”
“Joe?”
“Yes, Joe. Your son. He died in a boating accident the day before yesterday.”
“You told me.”
“Yes, I told you. That’s right. I need you to focus now and tell me about Joe’s business. I’ve talked to some other people, but no one seems to know exactly what was going on.”
He tsk-tsked and waved his finger at Sam. “That’s secret stuff, you know. Other people’s money.”
“You specifically said ‘it’s about the money,’ when we were talking about Joe, and I think you’re right. Joe’s gone, and I’m working on finding out what happened. And to do that, I need to know as much as you do, and probably more, about Joe’s company. A lot of people invested with him, trusted their funds to him.”
“You didn’t.”
“Dad, please. Bear with me.”
“Joe was good to you, Sammy. He left you everything. And his wife. He left you his wife, too.”
That was just crazy, about leaving Jules to him, and the rest, what he’d heard at the party from Hap, he’d dismissed as speculation or gossip.
Sam shook his head, frustrated. “You mean, he left his wife everything. I’m not a part of his will.”
“How do you know?”
“Dad, Joe and I weren’t . . . I will be meeting with Joe’s lawyers. Jules needs to see them, and I’ll take her. She’s just not ready yet.”
“Well, then you’ll know.”
“Does the name Cardaman mean anything to you?” Sam asked, hanging on to his patience with an effort.
“Ike Cardaman.” He snorted. “He was running that Ponzi scheme before he got caught. Yeah, I know him. He in jail?”
“Yes. I believe so.”
“He talked your brother into some stuff he never shoulda got into. He put investors’ money into Capitol College, that online one, y’know? Then the government shut ’em down, stopped the student loans. It was all a racket. No money from the government, so the college goes belly-up and who’s left holding the bag?” Donald was getting riled up as he jabbed a gnarled finger at Sam and answered his own question. “Joe’s investors, that’s who. And who’re they blaming? Joe, that’s who. Luckily Joe’s smart. He had ’em diversified, his investors. Capitol College was just some of it. He was trying to get all the money back for ’em. But that damn whistle-blower brought it all down. Joe had to defend himself, but people were really mad.”
“What about Summit Ridge, in Salchuk?”
“Everybody moving to Salchuk,” Donald said on a sigh.
“I ran into Hap—Walter Hapstell Junior—and he said he and Joe were working on a deal to buy those houses from whomever’s holding them.”
“Cardaman’s houses?” He looked at Sam like he’d lost his mind. Bushy eyebrows drew together. “Bah. That’s gonna be years. Government’s gotta untangle all Cardaman’s messes and put on a trial. Too long to wait. Houses’ll be termite dust by then.”
“It sounds like it’s Hap’s big deal.”
He flapped a hand at Sam, as if wanting him to stop talking. “He wants to get into Salchuk before it’s too late, but it’s already too late for Summit Ridge. Salchuk’s supposed to be the next big deal on the coast. Been a sleepy little town far too long. Got a great, private beach. Might be that it’s the big money maker. I put some money there, too, through your brother.” He paused, his face clouding over. “Where’d you say Joe was?”
Sam didn’t answer. He just couldn’t get caught in that kind of loop with his father. “Did Joe ever tell his investors to go with Cardaman?”
“Nah . . . Joe just inherited some clients who’d invested with Cardaman.”
“He inherited them?”
“They were all real upset ’cause they’d lost money with Cardaman and they wanted Joe to save ’em.” A frown line etched deeply between Donald’s eyes. “Maybe Julia knows.”
“Was Julia that involved in the business? I thought she just worked part-time.”
“Mighta been they were her dad’s clients,” he mused. “That St. James . . . stupid man.” He shook his head. “What a way to go. Couldn’t swim and jumps into the Columbia.”
“You think Julia knew about all this?” When she could remember things . . . Sam reminded himself grimly. Dealing with Dad’s altered reality and Julia’s loss of memory was only making things more difficult.
“Ask Joe,” Donald said. “He’d know.”
Sam gazed at his father in consternation. “Joe’s gone, Dad. The Derring-Do was set on fire and Joe didn’t survive. He drowned. And you know what they’re saying, Dad? That Joe burned his own boat. That he purchased the gasoline that was spilled on the boat and set fire to it. They’re intimating that he committed suicide and that he tried to take Jules with him.”
Donald reared back as if Sam had hit him. “Get outta here!” he roared.
“I didn’t say it, Dad. That’s just what the sheriff thinks. And I’m going to prove him wrong.”
“Those assholes don’t know what they’re talking about!” He tsk-tsked his finger in front of Sam’s nose. “Your brother was a good man. A good man.” Donald’s eyes began watering and he reached for a tissue on the table beside his chair.
Sam silently measured his father. Was a good man . . . Throughout their conversation Donald Ford had been remarkably “sane.” Yes, he fell into forgetfulness, but he seemed to be getting the information overall. He wondered, again, just how much of his father’s dementia was manufactured.
Yeah, but you think everyone’s faking what they know.
He tried to hold on to his patience. “Look, Dad, I don’t think my brother tried to kill himself, but I don’t think his death was an accident. I think it’s connected to Joe’s financial dealings. A lot of people invested with him, and I want to know about the ones who lost money, who maybe blamed Joe. I want to know who among them would kill him over it.”
His father slowly sat back in his chair. “You need to talk to the whistle-blower.”
“You brought him up before. Dennis Mulhaney?”
His father squinted at him. “You know him?”
“I heard he left Joe’s company.” He didn’t add that Mulhaney had been missing for six weeks, according to Phoenix Delacourt.
“He worked for Joe . . . and Hapstell. Said he was gonna tell everybody they were crooks. They said fine and he quit, all mad. Joe said he kept going on and on about them hooked in with Cardaman, but it wasn’t true.”
The Cardaman file. Maybe it wasn’t true.... Sam sure hoped it wasn’t true.
His father blinked a couple of times, then shook his head in frustration. “Why’d you come by again?” he asked. “It wasn’t just to talk about money, was it?”
Sam tamped down his frustration with an effort. “We were talking about Joe and his investment company.”
“Uh-huh. Joe always protects his customer,” his father said with a sage nod of his gray head. “That’s why everybody invests with him.”
Donald was looking at the clock and clucking his tongue, so Sam let him get up and ready for breakfast. Though he had cognitive difficulties, Donald was a fairly young man for the clientele at Sea and Sunset; he brought the mean age way down. But he’d been eager to move in, so here he was.
He walked with his father down the hall toward the dining area, then peeled off at the main set of doors and pushed his way outside, heading to his truck. He dialed the sheriff as he climbed inside, but learned from Brenda, the dispatcher, that Vandra wasn’t around. Could someone else help him?
“What about Detective Stone? He there?”
“I can put you through.”
Stone sounded distracted when he answered, so Sam just started right in. “I’m trying to reach the sheriff. Joe didn’t burn that boat. I don’t care what the kid . . . Mayfield . . . said.”
“You see Mayfield yet?” Stone asked.
“That’s on today’s agenda.”
Stone exhaled slowly and said, “Vandra won’t appreciate me giving you Mayfield’s name. He doesn’t like family interference during an investigation.”
Sam sensed something in Stone’s tone, a dissatisfaction, maybe? Definitely a caution. “Why’d you give it to me, then?”
“We could use more people looking into what happened, family or otherwise. Just my opinion.”
And you and Detective Dunbar have had your hands tied by the sheriff’s assertion that the fire was set by Joe.
“Who interviewed Mayfield?” Sam asked. “Was it just Vandra?”
“Yep.”
“Is that usual? For the sheriff to conduct investigative interviews?”
“We all do the same work.” The answer was short, his tone cool. Whatever Stone felt, he was keeping it to himself, but Sam sensed the detective thought there was more to be learned.
“I’ll call you after I see Mayfield,” Sam said, wondering if he could fit that in before picking up Jules. He needed to call the hospital and get some kind of idea about the anticipated time of her release. He also still needed to pick up that burner phone for Jules, since she was in no condition yet to fight it out with her cell phone carrier.
Staring through the dusty windshield, he placed the call to Tillamook Hospital, and after being routed around for a while, learned that Julia Ford was unlikely to be released before eleven. That gave him some time, so he hung up, fired up his truck, and drove to Seaside, where he purchased the disposable cell phone. Then he headed back down the coast. He put a call in to the marina, hoping to catch Mayfield and risking a ticket while he drove, as his Bluetooth wasn’t working. Maybe the kid would be at the marina this early, or maybe not. Sam’s nebulous plan had always been to just show up and take the kid unawares, make him tell his story without any rehearsal. But a call to the marina would at least tell him if Ryan Mayfield was on the premises.
“Yep?” an older male voice answered as an apparently usual form of greeting.
“Is this Bay Marina in Nehalem?”
“Sure is.”
“Is Ryan Mayfield working today?”
“No sirree. Should be here tomorrow, though.”
“Okay, thanks.” Damn. He clicked off before the man could ask who wanted to know. Now, what?
He wondered if he should track the kid down at his home. He could call Stone back and ask for an address, but sensed the detective had given him about as much help as he could without risking the sheriff deeming his actions total insubordination. Instead he called Griff. No answer. The call went straight to voice mail. Sam left a quick message: “Hey. This is Sam. Give me a call.”
He was passing Salchuk when he decided to try the Spindrift again. It was still early enough for breakfast and he still hankered for the huevos rancheros he’d seen on their menu yesterday. Sam’s appetite had come back with a vengeance, and he’d almost stayed and breakfasted with his father, but he’d been too antsy.
There was a parking spot right in front of the restaurant, which he zipped into. Inside, he was shown to a seat in one of the booths and ordered the huevos and a cup of black coffee as soon as the waitress appeared. His mind was circling back to the circumstances of his brother’s death and, of course to Jules. Always Jules.
When his breakfast arrived, it smelled and looked delicious, both refried and black beans circled two eggs smothered in melted cheddar and simmering in red ranchero sauce. He tucked into the flour tortilla, forking up the beans, eggs, and sauce, feeling better than he had since he’d learned about Joe. The deep heaviness from the loss was still inside him, but he was better than yesterday.
One step at a time, he told himself, already thinking about his next move as he drained his coffee. He couldn’t sit still too long, had to keep on track and find out what the hell had happened to Joe. Suicide? No way. But what about murder? If Joe had planned on torching the boat himself, to end it all, why take Jules? It just didn’t make sense and it pissed him off big-time that the sheriff would even entertain such a notion.
He paid for the breakfast, dropping a healthy tip on the young girl who’d served him—a different waitress from yesterday’s, this one a little nicer—telling her it was the best meal he’d had in a long, long time.
“Thank you!” she said with a bright smile. “I’ll tell the cook.”
As he drove back toward Highway 101, summer sun glinting off the hood of his truck, he took a quick turn to circle by his brother’s office. He needed to do a more thorough search of Jules’s house and find the extra keys. Meanwhile, there had to be a way into the office. If he could just keep Officer Bolles off his back and maybe get some cooperation, then—
Sam looked over at the small house Joe had rented and immediately screeched to a stop. A cold frisson slid down his spine and pooled in the small of his back. The front door of Joe’s office was thrown wide open. Through the door Sam could see papers strewn across the floor, drawers tossed on the floor, a lamp overturned.
Someone was there.
Heart pounding, he jumped out of the truck, left it running, and ran pell-mell toward the office door. One step inside and his worst fears were confirmed. The place had been completely trashed. Every drawer in the desk and credenza had been yanked open, most of the contents spilled on the floor, cushions of a small couch dumped and slashed, stuffing visible, plaques and pictures ripped from the walls and smashed on the floor.
What the hell?
On full alert, he did a quick run-through of the three rooms, a back break room with a counter, microwave, and minifridge, the bathroom, and the main office. No one. He took a deep breath. Mentally cursed the intruder, felt his anger mount. Whoever’d been there was gone. He waited for his racing pulse to slow down. He’d had a moment where he’d automatically reached for his gun, which he no longer carried, his hand swiping dead air near the hip where his holster had held his Glock.
Back in the main office he righted a chair and looked at the drawers and papers scattered every which way on the floor. Someone had tossed the place but good. Obviously searching for something. Something important. Something to do with the reason Joe was killed. Telling himself to remain calm, to survey the damage as a cop, not Joe’s brother, he let his eyes travel over the space without moving for several minutes, taking everything in, but understanding little. Eventually, he headed back down the short hall.
In the kitchen, cabinet doors were thrown open and everything was tossed in a pile on the floor; paper plates, plasticware, coffee bags slit and spilled, a couple of apples, and a small container of half-and-half made up most of the mess. He took a few steps and stood in the doorway of the bathroom, where toilet paper, cleansers, soap, and various and sundry medicine cabinet supplies—Band-Aids, throat lozenges, aspirin, and mouthwash—had been thrown about the small room.
Disgusted and seeing nothing that would explain why the place had been ransacked, he returned to the main room—Joe’s office, he thought with a pang. Pushing thoughts of his brother aside, he bent down to the papers, examining them without touching them. He shifted a few with the toe of his sneaker. They were mostly skinny manuals, financial circulars, and a scratch pad with a number of doodles. “SKY HARBOR” was spelled out in all caps, and below it the letters “CF.” Sam committed both to memory and realized the writing looked like the same on the missing Cardaman note. “Sky Harbor” sounded familiar, but it wasn’t anywhere he knew on the Oregon coast. He picked up a pencil from one of the open drawers and, using the eraser, leaned down to push other pages aside. There appeared to be no work files among the papers. Nothing to do with Joe’s business beyond general information pertaining to financial companies.
“CF” . . . Could that refer to the Cardaman file? Like the note had?
He thought about it awhile, thought it might be right. It seemed Joe had written the note, left it at his house, but who had taken it? And why?
Joe’s work files were on the missing computer, he concluded, or uploaded to a secure site. There might be paper files somewhere, but there were no file drawers in the office. He saw Wi-Fi paraphernalia tucked on a shelf to one side of the desk, and a desk phone, but there was no computer of any kind. So where the hell was it? Back at the house? He hadn’t noticed it. On the boat with Joe when it burned and sank? Or had it already been stolen by whoever was behind the mess in this office? Sam spied a power cord for charging a laptop, but said laptop was no longer on the desk. Had the intruder stolen it along with a desktop, or had it still been in Joe’s possession, tucked away somewhere, when he’d gotten on the boat? He sure hoped it was the latter.
He’d just straightened when he heard an approaching engine and shortly thereafter, a step on the outside porch.
He waited and froze in place when the muzzle of a Glock edged around the doorframe, followed quickly by Officer Bolles. The gun was aimed straight at Sam’s midsection.
“Whoa, now,” Sam said.
“Hands up,” Bolles growled, and Sam immediately complied. “Put that down,” the cop snapped, and Sam realized Bolles meant the pencil he was still holding.
Sam had been a cop long enough to recognize that Bolles was so nervous he might make a serious mistake. “All right.” Sam lowered his right arm and eased the pencil to the desk where it rolled toward Bolles before falling off the edge and bouncing onto the floor.
“Careful, there,” Bolles warned.
Sam put both arms up again, palms out. He wasn’t going to give this bohunk cop any reason to shoot first and answer questions later, which he sensed was a real possibility.
“What’re you looking for, Mr. Ford?” Bolles demanded.
“I’m not sure, but I didn’t break in. The door was open and I could see papers on the floor. Looked like the place had been burgled.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Everything was hunky-dory this morning,” he said.
“What time was that?” Sam questioned.
“Earlier.”
“You said you were going to keep an eye on my brother’s office, yet . . .” He looked over the mess on the floor.
Bolles’s face suffused with color. Sam worried for a second that he’d pushed the man too far. “Okay, smart guy. I think we’d better go down to the station and see the chief.”
The chief? The police department in Salchuk couldn’t be more than five people. “I look forward to meeting him or her,” Sam said.
“Him,” Bolles hissed.
“All right.”
“You head back out that door and I’ll follow behind you.”
Sam did as he was told, but his temper was rising. He told himself to let the situation just play out. Not give Bolles any reason to do something stupid. But as the officer marched him outside, he couldn’t resist saying, “You know, your sorry ass is gonna be in a sling when it comes out that you let someone break into my brother’s office.”
“I didn’t let them, asshole!”
“You’re the one who told me you would be patrolling, so this is your problem, Officer Bolles.”
“Just get in the goddamn car.”
He meant his patrol car, the same dark blue Ford Explorer with “Salchuk Police” swept up the side of it in white letters.
“Mind if I turn off my truck first?” Sam asked. Its engine was still rumbling away, the driver’s door wide open.
“Fine.”
He could hear Bolles holster his gun, which was comforting as he walked to his truck. No good getting into a pissing contest with Bolles, whose mental skills didn’t seem to rise above average. He was lucky the officer hadn’t decided to handcuff him. He reached into the truck, switched off the ignition, and pocketed his keys.
As he climbed into the back of Bolles’s Explorer, Bolles got behind the wheel and said, “I’ll have Cesar, our maintenance guy, come and secure this place.”
Then he drove the three blocks to the station.