by Kathi Daley
“No, I don’t have proof that your dad was undercover for a government organization while he worked for Henderson, though the theory does fit what we know about him to date,” Tony said, answering a question Mike must have asked.
“Yes, it is possible that Star was killed because of the information contained in the file she received if the person who killed her believed she had read all the paperwork and had the potential to do something with it,” Tony said after a brief pause to listen to Mike’s reply.
It had occurred to me many times in the past weeks that if we wanted to figure out who, if anyone, might want to kill Star because of the file, we needed to figure out exactly what was in it.
“Yes, I have considered that,” Tony said.
Considered what? I wondered. Listening in on half the conversation wasn’t turning out to be as informative as I’d hoped.
“I have a theory, but at this point, all it is is a theory,” Tony said. “We suspect that Star and Colton found the hidden panel and everything that was stored in it. We also suspect that initially, Star put the items she found in the desk in her safety deposit box, along with the file that she had obtained from Denton’s friend.” Tony paused; I supposed Mike might have said something. Then he went on. “Yes, we are aware that on the day she died, Star went into the bank to access her safety deposit box, and we assume she took everything that was in it with her when she left because the box is empty now. What if Colton noticed the envelope Star received from Denton’s friend when she showed up with the items she found in the desk, and what if, when she died, Colton not only took everything that had been hidden in the desk but the envelope as well?”
Wow. Tony pretty effectively had figured out a way to link Colton into the whole thing if it was someone connected to Star and her past that had killed him. If Colton was able to take possession of the envelope, maybe he did something that alerted whoever had killed Star that he had it, which was what led to his own death. I had to hand it to Tony; he really was a genius.
Of course, in this case, I found myself hoping he was wrong. It was horrible that two people were dead no matter what the reason, but the idea that their deaths could somehow be linked with my father and his covert activities left me with a rumbling feeling in my stomach. Of course, this was the theory I’d been working off of all along, so I wasn’t sure why I was surprised it was all coming together.
“I have a thought,” I said.
Tony glanced at me and then told Mike to hang on for a moment. “Is it something you want me to mention to Mike?”
I nodded. “While I was sitting here listening to you talking to Mike, the idea popped into my head that the fingerprints on the ‘open’ and ‘closed’ sign at Star’s shop might have the fingerprints of the man who kicked Jillian out. I know the store is a public place and there will be way too many prints found within the interior to home in on any one set, but who other than Star, who ran the shop without any employees, would be flipping the sign back and forth?”
“Hang on,” Tony said. He put his phone on Speaker. “Tell Mike what you just said to me.”
I did, and Mike agreed that the sign might provide a clean set of prints. Jillian had specifically said that the man in the suit who had kicked her out of the store had flipped the sign from “open” to “closed” himself. We all agreed it was certainly worth taking a look. Mike and Bree lived in town and were not snowed in, so he would be able to head to Star’s store to retrieve the sign.
After he signed off, Tony and I discussed several options for the day. It was a good day to stay in, but part of me felt a lot more isolated than my busy mind wanted to accept.
“I’m going to log on and check my emails while we figure out what to do next,” Tony said.
“I should check mine as well. I haven’t even logged on for a couple of days.”
We both picked up our laptops and settled in at the table in front of the fireplace.
“That’s odd,” Tony said.
“What is?” I asked.
“I have an email, and the entire body of it is two words, a name actually.”
That had my interest. “What name?”
“Darwin Norlander.”
“Who is Darwin Norlander?” I wondered.
“I have no idea. Nor can I tell immediately who sent it. I’m going downstairs where I can take a closer look with my large computers.”
I folded up my laptop. “I’ll come with you.”
Tony went straight to one of his workstations and began to type. I sat down in one of the chairs he’d provided for the times when I joined him there, a comfy one that reclined, so I settled in, reopened my laptop, and went back to my own emails.
After a while, Tony said, “Darwin Norlander was an associate of Layton Henderson. In fact, it appears he was one of the few considered to be a member of his inner circle.”
“Was?” I asked.
“According to the information I have been able to dig up, it appears that Norlander and Henderson parted ways maybe six or eight months ago.”
“Okay, that could be important. Who sent you the email with the name?” I asked.
“I have no idea. I’ve tried to backtrack and trace the source, but I’m being blocked at every turn. Whoever sent the email wanted me to have the man’s name but did not want to be found or identified.”
“My dad?”
“Perhaps. I would think that, given his resources, he knows exactly what is going on in White Eagle.”
I got up from the chair and walked across the room. I stood behind Tony. “So, what are you going to do?”
Tony pulled up a photo. “This is Darwin Norlander. Could he be the man who shot Star?”
I looked carefully at the man in the photo. “Yes. That could be him. I didn’t see the man’s face, but he had dark hair like the man in the photo, and he was tall and thin, as it appears this man is.” I put my hand on Tony’s shoulder. “Is it possible my dad just handed us the killer?”
Tony minimized the photo and kept scrolling through a mass of code that I didn’t recognize. “Maybe. Of course, we don’t know for certain that the email came from your dad, and this isn’t enough to prove this is the man who shot Star. And even if he is, we’ll need to figure out whether he also shot Colton.”
“How are we going to prove any of that?”
Tony paused and sat back in his chair. “I’m not sure yet. Right now, I’m trying to see if I can find out where in the world Darwin Norlander was during the eight days between Star and Colton’s murder.”
“We really need Star’s file,” I said.
“I agree, but it seems possible to me that the file is long gone. If we find it, great, but we need to work on finding our answers another way.” Tony turned his attention back to the computer. “I want to check out a few things. Can you run upstairs and call Mike? Tell him about the email and let him know I’ll call him if I find something important.”
“Okay. I can do that. I’ll be back down when I’m done.”
The secure room downstairs had no cell service, so I understood why Tony couldn’t call Mike himself without having to stop what he was doing, but I still found myself hoping that my being the one to call wouldn’t send the wrong message.
Thankfully, Mike seemed fine with getting the call from me, and he was excited that we had a new lead that might have been provided by our father. I knew there was no way to know that for sure, but I suspected that both Mike and I secretly wanted some sort of proof that Dad was really a good guy, not some sort of monster.
Chapter 18
The next several hours consisted of me waiting around and wondering while Tony focused all his attention on the task before him. Mike called me twice, which helped me to feel a bit more involved. The first call was to inform me that he had been able to lift a distinct set of prints from the store sign that did not match Star’s. He was running them through the federal database. The second was to inform me that he’d shown a photo of Darwin Norlander to Ji
llian, who able to tell him definitively that he was not the person who had kicked her out of Star’s store. That most likely meant the prints on the sign belonged to someone other than Norlander as well.
How many people were involved in this thing? I supposed the person who came to Star’s store could have been one of the good guys, who’d shown up to warn her that the file she had in her possession put her in danger. She might even have gone to retrieve the file with the intention of getting rid of it. Of course, if that was the case, I wasn’t sure how we’d know if she’d been successful in passing off the file or if she’d been shot before she could do anything with it. The fact that Colton died the following week indicated to me that if Star was killed at the hands of Darwin Norlander, Colton must have found the file and done something that landed him on Norlander’s radar as well. Maybe he did a computer search that set off bells and whistles, or maybe if there was information about Henderson in the file, Colton had gone digging in all the wrong places.
The sun had already begun to work its way toward the horizon when Tony finally emerged from the computer room.
“What did you find?” I asked as soon as he had a chance to grab a beer and take a seat in the living room.
“Darwin Norlander passed through customs at LAX on December 4th. In Los Angeles, he boarded a plane to Denver International the following day, and Star was shot the day after that. I think it’s very likely that he was the one who shot her.”
I felt myself cringe. So her death was related to her past. When I’d found out about the desk, I’d hoped for a different ending. “And Colton?”
Tony paused before answering. “I’m not sure. He died a week later. The timeline doesn’t make sense to me unless he didn’t pop up as a threat on Norlander’s radar until days after Star died.”
“I can see that. If Star retrieved the file she had been sent by Denton’s friend and hid it somewhere Colton would know about, it could have been a day or two before he went looking for it. Then he would have to read it and understand it enough to at least have some questions. I suppose he might have gone online at some point in an effort to find some answers and in doing so alerted whoever was monitoring things. Perhaps Norlander had left Montana but was still in the States, so when the alarm was sounded, he was sent back to take care of Colton as well.”
“I suppose it could have happened that way.”
“And the file?” I asked.
“I have no idea. We know that the man who shot Star went up to her house, killed her, and left. We don’t know for certain that was the same thing that happened with Colton, but given where his body was found, it seems likely. Still, I suppose whoever shot him could have gone looking for the file and found it in his office or somewhere else in his home. Unless we find the file ourselves, which would prove that Star didn’t hand it off and that it wasn’t stolen from Colton, we may never know what happened to it.”
“So, what now? How do we bring Norlander to justice, if he is, in fact, the one who shot two people?”
“Mike is calling a guy he knows at the FBI,” Tony answered. “If Norlander is involved, this is something that needs to be investigated by someone with more resources than Mike has.”
“Mike isn’t going to bring up Dad?”
Tony shook his head. “No, he isn’t. He wants to protect your dad as much as you do. He simply plans to say that an anonymous source brought up Norlander’s name and then take it from there.”
“Still, I have to admit to being worried. The feds are going to have questions that Mike isn’t going to want to answer.”
“If your dad is working for a government agency, as we suspect, chances are they already have the answers,” Tony pointed out.
I supposed that much was true. I hoped we’d get some sort of resolution ourselves. If Star and Colton were killed by someone with international ties, it was highly unlikely that Mike would be the one to make the arrest or to close out the murder files for two people who’d been part of the White Eagle family.
“So, what is Mike’s plan now?” I asked. Tony had been the last one to speak to him, so he knew more than I did. “If the feds agree to look into the murders, is Mike just going to stop looking for the killer? I mean, what if you two are wrong? What if Star and Colton were killed by a friend or a neighbor and not a thug working for a well-insulated billionaire?”
“I think that Mike plans to follow this through to the end. It may get even more confusing than it is right now if Henderson is behind everything, but keep in mind that it appears that Henderson and Norlander have parted ways. It might be possible that Norlander is working alone for some reason. Either way, I know that Mike wants real answers as much as we do.”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “I know.” I glanced out the window at the falling snow. “I wonder how Mom is doing.”
“Why don’t you call her?”
I’d considered doing that, but the plow still hadn’t been by, so it wasn’t like Tony and I could help even if she was involved in some sort of crisis. Normally, Tony could get into town with his big four-wheel-drive truck despite the snow, but last night’s storm had brought it down so hard and so fast that even larger vehicles weren’t getting through.
“I’ll try to call the county to see if I can find out when the plow might come by,” Tony offered. “I should have called earlier, but I became preoccupied once I noticed the email.”
“That’s understandable. If you think a call would help get them here sooner, I think you should try. I do want to be there to support Mom if at all possible.”
Tony made the call, and I went into the kitchen to scrounge up a snack. Tony had prepared a big breakfast, but I hadn’t eaten all that much of it, and we never did have lunch. I was sorting through the contents of the refrigerator when I heard the familiar rumble of the snowplow. Ah, help had arrived at last. Maybe Tony and I would just head into town and have dinner there. After we checked in with Mom, of course.
“I was still on hold when I heard the plow, so I hung up,” Tony said. “Should we head into town as soon as they make it through?”
“Let’s. Maybe we should drop the animals off at my cabin. That way, if the snow comes back, we won’t risk our being stuck in town while they are alone out here.”
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll start loading the truck.”
Chapter 19
Monday, December 23
While Saturday was a bust for the carnival portion of Christmas on Main, the sun came out on Sunday, which allowed the rides to reopen for the day. With the warmer temps brought on by the clear and sunny day, it seemed that everyone who ventured out had a wonderful time. It might not have been the record-breaking event the committee had hoped for, but at least it wouldn’t go down in history as a total loss either.
I couldn’t believe it was already Christmas week. Christmas Eve dinner would be at Mom’s and Christmas Day dinner this year would be at Mike and Bree’s. Tony and I had decided to stay in town and hang out at my cabin on Christmas Eve after we got home from Mom’s. We’d talked about heading out to his much more comfortable lake house, but the cabin was more convenient, and this year, I only had the one day off from work.
As for the murder investigations, Mike was working with the FBI, and I suspected the CIA was involved now as well. I didn’t know that for certain, but it did seem like something bigger than two small-town murders was going on here. Given the complexity of the issues, I’d had to reconcile myself to the fact that we might never have all the answers we were seeking.
I planned to spend tonight at Tony’s. Because we had family plans the next two nights, Tony and I had decided to have our couple’s Christmas tonight. We were going to share a nice dinner and then, hopefully, a night of uninterrupted romance. With the stress of the past few weeks, I felt like some one-on-one time was definitely needed.
Thankfully, my day’s route went faster than I’d expected. With the holiday fast approaching, I had another double-bag day with all the cards and gifts, but
for the most part, folks along my route had customers to see to in their stores, shopping for those last-minute gifts, so I hadn’t stopped to chat with them as I usually did.
It was dark by the time I made it out to Tony’s. I was singing along with the songs on the Christmas station as I pulled into the driveway to find another car sitting in front of the house.
“Dark blue sedan,” I said to Tilly.
I froze as I recognized the car in the drive. I couldn’t be 100 percent sure this car was the same one the person who’d killed Star had been driving, but it looked pretty close to the same to me. The question was, what should I do? Head inside and check it out? Flee before I was noticed?
Making a decision, I turned off my headlights and slowly backed out of the drive. I went down the street just a bit farther, then pulled over and called Mike.
“Hey, Tess, what’s up?”
“I just arrived at Tony’s. There is a car in his driveway. It looks like it might be the one the man who shot Star was driving.”
“Are you sure?”
“Not at all. It could belong to a friend of Tony’s, and nothing at all might be wrong. But my gut tells me otherwise. What should I do?”
“Where are you?”
“Parked along the street near Tony’s place.”