“Forget it,” Elias said.
Charity glanced at him. “What did you do?”
Hank raised his brows. “Don’t you know? Thanks to Winters, the Voyagers are going to get back most of their money.”
“What are you talking about?” Charity demanded.
Elias shrugged. “Let’s just say that Rick Swinton decided to make amends.”
“I don’t believe that for one minute,” Charity said.
“Neither does anyone else.” Hank chuckled. “Everyone knows it was Winters who somehow convinced Swinton to do the right thing and put the Voyagers’ funds into a trust account to be dispersed by the bank. No one’s dumb enough to ask Winters just how he pulled off that neat little trick.”
Charity was dumbfounded. “Swinton turned over the funds?”
“Yep.” The lines around Hank’s eyes crinkled. “I had a talk with Seth Broad down at the bank around noon. He says that Swinton walked in with Winters right behind him at about ten-twenty this morning and announced he wanted to see to it that the Voyagers got their money back.”
“Amazing,” Charity breathed.
“Swinton had a couple hundred grand wired in from a Seattle account and signed it over to the bank’s trust department,” Hank continued. “He also very kindly provided the bank with a list of the amounts each Voyager had contributed to the so-called cause. The trust department will take it from there.”
Charity looked at Elias. He gave her his mysterious smile. His eyes warned her not to say too much.
“That’s just terrific,” she said brightly.
“You can say that again.” Hank picked up his thick, white coffee mug and took a long, weary swallow. “Not all of those Voyagers were from out of town, you know. My cousin’s daughter got involved with Gwendolyn’s crowd. Turned over a thousand bucks to her. That money was supposed to help pay for this year’s college expenses.”
Charity grinned. “So Elias is a local hero, hmm?”
“If he decides to run for the town council, he’ll be a shoo-in.” Hank chuckled. “Hell, I’ll vote for him myself.”
“That won’t be necessary. I’m not interested in politics.” Elias got to his feet. “If you’re finished with us, Chief, we’ll be on our way.”
“That should do it,” Hank said. “If I have any more questions, I’ll give you a call.”
“Do you have any suspects yet?” Charity asked.
“Just between you and me,” Hank looked at her over the rims of his reading glasses. “I’m up to my ass in suspects.”
“Come on, Charity, you know he can’t talk about the case.” Elias took her arm in a firm grip. “Let’s get out of here and let the man do his job.”
She managed to keep her curiosity in check until they reached the sidewalk in front of the station. As they walked toward her car, she gave Elias a sidelong glance. “So, you just took a quick look inside Swinton’s motor home to see if he was there last night?”
“He wasn’t.”
“You don’t say. I’ve got to hand it to you, Elias. That was very, very smooth. You told Chief Tybern the truth without quite telling him the whole truth.”
“Trust me, Tybern didn’t want the whole truth. He’s smart enough to know that some things are better left alone. He’s satisfied with the results this morning.”
“In other words, he doesn’t intend to ask you to explain the method you used to persuade Rick Swinton to turn over the Voyagers’ funds to the bank.”
“I didn’t lay a hand on Swinton.”
“Hah. You may not have touched him, but I’ll bet you intimidated him something fierce.”
“Some people are easier to intimidate than others.” Elias reached down to open the car door. “I just mentioned to him that keeping all of the money he had siphoned out of the Voyagers’ account could look like a pretty good motive for murder to some people.”
Charity blinked. “Whew. You play rough.”
He straightened and braced one hand on the roof of the car. His eyes met hers, searching without betraying his own thoughts. “Does it bother you?”
“What? That you bullied Swinton into returning the Voyagers’ money?” Charity smiled. “You must be kidding! He deserved it. But I do have a couple of questions.”
“What questions?”
“First, do you think Swinton really might be the murderer?”
“I doubt it. He might be capable of hiring someone to pull the trigger, but I don’t think he could do it himself. He’s an embezzler. He doesn’t have the stomach for heavy violence. Too much risk.”
“You sound very certain of that.”
“No one can be absolutely certain about another person. But I think the odds are against Swinton being the killer. What’s your other question?”
“Why did you do it?” she asked very softly. “Why confront Swinton and force him to turn over the money? You don’t really know any of the Voyagers except Arlene, and you’re barely acquainted with her. There was no reason for you to get involved.”
There was a heartbeat of silence. And then another. The stillness in Elias was absolute. Charity could feel him retreating into himself.
It occurred to her that he might not know the answer to her question. It also occurred to her that he didn’t like the fact that he didn’t know it.
“The river of justice flows through many channels,” he finally said in a very neutral voice. “Some are obvious. Others must be opened by the observer.”
“Forget I asked.” Charity wrinkled her nose. “I know why you did it.”
His gaze narrowed. “Why?”
She stood on tiptoe and touched the side of his face with her fingertips. “Because you’re very sweet.”
“Sweet?”
“Yes. Sweet.” She patted his cheek. Then she brushed her mouth lightly across his, stepped back briefly to admire the stunned expression in his eyes, and then got quickly behind the wheel of her car.
She turned the key in the ignition and hit the gas. Something told her it would not be a good idea to hang around.
Sweet.
Elias eyed the curry paste he was in the midst of preparing. He had already taken the recipe to the outer limits, heat-wise, but he added a few more of the intensely flavored, hot red chiles, just for the hell of it.
Whatever else Charity would be able to say about tonight’s dinner, she would definitely not be able to call it sweet. He had spent the entire day plotting the menu.
The meal was built around a fiery potato and garbanzo bean curry. It was accompanied by a salad laced with a pepper-flavored dressing. Dessert was a very tart lime sorbet.
“This is war, Otis.”
Crazy Otis, perched on top of his cage, bobbed his head and uttered his evil chuckle.
Elias held up a plump jalapeño chile pepper. “As you are my witness, Otis. She shall never call me sweet again.”
“Heh, heh, heh.”
Elias still wasn’t sure why the word rankled. He only knew he had been fuming quietly since the previous afternoon when Charity had patted him as if he lad been an especially good dog, given him that airy little butterfly kiss, smiled, and called him sweet.
He was fairly certain that sweet was a word women used for babies, puppies, and brothers.
Sweet. It was an unpleasant, unsettling, uninspiring word. It was a bland, noncommittal, very dull word. And it sent a chill through him.
Charity’s eyes watered at the first taste of the curry. She blinked back the moisture, put down her fork, and snatched up her glass of wine.
“I’m still experimenting with the recipe,” Elias murmured.
“Tasty.” She gulped another swallow of wine, hoping the alcohol would kill the fire.
“The curry paste emphasizes three different varieies of red chiles.”
“I could tell.”
“Not too hot?”
She smiled grimly as she set the wineglass on the low table. “Hotter than Mount St. Helens, and you know it.”
; Elias looked pleased. “Try the salad.”
Warily she forked up a bite of salad. The dressing vas almost as hot as the potato and garbanzo bean curry. She breathed deeply and swallowed the smoldering greens. “Zesty.”
He frowned thoughtfully as he munched lettuce. “You don’t think the dressing is just a tad on the sweet side?”
“Sweet?” Alarm bells went off in Charity’s brain. Sweet? She reached for a slice of corn bread. “Not in the least.”
“How about the corn bread? I don’t like sweet corn bread, myself.”
Charity swallowed and took another deep breath. “I don’t think you have to worry about the corn bread. All the jalapeño chiles you put into it do an excellent job of masking any trace of sweetness.”
His eyes gleamed. “Thank you.”
She pondered his expression for a few seconds, read the challenge in him, and picked up her fork again. She was not entirely certain what was going on, but she knew she would eat every bite on her plate even if it resulted in the first fully documented case of spontaneous human combustion.
The sound of a big car in the drive came as a welcome distraction.
“You’ve got a visitor,” Charity announced with relief. She put down her fork.
The gleam vanished from Elias’s eyes. The familiar enigmatic expression returned. “I’m not expecting anyone.”
A car door slammed. A moment later someone knocked loudly on the kitchen entrance.
“I’ll be right back.” Elias rose from the low cushion. “Go ahead and finish the curry. Wouldn’t want it to get cold.”
“This stuff wouldn’t get cold if you froze it in a glacier for a few thousand years.”
Elias’s mouth tilted at one corner. He crossed the room into the kitchen and opened the back door.
“Sorry to bother you, Winters,” Leighton Pitt said. “Wondered if I could talk to you for a few minutes.”
“I’ve got company.”
“This is important,” Leighton muttered.
Charity looked up from her seat on the cushion. “Hello, Leighton. I’m very sorry about Gwendolyn. I know the two of you were divorced, but, still, it must have been a terrible shock.”
“’Evening, Charity.” Leighton nodded distractedly as he stepped through the doorway. Behind the lenses of his aviator glasses, his eyes looked haunted. “It was a shock, all right. Look, I don’t mean to intrude, but I need to talk to Winters, here, if you don’t mind.”
“No, of course not,” Charity said.
Elias moved to shut the door behind Leighton. “Anything you want to say to me, you can say in front of Charity.”
Leighton scowled. “This is business, Winters.”
“The nature of water and the nature of business share certain properties,” Elias said. “Neither is as simple as each appears at first glance.”
Leighton stared at him. “How’s that?”
“Don’t pay any attention to him, Leighton.” Charity waved him to a cushion. “He gets into these moods. Have a seat.”
Leighton started forward and then came to a halt when he saw the two low cushions on the floor. “That’s all right. I’d rather stand.”
“First, take off your shoes,” Elias said.
“Huh?”
“Your shoes. You can leave them at the door.”
Leighton stared, obviously bemused, at Charity’s bare feet, and then he noticed that Elias was also shoeless. Awkwardly, he stepped out of his tasseled taupe loafers.
Charity could not help but notice that the richest man in town had holes in his socks.
Elias glided around Leighton and went back to his cushion. He sank down onto it with an effortless movement. “What did you want to talk about, Pitt?”
Leighton glanced uncertainly at Charity and then appeared to steel himself. “Look, I’ll be blunt here, Winters. I want in on whatever you’re setting up for your off-shore clients. I can carry my own weight. I’ve got the kind of inside information you’re going to need to pull off your project.”
“There is no project,” Elias said.
“Don’t give me that bullshit,” Leighton exploded. “I know you’ve got something brewing and that it involves that pier. The whole damn town knows it. Let me in on it. I can make it worth your while to take me on board.”
“I didn’t acquire Crazy Otis Landing for off-shore clients or anyone else,” Elias said quietly.
“Look, I’m going to put my cards on the table.” Leighton began to pace the small room. “I admit that I’m in kind of a bind, financially speaking.”
Elias studied him. “A bind?”
“Gwen screwed me over but good.” Leighton’s mouth thinned. “She had her revenge, all right. Just as she promised at the time of the divorce. She ruined me. And I was such a fool that I never even saw it coming until it was all over.”
Charity watched Leighton pull a handkerchief out of his pocket and mop his brow. “What do you mean?”
“She conned me.” Leighton turned and trundled heavily back across the room. “It was a hell of a scam, and I fell for it. Just about wiped me out. I’ve got almost nothing left. I think Jennifer’s going to leave me if I don’t do something to recover from this quagmire. Things have been getting a little tense between the two of us lately, and this will tear everything apart.”
“What was the scam?” Elias asked.
Leighton drew a weary breath. “A couple of months ago I got a phone call from someone who claimed to represent a California developer. The guy said that his firm wanted to acquire view property along the bluff for a golf course and spa resort. Maybe eventually put in a community of resort condos. Naturally they wanted to get the land at reasonable rates.”
“Naturally,” Elias said. “And they had selected you to help them pick up the first big parcels in a discreet manner.”
“I realize now that the man who called me was probably Rick Swinton, although I can’t prove it. At any rate, I saw my chance to pull off the deal of a lifetime. Gwen and I still owned that old campground on the bluff, you see. It was the one piece of property we didn’t sell at the time of the divorce. We both knew it might be very valuable in the future, so we agreed to hang on to it together.”
“I know,” Elias said.
“Prime view land. Naturally the developer wanted it. I figured all I had to do was get Gwen to sell me her half-interest. Then I could turn around and sell the whole parcel to the developer.”
“For a small fortune?” Charity clarified.
Leighton shot her a quick glance. “Let’s just say for a very nice chunk of change. But before I could make my offer to Gwen, she showed up with those damn Voyagers. I couldn’t figure out what the hell she was doing. Then I realized she had to be using the cult to milk investment funds out of people dumb enough to believe alien spaceships would come to take them away.”
“Did you approach her about selling you her half-interest in the campground?” Charity asked.
“Of course.” Leighton waved a hand. “Figured we could do business together, in spite of the past. Whatever else she was, Gwen was a real first-rate businesswoman.”
“What happened?” Elias asked.
Leighton shook his head. “She admitted up front that she was running a con on the Voyager crowd. Said they were all getting what they deserved. I told her I wanted to buy out her half of the campground. She agreed, provided she could use the property until the fifteenth of August. She said that by the middle of August she’d have collected the money she needed to finance some investments she had in mind. We had a deal. Or so I thought.”
“She agreed to let you buy out her half-interest in the campground?”
“Right.” Leighton mopped his brow again. “I offered her a fair price for her share.”
“You mean you offered her a price based on land values in the current Whispering Waters Cove real estate market.” Elias took a sip of his wine. “Not what the land would be worth to a major resort developer.”
Leighton
scowled. “Business is business.”
Elias shrugged. “Water is water, but no two waves are the same. Some break harmlessly against the shore. Others conceal riptides that can carry the unwary out to sea.”
Leighton looked briefly baffled. “Uh-huh. Well, to make a long story short, Gwen came to see me a couple of weeks ago. Said she’d heard the rumors about the resort development. Said the fact that you were here in town, Winters, meant that something really big must be in the air. I thought she was going to renege on our deal.”
Charity toyed with her fork. “But instead she just raised the price for her share of the campground, right?”
Leighton frowned. “How did you know?”
“I sort of saw it coming,” Charity said gently.
“Wish I had.” Leighton sighed heavily. “Gwen wanted five times what I had offered her for that land. I said it wasn’t worth it. She claimed that, based on what she knew about Elias Winters, it was worth ten times as much as she was asking.”
“You let her convince you that even if you paid her five times the value of her share of the campground, you would still make a fortune when you sold to the developer?” Charity asked.
“I know it sounds stupid in hindsight.” Leighton’s soft, plump hand bunched into a thick fist. “But it wasn’t just Gwen who kept the pressure on. I was getting almost daily calls from the representative of the phony developer.”
Elias watched him. “Swinton?”
“Probably. He kept increasing his offer for the land if I could just get title to the whole piece. He said his people wanted to be certain they could get that one parcel. Said the developer was willing to pay top dollar for the old campground if the deal was handled quietly so as not to drive up the values of the surrounding properties.”
Charity watched him intently. “So you kept upping your offer to Gwendolyn?”
Leighton shuddered. “I told myself I had to get hold of that land, whatever it took. It was like a fever or something. I lost my sense of perspective. Then the developer’s representative called again. Offered to make me a partner in the resort deal.”
Elias watched him intently. “All you had to do was put up a large chunk of investment cash, right?”
Leighton closed his eyes. “I went way out on a limb.”
Deep Waters Page 18