“Frustrating.”
“Yes. I am thinking the same thing.”
When I thanked Nando for calling Winona, he looked at me and shook his head. “It is a shame, you two. I hope you can fix things. I love you both.”
It was a busy day of pro bono work, which was good because it took my mind off my problems and helped me—along with several ibuprofen tablets—to cope with the pain in my shoulder. Things slowed down around three o’clock, and I started listening for the outside door, hoping Tracey Thomas would show. It was her habit to drop by on Fridays, after all. Sure enough, at a little past three-thirty I heard someone enter, which caused Archie to grumble a single woof and get up from his spot in the corner. I followed him into the waiting room, but he didn’t get his customary greeting, because Tracey saw my arm was in a sling first.
“My God, what happened, Cal?” she asked, her nutmeg eyes wide with surprise and concern. I told her the story and answered her questions while she petted Archie, who sat in front of her. “This thing’s assuming biblical proportions, Cal. It’s good you’ve got the Portland Police hooked in, but Scott will probably have to get the green light from Chief O’Hearn before he even questions Turner and Avery. Both those guys have political juice in this town.”
“I know that. I hope he does question them, because he’ll see how jumpy they are, particularly Turner. He’s about ready to pop.”
She nodded, her lovely face taking on a grim aspect. “The fact that they came after an innocent young woman shows how desperate they are.”
“Either that or someone else is calling the shots.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Boyarchenko?”
“Who else? Turner and Avery are dirty, no question, but I’m wondering if they would be that brazen on their own. If Angela winds up dead in a botched marijuana heist, they might accept that as a coincidental piece of good luck. Never underestimate what people will believe if they want to badly enough.”
She nodded. “That brings me to my news: The meeting between Arrowhead Investments and Wingate Properties is set for next Wednesday night.”
“Where?”
“At a restaurant out in the Willamette Valley called Langsted’s.”
“I know it,” I said. “It’s south, down by Aurora, high-end rustic. Definitely a private setting. What time are they meeting?”
“Nine-thirty.”
“Excellent.” I beamed a smile as I jotted down the information. “Did your source pick up anything else?”
“No. He was lucky to get this. The information’s being very tightly held.” Tracey smiled, and her look turned mischievous. “Can I go with you next week? I want to be in on the cloak-and-dagger stuff.”
I chuckled. “If I let you come I’d have to teach you the secret handshake, and you know I can’t do that.”
She made a face and laughed, then turned serious again. “How’s Angela holding up?” It was a topic I hadn’t covered.
“She has the courage of a lion. Nothing seems to shake her. She’s staying with Winona now, and I’m keeping close tabs on her.”
“That’s generous of Winona. How are things between you two?”
“Broken.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Cal.” She stood up to leave and stretched, the spandex of her jogging pants conforming to her slender, well-muscled legs. “Well, I’ve got three miles to run.”
I walked her to the front door and opened it. She turned to face me, the afternoon light igniting the gold flecks in her eyes. She moved a little closer to me and smiled. “I, uh, don’t have to run, you know.”
I smiled back, involuntarily locked onto her lovely eyes. “What did you have in mind?”
Her look turned mischievous again. She pulled the door closed with her left hand, curled her right hand around the back of my neck, and pulled gently until our lips met. The kiss ramped up from exploratory to pure passion in a couple of mutual heartbeats. She moved her body into mine and I reciprocated, pressing her gently against the door. It seemed a good fit.
But I pulled away. She moaned, looking up at me. “What’s the matter?”
I stepped back. “I’m sorry, Tracey. I can’t do this. Not now.”
She dropped her eyes and nodded. “Okay, I get it. And I’m a patient woman.” Then she looked back up and smiled with more good nature than I thought possible. “But, Jesus, Cal, now I’m going to have to run six miles instead of three.”
After Tracey left, I turned to Archie, who was napping in the corner. “Not now? Really? Excuse me while I take a cold shower.”
Chapter Thirty-one
The big Doug firs swayed in the wind, producing a sound like the sifting of water through fine pebbles; a susurrus of fir needles that always calmed me. It was the following Tuesday, and I sat there listening, eyes closed, on an old wrought iron bench that afforded a view of the valley. Except for the odd clank and shout of a worker, the incessant noise of the gravel mining operation below the Aerie was quiet that day. A day of maintenance for the rock-crusher, I figured. Whatever the reason, I was thankful for the respite. I sat there thinking of the things I loved about the property—the seclusion, the view, the stoutly built old farmhouse resting on fertile soil. But it was the Douglas firs, over thirty of them, many well over a hundred feet tall, that I loved the most. Growing here long before I was born, the majestic behemoths stood like sentinels, watching over the Aerie and every living thing within its five-acre bounds.
I heard a car at the gate, opened my eyes, and glanced at my watch. It was the second of two realtors I’d invited out to get an estimate of my property value. The realtor’s name was Valerie Thatcher, a tall woman with a head of ringlet curls that bounced like springs, a firm handshake, and a pre-approved smile. I showed her around the property, then inside the house. “Oh,” she said, standing in the dining room, “I adore the crown molding and the parquet floors. Original, right?” I nodded, and she went on, “The wavy cut glass in the built-in cabinets must be original, too. How lovely.”
“The place is circa 1920, but they built houses to last back then.” I pointed at a large radiator along a wall, its collection of fins thick with countless coats of paint. “That includes the heating system. It’s a little noisy at times, but it keeps the place toasty.” I felt a certain allegiance to the ancient boiler hunkered down in the basement, and to the antiquated collection of pipes and radiators that delivered the heat, because one of those clanking radiators saved my life once. But that wasn’t the reason the system was still around. I couldn’t afford to upgrade it.
After touring the house, we wound up on the side porch, which I’d swept clean of telltale quarry dust. There was a low cloud cover that day, but enough light that the spring colors in the valley popped. “Such a beautiful view. Why isn’t the quarry operating today? I heard it’s a seven-day operation.”
I shrugged. “You’ll have to ask McMinnville Sand and Gravel.” I paused and looked at her. It was time to ask the question. “How tough will it be to sell with the quarry back in operation?”
She shook her head. “Very tough, but with the right price you can move this property due to the gorgeous view. We’re talking about a buyer who’s not worried about living next to a mining operation.” I coaxed a possible asking price out of Valerie, which was about a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars less than I’d paid for the property. Ouch. I did some quick math in my head. By the time I paid off the balance of my mortgage and paid her commission, I’d be in the hole five to ten thousand. My stomach dropped, and I tried again to imagine staying put. Even if Archie could cope, I realized there was no way. I hated the mining as much as he did.
I grimaced. “Well, the good news is your asking price is better than what the guy who just left gave me, but the bad news is it still leaves me upside down.”
I thanked her, took her card, and said I’d be in touch. It was even worse than
I feared. I watered the plants, did a load of laundry, and left, feeling all the while like I’d been gutshot.
“I’ve checked out the area around Langsted’s Restaurant,” I said to Nando. It was later that day, and we were having a beer on the back deck of Hopworks Urban Brewery on Powell Boulevard. Archie lay at my feet, blithely ignoring a rambunctious border collie two tables over. “There’s a grove of trees that runs along the west side of the restaurant, maybe a hundred feet from the entrance. Looks like pretty good cover in there, and it’s higher in elevation. We should get some good looks before they go inside. You’ll have enough zoom to get close-ups, right?”
“More than enough. My Canon XA Thirty has excellent night vision capability and a twenty X zoom. We can make stills from our best shots and enlarge them further, if needed.” I wasn’t surprised. When it came to PI surveillance equipment, whether it was listening devices, micro GPS tracking chips, or night-vision cameras, Nando kept his firm at the leading edge. My friend reveled in the invasive gadgets, but I always felt uneasy about them.
“Good. I want facial images of everyone attending the meeting.” I was aware of the irony of my utterance. This wasn’t the time to worry about infringing on someone’s privacy rights. The stakes were too high.
Nando nodded after taking a drink of his beer, an IPA the waiter said might come close to Casique, a Cuban favorite of his. From the look on his face after he swallowed, it didn’t. “We will get the images, and if we don’t recognize someone, I will try to access the FBI Facial Recognition Database.”
“What are the chances of that?”
“It is always a challenge, and I try not to play the card too often, but I know the woman who manages the database in the Portland Police Bureau.” He flashed a brilliant smile. “Roses—she prefers yellow—and Chanel Gardénia usually work, although I may be called upon to sleep with her as well.”
I had to chuckle. “You would do this for me? Such dedication.”
Satisfied that Nando and I had a good plan, I gathered up Archie and headed over to Angela’s studio. I pushed Darius Bentley’s buzzer as a test, and when he didn’t respond, buzzed Angela, who let me in. Her studio door was open when I came into the hall. I saw the flash of the torch reflected on it and smelled the now-familiar acrid scent that persisted despite the fan droning in the window. I entered the studio and watched her sculpt for a while. When she finally looked up and closed the oxygen and acetylene valves on her torch, I said, “Great progress. I think she’s about ready for arms.”
Angela stood back from the sculpture and cocked her head. “Not quite. I don’t have the lines of the torso right yet. It’s really bugging me.” Then she allowed a smile. “But I’m further along than I thought I’d be, thanks to my forced vacation.”
After she closed up and we were on the way over to Winona’s, she said, “Why don’t you have dinner with us tonight?”
“Did you check with Winona?”
“Well, no,” she admitted. “I just thought of it. I can call her, but I’m sure she won’t mind.”
I chuckled inwardly. An unexpected guest for dinner—even one she wanted to see—would throw Winona into a tizzy. “Thanks, but I have other plans tonight.”
“Other plans?” I felt her eyes bore into the side of my face while I navigated the traffic. “That’s such bullshit, Cal.”
I shrugged with both shoulders, now that I had my right arm out of the sling. “I can’t make it tonight, okay?” I said with a harsh inflection I didn’t intend. Of course, I didn’t have any plans, but my injured pride was calling the shots at that moment.
“Okay, okay. Jeez, you two make a good pair.”
When I turned onto North Flint, I pulled over and let a half-dozen cars pass us, watching carefully as they hurried on toward the Broadway Bridge. Confident we weren’t being followed, I pulled out again. Angela knew the drill by this time. “You think Nightshade might still try to find me?”
“It’s not likely. He’s probably gone to deep cover by now. This is just a precaution.”
“Deep cover? Does that mean he’s gone back to his Dark Web cave, and we’ll never catch the dickwad?”
I shrugged again. “I don’t know. He’s a pro, and pros don’t make a lot of mistakes.”
I caught her shudder out of the corner of my eye. “That creeps me out.”
When I pulled up in front of Winona’s loft, Angela got out, then stuck her head back into the passenger side window. “Hey, almost forgot. I have an AA meeting tonight at nine at the Alano Club. Can I get a lift?”
I wanted to take her myself, but since I’d already proffered my phony excuse, said, “No problem. Since I’m tied up, I’ll send BB.” She kept her gaze on me for a couple of beats, then rolled her eyes, making it clear she hadn’t bought my story. I drove off, and if I had a tail, it would have been between my legs. Angela’s lie detection skills were formidable, just like my daughter Claire’s.
Back at Caffeine Central, I put on my jogging gear and took Archie for a hard run—hard for me, at least—across the Steel Bridge, down the Eastbank Esplanade, across the Hawthorne Bridge, and back to the Burnside. I took the steep stairs up to street level two at a time, and after crossing the Boulevard, kicked it home with Arch leading the way. I was exhausted, but after feeding my dog and taking a shower, I had enough energy to make dinner—a small pork tenderloin slathered with a paste of olive oil and Dijon mustard, steamed broccoli, and roasted new potatoes, crisp on the outside and soft in the middle.
“Who said I didn’t have something to do tonight?” I asked aloud as I stacked the dirty dishes and finished my fourth glass of Carabella Pinot Noir.
I was a little too drunk to read that night. The last thing I remember thinking about before I sank into a deep sleep was the meeting Nando and I planned to document the next day. Maybe this will give us some traction, I said to myself. And, as for Nightshade, although he represented an existential threat, in my inebriated state I admitted I didn’t want him to go back to his Dark Web lair.
No. I wanted him to stay in the game so I could put the bastard away.
The next morning, Angela and BB dropped by to pick up Archie on their way to the co-op. Angela had agreed to watch my dog for the day. They’d become pretty tight, those two. I hadn’t met BB, so I introduced myself. “Nando speaks very highly of you,” I said as I shook his hand. He was tall with an athletic build, intense dark eyes, and a smile with more candlepower than Nando’s, which was saying something.
“As he does of you,” he replied. “I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Claxton. You’re a legend at Sharp Eye.
I laughed at that. “I’m afraid your boss is prone to hyperbole. Don’t believe everything you hear, BB.”
He returned the laugh, and as Angela let Archie into the backseat of his car, she turned to me and mouthed, “He’s so hot!” with a big smile on her face.
After a mind-numbing day at my office in Dundee, I met Nando in Wilsonville, and we crossed the Willamette River on the Boone Bridge just as the sun was setting. We took Nando’s Grand Cherokee, the one I followed Angela in a week earlier. Had it only been a week since Nightshade tried to kill Angela? It seemed much longer, the result of having made zilch for progress on the case over that time span, I figured.
“Take the Charbonneau exit,” I said, as we cleared the bridge and entered the northern tip of the Willamette Valley, “then hang a right on Airport Road and go south for three and a half miles.”
“It is very flat out here,” Nando said as we cleared the freeway. “My Jeep will stand out like a sore finger.”
“No worries,” I told him. “I’ve got a spot for the Jeep.” When we passed a lighted sign announcing the turnoff to Langsted’s Restaurant, I said, “Go another mile or so. You’ll see a dirt road on the left leading into a nursery that’s closed. We can park off the road on the right and walk back, using the cover of the t
rees on the west side of the road.”
Twenty minutes later we were fairly close to the restaurant entrance. We were both dressed in black. Nando carried his video camera and a short monopod to steady it on. I had a pair of night vision binoculars slung around my neck. “Okay,” I said, “let’s walk in through these trees. It’s a straight line to a low knoll overlooking the parking lot and the restaurant. We can set up there.”
We found a spot with good cover, and after lying prone for several minutes, Nando uttered under his breath, “Mierda, we should have brought a tarp. The ground is wet here.” So far, two couples had arrived separately for what looked like late dinners. We filmed them both but doubted they were part of the group we were interested in.
“Yeah,” I said, “the mulch under these trees holds water like a—”
Before I could finish, another car came into the lot and parked. I trained my glasses on it as Nando started filming. A man got out, locked the car, and started for the restaurant. “I know him,” I said. “That’s Fred Poindexter. He runs the Portland Planning Commission.” No sooner had Poindexter disappeared into the restaurant than another car arrived, a metallic silver Mercedes sedan with highly tinted windows. It stopped in front of the restaurant entrance. The driver got out, opened the rear door, and out stepped another person I was pretty sure I recognized. My pulse ramped up several notches.
“I’ll be damned. I think that’s Ilya Boyarchenko.”
Nando grunted as his camera whirred softly. “It is Boyarchenko. Of this I have no doubt.” Another passenger got out on the other side. “And that, my friend, is his lawyer, Byron Hofstetter.”
“Well, well. This is getting interesting.” At that point, another car pulled in behind Boyarchenko’s. “Can’t wait to see who else—”. That’s when I heard the crunch of a footstep behind us.
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