by Nancy Bush
“Yes.”
“Oh, God. How did it happen?”
“It appears they were on The Derring-Do together. Jules is . . . recovering.”
“Is she in the hospital? Which one? Tillamook?”
It’ll all be on the news tonight, he reminded himself, but he only said, “She has a head injury and her shoulder’s in a sling. There should be more answers when the forensics are in.”
“Sam, who’ll take over his company? He had investments for Georgie. Oh, Lord. Who should I talk to? I need to talk to someone.”
“I don’t know.”
“He has—had—a lawyer.”
“Then they’ll be getting in touch with you.”
“They’ll be getting in touch with you, too,” she said.
“I don’t know about that.”
“Don’t you know you’re a prime beneficiary? Unless Joe radically changed since he married Julia, you’re going to get a windfall. It’s me who loses, but oh, well. I’ve got a good man in Evan now. The estate’ll be divided between you and Julia and Georgie.”
It’s about the money.
“I don’t think Joe would do that,” Sam said.
“Then you don’t know your brother.”
He glanced at the counter where he’d set the note about Cardaman. Not seeing it, he looked underneath the table and chairs, then all around the counters.
The note about Cardaman was gone.
Chapter Six
Sam stared at the place where the note had been while his mind sizzled. It was gone. Gone. Someone had moved it, or taken it. Someone who had access.
He managed to disconnect with Gwen somehow, but his mind had moved on. He looked all over again, knowing the note had been right there. After a few fruitless minutes he headed down the hall, veered first toward the master suite, then immediately backed away from it and went into one of the spare bedrooms. The walls were painted a lilac color and there was a dresser filled with bottles of perfume and various and sundry makeup items. It stopped him cold for a moment, before he realized it was probably Georgie’s room.
He went into the third bedroom, which had a daybed and a chest of drawers, the look of a guest room. He sank onto the edge of the bed and thought hard.
Someone had been inside the house. Tutti-frutti whoever the hell had given him a key. She’d just handed over a key like no big deal, without asking for ID. Sure, he looked like Joe, but Tutti knew nothing about their relationship. She’d even said she didn’t know he had a brother, yet she’d just plopped the key in his palm. Way too trusting.
Someone had been inside their house and moved the Cardaman note.
There was something there. Something financial. He’d been walking around like a sleepwalker. Saying he believed it wasn’t an accident, but not really coming to the logical alternative, his mind shying away from the fact that foul play was involved. Someone had killed Joe, and tried to kill Jules. Joe was dead. The Derring-Do was a burned-out hull. Sam had been slightly concussed—was still feeling the effects—and dull as dirt because of it.
But now he had to do something.
Now.
Immediately Sam shot to his feet and headed into the den. Joe’s den. There was a desk in the middle of the room, a big, oak one. A monster that had been their father’s, a gift to Joe. The surface was clear except for a lamp. No computer. Sam opened every drawer, resisting the urge to dump them out on the floor. Instead, with an increasingly aching head, he went through every file, searching for anything about Joe’s financial dealings with Cardaman or anything else.
There was no Cardaman file inside. Joe had an office in Seaside, though Donald had told him that Joe had moved to Salchuk, closer to Fisher Canal. It was likely the Cardaman file was in one of those two places.
The smaller drawers held pencils, stamps, paper clips, a pair of reading glasses, a pocket-sized cassette player from when they were kids, a magnifying glass, and a number of other small office supplies. The file drawers weren’t locked, but all he could find were personal papers, nothing to do with Joe’s business.
He left the office and headed back to the kitchen, his eyes still searching for the missing note.
He needed to talk to Jules. Really talk to her. Ask questions. Get answers.
No memory?
“Bullshit,” he muttered angrily.
He suddenly realized he was thirsty and he walked back to the kitchen. He opened the cupboard by the sink, looking for a glass, and found a bottle of aspirin. Shaking two out, he then spied a row of neatly arranged blue glasses on an open shelf on the opposite wall. He grabbed one, filled it with tap water, swallowed the two tablets, while he gazed through the window to the houses on the other side of the canal. Tutti’s was directly across and a little north, the end home on her side as Joe and Jules’s was the end one on this side. Next to Tutti’s was a farmhouse style house with grayed shingles and white trim. On the composition roof stood a cupola out of the same shingles, capped by a wrought-iron weather vane in the shape of a porpoise. It was currently pointing east. An east wind brought hot air. He hadn’t thought about it, but it was warming up. A beautiful summer day with temperatures in the seventies and only the faintest breeze. Good boating weather.
What had happened out on the water yesterday?
He went back to the daybed, wanting to be out of sight of the neighbors without having to draw the curtain, which smacked of secrecy. He lay back and stared at the ceiling. He hadn’t been paying enough attention yesterday. He hadn’t been himself. He’d walked around in a daze—pain, grief, shock, disbelief, call it what you will—but it had made him feel like he was slogging through quicksand.
But now he felt razor sharp. Joe had called him because he was in danger. He’d gone out on his boat and taken Jules with him. Was that a usual occurrence?
He closed his eyes. He was still tired, but his mind was buzzing. He needed to know more about Joe . . . and Jules. What was their life like? What were they into? Who were their friends? Tutti? Other people along the river? People from work?
His heart clutched as he thought about something his father had once said, something he’d dismissed at the time because the old man was unreliable even on a good day.
“You should give up that damn cop thing. Your brother’s doing good. Work with him. Make some money. Joe’s made some good connections, you know. The Hapstells. They got it growing on trees, y’know. That’s who they are. . . .”
Walter Hapstell Junior . . . Hap . . . Jules’s old boyfriend.
The first night he met Jules they’d found their way to Brest’s. They’d ordered French fries and split a burger. It was like they’d known each other for years. They teased each other. The Sandy thing really got going. In the end he’d reluctantly called Joe to come and pick them up, and he’d made the mistake of bringing up Hap again while they were waiting.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Jules had said with more force than earlier. “We went out a couple of times, but I’m just a conquest that he can’t have. That’s Hap. It’s all about what’s the next best thing. He’s okay. But it’s over. We’re all going to graduate and never see each other again anyway.”
“I’ll still be around here,” he’d protested. “Your family’s here.”
“Yeah, well . . . maybe.”
He’d almost told her he wanted to see her again but couldn’t quite get the words out. Didn’t want to spoil the nice evening they’d had. He was still trying to work out how to make future plans when Joe wheeled in front of the restaurant in his black Explorer and he and Jules climbed into the backseat.
“Hi,” Joe said to Jules. “I’m Joe.”
“I’m Julia.”
“Nice to meet you.”
Sam noticed that she hadn’t called herself Jules, which was what she went by in high school. She didn’t know Joe, and with people she didn’t know she was apparently Julia. She and Joe were acquaintances, nothing more, and that’s what Sam had always expected them to be. In truth, he sus
pected that’s what they’d always expected they would be, too, if even that. Joe had been in the throes of wedding planning and he didn’t have tons of time for Sam and any of his high school friends. Jules didn’t pay much attention to him, either. She was more concerned about the dark house they pulled up to. Her house.
“Everyone’s asleep,” she said, worried.
“Maybe you can sneak in?” Sam suggested.
“You don’t know my family.”
Sam gallantly walked her to the front door, leaving the passenger door open. Under its interior light Joe was on his phone, smiling, talking to Gwen.
“Thanks for the fries, burger, and ride,” Jules said, but her eyes were on the door.
“When you get your phone back, I’d like to call you. Make sure everything turned out okay.”
“Okay.”
“What’s your number?”
She dragged her attention back to him and reeled off the digits, which he committed to memory, running them through his mind like a litany, inputting them into his phone as Joe drove him back to the cabin.
He’d called her the next week, but she hadn’t picked up. He’d tried again the next week and the same thing happened. He was thinking she’d shined him on when she suddenly called him.
“Hey, Sandy,” she said, a smile in her voice. “Let me take you to Brest’s. My treat. Fries and half a burger. Just got my phone back. Long story.”
“When?”
“Today?”
They met at the diner after school. She wore jeans and a green blouse that picked up hidden flecks of teal in her gray eyes. A dusting of freckles lay across her nose. She wore nearly nude lipstick that nevertheless made her lips look luscious.
“How’d you get here?” she asked.
“I drove. Awkward, with this ankle, but doable. You?”
“Hap brought me.”
“Hap?”
“Argued with me all the way here, then sped off in a cloud of dust.” She looked long suffering. “I told him we were just friends and that’s all it would ever be, but he’s so predictable. Even though he was with Martina.”
“Martina?”
“Yup. While I’m fighting with my dad to get my phone back because he all of a sudden decided I was spending too much time on it. Acted like we would go back into the dark ages of no communication. I had to stop making him dinner and ignore him. I just helped out Mom. Finally, he came around. But we were talking about Hap. . . . He’s been with Martina all along. They’re like codependent. Can’t leave each other alone.”
“You okay with that?”
“I told you. Hap and I weren’t ever really together.” She dunked a fry in ketchup and munched it down. “But I acted like I was broken up and upset. He hung his head and said he was sorry, but it was really what he was looking for. A sign that I couldn’t live without him. Now he can go be with Martina, knowing my heart is broken. Bet he’s telling Martina right now, burying his sorrows in her arms.”
“You sure you’re okay with this?”
“I’ve been trying to unhook for weeks. It was never anything anyway, but you couldn’t tell Hap that. Better to act like it matters more than it does.”
“Psychology.”
“Exactly.” She grinned. “That’s what I’m going to study. Psychology. I think I have a knack for it.”
“He dropped you off here. Does he know you’re meeting me?”
“Yes. I told him you were just a friend, which is the truth.”
Those words had deflated Sam some, but he’d already decided he would take friendship if that’s all there was . . . for now. “Okay. Just wanted to know if I had a target on my back.”
“Nah. Hap’s all talk. He won’t do anything. That’s too much work.” Then she slid her hands across the table and linked her fingers through his. A small gesture that later ran through his mind over and over again. “I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”
“Neither do I.”
“So, what’re we gonna do now?”
He’d stared at her, aware of her brightness, aware that something special was happening to him, aware that he was a little bit scared. “We could drive up the coast.”
She looked at him and he’d sensed that she was really examining him, too. “Okay.”
And that’s how it started. Friendship . . . then a first kiss on the beach, some exploration in the car . . . first lovemaking the day his ankle was unwrapped for good. Even now he could remember Jules pulling his mouth down to hers on the cabin couch after his father had gone to bed, the DVD player playing one of her favorite romantic comedies, the television flickering over their moving bodies, the soft gasps and moans that issued from her lips, the taste of her skin.
Throughout that fall, winter, and spring, through graduation and the next summer, and into college, she’d been in the forefront of his mind.
And then . . . Thanksgiving weekend. Everyone home and Sam feeling anxious and impatient. Jules was busy. Couldn’t see him. Dealing with a sick and difficult mother and a disengaged father. Everyone else their age meeting at various houses or down on the beach. The weather unusually warm for November. The rains holding off.
And around a campfire one night, Martina made a play for him.
“Jules’s sure been a ghost,” she observed. “Too good for us.”
“Yeah, that’s it. She’s too good for all of us.”
“Don’t be an ass. What’s the deal with her?”
Sam shrugged. “Family stuff.”
“And she’s leaving you all alone here with the rest of us? Dangerous. We might corrupt you.”
“You might,” he’d agreed.
And the night had gone on from there. He’d been happy to be with the old high school group, happy not to deal with real problems, happy to revert to his teenage self. He drank too much and Tina gave him a ride home. She kissed him good night and he let her. He let her a little too long.
The next day he went to see Jules and told her about his night with the old friends. She was distracted. Her mother’s illness had reached a crisis point and decisions were having to be made. Jules’s father was too distraught to make the decisions, so they’d been left up to Jules. When he admitted Martina had kissed him, at first she didn’t seem to hear him. But as he was leaving, she asked, “Did you kiss her back?”
He could’ve said, “No,” but it seemed like a chickenshit kind of response. A half-truth to make himself feel better when she was really asking something else. So, he said instead, “I didn’t push her away.”
At some level he’d thought she would understand. He’d expected he’d be in the doghouse for a while, but that things would go back to the way they’d been, the way they should be. But that wasn’t how it turned out. In that moment she just stared at him, as if she’d never really seen him before and didn’t much like what was there. She said, “We’ll talk later,” and headed into her house.
He couldn’t reach her on the phone the next day, or the next, or the next. He finally went back to her house, more than a little pissed that she’d gone dark on him. He banged on the door and waited on the porch, and it took her so long to answer that he was back on the sidewalk, stalking to his car, before she cracked the door open.
“There you are,” he greeted her, but his tone was accusatory.
“Yep. Here I am.”
“I’ve called you a bunch of times. I’m sure you know.”
“I’ve been kind of busy.”
“Too busy to answer the phone?”
“Sam, I really don’t want to do this now.”
“Well, neither do I, but what the hell, Jules?”
“If you want to talk, it’s going to have to be later. Much later. I’ve got . . . I just can’t see you right now. So, if you want to spend time with Martina, have at it.”
“Jules,” he protested.
“Just . . . leave me alone,” she said angrily. Then she whisked back inside and locked the door behind her.
Well, that rea
lly pissed him off. He’d wanted to bang down her door, demand that she come back and have it out with him. Luckily, he’d turned away and peeled out of her drive. He stewed for a while, expecting her to call. When she didn’t, he took her advice and went to be with Martina.
And that was the end of it all.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he’d always thought they would be together in the end. Even with everything, it hadn’t killed his romantic dream for the two of them. But it didn’t happen and Jules moved to Portland, while Sam returned to the coast and joined the Seaside Police Department. He kept seeing Tina, drifted into marriage with her, then after the tragedy of her father’s suicide, Jules had tied the knot as well. With Joe.
Now he wished he would have tried harder to put it all behind him, get over it, make peace with Joe. He should’ve accepted their marriage. He should’ve reconnected with his brother.
And now, if someone had deliberately set out to harm Joe, kill him . . . Sam was going to find the bastard and get some payback.
* * *
“Julia?”
She lifted her lids slowly. She’d been poked and prodded all day and her shoulder was hurting. Rest and not jarring it would supposedly put her collarbone back together, but all she felt was weary.
Luckily she no longer had a catheter.
Dr. Lillard was at the foot of her bed, looking expectant. She murmured, “You’re not going to make me do another test, are you?”
“No. I just have some test results for you, and they’re all good. You’ve had a concussion, but you’re recovering well. I have the results here.” He held a sheaf of papers in his hands. “I’d like to go over a few things, and then we’ll make the final decision.”
“What final decision?”
“Whether to send you home tomorrow.”
The news hit her like a hammer. Home? Where was home? She had no memory of it, and when she struggled to visualize it, the gray entity that seemed to shroud her mind pressed down on her, making her head ache and blocking all thought.
“I don’t think I’m well enough.” She could hear the unshed tears in her voice.