by Nancy Bush
“Yes!” Georgie pumped her fist, elated, her tears dried and forgotten.
It took another twenty minutes for Gwen to decide Jules really meant what she said and get back out the door to her car. The woman could barely disguise her relief at being unshackled from her own daughter.
“I hate her,” Georgie stated as the car drove out of sight.
“No, you don’t,” Jules said automatically, and both Jules and Sam looked at each other, recognizing how quickly she’d fallen into the parenting pattern.
“I’m gonna call Xena and tell her I’m back,” Georgie said, yanking a cell phone from her pocket and heading toward the privacy of her bedroom.
Sam said, “I’ve got a cell phone for you, too. It’s in the car. I’ll go get it.”
When he returned to the house with the burner, Jules was standing in the kitchen, looking out toward the dock. The rain that had worried Gwen was falling lightly, spattering against the wooden boards.
“You remember Georgie?” Sam asked as he put the phone on the counter. He needed scissors to open the plastic pack and he pulled a pair from a plastic container that was bristling with wooden spoons, tongs, several wire whisks, and various other kitchen tools.
“Yes. And Gwen. It just hit me as soon as I saw them. It’s a relief. I just want it to all come back at once.”
“You and me both. Sure you want an ‘almost teen’ to take care of?” He cut away the plastic and examined the phone.
“I guess we’ll see who takes care of whom.”
He looked up and caught her smile, the first one since she’d survived the boat accident.
She added, “But . . . I have to admit. I don’t really want you to leave.”
“Sadie should be here soon.”
“I’d rather have you.”
The words wrapped around Sam’s heart and he had to break eye contact. He told himself Jules was feeling insecure and wanted a man around. It didn’t necessarily have to be him. “I’ll come back as soon as I can,” he told her. “I’ll pick up a pizza or something on the way.”
“Am I going to figure out how to use that thing?” She nodded to the phone.
“They’re easy. I’ll show you.”
There wasn’t much to learn. Jules knew how to operate a cell phone and this one was pretty basic. They were standing in the kitchen and Jules opened a drawer, reached in, and pulled out a notepad and pen. “What’s your cell number?”
He stared at the notepad. It was the same one from which the Cardaman file note had come. He gave her his number and watched her write it down. Her printing was far different from Joe’s, far different from what had been on the note. If he needed more evidence that Joe had written the note, this was it. He just wished he knew why.
“Call me and it’ll give me your number,” Sam said. “Make sure all the doors stay locked and the windows are shut.” He glanced at his niece. “I don’t know how you’ll contain her.”
“I’m on it . . . Sandy.”
He’d been turning away but his head whipped back toward her. “You remember that?”
“I told you. What came back first is my memory of you. What that says about me, I don’t even know if I want to know.” She lifted her scraped chin. “Maybe it’s just a time in my life when I felt the safest.”
Sam didn’t know what to say to that and he was saved from explaining when there was a knock on the door and he looked through the front window to see Sadie standing on the porch. She was tall and rangy, built like her brother, with a much prettier face than Griff. When he let her in, she looked over Sam with a hungry look, but then broke into a smile.
“Oh, I know you just want me for my babysitting skills, not for my body. Okay, okay. Fine. I’ll take what I can get.”
“Thanks, Sadie,” Sam said. He introduced her to Jules, adding, “I wouldn’t call it babysitting. More like bodyguarding. Jules can bring you up to speed on everything. I’ve got to get going.”
“Bodyguarding,” she mused, taking in Jules’s bruised and scraped chin, her funky hair that flopped over the cut and knot on her head. Then she seemed to remember the circumstances and said seriously, “I’m so sorry about your husband. Let me know what I can do to help.”
Sam left them getting to know each other and headed to his truck. He told himself to keep his mind on his mission, but he kept hearing Jules’s words play back like a tape on a loop.... I’d rather have you. . . . I rather have you. . . . I’d rather have you. . . .
* * *
Julia Ford wanted the Cardaman file back.
Well, hell. It was her file, so she had a right to it. Phoenix had reluctantly pulled the document from her locked drawers. She’d already copied it and sent it to the cloud. Normally, she didn’t much trust the Internet and electronics in general, though she had a smartphone, a computer, and an iPad. There was no getting around technology. You had to move with it, or get left in the dust. But there were trolls out there, and WikiLeaks and hackers and God knew what. Phoenix preferred hard copy, something she could write on and pick up and smell and feel. She would run off a copy for herself later, but for now she would take the file with her and drop it off to Julia after she’d had a chance to settle in at home. Meanwhile, she had a meeting with one of the investors. Kind of a surprise, really, as most of them had only reluctantly talked to her. They really wanted nothing to do with the whole thing. Their lawyers were dealing with the Cardaman fiasco, working to unfreeze their assets, whatever was left of them. They didn’t need any reporter pouring salt into their wounds.
But P. J. Simpson had sounded first worried that she was calling about Cardaman, and then eager to talk to her. He asked if she could meet him in Seaside, which she could, so she was making the trip north. She wondered if he was one of the ones who’d been rooked by the Summit Ridge deal in Salchuk. Probably not, because that particular scam only worked if the investors lived far enough away that they couldn’t just drop in and see their “property.” More likely he’d just given Cardaman free rein with his money and was desperately working to get it back.
Phoenix looked out the window. There was some light rain coming down, but the weather was clearing up. It was supposed to warm up, too. Get back to summer. She stopped in at Perfect Cup, picked up a double espresso, then headed out to the lot behind the office and her blue and white Mini.
* * *
Sam called Phoenix Delacourt as soon as he was on Highway 101 heading to Salchuk. He didn’t expect her to answer and was surprised when she did. He could tell she was driving.
“Hi, Phoenix, it’s Sam Ford.”
“Hey, Sam,” she responded easily enough, almost as if she’d been expecting his call.
He cut right to the chase. “You interviewed my brother several times, right?”
“Yes, I’ve interviewed a lot of people connected to the Cardaman case. I’m on my way to interview another right now.”
“Sky Harbor,” he said.
“Uh . . . the Phoenix airport?”
“My brother had ‘Sky Harbor’ written on a note by the letters ‘CF.’ I figure the ‘CF’ stands for the Cardaman file, but I thought ‘Sky Harbor’ might stand for you.”
“You sound upset.”
“Does ‘Sky Harbor’ stand for you? That’s what I’m asking.”
She thought about it briefly. “Probably. He called me that once, sort of jokingly, sort of not. He wasn’t keen on some of the questions I asked about his business.”
Sam could well imagine Joe might resent Phoenix’s probing ways.
“But I was under the impression he didn’t know Julia had given me the file, so I’m surprised my name was linked to it.”
“In a kind of code,” Sam reminded.
“I can’t help you there . . . unless maybe he’d learned his wife had taken a copy of the file and was thinking over what to do about it. He might not want my name attached to any Cardaman information. I’m just guessing. I didn’t really know your brother.”
The words Joe had written had
been outside any file, almost like a doodle, and doodling was part of Joe’s makeup. He’d been known for it in their family. Sam could well imagine that if Joe had learned of Julia’s duplicity regarding the Cardaman file, he might sit down to think it through, doodling away in the process.
He could have been angry at Julia. He could have taken her on the boat to have a heart to heart....
But he would have never hurt her. That much Sam believed with total certainty.
“Julia asked you to bring the file back,” he reminded.
“And I’m going to. Soon as I’m done with the Simpson interview, I’ll stop by Julia’s house and drop it off on the way back. . . .”
“And I imagine you have a copy.”
“Of course,” she said on a laugh, ignoring his cool tone. “See you later, Sam Ford.”
He half smiled as he clicked off. He almost liked Phoenix, despite the fact she was working her own agenda.
Sam turned off the highway onto Fifth Street, Salchuk’s main street and only commercial district. He’d plugged Ryan Mayfield’s address into Google Maps and learned that Mayfield lived on Moolok Lane, residing in an apartment in an older home with two units on each of its three floors. Sam parked across the street, his eye following up Moolok as it meandered toward the headland and Summit Ridge, the location of the Cardaman homes that Hap hoped to purchase.
Mayfield’s unit was on the top floor, and as Sam approached he saw the building looked in serious need of maintenance repair. It had once been a dignified house, part of the first wave of Salchuk construction built when the town was new. All of the homes that climbed toward the headland had fabulous views of the sea, or salt chuck, as Chief Pendergast had made such a point of letting him know.
His cell phone rang and he swept it from his pocket and checked the caller ID. A number he didn’t recognize. “Sam Ford,” he answered. “Jules?”
“Yeah, it’s me. So now you’ve got my number.”
“So now I’ve got your number.”
He could hear the smile in his own voice and it annoyed him.
“Good,” she said, a smile in her voice, too, though she also sounded tired.
“Take care of yourself. I’ll check back later.”
“You too. Oh, and Sadie’s calling a locksmith.”
“Tell her we want them ASAP.”
“I think she knows, but I will. See you soon. . . .”
Sam said good-bye and clicked off, his mind full of Jules’s image. It was with a supreme effort that he pushed her from his thoughts and concentrated on the job at hand. Ahead of him and up the cliff road, Sam could see a few of the newer homes built by Cardaman, and others that were in various stages of construction, though it looked as if work had been halted indefinitely. Grayed boards, piled gravel with weeds climbing through it, and discarded wrappers, cans, and water bottles littered the construction site. A NO TRESPASSING sign was tilted against one half-finished wall and written over with graffiti: a squinched-up face sticking out a tongue accompanied by colorful messages about what the vanished builders could go do to themselves.
It would be quite a project for Hap, if he ever got it. And it would cost a bundle to finish.
Sam stepped out to cracked asphalt in danger of breaking off and cascading down the cliffs into the ocean. As he crossed a derelict plank board entry to the front door he could smell the skunklike scent of marijuana and hear someone picking an occasional note on an acoustic guitar. He walked into the main foyer and saw doors with numbers scratched into their wood. Apartment four was upstairs in the back. He stepped past the guitar music and climbed the stairs. Outside Mayfield’s door he could hear the laugh track from some television program.
He knocked and, when there was no immediate answer, knocked more forcefully. The television sound was turned down, so he rapped one more time, hard and fast.
“Shit, man. I’m comin’,” a male voice muttered.
The door was thrown open and a sleepy-eyed guy with a shock of red hair currently tied into a man-bun stood in front of him. Swayed in front of him, more like it.
A cloud of smoke boiled out of the room and Sam struggled not to inhale.
“Who’re you?” the guy asked, trying to straighten up and act sober, to little effect.
“You Ryan Mayfield?”
“Uh . . . depends who’s askin’.”
“Sam Ford.”
They stared at each other and Sam could practically track the message moving from the guy’s ears toward his brain, making some kind of dull connection, then moving away again, back down the optic nerve as Ryan’s eyes slowly widened.
“Who?” He cocked his head as if he didn’t understand, but his face had given him away.
“Joe Ford’s brother. And I know for a fact that you didn’t sell him five gallons of gasoline from the marina.”
“Wha’cha talkin’ about, man?”
“You told Sheriff Vandra you sold Joe the gasoline, but you didn’t. The sheriff knows you lied.” Sam figured his own little falsehood might speed the interview along.
“I didn’t lie! The guy was Joe Ford. He said he was. I didn’t ask him, or anything. He just told me!”
“He paid cash?”
“Yeah, man,” he said belligerently. “He paid cash. Said he was Joe Ford.”
“What did he look like?”
“I dunno . . . baseball cap and windbreaker . . . dark color, maybe . . . uh . . . jeans?”
Sam could tell he was making it up on the spot. “He never told you he was Joe.”
“He did!”
Sam was growing angry. “We all know you’re lying. Who’d you sell the gas to?”
“Joe, man!”
“Someone tell you to say it was Joe?”
“NO! He said he was Joe! I swear I didn’t do anything!”
“What do you mean? What didn’t you do?”
Mayfield stepped back from the door, nearly tripped over his own feet. He’d given something away, Sam realized, and now he was literally backtracking. “Just get the hell outta here and leave me alone!”
He sought to slam the door but Sam’s foot was in the way. “You did something. What was it? The boat?”
“NO!” he shrieked. “No way! I wouldn’t do that. Your brother killed himself with the gas, not me.”
“You’re lying about something, you piece of shit,” Sam said tautly, purposely pushing him. If he kept ratcheting up the pressure, the guy might crack.
“Not the boat! Not the boat!” He moaned, holding his head.
Sam sensed this was the truth. He cast about for another answer. What else could he have done? It came to him a moment later. “You broke into Joe’s office!”
“Nooooo . . .” But this time it was a wail of fear.
“Why? Somebody put you up to it?”
“You’re putting words in my mouth! I didn’t do nothing,” he moaned.
“What were you looking for? What did you take?”
The laptop.
“Nothing! Nothing! Go away. I’m calling Officer Bolles!”
“You know Officer Bolles?”
For an answer he made a squeak of protest, then yanked his cell phone out of the pocket of his loose-hanging jeans. “I’m calling my lawyer,” he declared. “You don’t want to get arrested, get the fuck out!”
His lawyer? Mayfield didn’t look like a man who could afford a public defender, let alone a lawyer. “I’m going to find out who put you up to this,” Sam warned with a hard edge. “When I do, your ass is mine.”
“Hello? Hello?” Mayfield was practically shrieking into his phone.
Sam stepped back and let Mayfield slam the door. He’d gotten enough for the moment, at least enough to go back to the sheriff with. Ryan Mayfield had lied to Vandra about who’d purchased the gas, he was sure of it. And Mayfield had also trashed his brother’s office and taken the laptop. Had to be. It stood to reason that Mayfield had already passed the laptop off to whoever had wanted it in the first place. There was
someone moving behind the scenes on all this, and it was time Sam threw it all in Vandra’s lap, even if it meant getting cut from the investigation.
He went downstairs and headed back to his pickup. The guitar picker had given up his tune. Sam’s lips tightened as he checked the time, torn between wanting to keep going and feeling he should return to Jules.
As he waited to catch back into the highway traffic his cell phone rang. Glancing at the screen, he saw it was Griff.
“Just checking in, see how you’re doing,” Griff said, when Sam answered. “Sadie get there all right?”
“Yep. She’s with Jules now.”
“Good. Maybe you can sneak away one of these nights and join me at the Seagull? Place is becoming a hot spot for the college crowd on weekends, and well, Friday’s here.”
“When things settle down,” Sam said. “Right now, I’ve got too much to do.”
“Okay, Sammy. Watch out for my sister. She’s a shark.”
Sam clicked off, then headed south on 101 toward Fisher Canal. He placed his cell in the cup holder, then put it on speaker and called the sheriff. This time he finally answered with a brusque, “This is Vandra.”
“Sam Ford. I just had a talk with Ryan Mayfield. He lied to you. He didn’t sell the gas to my brother.”
There was a moment of silence, maybe surprise, on the sheriff’s end. “You talked to Mayfield yourself?” He sounded like he was getting pissed.
“I sure did. Mayfield lied to you. There’s something else going on. I think someone told him to lie about Joe. I want to know why.”
“You saw Mayfield at the marina?” he snapped out.
“Nope. I went to his apartment where he was enjoying the freedom of legal marijuana.”
“How’d you know where he lived?” he demanded.
“I asked around.” He sure as hell wasn’t going to get Griff in trouble. “Everybody knows everybody around here. And here’s something else: My brother’s office was broken into and I think whoever did it stole Joe’s laptop.”
“You think, or you know that for a fact?” he shot back, rapid-fire.
“What I know is Mayfield’s up to his eyeballs in this. The laptop’s missing. A little more pressure, and he’ll break.”