by Nancy Bush
“Oh, my God.” Jules felt her face drain of color. “Is she all right?”
“She’s in ICU.”
“And somebody did this on purpose?”
“Looks that way. Phoenix was screaming my name, according to this woman, who could hear a roaring sound—the second vehicle’s engine, probably a truck if it was as loud as she says. Shoved Phoenix’s Mini over the edge of the cliff. Crime techs’ll figure it out.”
“She’s lucky to be alive,” Jules whispered, shaken. Who would do this? And why?
“Yes.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “She knew I wasn’t with the department any longer. She asked for me because whoever did this is attached to the investigation into Joe’s death. That has to be it. She found something out and somebody felt they had to silence her.”
Oh, God. “Something about the Cardaman file?”
“Gotta be related in some way. She said she had an interview. She said the name, but I can’t think of it right now.”
“I asked her to bring the file to me,” Jules reminded, but she also remembered she was the person who had given the information to the reporter before the accident. If Phoenix had been targeted because of the file . . . Jules swallowed hard, felt more than a little guilt niggle through her brain. She gazed down at her lap where the slim, silver computer rested. She hadn’t let go of it. “But it’s probably on her. Should I carry this into the hospital?”
He thought about that as he slowed slightly for a curve. “Griff’ll be there. We’ll give it to him, have him take it to the station. Lock it up. Too many people can get into your house and maybe one of them has the password. I don’t trust it in my truck.”
They drove in tense silence after that. Jules’s tiredness had disappeared as soon as Sam had shown up. She’d wanted all the women to leave. She’d wanted to be alone in her bedroom. She’d wanted to allow herself to think, remember. The laptop had lifted the gray veil a bit, allowing a swirl of memories before her brain shut down again, but there were still big holes, curtained thoughts that she couldn’t quite bring to the surface. They teased her, tested her, frustrated the hell out of her. If she could just remember everything.
What then?
She didn’t know, but it had to be better than feeling part of her life was shrouded in some self-protective fog. Or, was the past so terrifying that she was better off not knowing?
Georgie’s request to watch a romantic comedy had brought a knot to her stomach she was still trying to figure out. She associated those kinds of films with Sam, which brought on good feelings, but there was something else that her mind shied away from, some memory that had to do with . . . Thanksgiving again?
She lay her head back on the seat and closed her eyes. She saw the candles, the cornucopia . . . the sweet potatoes swimming in a syrup of butter, brown sugar, and miniature marshmallows, the metal pan being lifted from a red-hot oven by hands in long mitts that came to Mama’s elbows....
Mama’s? When is this memory? How old? Long before Sam.
She could almost see her mother and her father. She heard her father talking to someone. A man. And Clem was there, looking up at the other person. They were at a cabin . . . the cabin in the snow. . . .
Jules awoke with a gasp.
“You all right?” Sam asked, looking over at her with concern. They were pulling into the hospital parking lot.
“Yeah, I just . . . I just had some real memories. I didn’t realize I’d drifted off. I keep thinking about Thanksgiving for some reason, but now I realize I’ve been mixing up memories. I thought all of them were from the same year, that year you and I were first . . . dating, but some of them are from when I was a kid. My brother was still alive. We were at a cabin . . . like your father’s, kind of, but . . . huh . . .” She struggled to recall. “Maybe it was . . .” She trailed off.
“No, finish. What were you going to say?”
Sam threw the truck into park and reached across for the laptop, while Jules unhooked her seat belt. They both got out of the vehicle and slammed their doors, then walked quickly toward the hospital’s front entrance.
“I don’t know. I think maybe it was my uncle’s cabin, for some reason—my mother’s brother—but he’s been gone a long time. He lived like a hermit. Off the grid in a cabin in the Cascades, I think. My father called him Crazy Paul. We visited him once . . . the Thanksgiving before Clem died, maybe? That’s right! It was a woodstove,” she said on a note of discovery. “That’s what it was. I can remember Mama pulling a pan of sweet potatoes from the embers of a fire. There was no electricity there. We were basically camping inside the cabin. We had turkey, but it was kind of burned on the bottom. Wow, I haven’t thought about that in years.” She exhaled heavily. “I don’t get why Georgie’s mention of romantic comedies triggered it, but it did.”
“You’ve always liked rom-coms,” he reminded, then, “I’ve watched a few with you.”
So, he remembered, too. She gave him a quick smile, then pushed aside the warm feeling that had engendered and said, “But I couldn’t have been watching them at that cabin at that time. Like I said, we had no electricity, and I was pretty young. Pretty Woman and Sleeping with the Enemy . . . I would have seen them a lot later. But somehow Thanksgiving and rom-coms seem connected.”
“I don’t know Sleeping with the Enemy,” he said, holding open one of the front doors for her with one hand, gripping tightly onto the laptop with the other.
“It’s more of a thriller, but it’s a Julia Roberts film. It’s . . .”
She trailed off as they stepped into the hospital reception area and she was assailed by the scents, sounds, and smells of the place. She’d just been released from the hospital herself, but her mind traveled back to Clem’s death nonetheless, like a needle in a groove. Now at least she understood her aversion. Those memories had returned in full.
A uniformed officer saw Sam, and Sam spotted him at the same moment. They both picked up their pace and Jules had to hurry to keep up, but the officer motioned toward a hallway, heading that way himself, already speaking in low tones as Sam fell into step with him. This had to be Griff, Jules presumed.
“. . . in ICU . . . unconscious . . .” Griff was saying. He looked back at Julia, as if finally realizing she was following them, and his steps slowed.
“I’m sorry. This is Jules Ford,” Sam introduced, apparently waking up to the fact that they’d never met. “My brother’s . . . widow.”
He looked at her closely, making Jules wonder what had been said about her. “I don’t know if the hospital will allow her into ICU. And, well, between you and me”—he cast a glance in Jules’s direction—“this is looking like attempted murder. . . .”
“She stays within eyeshot of me,” Sam stated firmly. He held out the laptop to Griff. “Take this when we leave here. Lock it up at the station. It’s my brother’s, and I want to keep it safe.”
Griff accepted the laptop. “What’s on it?” he asked, his voice lowering further still as the elevator doors whispered open and an orderly pushing a wheelchair passed in the other direction. His patient was midforties, probably, wearing a huge, padded hospital boot on one foot while holding a potted plant with a half-deflated balloon tied to the pot and trailing behind them.
Once they rounded a corner, Sam said, “No idea what’s on the laptop. Maybe nothing. Maybe what got my brother killed. We don’t know the password.”
Griff grunted and clamped the laptop a little tighter. To Jules, he said, “You might have to wait outside the door to Phoenix’s room.”
“That’ll be fine. I’ll be okay,” she said when Sam seemed about to protest again.
Griff nodded curtly, and they walked on.
ICU was on the second floor at the end of a hall with several glass doors that whispered open as they approached. As Griff had predicted, they were stopped outside Phoenix’s room. Jules could see the monitors and tubes and lights that regulated Phoenix’s vitals. Jules’s head throbbed, as if in commiseratio
n, and she shifted her right arm in its sling, earning a jab of pain from her collarbone.
Griff and Sam were allowed inside and Jules stood right outside the windowed enclosure. Seeing her, a nurse drew a curtain and Jules was cut off. She looked around herself a bit nervously. Maybe the guy who’d come after her had worked at the hospital?
No, he came there specifically for you. Don’t be paranoid. It’s still light out; there’s a full staff of nurses, doctors, volunteers, and interns. Sam’s just on the other side of the curtain, with Griff, a Seaside cop, no less. You’re fine.
But she couldn’t stop the knot of worry fisting in her stomach. She hunched her shoulders, drawing in on herself, and kept searching the area, cataloguing the nurses and hospital staff nearest to her. Better to be safe than sorry.
Sam reappeared within minutes, looking grim, carrying the laptop again. He was moving and she fell in step beside him. “Phoenix is still unconscious. Broken limbs. Head trauma, which they’re monitoring, bruised kidney, but no internal bleeding, so that’s good.”
“Is she going to be all right?” Jules asked. They reached the elevator and Sam slapped his palm against the button.
“I hope so. No one’s saying she won’t be.”
“I hope so, too.” They entered the elevator car and she observed, “You have the laptop.”
“Thought it over. If it goes to the station, and someone thinks it’s connected to my brother’s death, we might not get it back. Griff’s not the problem, but up the chain of command could be. Griff’s allowing me more information than he probably should because the woman who alerted them about Phoenix asked for me specifically, but if someone shuts him down, he can’t help me anymore. He’s got a job to protect.”
The elevator opened on the first floor. “Okay. What now?” She could tell Sam had something in mind.
“Phoenix was going to meet someone. Maybe that person’s involved with this, maybe not. I’ll have to think about that. But meanwhile there’s something I can do, and I’m going to run with it.”
“What?”
He pushed open the door to outside and they were greeted by an orange and pink gathering sunset. “Are you up for a trip to Portland? Actually, around Laurelton?”
“When? Tonight?” Laurelton was one of the westernmost suburbs of Portland, but it was an hour and a half’s drive from Seaside.
“It’s eight-thirty. We could be there by ten p.m. I’ll have to trust the laptop in the truck, shove it under the seat,” he thought aloud, then seemed to come to himself. “I don’t want to overtax you, but I don’t want to leave you alone, either.”
“No, don’t leave me alone,” she agreed immediately.
“I could check with Sadie. She seemed ready—”
“Hell, no, Sandy. I’m going with you.”
He flashed a smile as they got into his truck, and her heart somersaulted. Oh, you’ve got it bad. You always had it bad. You married Joe for all the wrong reasons; it was Sam you wanted.
She immediately sobered, thinking about Joe. Had she loved him, or had she just been grateful that he’d been there during one of the hardest times of her life?
Sam was saying, “. . . her name’s Pearl Enos. Griff talked to her awhile, and I gave her a call. She’s employed at Glencoe Electric, where Dennis Mulhaney worked until about six weeks ago. Phoenix said she went to see Mulhaney at the company, and then went again a few weeks later, but he was no longer there. Nobody knows what happened to him. Pearl was first out sick, then on vacation, so she didn’t know about Phoenix’s second visit till today, when Phoenix called. Not long into the conversation, she heard strange sounds, a loud roar, and then Phoenix yelling as if from a distance to call me, probably just at the time Phoenix’s car was being shoved into the creek. Pearl’s worried about Mulhaney. They had some kind of relationship and met a few times at a bar called Tiny Tim’s. That’s where we’re meeting her.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
With that, Sam pulled onto the highway and headed to the turnoff that would take them to Highway 26 and all points west.
* * *
P. J. Simpson looked at himself in the mirror and peeled off the thick mustache. There was a faint tremor in his hand and once the mustache was removed he opened and closed his fist several times. The tremor was the aftermath of adrenaline.
He’d killed that woman . . . that reporter. He’d known he was going to do it when she’d called him and wanted to ask some questions. Panic had flooded through his system and it was all he could do to react normally. He’d talked her into a face-to-face and chosen the old chowder house because it was off the beaten track and damn near forgotten. He hadn’t been worried about being recognized himself, but she was well-known up and down the coast. A nosy, quirky personality who’d come from money and then thumbed her nose at it. Stupid woman. No one ever gave up that much money unless they were touched in the head.
He’d never met her personally. Phoenix Delacourt. But he knew of the family before he’d left the area and become the hermit he’d chosen to be.
He sighed. Life had been a total shit bucket for too long. All his careful planning going up in smoke. These dire circumstances had brought him back to the beach, and he’d found he’d missed it, though he couldn’t afford to stay here long. He needed to be here just long enough to get his money back. Ike Cardaman, the venal scoundrel, had jeopardized everything of importance in his life. Suddenly all his money was at risk and then gone! Everything he’d worked so hard for, given up so much for, pretended and acted and lied for.
He’d raised holy hell in those first few months after the Ike Cardaman story broke. He’d fallen for the scam hook, line, and sinker. Him. A man who knew the game! Jesus. He wanted to put his head in his hands and weep.
He’d needed an ally, someone to help him. A man on the inside who could move his money for him. He’d promised Denny Mulhaney buckets of cash, and Mulhaney had gone to bat for him. Yes, he’d known Mulhaney was a sour, grudging loser who was quick to blame everyone but himself, but he was all he could get. The only other employee at Joseph Ford Investments had been Julia St. James Ford, and that was never going to work.
But his alliance with Denny broke down almost immediately. Mulhaney had started whining and making demands of Joe Ford himself. Mulhaney hadn’t been able to make the transfers, not enough power. And then the fool had gone to the reporter! What an idiot. Worst of all, he’d awoken Joe’s interest in P. J. Simpson and then P. J. knew it was only a matter of time until everything unraveled.
And it sure as hell had.
He shuddered from head to toe. He’d had to build another alliance with a thrill-killer, actually a dynamic duo, though neither of them realized he knew about the female half of the couple. P. J. had done years of research on anything to do with his money. Every aspect, and that included the thrill-killers. He also knew about as much about Joseph Ford Investments as Joseph Ford himself. And he’d kept tabs on Ford, too. Joe Ford was smart. He’d personally invested in homes along Fisher Canal, taking the slow and steady route rather than the big kill, like Summit Ridge. What a cluster-fuck that was. It hurt P. J.’s head to think about it.
P. J. had followed Ford’s investment on the canal closely, intending to follow suit, but his money had been tied up with Cardaman, and that whiner, Mulhaney, hadn’t been able to get it out. It stuck in P. J.’s craw that Joe had actually cautioned his investors about the risks of going with Cardaman and he hadn’t listened.
Too smart for your own good, huh?
High risk, high reward, baby. His whole life had been a risky venture, because you don’t make money playing it safe.
But if you don’t play it safe, you could lose everything.
And then P. J. had had a complete meltdown, had called up Ford personally and screamed at the man, demanding his money back.
And Joe Ford, who’d absorbed Peter St. James’s clients, of which P. J. was one, into his own company without looking at them closely, started going
over them with a fine-toothed comb. If he figured out what P. J. had done . . .
It didn’t bear thinking about. All of a sudden, everything had become at risk and that’s when he’d hired the thrill-killers.
Except Joe figured out the investment scam anyway and then a frantic plan B had gone into effect, which had damn near killed Julia. P. J. had mixed feelings about her survival. He didn’t want to hurt her, but she knew too much.
And then Phoenix . . . that damn reporter. He hadn’t trusted the thrill-killers. They’d botched things up good, and the police were all over Joe’s death. He’d had to act himself, and so he’d driven her into the ravine. The Mini had rolled twice and landed upside down on its roof. He’d raced down the ridge after it and looked inside. Phoenix had been been unconscious, bleeding, at death’s door. A soft briefcase of sorts was right there, lying on the crumpled roof of the car by her head. He reached through the broken window and took it.
The Cardaman file.
He’d wanted to roar with triumph, had carried his bounty back to his truck—the one he’d bought with cash two months earlier from a teenaged drug dealer who was desperate for money, the one he hadn’t yet changed the title on—and had driven back to the motel. He’d checked the grill on the front of the truck, but there was barely any damage to the hulking beast of a vehicle, so he’d felt safe as he’d hurried inside and opened the file.
A list of names and phone numbers. No addresses. No other information. Nothing that would lead them to him. Nothing.
He’d killed Phoenix Delacourt for nothing.
Not that he still didn’t have other problems. Julia Ford was still alive and if, or when, her memory returned in full . . . but the file wasn’t the confidential disaster he’d blown it up to be in his mind.
So, now what?
If you hadn’t confronted Joe. If you’d let everything lie . . . then you’d be safe.