A Fool's Journey

by Judy Penz Sheluk

  “Sometimes my family drives me crazy, but I can’t imagine disappearing from their lives without a trace. Do you have a business card? I can’t think of anything else right now, but there’s something niggling on the edge of my brain. I just can’t bring it into focus.”

  I handed over my card. “Call anytime.” I just hoped she would.

  38

  Sunday morning run club was a welcome respite from the ongoing investigation and I savored every mile of the two-plus hours it took me to complete our assigned route, my cell phone turned off to keep the world out. I kept it off once we returned to the club’s weekly meeting location—a local running store that actually encouraged the crowd of post-run sweaty bodies and their gym bags filled with a change of clothes, water, energy bars, and other magic potions and lotions each runner swore by. I found a vacant spot on the laminate floor and concentrated on my cool-down stretches: calf, hamstrings, quads, glutes, IT band, piriformis, back, spine, groin, and psoas. It was a ritual I found mind-numbingly boring, but I’d learned the hard way it was necessary if I wanted to remain injury-free.

  Most of the other runners were heading to the nearby coffee shop by the time I was finished. I promised to meet them, popped into the washroom to do a quick change, tugging off my sweaty sports bra, spandex tights, and long-sleeved tee in exchange for clean sweats. Only then did I turn my phone back on.

  There were three missed calls: Royce Ashford, Ben Benedetti, and Nicolette Baxter. I checked voice mail, prepared to listen to the messages in order.

  “Hi Callie, Royce here. I wanted to apologize if there was any awkwardness when we ran into each other last week. I’ll admit that I was surprised to see you with a date. Sorry, that came out wrong. Of course you’re free to date anyone you wish, and Ben seems like a nice guy. Anyway, I’d like to stay friends if that’s at all possible. Call me back when you get a chance.” There was a long pause, and then, said so softly that I had to strain to hear it, “I miss you, Callie.”

  Miss me? Friends? Really? Why not suggest a double date? I deleted the message, went to the next one.

  Ben’s voice was as warm as the cup of hot chocolate I’d been planning to order. “Hi, Callie, sorry I missed you. I wanted to let you know that I’m still out of town until Wednesday. It’s nothing serious, just some old business to take care of. Let’s do dinner when I’m back. I’ll call you then.”

  Some old business. What did I expect, a true confession from a guy I’d met exactly once? Still, I’d been looking forward to seeing Ben again and finding out where that might take us. Besides, it was for the best. I had a case to solve and needed my head in the game. I saved the message without having any good reason to do so, and went on to the voice mail from Nicolette Baxter.

  “Hello Callie, Nicolette Baxter here, the owner of Light Box Auction Gallery? I promised to call if I remembered anything else, and in fact I have. Ring me when you get this.”

  I took a minute to decide between calling Nicolette and heading for hot chocolate. I wasn’t quite ready to shed my post-run glow, and I enjoyed the after-run camaraderie our group shared, but I was curious.

  Baxter won.

  She answered on the first ring, as if sitting on her phone, waiting for me to call back. “I remembered the thing that was niggling at me,” she said, an undercurrent of excitement in her voice. “It’s about Brian Cole.”

  “Go on.”

  “He came in on his own, but he got into the passenger side of a black SUV parked outside the gallery when he left. I didn’t get a good look at the person driving, but it was a man.”

  “Did you get a license plate number?”

  “Didn’t occur to me to look.”

  A man wasn’t much to go on. “Can you describe the man at all?”

  “Not really. The door was only open for a minute and the vehicle had tinted windows. He might have had gray hair.”

  “Okay, thanks.” I tried to keep the disappointment out of my voice.

  “Before you go there’s one more thing I haven’t told you. I’m ninety-five percent sure the SUV was a Mercedes. My ex-husband drives one, the lying, cheating bastard that he is.” She exhaled loudly, as if trying to exorcise the memory of her ex.

  A black Mercedes. Just like the one that Michael Westlake drives.

  “Does that help?” Baxter asked. “The information about the SUV?”

  “More than you can imagine. Thank you.”

  I hung up, assessing the implications. Was the man who called himself Brian Cole actually Brandon Colbeck, as I suspected? If so, why was he hanging around with the stepfather he supposedly hated? More importantly, why was Michael Westlake keeping silent about it?

  39

  Who to contact first, Samantha Sanchez or Michael Westlake? Unsure of what to do, and in desperate need of something to eat and drink, I made my way to my car, tossed in my bag of sweat-soaked clothes, and headed to the coffee shop to join the group. One of the rocket-fast runners, Howard Portland, had saved a seat for me, and I knew he was curious about my delayed arrival. Portland, a retired criminal prosecutor, had been helpful in Past & Present’s last case, but I couldn’t see how he could help me with this one. I gave him a bright-eyed smile, and joined the queue to order.

  Restored by an extra-large hot chocolate and a toasted twelve-grain bagel with peanut butter, I spent the next half hour enjoying the runners’ mindless banter on blisters, tensor bandages, and the prideful admissions of blackened and missing toenails.

  Back home, I paced. And paced. And paced some more. When I’d left Michael Westlake’s office, I knew he’d been hiding something. I hadn’t expected that something to be Brandon Colbeck.

  But what about Sam Sanchez? I had so many unanswered questions to ask her, not the least of which involved her possibly deceased, possibly alive grandfather, Nestor.

  I considered asking Chantelle for her opinion, but I didn’t want to distract her from the Ancestry research on Michael Westlake. Royce was out, though I’ll admit I briefly considered confiding in him. And I could hardly call out-of-town-on-business-barely-know-him Ben. Could I?

  No I couldn’t.

  After more pacing I decided to call Sam Sanchez. She’d been keeping secrets from the beginning, and something told me she held the key to everything.

  It turned out Trust Few was closed on Sundays, but I left a voice mail on the off-chance Sam would check her messages, then went and took a much-needed shower.

  I was getting dressed when my phone rang. Sam Sanchez.

  “Hi Sam, thanks for calling back.”

  “I take it the investigation continues.”

  “It does. I’ve learned some things, but there are still plenty of gaps. I’m hoping maybe we could get together and you could fill some of them in.”

  “You’re one determined lady.”

  “I’ve been hired to find out the truth. I take that responsibility very seriously. When can we get together?”

  There was a long pause, then, “Oh, what the hell. Today, tomorrow, Tuesday, it doesn’t really matter, does it? You’re not going to leave me alone until I answer all of your questions, are you?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Then it might as well be today. Except this time, I’ll come to you.”

  Sam arrived thirty minutes later, turned down my offer of coffee or water, and sank into one of the Mission oak recliners. Her Sunday look—black yoga pants and an above-the-knee waffle knit sweater—was markedly different from the one she sported at Trust Few. Even the plum lipstick and combat boots were missing, replaced with clear lip gloss and white sneakers.

  “Thanks for coming.”

  Sam shrugged. “No biggie. What do you want to know?”

  I grabbed my notebook and slipped into the chair next to her. “Some of these might seem random, but I’ve been writing down questions since the last time we spoke.”

  “Ask away.”

  “Let’s start with Dave Samuels. One of my team members, Shirley Harrington,
is a retired research librarian. She’s good at digging through old newspaper archives, tracking down stuff that’s pre-digital era. She found an article in the Marketville Post dated August 14, 2003.”

  I referred to my notes and began reading. “After nearly six years in business, Dave Samuels has closed Such & Such tattoo parlor, which had been located at the back of Nature’s Way. His remaining collection of vintage and original tattoo flash—the term used for the artwork—has been sold to a private buyer who prefers to remain anonymous.” I glanced at Sam. “Were you the private buyer?”

  “Sorry to disappoint, but no. I would have loved to but didn’t have the money to buy his collection and open Trust Few.”

  “Do you know who did?”

  “A woman named Nicolette Baxter. She was a big-time collector back then.”

  I wrote down “Nicolette Baxter” in my notebook, as if it were a new lead, then resumed my questioning.

  “Did Dave Samuels have a tattoo of an eagle on his back, stretching between his shoulder blades?”

  Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “Yeah, how’d you know?”

  I ignored the question. “The other thing we found in the Marketville Post was Dave’s obituary. With his photograph. Tell me, Sam, when did you realize Brandon Colbeck was Dave’s son? Was it the day he walked into Such & Such, or when you befriended him in college?”

  The color drained from Sam’s face. Whatever she’d been expecting, it hadn’t been that.

  “How do you know we were friends in college?”

  “How I know doesn’t matter. Brandon wasn’t a stranger that day in March when he walked into Such & Such. What matters is that you lied.”

  “It wasn’t a complete lie. Dave hadn’t met Brandon yet. He didn’t even know he had a son.”

  “You thought if Brandon came in for a tattoo, they could get to know each other?”

  Sam nodded. “Brandon was obsessed with meeting his real father. He loathed Michael Westlake. From what he told me, the feeling was mutual. The first time I saw Brandon on campus, I was struck by how much he reminded me of Dave, small things, like how they’d line up their plastic takeout cutlery in a neat parallel line.”

  “When was that?”

  “We were both in first year at Cedar County College. Brandon was taking business admin and computer sciences, and I was taking graphic arts. When Nestor left, Dave offered me the apprentice job. Money was tight and I figured I’d learn more from him than any college professor. After I dropped out, Brandon and I stayed in touch, though there was never any more to it than friendship and a shared interest in tarot.”

  “When did his interest in tarot begin?”

  “With me. Though he wasn’t particularly interested until I told him many followers of tarot believed the Major Arcana represented The Fool’s Journey. That’s when he started to really confide in me, told me his stepfather often called him a fool. Somewhere along the line, he became obsessed with taking his own journey.” Sam paused. “It sounds disloyal to say this, but Brandon was like that. He’d get fixated on something, whether it was his hatred for his stepfather, finding his biological father, or tarot, and it would become all-consuming. Dave was like that, too.”

  “You knew he planned to leave home.”

  “I did, though I expected him to get the tattoo finished first. He’d talked about heading out when the weather got better. Something must have triggered him to leave early.”

  Something like Michael Westlake’s keylogger software, I thought. “When did you learn that he’d left home?”

  “He called me, would have been mid-March, maybe a bit later. He said he was fine, that he was hitching rides, taking buses, making his way out west to Vancouver.” Sam chewed on her lower lip. “I never heard from him again. Even so, I didn’t think of him as missing, you know? At least not until I read the article in the Marketville Post that summer.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  Sam shrugged. “My experience with Nestor. I assumed Brandon didn’t want to be found. After a while, I tucked my memories of him in a storage compartment at the back of my brain.”

  “And when you read the Marketville Post article in 2015, the family still searching, did you still believe he didn’t want to be found?”

  “I didn’t know what to believe. Part of me thought he might be dead. The other part hoped he’d started a new life. Either way, I wasn’t going to the police.” Sam paused. “You know, as much as Brandon was like Dave, I was never sure. Except one day Brandon told me his mother had finally relented, given him a tiny nugget of information.”

  “The eagle tattoo.”

  Sam nodded. “That’s when I knew. Maybe if I hadn’t figured it out, hadn’t told Brandon about Dave. Maybe if Dave hadn’t disappointed him, hadn’t joked about getting all his tats in a single day. Maybe if I hadn’t filled his head full of The Fool’s Journey. Maybe, then…” Sam’s voice trailed off, her blue eyes glistening with unshed tears.

  At long last, I thought, the real reason behind Sam’s secrets. “You blame yourself for Brandon leaving.”

  “Yeah. I guess I do.”

  40

  I poured us each a drink, a double shot of dark rum on ice with a splash of cola for Sam, white wine for me. Put together a plate of cheese and crackers, raw veggies, scooped out the last of a container of red pepper hummus. I needed to talk to her about Light Box Auction Gallery, but that could wait ten minutes.

  The rum seemed to restore her spirits, with the added bonus of loosening her tongue.

  “There’s something else I haven’t told you,” she said.

  “I’m listening.”

  “It’s about Nicolette Baxter, the woman who purchased Dave’s flash. She recently opened an auction gallery in Burlington. On Brant Street. Light Box Auction Galleries. She specializes in vintage flash, Disney cels, original comic art, that sort of thing. I went to see her on Thursday.”

  I could have played true confessions in return but I didn’t. “What prompted you to go there?”

  “Google Alerts.”

  Google Alerts? My confusion was apparent, because Sam explained, “I have Google Alerts set up to ping me if Nestor Sanchez’s name pops up on the internet. Last week, I got an alert with a link to Light Box Auction Gallery. They wrote about him in the past tense, as if were dead, claimed to have some of his vintage flash.”

  A dark flush spread across Sam’s face. “I lied to you before, when I said I hadn’t heard from my grandfather in years. Truth is, he stops by Trust Few every now and again. Never stays more than a week or two, then he’s back on the road, but he needs a permanent address to collect his government pensions. The last time I saw him was a month ago. He looked good, better than he had in a long time. I’m not saying he’s immortal, and he’s barely on the green side of ninety, but he wears a Road ID bracelet—the kind runners and cyclists wear—and my contact information is on it. If he’d died, someone would have called me. They haven’t.”

  Unless he lost the bracelet, I thought, but didn’t say. I needed to get Sam back on track. “You said you went to Light Box Auction Gallery.”

  “My first thought was that my grandfather had sold some of his vintage flash because he needed the cash. I’d give him money if he asked, but he’s stubborn like that. It could have been his idea of a joke, telling Nicolette that Nestor Sanchez had died. He does value his anonymity. But then I looked at the flash that she’d posted on the website. I couldn’t be sure, not until I saw it in person, but it reminded me of the flash that Brandon had purchased back in 2000.”

  I felt my pulse quicken “What did you think when you saw it?”

  “I can’t be positive after all these years, at least not about the ones focused on tarot, though if I was a betting woman, I’d go all in.”

  “Why is that?”

  “There was one sketch of me. I didn’t want Dave to sell it, but he said Nestor could always do another one.” Sam gave a rueful smile. “I didn’t realize it at the
time, but my guess is Brandon wanted something to remember me by after he left.”

  Now was the time for true confessions. I admitted to Sam that Chantelle and I had visited the gallery the day after her visit. I wasn’t sure how she would react to the admission, but I wasn’t expecting the wide smile that lit up her face.

  “I thought the person who’d expressed interest might be you,” she said. “Kudos. Then I gather she told you the name of the seller was Brian Cole.”

  I nodded. “I suspect Brian Cole may be Brandon Colbeck.”

  “I’d say it’s more like a sure thing. He tried out new names for himself before he started his fool’s journey. Brian Cole was his favorite. He did his research, read it was easier to remember a fake name if you kept the same initials. He left his ID behind. He said he was wiping the hard drive on his laptop and selling it, too much personal information there.”

  “His family thought he’d taken it with him.”

  “Maybe he did, all I know is he wanted to stop being Brandon Colbeck the day he left home.”

  And there you had it. All this time, Sam had information that could have helped the police, the family. Not closure, perhaps, but something tangible to grab onto.

  I had one more question to ask her.

  “Nicolette Baxter said she saw Brian Cole get into a black Mercedes SUV.” I studied Sam’s face for any sign of recognition, found none. “She didn’t get a good look at the driver, beyond it being a man with short gray hair.”

  “And that’s important, how?”

  “Michael Westlake has short gray hair and he drives a black Mercedes SUV.”

  Sam shook her head. “No way. I told you, Brandon loathed his stepfather, and the feeling was mutual.”

  “And yet, all roads lead to Westlake being the driver.”

  “Okay, let’s say you’re right, that the driver was Michael Westlake. What are you going to do next?”