“You did? That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me, Pete.”
He kissed me. “River, when will you wear my ring and agree to be my wife?”
“Soon.”
Geneva Walker called me at seven that evening, and she was with Melanie on speaker phone. “My daughter has something to say to you,” Geneva said to start the conversation.
“Good evening to you both,” I said. “What can I do for you?”
“I apologize for the calls,” Melanie said. “Mom and Malcom explained that he’d been tapped to take the big boss’s daughter out when she visited their branch of the company. It wasn’t a date. He escorted her so she wouldn’t have to eat alone.”
“That’s good to know.”
“And,” Melanie said, “if you haven’t booked my date with anyone else, I still want you to cater my wedding.”
“I’ll be glad to, Melanie.”
“Whew, glad that’s over,” Melanie said. “Mom said we can’t afford to lose you.”
“Your mom is a smart woman.”
Special agents Hightower and Greene called midafternoon the next day and asked to see us. Everything went better with food, so I invited them for an early dinner at five.
Pete surprised me by offering to do burgers on the grill. I made an easy strawberry pie, baked sweet potato fries, and whipped up a perfect batch of coleslaw.
Pete made margaritas for everyone, though I noticed Hightower didn’t touch his. While the grill and oven were doing their thing, we gathered on the back porch. The deep blue sky overhead gave the illusion everything was picture perfect. It hadn’t been that way for me. Yesterday, I’d gotten a lot closer to the action than I liked.
I kept looking for the cat but Major hadn’t been around all day.
“Lance survive the initial interview?” I asked Agent Hightower after he and his partner arrived.
“Didn’t get to ask him anything. Lawyered up at first breath.”
“Oh. That’s not helpful.”
“We have our ways. Lance Hamlyn is no match for the FBI.”
“What about the missing money?” I asked. “You have any idea where it is?”
“No. We hoped you had ideas.”
“I’m just now understanding the bigger picture, but I don’t see why they needed Estelle’s dry-cleaning shop when they already had a perfect business cover in the marina. They had the facility to themselves. It would be easy to fake invoices for goods and services from there and pass the dirty money through the bank.”
“We believe they started out with the marina laundering the drug money, then they set up Estelle to also run money through her business,” Hightower said. “Once they had both systems in place, they sent Lance to keep an eye on the process and enforce the cartel’s wishes. When the double shipment of money vanished, Lance jumped all over the Bolz family. In his eyes, they were expendable.”
“Why didn’t he jump all over Garnet at the marina? Why target the Bolzes?”
“The dockmaster is his cousin by marriage. From what we can gather, he trusted her completely. Now she’s elsewhere, and a million dollars is missing. With no leads here for the money, the mob will go after her for it.”
I shuddered. “I wouldn’t want to be Garnet when the mob enforcers find her.”
“If she’s smart, she’ll find an island in another country and lay low for the rest of her life.”
“Is that likely?” Pete asked as he flipped a burger.
“Sadly, no. Between you and me, she’s most likely to end up a Jane Doe homicide elsewhere. We may never know her fate.”
“How dirty was my friend Estelle Bolz?” I asked.
“She laundered mob money, that’s illegal.”
“How’d she get involved with these people? I don’t understand her stooping to their level. She supported her family with a small business, for goodness sake.”
“We subpoenaed her bank records,” Hightower said. “She made regular deposits in her personal checking account of $3,000 a month for the last three years, so she was on their payroll that long. Other than Social Security, that was what she lived on. What income she netted from the dry cleaners, paid the bills there. She had very little personal income from the dry cleaners.”
“I thought her shop was rock solid and profitable. Since it wasn’t, I believe Estelle kept it open so that her staff had jobs.”
“It might’ve seemed successful from the outside, but her shaky finances from the previous five years indicate Estelle had done everything short of selling her blood to pay her bills. We think Estelle was targeted because she had the kind of business they needed to expand the money laundering operation, and she desperately needed money.”
“I feel awful about her situation. If I’d known, I would’ve moved her in here with us. Why didn’t Chili and Kale help her? I don’t understand this at all.”
“We’ll never know, unless her sons tell the story, and there’s a chance they may not know all of it. Pride is a terrible burden to seniors, as is independence. Odds are, Estelle did everything she could to maintain both.”
I glanced at the lengthening shadows in my yard. How many more people in my life were just barely making it? Jude Ernest for one. I needed to make sure he got more meals each week, but he’d protest my help. That was his way.
“We have your written statement, and once the federal prosecutor is ready to file the case, you’ll hear from us again.”
“How is it a federal case with the money still missing?” I asked.
“Estelle’s financial records document money laundering occurred at her cleaners. We’re hoping Hamlyn will roll on the enforcers that tore up Estelle’s house. If he does, we have a shot at the biggest guns in the drug ring. We’re also hopeful to learn more once we get deeper into the marina finances. We took their computers and cameras, even found a hidden trail cam on our second pass through there.”
“Let me see if I understand the logistics,” I said, keeping my smile to myself about the trail cam we’d returned to the marina. “The mob funneled cash through the marina to a regional bank, and from there the money transferred to different financial institutions until it landed in offshore accounts. When they needed more money processed, they brought Estelle’s dry cleaners into the fold.”
“Since Estelle kept the books for her business, no one was the wiser when her net receipts increased to a few hundred dollars a day on a regular basis, and then jumped to nearly two thousand a week,” Hightower said. “We estimate that over $100,000 passed through her dry cleaners. She hadn’t filed her taxes for last year yet. Those hefty bank deposits into her new business account at that regional bank would’ve triggered an audit. The mob probably intended to sideline Estelle soon. That’s their pattern, to involve local business owners and then bug out when the activity comes under scrutiny.”
“Poor Estelle.” I tried to piece more of it together. “But why did Kale fake his death if he was barely involved in the money laundering?”
“He said Hamlyn came to him and demanded the missing money or he’d kill him.”
“That’s scary. Why didn’t he tell someone?”
“He probably told his mom,” Pete chimed in. “He wouldn’t have trusted the cops.”
“If either of them confided in Jude Ernest or me, we could’ve found a better way to deal with this,” I said. “Estelle might still be alive.”
“And you and Jude might be dead,” Hightower said. “Kale did what he had to do to protect the ones he loved.”
“What happens to him now?” I asked.
Greene smiled benignly. “He’s our guest for a while longer.”
“And if Chili surfaces?” I persisted.
“We want to talk to him too. Someone took that money. We think it was Garnet, but we have no proof either way.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
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“Someone took that money.”
Those words resonated in my ear all evening and into the next morning. Over coffee on the back porch, Pete and I continued the conversation. “Kale and Chili didn’t steal the money. They’re not bad people,” I said, eying the big black cat that rested near me on the bench. Major showed up last night after the agents left and he showed no sign of leaving here again.
“People under stress do things you wouldn’t expect,” Pete added.
“I know them. If they found a billfold in the street without ID, they’d take it to the nearest business. They wouldn’t help themselves to anything inside it.”
“A million dollars is a huge temptation. Think about what you would do with a million dollars.”
I went to take a sip of coffee, but my cup was empty. I set it down. “Me? I’d buy a new van and help get Doug set up in business. I’d help seniors with their bills. I’d set up a soup kitchen somewhere so that everyone who was hungry would have food. I’d repair Estelle’s house because what those men did was wrong. I’d figure out a way to get Jude back on his feet.”
“What about a new house? Trips overseas?”
“I don’t need those things. If I had a million dollars I’d spend nearly all of it helping people. But I might hire a few people to help me do the cooking for giving away free food. No way could I do that and keep Holloway Catering afloat.”
“You’re a good person, River. I wouldn’t be so charitable if I had a million-dollar windfall. I’d plan the best wedding and honeymoon trip ever and bank the rest for all the kids we’re going to have. Bottom line, I’d invest the money in our future.”
“That’s lovely,” I said, meaning it. “But Kale and Chili. If they had a million dollars, they’d probably buy a hunting preserve and live there with Jude. We’d never hear from them again.”
“Wonder how Hamlyn got the money to the marina,” Pete said. “Did he meet a boat offshore?”
“We’ll never know, but that sounds reasonable to me.”
“Garnet kept a low profile, and even though we suspected her, we had no proof of her association with the mob. Wonder what she’d do with a million dollars? I haven’t a clue.”
“Which makes me think she took the money,” Pete said. “Think about it. Lance is in jail, Estelle’s dead, Kale is singing for the feds, and Chili’s off the grid. Garnet is the last woman standing.”
“Except she’s one of them.” The cat’s purring was so soothing I had to work hard to string my words together. “Why would she need the money? She probably got a higher cut than Estelle, probably had more money than she could spend without blowing her cover.”
“Some people never have enough money. She could’ve felt slighted at some point along the way and figured she would take her due. In any event, we’re speculating. We may never know what happened to the money. Though her banking records for the last three and a half years indicate a huge rise in her deposits. She must’ve been skimming money from the marina too.”
“It doesn’t feel finished,” I said. “The ending is messy with the money at large.”
“We got a bad cop off the street and both Bolz brothers are alive. That counts as a win in my book,” Pete said. “The case is over, and we’ll never see any of those people again.”
Easy for him to say. The loose ends still flapped in the ocean breeze. I didn’t like how unsettled I felt. There was no storm brewing on the horizon. The sky was bright and clear, despite my clanging intuition. Where are you, Garnet?
That unsettled feeling wouldn’t leave me alone. The next day I told Pete, “I want to find Chili again to give him an update.”
Pete and I drove to Jude’s house to ask about Chili, only Jude wasn’t home either.
“Chili’s been here,” Pete said, pointing out a small object.
The rusted mint tin sat on the porch under the railing. I grabbed the box of secrets and inside lay a small scrap of paper. “Previous coordinates,” it read.
I whooped with delight and took Pete’s hand for the hike back to the van. Before I cranked the vehicle, I turned to Pete. “I wonder if Chili left us a message out there. Will we ever find out what happened to that money or Garnet?”
“Garnet’s body never turned up, so there’s a possibility she’s still alive. She’s missing. The money’s missing. I think she took it, but what do I know? Since the FBI found out she’d been skimming from the mob, it’s fair to assume the mob did too. Either organization could’ve recovered the money,” Pete said, pausing for a moment. “There’s a good chance we’ll never know.”
“Hmm. Estelle used me to hunt for Chili. Kale gave me a message for his brother, only I didn’t see Chili after that.”
“You gave Jude the message,” Pete reminded me.
“I did, and he must’ve known what it meant.” Realization dawned. “They used me. All of them. I fell into the little sister trap, trying to help them, and they used the misdirection to get away.”
Fortunately Pete hadn’t cleared the cache in his phone and the GPS coordinates were still there from before. I drove to the other end of the island and found my pull-in spot. We loaded up with water and protein bars and set off to our fallen log.
But when we arrived, there was no flashing sign that said, “River look here.” As before I sat on the fallen tree to rest. I searched the nearby trees with my eyes. “We hiked out here for nothing.”
Pete had been sitting quietly, but then he grinned. “Look. Up there.”
I glanced where he was pointing, the stout pine next to the fallen log, and up high a small plastic box was nailed to the tree. I fetched it and opened the box, withdrawing a note wrapped around a hunk of bills. I handed Pete the money and opened the note.
“It’s Chili’s handwriting,” I said eagerly reading aloud.
Thanks for everything, L’il Sis. You’ve always been family to us, and we thank you for welcoming us into your life. You made this island bearable. Uncle Jay loaned me this money. Use it to bury Mama in Kale’s unused grave. Put her birth date, death date, and Mother of Chili and Kale on her headstone. Don’t look for us. Uncle Jay and I are taking off and laying low until Kale gets out of prison. Uncle Jay knows the right people for us to start over with new identities, so that’s what we’re doing. Use whatever’s leftover on your wedding. I regret I won’t be there to watch you walk down the aisle. Chili. PS we did not steal the money nor do we have it.”
Pete met my gaze. “There’s probably ten grand here in hundreds. That’s one heck of a memorial tombstone.”
“Wow,” I said. “Chili’s okay. He’s with Uncle Jay. You were right earlier. We’ll never see these people again.”
“Does it matter?” Pete asked. “You have me and your brother and the cat.”
“You’re right. I’m not alone. But this dance with the mob cost them dearly. Nothing can replace Chili and Kale’s mom.”
“Chili and Jude and Kale will be fine. People underestimate small town folk all the time. They think we don’t have half a brain to think with. We are just as smart as they are, if not smarter, because we know what’s important. Family is important. Money makes things easier, but if you trust the right people, your heart will always be full.”
I stared at Pete. He’d never mentioned his personal philosophy before, and it warmed my heart that he believed the same things I did. He took his time coming to the realization he needed me in his life, but he’d come home, and that was the important part.
As for me, I’d been so busy helping my friends that I hadn’t given Pete the attention he deserved. My friends were safe now and so was I. That missing money could stay missing for all I cared.
“I trust you completely,” I said, looking deep into his eyes and smiling.
He stared back. “Does this mean what I think it means?”
“It does.”
“I’v
e been carrying this with me since Valentine’s Day when I asked you the first time.” He reached into his pocket for my engagement ring. “River Holloway, will you be my wife?”
Emotion choked my throat. I tried to speak and not a sound would come out. I nodded. He slipped the diamond ring on my finger and drew me into his arms.
“Thank you,” he said. “I stumbled down the wrong road, trying to build an impressive resumé and get rich, but the effort nearly cost me the treasure I hold most dear. You.”
“We’ve been tempered by life,” I said. “We learned from our mistakes.”
“We’re a helluva team.”
As we sealed our promise with a kiss, a song filled my heart. Not a song with words, but one of joy and peace. While I was sad about Estelle, her sons and Jude were starting over now that the dirty cop was in custody. The truly important thing was I’d found my way back to trusting Pete with my heart. He would be careful with it from now on, I believed that with every fiber of my being.
I wasn’t perfect, far from it, but I did my best every day to help others. Pete and I had committed to each other. There’d be storms, but the sun would always appear. I’d wintered plenty of storms to date and they’d strengthened my character. I was the caring, helpful daughter my parents had raised. They’d be proud of me for helping the Bolzes, for finding my own happiness, and for guiding my brother into maturity.
Light glittered on my ring. Life was good, and the future shone diamond bright.
River’s Delicious Sea Bass
Ingredients
4 servings of sea bass (about 4-7 ounces each)
8 ounces of baby bella mushrooms, sliced
A “bunch” of scallions, bulbs sliced diagonally
Ginger root, peeled and thinly sliced
Garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 lemons, sliced in thin circles
SEAS THE DAY Page 25