Freefall

by RaeAnne Thayne

  "Yeah, but you have to admit, it's one hell of a physical attraction. And we have the children in common. That's more than most people who get married."

  She drew in a shuddering breath. Her insides were hollow, shaky, and she couldn't seem to get enough air. "You're crazy," she said again.

  "What other options do we have? You've been good for the children. They need you in their lives."

  Resolute determination gleamed in his eyes and his features hardened. "But they need me, too. I'm not about to let you take them and walk away from here the next time you get itchy feet. I'll fight you with everything I have before I let you do that. We're stuck, Sophie. We can't just go our separate ways and we certainly can't continue as we have been, circling around each other, trying to ignore the heat between us."

  "And you think marriage is the answer?"

  "I think we could make it work. What other option do we have? Somehow we have to find a way to cobble together what's left of this family, for the sake of three children who have lost everything."

  She blew out a breath, at a complete loss for words. This was all too huge, too overwhelming. Marriage to Tom. Trying to build a life together, for the sake of the children.

  It sounded like Heaven and hell, all wrapped into one staggering package.

  "Just think about it, Sophie." He rose from the bed and crossed to the door. "That's all. Think about it."

  Her emotions battered, numb, she watched him walk out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

  Think about it, he said.

  As if she would be able to do anything else!

  * * *

  They tiptoed around each other—and his impromptu proposal—for the rest of the week.

  Neither of them referred to it again whenever they saw each other—which wasn't that often, between his hectic schedule at Canfield and trying to meet the needs of the children. But it was always there, simmering between them like a kettle full of something they were both afraid would explode in their faces at any moment.

  The words had come tumbling out of the blue, he acknowledged in his office Friday afternoon, but the more thought he gave the idea, the more it made sense.

  He couldn't let her walk away again. The children needed her too much, were blooming under her care. Grief still cut through the house like a thick, murky stream, but under Sophie's watch, Alison and the twins were learning how to navigate it, to flow with the current of their emotions instead of fighting them at every turn.

  On his own, he feared they all would have floundered. He wasn't good with emotions, probably because he'd grown up in a household where excess sentiments of any kind simply weren't permitted.

  He wouldn't have known how to comfort Zoe after a bad dream or talk to Ali about how much she missed her mother or share knock-knock jokes with Zack until he stopped brooding. Sophie did all that and more.

  He probably could have figured out a way to muddle through without her but he didn't want to. The children needed her laughter and her softness. She was the heart and soul of their makeshift little family.

  He only hoped she was giving his proposal serious thought because he couldn't seem to focus on much of anything else, despite the tangled mess of Peter's affairs he didn't seem any closer to unraveling.

  She had to say yes soon because he needed all his powers of concentration to figure out what the hell kind of mess his brother had dug for himself.

  Something was rotton at Canfield. He could smell it, a lingering decay in the air that permeated everything. So far he hadn't been successful at figuring out what was wrong. According to the books, the company was exceeding income projections for the year.

  But if that was the case, why had so many of their investors lost so much in the past twelve months? Where was the money coming from?

  His father and grandfather had built Canfield slowly, steadily, by making conservative investments in start-up companies they believed in, with people they trusted.

  Poring over the records showed him that in the three years since he'd taken over, Peter had used a very different approach. He'd taken some wild leaps, backed some risky ventures. Some investors had lost a great deal of money, something not so unusual given the uncertain economy. But while investors seemed to be suffering an endless series of setbacks, Canfield's financial picture continued rosy.

  At least until the last six weeks or so, when several funds had been mysteriously depleted.

  He had hired one of the best teams of accountants he could find to help sort out what Pete had been up to but so far they were stymied.

  "Excuse me, sir." Janine White, Peter's efficient secretary, buzzed in suddenly. Her voice sounded tight, a few octaves higher than normal. "There are some FBI agents here to see you."

  Herrera and Washburn, he was willing to bet. Good. Maybe he might finally get some answers, at least regarding Peter and Shelly's deaths. "Show them in, Janine."

  The two agents who had come to Seal Point entered immediately, Herrera in the lead. He rose to greet them, his hand outstretched. "Agent Herrera, Agent Washburn. I'm glad you're here. I had planned to call you in the next day or so if I didn't hear from you about the status of the investigation. Please, have a seat."

  They complied. "Thank you for seeing us so promptly, Mr. Canfield." Again, Agent Herrerra took the lead in her cool, competent manner. "We wanted to let you know that we believe we have a lead in the Marlowe hit-and-run."

  "Oh?"

  "The Monterey police have a suspect in custody on unrelated charges who we believe might be connected to the case. A neighbor of Mr. Marlowe's who has been away since the night of the hit-and-run finally returned to the area and learned what happened. He came forward with a partial license plate of a suspicious vehicle he had noticed in the area the night of the accident. We were able to trace it to a man named Leo Harris, who was wanted on an outstanding warrant."

  Some tiny flicker of memory sparked at the name but he couldn't place why it seemed familiar. Not surprising, he supposed. He'd been through hundreds of files in the past few weeks, so many that all the names had begun to blur together in his mind. The man's name could have been on any one of them. Or none at all.

  "What do you know about him?"

  "Harris has a fairly lengthy rap sheet—assault, robbery, weapons violations. Mostly penny-ante stuff, but he's been in and out of the system most of his life."

  "A partial license plate doesn't sound like much evidence to pin a hit-and-run death on."

  "We have other evidence we're not prepared to make public at this time."

  "But you think he's the man who killed Walter?"

  "We're still investigating," Washburn hedged. "At this point, we can only say we believe he's a definite suspect. We haven't been able to shake his alibi witnesses yet but we're working on that."

  Herrerra spoke up. "We can tell you we found some blood evidence on the fender of Harris's vehicle that tentatively matches Marlow's type. We've sent it away for DNA testing but that will take a few weeks."

  "What about Peter and Shelly's crash? Any link between this Harris and their deaths?"

  "We're working on it," she said. "In fact, that's why we're here. We're looking for a motive. We'd like to check company records. These are tough financial times and a lot of people have seen their investments hit the toilet over the last few years. We'd like to know if Harris might be one of them or if he might have ties to any unhappy customers."

  Tom thought of all the Canfield investors who had lost money since Pete took over the company. The list of suspects would be staggering. "Murdering three people over an investment that goes sour seems a fairly extreme reaction to a market downturn."

  Candace Herrera's smile was hard. "When millions of dollars are involved, Mr. Canfield, no reaction is too extreme."

  He couldn't dispute that. "Walter's replacement might be the best place to start. Margot Henley has been here for years. She knows a great deal about the inner workings of the company and she also
knows her way around the computer system."

  He didn't add she was one of the few people left at Canfield he trusted implicitly.

  He rose and led them down the hall to Margot's office. After he explained what the agents were looking for, she was eager to help.

  "Walter was my friend. My mentor," she said simply. "If someone killed him, I'll do everything I can to help you find out who."

  Tom hovered for a while but quickly realized his presence was superfluous so he decided to return to his own office. On his way, he passed Janine's desk.

  "What was that all about?" she asked.

  He stopped at her desk, struck with the realization that he should have asked her to help with the research before sending the FBI agents to Margot. Janine had been with Canfield as long as he could remember, first as secretary to his father then to Peter.

  A plump, proficient woman with graying hair and pictures of her grandchildren on her desk, she had doted on him and Peter when they were boys. She always used to keep Hershey's Kisses in her desk just for them on the rare ocassions they visited their father at work.

  It probably wasn't a very kind thought to have about his brother but he had always been a little surprised that Pete hadn't let Janine go and hired someone polished and elegant to be his secretary.

  Maybe his brother still had a soft spot for Hershey's Kisses. Or maybe Pete had just been smart enough to realize Janine was the real driving force behind Canfield.

  She had been the first to point out to the family that William's behavior was becoming more and more erratic. If not for Janine's concern, they might not have noticed anything unusual for months or even years. They wouldn't have been able to get help for William so early, medication that had helped delay the progression of the disease to some extent.

  He sat on the edge of her desk and decided to do a little sleuthing. He didn't want to alarm her unnecessarily so he opted not to tell her the FBI's suspicions about a possible link between Walter Marlowe's death and Peter and Shelly's crash into the Pacific.

  "They're trying to find information about a man who might have been a Canfield client. Does the name Leo Harris ring any bells?"

  She frowned. "Leo Harris. Actually, yes. I believe he called for Peter several times in the week before the crash. He seemed very determined to talk to him but your brother made excuses every time he called."

  Tom stared at her, stunned, and realized he hadn't really expected her to know anything. Harris had called Peter? What business would a criminal like Harris have had with his brother? Had he been an unhappy investor? One angry enough to kill over his losses?

  "Are you sure about this, Janine?"

  "It's my job to remember names, Thomas," she said primly. "But I can certainly double-check for you. I log every call on the computer, with the date, time and the name of the caller. It should be on the log."

  He wanted to kiss her for her somewhat frightening efficiency as he watched her call up a window on her computer then scroll back through the dates.

  "It would have been around the twenty-fifth of October that he started calling," she said. After a moment of perusing the file, she frowned. "Now that's certainly odd."

  "What's wrong?"

  "I don't forget names. I just don't, especially when a caller is as irate as Mr. Harris was. I know I'm right about the date he started calling—it was my granddaughter's birthday and I wasn't in the mood to take any guff—but his name isn't here."

  She scrolled down. "Or the next day. Or the next. How can that be? I know I'm not going crazy. It's almost like someone deleted any record that he called."

  He shifted on the desk, uneasy all over again. "Who would have access to your computer?"

  "I don't know. My files are password-protected but I suppose anyone with a little knowledge could have hacked in." She lifted her concerned gaze to his. "Peter knew my password, of course, in case he needed to find something on my computer when I wasn't here. But what possible reason would he have to alter the call log?"

  Now there was a damn good question.

  Pete, what the hell were you up to?

  Why would Leo Harris have tried so frequently to reach his brother? And why would Peter want to hide that? What business might they have had together that could have been worth killing over?

  He had a strong suspicion that if he or his team of auditors was able to get to the bottom of all this, he wasn't going to like what they found.

  Chapter 14

  "Aunt Sophie, Aunt Sophie. Look!" Zach exclaimed. "Grandfather found an invisible fish. Come see!"

  Zach and William crouched near a tide pool, their heads bent together as they studied the inhabitants. Sophie snapped off a half-dozen frames of their matching gleeful face in the dusky slanted light of early evening with the stunning azure sea as a backdrop then forced herself to step away from the camera and tripod.

  She wanted to stay there and take more pictures of them before the light faded. But she was trying to force herself to walk away from her camera a little more, to experience life instead of only watching it and recording it. It was tough to break habits she had worked to develop over a lifetime but she was trying.

  As she moved to join William and Zach, her tennis shoes skidded over the wet, slippery rocks that rimmed the south edge of the small Seal Point beach. She teetered a little but caught her balance and hopped to the rocks where they stood looking into a small pool left by the receding tide.

  She craned her neck but couldn't see anything. "Where?"

  William pointed into the water. After several more moments of searching, her eyes finally picked out a small creature about five inches long nestled against a jagged rock.

  "Wow! You're right, Zach. It is almost invisible. I can hardly see it, it's camouflaged so well. William, however did you find it?"

  Tom's father looked pleased. He beamed at her with the same enthusiasm stamped on his grandson's face. "I don't know. I just looked and saw it hiding there. It's a cling-fish."

  What kind of cruel disease left him with that tiny, seemingly insignificant snippet of knowledge while he frequently couldn't remember his own son's name? She ached again for Tom's loss. First his mother, then his brother, then this endless, painful parting with his father.

  "A cling-fish, huh?" Zach said. "That's a good name. I guess that's why he's holding on to that rock so tightly."

  William nodded. "A cling-fish can be stuck so tight to a rock that the current can pull the rock away with the cling-fish still holding on. Oh, and look." He pointed to a tiny pink cluster. "That's called a Hopkin's rose."

  "What a pretty plant," Sophie said.

  "It might look like a flower but it's not. It's really a nudibranch—a sea snail without a shell."

  "How do you know all this?" she asked, baffled at the strange workings of his mind but pleased by the admiration in Zach's eyes as he looked at his grandfather.

  "I just do. I've read a lot."

  "It's wonderful knowledge." She peered into the water and saw other creatures she had missed earlier. "You know, I would love to come down here and photograph the tide pools again if you were willing to help me identify what's inside. Would you like to do that?"

  William's shoulders, usually stooped and bent, straightened slightly. He smiled at her with a pride and dignity she hadn't seen on his features since she arrived back at Seal Point. "I would be honored to help you, Sophie," he said formally. "Anytime. Just ask."

  She returned his smile, aware this was the first time since her return to Monterey that William had managed to call her by her own name instead of her sister's. Maybe all the time she had spent reading to him during the past week was paying off and he was beginning to realize his daughter-in-law was gone.

  "Girls, come see all the cool things your grandfather found," she called to Ali and Zoe, busy building a castle from damp sand and ice-cream buckets up the beach a few dozen yards.

  The girls abandoned their construction efforts and joined them, climbing over the
slippery rocks with such alacrity that Sophie was once more glad she had trusted her instincts to take advantage of the low tide and mild weather to bring them all down to the beach.

  They needed this, all of them. The twins were always happy to be outside and Ali had been upset after school. Though she hadn't wanted to talk about it, Sophie gathered one of the other girls had said something thoughtless about her parents.

  Whatever the reason, no trace of her tears remained now as they all enjoyed the sunshine and moist sea air.

  She couldn't help thinking it was good for the children to spend time with their grandfather, to see a side of him that wasn't confused and delusional. Sophie watched as William continued to point out the inhabitants of the tide pools, some so tiny they could hardly be seen. The children soaked up the knowledge.

  "That's so cool, Grandfather," Ali exclaimed with a grin when William pointed out a miniscule hermit crab scuttling across the sandy bottom of a pool.

  They were so engrossed in what he was showing them that no one noticed when Sophie stepped away and returned to her camera. How could she ignore the chance to capture such a touching scene? A grandfather passing on his dwindling knowledge to another generation before it all completely slipped away?

  If nothing else, she wanted the pictures for herself so she could remember this evening.

  For the next half hour she photographed William and the children while the sun continued its long, slow slide below the water. As she clicked frame after frame of the four of them, she was aware of a curious contentment stealing over her, an easy peace in her soul that had been missing for longer than she could remember.

  No, not missing. She'd never had it before.

  It felt right being here with them all. They belonged together, even William.

  How strange was that, that she could even consider him part of her little family after their shared history? All her resentment toward him had disappeared long ago, she realized. He was part of their little makeshift family, too.

  The only one missing tonight was Tom.