Changing Tides

by Veronica Mixon

  Cal pointed a finger into my chest. “I want my money.”

  I swiped his hand away. “Then don’t jeopardize our future.” I was having trouble keeping my emotions in check, and talking too fast. But I had his attention. “And something weird is going on with the South Carolina warehouses. The appraisals are coming in wacky.” I stepped back. This garage smelled like a sewer. “I don’t need any more problems.”

  He honored my heartfelt plea with a bitter laugh. “As far as I’m concerned, taking care of snags is why you’re paid the big bucks.”

  Same old Calvin. “That’s it. That’s all you can say?”

  “I have my own problems. The business, the bank problems, the island, those are yours.” His voice had an acrimonious edge that would fool most but not me. Cal wasn’t angry; he was worried.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He opened the car door.

  I grabbed his arm. “Talk to me.” He tried shrugging me away, but I gripped his briefcase and drew him closer. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  He wrenched his briefcase free and flung it into the backseat. “A couple of friends borrowed my boat. They didn’t take anything that was yours.” He put his hands on my shoulders and squeezed. “Katie, forget about it. They won’t be back.” He climbed into the driver’s seat.

  I grabbed the window and held the door open, took a second to weigh my words and filter out the sore points. Granddad’s booming voice played in my head. Katie-girl, family always comes first. Do what it takes to protect what’s ours. “I can’t help if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”

  “Stay out of my business.”

  One of Calʼs shady deals was about to ruin my world. The world I’d worked for the past year to rebuild. Memories of working sixteen-hour days, my marriage disintegrating, and weeks of travel without seeing my son, all rushed forward. “Now you want me to stay out of your business?” The roar in my ears matched my voice. “Now that nineteen-year-old Amanda’s not calling six times a day threatening to tell her daddy you’re the father of her baby?”

  Calvin’s jaw clamped tight. “That happened two years ago. And it wasn’t too long ago you were begging me to vouch for you in court.”

  I sagged against the car as exhaustion erased my fury

  “I’ve done everything you’ve asked. Signed all your papers.” His tone softer and heartfelt. “Let it go.”

  “Let what go?” I pushed away from the car, looked into his eyes, and tried again for reason. “The bank is willing to refinance millions because of our company’s reputation. Our name. Bad press will be a deal breaker.”

  He stared straight ahead and white-knuckled the steering wheel.

  “I’m going to let the Feds use Spartina as their base,” I said. “In exchange, I’m going to require they keep our name out of the papers when they make their bust.”

  “Bust?”

  “Yes, bust. A drug ring is using Barry Island.” I stared into Cal’s blue eyes and asked the unthinkable. “Your dive boat doesn’t have anything to do with drugs, does it?” An unbelievable and incomprehensible thought shook loose in my head. I took a step back. “Cal, do you know Juan Cabral?”

  Resolve hardened his face. “Never heard of him.” He started his engine. “Move.”

  I backed up another step.

  He slammed the car door and backed out of the garage.

  Chapter Seven

  Nathan gripped the dashboard of Erica Sanchez’s SUV. A Savannah morning traffic jam was not the time to ride shotgun with Erica at the wheel. Tires skidded, a horn blasted, and the crawling traffic came to a standstill. A white BMW idled at the crosswalk waiting for a jogger to amble past. Smoke and the smell of burned rubber drifted from the car’s back tires.

  Nathan rolled down the car window, stuck his head through, and tried to see around the horse and carriage parked a half a block away. Negotiating the morning traffic in downtown Savannah, a grid of historical squares combining homes, businesses, and public parks, entailed hair-pulling patience that would tax Job.

  Erica banged her fist on the steering wheel. Her patience appeared more on the nonexistent level.

  Nathan’s phone signaled a text message. “Katelyn Landers just arrived at her mother’s residence.” He popped the glove box and set a magnetic cop light in place.

  Erica whipped around the stalled lane and rode two tires on the sidewalk for the next six blocks. At Whitaker Street, she pulled to a stop in front of a sprawling Savannah gray brick surrounded by a porch large enough to host a three-hundred-person reception. Roslyn Barry’s house was like a picture in one of those southern designer magazines, except for Kate Landers’s Hummer sitting cock-eyed in the driveway and the two police cruisers parked on the corner.

  Nathan and Erica jumped from the car, hurried through the open double mahogany doors and into a wide foyer.

  “Kate.” Erica turned left and sprinted down a hall as if she’d done it a million times.

  Nathan paused at the first room on the right and peeked into a formal living area overlooking the park across the street. Everything appeared neat and orderly. Roslyn Barry’s dining room could sub for a period movie set with mahogany antique furniture, silver candelabras, and a sparkling crystal chandelier. An adjacent door led to a pristine white and chrome kitchen larger than his apartment. The back door stood open, and Erica and a uniformed policeman conversed on the back porch.

  Nathan kept moving. At the end of the hall French doors stood partially opened. He paused in the threshold and fixed his gaze on the papers, books, and broken glass littering the floor of a home office. A wide-eyed Kate Landers, vertical but just barely, leaned against a burl-inlaid desk holding an armload of books.

  Nathan removed gloves and shoe covers from his jacket pocket.

  Kate dropped her armload of books on the credenza. “What are you doing here?” The wrinkles on her forehead reminded him of a friend’s Chinese shar-pei. “I haven’t notified the police.”

  He slipped booties over his shoes and stepped inside the room. “A beat officer noticed the front door ajar at eight o’clock.” Nathan perused the room as if responding to a city burglary call was an everyday occurrence. “When it was still open at eight forty, he called it in.” He pulled on his gloves.

  “Police officer?” Kate shoved a desk chair aside, stepped to the window, and searched the street. She wore a straight black skirt and white blouse, nothing showy, even her shoes were plain and black. Somehow, she made the nondescript outfit look like a million bucks.

  Kate Landers was close to perfect, maybe a little too perfect.

  Nathan studied the room’s alarm equipment. There was a glass-break device above the window, and an infrared motion detector positioned over the door. Either the intruder had been talented enough to circumvent the system, or they knew the code.

  Kate glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner. “Mom’s late. She and Owen were supposed to meet me here thirty minutes ago.” The worry in her voice held none of the take-charge tone from the night before. “She can’t face this without warning,” she added.

  “Roslyn knows.” Erica walked into the room, gloves in hand, shoes covered. She gave a curt, almost grudging nod in Kate’s direction, then snapped on her gloves and squatted. She lifted the edge of a drawer and thumbed the file underneath.

  Kate closed the distance in two steps and slammed the file shut. “Prying into private business usually requires a warrant.”

  Erica popped up and edged back rubbing her neck.

  Hands on her hips, Kate stalked forward. “And how do you know my mother knows about the break-in?”

  Erica’s jaw clenched, she glanced through the window as if carefully choosing her words. Nathan figured that’d be a new experience for his second-in-command. “When we got word of a possible burglary, we sent a man to Spartina.”

  “What?”

  Clearly Kate held the upper hand in this relationship. Erica was on edge, but Kate was livid.

&nbs
p; “Marshal Parsi,” Kate said, “Last evening you failed to mention that Agent Sanchez was part of your team.” Kate’s sarcastic undertone mirrored a parent chastising a child for lying. “Would either of you care to explain why a federal marshal and a DEA superstar responded to a possible robbery?”

  “Is this a robbery?” Nathan asked. “Because if it is, the thief didn’t know squat about antiques.” He pointed to the credenza. “Those jade animal carvings look genuine and old.” He nodded to a chest in the corner. “Egg under that glass dome looks like one of those Faberge pieces. Oil paintings and tapestries are on every wall, all untouched.”

  Kate turned a slow circle, scanned the room as if taking into account what wasn’t missing. “This is my mother’s home, but as far as I can tell, everything of value’s still here.” She considered Nathan. “But why are you here?” Her tone held no anger, just a bewildered confusion.

  He knelt beside a black briefcase leaning against the wall. “This yours?”

  Kate’s questioning gaze moved to the case. “No.”

  “Your mother’s?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Nathan raised an eyebrow. His finger hovered over the lock of the briefcase waiting for Kate’s nod of approval. After a couple of beats she graced him with a sullen chin lift. He popped the lid and pulled an address book from the side pocket. Stood and thumbed through the pages.

  Kate reached for the book. “Whose is it?”

  He raised the book out of her reach. “Prints. You’re not wearing gloves.”

  Erica stepped closer and peered over Nathan’s shoulder.

  He flipped to the front of the book and glanced at Kate. “When was the last time you saw Calvin Thompson?”

  “This morning.” He knew she told the truth.

  “Here?”

  “No. His house.” Same clipped tone, but she didn’t waffle. She crossed an arm over her body, held the other in a protective gesture. A normal reaction if the realization of the break-in had begun to sink in.

  Thompson was under surveillance, so Kate hadn’t owned up to anything he didn’t already know. But did she pay her cousin a visit to warn him or get answers? And how did the briefcase end up in the aunt’s library?

  Nathan was still a few hours away from approval to tap Kate’s phone. Citizens with nothing more serious than a speeding ticket on their record took longer. Request to tap Thompson’s cell had taken less than an hour, but it hadn’t helped with the early morning conversation between the cousins. No novice when it came to privacy protection, Calvin rarely used his personal cell. When he did, it was to order pizza or call his secretary at the port. And he never failed to remove the battery after a call.

  Nathan lifted the briefcase and placed it on the desk. “Did your cousin have this case when you saw him earlier?”

  “I think so.”

  “You think.” Erica stepped around Nathan and stood in front of Kate. “You don’t know? You don’t remember? What?”

  “He had a black briefcase. I can’t say for sure it was this one.” Kate reached to shut the lid.

  Nathan nudged Erica aside, and caught Kate’s hand mid-air. “Prints.”

  To get answers, Nathan needed to provide Kate with a reason to cooperate. “After Calvin left you this morning, he went to a diner on Abercorn. His car’s still in the parking lot, but your cousin’s nowhere around.”

  Kate’s shar-pei wrinkles made another appearance. “How do you know my cousin’s not with his car?”

  “Because I had a man tailing him. Your cousin managed to lose him.” Thompson giving his man the slip, then ransacking his aunt’s house, and leaving so abruptly he forgot his briefcase was interesting. Not enough for an arrest, but if he added the dive boat ownership, it was enough to bring Thompson in for questioning. And Kate was their best chance of finding him.

  Erica’s phone buzzed, and she turned her back to take the call. She barked an okay and pocketed her cell. “The forensic team’s five minutes out. Wayne’s in route with Roslyn and Owen.”

  “Who’s Wayne?” Kate asked.

  “One of my guys,” Erica said.

  “Why’s he bringing Mom and Owen here?”

  Nathan’s gaze swept the room. “We need your mother to look over the house. Make a list of any missing items.” He wasn’t exactly lying. Calvin had searched for something, he needed to know what.

  “Owen can’t come here,” Kate said. “Uniformed police still terrify him.”

  “I assumed you’d want him with you.” Surprise echoed in Erica’s voice.

  “You assumed?” Kate leaped forward like she was spring-loaded. “You have no right to assume anything about my son.”

  Erica’s body stilled. The color of her skin flushing close to the shade of her hair.

  “You can take your son home.” Nathan softened his voice. “But we’ll need your mother to stay.”

  “I’m not leaving my mother to deal with this alone. I’ll have my assistant pick up Owen.” She turned to Nathan. “I can’t seem to find the landline and I left my cell in my car.”

  “This room needs to be processed.” Nathan placed his hand on the small of Kate’s back and gently led her into the hall. “It’s best if you don’t add more prints.” He handed her his cell.

  She explained the situation to her assistant and asked her to pick up Owen. Her fingers stayed in constant movement during the phone conversation, pushing her hair from her face, straightening her shirt collar, smoothing her forehead. She was shaken, an understandable response to finding her mother’s home burglarized, but Nathan’s gut said there was more to her unease.

  Kate handed him his cell, then glanced out a picture window in the living room. A beige four-door sedan pulled to the curb and she rushed for the front door.

  Nathan followed, but lagged on the porch and took the opportunity to assess the group. He wanted to get a handle on Kate, a woman who just might be the best con artist this side of Tijuana.

  She wrapped Roslyn in a hug. “Mom, I’m so sorry. Your library’s trashed, but it doesn’t seem that anything important is missing.”

  Roslyn visibly relaxed into her daughter’s side. “Thank God.”

  Kate pulled her son close, tousled his hair. “Everything’s fine.” No way Kate’s fake smile fooled her mother, and based on her son’s face, he wasn’t buying either.

  Nathan had firsthand experience with family felons and their secrets. And while Nathan had been an innocent and unaware of his brother’s terrorist leanings, it’d be a stretch to assume Kate shared the same blindness to her family’s connection to a cartel drug lord. Katelyn Landers’s record was so clean she practically squeaked. Records that spotless didn’t generally play true in a family of crooks.

  “Erica’s inside,” Kate said to her mother.

  “Erica?” Roslyn didn’t bother to hide her surprise.

  “Seems she and the marshal work together. Something he forgot to mention last night.” She was too far away for Nathan to read the nuances playing out in her expressions. “They want you to look over the house and note anything that’s missing.”

  “Why are the marshal and Erica here and not the local police?”

  Kate turned and sized up Nathan. “Now that’s an excellent question.”

  Owen tugged Kate’s arm. “Mom, can I go see Aunt Erica?”

  She glanced down, smiled at her son. “Not now, sweetheart. She’s working. Maybe later.” A tight smile played on Kate’s lips. “Mom, why don’t you go on in. I’ll meet you inside once Jennifer arrives to pick up Owen.”

  Roslyn walked up the drive and gave a terse nod to Nathan before walking through the door.

  Kate leaned against the sedan. “A friend of mine’s going to take you for ice cream. She’s bringing her niece.”

  “A girl?” Owen groaned.

  Nathan smiled. He remembered when girls still had cooties.

  A light blue Toyota Corolla swung into the driveway. The woman Kate called Jennifer rolled down the
window and spoke to her boss. She introduced Owen to a tow-headed little girl, and he climbed into the backseat. The Corolla caught a break in the traffic and pulled into the street. A black sedan sped forward and all but kissed Jennifer’s back bumper.

  Kate fast-tracked for the street.

  Nathan flew off the steps and caught Kate’s arm before she made it to the curb. “It’s ours.”

  “Why’s he following Jennifer?”

  Nathan grappled for a reasonable excuse that wouldn’t cause more conflict.

  Wayne stepped forward. “Erica’s orders.”

  Nathan blew a breath. Great. The two words guaranteed to start a war. “Erica said not to let the boy out of our sight,” Wayne said.

  Kate held a hand in the stop talking position. “Erica Sanchez makes no decisions affecting my son. Ever. Understand?” She stomped up the drive.

  Nathan gave her a mental salute. He was certain she was on her way to give the same order to Erica, a conversation he wasn’t about to miss.

  Chapter Eight

  Nathan managed to catch up with Kate halfway down the main hall. They turned a corner and came face-to-face with the man he knew to be Cedar Haynes.

  Nathan extended his hand. “Mr. Haynes.” Family attorneys were never a cop’s best friend. Due diligence had shown this one as an engaging man currently romantically involved with Roslyn. So far, Nathan had found him to have no connection to their case.

  Decked out in a light blue seersucker suit, the guy looked stuck in a fifties time warp, a Jimmy Stewart lookalike sporting a cleft chin. “Roslyn called me,” Cedar said, as if sensing Nathan’s curiosity.

  Kate buzzed Cedar’s cheek. “Have you seen Erica Sanchez?”

  “In the kitchen talking to your mother. I’d like a word with you.”

  She continued down the hall. “If it’s about the warehouse appraisals, I’m working on it.”

  Cedar took a quick step, caught her hand and held her in place. “No, it’s something else.”

  “I’m sorry, Uncle Cedar, but it’ll have to wait.” She barged into the kitchen and homed in on Erica. “Why do you have one of your men following my assistant?”