by Mark Henwick
If the maître d’ thought I wasn’t dressed for it, he didn’t even blink. His eyes lit up at the sight of Jennifer and he came out and made a tremendous fuss over her. She was obviously a frequent diner here and she spoke fluently to him in French. While his back was turned for a moment, I caught a smile from her and a roll of the eyes.
“Stop that,” I whispered. “You absolutely love it.”
With more commotion than I’d ever had in all my years of visiting restaurants, we were eventually settled in our booth with spritzers and two orders for light meals on the way.
Jennifer took a long drink, looking out over the tended garden. Her face became serious.
“Okay,” she said. “Fun over for the moment. We need to go through how it’s looking.”
I nodded and retrieved my notes. I didn’t normally need them, but I’d had very little time for the wide range of things I had been looking at. The financials in particular, which I’d gone through last night in a desperate bid to clear my mind of the scene at Monroe Street.
“I’ll start with Troy?” I looked up and Jennifer nodded.
“Captain Morales appears to be aware that I’m retained by you. Is it okay to share information with him?”
“Of course, but thank you for asking.”
I tapped the notes. “Victor’s tracked down Troy’s friends from the cycling community. He missed a race he was signed up for, first time ever that they can recall. He hasn’t made any contact with his family back east. Captain Morales tells me that it was blood on the carpet. Troy’s keys were under the sofa.” I waited a beat. “I think we can be sure that he was abducted. The security cameras were turned off at the time and no one can remember seeing or hearing anything. That tells me it was planned and done professionally.”
Jennifer cleared her throat. “Was this done to get at me, or is there something in Troy’s background I don’t know about?”
I looked at the file in front of me, but didn’t open it. “Jen, there’s nothing Victor found in Troy’s life outside of work that would warrant anything like this. No gambling debts, no secret vices. The worst we can pull up is his father wanted him to go into the family business and there was a big bust-up.”
“And?” It struck me how like David she was. She knew I had something to say and was delaying saying it.
“His friends say he was infatuated with you.” I sipped the spritzer to wet my mouth. “They also believe that you used that to keep him when he got an unbelievable offer from the Jardines chain in California.”
Jennifer turned a furious gaze on me. “I’ve told you—”
I held a hand up to stop her, and she immediately backed down. “No. Sorry, Amber. You didn’t say what you believe. And it doesn’t matter what you believe, it’s what they believe.”
“I don’t think you are at all the type of person to use sex to keep a key employee from leaving,” I said. “And Troy never told anyone that. Quite the opposite. But the more Troy denied it, the more his friends believed it.”
Jennifer stared out at the gardens, still angry.
“So, as an outside party,” I went on, “I could easily identify the Golden Harvest as your signature restaurant in your home town. If I got the mistaken impression that you were also involved with Troy, abducting him would be an easy way to cause disruption and financial damage, at least for a time.”
The appetizers arrived, and we paused while they were laid in front of us. I ate and continued the briefing. God, I hadn’t gotten near the hard parts yet.
“Victor’s still working on Troy. But I’m afraid I have to say, every day that goes by means less hope.” I stopped and saw the shadow in her eyes as she took that on board.
Looking down, I flicked the notes. “On to other staff. I’ve looked at the rest of them who’ve left. I’ve only managed to talk to a few, but, with one exception, I think it’s a waste of my time and your money.”
“So why is the turnover rate going up?” she snapped.
“It has gone up. I’m not sure it’s still going up,” I replied. “I would lay the blame on your HR department, and your recent takeover of Frankell-Maines.”
“Blame stops on my desk, Amber. What’s your reason?”
“Mixing different cultures.” I was reaching here. It said private investigator on my business card, not business analyst. But as a sergeant previously responsible for getting boys and girls from different parts of the armed forces to play nicely, I had an appreciation for the flashpoints caused by even minor differences in the way things get done.
“On top of that,” I went on, “there are large salary differences between the parts of your company since the takeover. The former employees I talked to were well aware of what people doing the same jobs were getting in the PR division.”
Jennifer looked thoughtful and we were silent again as the wait staff cleared the first course. “The exception you mentioned?” she asked when they were gone.
“I want to talk to Geoff Hansen, who left the financial department. Just a gut feeling.”
She nodded, her cool blue eyes hooded. The main course came and we ate in silence for a while. The food was excellent, much more pleasurable than the next part of the conversation was likely to be.
“Finances,” said Jennifer simply and my stomach tensed. I had been given a lot of information, down to the intended target for her next takeover, Tucker Beacon, a company run by a local boy made good, Jack Tucker.
“All I have are the files you gave me, so maybe I’m missing something.” I took a deep breath. “You haven’t got the cash to build a resort, let alone take over Tucker’s company. You can barely keep the PR division afloat in today’s climate. You can’t get the kind of backing you’ll need from the banks without losing control.”
Jennifer threw back her head and laughed.
Diners looked up from their meals. Wait staff glanced and went back to work. The maître d’ beamed at us from his strangely ecclesiastical pulpit; happy eaters meant good business, and people noticing that Jennifer Kingslund ate at the Moulin was even better.
When she had the laughter under control, she leaned across and squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry, that was so rude. I’m repaid for my suspicious nature. I haven’t given you all the figures, and on what I gave you, your analysis is actually right, but there should have been no way you could have been able to come to that conclusion.”
She dived into her bag and pulled out a single page summary which was close to mine, except for a section under the title ‘war chest.’ I pulled mine out from my file and laid them side by side.
Jennifer ran through the figures and wrote in an amendment on my summary for the war chest, which raised the cash available enormously. She waited expectantly as I scribbled in the margins.
I scratched my head. This was like being back at school. “With the banks coming in at a funding you should be able to sustain over three years, you could clear the costs of your resort, but I still don’t see that you can take Tucker at the same time.”
She grinned. “Wrong way around, Amber.”
I frowned and looked at the figures again. “No, even if you delay building the resort, you still can’t take Tucker as well.” I thought it through and added, “Well, not at the valuation you’ve quoted, unless you have a different deal with a bank or partner taking much more of the business.”
“Hell, no, honey. The banks can go whistle.” She finished her last bite and took a sip of spritzer. When she spoke again, it was very quietly. “I might not develop Silver Hills, but the threat of it has already knocked fifteen percent off Tucker’s valuation. He put a huge investment into his resort and it’s not doing well. Tucker’s overextended, he’s hurting and he’s eager to sell. But only so long as everyone thinks Silver Hills is going to be built.”
I could see the plan. Without being on the inside and having a better feel for the businesses involved, there was little I could add to this, so I just shrugged. “Okay, let’s leave the big picture fo
r the moment,” I said. “On what I was supposed to be looking at, well, I need to check some of these figures in more depth and go through your analyses to see if there’s been any fraud.”
“I’m surprised you got this much of a handle on it this soon. It’s important, Amber, but not as much as Troy.” She smiled. “And there’s a job for you with me if you get tired of being an investigator.”
“Thanks.” I filed the amended summaries away and cleared my throat. “There’s something I have to ask. Why bother with this? You’ve spent money on a resort you don’t intend to build and you’re working to take over Tucker Beacon, which will stress your company finances to the limit. It’s not as if they have things you don’t. There’s no synergy. Both companies are running lean, so you won’t be able to find savings. It doesn’t make sense. Why do it?”
Her eyes were icy again. “Remind me who’s running the multi-million dollar company and who’s running the one-woman agency?”
I held up my hands in surrender. “I’ve only been going a year, of course,” I said by way of defense.
She laughed, the tension vanishing as quickly as it had come. “I’ll tell Bell and Hewitt to watch out. Anyway, it’s in motion. Jack and I made a statement this morning. I let him say we’re working toward a merger, to salve his pride, but I’m buying.”
We ended the meal in better humor than I had anticipated. Talking to Jennifer was like riding a tiger: unpredictable and exciting, but you wouldn’t want to fall off.
She waved for the check. “Let’s go see the resort.”
And all the weird stuff, I thought.
Chapter 16
“You speak French well,” I remarked as we headed away from the restaurant and back down to the I-70. I’d been afraid that the maître d’ wasn’t going to let us go, he seemed so happy to speak in his native tongue.
“I was at college at the Sorbonne in Paris.”
“Studying?”
“Philosophy.” She chuckled. “Blame it all on that. Hell, after three years you never get your head straight again.”
She didn’t ask what I had done, luckily. Or maybe she already knew that I left school early.
As we turned up into the foothills along the 285, Jennifer gunned the engine and the car responded smoothly. Jennifer drove fast. If we’d had wings, we would have been flying. I loved it, but like a lot of enjoyable things, there’s a law against it.
“So how much have you racked up in speeding fines?” I asked.
“Not a single dollar, honey. But I have to say, I don’t get the chance to drive as often as I would like, so this is a treat for me. Thanks for the excuse.”
“My pleasure,” I said. The sheer exhilaration from being driven in a fast, comfortable car on a sunny day, with the roof down, had lifted my spirits.
“You know,” said Jennifer, “you’re the second most relaxed person I’ve ever had in the passenger seat.”
I laughed and waved it off. “You know what you’re doing.” But my curiosity was aroused. “So, who’s the first?”
“That was my last husband.”
“He liked your driving?”
“Hell, no, he only ever came with me the once. He had gotten so roaring drunk I had to knock him unconscious and take him to the hospital.”
I put back my head and laughed up at the bright blue sky. I hadn’t enjoyed myself so much for a long time.
All too soon, we turned off the 285 and drove a ways up a couple of small roads that became a track barred by a gate. Jennifer unlocked it and parked by a cluster of containers and temporary site buildings that I recognized from the security footage. It had rained up here last night and the ground was still soft. The Mercedes handled it well, but it was going to need cleaning when we got back. I could see a mess of prints over the muddy soil, mostly erased by rain and wind and other people.
I grabbed my evidence kit out of the back and slung it over my shoulder. Jennifer changed her heels for running shoes.
“What are you going to do?” asked Jennifer.
“Me? I’m going to see what wolves do in the woods,” I said, walking off to where the incoming prints had seemed to come from or return to—it was such a mess that it wasn’t possible to make out much.
They headed uphill as far as I could tell, into a green and gold wall of fluttering aspen leaves, broken here and there by bands of the darkest green pine, so that’s where I went.
We walked into the woods and I filled my lungs with the sweet, clean smell of aspen and pine. I loved it. It smelled of carefree days out walking with the family. Whole bright, dreamy days when my greatest burden was mom or dad’s hand occasionally resting on my shoulder. I shook that pleasant memory off. I was here to do a job and I was responsible for Jen’s safety as well.
“Is it dangerous?” Jennifer didn’t seem concerned. I would have been okay with it if she had stayed in the car, but I liked it that she was confident enough to come with me.
In truth, I didn’t know how dangerous it was. The colonel had given me a warning about werewolves and I didn’t see what else it could be, not with the size of them, the stone breaking the camera and that bare human leg. Did they prowl up here in daylight? The work crew hadn’t reported anything like that, but they’d only been in one spot.
I was sure Hollywood didn’t portray the werewolf any more accurately than the vampire. I’d put trust in small lumps of lead delivered at high speed to dissuade anything from bothering us. But I’d chosen the little Walther over the HK because of the shape of my jacket. Dumb decision.
“What’s safe?” I said.
She gave up on that. “So, what do you mean exactly—what they do in the woods?”
“Well, everyone knows what bears do in the woods?” She nodded, smiling. “Let’s see if wolves do too.”
I followed what trail I could, casting around where it was lost on pine needles or rock until I found it again. Jennifer was a help once she understood what we were looking for, and she had sharp eyes and a good nose.
I scraped bark off trees where it smelled. I found pungent scat dumps and they went into my little sample bottles as well. I took photos of every paw print that was clear, dropping a little ruler next to each. For the best of the huge paw prints, I took casts with quick setting foam.
Squirrels scrabbled up trees to escape us and jays shrieked abuse down on our heads.
Further in, the woods took on a different character. Here, there were no squirrels and jays. It was sacred-quiet, dominated by pine, and the thick green foliage made deep shadows where we walked. The wind sighed. Our feet pressed silently into soft beds of old pine needles. Our voices dropped to a whisper and I caught myself glancing over my shoulder. I wasn't so much concerned with what I could see as with what I couldn't. There was something here. My estimation of danger rose with every step, and I mentally kicked myself. It was one thing to have come out here on my own, quite another to expose Jennifer to risk. I loosened the Walther in its holster.
It was a relief to see the pine finally thinning out and cottonwood, juniper and aspen coming back. As we emerged from the dark into dappled sunlight, a shadow swept over us like a falling blade. We both jumped. A hawk soared up, screaming protest at our disturbance, and we laughed nervously.
We ended up at the edge of a small cliff. The trail pointed to this rocky outcrop as a focus. I looked over the side. It was around ninety feet, not a big climb, but nothing got up here on four legs. About a mile away, I could see a dirt track an SUV could manage.
“This is called Falcon Bluff,” Jen said. “The foot of it marks the edge of my property on this side.”
She stood with her eyes closed for a while, the afternoon sun turning her face golden and blissful.
“So, what do you think?” she said finally.
“I think your land is beautiful, Jen.” That earned me a jab in the ribs.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Maybe you were right, you’ve got weird. I’ll know more when the results come back.”
I stepped up onto the highest rock and tried to think myself into a werewolf’s head. The wind brought me the dry scents of early fall with their thin promise of coming cold. Animals stirred to the change of season. Below, the dirt track wound in and out of the woods like a lazy snake in the afternoon sun. I looked down at it and imagined getting a pack of Weres to drive out there, climb up here in human form, then change to go party down where the containers were. Why?
I shut my eyes and imagined the night, the moon, the commotion of fur, the rising excitement. The call hanging in the cold night air. The heart-racing chase through the still woods.
Jennifer walked around below me. I looked down on her as an intruder, with the sun behind my head, and saw her through a wolf’s eyes.
“It would be a mistake to build a resort here.” I had no idea why I said that. It wasn’t appropriate, even if it was what I thought.
I gave myself a little shake and got off my rock. Where the hell did all that come from?
Jennifer didn’t notice or didn’t mind. She squinted up at me. “I have no intention, really. I don’t even want a cell tower out here. I just need Jack to think I’m building.” I could see her face clearly and I knew this was the truth, even though she shouldn’t have been telling me.
We began to retrace our steps, warily.
The sun was lower and its angle made the woods lighter. They had none of the spookiness we’d felt on the way up. Without the need to stop and keep finding the wolf tracks, we were back in twenty minutes, without any scares.
At the edge of the trees, I paused and touched the trunk of one, like my dad always had. I felt the memory of his hand ruffle my hair.
I put the kit away in the trunk of the Mercedes, looking around longingly at the wooded hills. Maybe I could get Jennifer’s okay to come out here and go running.
So, it was scary. I liked scary.
For a couple of minutes, I had been vaguely aware of the sound of a pickup truck getting closer and I saw a black Dodge nosing through the gates below. I came back from daydreaming with a start. A prickle of apprehension raised the hairs on my neck and my bracelet tingled.