Retreat

by J. F. Gonzalez

  She set the tray down on the table and began serving him. As she poured his coffee, she asked, “So, do you have big plans for the day?”

  Bob spread his white linen napkin over his lap. “I’ll probably do some hiking.”

  “Very good.” Last evening, Anna had casually asked Bob what his plans were after dinner and his response had been equally vague. Every client at Bent Creek gushed with details, as if they couldn’t help but rub it into the faces of the wait staff that they were doing Really Great Things and Don’t You Wish You Could Do This Too? Not Bob. Anna was under the impression that Bob’s answers were not out of a conscious effort to be subtle, but came naturally to him, as if it was natural to not give away too many details about himself. It made her run through the list of possibilities of what kind of life he led when he didn’t vacation at Bent Creek. High-level government official, perhaps? CIA or FBI?

  “How about you?” Bob asked. He reached for the cup of sugar that resided in a crystal bowl and spooned some in. He was looking at her with inquisitive features. “I take it you’re working dinner service tonight?”

  “Yes, I am,” Anna answered. “I don’t work lunch service at Bent Creek.”

  “It gives you a few hours to relax between services. That’s good.” Bob splashed some cream in his coffee and stirred.

  “Absolutely. It’ll give me a chance to get caught up on my reading.”

  “What do you like to read?”

  “All kinds of stuff. Currently, I’m on a gothic novel kick.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. But probably not the kind of gothic novels you’re thinking.”

  “Let me guess,” Bob said, appraising her with those remarkable green eyes as he sipped his coffee. “Something by one of the Bronté sisters, perhaps? Or Jane Austin?”

  “Kinda-sorta.”

  “Something more obscure? Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer, perhaps?”

  “Closer.” Anna couldn’t help but crack a grin. Not only was Bob good-looking, he had a brain. “I’m halfway through Le Fanu’s Uncle Silas. Last week it was Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.”

  Bob nodded as he took a sip of coffee. “I have to admit, I’ve never read Uncle Silas. Love Carmilla, though. That’s one of my favorites. As for Hawthorne, the theme of past sins weaves through some of his other works but is more pervasive throughout The Scarlet Letter. It’s like a driving force.”

  “Absolutely,” Anna said. “That, and Hawthorne’s disdain for the stern morality and rigidity of the Puritans is very front and center in that novel. I almost get the feeling that this is a pervading theme in a goodly portion of his work. Some of his short fiction, particularly “The Minister’s Black Veil” and “Young Goodman Brown” and his novel The House of the Seven Gables explore similar themes just as strongly.”

  Bob regarded her as he sipped his coffee. “What do you really do, Anna?”

  Anna started. The question came completely out of left field. “Excuse me, sir?”

  “No, excuse me for asking such an abrupt question.” Bob set his coffee down. “I didn’t mean to surprise you, so forgive me for that, and for the nature of the question itself, but...in all seriousness, what do you really do? You are probably the most verbose and quietly intelligent person among the wait staff. I get the sense that this job is only filling a vacancy, that you’re out of your element. Don’t get me wrong, you’re an excellent waitress, but I get the sense that...” Bob let the sentence trail off as he regarded her quietly.

  Anna felt as if she’d been placed under a magnifying glass, or perhaps a microscope. For a brief instant, so fleeting that it was gone within a second, she felt as if she’d been caught at something dreadful. As if she’d been discovered performing some horrible, secret act. She smiled at Bob, confident he hadn’t seen that very fast blip across her demeanor. “You’re a perceptive man, Bob. I used to be a business analyst with Deloitte and Touche. A very successful one, and in demand, too. I got laid off from Deloitte almost a year ago.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Bob said. He took another sip of coffee. “Which office did you work out of?”

  “I worked out of their Denver office, but they had me with clients all over the south-west.”

  “Where’d you go to school?”

  “UCLA for my Bachelor’s, Pepperdine for my Master’s.”

  Bob nodded. Anna could tell he was impressed. He set his coffee cup down and reached into the left front pocket of his shorts. He drew out a business card, which he handed to her. “I have a lot of professional contacts in the greater Denver and Boulder area. Give me a call when the season’s over. Maybe I can help you.”

  Anna gave the business card a quick glance. It was printed on a high-grade stock, with raised letters. The card identified him as Robert Garrison, owner of Garrison Enterprises, Limited. There was an Aurora, Colorado address, along with a series of phone numbers and an email address. Anna quickly pocketed the card. “Thank you,” she murmured. She quickly glanced toward the pass and saw that her orders were in the process of being placed there. “I have to pick up an order, but I’ll be back to take yours in a moment.”

  Bob waved her off. “Go on. I’ll be here.”

  Anna nodded and stepped away from the table. As she headed toward the kitchen, she felt a rising sense of optimism. The past thirteen months had been brutal for the job market, especially the kind of work she specialized in. She didn’t like having to resort to what she was doing here at Bent Creek, but she had to survive. This waitressing job, which she’d only taken because the opportunity had been too good to pass up, and she’d needed the money desperately, was the most demeaning job she’d ever been forced to take. It wasn’t the first time she’d held a waitress position; she’d had two waitress jobs in college. But waitressing here, at the Bent Creek Country Club and Resorts, was hard on both body and soul. The Bent Creek patrons were more than demeaning; most of them were aloof, uncaring, clueless, and some were downright mean. They saw her and her fellow wait staff not as fellow human beings, but as objects, servants to boss around at their sole whim. She’d known that going in, and had maintained a stiff upper lip throughout the four month-long gig. She had a good exterior shell that deflected the insults and meanness that was hurled her way.

  But sometimes...

  Sometimes, the cruel jabs got to her. She was only human, after all. But she never let the Bent Creek patrons see that they’d gotten to her. She never let her emotion rise to the surface when she was insulted, verbally berated and dressed down in public by some rich snob, never exploded in anger or frustration when it became too much for her to handle (except that time when the pus-filled bandages were thrust into her hands—she couldn’t help reacting in the way she did when that happened).

  Anna approached the pass just as Chef Winters placed the last dish up for table four’s order. Anna began transferring the dishes on to the serving platter. There were only a few more days to go before the season was over. Then she could be rid of this place forever. The snooty bastards that patronized Bent Creek would never see her again and good riddance to them. She knew things were going to get better once the season was over and she was back home, and Bob Garrison’s kindness had only sweetened the deal. Perhaps there was light at the end of the tunnel after all.

  Thinking about this, and about Bob’s generous offer of a helping hand, gave her pause. As she waited for one final entree to be brought up to the pass, her right hand dove into one of her pockets and fingered the business card Bob had given her. It was real. It was a lifeline. She couldn’t stop what she was doing now—after all, she only had a few more days at Bent Creek. But when the season was over?

  The pass chef delivered the last entree. With table four’s order on the serving tray, Anna headed back to her station to continue the temporary work she’d been hired for, knowing that it wouldn’t be long before she’d never have to do this kind of work ever again.

  CHAPTER 9

  When Carl White logged
in to his bank account in the privacy of his suite, he felt himself go lightheaded with shock.

  What the hell? This can’t be!

  Carl leaned forward over the cherry-wood desk in his suite, peering at the screen that displayed his account. He’d checked it the day before yesterday, and the last transaction had been a transfer of one hundred thousand dollars into his main account, where all the funds of the Lewis Project were percolating. The transfers, over an eight-month time period, had added up to seventy-five million, four hundred thousand dollars.

  Over one million dollars of that money was now missing.

  Carl quickly checked the link that displayed all transactions, wondering if somebody had hacked in and transferred those funds to another account. His heart took another shock when he ran his gaze down the list of transactions. All the transfers he’d made into the account were picture perfect. They all showed transfers into the account.

  There were no transfers showing money that had been taken out of the account.

  A tad over a million dollars out of seventy-five million was a drop in the bucket. Not a big deal. But still...it was a million bucks. He had not authorized its transfer. And if Jake, his partner, found out it was missing—

  Carl picked up his cell phone and called Jake. “Jake, we have a problem.”

  Carl stood up and began pacing the suite. He went to the window and closed the drapes, shutting out the warm sunny day. “I just checked the account and there’s money missing.” Beat. “About one million point two five.” Beat. “You tell me! I checked the transactions, that account only shows transfers going in to the account. It was set up so nothing could be transferred out, and it currently shows that there are no transfers out of the account. But get this...the balance was seventy-five and a half million dollars yesterday. Today it’s a tad over seventy-four million. How do you explain that?”

  Carl stopped pacing, phone held to his ear as he listened to Jake. He could feel his heart race, could feel himself start to sweat. “Does anybody know where I’m at?”

  Carl listened. He felt a little better hearing Jake tell him no, his current location was unknown except to the two of them. “Maybe I should check out,” Carl said. “Go home.”

  That brought a flurry of words from Jake. Carl listened, sat down on his rumpled bed, feeling his heart race again. He looked at himself in the mirror that hung over the dresser as Jake talked. “You think somebody here at Bent Creek set me up? Who would do that?”

  Jake didn’t know. And he told Carl that they had to play this carefully if they wanted to finish the job. Leave Bent Creek now, it could alert the wrong people. Carl sighed. “So what do we do?”

  For the next hour, Carl and Jake made plans.

  * * *

  Paul Westcott was sitting in Rick Nicholson’s office, getting him up to speed on the two major events that occurred this season at Bent Creek: the theft of Parker Goode’s cash from his attaché case on Monday, and the disappearance of Brian Gaiman, which most likely occurred that same night.

  “In my professional and humble opinion, the two are unrelated,” Paul said. He was seated in one of Rick’s chairs, lounging in a relaxed pose. He was tapping a pen on a white notepad. Paul was fifteen years Rick’s senior, and favored dark suits and white shirts; he thought it made him look like a real law enforcement agent. Maybe the style of dress did, but Rick thought Paul looked more like a salesman. His face had that engaging look that seemed to trap you the minute you looked at him. It was an open, friendly face that always seemed to be wearing a sunny disposition. “Brian’s background doesn’t indicate he’s capable of this type of theft despite his record. It’s obvious somebody else is the thief. Probably one of Mr. Goode’s friends. Somebody he plays poker with.”

  “But you questioned those guys, had their rooms searched, and haven’t found anything,” Rick said.

  “True. We also questioned people Mr. Goode and his friends have been hobnobbing with. The Bakers, the Smiths, the Zuckerman’s. They all checked out. One of my investigators checked out the attaché case and found evidence that the lock was picked with a sharp object, possibly a picking tool usually found in the personal belongings of professional locksmiths.”

  “Really?” This was something new to Rick. He sat up behind his desk to pay closer attention.

  Outside Rick’s picturesque office window, the Wyoming sky was a deep blue. The thermometer tacked onto Rick’s office wall revealed the outside temperature to be a balmy seventy-one degrees. Quite warm for early fall. In another month, the area would begin to experience the first biting cold of approaching winter. Rick would be back home in Boulder by then, planning his next move in life.

  “Yeah. Locksmiths have a picking tool that are multi-functional. They’re non-destructive to the lock. An experienced locksmith or burglar can have an old fashioned lock like the kind found on older attaché cases open within seconds. Mr. Goode’s attaché case bore several marks around the edges of the lock, and when Johnny opened it, he found deep groove marks in the steel; clear indication a professional had been at it. Brian Gaiman was a smash and grab kind of guy. He sneaked into open windows, that kind of thing. He never did break into homes using tools like this.”

  “Maybe he was just never caught in the act,” Rick said.

  Paul shrugged. “Maybe so, maybe not. Man only had one count of breaking and entering, and that’s when he broke into an old girlfriend’s apartment to lift her stereo for drugs. He pried her basement window open and got in that way. His criminal record has counts for strong-arm robbery and assault, DUI, drug possession, and trespassing, but no other burglary offenses.”

  Rick sighed and looked out the window. It didn’t add up. He could understand why Paul would question Mr. Goode’s friends and those guests they’d mingled with at Bent Creek. It was doubtful they’d revealed to those guests that they were involved in high-stakes poker in their rooms and why Mr. Goode had all that cash. “Parker’s friends weren’t robbed either, correct?” Rick asked, verifying this information to himself. “You and your team inspected the cash they had and searched their rooms completely?”

  “We gave their rooms a thorough inspection,” Paul confirmed. “And they surrendered their money to us and that money is now in the Bent Creek safe at the front desk.”

  Rick nodded. Bent Creek Country Club and Resorts, like all hotels, maintained a safe accessible only to employees for the purpose of providing a secure storage place for its customer’s valuables. Over five million dollars in cash had been surrendered to Paul Westcott by Parker Goode’s friends yesterday, following news of the theft. One of them had complained to Rick that he was very disappointed that they would be unable to partake in what had become a dearly beloved yearly tradition.

  “Okay, so let’s say it isn’t Brian,” Rick said, musing aloud. “I’m still bothered by him taking off so suddenly. To me, that says he was up to something.”

  “I understand that,” Paul said. He shrugged. “Especially when you look into the time-line. It’s estimated Parker’s suitcase was broken into very late Monday night, when he was with his friends at the Roxy.” The Roxy was the dance club on Bent Creek grounds. It catered to its younger clientele. “Carmen indicated she last saw Brian Gaiman Monday night around ten-thirty. Parker and his friends returned to their rooms around two-thirty on Tuesday morning. By all accounts, Parker never bothered to check his attaché case when he returned, because it was in the same spot he’d left it. Plus, there was no obvious signs of a break-in to his room. He goes to sleep, wakes up later that Tuesday morning, opens the case at nine-thirty and the money is gone.”

  “That means if it was Brian, he would have had close to four hours to break into Parker’s suite and steal that money,” Rick said.

  “True,” Paul said, holding a finger up. “Especially if we consider that end of suites where Parker is staying is along Brian’s maintenance route. Brian didn’t return to work Tuesday morning, and with Carmen reporting him missing, that would ha
ve made me suspicious too.”

  “But you’re not,” Rick said. “Why?”

  “Brian would have had to have stashed that money someplace,” Paul replied. “Nobody saw him leave Bent Creek grounds. Furthermore, his fellow employees never saw him in the employee wing of the building Monday night, or yesterday morning. His and Carmen’s quarters were searched. No money was found.”

  “What did you find in your search of Brian Gaiman’s room?” Rick asked.

  “Nothing.” Paul regarded Rick calmly from across the desk. “Not a damn thing. There was no personal effects, no clothing. If anything, it looked like Brian packed up all his stuff and snuck the hell out.”

  This new bit of information was surprising to Rick. “Snuck out?”

  “Well, when Carmen reported him missing, what did you think happened?”

  “I don’t know. I thought he was hiding out somewhere on the grounds. Maybe he grabbed a few bottles of booze from one of the bars and snuck off somewhere to fall off the wagon.”

  Paul chuckled. “Sure, I can buy that. Happens a lot with these guys. I thought that too. But a complete search of the grounds shows no evidence of that. No missing liquor bottles, no signs Brian is hiding away in the stables or the workshed, or even the garage.” Bent Creek maintained a fully-functioning auto shop that serviced company vehicles and those vehicles owned by some of the high-roller clients. “What it looks like to me is that Brian simply snuck off the grounds very early in the morning, before the early day-shift janitorial crew started and the kitchen crew clocked in.”

  “And he packed up all his stuff and took it with him?” Rick asked.

  Paul shrugged again. “Looks like it. His clothes are gone, and there’s no suitcase.”

  Rick thought about this. It just didn’t make sense. “You think he trucked his suitcase two miles down the private road to the secondary road? Route 501?”