A Shroud of Tattered Sails: An Oregon Coast Mystery (Garrison Gage Series Book 4)

by Scott William Carter

  "Yep. And, according to Miranda, he called up and offered his services pro bono."

  "So long as he gets to represent her in a civil suit later, in which he will take his massive cut? And he also co-writes a book with her?"

  "That's his usual procedure," Alex said.

  Gage took a sip of the bourbon, then, thinking of Conroy working his tricks on Miranda, took another. "Has he met her yet?"

  "No. He stopped by here today and said she insisted you or I be there when they meet tomorrow morning for the first time." Alex shook his head. "Man, that guy is quite a character. The accent alone will leave your head spinning. And the rumors are true. He drinks whiskey out of a little metal flask and smells like it. I went down to see her to try to talk her out of it, but the police wouldn't let me see her. They said D.D. had stopped by to ensure that he was present for any visitor meetings. I tried to explain that he's not her lawyer yet, but I think they're a little intimidated of him."

  "I don't like this at all," Gage said. "We already have Buzz Burgin. We don't really need another slimy character sticking his nose in this."

  "Maybe two slimy characters will cancel each other out. So what do you want with the phone?"

  "I need to call Marcus's girlfriend," Gage said.

  "And you think I can somehow magically find her number for you?"

  "I thought maybe you could look it up on that computer thingy of yours."

  "Sure," Alex said, "I'll just type in 'Marcus Koura's girlfriend' in Google and I'm sure her name will come right up."

  "Actually, it might, considering that the media in San Jose has probably already done a story on his death. But, if not, Quinn told me that she was a long-term girlfriend, and that usually means cohabitation. Find out his address the last couple years, search for an address with that time frame, and ... voila."

  "Voila?"

  "I've been practicing my French," Gage said. "Thought it might come in handy because of the huge Francophone population in Barnacle Bluffs."

  "If I didn't know you better, I might say you were being sarcastic."

  Gage took another sip of the bourbon, closed his eyes and allowed that warm feeling to cart him away. "But you do know me better, so you know that I am always deadly serious. If Google doesn't work, you can always ring up your friends in the FBI again."

  "Yeah, about that," Alex said, "that's something I need to tell you. Those channels have suddenly dried up."

  This news brought Gage back to the present moment in a hurry, stealing away the cozy feeling he'd been doing his best to embrace. He opened his eyes and looked at Alex, whose face was now glowing blue from the laptop screen. "What do you mean, dried up?"

  Alex clicked away on his keyboard. "My connections have all suddenly stopped responding to me. That, and what little direct access I had to information in the database all vanished. Everything about the eTransWorld operation has suddenly been locked down and you need very high level access to get to it. Far beyond the access of a mostly retired former academy instructor, I'll tell you that."

  "You were a lot more than a former academy instructor," Gage said.

  "Sure, but when that was true, most of the people in the FBI were in diapers. Now I'm just that strange retired guy in Oregon who does oddball consulting now and then on the cases nobody else wants to work on." He squinted at the screen. "Looks like we lucked out anyway. Nothing about her in the media that I can find, but you were right about searching by the address. There's a woman named Claire Brandt who lived at the same address as him for two years."

  "Got a phone number?"

  "Working on it ... well, no home phone number. Looks like she's an OB-GYN, though, and there's a work number here. New Springs Mother and Baby Clinic."

  "I bet there's an emergency line," Gage said. "Give me your cell phone and I'll work my magic."

  "I'll do you one better," Alex said. "I bought you a little gift."

  "Oh no."

  Sure enough, Alex didn't produce his own cell phone from his pocket; he produced a different one—small, black, and of the same model as the first two Gage had briefly owned. Alex placed it on the end table between them, and both of them stared at it as if it was a bird that settled there and would fly away at any moment.

  "What is it with all of you?" Gage said.

  "My friend, we've all pretty much given up on bringing you into the twenty-first century, but we are determined to at least bring you into the twentieth. Well, are you going to use it or not?"

  "I'm thinking about it."

  "Well, while you're thinking about it, I'll refresh our drinks. Go ahead now. Third time's the charm. The phone number's right there on the computer."

  It was no use arguing, since there was a call to make, so Gage snatched up the phone, made note of the number, then dialed the clinic. It rang twice and he listened to an automated, after-hours message until he heard that he could push nine if it was urgent. He pushed nine and a woman answered whose rough voice made him think she was between smoke breaks.

  "New Springs hotline," she said. "What is the nature of your emergency?"

  Gage took a deep breath, then fired it all out in one big rapid-fire burst: "It's my wife she's gone into labor call the doctor quick."

  "Slow down, sir. What is your wife's—"

  "Beth. Beth Anderson. We're in the car and I think the baby's gonna come any second. Call her now!"

  "Sir, I'm not finding a patient with that name in our—"

  "Doctor's name is Grant or Lance or something."

  "Brandt?"

  "Yes, that's it! Claire Brandt. I'm on a friend's cell. Can you have her call me?" He told her the number and heard the click of her keyboard.

  "Sir," she said, "I'm going to need a little more—"

  "Oh God! It's happening! Hurry!"

  He hung up. Alex, returning with their drinks, shook his head at Gage.

  "You know," he said, "have you ever considered just telling people the truth? I actually found it worked wonders when I was doing field work."

  "And miss my chance to sharpen my thespian skills? Certainement pas!"

  "There's that French again."

  They had perhaps thirty seconds to enjoy their drinks before Gage's new cell phone rang. He answered it.

  "This is Dr. Brandt," a woman said, who had one of those smooth voices that made her sound both young and old at the same time. "I'm afraid I don't have a Beth Anderson—"

  "Actually," Gage said, "there is no Beth Anderson."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Name's Garrison Gage. I'm a private investigator in Barnacle Bluffs, Oregon, and it was urgent that I talk to you. Sorry for the ruse, but under the circumstances it was the best way to get in touch with you quickly."

  She didn't answer. In the background, Gage thought he heard the clink of glasses and the dull murmur of conversation.

  "Ma'am?" Gage said.

  "This really isn't a good time," Brandt said. "I'm out with friends and—"

  "Do you know why I'm calling?"

  "I—I have a pretty good idea." She dropped her voice to just above a whisper. "I have already told the authorities everything I know. There isn't anything else."

  "Are you sure? There's a woman behind bars up here who could really use your—"

  "I know her situation," Dr. Brandt said coolly. "Now, I'm afraid this conversation is over. Please don't call this line again, Mr. Gage. It really is for medical emergencies."

  "Dr. Brandt—"

  But she was already gone. Gage, perplexed, stared at the phone.

  "I think there's something wrong with this thing," he said. "It lost the connection."

  "Somehow I don't think it was the phone," Alex said. "Didn't sound like she was happy to talk to you."

  "Nope," Gage said, "which makes me all the more inclined to talk to her. What's that emergency number again?"

  He dialed the emergency number again, told the dispatcher he and the doctor had been disconnected, and she paged Dr. Brandt again.
Less than a minute later, his phone rang.

  "Don't hang up on me," Gage said.

  "I knew it would be you!" Brandt shot back. "I thought I made myself abundantly clear. I have nothing more—"

  "Shut up," Gage said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Just shut up for a second, will you? Are you someplace you can talk now?"

  "I told you, I'm not going to—"

  "Yes. You will."

  "Mr. Gage, I don't appreciate being spoken to in this—"

  "Listen, we can do this now over the phone, or I can catch the next flight down to San Jose and we can do it in person. Trust me, I'm a lot less pleasant in person. I'm also a lot tougher to get rid of. The more you refuse to talk to me, the more I think you have something to hide, and the more I think I better start sniffing around your life to figure out what it is."

  "I have nothing to hide!"

  "Good. Then let's start over. I need five minutes of your time. Don't you think your dinner companions can survive five minutes without you?"

  There was a pause. Gage did hear something in the background, the same noises as before, but it sounded much more distant, much more hollow, and he guessed she'd moved to some kind of hall.

  "If I give you five minutes," Dr. Brandt said, "can you promise to leave me alone?"

  "Nope."

  "Well then! How do you expect—"

  "But I can promise that the more forthright you are with me, the less I'm going to think you're some kind of accomplice in the murder of Marcus Koura."

  "Accomplice! That's ridiculous!"

  "Is it? I heard you broke up a few weeks before he left on his boat. Did you break up with him, or did he break up with you?"

  "I told the police! It was mutual. We just grew apart."

  "Dr. Brandt, I have this sense you're not telling me everything. What is it you're holding back?"

  "I'm not holding anything back! After he sold out to his brother, he changed. He became withdrawn. He bought a sailboat and spent most of his time on it. He told me he was going to sail around the world in it. But he didn't seem committed. Months passed. I kept hoping it was a phase. I kept hoping he'd come back to me. Then one day he called and said he was leaving the next day to start his journey. It was very abrupt, not at all like Marcus. We both agreed it was better to part ways then to drag it out."

  "You both agreed?"

  "Yes!"

  "Do you know why he sold out to his brother?"

  "No! He was not an emotionally open man. I had a hard enough time getting him to tell me when he was hungry, let alone something that actually required him to think more deeply about his feelings. I would say it was his Egyptian heritage, but I have known Egyptian men who were not emotionally stunted." She sighed. "Mr. Gage—"

  "Please call me Garrison."

  "I'd rather keep this more formal," she said icily. "I've told you what I know. I agree it isn't much, but I don't know much. Even when Marcus still owned half of eTransWorld, he never talked about the business. He withdrew from me, we broke up, he left."

  "When I mentioned the woman up here," Gage said, "the woman we're calling Miranda because she can't remember who she is, you seemed ... irritated."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Oh, I think you do. What, were you jealous?"

  "Don't be ridiculous! I told you that we broke up and it was mutual. You can ask my close friends if you want. They'll tell you that I was thinking about breaking up with Marcus for months. I don't care who he was with after he left. Now, can I go back to my dinner or do you want to badger me some more to no purpose? My food is getting cold."

  Gage thought about it. He didn't get the sense Dr. Brandt was withholding anything big, but there was something there. What could it be? She sounded like somebody who thought of herself highly and would expect the person she was with to think highly of her as well. Then it came to him.

  "Did you think he was cheating on you?" he asked.

  "What?"

  "It might explain your reaction when I mentioned Miranda."

  "That's absurd."

  "Is it?"

  "Of course it is! I have never been with a man who cheated with me. I never gave any of them a reason to do so. I would have known if that was the case. I am not an easy woman to fool, Mr. Gage."

  Now Gage knew he was onto something. It was all about her pride. "I imagine not," he said. "Your past boyfriends ... I'm guessing you were the one who usually broke up with them."

  "What does that have to do with anything?"

  "Am I right?"

  "It's irrelevant."

  "Was it really a mutual breakup with you and Marcus?"

  "Yes!"

  Gage sighed. "Why don't you just come clean with me here, Dr. Brandt? There's obviously something that you didn't tell the police. It really will make things easier for both of us."

  "I've told you everything I know!" she protested. "There's nothing more. Now, I'm afraid my patience—"

  "All right, I'll fly down there tomorrow. If you're not helpful, I'll talk to some of your friends. Your colleagues. Your patients. I'm sure I can dig up whatever it is you're not telling me. It may not be fun having me poke around your life, Dr. Brandt, but there's a woman's life at stake here. You'll have to forgive me if your patience is the least of my concerns."

  He heard her breathing into the receiver, then, distantly, hollow laughter as if coming from a television. They were separated by nearly a thousand miles, but he imagined he could see her right in front of him, closing her eyes and bowing her head. He thought he could smell the wine on her breath. When she spoke, it was too quiet to make out the words.

  "What was that?" he asked.

  "I said, it was just a feeling," she said.

  "What kind of feeling?"

  "I don't know if it was another woman." Her voice was so low that he had to press the cell phone tight against his right ear. "I really don't. I just ... If it was someone else, it wasn't someone in San Jose."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because I ... I watched him."

  "You what?"

  "I'm embarrassed to say this. But when he started getting distant, started pulling away ... Well, I'd never had that happen to me with a man before. I didn't understand. I started ... I started parking outside his condo. Just now and then. A few times. I, um, followed him, too. There wasn't anyone else. His life was very mundane. He went to his boat alone. He went home. But ..."

  "Yes?"

  "This is very embarrassing."

  "Please. This could be very helpful. If I can, I promise this will stay completely between us."

  "Do you mean that?"

  "Dr. Brandt, I admit I am far from a perfect man. But if I give someone my word, I mean it."

  "All right. I just ... It's very embarrassing. You see, I started snooping around his condo when he was at his boat. I still had a key then. I just wanted some sign, you know, that I wasn't crazy. There really wasn't much there. He was a very tidy man. It wasn't possible to get on his computer, either, since he was fastidious about keeping everything password protected. I didn't find any signs of another woman. Except ..."

  "Yes?"

  "I found a receipt in his nightstand. It was to a restaurant in Manhattan. That wasn't all that surprising, I guess, since he used to go to New York all the time when he was still heavily involved in eTransWorld. It was fairly recent, though, only a month earlier. I didn't think he'd been traveling at all the past six months. It was also obvious the receipt was for two people—two meals, two glasses of wine. Only one dessert, though, a chocolate mousse. Do you know when you buy only one dessert, Mr. Gage? You buy it when you're sharing it with someone. Otherwise hardly anyone would buy a desert for themselves just to have the other person watch them eat."

  "Probably true," Gage said.

  "Even then, I wasn't convinced. It wasn't until I turned the receipt over and saw the drawing on the other side. It was just a sketch done with a pen, but it was obvio
usly a likeness of Marcus. It wasn't just that it was a sketch, either. It was very ... loving. He had quite a glow to him, a warmth in his eyes. He used to look at me like that."

  Gage, knowing Miranda's artistic talent wasn't public knowledge, mulled over what it meant. There was also Miranda's memory about working on a puzzle that seemed to indicate she was from a big city. Why not New York? If Marcus was doing business there, that might have been where he met Miranda. Perhaps they had some kind of love affair and made plans to run off together. But why the rendezvous in Crescent City? Perhaps because they were afraid of someone finding out about them, someone powerful? Miranda had obviously gone to great pains to live anonymously.

  It was a lot of supposition based on a drawing, one he hadn't even seen. But the pieces were starting to come together.

  "Why didn't you tell any of this to the police?" he asked.

  "And tell them I was skulking around, spying on him? This thing has already gotten so much news. I have my practice to think about, my reputation. It didn't make me look good at all. And then there was the receipt. I destroyed it."

  "You did what?"

  "It's humiliating to even think about. And he must have realized it was gone right away, because he broke up with me within days. Never said why, and I never said anything about the drawing. That's not even the worst part, the part I can barely even think about. I don't know why I'm even telling you this. What difference does it make? I could just tell you I flushed the receipt down the toilet. You wouldn't know the difference."

  "What did you do, Dr. Brandt?"

  She sighed. "I ate it."

  "You what?"

  "It was ... impulsive. I was crying. I couldn't stand looking at that drawing. So I crumpled it into a ball and ate it."

  "What did it taste like?"

  "Excuse me?

  "Never mind. Is there anything else?"

  There wasn't. He probed for a few more minutes, Dr. Brandt getting increasingly more exasperated, then let her go. He tried to hand the phone back to Alex, who shook his head, so Gage grudgingly put it in his own jacket pocket. He relayed everything he had learned, then the two of them sipped their drinks in silence. Often the wind blew on the windows, a constant whistle, but tonight the air was still enough that Gage could hear the swish of the waves on the beach. He felt the alcohol warming his bones, trying to tease his mind away, and he fought the impulse.