The Tipping Point: A Wainwright Mystery

by Walter Danley

  Wainwright had been working like this for the past several mornings. He considered himself both lucky and unique as an author. Unique because his first novel was published and continued to sell well. Before starting his writing career he’d heard the horror stories about starving writers. He was lucky because a little more than two years ago he retired after years as a partner in a large real estate investment company. In that role, he had amassed considerable financial assets. His net worth assures he will never have to starve, even if his books don’t sell. Parrish the thought!

  He felt doubly lucky since he just wed his long time sweetheart, Lacey Kinkaid. They met on the job and fell in love quickly, causing a long-term bi-coastal romance. Wainwright likes to tell friends it was love at first sight. The truth is they dated for several years before they wed. Between his publishing dead-lines and her law practice, finding the time for something as mundane as their wedding took many months. The forward planning required for the wedding plans made Eisenhower’s D-Day invasion logistics look like a middle school play date. Life is complicated but the more people depend on you and your efforts, the more entangled plans become.

  There was another event, besides mutual attraction, which brought him and Lacey together. That was the fight to save his company from an SEC forced closure and apprehending the killer of four of his business partners. They saved the company and discovered who was responsible for partner deaths. All of that happened during 1978. And now, he was retired from the company he helped to survive, married and on his honeymoon. With two New York Times Best Sellers to his credit, Wainwright was a very happy and contented individual.

  He needed to go back to Hotel Sacher Salzburg. He and Lacey were on their honeymoon, after all. The cafe clock showed it was half past eleven. Lacey would be up and about by now.

  The decision to honeymoon in Salzburg Austria was classic marital compromise. The Sound of Music, Lacey’s favorite film, shot some location scenes in Salzburg. He loves how she sings a parody on the theme song when unaware of him listening, ‘The hills are alive, and that’s really scary’.

  Garth’s reason to visit the city was to soak up the history of the place which intrigues him. The casino, which bolstered the honeymoon budget last night, was built in the year 1070. Imagine; one hundred and forty-five years before England’s King John signed the Magna Carta, Austria had a casino. Actually, the country only had a monastery. It became a casino about eight hundred years after the Magna Carta.

  Garth packed up his gear; left what he hoped was adequate Euros for the waiter in order to rush back to the Hotel Sacher Salzburg and the bedside of his blushing bride. They found this particular hotel as a part of diligent premarital planning. Phone calls to well-traveled friends confirmed the glowing testimonies of the advertising copy. The Hotel Sacher Salzburg is located in the baroque heart of the music and theatre metropolis of Salzburg. The Wainwrights considered it unique in the city for its timeless romantic charm of the fifteenth century combined crucially with twentieth century comforts. They booked the honeymoon suite for two weeks.

  Sister Beatrice held her habit off the dirt of the bike path while next to her Henry pushed his bicycle up the gentle slope of the Giselakai. They had just passed the Café Amadeus when she leaned close to his ear and asked Henry, “Did you see that?”

  “I am so sorry, Sister, did I see what?”

  “Back there at the Amadeus, the man with the camera and all the papers on the table, he took our photo as we walked by him.”

  Henry thought for a moment, reconstructing the last few seconds to replay it in his head. Before he could say anything, Sister spoke again.

  “He saw us. I know, because he took our picture. He knows we are here and I recognized him. I’m pretty sure that was Garth Wainwright.”

  Henry, the humble parish handyman, looked at Sister Beatrice and asked his companion, “How do you know, Sister?”

  “I was looking at his face when he picked up the cable thing. It was Garth Wainwright, alright, but I didn’t see any recognition of us from him. He paid little attention to us. He was writing on some yellow tablet and barley looked up as we passed.”

  “The camera, I saw the camera pointed at us, but I didn’t pay any attention to the man,” Henry told the nun. “So, your old lover Wainwright has found us, half a world from Bellevue Washington.”

  Sister Beatrice gave Henry a sidelong glance, but didn’t say anything as they continued their trek up the bike path. That invited more comment from the handyman. “You must have really fucked his socks off for him to be searching for you here.”

  “Is that the kind of language you use when speaking with a nun, Henry? I should wash your mouth out with strong soap!”

  “Hey, BJ, stuff all the nun crap. But to change the subject from carnal delights to chancy decisions, now that I think it through, I believe you are right. I remember seeing that guy with the FBI when they arrested me in your penthouse in Bahama.

  “Okay, so he knows we’re here. We have to put together a plan which will take care of that little detail.” And Henry pushed his bicycle a bit faster up the gradual hill of the Giselakai.

  About the Author

  Danley’s blue-collar background is far from the high-flying characters of The Tipping Point. He was born an Indiana Hoosier before Danley’s family moved to California when his father took employment as a machinist in a World War II defense plant.

  Following D-Day, Walter Sr. reasoned returning service men and women passing through the beautiful state of California might want to live there. He decided to be a home builder. His idea was good; the error was that Danley’s dad built houses one at a time while contractors on the east coast built thousands all at once. But this is the environment Walter grew up in; construction and real estate.

  Much later, Walter served his country as a U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman. After Corp School Danley, thinking Medical Doctor as his career goal, enrolled in the Navy’s specialist school as an Operating Room Technician (read scrub nurse) and was stationed to the San Diego Naval Hospital.

  On the sixth floor SOQ, Sick Officers Quarters, he had the good fortune to work in surgery with the Navy’s best—the Chiefs of Staff for each service; Orthopedics, Oncology, Internal Medicine, etc. This was more fodder for his future career.

  But the Navy had little interest in his post Naval plans and Danley was eventually transferred to the Fleet Marine Force as a Medic at U.S. Marine Corps’ Weapons Training Battalion, San Diego. Young Marine Corp recruits spent weeks training with the Corp’s small arms weapons. With live ammunition in the hands of trainees, a Medic was required to be on duty on the firing range. Some of these stories will undoubtedly find their way into future Danley novels!

  Following an honorable discharge and with a new wife, he found his way back to construction, selling wood kitchen cabinets to tract home and apartment builders. Bidding new projects and attending college at night left little time to help his wife raise their first two sons.

  It was at this time Danley was recruited to join a commercial real estate firm. Several years spent in the land business, managing a sales crew for a national conglomerate then moving into income properties. Danley spent most of his working career on the investment side of this business.

  Danley’s five grown sons have parented many grandchildren. He credits their mother’s outstanding child rearing skills together with the marvelous influence of their stepmother, Christopher Norris—a Broadway, film, and television actress—for the fine family with which he is blessed. Walter and Christopher were married for eighteen years, during the boys’ formative years. She remains a good friend to the boys and Walter.

  Danley continued his education at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management, earning an MBA in mid-career. Encouraged by the outstanding curriculum experienced at Pepperdine’s Presidential/Key Executive Program, he completed one year toward a Ph.D. degree in Management Theory at the Peter F. Drucker School of Management at the Clare
mont Graduate School of Business.

  A four decade veteran of real estate investments on a national platform, Danley authored the course, Creative and Unconventional Finance and taught the course at five campuses of the University of California Extension School for several years. During that period Danley also served on the UCLA Real Estate Advisory Board.

  Walter now lives in the Texas Hill Country, where he works on Inside Moves, the sequel to his suspense thriller, The Tipping Point, as well as another work in process novel, which he describes as a historical western with a fantasy twist.

  A Personal Note

  I HOPE YOU ENJOYED this book and received the same pleasure reading it as I did in the writing.

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