A Lighthouse for the Lonely Heart: An Oregon Coast Mystery (Garrison Gage Series Book 5)

by Scott William Carter

  "Right. Damn, they had good coffee. You remember that coffee, Willy?"

  "It was indeed superb."

  "Anyway, Ed would sometimes stop at the booth and say hello, chat a little, but it was mostly about the weather or complaining about the tourists, you know, the usual. So I don't know. Maybe loner isn't the right word. He did talk to everybody, but it never seemed to be about anything. Everybody seemed to like him, that's for sure. Everybody knew Ed. Why are you so interested in him, anyway?"

  "He died last week," Gage said.

  "Oh. Natural causes?"

  "I can't say more right now, but it will come out soon enough."

  "Wait a minute," Wilford said. "Wait a minute now. Last week. He wasn't that fellow who committed suicide by jumping off Heceta Head, was he?"

  Gage took a sip of coffee.

  "Aha," Wilford said. "How did you find this out? The paper didn't mention his name."

  "Let's just say his recent death piqued my interest in him, okay? Here's a guy everybody in town knew at one point. He was Ed of Ed's Diner. Then, after he sold the place, he faded into the background, to the point where people are surprised to find out he was even still alive. What happened to him to make him do that?"

  "Well," Frank said, "that's kind of the thing with him. Everybody may have known him when he had the diner, but he was still part of the background. He was just part of the background that everybody saw, you know? It's like if you pass the same tree every day on your way to work. You see it but you don't really see it."

  "Excellent simile," Wilford said.

  "Thank you," Frank said.

  "You know anything about his wife and kids?" Gage asked.

  "Oh, sure. She was hard to forget. She didn't come in all that often, but when she did … boy, she was a shrew. What was her name, Willy?"

  "Hmm. I remember it started with a K."

  "Kathy! Right. She was a piece of work. Now if there was ever a woman who could drive a man to suicide, it was her. Wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that was the reason."

  "Apparently," Gage said, "she actually divorced him and moved to California before he sold the diner. So she'd been gone a long time."

  "Oh! He never said a thing about it. Not surprising, I guess, the way he was."

  "What about his sons?"

  "The boys?" Frank said. "They were even worse than her. Spoiled little brats. I mean, she only came in when she needed cash for something, and she usually just dipped into the till and took it. The boys were usually just running wild, climbing all over everything, yelling, fighting with each other—real snot-nosed little brats, you know. Tells you how bad they were, I remember them so well. You remember their names, Willy?"

  "Not a clue."

  "Yeah, she avoided this place like the plague. I do remember them coming in sometimes on their own when they were a bit older. Same deal. Just to get money from the till. They were just a year apart, I think. Big boys. Built like bulls. I think Ed was a little scared of them by then, and they were only in middle school."

  "All right," Gage said. "This question is going to seem a little out of the blue, but do you know if he had an affair?"

  "What?" Frank said. "Ed? No. If he did, he hid it pretty darn well." He glanced at Wilford, who had grown noticeably quiet. "What is it, Willy?"

  "I was just … Do you remember Ronnie?"

  "Of course. Best waitress we ever had. Sweet gal. Wait a minute, you're not saying … she and Ed …"

  "No, no," Wilford said. "I mean, I don't know. When my mother was still alive, she lived down the street from Ronnie's place. I saw Ed drop her off a few times, back when her car was always having trouble. Do you remember her complaining about that?"

  Frank scratched the stubble on his chin. "Ronnie and Ed. Come to think of it, they did seem to have a way about them, little smiles they had just for each other. But … nah. They were both just sweet people. No way they could have been carrying on something and keeping it hidden from everybody."

  "If they were," Wilford said, "they were certainly very good at it."

  "Didn't she have a kid? I remember her mom stopping by with a little boy a couple times. She didn't seem unhappy. But then, it would be hard to know with someone like Ronnie. The world might be falling apart around her and she'd probably go on smiling."

  "Anything else you remember about him?" Gage asked. "Did he have any hobbies or interests?"

  "Don't know," Frank said. He glanced at Wilford, who shook his head. "Like I said, he kept a pretty tight lid on himself, and we didn't really know him that well."

  "What about the casino?"

  "How's that?"

  "Did he say anything about gambling? Playing cards, that sort of thing?"

  Wilford straightened in his seat. "Oh! I do remember something. It was back when the Golden Eagle Casino was first going to open. I overheard him talking about it with another customer. He was really quite animated about it. That's why I remember it so well. I remember thinking it was strange to hear Ed so animated about anything."

  "He was happy about it?" Gage asked.

  "No! Quite the opposite. He was dead set against it opening. He said casinos were like catnip to gambling addicts. He said they soaked up money in a community and ruined lives. He said it was the worst mistake the city of Barnacle Bluffs had ever made, letting the Kayok tribe open the Golden Eagle, and we'd all be dealing with the aftermath for a long time to come."

  "Interesting," Gage said.

  Gage pressed a bit more, but other than Frank remembering Ed making a few positive comments about the Portland Trailblazers during one of their runs to the finals, they couldn't remember anything else distinct about him. They seemed to feel a little bad about it, too, that he'd been such a distinct presence in their lives for such a long period, and yet they knew so little about him.

  After Gage finished his breakfast, he paid his tab and thanked them for their help. Outside, he glanced over his shoulder to see what the two of them would do once Gage left. He told himself he didn't care, that whatever the two old guys did wasn't his concern.

  And yet, when he saw that Frank and Wilford were still sitting at the same booth, talking happily, Gage couldn't help but smile.

  Chapter 7

  If nothing else, Gage drove away from the diner feeling like he had a few more people to talk to about Ed Boone. There were his sons, of course. He'd need to talk to them. Ronnie, the waitress, if she was alive, and maybe her husband or son. There was also something there concerning his strong negative reaction to Golden Eagle Casino coming to town. A recovering gambling addict, maybe? In his experience, gambling addicts were often like ex-smokers: militant and outspoken in warning people about the dangers of their particular vices.

  Yet that made it hard to believe Ed would play the slots at the casino just to relax, as he'd mentioned in his letter, but why lie in the letter? Something didn't quite add up, though Gage couldn't say what yet.

  He also felt a growing connection to Ed Boone. He'd assumed Ed had been a real man of the town, a social butterfly, but he sounded more like Gage: private, keeping his personal life personal unless it couldn't be helped. He might have been a little more outwardly polite, a better and more willing listener to the trivialities of people's lives, but in temperament and personality, Gage sensed a kindred spirit.

  Or maybe he was just projecting onto Ed what he wanted to be there. He'd been guilty of that before.

  For now, Gage decided the next step was to visit the man's last residence. The digital clock under the outlet mall sign read 8:47, the red letters glowing in the wisps of fog that wreathed the sign. Plenty late enough to knock on people's doors. Traffic was heavier, but he didn't have far to drive, turning onto the road just past the one that led to his house, a wider road that wound up into the firs and around the hill.

  The apartment complex, appropriately called Hidden Hills Village, was a dozen buildings tucked into the trees like a private commune, each building with ten units, five on t
he first floor, five on the second. Most of the buildings had been recently painted a tint of bright yellow that should have been reserved for bananas and rain slickers, and the other half of the buildings may have once been a jolly shade of red but were now a faded and diluted pink. The colors may have been someone's attempt to make the place seem cheery and welcoming, but they seemed like a feeble effort to camouflage the drabness of the place. Moss and pine needles coated the sagging roofs. The sidewalks were crumbling and the parking lot was full of potholes. The grassy common area could only be called grassy by a narrow margin; most of it was weeds and mole holes.

  The complex may have been less than a hundred yards of forest away from his house, a fact that was highly evident by the number of cats from the complex that wandered through his property, but Gage had never visited it. There'd never been a reason. When he went on his walks, he always went to the beach. But it was about what he expected. He'd seen a half-dozen other apartment complexes like it around town, and they were all about the same—full of twenty-year-old cars and trucks, rusted out and missing hubcaps; children's plastic outdoor toys crammed onto tiny balconies; haggard men and women in too-tight T-shirts smoking on their postage-stamp patios or in their open doorways.

  It was about what Gage expected because it didn't take him long, after moving to the city years ago, to learn about the highly bifurcated nature of Barnacle Bluffs, which had no industry except tourism. People didn't like to talk about social classes in Oregon, or really anywhere in America, in Gage's experience, but that didn't mean there weren't any. With rare exceptions, the people of Barnacle Bluffs could be divided into two groups: the rich, either full-time retirees or part-timers from the valley with second homes on the beach, and the service class. They were the people who worked in the knickknack shops, the restaurants, and the grocery stores, which made up the bulk of the available jobs.

  The best off among this group may have ascended to working at the casino, or perhaps, if they were lucky, the city or the county, with its more generous pay and prized benefit package. The worst lived primarily off welfare checks and food stamps, and there were plenty of those people, too. There wasn't much of a middle class—teachers, police officers, nurses who worked at the hospital—and those people always seemed to struggle to find their place in Barnacle Bluffs. If they could afford it, few of this smaller group wanted to raise their families in an apartment, even in one of the rare upscale ones, and a decent house in their price range was always tough to find.

  Gage had Ed Boone's address from the letter he'd sent to Nora, number 608. As luck would have it, it was located in the building farthest from the front, which meant there were fewer curious neighbors who might spot him if had to break into the apartment.

  Yet when he parked his van, he saw that breaking into the apartment was going to be a difficult prospect. The first problem was that number 608 was on the second floor, with no access to windows or screen doors. The second problem was Unit 6, where the apartment was located, was the building currently being painted, and a crew of two guys was working on the wall directly adjacent to Ed's door.

  That left returning late at night, or seeing if someone with a key would let him in now. The shades of the windows were drawn, and no light seemed to come from within. Had anyone been there since Ed died? If they hadn't, it wouldn't be long, and Gage really wanted to see the man's place before too many people started picking over his belongings. That made waiting until night less appealing.

  He'd passed the office on the way in, a first floor apartment marked with an orange neon open sign in a window, so he drove the van back there and parked. The sign had been on when he came in, but now it was off. Just his luck. Not far from the door, a man in tan overalls was emptying a lawnmower bag into a green barrel, a big, lumberjack-like guy with an unruly black beard. The patch of lawn in front of the office was one of the few areas that had healthy, growing grass.

  When Gage got out of the van, the man eyed Gage suspiciously.

  Gage waved politely. The man glared. Obviously the friendly type.

  "The managers in?" Gage asked.

  The man shrugged. His face was like churned-up mud, lumpy in some places, hard-edged in others, his tan a deep but uneven brown. It was still cool enough that Gage saw the man's breath fogging in front of him. The air smelled of freshly cut grass and gasoline.

  Since the conversation wasn't getting him anywhere, Gage walked to the door, leaving his cane behind because it was such a short distance. Plus, he felt self-conscious about it with King Kong watching. He tried the door. Locked. He looked at the yard man, who'd since turned his attention to putting the bag on the mower.

  "Any idea when they'll be back?" Gage asked.

  This time, the guy didn't even bother with a shrug. The blinds on the window next to the door were closed, but there was light inside. He also thought he heard faint voices. Not regular voices, though—hollow, like from a television. He knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked again, harder. Still no one. The television implied that they were either inside, and ignoring him, or they were somewhere in the complex and didn't bother turning off the set because they knew they'd be back soon.

  Gage returned to his van. The yard man pushed the lawnmower off the grass onto the sidewalk, passing Gage without even a glance. Gage watched the manager's office for any sign of activity. It hadn't felt cool inside the van before, but now, sitting in stillness, it did. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel to warm them. So much of his early years as a private investigator in the New York area had been spent waiting. Some people even said that was what separated the good PIs from the bad ones—the ability to wait. Gage had never liked waiting, the endless monotony of it, but he was certainly good at it. He could out-wait the best of them.

  He was sitting there practicing his waiting skills when there was a partial eclipse of the sun. That was what it felt like, a sudden darkening of the interior of the van, but when he turned toward the driver's-side window, he saw that the thing doing the darkening was, in fact, the yard man.

  His huge, bearded face loomed so close to the glass that Gage flinched. Other than a few rhythmic blinks, the yard man barely moved, studying Gage with the kind of passive curiosity that a boy forced to visit a museum might have when peering at a rare insect under glass—like everyone told him how rare and interesting this insect was, and he was trying to judge for himself but so far was unimpressed.

  Gage, his heart slowing, rolled down his window. He didn't sense any violent intent from the big guy, but still his hand moved to the Beretta holstered inside his jacket.

  "Can I help you?" he asked.

  The man just went on staring, his utter stillness even more unnerving than if he had raised a clenched fist. He smelled of wet earth and garlic.

  "Is this a staring contest?" Gage asked. "I stopped doing those in fourth grade, so I'm pretty out of practice."

  "Ron," the man said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Name."

  He spoke in a whisper, but his voice was so deep that it would have rumbled like a locomotive if he'd talked any louder.

  "That's your name? Well, nice to—"

  "No. Your name. What is it?"

  "Oh."

  "Don't lie."

  "Um … I wouldn't even think of it. The name's Garrison. Garrison Gage."

  Ron tipped his head. It might have been a nod, but it was so slight that Gage immediately began to doubt whether the man had moved at all.

  "Is there something you—" Gage began.

  "I knew it," Ron said.

  "Sorry?"

  "You're that detective."

  "Um."

  "I heard about you."

  "Okay. I'm still not sure …"

  Gage trailed off because Ron abruptly turned and walked away. No goodbye, no acknowledgement of any sort, not even another one of those barely perceptible nods. And here he thought he'd made a new best friend. He watched Ron walk—it was more of a lumber, really—down the s
idewalk toward the management office.

  He assumed the big fella was going to report Gage to the managers, tell them just who, exactly, was biding his time outside their office, and his belief seemed confirmed when Ron took a key from the center pocket of his overalls and unlocked the door. Instead of entering, Ron turned, looked at Gage for a long beat, and walked away. This time, he headed away from Gage's van, rounding the corner and disappearing.

  Despite Ron's slightly less than optimal communication skills, it only took a moment for Gage to realize what the big guy had in mind. He'd unlocked the door because he wanted Gage to go into the office.

  Why? Gage sensed some kind of trap, but couldn't for the life of him think of any reason why Ron would want to do such a thing. Did he already know why Gage was there? How would that even be possible?

  Still, whatever Ron's motive, Gage was not about to pass up the opportunity to look inside the office. He checked his Beretta, ensuring it was properly loaded, and returned the piece to its holster with the outer strap unbuckled. Approaching the door, he didn't see anybody watching. The sun, piercing the clouds, warmed up the air in a hurry; what was left of the dew on the grass was nearly gone. A crow cawed at him from up in the branches of the oak, but otherwise he was alone. He knocked. Again, nobody answered. When he thought he'd waited long enough, he tried the knob. Unlocked.

  Steeling himself, he opened the door.

  If there was a trap waiting for him, it wasn't an obvious one. Standing in the doorway, he found himself looking upon a messy but rather ordinary office. Mounds of paper littered the top of the L-shaped wood laminate desk. A dozen blue spiral notebooks, each marked with a year in black marker, filled the matching bookshelves. A sad goldfish swam in lazy circles in the bowl on the metal filing cabinet. In the corner, a behemoth of a television, even by current standards, was showing an episode of Modern Family. There was a no smoking sign on the corner of the desk, but the place smelled strongly of cigarettes.

  There were two doors along the far wall, one that was open and led to a tiny bathroom, and another that was closed almost all the way but not completely. He saw light under the crack.