by Harper Lin
I decided I needed to pay Sunnydale Nature Resort a nocturnal visit.
Thirteen
I had, of course, scouted out the resort already using Google Earth and had discovered a small dirt road that skirted the woods at the northern edge of the property. I could find a place to park there and cut through the woods easily enough.
The only problem was that I’d heard Adrian and Zoe lived on the property. There were no facilities for overnight guests, at least, but I’d have to take care.
After dropping a bloated Martin off at his parents’ house and wishing him a good night, I headed back out into the countryside. I felt a bit bloated myself. Even the salads at Fatberger came with dollops of mayonnaise and creamy dressing, and the chicken turned out to be deep fried. Whoever heard of putting fried chicken in a chicken salad?
I found the dirt road easily enough, cutting past a farm just a mile ahead of the Sunnydale entrance. Luckily, no other cars passed by, so no one saw me pull off onto what turned out to be a rutted, overgrown, and disused dirt track. Trees pressed in on the left side, their branches scraping against the doors, and the wheel ruts were so deep from the tractors that came along this way that the central hump kept grinding against the bottom of the car.
The road had looked better from the satellite pictures offered by Google. My rental car bumped and scraped its way along, and I could practically hear my security deposit disappearing with every clonk and bang and screech.
The bumps squeezed out a few burps from yours truly, courtesy of Fatberger. I pictured Martin laughing hysterically at me. That’s what he had done the last time we had gone there and the food had had this effect. He had probably been hoping for a repeat performance.
After a mile or so, I estimated I was parallel to the Sunnydale property and parked right in the lane. I hadn’t seen any place to turn off, and I figured there was little chance of anyone else passing by here at this hour.
I got out, geared up for a night of fun. I wore a black shirt and loose black pants and had a balaclava I could put over my face. I had my 9mm and pepper spray, of course, plus a small bag holding a Mini Maglite, my lockpicks, my phone, and a pair of bolt cutters.
The bolt cutters were because I had seen what looked like a chain link fence around the boundary of the nudist colony. While the property was ringed with trees, there were a few bare spots where I could see a thin gray line.
It’s amazing what you can find on Google Earth, and most people only use it to find the closest Starbucks.
I pushed my way through the trees, my Maglite showing me the way. I found the fence not far in. Peering through the links, I could see the trees continued for a way beyond.
Good. No one would see my light. I got to work on the fence.
And it got to work on me. There was a time when I could snip through a double coil of razor wire and make an adult-sized crawlspace within five minutes and do it quietly.
Not anymore. Here I was faced with a simple chain link fence, each bit of wire conveniently held taught by the network of its neighbors and safely smooth, not some bobbing, shivering, razor-sharp coil of military-grade defensive wire, and it was taking me ages.
I hadn’t gotten a quarter of the way through before I began to feel every snip of the wire in my finger joints. Something about the pressure and sudden release as the metal gave hurt me terribly.
I stopped when I got a third of the way through. My intent had been to cut a simple hole that I could duck through. I should have been done by now, and instead I was looking at less than a half circle of cut fence. I rubbed my joints, frustrated.
Continuing, I didn’t get more than ten links cut before I had to stop again.
I stepped back, wincing with pain and looking at the fence with despair.
This place … this place … it was hitting me on every level. Having to show my body to strangers, having to interact in an atmosphere that was weirdly pseudo-sexual (at least to me), and now this new reminder of the ravages of time. Yet another thing I couldn’t do. I probably hadn’t cut any wire since Somalia in the nineties. The ability was one of those things I had thought would always be there, like James or being able to see the sights on my gun without my reading glasses. Another bit of my old life I had taken for granted. Gone.
I glared at the fence and said something unprintable.
Getting back to work with gritted teeth, pain lancing through my forearms now with each snip of the wire, I soldiered on through until I’d cut the hole I had set out to make.
At last the final wire sheared away and the circle of fence fell into the underbrush. I ducked through, gave it a kick, and stowed my bolt cutters. It took me three attempts to get them into my bag.
I allowed myself a little cry over James. Any time something like this happened, it made me miss him more. I think growing old would be much easier to bear if I had someone to grumble with. Frederick and Alicia and Martin were a blessing in my life, but they had lives and futures of their own. While I didn’t have to grow old alone, I was alone in growing old.
Okay, enough of that.
I wiped my eyes, squared my shoulders, and got on with the mission.
It didn’t take long to creep through the screen of trees and into a field beyond. I came out past the pool and activity building, visible in the far distance and illuminated by a couple of outside lights. The office, my goal, lay hidden behind them. I threw some sticks on the grass in a seemingly random pattern so I could find my escape route.
I hid in the shadow of the tree line, watching for several minutes. No sound but the cicadas. No movement. The interior lights were all off in the activity center.
The tricky thing was that Adrian and Zoe had their little house right behind the office. I could only hope they weren’t working late. I pulled my balaclava over my face.
My luck held as I crossed the field, silent and nearly invisible in my black clothing.
I stopped with my back pressed against the wall of the activity center, listening. Still no sound. Peering through a window, I didn’t see any signs of life inside. Good. No nocturnal activities in the activity room. The last thing I needed tonight was to come across a pair of amorous nudists being positive about each other’s bodies.
I was not a prude, really, but I just wanted this mission over without having to deal with any more embarrassments.
Yeah, like that was going to happen.
I crept around the corner of the activity center and studied the office and house behind. The office was dark. In the house, a light shone downstairs. It was too far away to see anything clearly. The night air brought the faint sound of a television. Good, the sound would mask my movements. Bad, because they obviously had a window open.
Speed was the answer, speed I didn’t have. In the old days, I would have run low and silently to the office and quickly gotten out of sight of that window. Instead I walked quickly and silently and eventually got out of sight.
No one appeared at that window. No one shouted. Thank goodness for the apathetic American television viewer, clothed or otherwise.
I dared a quick shine of my light and saw no stickers warning of a security system. I saw no telltale wires either, and I did not recall seeing a keypad inside the front door like I had in my own home.
The door was locked, of course, but I took care of that with my lockpicks easily enough. I allowed myself a smile. That was something time hadn’t yet stolen from me.
I eased the door open and closed it silently behind me. The interior of the office was dark, the Venetian blinds all closed. I turned my Maglite back on, half covering it with my hand. With the feeble glow I allowed through my fingers, I made my way to Adrian’s desk. The desktop had a photo of him and Zoe in the buff at a beach somewhere, a landline phone, and a few papers having to do with some plumbing repair in the activity center. There was also a desktop computer on sleep mode. I didn’t touch that, figuring there’d be a password.
Holding the Maglite in my mouth, I began to rumma
ge through his drawers.
Searching files in the dark was not really my specialty. I was more on the covert ops side of things, not domestic spying. It took me some time to find a file marked “Taxes—Personal.”
That set off a little bell in my head. Grimal had only mentioned checking the resort’s tax returns, not Adrian and Zoe’s personal returns, on the assumption that any financial malfeasance would happen with the resort’s finances. But what if…?
Bingo. It turned out that Adrian had a private income. He owned two apartment buildings down in Georgia and earned a considerable amount of money from rents. I found receipts for rents, repairs, payment to the building manager, plus tax returns going back ten years. I wondered where he had gotten the money to buy two buildings. Had he inherited them, or had he come by them in a more dubious fashion?
The tax forms might have been written in Babylonian cuneiform for all I could understand them. I’ve always hated doing my taxes and always hired an accountant to do them for me. What I did see was that the income derived from the apartment buildings stayed more or less constant throughout the last ten years except for three years ago, when the income jumped by about ten percent. The receipts showed he had raised the rent. In the line for “tax preparer,” I saw Clarissa Monell’s signature on the most recent eight years.
I put that file away and found another folder that was unmarked. This contained returns for the upcoming year, filled out in pencil with many notes in the margins. It was in a different handwriting that I assumed was Naomi’s.
The first form showed an income on the apartment buildings that was about ten percent less than the previous year, even though receipts showed he had raised the rent again. In a different handwriting on the margin was a big “NO!” with a circle around it. Unlike the handwriting that filled out the form, this looked to have been written by a male hand. Adrian not approving of Naomi’s numbers?
Another form showed an even lower figure. In the margins in the same male hand was the word “Better.”
Then it clicked. Adrian was trying to fudge his personal taxes. He wanted to hide the fact that he was making more income. Naomi seemed reluctant to play along with the game, and perhaps Clarissa had out and out refused.
Had Clarissa threatened to spill the beans to the IRS? That could lead Adrian to murder. It seemed a bit of a crazy reason to kill, however. We were only talking about a few tens of thousands of dollars in tax here. Unless there was something else involved. Perhaps it wasn’t so much the hiding of the income that Adrian wanted to cover up but what he planned to do with it.
I let out a celebratory Fatberger belch that tasted of half-digested fried chicken. I was much closer to a solution than before. It was amazing what a little illegal breaking and entering could bring to a case.
I dug deeper into the drawers and found little else, just older files relating to the resort and a plaque from Boeing dated from twenty-five years ago naming Adrian Fletcher “Engineer of the Year.” So he had been an engineer at a big military contractor before owning a nudist camp. Those jobs paid well, and he had given it all up to invest in a nudist colony next to a conservative town. Quite a gamble. He meant all that stuff he said about his dedication to nudism.
I replaced the files the way I had found them and closed the drawers. Now I had a motive. What I needed was proof.
Checking the other desk, I found it was Naomi’s and didn’t see anything amiss inside.
The small office building had a second room, reached through an open doorway. I found a pair of file cabinets, a closet full of office supplies, and another closet with various tools, sports equipment, and other odds and ends.
I let out another belch and got a bitter taste in my mouth. A burning in my chest reminded me that I should have brought my antacids. A few minutes of searching turned up nothing of use.
Just as I turned to go back into the main room for another look, I heard footsteps outside. I turned off my Maglite and ducked behind the doorway, cursing my luck. I was out of sight of the main room, but if whoever it was came in here, I would have nowhere to hide.
Of course, they’d get a gun pointed at their face, but I would rather settle this without violence. I’d been in too many gunfights in my so-called retirement already.
I heard a key go into the lock, and the door opened.
“Damn it, Zoe.”
That had been Adrian’s voice. No doubt he had noticed the door was unlocked and had assumed Zoe had forgotten to lock it. The way he said it made it sound like he habitually blamed Zoe for a lot of things.
The light turned on, and the door closed. Footsteps crossed the room. I heard him sit down and pick up the landline phone on his desk.
A minute later, Adrian spoke again.
“Hey, baby, I can only talk for a minute.”
Pause.
“Yeah, good to hear your voice too. I know, I know. But I couldn’t help it. Naming you to the post means I get to spend more time with you.”
Pause.
“I know people are talking. It won’t matter for long. Soon we’ll get out of here. The taxes are getting all fixed up. We’ll have enough.”
Pause.
“Wherever you want. Yeah, I’ve heard the resorts in the south of France are wonderful. Yes, I looked at the links you sent me. That will be great.”
Pause.
“I told you we’ll have enough money. Don’t worry.”
Pause.
“Okay. Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine. Look, I got to go. I told her I just needed to fix one thing on a spreadsheet. She’ll be wondering where I am. See you tomorrow? Great.”
Pause.
“Yes, yes. She’s come around. I told you, everything will be fine.”
Pause.
“Love you too, Angie. Bye bye.”
He hung up. I heard him cross the room again and open the door.
My stomach knotted. An acidic burn rose in my throat. Ugh, why did I let Martin convince me to go to Fatberger? I was going to have an uncomfortable night.
It suddenly got more uncomfortable.
Before I could stop it, a loud belch erupted from my throat.
Fourteen
“Who’s there?” Adrian demanded.
The game was up. I stepped out from behind the doorway, gun leveled.
Adrian stood at the front door, his hand on the knob, the door half open. Luckily for me he had his clothes on.
At my appearance, he let out a little squawk.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
What, didn’t he recognize me with my clothes on?
Oh, the balaclava. I pulled it off my face.
“Barbara? What’s going on?”
“Keep your voice down.” I motioned with my gun. “Sit down in that chair while I call the police.”
He looked baffled. “Police? What for? You’re the one breaking into my office!”
“For the murder of Clarissa Monell.”
“What? That was a hit and run. Why do you think I killed her?”
“Because she wouldn’t doctor your taxes, and you’re obviously about to elope with Angie.”
“I’d never kill anyone.”
Then something clicked. Adrian had been a mechanical engineer. He could have figured out a better way to pick my lock than with a paperclip. And look at him shaking head to toe at the sight of a gun. Was this a cold-blooded killer?
“You pressured Clarissa to fudge your taxes, and she wouldn’t do it,” I said. “Don’t try to lie. I just saw your old tax returns, plus the new ones Naomi is doctoring.”
He hung his head. After a pause, he whispered, “Yes, it’s true. I pressured Clarissa, and she wouldn’t budge. It stressed her out and ruined our friendship. Eventually she quit, and I got Naomi to do the taxes. She didn’t want to change them either, but I convinced her. She’s more pliable than Clarissa.” His head came up, eyes desperate. “But I didn’t kill her, I swear. Why would I do that? She never threatened me. Are you
saying that it wasn’t a hit and run?”
“I saw it with my own eyes. A stolen car pulled out of a parking spot and deliberately ran her over. The driver also tried to run me off the road when I pursued.”
“Pursued? Who are you?”
“Never mind that. So when were you planning on eloping with Angie?”
“Soon. She was worried about money. She’s always worried about money. She grew up poor, you see.”
“And she’s still worried that you don’t have enough.” The final piece clicked. It was Angie who had killed Clarissa. It was the only solution. But why? If Clarissa hadn’t been threatening to expose them, what was the danger?
“Where’s Angie now?” I asked.
“At home.”
“You got your car keys?”
“What? No, they’re in the house.”
“Fine, we’ll go in my car.”
“But Zoe will notice I’m gone.”
I shrugged. “You were going to leave her anyway. Move it.”
I gestured with my gun, and he got up. He put his hands in the air, and we walked out of the office. I turned the light off in case Zoe peeked out. I didn’t want her to see me leading her husband away. She should be spared that much, at least.
“Why do we need to go to Angie’s?” he asked.
I shook my head. He still didn’t get it, did he? Not that I entirely got it either. That was why we needed to pay her a visit. She must be the murderer, but why she had killed was not yet clear.
We walked across the field. When we were halfway to the tree line, I heard Zoe’s voice far behind us, calling Adrian’s name. Adrian stopped and turned.
“Keep moving. She can’t see us from there.”
“Please don’t do this. All I want is to be happy.”
“Zoe seems like a nice woman. Why can’t you be content with her?”
He didn’t answer. I shook my head in disgust. The same old story—trading the wife in for a newer model. Disgusting. I let out a Fatberger belch to show my feelings.
Zoe’s calls followed us to the trees.