CHAPTER 8
I’d had more than my share of doubts about Genesis, but Graham had been so optimistic, so sure of its success, that I had finally relented, despite my reservations. I don’t want to say Graham wore me down, or that I caved to his repeated attempts at persuading me, but it had become so unbearable at home I knew we couldn’t go on the way we had been. Graham would come home and slowly begin with the numbers, then tell me he’d spoken to another dispensary in Washington and about how much money we would make. When I tried to question his numbers, he would dismiss me or accuse me of not supporting him. Then he would either leave pissed off and not come back until late, or sulk the rest of the evening and not say two words. He needed my income to get the loan.
When I finally said yes, his eyes widened like a man who’d just been told he was cancer free, and he gave me a bear hug and a kiss.
“You’re not going to regret this,” he said, holding me by the shoulders. “This will be the best money we’ve ever invested.” Then he hugged me again.
“I hope you’re right,” I said, trying to smile through my apprehension.
“I can feel this, Andrea.” He paced the apartment. “I can feel this is going to be my big chance.”
We’d lit a strawberry-scented candle and made love that night on the couch, the way we had when first married, like it mattered. Like I mattered.
Thereafter, our lovemaking sessions continued almost nightly, until we went to visit the banker about our business loan. We had to disclose our assets and debts. The only debt I knew of was the lease on Graham’s Porsche. We had no real savings, despite Graham saying we’d save money because he’d moved into my loft. I was uncomfortable with him lying about becoming a partner at BSBT, and already nervous when we sat down on the opposite side of the desk from the banker—a tall, officious-looking man with a head of silver hair who asked a lot of questions and filled out forms.
After about forty-five minutes, he looked rather grave and said to Graham, “You have quite a bit of credit card debt.”
I was not aware of that.
“I had a sick parent and I’m the primary caregiver,” he said. “But that’s over now.”
I was surprised at the ease with which Graham lied.
“Well, do you have a way to pay that down?” the banker asked.
“I’m going to have a substantial increase in income when I make partner,” Graham said.
“When will that be?”
“I believe it’s first of the year,” Graham said.
“Perhaps you could provide a letter from the law firm confirming that?”
“Certainly,” Graham said.
Maybe it was my nerves, but I suddenly felt compelled to mention my parents’ trust, though its terms would not allow me to use it as collateral.
Graham went white as a sheet. I swear I could hear the thud of his jaw hitting the desk. He leaned forward, though there was no way the banker could not overhear our conversation.
“You have a trust?” he said.
I glanced at the banker. He sat with the uncomfortable smile of a man who’d walked in on an argument and was trying to find an inconspicuous way to exit. He made an excuse about having to find some other form, and left his desk.
“What are you talking about?” Graham asked.
“When my parents died, their estate was left for me in trust. I gained limited access to it when I turned twenty-one.”
Graham stared at me with a look of disbelief, then glanced over his shoulder to be sure the banker was out of earshot. He leaned even closer, his jaw taut and his voice hushed. “Jesus H. Christ, Andrea. When did you plan on telling me about this?”
“I didn’t think it was relevant,” I said.
“Not relevant?” He cleared his throat and sat back, lips pursed. “What are we doing here?” He asked the question in that patronizing voice I hated, like I was a child. “We’re borrowing money that we’re going to be paying interest on because I thought we needed it.”
“We do need it.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “How much is the trust?”
“It’s not important, Graham.”
He scoffed. “Not important? I’m your husband. What other secrets have you been keeping from me?”
“What? I’m not keeping . . . No, that’s not what I mean.”
“What do you mean? Because it sure sounds like you’ve been keeping a very big secret from me.”
“I mean it’s not relevant because we can’t use the trust. We can’t use the money.”
“You mean you won’t use it.”
“No, I mean we can’t.”
His cheeks flushed red and his blue eyes became more a shade of gray. “Why the hell not?”
“Because of the way my parents had the trust set up. It’s designated as my separate property and has restrictions on how it can be used. It can’t be invested in a business. It’s just for my well-being.”
“Your parents are dead,” he said, emphasizing each word.
“I’m aware of that, Graham, but the terms of the trust still remain in place. When I turned twenty-one I had full say in the use of the interest, but there are restrictions on the principal until I turn thirty-five. My parents set it up that way so I would always be taken care of.”
In truth, I knew my parents well enough to know they’d set it up that way so no one could ever take advantage of me, marry me believing they would get half the money, or take it from me in a divorce.
“So it’s yours and yours alone?” Graham said.
“Technically, yes.”
“What does that mean, ‘technically’?”
“It means, what do you think I’ve been using to help make ends meet each month when we didn’t have enough money to pay the rent or the lease on the Porsche and the other expenses? I’ve been using the interest money I get from the trust.”
“Oh, so you’re saying, what? I’m some kind of sponge?”
“No, I’m not saying that.” I wanted to scream.
“How much is the trust?”
I didn’t want to answer.
His jaw clenched. “How much, Andrea?”
“The principal is half a million dollars.”
Graham scoffed and laughed at once. It sounded almost like a man choking. “Are you kidding me? You’re sitting on half a million dollars? What the hell are we doing here?”
“I told you, I can’t use it—”
“Andrea, I’m a lawyer. Every contract can be broken and a trust is basically a contract.”
“Not this one,” I said. “My trustee said my parents had it put together so that it can’t be broken.”
He shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you let me worry about that? Can you get the money?”
“It can’t be done, Graham.”
“Can you get it?”
“I can get it, but I can’t use it for this type of stuff. So I say we end the lease on the Porsche, apply that money to your credit card debt, and get our loan as we’d intended.”
Graham bit his lower lip and rolled his eyes. “You want me to give up my Porsche? I’m a lawyer, Andrea. I have to maintain a certain image.”
“But you won’t be a lawyer anymore.”
Thankfully, the banker cleared his throat when he came back to his desk. “Are we set to move forward?” he asked.
Graham still looked angry but he smiled as if nothing was wrong. “Of course,” he said. “Let’s get this ball rolling.”
Graham remained upset for the next two days. He traded in his Porsche and we applied the lease payment to his credit card bill. I also chipped in another $2,000. “I intend to pay you back,” he said. I wasn’t holding my breath. Nor did I really care. I’d never cared about money. I’d gotten by with virtually nothing my entire life, and now it seemed money just created problems.
The third day, Graham came home with a bouquet of flowers and an apology. I almost wished he hadn’t. Just when I thought I’d figured out his mood for
the week, it would swing again.
“I’m sorry I’ve been such a jerk,” he said, handing me the fragrant bouquet. “It’s just that you really caught me out of the blue at the bank and I felt like I’d been put in an embarrassing situation, you know? I mean, here I was getting ready to take out a bank loan, and I’m supposed to be a lawyer, and I didn’t even know my wife had this massive trust.”
“I should have told you,” I said, though it was more to appease him. “It’s just, like I said, I didn’t think it would make any difference since we can’t use it.”
“Then why did you bring it up?”
“I was nervous. I didn’t want you to lie on a bank application and say you were going to be made a partner of the firm.”
He smiled, but it was patronizing. “Andrea, you’re such a Goody Two-shoes. Nobody is going to check on that, but it’s cute that you were looking out for me. And I get it. We can’t use the trust for the business, but hey, it’s nice to know that we have it, right? I mean, it’s like we have a net under the trapeze.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, suddenly leery of where he was taking the conversation.
“I mean we can use it if things get a little tight getting the business up and running, or to do things like travel—or buy a boat, you know, fun things as a couple. Wouldn’t it be great to have a boat? I mean we can use it like that, can’t we?”
“I suppose,” I said, wary. “The interest anyway.”
He leaned closer. “Do you forgive me?”
“Sure,” I said. What else was I to do?
“You know what I want to do?” He moved quickly, the way he did when he had a thought that excited him. I was praying he wasn’t about to say, “Have sex.”
“I want to go out to dinner and celebrate our new business. Someplace special.”
With Graham I was learning that “special” meant “expensive,” and I already knew whose credit card we’d be using.
Over the next two months the bank approved the loan, and Graham searched for space to rent and researched inventory. He’d been energized, upbeat, and excited like the Graham I’d met and married. He couldn’t get enough of me either. We had sex all over the loft, and in creative ways. I’d tried to be optimistic that the business would succeed, but my doubt grew when Graham told me he’d found a small shop right there in the Pearl District, which was one of the highest-rent districts in Portland—and that was saying something. I’d read an article that said, since 2015, Portland’s residential and commercial rents had shot through the roof. All the newspapers lamented how Portland was losing its identity as longtime residents and small businesses were forced farther and farther out of the city core. The rent on my loft had skyrocketed from $900 a month to $1,250 in just three years, and the space Graham chose to open Genesis was $23 a square foot. I tried to persuade him to open the dispensary in a more industrial area where the rent was $11 a square foot, where we would have plenty of parking, and where we would be farther away from the medical dispensaries, but Graham dismissed it.
“It’s the first rule of real estate,” he said. “Location, location, location. We’re going to be in a prime location within walking distance of all the businesses and law firms, and that’s where the money is. Those are the people we are going to cater to. Besides, think of the money we’ll save by not having to drive.”
Between the bank loan payment, the rents on the loft and the building space, and Graham’s lease on his Porsche—which he renewed once we got the loan—we were going to have to clear close to $6,000 a month just to break even. That didn’t include our regular expenses or the cost of the business permit to sell marijuana, and Graham had pretty much blown through the loan on our portion of the tenant improvements and other start-up costs. He kept opting for upgrades like Brazilian hardwood floors and high-end glass cabinets with recessed lighting to display the different kinds of pot, as if it were jewelry.
“I want this place to shout ‘class’ when people come in,” he said. “I don’t want to be catering to some lowlife losers.”
I didn’t care who we catered to so long as those lowlife losers had real American dollars, but if I expressed any reservation or tried to get him to opt for a cheaper alternative, he’d just smile and say, “Relax, we have the trust income we can pull from if we’re a little short this month.”
Beyond all of that, I was worried because I’d been reading that city officials were contemplating allowing Portland’s medical marijuana dispensaries to sell to recreational users. It would be a huge windfall for the dispensaries. They wouldn’t have the same start-up costs and could drive down the price, not to mention increase competition. When I brought it up with Graham, however, he dismissed it. “Those places are pits. That is not our clientele. And our reputation is already spreading.”
And it seemed it was—to some extent anyway. They ran an article in the Portland Tribune—the free weekly paper—and it included a picture of Graham standing beneath the store entrance and green neon Genesis sign. Graham had framed the article and the photograph and hung both on a wall in the store.
And for those first few months, Graham came home happy and our lovemaking sessions remained frequent and fierce, and I thought that maybe, just maybe, everything was going to be all right.
CHAPTER 9
Tracy scanned the significant number of web hits for Andrea Strickland on her iPad as Kins drove down the mountain. With a portion of Mount Rainier located in Pierce County, the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department had asserted jurisdiction over the disappearance of Andrea Strickland. The case had generated a lot of publicity. The DA had been careful not to call Graham Strickland a suspect—but, of course, he was. He was the prime suspect. The infamous murder of a pregnant Laci Peterson in Modesto, California, had beaten that point home. The sad truth was that more people died at the hands of people they knew, and loved, than from some random killer.
Stan Fields, the detective from Pierce County’s Major Crimes Division, told Tracy over the phone he’d be “happy to speak with her.” She sensed that Fields, like Ranger Glenn Hicks, didn’t appreciate having the wool pulled over his eyes by Andrea Strickland, or by both her and her husband.
And Andrea Strickland had fooled them. She’d fooled everybody, at least for six weeks. Everybody but the person who’d eventually killed her.
Fields’s ego likely wouldn’t let him admit he’d been fooled. No detective liked to admit that, which was why, during what should have been a short telephone conversation to set up their meeting, Fields had felt compelled to add that he’d suspected things were “not as they’d seemed.”
When Tracy sensed the content of the Internet articles becoming redundant, she closed her iPad and wedged it in the space between her seat and the center console. She grabbed her plastic water bottle and took a sip, but the water had become lukewarm. Even in the air-conditioned car, she felt sticky from the heat.
“She was the perfect candidate to disappear,” she said, returning her water bottle to its designated holder. “Parents deceased. No siblings. No one to miss her.”
“Except, of course, the husband,” Kins said. He shifted in his seat, also looking uncomfortable, and no doubt wishing he could exchange his blue jeans for a pair of shorts like Ranger Hicks wore. Blue jeans were standard attire for Kins when not in court, and it seemed an odd choice. Four years of college football and a year in the NFL had left him with overdeveloped calves and thighs even a decade after he’d retired. “I’m assuming no kids?”
“Thankfully not,” Tracy said.
“Work colleagues?”
“She and her husband owned a marijuana dispensary in downtown Portland. It was just the two of them.”
Oregon had followed Washington and Colorado in legalizing marijuana, which had come as little surprise to anyone who knew the state’s politics. The populace was generally considered even more liberal than western Washington, which was saying a lot.
“Like I said, she wasn’t going to be missed.�
�� Kins glanced in the rearview mirror, put on a blinker, and exited the highway. “What did they do before selling dope?”
“He’s an attorney. She worked at an insurance company in downtown Portland.”
That caused Kins to glance over at her. “Insurance?”
“I’ve got it on the list of questions to ask him about.”
“So neither of them was stupid.”
“Definitely not stupid,” Tracy agreed. She adjusted the vents on the dash so the cool air hit her neck and chest, and she fanned her shirt.
They drove through Tacoma’s mostly deserted surface streets, residents seeking refuge in air-conditioned offices and retail establishments.
“How far did Pierce County get in their investigation of the husband?” Kins asked.
“According to the detective, and the articles I’ve found, the DA named him as a person of interest but not a suspect,” Tracy said.
“So he was the suspect,” Kins said.
“Clearly.”
“But not charged?”
“Without the body they probably didn’t think they had sufficient evidence,” Tracy said. “Only two people know what happened on that mountain, and one was presumed dead. So everything’s circumstantial.”
“Hopefully, this guy Fields can shed some light on it.”
Stan Fields had suggested they meet at a restaurant on Pacific Avenue called Viola. The last time Tracy had visited Tacoma, a decade earlier, Pacific Avenue had been a haven for prostitutes and drug dealers, the buildings graffiti-tagged with gang symbols and the streets littered with trash. Downtown Tacoma had been undergoing a massive renovation by community activists and business leaders tired of the city being known as the blue-collar stepchild to Seattle—more for a blend of industrial stink referred to as “the aroma of Tacoma.” Pacific Avenue was clearly a part of that renovation. The two- and three-story stucco and brick industrial buildings had been renovated and freshly painted. Storefront advertising revealed professional businesses, retail stores, boutique shops, and restaurants.
Kins found a parking spot at a meter half a block from the restaurant. As they approached, Tracy noticed a man standing outside the restaurant, smoking in a patch of shade. He made eye contact, nodded, and blew out smoke. “You Crosswhite?” he said.
The Trapped Girl (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 4) Page 8