The Boardwalk Trust (Beach Lawyer Series Book 2)

by Avery Duff

  Robert tried tamping down his pulse. Trying to act casual, he pulled the envelope from the frame. Handwritten on the outside: Hold for pickup 2 wks. Then deliver to Amherst Ave.

  Inside the envelope: Carlos’ receipt.

  Drew said, “We don’t normally deliver, but it’s not far over to his home. I planned to deliver it in a day or so.”

  “Looks great. Did Carlos mention where he’d found the rocks?”

  “Didn’t say. Why don’t you ask him?”

  Robert didn’t answer. He read the receipt. Its date was the morning Carlos died. A few hours before his time of death, according to the medical examiner.

  “Is Mr. Famosa all right?” Drew asked.

  “Why do you ask?” Robert asked.

  “That was the first time he asked me to deliver. I thought it was odd, but I—”

  Drew stopped himself, that same man who didn’t want trouble.

  “Well, Mr. Worth, will that be all?”

  Robert tried sounding semi-official: “No, Mr. Freize. Carlos Famosa died not long after he left your store, and I’m his legal representative. He died approximately three hours after leaving here, making this his last known stop.”

  “God, how’d he die?”

  “Massive heart attack. Anything I can learn about his state of mind that day would help.”

  Drew Freize shut down. “Sorry, I can’t help. Anything else?”

  Robert took in Drew Freize’s girth—no wedding ring, no framed family pictures on the walls or counter—and made a blunt assumption about this man’s social life among the beautiful people. Guessed at the inevitable childhood nicknames: Tastee Freez, Deep Freeze, the Freezer.

  “Mr. Freize, Carlos’ mother and father died years ago, and he had no close friends. His only family member, his brother, is in an induced coma over at Saint John’s. And I’ve been running around town for the past week, trying to find out as much as I can about Carlos. So if you—”

  Must’ve struck a nerve. Drew said, “When he was here, he looked scattered, unorganized, not like himself at all. His receipt. He left it on the counter and walked out the door before I could stop him. I hurried over there—”

  Robert looked at the open door, fifteen feet away. They walked over to it. Drew pointed at a metered parking spot about twenty-five feet up the street.

  “He parked right there. I started to call out, but two men were already talking to him, right beside his car. Then the men got in with him; the three of them drove away. There might’ve been another car that followed them, hard to say.”

  “Did they force him into the car?”

  “Not exactly . . .”

  Drew looked like he was thinking it over. Robert gave him time to do it.

  Drew said, “It was more like he was resigned to it.”

  “Like he gave up?” Robert asked.

  “Kinda like he’d had enough. I feel like that some days, don’t you?”

  “Some days I do, Jim. Not today, though. You stepped up and helped me out. You didn’t have to, but you did.”

  Drew looked down, might’ve blushed. Robert eyed that parking spot again. So close to the door.

  “Why didn’t you just walk over, hand him his receipt?”

  Drew said, “I had another customer, and I needed to see if she . . .”

  He stopped, looked down again.

  “What’s wrong?” Robert asked.

  “I didn’t say anything because of how those men looked. One of them in particular. Honest to God, I was afraid to go over there.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Robert drove over to Ozone and took his laptop inside. Once he jacked Evelyn’s flash drive into the USB port, he went back over the offering circulars for Vegas Rail and SoccMom. Scanning them, he looked for anything more he might glean about the two men outside Drew Freize’s shop. Bulgarian men, Robert believed, maybe another car following them.

  But the circulars revealed nothing new. The ideas behind them, bogus or not, had only one purpose—to separate Carlos from the trust’s money.

  He took another look at Carlos’ e-mails to Mr. Saxon of SoccMom. SoccMom was supposed to pay an immediate monthly income stream, so Carlos’ complaints to Saxon started on the heels of SoccMom’s first missed payment, with Carlos doing his best imitation of a trustee about to sue for nonpayment.

  After Carlos’ “threatening” e-mails hadn’t worked, he’d arranged lunch with Mr. Saxon at the Lobster, about six weeks before he died.

  Mr. Saxon,

  What the hell happened? I made the reservation for 12:30—at your request—and waited at the Lobster bar for a full hour. You failed to return my texts while I waited, and I am left wondering about your total lack of professionalism. I expect an immediate explanation. S/Carlos Famosa

  This e-mail from Mr. Saxon followed several hours later:

  Mr. Famosa,

  My phone failed to hold a charge today, and there was a big pileup on the 405 going from Playa Vista to the restaurant. Also, there was a death in my family. My bad. Reschedule?

  Robert knew, same as Carlos, that taking the 405 from Playa Vista to the Lobster was like driving from LA to New York via Mexico City. Whatever Saxon’s real name, he might as well have written: Blow me. I already took your money. What’re you gonna do about it? Smiley face.

  A few more half-baked e-mails from Carlos to Saxon followed, but he was screwed and knew it. Something churned inside Robert. An underlying thread he couldn’t discern, much less untangle. Carlos—who never made the twenty-minute drive from his house to Playa Vista—set up a lunch meeting with Saxon at the Lobster. Stood up there, Carlos still didn’t drive over to Playa.

  Rather than go down that rabbit hole again, Robert looked at Carlos’ last work notes from his accounting software: Profit . . . Rx Samuelson . . . O’Meira . . . a real prick . . . Meet Karen . . .

  Gibberish, Evelyn had called the notes. Nonsensical was how Robert viewed it.

  “Forget it,” he said out loud.

  Closing his laptop, headed out the door, he was already calling Erik.

  “Let’s hit the hill,” Robert told him.

  “When?”

  “Right now. I’m tired of being wrong.”

  “About what?” Erik asked.

  “Everything,” Robert said.

  Twenty minutes later driving north on Pacific Coast Highway, Robert finished bringing Erik up to speed: Delfina’s stamped rock; Teo’s larger, lighter rock and Carlos’ own matching, marked-up rock in his study; the three framed rocks; the two men outside the framer’s, maybe another car following; Saxon’s no-show lunch at the Lobster.

  At Sunset Point, a few paddleboarders downwinded toward Will Rogers beach, and several never-say-die surfers tried to make something out of mushy conditions. At Gladstone’s restaurant, Robert hung a right off PCH onto Sunset Boulevard, then a left onto Los Liones. A quarter mile later, he parked at the hike’s trailhead.

  “No talking,” Robert said, “until we reach the landing zone.”

  “Agreed.”

  For the first half mile up and into the Santa Monica Mountains, the incline was shaded, gradual, and as usual, they jogged. Once they made it onto the wide-open East Topanga Fire Road Trail, they slowed to a fast uphill walk, adding random sprints. The beauty of the fire-trail workout: it was relentlessly steep for a mile and a half. Some days, they’d take side trails—even steeper—that reconnected to the main trail. Today, they kept to the main drag, with its sheer hundred-foot drop-offs to their left. With Robert pushing the pace, his own rasping breath was the only sound he heard.

  His primary focus—don’t think about anything except what’s in front of you. Another step, another breath. Taking in the bitter smell of creosote and staying alert rounding bends, hoping to catch sight of a coyote or the white tail flash of startled deer. Always keeping in mind the trailhead sign: Beware of Mountain Lions.

  Erik liked pointing out, “Mountain lions’re just as scared of you as you are of them. Unless
they’re consuming you.”

  To their right lay Pacific Highlands, an upscale development. Its meandering streets spider-webbed the adjacent hillside, and the relentless building had stopped only when someone finally screamed, “Enough!”

  To Robert’s left, a more serene view. Two miles down, Pacific Coast Highway and the becalmed Pacific Ocean; on a hilltop, the Getty Villa, a museum finished in the ’70s and filled with J. Paul Getty’s antiquities. Old stuff, Erik called it.

  After the first mile and a half, the incline flattened, and they ran another mile and a half out to Parker Mesa Overlook. With no breather, they ran back to the bottom of what they’d named Hill of Doom. On all fours, they scrambled a steep hundred yards up the barren, rocky incline to its top, where they crashed in their landing zone.

  A minute later, still sucking a little wind, Robert said, “Carlos Famosa.”

  “Check,” Erik said.

  “One month before Carlos died, he framed a rock that matched Teo’s rock. Carlos paid a ton for the frame and hung it on the wall in his study. The brothers, they’d each owned their rocks nearly forty years.”

  “Check, check, and check. Forty years, damn.”

  “Right before he died, Carlos bought three new rocks, but these three were like Delfina’s stamped rock.”

  “Check. No, wait. Check, check.”

  “Two years ago, Teo bought Delfina’s rock somewhere in the desert. So I’m assuming Carlos bought his new stamped rocks in the desert, too.”

  “Almost certainly—so I’m giving you several checks.”

  Robert thinking now: Carlos drove to the desert, bought three stamped rocks, brought them to LA, and had them framed. Those rocks were to be looked at, pondered, and understood by his brother. But Carlos already owned a framed rock in his study. If that rock signaled Teo about their childhood moment, why did Carlos repeat that thought with three new framed rocks?

  “What is it I’m missing?” Robert asked Erik.

  Erik didn’t answer. Robert looked over and found him stretched out on the ground, his eyes closed, asleep.

  “Asleep?” Gia asked. “You sure?”

  “Snoring,” Robert said, behind the wheel of the Bronco. “Hiking down, he said he thinks better that way.”

  Gia was looking out her window, laughing at Erik’s dry comment. Delfina sat in back, absorbed in a book Teo had bought for her about historic Venice.

  “I’m a crazy person, right?” Robert asked.

  “Shin jing bing, for sure.” Meaning crazy in Chinese. Same as feng. He’d heard both from her lately.

  Since Teo’s induced coma, Robert and Gia had made every effort to avoid doing things with Delfina as a trio. That way, they wouldn’t feel like a family and confuse Delfina, or undercut Teo, if and when he came to. Today was a rare exception—the girls had asked him to run the Santa Monica steps with them.

  “Like you did with Daddy,” Delfina said.

  How do you say no to that?

  In the book Delfina was reading, remarkable twentieth-century photos showed Venice becoming the Coney Island of the Pacific, and its later decline. When Robert thought about what had once been here, he was amazed and saddened. The craftsman homes, board-and-batten cottages, the Italianate buildings, Ocean Park Pier, and Abbot Kinney Pier had given the place character beyond modern duplication.

  Delfina handed Gia the book over the seat.

  “I know this building. You showed it to me, the one near that circle.”

  “Windward Circle,” Gia said.

  Robert glanced at the photograph: a multiarched brick facade on Windward Avenue, the current home of the Poké Shack.

  “That’s right,” Gia said to her. “What are those brick things called in front of the building?”

  “Arches,” Delfina said.

  “How many kinds of arches are there?” Gia asked,

  “Three kinds. There’s circle ones, pointy ones, and the other kind. It starts with p, too. I can’t remember the name.”

  “Robert?” Gia asked. “A type of arch beginning with the letter p.”

  “Pointy,” he said.

  “No, that’s one of mine,” Delfina said.

  Gia said, “The smart girl in back already said pointy. You need to say another one.”

  “That starts with a p,” Delfina said.

  “Um, pink arches,” Robert said.

  “Nope,” Gia said.

  “Purple! Purple arches!” Robert said.

  “No!” Delfina said.

  Gia said, “Maybe he’s not as smart as I said. The correct answer . . . parabolic arches.”

  “Like on some kinds of bridges, too,” Delfina added.

  “Parabolic was my next answer,” Robert said, “but you two were talking too much.”

  He parked the Bronco out on San Vicente; they walked toward the workout stairs.

  “Want to warm up?” Robert asked.

  He wanted to stretch his hamstrings, still tight from the Los Liones hike, but the girls kept walking, so he followed them down the eastern set of stairs to Entrada.

  “Maybe you are overthinking the whole thing with Carlos,” Gia told him on the way down. “Look, you’re the lawyer every client wants. It’s just that being that guy is hard on you. Anybody else would’ve waited for Teo to come to and asked him.”

  If he comes to, Robert was thinking. Dr. Wan had been clear that staying positive was the way to go, but positivity didn’t guarantee a good result.

  Down on Entrada, the western set of stairs loomed over them. Robert offered to go last and whispered to Gia, “So men can’t look at your ass, baby.”

  “Were you this full of shit back at the firm?” Before they’d actually dated.

  “No, I’m a work in progress.”

  “Wo ai ni anyway.” Chinese for I love you.

  Gia and Delfina started up the steep stairs in front of him. Delfina was an animal, but the stairs slowed her down a bit as he brought up the rear.

  Watching them and climbing, he lapsed into a meditation on Gia: holding Delfina’s hand, moving nice and easy. He’d never seen Gia hurry—move fast, yes, but never hurry. Always smooth, even on a rare trip to the gym. Working the StairMaster, she’d hit it with her long, slow pace, listen to music, and after an hour, she’d climb off like she’d just strolled down the CVS toothbrush aisle.

  On the stairs, she looked down at him.

  “Are you objectifying me?” she asked.

  “Ogling you,” he said.

  “Carry on, then,” she said.

  He and Gia never talked about how she handled men, but he knew what he’d seen when men hit on her. Meeting him at a bar, her eyes would catch him at the door and follow him all the way to her side. By then, bar players with any sense had already caught on and split. If not, she’d put her arm around her man and ask the clueless player: “I’m sorry, you told me three times. What was your name again?”

  Attention. She didn’t crave it. In a look-at-me town, she had no look-at-me in her, unless he counted her karaoke version of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s hit “Baby Got Back.”

  On the stairs, Robert still lagged behind, fighting how beat he was from hiking with Erik.

  He returned to the other nagging questions he and Erik had discussed at the trailhead:

  “Why’d the Bulgarians grab Carlos?”

  Erik said, “Didn’t sound like they forced him into his car, did it?”

  “But why meet Carlos at all? They’d already ripped him off.”

  “Because Carlos could ID them?” Erik offered.

  “But Carlos didn’t ID them to the cops or make any effort to do that.”

  “No effort that you know of.”

  Halfway up the third set of stairs, Robert considered faking a hamstring pull or a heart attack, when the idea came to him and hot-wired a hidden thread woven though the Famosa family.

  He hit the stairs two at a time, caught Gia and Delfina near the top.

  “Pick me up at the Lobster.”

&n
bsp; He took off running. A mile away, he crossed Ocean Avenue by Santa Monica Pier, dodged cars driving onto it, and hit the restaurant’s glass doors. Still sucking wind, he found the Lobster’s maître d’.

  “Listen, I’m working on a project, need to know if a guest was here on a particular date earlier this month.”

  “You mean, made a reservation.”

  Robert gave him the date, a couple of months back. “Made a reservation on that date, made it and canceled it, made it and was a no-show—whatever you have.”

  “You’ll have to wait for the manager, and she won’t be here for two hours.”

  “Okay, I’ll wait,” he said.

  “I just started working here, but seriously doubt she’d share that with you.”

  “I need to know. It’s important, so I’ll wait.”

  “Suit yourself. Drink?”

  “Modelo Negra, thanks.”

  He grabbed a counter stool in front of a plateglass window, checking out the tourist flow to and from the pier, the coastline, and the mountain trail he’d just hiked with Erik. Then the maitre’d set his Modelo on the counter.

  “Just spoke to Ernesto at the bar, and he said to tell you your party definitely wasn’t here then.”

  He looked over at Ernesto, who gave him a thumbs-up.

  “I didn’t tell you his name. How could Ernesto know that?”

  “Ernesto said the restaurant was closed that week. Actually, for ten days because of a roof leak.”

  After he gave the maître d’ a hundred dollars to split with Ernesto, he walked outside and bent over. Hands on his knees, he reached deep for breath—this time from excitement.

  Carlos, you dog, he was thinking. You made bad investments, sure, but it didn’t matter, did it?

  Almost immediately, like he’d always seen in movies, Gia pulled up in the Bronco. Once he slid into the passenger side, he reached back and gave Delfina a high five.

  “Ready to go see your daddy?” he asked.

  She high-fived him again. “Yes, thank you.”

  Leaning over, he whispered to Gia, “Watching your beautiful shape on the stairs set my mind free.”

  She whispered back, “Does this mean we can be lovers again?”

  He realized it had been several days since they’d fooled around.