Thanksgiving by the Sea

by Kathi Daley

  Walking into the kitchen, I opened the refrigerator. Beer, water, and fruit in the main compartment, nothing in the freezer. I supposed the guy ate out most of the time. I didn’t blame him. The house didn’t have that warm and cozy feel that would make a person want to spend a lot of time there. The cupboards were likewise empty except for coffee pods, granola bars, and protein powder. There was a rack with wine bottles on the kitchen counter and a cupboard with a variety of glassware. A half-full bottle of scotch sat next to a used glass on the island. It looked as if Bryson had come home the night before he was shot, had a drink or two, then most likely retired to the master bedroom. I headed toward the hallway.

  Most of the rooms had no furniture. The master bedroom was the only room that looked occupied. It featured an unmade king-sized bed, a tall armoire, a walk-in closet, a flat-screen TV, and several chairs, all with clothing draped over them. There was a table near the window which overlooked the water. A printer and cables for a laptop, which I assumed Bryson had with him when he was shot, sat on the table.

  Woody, who was waiting outside with Trevor, had given me a photo of Bryson. I sat on the corner of the bed, closed my eyes, and tried to focus on his photo. Most of the time, when a ghost came to me, it simply appeared. Either Bryson really was gone, or he was playing hard to get.

  “Bryson, if you can hear me, my name is Amanda. I can see ghosts if they want to be seen, so if you are here, it would be awesome if you would appear.” I opened my eyes. Nothing. “I realize you don’t know me and have no reason to trust me, but I work with the police and am trying to figure out who shot you. If you have any information at all that might help narrow down the suspect list, revealing what you know would be much appreciated.”

  Sitting quietly, I waited. I didn’t see him, or anyone for that matter, but I did feel a presence. The presence was faint. So faint, in fact, that I wasn’t sure that what I was feeling was even a presence. If Bryson wasn’t here or wasn’t willing to appear, then I didn’t want to waste my time by sitting here all day, but if he was just shy, I didn’t want to leave too soon.

  I was about to give up and return to the guys when I heard a crash in the walk-in closet. I opened the door, turned on the light, and stepped inside. It looked as though a shoebox had fallen from the shelf onto the floor. “Bryson?”

  Still, no one appeared. I picked up the shoebox and looked inside. Black dress shoes that appeared to be new were inside the shoebox. I was about to replace the shoebox, but I decided to take the shoes out to make sure there wasn’t anything significant about them, like a hidden compartment in the heel. When I took the right shoe out of the box, a small gold key fell to the floor. I bent over and picked it up. “Okay,” I said, turning the key over in my hand. “What do you open?”

  I looked around the bedroom, but I didn’t find a locked cabinet or drawer of any kind. I returned to the closet and began moving clothes to the side. Three drawers were on the wall behind the clothes. The top drawer held socks, the second drawer boxers, but the bottom drawer was locked. Using the key, I unlocked and then opened the drawer to find files. I lifted them out. I wasn’t certain they were relevant to the shooting but decided to take them with me. It seemed odd to me that Bryson would have files in a locked drawer in the back of his closet. A file cabinet or a desk with locking drawers would have made a lot more sense.

  “Anything?” Woody asked when I returned to the porch where the guys were hanging out.

  Holding up the files, I shrugged. “Bryson didn’t appear, but a shoebox containing a pair of shoes fell to the floor from a shelf. I found a key inside the right shoe that opened a locked drawer at the back of the closet. These files were in the drawer.”

  “And the other drawers?”

  “Just socks and boxers,” I said.

  Woody took the files. “I suppose the files could contain a clue. Especially if it was Bryson who led you to the key. Let’s go back to my office and see what sort of things Bryson was working on during his off-hours.”

  ******

  Once we arrived at Woody’s office, he ushered us to the conference room. He set the files on the conference table while he made a pot of coffee. There were six files in the stack. As Woody had, I wondered if one of those six files might point us toward Bryson Teller’s killer.

  Once the coffee was made, Woody poured the dark liquid into three mugs and then joined Trevor and me at the table. He reached for the first file and opened it. After a moment, he began to speak.

  “This file pertains to the case I mentioned before relating to the fifteen-year-old who has been in the foster care system since he was four. If you remember, both of his parents were sent to prison for armed robbery. As I’ve already mentioned, the boy’s mother was recently released from prison early due to overcrowding and for good behavior. She has petitioned to have her son returned to her. When the foster parents accepted the child, they had been told that the boy’s parents would be in prison until after he was eighteen, so having him returned to either parent wouldn’t be an issue. They are fighting the mother’s petition and are arguing that the boy will be better off with them.”

  “And the boy?” I asked.

  “He has stated that he would like to stay where he is. He has very few memories of his biological mother and those memories he does have are tainted with fear. Based on these notes, it looks as if Bryson was representing the fifteen-year-old, and it looks, based on his notes, that he didn’t anticipate there being a problem with arranging things so that the boy could stay in the foster home.”

  “Did you ever speak to the mother?” I asked, remembering that he had intended to.

  “I have. The woman seems remorseful about the decisions she made in the past. She was a model prisoner during her incarceration, and her desire to be reunited with her son seems to be based on genuine caring. She’d been working with Trinity to try to find a way into her son’s life. What the mother really wants is to have custody returned to her, but since the boy is doing so well with his foster family, and it was his desire to stay where he is, Trinity seemed to be leaning toward a recommendation that the mother be given supervised visits, but that the custody issue be left as is for the time being.”

  “It sounds like neither Trinity nor Bryson supported the mother’s desire to regain custody of her son. Do you think the woman might have taken matters into her own hands to remove the opposition?”

  “Actually, I don’t. The biological mother made a lot of bad choices in the past, but she has done her time and is ready for a second chance. She seems to be doing everything required of her as part of her early release, and I don’t think she’d muck that up by going on a shooting spree. While she was unable to provide an alibi for the time of either shooting, I didn’t get the feeling that she is the person we are looking for.”

  “And the biological father?” Trevor asked.

  “Still in prison.”

  I took a sip of my coffee and then set it aside. Woody was a fantastic person and an excellent cop, but he was a terrible coffee maker. “Before we continue looking at the files we found in Bryson’s closet, I wanted to ask about the wife. At one point, you said she was a suspect.”

  “She was. And I guess in the opinion of some, she still is. Personally, while I guess it is possible that she hired someone to kill her husband, I sort of doubt that she’s behind the man’s death. If the shooting of the attorney existed in isolation, I might think differently, but with two shootings so close together, I have to think they must be related.”

  Maybe, but then again, maybe not. “Okay, what else is in those files?” I asked. “If it was Bryson’s spirit who was responsible for the shoebox falling from the shelf, then the answer must be in there somewhere.”

  Woody took a few minutes to read the next file before responding. “This second file relates to a woman who has three children by three different men. The children are spaced about a year apart. It doesn’t appear that any of the fathers are in the picture. The mother
was homeless for a while, so the paternal grandmother of the oldest child agreed to take in all three children, but she refused to take in the mother. The children have lived with her for three years, but in those three years, the mother has managed to find a job and an apartment. While she voluntarily allowed the mother of the baby daddy of her oldest child to take her children in, now she wants them back. The grandmother is arguing that, while she never did obtain legal custody, the children are better off with her because she can provide them a stable home and a certain level of financial security, whereas the mother cannot.”

  “Tough situation,” I said.

  Woody nodded. “I agree, but based on the paperwork, it appears as if this was a new case for Bryson. I’m not sure that enough time has passed for emotions to have spun out of control, and Trinity was not involved with this case. Since the children were not part of the foster system, a social worker has not been assigned to them. It looks like Bryson was assigned the role of arbitrator between the grandmother and the mother to avoid dragging the whole thing into court. While I will look into it further to determine whether there was more going on that meets the eye, I don’t get the feeling this is the case we are looking for.”

  “I agree,” I said. “What else do you have?”

  Woody picked up and read the next file. We all agreed that the case contained within the file was fairly routine. It was the fourth file he looked at that gave us all pause.

  Chapter 8

  “Okay, so why would Bryson have a file relating to a murder case twenty years old?” I asked. I quickly did the math. “He wouldn’t even have been an attorney then. I suspect he would have been in law school, or possibly his final year of college.”

  Woody frowned. “I don’t know. The case involves a man named John Thornton, who was accused of and later convicted of murdering his landlady.” Woody sorted through the file. “There is no indication that Bryson was involved in the case. If he had been in law school, he might have helped with fact-finding or research. I suppose he might have acted as an intern of sorts for the attorney handling the case. Or possibly he worked in the DA’s office. It’s hard to tell.” Woody continued to sift through the documents in the file. “I can reach out to some folks I know and see if his name comes up.”

  “The DA we have now has only been around for about five years, so he wouldn’t have been involved in the prosecution of the man. Who served as the defense attorney?’ I asked.

  “This case was before my time as well,” Woody answered. “But it looks like Donald Ferguson was the appointed public defender.” Woody looked up. “Ferguson is a district court judge now.”

  “Okay, so maybe something was going on about the way John Thornton’s defense was handled, and Bryson was onto it,” Trevor suggested.

  “Are you saying Donald Ferguson killed this man to cover up something that occurred twenty years ago that he didn’t want to be leaked all these years later?” Woody asked.

  Trevor shrugged. “Maybe. The guy obviously has a lot to lose. What if he did something negligent that led to the conviction of Thornton and Bryson somehow stumbled across a piece of information that proved this? What if he threatened to tell what he knew and Ferguson had him killed?”

  “Sounds like a stretch. A really, really, long stretch,” Woody responded. “And what sort of information could Bryson have stumbled across? And better yet, why get involved? Even if he did know something, taking on a district court judge would be career suicide.”

  “I don’t know,” Trevor admitted.

  I leaned forward, crossing my arms on the desk. “What if Bryson had a personal relationship with Thornton?” I asked. “I am assuming this shooting, as well as the trial, took place here in Cutter’s Cove.”

  “It did,” Woody confirmed.

  “So do we know where Bryson lived at the time of the murder?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Woody answered. “Hang on, and I’ll see if I can find out.”

  Trevor and I sat quietly while Woody worked on the computer. After several minutes, he spoke. “It looks like Bryson’s official residence was here in Cutter’s Cove at the time of the shooting. It appears he lived and worked in Cutter’s Cove during his summers while attending college in Portland. The shooting took place during the summer of what I assume might have been his junior or senior year. The trial took place the following summer.”

  “Where did he go to law school?” I asked.

  “Salem, Oregon.”

  “Did he continue to spend summers in Cutter’s Cove after he graduated college?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You said that Thornton was convicted of shooting his landlady. Bryson didn’t have the same landlady, did he?” Trevor asked.

  Woody turned his attention to his computer. He continued to type in a string of commands. As we had before, Trevor and I waited quietly. “I’m not coming up with an address. I’ll continue to look for one. Your theory that Bryson might have lived in the same apartment building where the murder occurred is a good one. Perhaps he even saw something. Or perhaps he knew Thornton and had inside information as to what really happened. I don’t suppose that speculating about what might have occurred will do us a lot of good without facts to back up those speculations.”

  I sat back in my chair and crossed my arms. “Okay. Say that this file is what we are looking for. Say Bryson’s death has something to do with this murder case from twenty years ago. If that turns out to be true, we just need to tear it apart and look for a motive. But if this case is behind Bryson’s death, how does Trinity fit into it? Trinity would have been a kid twenty years ago.”

  “Amanda has a point,” Trevor said. “It would be pretty odd if the two shootings weren’t linked. I mean what are the odds that there would be two shootings within twenty-four hours in this little town and they not be linked. Add in the similarity of the careers each victim was engaged in at the time of their death, and the odds of them not being linked would be astronomical.”

  Woody bobbed his head around as he appeared to be gnawing on the situation. “It would seem the two shootings are linked, but how? And why were different weapons used? If the killer was trying to throw us off by using two different guns, why not use two different methods altogether. Like a shooting and a stabbing or a shooting and a bludgeoning.”

  “I suppose the killer might not have wanted to get close enough to stab or bludgeon the victim, but I get what you are saying,” I responded.

  Trevor looked at me. “How certain are you that the shoebox falling off the shelf to alert you to the files was Bryson trying to communicate with you?”

  “Not certain at all. In fact, I would say that it is more likely that the shoebox falling is unrelated to anything else that is going on here. Having said that, the presence of these files in Bryson’s closet does seem relevant.”

  “Other than the fifteen-year-old who is in the foster care system, I wonder if we can link Trinity to any of the cases represented in these files,” I said.

  “Again, I can’t answer that with any certainty without doing some additional research. At this point, I think I should really dig into these files and fill in as many blanks as I can. We can talk again. In the meantime, how do you feel about another visit with Trinity?”

  “Yeah, about that,” I hemmed. “The last time I spoke to her, she died, so her sister has requested that I not come by again. I told her that I wouldn’t. I realize that connecting with her is the best chance we have to find the person who shot her, but Carmen is more concerned that her sister lives than she is that we find the shooter. Not that she wouldn’t like to see both occur, but given the choice…”

  “Yeah. I get it. I would feel the same way. I guess we’ll just keep plugging along and hope that at some point, something begins to make sense.”

  Chapter 9

  When Trevor and I arrived back at the house, Willow and Henry had arrived. It only took a single glance to know that the four siblings had missed each other
and were thrilled to be together again. I really hoped that a permanent solution could be found that would allow all four children to live together. Siblings were destined to be in each other’s lives; separating them seemed wrong. Of course, I did understand how difficult it would be to find a single foster home that could take all four children. I knew there were times in life when what should be, simply wasn’t possible.

  “So what are you all doing?” I asked the group as a whole.

  “Watching cartoons,” Billy answered. He looked at Trevor. “Unless you want to play video games.”

  “I might be interested in blowing up a few zombies.”

  “I’m going to make a get well card for Ms. Rosewood,” Aspen said.

  “That’s nice of you. I’m sure she will love to see it when she wakes up.” Something occurred to me. “I remember seeing a note somewhere that said that you called Ms. Rosewood on the day she went into the hospital.”

  Aspen looked sad. “I didn’t mean to cause a problem, but I was just so mad. I told Ms. Rosewood that I was going to run away if she didn’t take me back to my brothers and sister.”

  “What did she say when you told her that?”

  “She said she was working on it. She said I needed to be patient.”