by Mary Feliz
“He did volunteer work too, with at-risk teens. Kids whose families had no money and who had no hope of a future…the ones who saw nothing but the easy money that comes with criminal activity and drug running for the gangs.”
“What kinds of things did Jake do with them?”
“Made sure their families had all the services they needed, helped them get scholarships, tutored them, took them surfing, flying, had them help him in the shop—whatever they needed. It took time, but not as much as you’d think because he mostly just gathered them up and hauled them along with him.”
“Did it work?”
“Sometimes. Better with some kids than others,” Jen said. “But it didn’t hurt.”
“Did it tick off the gang leaders?” I asked. “Could they have wanted him out of the way?”
Jen laughed, but her face reflected a darker mood. “Are you kidding? Of course not. If there’s one thing we’re not short of in this area, it’s poor kids with little hope. The gangs have no trouble recruiting kids, even when you take the ones Jake was helping out of the mix.”
I winced, thinking about the pressures on the life of the county’s poor and of Jake, already burdened with jobs, school, and volunteer work, plunging into political activism. Dozens of thoughts swirled in my head, but I picked the lamest of them to say aloud. “Picking berries doesn’t offer much job growth. Takes its toll, too.”
“It can, but there’s stuff that makes the work easier. The university has a joint project between the sports medicine, agriculture, and mechanical engineering departments to design new tools like wheeled carts that make the berry picking jobs a little easier.”
“Farms that update their procedures would have an easier time hiring and have more efficient workers. Sounds like a no-brainer.”
“Ya think?” She wiped crumbs off the table so vigorously I feared for the table’s enamel. “Jake was working on smoothing the road toward low-cost changes that could benefit everyone.”
I registered everything Jen was saying and wished I’d had a chance to meet Jake. But I wanted to revisit the beginning of our conversation. “So, you’ve said there’s no way Jake committed suicide or contributed to a mechanical failure through misuse or neglect of his machine. What do you think happened?”
Jen fiddled with her coffee mug. She looked at her phone, her wrist, and the clock in the tower at the center of the shopping plaza. But just when I was sure she was going to say she had an appointment elsewhere, she squared her shoulders and looked me in the eye. “I don’t know, but…”
Silence followed her remarks, and I became aware of the bustle around us as the commuters left and parents began to arrive with toddlers in tow. I leaned forward. “That’s the problem, isn’t it,” I said in a low voice. “As soon as you start to think about what happened, the world becomes a scary place. Did Jake see something he wasn’t supposed to?”
Jen pushed her chair away from the table. The metal legs screeched as they scraped against the concrete. But then she leaned forward. “Something was bothering him. Like I said, he’d been hard to reach in the last few weeks. He was working longer hours and not returning my calls. We’d worked together at the Jumping Bean for a long time, but I found a job with better pay and more flexible hours—helping a professor analyze data from a marketing survey. I wanted to recommend Jake for an opening in the department so that he could reduce his hours, and we could spend more time together, but he only wanted to do what he called real work. He said marketing didn’t fit that definition for him. It made me feel bad, like he thought my work was less important than his. That was probably the start of our fight.”
Her eyes teared up, and I passed her another napkin. A bouncy group of high school students pushed two tables together and asked for our permission to drag extra chairs from our table to theirs. While they loudly got themselves and their seating arrangements settled, Jen pulled herself together.
“Jake and I were soulmates and would have gotten back together. The breakup was meant to be a kick in the pants. I’ve been accepted at a business school in Southern California for graduate work. I wanted Jake to go with me.” She leaned back in her chair and scoffed. “Jake wasn’t sure he wanted to move, but it’s not like there aren’t poor people, non-government agencies, and shoreline studies in Southern California that would have interested Jake. I didn’t see much difference between living here and moving there. I even offered to apply to schools in San Francisco and wait until next year, but he was distracted. I couldn’t get him to make a decision.” She looked away before shaking off her grief and surging on. “So I told him to figure out what he wanted and let me know. Until then, I didn’t want to see him or talk to him. If I’d known what would happen…as it is, I missed two weeks with him.”
“It sounds like it was more than just the time crunch of his work that was bothering him,” I offered, hoping she’d speculate more about what Jake’s real problem could have been. Could he have sensed he was in danger and pushed Jen away to protect her? “Was someone threatening him?”
“I just don’t know anymore. Have you talked to his parents? Or the people he worked with? They may have seen something or heard something Jake didn’t want to worry me about.”
I frowned. “My chats with the Petersons haven’t been productive.” My voice held far more anger than I’d intended, and I must have scared Jen. She gathered up her belongings and stood, shook my hand, thanked me for talking to her, and strode away. But she’d only taken a few steps before she stopped and turned around.
“There’s one thing I can be sure of,” she said. “If Jake thought someone was threatening him or that his safety was at risk, he would have distanced himself from me, to protect me. He was over protective and was never any good at sharing a burden.”
“Look, Jen,” I said, handing her my card. “If you think of anything else, or just want to talk, please call me. I’m a good listener. And, like I said, the Petersons are hell-bent on accusing my kids of killing Jake. They didn’t, and I may need help to prove that.”
Jen had had enough talk for the day. She took the card and stuffed it in her jeans pocket. Her shoulders shook as she walked away.
I scribbled a list of the places and people Jen had mentioned. They might be useful sources to mine for alternative theories regarding Jake’s death. On television, cops learned as much as they could about murder victims’ lives hoping some tiny detail would lead them to the killer. I needed to emulate them.
Jen had referred to Jake’s department at the university, the Jumping Bean, his parents, the political organizers from Santa Clara County, and whatever the name was of the organization that helped the at-risk kids in the community. I needed to talk his co-workers. I’d have been happy if I never saw Jake’s parents again, and doubted they’d share any information with me anyway. But maybe the sheriff or Forrest Doucett could help. The Petersons might have revealed information in their meetings that, added to what Jen had told me, could provide a more detailed picture of what had happened to Jake.
My phone rang, and I struggled to locate it in my backpack. By the time I found it, the call had gone to voicemail. I worked some cell phone magic and listened. It was Nell, asking me to phone her. I did, but thanks to sparse cell coverage in the south county, the call didn’t go through.
Chapter 15
If you’re traveling with family for a wedding, graduation, or funeral, it may make sense to pack everyone’s event clothing in one bag. This trick is particularly useful if you’re making a multi-day car trip. It means you’ll only need to pack/unpack the special event bag on the day you’ll need it.
From the Notebook of Maggie McDonald
Simplicity Itself Organizing Services
Friday, June 21, Morning
“Mom, you’ve got to hear this,” David said before I had a chance to unload the groceries. “Brian remembered something. It’s gold.”
“Gold?”
“Well, not gold, exactly, but it changes the picture of what could have happened to Jake.”
I looked at Brian, whose hair was flat on one side from sleep. He sat at the counter with his leg settled regally on a pillow perched on the stool next to him.
“So, spill, kiddo. Do you guys want hot chocolate or anything with those cookies?”
“Cookies for breakfast? Who are you and what have you done with our mother?”
“Vacation. You’re on vacation. I ran into Jake’s girlfriend at the coffee shop. She looked like she needed a boatload of carbs and about a year of sleep. I helped her out with the carbs, but she’s on her own when it comes to the sleep. I wasn’t going to buy her a cookie without having one myself. Then I felt guilty not buying them for you, too.” Belle nudged my hand and thumped her tail on the floor. “You get a dog biscuit,” I added. “My brain is not completely addled.”
“Never mind that,” said David. “Brian, tell her.”
Brian broke his cookie into four even pieces. “Remember when I told you that Susie turned off the engine on the plane, and you freaked?”
I nodded. Of course I remembered.
“I didn’t have a chance to explain. Susie wanted to demonstrate how quiet the plane was without the engine noise. But she also wanted to show me that the plane didn’t need the engine to be aerodynamic. She said that even novice pilots can and do land planes when the engines have gone out.”
I paused in the middle of unpacking the groceries and looked up. “Help me out. What’s the significance of this tidbit?”
David started to answer, but Brian shushed him. “Ultralight pilots must practice engine failures, too. They’re basically gas-powered hang gliders, right? So why would they need an engine to fly properly? Even if someone sabotaged the engine, or Jake ran out of gas, or something else went wrong, he could have landed the plane safely.”
“Could Jake have been aiming for that strawberry farm on the cliff and, I don’t know, hit some turbulent air?” I asked.
“Unlikely,” David said. “Have you watched the hawks? They catch thermals on the edge of those cliffs that lift them up. Jake ended up nose down in the side of the cliff. If he didn’t think he’d make the farm at the top, he could have landed on the beach. It was low tide. Plenty of nice flat beach to land on.”
“So, where does that leave us?”
“Something bad happened to Jake, or the ultralight,” Brian said. “Something that made it impossible for him to fly safely.”
“Or something distracted him,” David went on. “Or maybe startled him so badly that he jerked the controls, making the ultralight unstable. He could have been too close to the ground to correct the problem.”
I considered the possibilities. “Jerked the controls? Like you’d do if someone shot at you?” My skin grew cold and I felt woozy. I sank into a chair, my hands braced on the table for support. That’s what I’d been forgetting. The gunshot. That sharp sound I’d heard on our first day, when we’d watched Jake’s aircraft wobble over our heads. I forced myself to stop my silent musing and say the words out loud. “Do either of you remember hearing a gunshot that first day? I thought it was a car backfiring or there was something wrong with Jake’s engine.”
There seemed to be no question in their minds about having heard a gunshot, because they both leaped ahead without directly answering my question. “Or maybe someone was shooting at something else and the bullet got too close to Jake?” David asked.
“Exactly,” Brian said.
“On the other hand…” I began, unsure how to turn my fledgling thought into a fully viable theory.
“What?” David asked.
“Susie said the plane and ultralights were aerodynamic without the engine, right?”
The boys nodded.
“Well, what if the plane wasn’t aerodynamic? What if there was a tear in the wing fabric, or something broke off?” I looked frantically around the room for the piece of metal David had found, before remembering that Max had taken it to the materials engineer at work.
“I took a picture of it,” Brian said, scrolling through the photo library on his phone as if he’d read my thoughts. “There.”
David and I peered at the picture. I tilted my head and squinted. “Could it be part of a propeller? If part of one blade broke off, would that create turbulence? Or worse?”
David pulled the phone close, picked it up, and tapped and swiped, making the photo bigger. “It’s hard to be sure, but could that rounded edge be a propeller blade tip?”
“Has your dad called?” I asked. “We need to find out what Howard thinks about that piece of metal.” I put the milk in the fridge and struggled to gather my thoughts. Thinking about the possibility that someone had tampered with Jake’s ultralight made me retroactively terrified for Brian’s safety during his Eagle flight. What had Max and I been thinking? I took a deep breath in an attempt to regain my sanity and equilibrium, then sank into a chair at the breakfast table.
“Text your dad,” I said to Brian. “David, give your brother his phone. Bri, send him the picture. Ask him what he and the metal expert think. Could it be part of the propeller? Do they think it shows signs of tampering? Could a propeller missing a chunk of metal have caused the plane to crash? And if it did, how could David have found it next to the ultralight?”
“Yeah,” said David. “Good idea. I think all that is a little beyond my introductory physics class. When in doubt, call an engineer.”
Brian sent off the photo and the message. While we waited for Max to call or text back, I phoned Nell to return her earlier message. The call went to voicemail. After a quick tidying of the tiny condo, which had a propensity to become cluttered quickly but was equally swiftly put to rights, the boys and I trooped over to the rental office.
Brian clumped up the ramp to Renée’s office and struggled to open the door. David and I refrained from helping him. Upon waking this morning, he declared he was going to be as independent as possible and wanted no one, no one to help him with anything.
I’d solemnly promised to hold back on my motherly nurturing.
David, who’d suffered a broken ankle almost a year earlier, was surprisingly supportive. “Whatever you want, dude,” he said. “You’re tougher than I was and your leg is worse. No shame in throwing in the towel, though, okay?”
Managing the crutches and the heavy door to the rental office wasn’t easy. With determination, stubbornness, strength, and willpower, Brian conquered the challenge and then held the door for David and me.
“Ay yi yi! What happened to you? Are you okay?” asked Renée, looking up from behind the stack of papers and boxes on her desk.
Brian sank gratefully into a chair his brother pulled from the conference room. “It was on the beach. A post. Like a big metal stake.” He held his arms far apart to indicate the size. “Smack in the middle of the beach like it was put there deliberately for someone to trip over.” He glanced at each of us, his eyes pleading with us to believe him.
Renée was skeptical. “One of those old wharf pilings, you mean? The ones that are uncovered at low tide?”
“What are those things?” David asked. “My mom said there used to be a pier there.”
“Not for almost a hundred years,” Renée said. “There was a railroad track that ended there years ago in a shipping pier. Passenger steamers used to stop here on their way to San Francisco, too. There was a dance pavilion, race track—all sorts of entertainment.”
“I’m surprised the pilings are still there,” I said.
“After every big storm, I expect to find them gone. They knew how to build stuff back then.”
“Uh, can we get back to the stake?” Brian said. “It was metal. Rusty metal. The doctor had a hard time cleaning fragments out of the wound. It wasn’t wood. And it was high tide when we were walking,
remember?”
“Definitely not the old piers then,” said Renée. “They only show up at the lowest of low tides.”
“But why is there a metal stake there?” I asked. “Surely that can’t be safe. Brian can’t be the only person who ever tripped on it. It wasn’t even all that dark when we were out there. Twilight, at the most.”
Renée shook her head. “I’ll have to look. Something like that could be a liability for the association and for the state park, which manages everything beyond the high tide mark. If there were any permanently-placed dangerous obstacles, our risk-management committee would have addressed them. I’ve never seen anything like what you describe.”
“We’ll go for a walk later,” David said. “I’ll take a picture of it for you.”
Renée thanked him for saving her a trip. She’d set up a babysitter for the children, but said that she might have to stop work in the middle of the morning to answer the phone or head back into town. Child Protective Services had contacted her, and she’d consulted an organization for help keeping the kids in her care rather than having them placed with strangers.
“What a nightmare,” I said. “For everyone.”
Renée nodded. “It is. Pobrecitos. I’m worried about their parents, too. But the Immigration Law Center is on it. They’re trying to make sure none of the family members get lost in the system. The best thing for me is distraction.”
“I may need to take a break at some point, too. Our family lawyer and some of his staff are going to help us deal with the media attention following Jake’s death, and what we hope will turn out to be a nuisance lawsuit that the Petersons filed.”
Renée shuddered. “I know most of the local reporters and it still makes me nervous to talk to them.”
“Let’s see what we can accomplish before our phone calls interrupt us,” I said, changing the subject. “Have you had a chance to check with your lawyers and insurance to find out what records you absolutely need to save?”