Cliff Hanger

by Mary Feliz

  Sheriff Nate tilted his mug back, took a swig of his coffee, and set it firmly on the table as if punctuating the conversation, full stop. He stood, thanked me graciously, and then handed Max what looked suspiciously like the paperwork delivered by process servers on television. Max raised his eyebrows, and the sheriff confirmed my suspicions. “A subpoena,” he said. “We’ll expect David, Brian, and Maggie at the district attorney’s office on Ocean Street in Santa Cruz for depositions Monday morning,” he said in a voice that was far more formal than he’d sounded since he’d arrived and introduced himself to Max.

  Max stiffened, but before he could protest with the fury of a protective father and husband, I jumped in. “Seriously? A subpoena? All you had to do was ask. We’re happy to help.”

  Sheriff Nate bristled. “We’re just being thorough.”

  “We’ll be there,” I said. “With our lawyer.” I nodded to Nell, who stood. In a T-shirt, jeans, flip-flops, and a messy ponytail, she looked neither as scary or accomplished as I knew her to be. But I wasn’t worried. My previous work with Nell and Forrest had taught me well. In legal skirmishes, it never hurts to be underestimated by your opponent.

  Sheriff Nate’s nostrils flared, but he spoke slowly and calmly. “That’s not necessary,” he said, echoing the words I’d used moments before.

  I responded in kind. “We’d like to be thorough.”

  The sheriff showed himself out and closed the door softly, indicating he had a greater command over his emotions than I’d thought. If he had allowed any of his feelings to leak out, I felt sure he would have slammed the door and stomped down the stairs.

  In Nate’s absence, I could hear the tick of the battery-operated wall clock and the hiss of water dripping on the defrost heaters in the refrigerator. Belle sighed. I was afraid to speak, terrified of what the subpoena meant and of what might happen on Monday. I wasn’t alone in my fears.

  Stephen voiced my unspoken anxieties. “That means we have until Monday morning to figure out what’s going on here, who’s behind it, and how it’s all related.”

  Max took an audible breath. “That doesn’t leave us much time.”

  “We can only do what we can do,” said Nell, gathering up her things and stashing a cookie in her pocket. “I’ll call Forrest and work out a plan for Monday and a backup plan, just in case.” Shoulders back, chest out, chin high, she looked each of us in the eye and strode out of the apartment, not-quite-slamming the door. She was confident of her ability, as always, but angry, too. We were in good hands, but that didn’t stop me from reaching for the last cookie on the plate.

  “Shouldn’t she be interviewing you and the boys?” Max said after the door closed behind Nell. “Taking down the details on a legal-sized yellow pad?”

  Stephen let out a breath and placed his hands flat on the table. “Nell and Forrest will do what they do best. The rest is up to us. How ‘bout you show me this crash site, the place on the beach where you saw the smugglers come in, and the farms you told me about.”

  The walk would do us all good, burning off nervous energy, and familiarizing Stephen with the lay of the land. But I wondered if it would be enough, what the rest of the weekend would entail, and what would happen on Monday if we weren’t able to uncover some earth-shaking new evidence within the next forty-eight hours.

  Chapter 23

  Pack a garbage or laundry bag to collect the whole family’s dirty laundry in one spot. This tactic is helpful if you need to wash clothes during your trip, and makes it a snap for any family member to quickly start the laundry chore once you’re home again.

  From the Notebook of Maggie McDonald

  Simplicity Itself Organizing Services

  Saturday, June 22, Afternoon

  We’d returned from our hike, washed the sand from our feet, and had started dinner preparations, when my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number.

  “Hello?” I spoke tentatively, fearing the call might have originated with the Petersons, a news outlet, or the person who’d sent the threatening text.

  “Maggie? It’s Jen. Jen Amesti, Jake Peterson’s girlfriend. We met at Starbucks?”

  “Of course. Jen. How are you?”

  “Did you say you had connections in law enforcement?” Jen asked, squishing the words together and voicing them in a single breath. Before I could respond, she raced on. “Jake’s house. Someone broke in. All his camera memory cards are gone. All his research. All the pictures recording our life together.” Her voice broke, but she cleared her throat and barreled on. “I checked with his roommates, his parents, his department at the university, the landlord, and the sheriff’s office, and none of them have the memory cards. They’re gone. I have to get them back. I have to.” Her voice broke again. “Can you help me? I don’t know who to talk to, who to trust, or what to do.”

  “He didn’t back them up?” I asked, and then kicked myself. That was the first question people always asked when someone was distraught over losing something stored digitally. Obviously Jake hadn’t backed up the memory cards, or Jen wouldn’t have been so upset. We all know we should back up our computers. No matter what kind of project I was working on with a client, I would also suggest they buy easy-to-use automated cloud backup systems for their digital devices. But most of us learn those lessons the hardest way possible, when we haven’t backed up our prized work, research, or mementos. Losing data sucks. It’s never helpful and often downright cruel to ask a sufferer why they neglected to back up their files. Doing so was the modern equivalent of kicking a guy when he was down.

  Jen’s helplessness overcame her and she burst into tears. I fought against absorbing her despair and struggled to think of something, anything that could help her locate the photographs that represented her memories of her beloved Jake, but which my gut told me could also hold the key to his murder.

  “Jen?” I spoke slowly and gently as I would with a skittish dog or horse. I needed to be sure she was listening.

  “Sorry.” She sniffed. “Go ahead.”

  “My law enforcement friends are here with me now. We’re just starting dinner, but we can save a plate for you, or you can join us for dessert if you want to come over. We can talk it through and figure out our next step.”

  “Our next step? You mean you’ll help me?”

  “Of course. Helping you helps my kids, and though I never met Jake, I’ve become surprisingly attached to him. We’ll put our heads together and solve this thing.” I spoke with a confidence and cheerfulness that rang false as I replayed my words in my head. But it was enough to buck up Jen.

  “I’ll be right over,” she said. “Heron Beach? What’s the number?”

  I gave her directions, since GPS was useless inside the security gates, and told her we’d see her soon.

  As I ended the call, Max, Stephen, David, Nell, and Brian all pelted me with questions. A knock at the door made me feel assaulted from all angles. I pushed back my hair, took a deep breath, smoothed out my T-shirt and opened the door, slowly.

  “Renée.” I hugged her with relief, having nearly forgotten I’d invited her. We weren’t quite at the hugging stage of knowing one another, even in instant-intimacy California. Renée recoiled slightly, then hugged me back and handed me a bottle of wine and some flowers.

  “You shouldn’t have,” I said. “Really. How on earth does a working woman, who unexpectedly finds herself the mother of three tiny children, find time to breathe, let alone focus on social niceties? Where are the kids?” I searched behind her as though she’d been hiding them behind her back.

  “Another neighbor, bless her, has taken them for the evening. If you hadn’t invited me to dinner, I probably would have made do with popcorn and fallen asleep on the couch. How can three such tiny people be so exhausting?”

  “It’s the mystery that haunts parents everywhere,” Max said, taking Renée’s jacket and handing h
er a glass of wine. “But we’ve got a few other problems on our hands, including a new one Maggie was just about to tell us about. Have a seat.”

  David brought in a plate of chicken from the grill. Stephen handed her the salad bowl, introducing himself and Nell. Max, who suddenly realized Renée had no idea who he was, retroactively said, “I’m Max. Maggie’s husband and father to these two.” He waved his hand toward Brian and David.

  Everyone turned toward me, apparently expecting me to quickly recount the details of my phone call from Jen. But I hesitated, squinting at Renée. Could we trust her?

  Renée looked up from preparing her plate. No one spoke. My thoughts raced. Tension in the room built. She glanced around the room. “You’re giving me the heebie-jeebies,” she said. “What is it? What’s happened?”

  I decided it wouldn’t hurt to fill her in on Jen’s phone call. If she was behind the theft of Jake’s memory cards, she already knew everything I was about to say. More likely, she wasn’t involved in this tangled mess of criminal activity, and we could trust her.

  I took my seat at the table and poured myself another glass of water and another glass of wine, trying to remember to alternate sips. I recounted the details of Jen’s phone call.

  “So, what do we think?” I asked when I’d finished my tale. “Who stole Jake’s stuff? How do we get those memory cards back?”

  Stephen stood and picked up his phone. “Jason has a contact in the local police department. I’ll ask him to double check what the sheriff’s office told Jen. The deputies may have picked up the memory cards but weren’t ready to share that information with Jen.” He stepped away from the table and into the hall leading to the boys’ bedrooms. The sound of his low rumbling voice told us he’d reached Jason.

  As he finished the call and returned to the table, there was yet another knock on the door. Stephen answered it and introduced himself to Jen. The condo, which had once seemed spacious, was growing crowded. The boys moved, unbidden, to lean on the sill of the dining area window. Then David opened the door to the balcony and brought in two patio chairs. He positioned them so that Brian could sit and keep his still-healing foot raised.

  When everyone was mostly settled, Stephen cleared his throat. “If I may, I’d like to summarize where we are to bring everyone up to speed. We don’t have much time left to solve this thing, and we’ll need to work fast.”

  After Stephen reviewed the list of suspects and some of the outlandish scenarios we’d proposed to explain all the goings on and tie them together, I glanced at Jen and Renée, expecting them to be first to ask questions. But Jen had covered her mouth and was blinking rapidly as if trying to bring the room and Stephen’s words into focus. Renée shook her head and laughed nervously. “I can’t believe all this has been going on and I knew so little about it.” She scoffed. “I mean, I knew about Jake and the Petersons’ accusations, of course, but smuggling on our beach? Mrs. Nesbitt being a drug runner? Bad guys on the farms and in the state park? Talk about conspiracy theories. I’m surprised you haven’t lined the windows with aluminum foil. For heaven’s sake. I’ve lived in Watsonville all my life. These are my friends. My family. Most people in town are both. Are you all stark raving mad?”

  I think Renée must have expected us to laugh off our suspicions, or at least be amused by her suggestion that we were all crazy. But we met her accusations with silence.

  Stephen once again filled the gaping chasm in the conversation. “It does sound crazy, particularly when it’s all laid out at once. But something is certainly happening here that someone wants to keep secret. Someone tampered with Jake’s ultralight and someone wants to stop Maggie and the kids from investigating. Show her that text you got, Maggie.”

  I unlocked my phone and started scrolling, getting a quick reminder about how crazy the past few days had been. I found the still-terrifying message, shivered, and handed the device to Renée, who read it, then looked up. Her face reflected her dismay and disbelief.

  “You’ve got to be kidding. You believe this?” Renée held up the phone. When no one answered, she said, “Seriously? If you do, why are you still here? Why not go back home and forget you ever heard of Heron Beach and this project?”

  For a moment, no one spoke. Then David said, “Because that’s not what our family does. My mom said she’d help you get your office organized, and she will. If there’s something bad happening here that could endanger us, it would threaten your business too. You need to be as concerned about your safety as we are about ours.”

  “Imagine the liability,” said Nell.

  “We are not going to sue, no matter what happens,” I said. As Brian had observed earlier, the words were those most often used by someone who would eventually bring a lawsuit and did nothing to reassure Renée. She still looked as though she thought she’d landed in a nest of paranoid lunatics.

  Everyone began speaking at once, and the noise level grew excruciating until Stephen whistled in a way he must have perfected in his military days. It worked.

  “Here’s what we need to do,” he said, counting off the individual parts of our project on his fingers. “We need to locate those memory cards for Jen, find out who took them, and why.”

  He took a sip of water and continued outlining our tasks. “We need to test the package Maggie lifted from Mrs. Nesbitt’s apartment so we can either rule out the old lady’s part in this or add her portion of the scheme into the mix. We need to get a computer expert to trace that threatening text. We need to find out who drives a silver pickup truck and was looking after Mrs. Nesbitt, and whether it’s the same person that Maggie saw in the parking lot. Renée started to speak, but one look from Stephen silenced her.

  “I want to hear what you have to say, Renée,” Stephen said. “You know the people around here better than anyone. But let me lay all this out first.” He looked over his shoulder at Brian and David. “The boys want to watch for smugglers from the pits they’ve dug on the beach. I need to check with the ranger and let him know what they’re planning since the beach officially closes at ten o’clock. We don’t want him driving his truck into one of your bunkers in the dark, either.”

  Stephen spoke his last sentence in a lighter tone than he’d used all evening, and a tension-busting peal of laughter started with Brian and David and moved around the room. Stephen grinned, but then brought us back on task. “Renée, is there a place on the property where we could observe those fields behind the ridge? Where no one would see us?”

  “Do you think there’s something illegal going on up there? If there were, surely Vik or Lenny, the night guard, would have seen the lights and reported them.”

  “We need to check it out anyway,” Stephen said, in a voice that brooked no argument. I was used to seeing him take charge of a roomful of citizens and volunteers back in Orchard View where his law enforcement experience was well recognized and his standing in the community had bought him some clout. I was surprised to see that his kindness, firmness, confidence, and leadership skills worked almost as well here, where he had no connections or credentials and was unknown to Jen and Renée. The two women seemed to trust him implicitly, as I had when we’d met him on our first day in Orchard View.

  “Renée, I know that you trust all the local people who we’ve listed as suspects,” Stephen said. “My partner Jason Mueller, who is chief of police in Orchard View and has connections all over the state, is running background checks. The ranger here in the state park, Charlie Adams, is a well-known straight shooter, as honest as they come. Jason says we can rely on him. But are there people here you don’t trust or have been wary of before? Who are the usual suspects?”

  Jen and Renée looked at each other. Jen whispered, “Oh-Oh?” Renée clarified. “Oscar Ochoa. Oh-Oh. He’s a local street gang leader. I’m sure the Watsonville cops have their eye on him.”

  Jen cleared her throat and added, “Jake was good friends with Oh-
Oh’s little brother, Dom. Domingo. Oscar once accused Jake of being a pedophile and grooming Dom and some of the other boys.”

  I gasped, but Jen waved her hand. “Dom must have convinced Oh-Oh otherwise, because as far as I know, Jake was never threatened after that one time. Dom had a serious case of hero worship, but it wasn’t anything more than that. Jake wanted the kid to take science classes and study hard and go to college. I think Oscar wanted that, too. He and Jake were on the same side. They both wanted something more than the gang for Domingo.”

  Renée interrupted. “I went to school with Oh-Oh. He had gang connections, but I never thought of him as a bad guy. Last I heard, he was talking with some outfit in Los Angeles or New York that provided seed money to gangs wanting to start legitimate businesses.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  Stephen smiled. “No, it’s true. A gang in New York launched a company that does street fashion. The design part and the connections are all new, but it turns out some of their taggers had a great artistic vision. Manufacturing and distributing illegal drugs aren’t all that different from what legitimate businesses do: handing out samples to influential people, and letting word of mouth work its magic.”

  “I want to hear more, but I don’t want to get off track,” I said. “Could we be looking at the start of a gang war here? Some higher ups could be miffed that this Oscar character is thinking about shifting gears. I heard somewhere that the only way out for gang members is to fall off the radar and disappear with a witness-protection program level of secrecy.”