Cliff Hanger

by Mary Feliz

  Nell sat next to me at the counter and accepted a cup of coffee from Max, who was pulling an odd assortment of ingredients from the cupboards and fridge. Chocolate chips and carrots? Butter and Jarlsberg cheese? When cookie sheets and a crock pot joined the seemingly random assortment, I relaxed. Cookies and soup were in our future. Max was a man who needed to keep busy. Peeling carrots helped him organize his thoughts in the same way my lined yellow pads aided me.

  “What’s up?” Nell asked, taking a grateful sip from the steaming mug of coffee. “How can you look so discouraged when you’ve got coffee like this at your fingertips, and hunky kitchen help like Max here?”

  Max grinned, but didn’t speak and got on with his work, starting with creaming the butter and sugar for the cookies.

  I sat up straighter to avoid the appearance that I was moping. “Our trouble has so many moving parts it’s easy to lose track. I’m overwhelmed by the tangled thread of possible explanations for what’s going on in this sleepy little resort community. Part of the problem is that there aren’t any complete threads. Just as one idea begins to look promising, we follow it to a broken, raveled end, unable to find a connecting piece that explains all and saves Brian and David from interrogation by the district attorney.”

  “Managing any interviews with law enforcement is my job,” Nell reminded me. “And no one is going to badger your boys when I’m around.” She glanced at my yellow pad. “If you’re making a list, cross that job off of it and fill me in on what happened today. I got an upbeat text from Stephen followed by your dreary one. Something must have gone wrong. Spill.”

  Nell pulled out her computer and plugged it in, fingers poised over the keyboard. No yellow pads for her. Nell was a card-carrying millennial—or would have been if millennials carried cards.

  I’d just finished filling her in on our adventures, including the thrilling capture of Zeke and the memory cards when Renée knocked and entered, followed by Diego. We moved from the counter to the table where there was more room.

  The sound of video games came from David’s room. “Brian could use a rest,” Max said. “I’ll tell David to keep it down.”

  He came back a moment later. “Brian’s zonked out on the floor with one hand on the game controller and the other around Belle. David put a pillow under the leg to raise it up a bit, and Brian didn’t flinch.” Max shook his head. “Healing takes a ton of energy.”

  Stephen returned and joined us at the table. While we waited for him to speak, a shadow darkened the front window and I heard the door to the apartment next door open and shut. Rocket was back, too.

  I looked around the table at my friends, new and old. “This is the problem I was telling Nell about,” I said. “Not knowing where to start.”

  “My news can wait,” Stephen said, though I wasn’t sure I agreed with him.

  Diego cleared his throat. “I’ll go first,” he said. “I’m not sure what to do with my information, or whether it amounts to anything at all. I’d feel silly taking my ideas to the sheriff, but I will if you think it amounts to something.”

  I leaned forward, and Stephen nodded. Diego took a deep breath and jumped in. “You all know that Kevin Rivers and I are butting heads over our farms. He’s gone organic and thinks that I’m poisoning his crops. I’m not, but I think I know what he’s getting at.”

  Diego stopped and swallowed hard. “We both use helpful insects like ladybugs, bees, and lacewings to control aphids and mites that damage the berries. Anything I can do to limit how much pesticide I use saves me money. We used to control costs by chipping in to hire a crop duster that could spray pesticides over both our fields at once. Rivers went organic, and that was the end of that. My costs have gone up, but so have my pest problems.”

  “You didn’t want to go organic when Rivers did?” I doodled on my pad.

  Diego bit his lip and rubbed his hands together. “It wasn’t a matter of what I wanted. It was a matter of what I could afford. The process of shifting to organic production takes years—years in which your yields go down, but you still have to sell your crop at non-organic prices. I couldn’t swing it.”

  I made a note to check on possible grants to help Diego.

  “So what happened?” Stephen asked.

  “Nothing much, at first, but we got into a disagreement over who owns that barn and the land it sits on. It’s gotten ugly. My deed says the barn belongs to me, but Rivers brought out a surveyor who says it’s built on his farm. It’s got a dirt floor, so Rivers asked me not to store pesticides in there in case they leach into his soil. I agreed, but I forgot to alert my supplier. He delivered my chemicals to the barn the same way he always had.”

  “What happened?” Max placed a plate of warm cookies on the table. The fragrance lured David from his room, and we had a moment of silent appreciation of the stress-busting properties of chocolate and refined carbohydrates.

  “I moved the canisters, of course,” Diego said. “But all hell broke loose. The sheriff came out. Rivers was shouting, glaring at me whenever I went near the barn. And then my pest problems began. Especially in the portion of the field closest to Rivers.”

  “You think his organic fields were infested, and the bugs were creeping over onto your land?” Stephen asked.

  “That’s just it. I checked. One night I snuck out and took samples from his field. He had a bit of an insect problem, but it was nothing like mine.”

  “But how do bugs know where the property line is?” I asked.

  “They don’t. So you’d expect to find a similar population of pests on either side of the line. But I didn’t.”

  “Hypothesis?” asked Max, prepping another tray of cookies for the oven.

  “I think Rivers was seeding my field with bugs.” Diego grimaced. “That hurt, you know. We’ve been friends since grade school, growing up on our dad’s neighboring farms. We’ve had problems before, but have always been able to work things out. But in the last year, it’s been like the tiniest thing gets blown all out of proportion.”

  “Like?” Max asked.

  “Like outside the grocery store last week. I’d just parked my car when Rivers was coming out with his cart. He lifted a paper sack and the bottom fell out. A jar of spaghetti sauce broke along with a milk jug, and I jumped out of the way. Rivers glared at me like it was all my fault. I offered to help, and he yelled at me to keep away.”

  “Has he always had an anger problem?” Stephen asked. “Could be stress or a drug issue.”

  “Like I said, he’s been my best friend since childhood. Makes me feel like he’s possessed by a demon.”

  “Maybe he is.” Stephen tapped a pencil on the table top. “Maybe he is.”

  “Anyway,” Diego said. “When Rivers says I’ve been poisoning his crop, he may have something. I have been putting down more pesticide on those infected rows, trying to keep the infestation from spreading.”

  “Anything else?” Stephen asked.

  Diego shook his head. “Like I said, I don’t know what it all amounts to. I’m not doing anything to hurt Kevin’s operation. And I don’t want the sheriff to have any more evidence against me than he already has about that drug operation. I mean, it’s mostly true to say that I allowed myself to be taken advantage of by those crooks, but I did have my suspicions.”

  “It’s possible that Kevin Rivers also had a part in the drug smuggling.” Stephen bounced the eraser end of his pencil on the table. “The gang could have taken advantage of the rift between you, hoping it would keep you from comparing notes with one another.”

  “Are crooks that subtle?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. But I’ve got other news I’ll spill in exchange for that last cookie.” Stephen raised his eyebrows and glanced at the plate.

  “Take it,” Max said. “I’ve got a fresh dozen coming out in thirty seconds.”

  Stephen pulled a piece
of paper from the inside chest pocket of his jacket and unfolded it. He pulled his reading glasses from another pocket and put them on, looking more like a beloved prep-school history teacher than a retired marine. “I got the report back on that plastic packet you gave me, Maggie.”

  I scooted my chair forward.

  “It’s kapok,” Stephen said.

  “Kapok? Like in old life jackets?”

  “Exactly.”

  I frowned. “I was so sure that dreadful condo was connected to all this drug running in some way. I felt better blaming bad guys for the mess than I did fearing that some sweet old lady’s life got beyond her control.”

  “Not so fast,” said Stephen. “Don’t rule out the bad guys just yet. There were traces of heroin in the kapok package you gave me. The composition of the drug was similar to what we found in the barn.”

  Renée gasped and her face blanched. She covered her mouth with her hand. “Mrs. Nesbitt was a drug kingpin?”

  Stephen adjusted his glasses and consulted the report. “The lab tech who worked on this made a few calls. It’s true that there is a small market for recycled kapok, but they usually use clean remnants from manufacturing operations rather than trying to recover the material from old lifejackets. I suspect that Mrs. Nesbitt was taken advantage of by the drug runners, just as you were, Diego.”

  Diego, who’d chosen that moment to reach for a new cookie, pulled his hand back and looked sheepishly into his coffee mug.

  “What are you thinking, Stephen?” I asked. “How was Mrs. Nesbitt involved, and why?”

  “I think it’s like the strawberries,” he said.

  My forehead wrinkled. “How, exactly, are strawberries like moldy old kapok?

  “Camouflage,” Stephen said. “Someone from the gang came twice a month to bring supplies to Mrs. Nesbit and take away packages of kapok. They concealed their heroin in shipments of the fluffy batting to fool anyone who stopped them and tried to look through the crates.”

  “But if everything was covered with plastic, how did the heroin get mixed into the kapok?” I asked.

  “It was only a trace amount. Likely, the gang members handling Mrs. Nesbitt’s groceries and kapok supplies were also handling the heroin shipments. Microscopic bits of the drug were transferred from the illegal packets to the innocent ones—enough to be detectable by modern lab instruments.”

  “But Mrs. Nesbitt was so proud of her conservation efforts,” Renée said. “I hope she never finds out that none of her kapok went into making those berms to soak up oil from spills.”

  “It’s possible that some of her recovered material went into those berms,” Stephen said. “The lab guy I talked to couldn’t rule it out. Any lie or effort to conceal an illegal activity works best when most of the lie is true. Like when all of Diego’s strawberries went on to be processed and distributed normally after the heroin was delivered.”

  Diego’s tense shoulders relaxed. “For Mrs. Nesbitt’s sake, let’s assume they used every ounce of kapok she collected.”

  Renée raised her coffee mug. “From your lips to God’s ears,” she said. “She’ll never hear otherwise from me.”

  Everyone else at the table lifted their mugs, except David who lifted his half-eaten cookie. Belle and Munchkin thumped their tails.

  Max, his eyes streaming, scraped chopped onions into a sizzling sauté pan and turned on the overhead fan. “Was there any connection between Zeke and Mrs. Nesbitt? I’ve lost track of who connects to which crimes.”

  I leaned forward to speak, but Renée beat me to it. “Her grandson. He’s the boy I thought was being so helpful, bringing her groceries and taking out her garbage.”

  “He must also be the guy I saw with his pickup truck. He looked a little squirrelly at the time, but I just assumed he was cleaning out Mrs. Nesbitt’s condo.” I fiddled with my coffee cup. “At the time, I thought maybe he was a moonlighting employee of yours, Renée, doing some after-hours maintenance.”

  She laughed. “I wish. The association rules say we can only handle emergency repairs on weekends and the evenings. This place is primarily a resort, and no one wants to listen to hammers and drills on vacation.”

  “So, back to tomorrow’s meeting,” I said. “Does the fact that Zeke and the gang were up to no good prove that David and Brian are innocent?”

  Nell looked up from her keyboard on which her fingers had continued to click throughout the conversation. “At the very least it will buy us some time as they investigate further. There’s no way a judge will arraign your kids when there’s so much evidence pointing to others. Means, motive, and opportunity are old-fashioned criteria in the modern world of DNA evidence. They’re not relied upon nearly as often in real life as they are in television investigations, but the only time your boys came in contact with Jake is when they were trying to save him. And they did save him. Long enough and well enough that the doctors at the hospital whisked him into the operating room and continued working on him.”

  “You’re saying that if we’d wanted Jake dead, we would have killed him at the scene?” David asked.

  “Absolutely,” Nell said. “Why wait and hope he died from his injuries later? And if you’d been as inept as Mrs. Peterson accused you of being, you would have hastened Jake’s demise, rather than forestalling it. I had investigators talk to the first responders and the medical team. Every single person they interviewed praised the work you boys did. Not one of them saw any sign that you hurt Jake while trying to save him.”

  David leaned back in his chair. I grinned at him, bursting with pride. “Should I wake up Brian and tell him?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Good news shouldn’t wait. Even if he goes right back to sleep, he’ll rest so much better without the Petersons’ accusations hanging over him.”

  David disappeared down the hallway, and we heard mumbling followed by a loud whoop and the slap of the boys high-fiving one another. Max and I stepped into the hall and the open doorway. “Proud of you both,” Max said. “Hey Bri, do you think a chocolate chip cookie, warm from the oven, is enough to celebrate this news?”

  Brian scrambled to grab his crutches and join us in the dining room.

  * * * *

  Stephen, Diego, Renée, and Nell were deep in a conversation when we bubbled back into the kitchen, high on the news that the boys had been exonerated. I eavesdropped as I nibbled on what I promised myself was my last cookie.

  “Tonight?” Diego asked.

  Stephen nodded. “Yes, so keep all your guys far away from the barn. Make it a poker night. Treat them to the movies. Make sure you all have alibis. This operation could go south in a hurry. It isn’t anything you want to get anywhere near.”

  “What’s going down?” asked David, sounding like a character in a caper movie.

  Stephen glanced at me and then at Max, who nodded. With that approval, Stephen continued. “The sheriff has set up a joint sting operation with federal drug enforcement officers. They’re staking out the beach, the trail, and the barn tonight, hoping to seize more of the contraband.”

  “Surely they’re not stupid enough to bring more drugs in now,” I said. “Not when they’ve already been detected.”

  Stephen shrugged. “My thinking was the same as yours, but the DEA guys think it’s worth a try. Apparently the demand for heroin is sky high here on the coast, and stepped up enforcement efforts on the border mean the supply is limited. The cartel will make a fortune on whatever they can bring in right now and greed trumps all. They’ve got quite the high-tech set up with night vision and heat detection equipment. The DEA guys are going to have to work hard to remain undiscovered until they’re ready to nab the bad guys.”

  “Can we watch?” asked the boys.

  Part of me wanted to echo their eager request to watch the sting unfold, but the mother in me answered quickly. “Absolutely not.”

  But
Renée jumped in. “I’ve got an idea,” she said.

  Chapter 30

  The most useful skill for families or individuals to nurture while traveling is remaining flexible and well-rested. Keep your sense of humor, expect the unexpected, and don’t be afraid to change your plans.

  From the Notebook of Maggie McDonald

  Simplicity Itself Organizing Services

  Sunday, June 23, Late afternoon and evening

  Renée had keys to the gate barring vehicle access to an old fire road now used mostly by hikers. It zigzagged up a steep hill behind the Heron Beach condo complex. When we checked it out before hand, it seemed like a perfect spot from which to spy on the sting. At the top, an old water storage tank would hide our car from anyone glancing our way from the beach or strawberry fields to the northeast. From our vantage point in front of the water tank we had a great view of the curving shoreline from Santa Cruz to Monterey and of the patchwork fields of the Pajaro Valley, including Diego’s strawberry field where it adjoined the property belonging to Kevin Rivers.

  We’d be close enough to observe as the DEA sting unfolded, but far enough to be out of harm’s way. In theory, least.

  Close to the time we’d normally have been wrapping things up and getting ready for bed, we drove up the hill with the car lights off, navigating by the light of the moon and an incredible array of stars that never appeared so clearly in Silicon Valley. The sound of the waves and the peace of the heavens could easily have lulled us into forgetting the law enforcement agents who might well be putting their lives on the line as the evening unfolded. Max, an amateur astronomer, guided us through the constellations.

  “That’s Corona Borealis,” he told us, pointing upwards. “Representing the crown of Ariadne who helped Theseus defeat the Minotaur.”

  “Shh,” whispered Brian. “Look.”

  Lights flashed on the bay out near the horizon. A spotlight blinked a response from the field. I held my breath as a spotlight swept the beach. One false move on the part of the person wielding the light, and we’d all be illuminated. We crouched down, silent.