by A. J. Wynter
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I leaned back in the squeaky office chair and crossed my arms. I clicked on another business article, and when I saw my name in the byline, my heart started to pump a little faster. I leaned in and tried to keep calm while I read the details. This must have been what Emma was sent to deal with, I thought as I read through the story. If I didn’t take an active role in the company, or gift my shares to Liam, fifty percent of the company was set to go public in the next year. The source stated that the last option would likely set back any gains the company had made in its environmental crusade.
“Shit.”
“Everything okay over there?” Marion whisper shouted. I must have sworn louder than I thought.
I stood up and deleted my browsing history. “Yes, just finishing up.” I stopped at the counter and signed out some more books.
“How’d your interview go?” Marion asked.
“Interview?”
She tilted her head, “The interview with that pretty reporter.”
Right. Emma’s guise to draw me in. “I don’t think I had the information she was looking for,” I grumbled.
“That’s too bad. I’ve been following her column for years. I’ve been waiting for her off-grid piece.”
“I’m not too sure when it’s going to come out.” I didn’t want to get into all the details. Even though Marion was one of my few friends in town, she was still part of the well-oiled small-town gossip machine.
“It looked like you two hit it off...” she prodded.
“Well, looks can be deceiving, Marion.” I shoved the books into my backpack. “Get home safely,” I smiled, trying to change the subject. “Looks like we’re in for more snow.”
“I’ve got my big boots. I’ll be fine dear.” She patted my hand, the warmth of human touch the first I’d felt since Emma. “You get home and enjoy those books.”
I headed out to the truck. Dumpster was curled up in the passenger seat on his wool blanket. The dog had a thick coat of fur and there was a bit of husky mixed into his mutt-ness, so he was much more comfortable in the cold than in the heat. I wiped the condensation from the windshield and headed home, ready to hunker down. I turned the radio up to try and get my thoughts to calm down. After living off the land for so many years, the environment had been one of the few things that I actually cared about. Now, Liam was stepping up to the plate and doing something about it.
As I navigated down the forestry road, I found that my tracks from earlier were completely covered, the snow almost reaching the bottom of my truck. I was ready to weather out the storm, even if it lasted for a month, but there was an aching in my guts that only grew deeper and more painful the more I thought about it.
I couldn’t just hide here. I had to do what was right.
Chapter 21 – Emma
THE PLANE TOUCHED DOWN and taxied to the small hangar. I told Liam that I didn’t need to use the jet, but he had insisted. Liam and I had made a deal that we wouldn’t go out to Chase’s cabin until I had all the details on his half brothers. I had spent the past two weeks researching everything I could. Liam had given me access to all of Bruce Titan’s personal archives. That meant combing through bank books and handwritten ledgers. The mysterious Alfa Romeo twins had to be old enough to drive when that photograph was taken, making them in their late twenties or potentially early thirties – their childhoods a time before electronic banking and social media.
I hadn’t been able to find much about the brothers. The only thing I knew about them was that their matching cars, like all the Titan vehicles, had come from a custom shop in Vermont, and that’s where I found myself as I exited from the Titan Jet and was ushered directly into an awaiting vintage Range Rover.
“Welcome to Vermont, Miss Hunter,” the owner of the Fine Customs shop, Mr. Murphy, an octogenarian with a full head of white hair smiled as he shifted the gears on the impeccably restored car.
“Thank you,” I replied, rubbing my hands together. “Are you guys going through a cold snap?”
Mr. Murphy chuckled. “This is balmy.” But he turned up the dial on the car’s heater.
Mr. Murphy had the gift of the gab and by the time I reached his shop, I had learned all about the local weather patterns and the cars he was currently working on. He pulled up in front of a corrugated metal shop with several bay doors, and we pulled into the one closest to the office. I stepped out of the car and into one of the cleanest, most brightly lit shops I had ever seen.
“Your shop, it’s beautiful,” I gushed.
“Thank you, Emma.” The old man smiled a toothy grin and led the way to the office. “How is young Liam enjoying his new Benz?” I didn’t have the heart to tell the old man that Liam hadn’t touched the Benz since he purchased his electric car. I’m pretty sure that would’ve done the old man in.
“I don’t think he takes it out much in the winter,” I replied.
“Of course, of course.” He shook his head like he should know better. He opened up a locked cabinet door situated behind his desk. “These are all the records. I probably shouldn’t be showing these to anyone, but the Titan family has practically built this shop with their cars alone.”
“Thank you, Mr. Murphy,” I smiled and set down my bag on the desk.
He pulled out one of the boxes and set it on the desk. “Let me know when you need to get the next one down,” he said. “They’re darn heavy.”
“I will, thank you.” I was being polite, but there was no reason this frail old man should be pulling the boxes down on my behalf. Mr. Murphy left me in the office, and I spent the next five hours combing through yellowed invoices until I found what I was looking for. I had the original sales receipt for the matching forest green Alfa Romeos, billed to a Bruce Johnson. Almost as original as Jack Smith, I shook my head as I photographed the invoice.
Mr. Murphy peeked his head in the office door asking, “Did you find what you’re looking for?”
“I think so.” I went to put the sales invoice back in its file but then was struck with a thought. “Mr. Murphy, do you service any of these cars once you sell them?”
“Some,” he said. “My shop rate isn’t cheap, but some come back here.”
“How about these?” I slid the paper across the desk. “Have you seen these cars lately?”
He smiled. “Ah, yes. The matching Alfas.” The paper shook in the tremor of his hands. “Only one of them. The owner lives in Vermont and I’m pretty sure the other one is somewhere south.”
“Can you tell me who owns this car now?”
“Well, sure. That’s Cody Johnson. C.J.”
“And he lives here in Vermont?” I scrawled the name Cody Johnson onto one of Mr. Murphy’s notepads. “Now that you mention it, I haven’t seen him for a few years, so I can’t say for sure.” I tried to control my breath to hide the fact that I was trembling with excitement. “What about the other one?”
“Oh, dear.” He squinted his eyes and looked to the ceiling, “I don’t think that I do.”
Well, I had one piece of very important information.
“Thank you, Mr. Murphy.” I checked with my watch. The pilot was waiting at the airport for my return, and even though he was on the payroll, I felt guilty for making him sit around waiting for me.
“You’re welcome.” Mr. Murphy nodded and adjusted his Fedora. Over his shoulder, something caught my eye through the open door. I couldn’t believe that I missed it when we walked into the hangar-like garage. I stood up and walked past Mr. Murphy and pointed at the silver Rolls Royce. It looked remarkably like the one from all of Chase’s family photos.
“Mr. Murphy,” I pointed to the silver car. “That Rolls...”
“Ah, you have a good eye.” He walked into the showroom and I followed. “This was a custom job, the biggest engine I could fit into her.” He pulled a neatly folded handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and used it to run his hand along the hood of the car, stopping at the hood ornament to give it a shine.
&
nbsp; “Did the Titans order many cars like this one?” I asked, peering into the interior of the luxury automobile.
“Not like this one,” he continued shining the already gleaming car. “This is theirs. They didn’t want this particular vehicle anymore and I bought it back from them. She was in rough shape, but I managed to get her back to her original condition.”
I wondered if he referred to all of his cars as ‘she.’ “She was in rough shape, was she?”
“Oh, yes. Terrible story,” Mr. Murphy said.
“Do you want to sit inside?” he asked and pulled open one of the doors.
“No thank you, sir.” I smiled politely. If this was the car I thought it was, the last thing I wanted to do was sit inside the very place where three people had perished. “Mr. Murphy, was this the car that was in the big accident?”
“It was,” he sighed and then his eyes widened. “No wonder you don’t want to sit inside. My apologies, miss. I’m not as sharp as I used to be.”
“That’s quite alright,” I smiled.
“We had to replace most of the components, so it really isn’t the same car now though.”
“I see.” I still wasn’t getting inside.
“This particular car, we had to redo everything... interior, bodywork, brake lines.”
“Brake lines?” I asked. Mr. Murphy had paused with his hand on the car, he seemed far away in thought.
“Something had chewed clean through.”
“Chewed?” I was totally lost.
Mr. Murphy sighed. “Sometimes rodents, they can get inside and do serious damage.”
“Mr. Murphy.” My head was spinning. “Are you telling me that this car crashed because a mouse or a rat had chewed through some critical components?”
“Probably a red squirrel.” He rubbed his chin.
“It wasn’t driver failure?”
“Of course, not. Bruce was an experienced racer.”
I had to lean on the car because the room was spinning and closing in around me. The crash, it wasn’t Chase’s fault.
“Are you alright, Miss Hunter?” Mr. Murphy rested his hand gently on my elbow.
I straightened up and as soon as I took my hands off the car, Mr. Murphy’s chamois was there buffing away my handprints.
“Why... why didn’t the police report say anything about this?” Everything I had read said that the car had crashed due to driver error.
Mr. Murphy shrugged his shoulders lightly, “I suppose they just assumed...” his voice trailed off.
“And you didn’t tell them?” Chase could’ve been saved years of heartache, years of self-imposed solitary confinement if he’d had this one detail. “They would’ve impounded the car.” Mr. Murphy replied and then quickly added, “I knew that Bruce wouldn’t want that. He’d want it brought back to its original glory.”
Mr. Murphy was a sweet old man, but his sheer negligence and self-serving actions had ruined Chase’s life.
“I need to go,” I whispered and then vomited all over the shiny showroom floor.
Chapter 22 – Emma
THE HELICOPTER BLADES spun up the skiff of snow that had accumulated on the Titan Towers rooftop helipad. Liam, Sadie, the pilot, and I all wore headsets and the pilot’s voice rang through loud and clear as we lifted off and headed north.
“Emma, you’re sure you’re going to be able to recognize the clearing from the air?” Liam’s voice came through my headset.
“I’m pretty sure,” I replied. “If I can’t, we can follow the highway from town.” I wasn’t as confident as I sounded. The access road to Chase’s cabin was so densely forested that even in the daylight it seemed dark d the tree’s canopy.
The helicopter tipped forward and just like that, I was off to face the man that I loved but who hated my guts. And I didn’t care. He had to know the truth about the crash. I wanted to give him that peace of mind and free him from himself, even if he told me to go to hell and never come back. I was prepared to take anything from him knowing that I deserved it. More importantly, he deserved to know the truth.
Liam and Sadie had cried when I told them. The half brother information had been quickly eclipsed by the revelation that Chase wasn’t responsible for the deaths of Liam’s parents and Sadie’s mom. I could see Liam’s jaw clenched with tension as the helicopter buzzed through the clear sky, the mountains looming jagged in the distance. We wanted to go earlier but had to wait for a clear day to fly. In that time, all of us had felt sick with anticipation, me especially. For some reason, my rock-solid, well-traveled guts couldn’t keep anything down. My hands shook when I thought about seeing Chase again, and I had spent so much time hunkered down over my toilet that I’d swear I had the flu. The helicopter started to jostle around as we neared the mountain.
“Sorry folks, going to get a little rough as we head into the mountains,” the pilot’s voice crackled.
I glanced over and saw Liam and Sadie holding hands and tried to keep the tears that had started showing up on a daily basis, away. Losing Chase had hit me hard, and I was having the worst time trying to keep my emotions in check.
“That’s Windswan.” The pilot pointed to the town and I recognized the circular main street.
“Can you follow the highway north out of town?” I asked.
“Roger that, Miss.” The pilot altered course to follow the highway.
I held my hand over my eyes and stared intently out the window. “Can you go any lower?” I asked.
“Affirmative.” He angled us down and soon we were cruising as close as he could following the road.
“There,” I shouted and pointed to the opening in the trees. “That’s the forestry road. Follow that.”
The trees below us were swaying in the turbulence from the blades of the chopper as we weaved along, following the narrow clearing that wound its way through the forest.
“I’ve lost it,” the pilot said.
“Shit,” I muttered. I couldn’t see it anymore either.
“We’ve got to be close,” I said.
“I’ll initiate a grid pattern.”
“Emma, do you remember how long it took you to get from the forestry road to the cabin?” Liam asked from the back.
“It was slow going, but I’d say at least twenty minutes.”
The pilot angled back and forth over the forest where we had lost sight of the road. I was beginning to lose hope, but then I looked up. I had been staring at the ground the whole time when I should’ve been looking up. “That peak,” I pointed. “The one that looks like a movie screen.”
“What about it?” Liam asked.
“You can see that from his yard.” I remembered the sun setting over that peak. “His cabin, it faces that side of the peak, that means it’s east.”
The pilot altered course, but there was still nothing.
“Can you go any lower?” Liam asked.
“I’ll try sir, but we’re getting low on fuel, We’re going to have to head to the closest hangar soon,” the pilot advised.
Then I saw it. The posts barely sticking up over the snow, but it was his garden. “There,” I yelled. “That’s it.” I pointed at the big bump in the snow. “His cabin, it’s an A-frame, it must be covered in snow.”
“Can you bring us down?” Liam asked.
“There’s a clearing that looks big enough,” the pilot replied.
“That’s his driveway.” My voice was higher than it should have been, and I wondered if the rest of the crew could hear my heart thumping, but it was just me, the pounding in my ears from my racing heart amplified in the headphones.
The helicopter was swaying in the wind and the nausea that had plagued me for the past two weeks struck again with a vengeance. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Me too,” Sadie replied.
Liam handed us each a paper bag. “My apologies guys, it’s going to get rougher.”
I held onto the edge of my seat, breathing out deep long breaths and I could hear Sadie doing
the same thing, but it wasn’t enough. As the helicopter settled down onto the ground, I retched into the paper bag.
The snow was swirling around us like a snow globe on steroids. The pilot cut the engine and the snowicane we’d created settled as the blades slowed. I could hear barking coming from the cabin, “Dumpster,” I whispered.
“Here,” the pilot handed me a water bottle and a pack of gum. “Thanks,” I tried to smile as I took the rookie motion sickness tools from his hand.
When the snow had settled, I could see Chase’s truck. He was here.
The door to the cabin opened and Dumpster shot out, barking and lunging at the helicopter. I shielded my eyes and my breath hitched as I saw the shadow of the man in the open doorway of his cabin.
Chapter 23 – Chase
THE MORNINGS WERE COLD and dark, and it had been days since the forestry road had been cleared. I tried to tell myself that I was okay with the isolation, and every year I had reveled in the fact that I couldn’t go anywhere and no one could come in. The thick snow cover had been a great security system. I hadn’t been able to make it out to pick up my snowmobile though, and my stack of read books was now taller than my stack ‘to read’.