Moving Target, page 11
part #9 of Ali Reynolds Series
Ali recognized the photo. It wasn’t from her parents’ current back porch in Sedona Shadows, the active-adult community where Bob and Edie Larson now made their home. This was one her father had taken years ago, from their old front porch, with a corner of the Sugarloaf Café’s roof visible between the camera lens and the setting sun. Ali knew it was an encrypted message from Stuart. In order to read it, she would need access to both her thumb drive and her computer. The thumb drive wasn’t a problem—it was safely in the bottom of her purse—but the computer was back in the hotel.
In other words, the message from Stu would have to wait until after tea. She sent B. a message telling him to travel safely, then she went looking for Jordan’s-by-the-Sea. It was at the other end of Bournemouth, at the far southern tip of East Overcliff Drive. Jordan’s was at about the same elevation as the Marriott, but the way to the beach was a steep footpath that meandered down the bluff through a forest of brambles and bracken. The place may have had a view of the sea, but anyone who came thinking they had fallen into a seaside resort was in for a rude awakening. As for Jordan’s current crop of guests? From the six or seven motorcycles parked in the gravel lot, it looked as though the clientele might be a bit on the rough side.
As Ali stepped out of the Land Rover, she was surprised to realize that the weather was still almost balmy, due to the proximity to the water at the bottom of the bluff. She walked through an iron gate and up a paved front walk through a ragged winter garden badly in need of some TLC. The house was a tall and narrow two-story brick affair with a small front stoop. When Ali rang the bell, she was surprised when Daisy herself—at least she was reasonably sure it was Daisy—answered the door.
“We’re completely booked,” she began, then stopped abruptly and stepped back in surprise when she realized Ali wasn’t some stray traveler ringing the bell in search of a room.
“Who is it?” Maisie called from some other room. “Tell them we’re full.”
Ali took advantage of Daisy’s momentary surprise to horn her way into the entry. “I hope you’ll forgive my dropping by this way, but Leland is back at the hotel, and I wanted to speak to you both in private.”
Maisie bustled into the dining room from what was evidently the kitchen wearing a full-length apron covered with a dusting of flour. Her dour expression was anything but welcoming. “I wish you had called,” she said shortly. “We’re baking for tomorrow morning’s breakfast.”
“This won’t take long,” Ali assured her. “I wanted to ask a few questions, and you’re probably the only people who might be able to provide the answers.”
A subtle shift washed across the contours of Maisie’s face, and Ali knew she had called the right shot. Maisie Longmoor was a gossip to the bone, and talking behind Leland’s back was more of a temptation than she could resist.
“Well, all right, then,” Maisie said, feigning reluctance. “Come through to the sitting room.” Speaking over her shoulder, she told her sister, “Do see if you can come up with a bit of something for tea.”
“That’s not necessary,” Ali said. “Really. I’m not hungry.”
“Go,” Maisie growled at Daisy, and her twin scurried away. That appeared to be the pecking order in this family. Maisie was the commanding officer who issued the orders, and Daisy was the grunt who carried them out.
The sitting room was crowded with furniture far too large for the available floor space. Maisie motioned for Ali to take a seat on an antique sofa that was scratchy enough to be genuine horsehair. The room was dimly lit by a series of faux Tiffany lamps whose yellowish-orange light did nothing for the maroon upholstery.
“What questions?” Maisie asked, taking a seat and making zero pretense of pleasantry.
Since her hostess was being only one step under rude, Ali responded in kind, and her first question was nothing short of accusatory. “Were you aware that until this morning Leland had no idea that his father was murdered?”
“I had no idea,” Maisie said. It was an obvious lie.
“I’m surprised neither you nor your sister made no mention of it when you came to tea.”
Maisie shrugged. “It’s a painful subject,” she said primly. “Having someone in the family murdered isn’t something one goes about mentioning to complete strangers.”
“I may be a stranger,” Ali countered, “but Leland is not. Jonah Brooks was his father.”
“Yes,” Maisie replied, “but he’s been away for a very long time. We weren’t sure how he’d react to seeing us, let alone to discussing something as difficult as his father’s death.”
“You didn’t look unsure,” Ali replied. “From what I saw, you both seemed overjoyed to see him again.”
“All right,” Maisie admitted. “Maybe I was glad to see him, but more out of curiosity than anything else. It’s been a long, long time since he was here last. Even so, I’m surprised he could come back and not be concerned about showing his face to all and sundry, especially after everything that happened.”
“After what happened?” Ali prompted.
Maisie paused. Ali expected her to launch off into a discussion of Leland’s illicit relationship with Thomas Blackfield. She didn’t.
“The war and all that,” Maisie said.
“The war?”
“Yes, dear girl. The Korean War,” she said. “That one’s ours, Daisy’s and mine. We were all too young for the previous one.”
“What about the war?” Ali asked.
Daisy came in from the kitchen, carrying a tray laden with a teapot, cups and saucers, and some tired store-bought cookies. Whatever baked goods were being made in-house were reserved for paying guests.
They’re biscuits here, Ali reminded herself. Not cookies.
Maisie turned to Daisy, who was busy pouring tea. “She’s asking about Leland and what he did doing the war.”
“Oh, that,” Daisy said, nodding.
“What?” Ali asked.
Maisie turned toward her, eyes blazing. “Leland Brooks was a traitor, if you must know. That’s what he did. He may have signed up for the Royal Marines, but the whole time he was over there, he was really selling secrets to the enemy.”
The charge was so outrageous, Ali wanted to laugh outright. “What secrets could he possibly know?” she asked. “He was a cook.”
“That may well be, but Langston had a friend at the War Office,” Maisie said archly. “An old chum from his university days. He’s the one who told Langston about it. The authorities were about to pick Leland up and charge him with being a double agent when he dodged out of town in the dark of night, never to be heard from again. He never once tried to get back in touch with Aunt Adele. Not once.”
“He emigrated to the States,” Ali said. “If there had been some kind of charge like that hanging over his head, he wouldn’t have been allowed to leave this country, to say nothing of being given citizenship in the U.S. And he was heard from again. He wrote to Langston to let him know where he was. Langston told him their father was deceased and that his mother wanted nothing more to do with him.”
“That’s his story,” Maisie said with an audible disbelieving snort. “No one went after him because there was a cover-up. No one wanted to have the fact that a Royal Marine had gone bad bandied about in the newspapers. Once Jonah heard about it, I’ll tell you the man was livid.”
“Absolutely furious,” Daisy offered.
“He was humiliated beyond words to think that one of his very own sons would betray Queen and country. He went straightaway to the family solicitor and had a new will drawn up.”
“To disown his own son,” Ali murmured.
“Yes, and why not?” Maisie demanded. “Jonah was so shamed by what had happened, he could barely hold up his head in public. If he hadn’t been murdered, I believe the poor man would have died of a broken heart. I remember our mother saying that his dying right then was probably a blessing in disguise. At least it put him out of his misery.”
“What kind of a father would disown his own son without hearing the son’s side of the story?” Ali asked. “How could Jonah take that kind of drastic action on Langston’s word alone?”
“Wait a minute,” Maisie objected, waggling a finger in Ali’s direction. “Don’t you speak ill of Langston. He was a good man; a decent man.”
“Entirely trustworthy,” Daisy added. “We never would have been able to turn this place into a B and B if he hadn’t offered us some financial backing.”
“What you’re telling me is that you believed every lie Langston ever told about Leland.”
“You could take what he said to the bank,” Maisie offered.
“It sounds like you did just that,” Ali observed.
If Maisie noticed Ali’s ungenerous comment, she paid it no mind. “The whole town believed it, why wouldn’t we? And Aunt Adele believed it, too. If you had seen how Leland dodged out of here like a criminal, under the dark of night and without a single word to anyone, maybe you’d understand.”
As though a light had been switched on, Ali suddenly did understand. Leland had left town in the dark of night not because he was a traitor but because he was hoping to keep Thomas Blackfield’s damning secret. All these years later, that bit of subterfuge was still working as far as Maisie and Daisy were concerned.
“What can you tell me about Jonah’s murder?” Ali asked.
Maisie shrugged. “Nothing much. I do know it was never solved. We were told that someone wanted his car. Uncle Jonah and Aunt Adele had a fairly new car—a Jaguar, I think. After Jonah died, Aunt Adele went back home to live in Cheltenham with her parents. She just couldn’t stand being here without her Jonah.”
“And without Leland,” Daisy added quietly. “He was her baby, you see. When he and his brothers were growing up, I think Lee was always Aunt Adele’s favorite.”
Maisie glowered at her sister as if willing the woman to shut up. Ali took that moment to set down her teacup and reach for her purse. “I need to be going,” she said. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
Daisy hurried to open the door. As Ali walked back down the front path, she heard loud laughter and boisterous voices coming over the laurel hedge that separated the yard from the parking area. A group of leather-wearing motorcycle riders stood clumped around their bikes, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. They gave Ali the same ogling looks as she walked to the Land Rover that Marjorie Elkins’s officemates had dished out an hour or so earlier.
Inside her vehicle with the door shut and locked, Ali Reynolds realized Jeffrey Brooks and Charlie Chan were both right. Jordan’s-by-the-Sea was exactly the wrong place for a family reunion.
The one thing that LeAnne Tucker had learned in the days her son was hospitalized was that out in the waiting room, time stood still. Far inside the building, with only a single window to help mark the changing of morning to afternoon or afternoon to evening, she had few clues to help her gauge the passage of time. Yes, she wore a watch, but the hands seemed to move so slowly that there were times when she held it up to her ear to make sure it was still ticking.
Sometime after Mr. Dunn left, Sister Anselm and LeAnne returned to Lance’s room to maintain what was now a mostly silent vigil. LeAnne noticed that Sister Anselm often clutched her rosary, passing the beads through her fingers one by one. LeAnne supposed the woman was praying, which made her think guiltily that she should be praying, too, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Her needs right then were so overwhelming—to have Lance live; to be able to keep the house; to not lose her job—that praying seemed like dropping empty words into a bottomless pit.
She was grateful to Lowell Dunn for coming by and being willing to take Lance’s part, even against his own employers. She was grateful for his advice, too, though she had no idea how to put it into action. She’d had only two dealings with attorneys in her whole life. One had been the sleazy guy she’d found on the Internet to help get her divorce; that had been mercifully cheap because her ex made no effort to contest it. The other had been the guy who was Lance’s public defender. Everyone knew how that had turned out. All of which meant that as far as hiring attorneys went, LeAnne Tucker had no idea where to start.
Now that Sister Anselm had appeared on the scene, the hospital’s five-minute visiting restriction seemed to have been lifted, but when the nurses came in to deal with Lance’s dressings sometime in the afternoon, Sister Anselm advised LeAnne to go elsewhere.
Out in the waiting room, LeAnne looked around, more than half expecting that her mother would be there. Then, glancing at her watch—the hands had moved this time—she realized it was early afternoon. Phyllis would be on her way back to San Leandro to pick Connor up from school and go to Thad’s basketball game. It was easy to sit in Austin and feel guilty about missing the game, but the truth was, even if Lance hadn’t been in the hospital, it was unlikely that LeAnne could have made it to an afternoon game. She was usually at work.
She was sitting there waiting when a man walked into the room. The guy was dressed in a finely tailored blue suit that fit him well enough that LeAnne wondered if it had been custom-tailored. Her first instinct was that the man was an attorney. It was only as he came closer that LeAnne realized he looked oddly familiar.
“You wouldn’t happen to be Mrs. Tucker, would you?” he asked.
Oops, LeAnne thought. Another reporter. How’d he get up here? “And who might you be?” she asked.
He gave her an ingratiating smile. “I don’t believe we’ve ever officially met,” he said, ignoring her off-putting tone. “My name is Crutcher. Daniel Crutcher.”
It came back to LeAnne in a rush: This was the guy who had been selling the student locating system, the tagging system. She had never met him in person, and he hadn’t been called to testify during Lance’s trial, but she had seen him being interviewed on TV; she knew he worked for some big multinational company.
“I have nothing to say to you,” she said coldly. “Get out. Leave me alone.”
“Please, Mrs. Tucker. I wish you no harm. I’m here at my company’s behest, with only your best interests and those of your son in mind. I came by to see how he’s doing and to give you this.” He reached into the pocket of his suit coat, pulled out an oblong piece of paper, and handed it to LeAnne. “You might want to take a look at it.”
She looked, and then she looked again. It was a cashier’s check made out in her name in the amount of fifty thousand dollars. “What’s this?” she demanded. “Is it some kind of joke?”
“I can assure you, it’s no joke,” Crutcher said. “I work for United Tracking Incorporated. We make the SFLS—the student/faculty location system—the use of which your son adamantly opposed, by the way. UTI wants you to know that what happened after Lance took the actions he did to protest the system had nothing to do with us. Bringing charges was the prosecutor’s decision, not ours. When I heard about last week’s unfortunate incident, I let higher-ups in UTI know what had happened. The check you are holding in your hands is their response. This is my company’s way of showing how much United Tracking International and all of its subsidiaries regret any part we may have played, however indirectly, in the terrible calamity that has befallen your family.”
Tears blurred LeAnne’s vision, causing the numbers on the paper to swim out of focus. It was an impossibly large amount of money. Enough to catch up her back mortgage payments; enough to get them out of hock.
Just then a shadow fell over her shoulder. “What’s this?” Sister Anselm asked.
“It’s a check from United Tracking International, the people who made the tracking system that got Lance in so much trouble in the first place,” LeAnne explained, holding the paper up so Sister Anselm could see it. “That’s what Lance was doing when he broke in to the school district’s server: protesting the student locater system. UTI executives heard about what happened to Lance last week, and they sent Mr. Crutcher to give me this.”
The nun turned to Daniel Crutcher and gave him a stern look. “They did this out of the kindness of their hearts? How very Christian of them!”
“It’s a matter of public relations,” Daniel Crutcher began. “The boy and his family have already been punished enough. Now, with this unfortunate accident—”
Sister Anselm deftly removed the check from LeAnne’s trembling fingers. She studied it and then handed it back to Daniel Crutcher. “I suggest you take this back to wherever it came from.”
Daniel Crutcher and LeAnne both gaped at Sister Anselm. “Wait,” LeAnne objected. “You can’t do that. He gave it to me.”
“I know he did,” Sister Anselm said calmly. “You do not want to take this man’s money or his corporation’s money, at least not right away. If this was their first offer, you can expect that there’s a lot more where that came from. Now, let’s go back into Lance’s room and see how he’s doing.”
With that, Sister Anselm took LeAnne’s hand, bodily lifted her up, and led her away. LeAnne was still protesting as they walked through the door into Lance’s room. Looking back, she saw Crutcher glance quickly around the room, as if checking to see whether anyone else had witnessed his humiliation at Sister Anselm’s hands. Then he stood up, tucked the check back into his inside coat pocket, and strode out of the room. LeAnne Tucker read the thunderous expression on Daniel Crutcher’s face. She had lived with her ex-husband long enough to recognize fury when she saw it.
LeAnne turned on Sister Anselm. “Why did you do that?” she demanded. “Why did you make me give the money back?”
“Because there are a number of countervailing forces at work here,” Sister Anselm explained. “That includes someone who was prepared to murder your son rather than see him released from jail. Lance is still alive but that doesn’t mean whoever wanted him dead has given up. Maybe the UTI people were behind it and this is their way of trying to get close enough to you to try again. On the other hand, what Mr. Crutcher said might be true—that the UTI people feel guilty about what happened to Lance and they’re trying to salve their consciences. In any event, that was only their first offer. Trust me, it won’t be their last.”
