by J. A. Jance
Stu Ramey appeared in the open doorway and stood there uncertainly. “You wanted to see me?” he asked.
“I’m the one who wanted to see you,” Julia Miller said, striding forward to meet him with her hand outstretched. “It’s so good to see you again after all these years, Stuart. I believe the last time I laid eyes on you was that summer when you and Roger spent two weeks with me at the ranch in Payson, and Pansy, that mean Shetland pony we had back then, took a bite out of your arm.”
Stuart’s face broke into a genuine grin, something else that took Ali by surprise. The Stu Ramey she knew wasn’t the grinning sort.
“Ms. Miller? Are you kidding? Really? What on earth brings you here?”
“It’s bad news, I’m afraid,” Ali interjected. “It seems your friend Roger passed away.”
Stuart’s welcoming grin vanished. Looking stricken, he staggered over to the table and sank down heavily into one of the molded-plastic chairs. “Roger’s dead? How can that be? What happened to him? A car wreck? Cancer? What?”
“The authorities say he committed suicide, and maybe he did,” Julia said. “If that’s the case, though, I want to know why. Things were going so well for him, I can’t imagine him doing something like that. That’s the reason I came here today. I want to hire you people to get to the bottom of what happened.”
“Suicide,” Stuart repeated. “But I thought he’d put his depression issues behind him. The last time I saw him, a year or so ago at the conference in Las Vegas, he said he was doing great.”
Julia nodded grimly. “He was doing great,” she said.
“Wait,” Ali interjected. “You’re saying Roger had been depressed before?”
Julia gave a dismissive wave. “Yes, and I’ll admit he did attempt suicide once, many years ago, but things have turned around for him since then,” Julia added. “And that’s why his committing suicide now makes no sense at all.”
Glancing in Stuart’s direction, Ali saw that the man seemed to be close to tears. It didn’t matter whether or not this investigation was something High Noon Enterprises was prepared to undertake. Learning about his friend’s death had shocked Stuart Ramey to his core, and the least Ali or anyone else could do would be to hear Julia Miller’s story from beginning to end.
“It smells like someone just made a fresh pot of coffee,” Ali said, hoping to take some of the emotional overload off Stu. “How about if I pour some coffee and then you can give us the whole scoop. How do you take yours?” she asked, turning to Julia.
“Black,” Julia replied. “Black and strong.”
While Ali went to the counter to fetch cups and pour coffee, Stu lumbered to his feet, retrieved his drink of choice—a can of Diet Coke—from the fridge, and popped it open. Doing that provided enough of a diversion that, by the time Ali delivered the coffee and Stu returned to the table, he seemed to have regained his composure.
“So tell us,” he said. “From the beginning.”
“Shining Star Cruises was one of the accounts Rog—that’s what I always called him, Rog not Roger—handled for Cyber Resources Unlimited. The cruise line was targeted with some kind of huge data hack that would have turned their whole reservations system upside down. The bad guys, whoever they were, were holding the company’s information hostage and expected to be paid a ransom. Sort of like a kidnapping, only of data rather than of a living, breathing person.”
“And?” Stuart urged.
“Roger figured it out. He discovered the problem and traced it back to a former Shining Star employee—a disgruntled IT guy—who was bent out of shape over getting fired.”
“And then what happened?”
“The cruise line offered Rog a cruise—as a reward. I’m under the impression that some of the people at Cyber Resources were pissed off because he got to go and they didn’t.”
“Names?” Stuart asked, setting an iPad down on the surface of the table and positioning his fingers over the onscreen keyboard, preparing to take notes.
“I don’t really know any of their names,” Julia replied. “I think there was a Kevin, maybe. Somebody named Jack, and there was a woman, too, an Amy or Annie—something that started with an A.”
“So professional jealousy could be part of the problem, but you have no last names?” Stuart insisted.
“None.”
“Tell us about the cruise,” Ali suggested.
“It was a two-week cruise,” Julia answered. “Southampton to Stockholm by way of Copenhagen, St. Petersburg, and I don’t know where all else, but this happened on the second day out. As soon as he got on board, Roger was having a blast and sent me photos of his suite. It looked gorgeous—a sitting room, dining area, bedroom, and bath along with a private patio. First class all the way. And it was one of those deals where food and beverages were all included in the price.”
Ali’s parents, Bob and Edie Larson, were inveterate cruisers, so Ali knew a little about cruise pricing. A two-week, all-inclusive cruise wouldn’t have come cheap.
“Before the cruise, were you in touch with your nephew on a fairly regular basis?” Ali asked.
“I was all he had left,” Julia replied. “His father committed suicide while Rog was still in high school, and his mother, my sister, died a number of years ago. No great loss there, by the way.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean Eloise Miller McGeary was a complete bitch. Thank God and Greyhound she’s gone.”
Ali glanced toward Stuart. He said nothing but nodded in somber agreement.
“Are you saying that Roger and his mother were estranged before she died?”
Julia let loose a hoot of laughter that ended in a fit of coughing. “What do you think?” she said. “She never wanted Rog in the first place. She was looking for a meal ticket. That’s the reason she got pregnant, so she could marry a likely-looking prospect. She told her son that to his face—called Rog her ‘mistake by the lake,’—Lake Pleasant being the body of water in question,” Julia added dryly. “Unfortunately for James McGeary, as far as Eloise was concerned, it turns out he didn’t measure up to her stringent standards. She ended up running him off while Rog was still in junior high.”
“Let’s go back to the cruise for a minute,” Ali said. “I believe you mentioned that it happened on the second day of the cruise. How did you find out about it?”
“Rog listed me as his emergency contact. The cruise line called me the next morning.”
“So this happened overnight?”
“Yes, my understanding is that Rog went to dinner with some women he met on the ship. Later that night he returned to his room and was never seen again.”
“Were these people he knew before he boarded the ship?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“Do you happen to have their names?”
Julia nodded. “And their e-mail addresses. All three of them were kind enough to send me notes of condolence. I understand that the dinner that night was a formal affair. He and the women were seated together in the dining room. Afterward, they stopped off in the bar to have a few drinks. Maybe more than a few. I was told that they have security video showing Roger going back to his suite, drunk as a skunk. The footage shows him trying to enter the wrong room before he finally made it into his own. The only other people seen entering or leaving his suite were his butler—a guy named Reynaldo—and a housekeeper named Gabriella.”
“But neither the housekeeper nor the butler were there when he entered the room after the dinner?”
“No,” Julia said. “At least that’s what I’ve been told. No one has allowed me to view the security footage. The cops from Panama described it to me. They evidently saw it, but I wasn’t granted that privilege.”
“All right, then,” Ali persisted. “Your nephew goes to his room. What time was that?”
“A little past midnight.�
�
“What happens then?”
“Nothing, for a very long time—a period of several hours. Then, at eight fifteen the next morning, the butler . . .”
“The same one you mentioned before—Reynaldo?”
Julia nodded. “Yes, the same one. He shows up with a breakfast tray because Roger had ordered breakfast to be delivered to his room. The butler went inside and found that the sliding door leading out to the patio was wide open. It had been stormy enough overnight that the carpet in the dining area was soaked. He saw Roger’s phone, sitting on a table out on the balcony. The battery was completely discharged. They found a bow tie out on the balcony, too, but nothing else—no shoes, no tux, and no Roger, although there was some evidence that Roger had tossed his cookies outside on the balcony.”
“He’d been sick?”
“Yes, and since his bed clearly hadn’t been slept in, the butler immediately initiated man-overboard procedures. The captain ordered every inch of the ship searched, but of course they found nothing. Roger was simply gone. They concluded that he might have fallen overboard because he was drunk, but the fact that one of the deck chairs had been moved over next to the railing made them suspect it was suicide. I guess, as far as Panama is concerned, the term ‘misadventure’ covers both of those eventualities. But I don’t believe it was suicide,” Julia insisted. “Not for a minute.”
“In cases like this it’s always a good idea to follow the money,” Ali suggested. “Did Roger have a will?”
“Yes,” Julia said. “I happen to have a copy of that along today. It’s in the banker’s box along with the rest of his stuff.”
“And?” Ali prodded.
“I’m his only beneficiary. He had a condo in San Jose that’s worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $750,000 or so. He made good money, but he didn’t live very high on the hog. He sent me money every month.”
“He sent you money?”
“Not me,” Julia said quickly, “and not directly. He gave about five thousand dollars a month to United Way. His company, Cyber Resources, matched his donations, and they sent the combined contribution to my 501(c)3—Racehorse Rest. We rescue discarded racehorses and look after them to keep those magnificent creatures from being turned into horse meat.”
“So your nephew has been single-handedly underwriting your operation to the tune of ten thousand dollars a month?”
Julia nodded. “And whatever proceeds I receive from his estate will most likely end up there, too. There’s some life insurance—group life insurance—and a big chunk of 401(k).”
“I hope you don’t mind my asking, but does the insurance angle have anything to do with why you’re so determined to prove Roger didn’t commit suicide?” Ali asked. “I mean, is there some kind of clause that would preclude benefits being paid in the case of suicide?”
“No, nothing of the kind,” Julia answered. “In fact, I’ve already filed the death claim on that. Those funds will most likely arrive within a matter of days. I came here today with the intention of offering you the whole amount of the death proceeds—up to $500,000—to hire you and your people to do a thorough investigation.”
“But why is it so important for you to find out what happened?” Ali asked.
Julia paused for a moment before she answered. “Because of Eloise,” she said at last. “She always told anyone who would listen that Roger was cut from the same cloth as his father. She claimed they were both a waste of air, and that since Roger’s dad committed suicide, Roger most likely would do the same, sooner or later. It seemed to me like she was almost goading him into it.”
Julia stopped speaking long enough to wipe a single tear from her eye.
“And?” Ali persisted.
“And I’d like to prove the bitch wrong, once and for all,” Julia said fiercely. “If not, I at least want to know why it happened. As far as I could tell, Rog was in a good place, not only at work, but also in his personal life. He seemed to be starting a whole new chapter in his life, and now he’s gone.”
With that, Julia Miller, who had walked into the office looking as though she were tough enough to chew nails, laid her head on her arms and wept.
2
“I’m afraid it’s bad news, Harold,” Dr. Darrell Richards said. “As I suspected, it is ALS.”
It was a gorgeous early-spring day in March of 1986. Through the windows of the doctor’s Santa Barbara examining room the sky overhead was a clear, untroubled blue. Forty-six-year-old Harold Hansen heard the words in stunned silence and knew that life as he knew it was over.
“As in Lou Gehrig’s disease?” he managed finally.
Harold had been only a year old when the famed ballplayer succumbed to the illness that would eventually become synonymous with his name. His father, Leif, who had emigrated from Norway in the thirties and had somehow turned himself into a multimillionaire lumber baron, had loved the “great American pastime” with all his heart. Harold had grown up listening to his father tell anyone who was interested, and a lot of people who weren’t, that “Lou Gehrig was the best damned ballplayer of all time,” and that it was a “hell of a shame what happened to him.”
“Yes,” Dr. Richards agreed simply. “Lou Gehrig’s.”
“How long do I have?”
Dr. Richards replied with a silent but eloquent shrug, one that spoke volumes.
“So you have no idea?”
“Years if you’re lucky.”
“And if I’m not?”
“A matter of months.”
Harold had noticed that his right hand was going wonky on him. There were times when he could barely hold a soldering iron anymore, to say nothing of keeping it steady. But being unable to open a new pickle jar Irene had handed him two weeks earlier had been the last straw. He’d made an appointment to see Darrell, who was both his personal physician and also his golfing buddy, until Harold had started having trouble with his grip and connecting with the ball.
During the exam, Harold had answered a string of seemingly unrelated questions. Had he experienced any difficulty in walking recently? Well, yes, he’d tripped a couple of times, maybe, but nothing extreme. Any weakness in his other limbs, in addition to the gimpy hand? Well, maybe a little, especially in his right leg. Any difficulty swallowing? Let’s see, every once in a while he had a problem choking down the handful of vitamin supplements Irene insisted he take on a daily basis, but what did the occasional choking episode have to do with the growing weakness in his hand?
“Let’s run a few tests to see what’s going on,” Darrell had said. The testing was over, and now they knew.
“There’s not really any treatment for this, is there,” Harold said—a statement rather than a question because he already knew the answer.
“No.”
“And this is just between us, right?” he asked.
“Of course,” Darrell replied. “Absolutely.”
“I’m holding you to that,” Harold said. “No one else is to know—not ever.”
Harold left the doctor’s office on Hollister. Instead of heading home to the house on Via Vistosa, he fired up his Nassau Blue Corvette and headed for northbound Highway 101. He needed to go someplace where he could be by himself so he could think and come to terms with this new reality. That called for a solitary walk along the shore.
Harold gave Darrell full points for not attempting to sugarcoat the situation. It was what it was: Harold was dying. Of course, he understood that everyone alive was also busy dying sooner or later. He wouldn’t be gone today or tomorrow or even next week. But now was the time to make his final arrangements. He had a wife to think about and a child.
Harold Hansen was a wealthy man. Not only had he inherited a fortune from his father, he’d created one of his own. He hadn’t wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. He had no interest in trees or logging or milling. From the time he was
given his first Erector Set, Harold had wanted to know how things worked and what made them go. An electronics engineer/entrepreneur at the dawn of the computer age, he’d invented a chip that had changed the course of computer science. Although plenty of corporate suitors had come calling with mind-blowing offers—one as recently as a week earlier—Harold had stayed the course. Now, though, if he was no longer going to be at his company’s helm, it was time for him to sell out before any of his competitors smelled blood in the water, and the sooner the sale was finalized, the better.
As for what to do with the money? Irene was the love of his life, as sweet as sweet could be, but she was also a bit dim, especially when it came to money. To Harold’s knowledge, she’d never written a check or balanced a checkbook. If she saw something she wanted, she bought it. Harold had never begrudged her any of that, but if he was gone and there was no more money coming in, there had to be safeguards. Irene was thirty-nine. Her mother was a hale and hearty sixty-eight and would probably last another decade or so without much effort.
That meant that when it came to looking after Irene, Harold needed to plan for her to be around for a long time after he was gone. He also needed to safeguard the funds so they would be there for her, and not be carted off by the first fast-talking asshole who came sniffing around looking for a free ride. Harold realized that he’d need to set up a trust of some kind—something that would come with spendthrift provisions. Irene adored the house—she had chosen it herself—but Harold also needed to create an ongoing entity that would make sure property taxes were paid on a regular basis and that house maintenance issues were properly handled. That way Irene would always have a suitable roof over her head and so would Owen.
Owen. Thinking of his four year-old son made Harold’s heart hurt. Harold loved him, of course. After all, you had to love your own kid, didn’t you? But he was such an odd little duck—solitary, standoffish, a bit of a frail flower, and spoiled—most definitely spoiled. Owen had no interest in any of the rough-and-tumble things that Harold had loved as a boy. If there was a tree, Harold had climbed it. If there was a mud hole? Harold had been in it up to his eyeballs. And if someone offered a dare, Harold had been the first to take it.
