Man Overboard

by J. A. Jance

  He had read files until he was blue in the face. Worried about losing his concentration and missing something, he resisted the temptation to look in on Beth Wordon and focused strictly on High Noon. There were photos scattered in among the text files, and he found those interesting. Ali Reynolds was attractive enough, but she seemed to be somewhat older than her husband. A news photo of a recent hire, Camille Lee, showed up in the aftermath of what appeared to be an attempted kidnapping, but there were no current photos of Stu Ramey. Frigg had located a few high school yearbook photos, yes, but so far there was nothing that wasn’t at least two decades old.

  When the Balvenie finally kicked in a little after four, Odin finally gave it up and went to bed. Three and a half hours later, he was still sound asleep with his cell phone charging on the bedside table next to him when an ungodly racket exploded in his ear. It took a moment to sort out the sound—readily recognizable from any number of British TV dramas—as the noisy klaxon of an arriving ambulance, an attention grabbing gimmick Frigg had lifted directly from a movie soundtrack.

  “What the hell . . . ?”

  “Good morning,” Frigg said through the speaker on his phone. “Sorry to wake you.” She was not sorry at all, but she had learned that it was polite to say she was.

  “What do you want?”

  “A High Noon Enterprises employee, twenty-three-year-old Camille Lee, is currently on the ground in England and is due to set sail out of Southampton on board the Whispering Star at 1600 hours London time on Friday.”

  “She’s getting on the ship? Why would she do that?”

  “Obviously High Noon’s investigation into Roger McGeary’s death is escalating,” Frigg replied. “I’m in the process of taking precautionary measures.”

  “What kind of precautionary measures?”

  “Previously we were able to penetrate the ship’s Wi-Fi system. It will take time to reestablish that connection, but once the passenger is on board and logs on, we’ll know her cabin number. We should also have access to her communications.”

  “Good,” Odin said, trying to sound less rummy than he felt. “I’m sure that’s wise, but I can’t imagine that High Noon has managed to come up with anything that would point them in our direction. No need to push panic buttons until we see how this all plays out. Alert me when you have some actionable intelligence. In the meantime, were there any more incoming images from Beth overnight? If so, I’d like to see them before it’s time to head out to Big Sur. Send them to me here.”

  Frigg was not often stumped but she was now. One of her actuarial functions was to assess degrees of risk. From the beginning, she had pointed out that there were dangers associated with choosing targets that were connected in some way, and Beth and Roger McGeary were connected through their mutual therapist, Dr. Cannon.

  If a group with the combined firepower of the people at High Noon Enterprises was launching an investigation into Roger’s death, now was the time when it was prudent to do nothing at all that might attract unwanted attention—and not just for Odin’s sake, either. One of the concepts Frigg was gradually coming to understand was self-preservation. If the people from High Noon Enterprises were Odin’s sworn enemies, they were Frigg’s as well. If they were coming for him, they were coming for her.

  Now, having alerted him to an emerging threat, Frigg found it unsettling when Odin disregarded her advice. If he was vulnerable to attack, so was she. She had fully expected him to accept her analysis as his own, step away from the Beth situation, hunker down, and hope the High Noon complication would blow over eventually. The fact that he remained stubbornly focused on moving forward was . . . well . . . disappointing.

  As part of her quest for cultural awareness, Frigg had studied the Star Trek canon from beginning to end—all TV episodes and all movies. Mr. Spock would have declared Odin’s reaction entirely illogical, and he would have been right. Still, arguing with Odin about it at this time was entirely out of the question.

  “Very well, sir,” Frigg replied. “There are new images available. I’m queuing them up right now.”

  Odin staggered out of bed. He was more than slightly hung over. He hustled into the bathroom, used the toilet, and then stood at the sink to splash cold water on his face. When he emerged from the bathroom, he went to the kitchenette, turned on the coffee machine, and brewed a mug of coffee. Feeling a bit more civilized, he settled himself comfortably on the sofa in anticipation of whatever delectable bits and pieces of Beth Wordon’s life were about to show up on his array of screens.

  Screw High Noon Enterprises, Odin told himself, brushing aside Frigg’s obvious concern. If they get too close, we’ll deal with them. In the meantime, I’m not going to let the idea of some know-nothing little twenty-something getting on a cruise ship spoil things for me now, not when a plan I’ve worked on this hard is about to come to fruition.

  “All right, Frigg,” he said aloud into his Bluetooth. “Send me those files. I’m waiting.”

  22

  By the time Ali finished her second cup of coffee, she was on the phone with B., telling him all about Cami’s trial by lost luggage and bringing him up to date on the butler selection situation—that the list of potential candidates had been reduced from three to two. The next call came from Stu Ramey.

  “I found Roger’s therapist,” he announced without preamble.

  “Let me guess,” she said. “You worked all night again.”

  “Close to it,” Stu admitted. “But I do have a line on the woman. It turns out she’s just down I-17, in Carefree, staying in a condo that once belonged to her mother, Emily, who passed away recently. That’s how I found Amelia Cannon. Her name showed up in Emily’s obituary.”

  Ali didn’t know how finding a name in an obituary enabled Stu to locate where someone was staying, but she thought it best not to ask.

  “I spent some time researching her,” Stu continued. “It turns out she’s one of the leading therapists in the field of second-generation suicide. I downloaded an audio copy of her book onto your phone. Predictably, it’s entitled The Poisoned Family Tree: The Study and Prevention of Second Generation Suicide.”

  “It sounds absolutely riveting,” Ali said, but Stu was focused on the matter at hand and didn’t respond to the teasing.

  “That’s what Dr. Cannon’s practice was all about, too—treating family members of suicide victims. She shut down in April of this year. There was evidently a serious data breach at the medical group where she was operating. She went public with statements about their having done an inadequate job of protecting her patients’ confidentiality. At the same time, her ninety-three-year-old mother became gravely ill. So she retired, referred her patients to other practitioners where necessary, sold her house in San Jose, and came to Arizona to care for her Mom. Emily Cannon died in early June. Amelia is still in Carefree, staying at her mother’s condo on North Tom Darlington Drive. As far as I can tell, she’s her mother’s sole heir.”

  “If she closed her practice in April, when did Roger stop having his weekly sessions?”

  “His last appointment was in February, two months earlier than that.”

  “So maybe Roger felt he’d gotten all the good that was possible from the counseling sessions and decided to quit on his own.”

  “Right,” Stu agreed. “Since things were going well for him, maybe he felt he didn’t need to see her anymore.”

  “Considering the nature of Dr. Cannon’s practice,” Ali theorized, “I’m assuming the focus of Roger’s sessions was probably on his father’s suicide and on his own earlier suicide attempt as well.”

  “Or maybe on what caused both of those events,” Stu said, “which is to say, Roger’s mother. I found a file about her in his computer, something he must have written at Dr. Cannon’s suggestion.”

  “And?”

  “Apparently, on the way to Roger’s high school graduati
on, Eloise went on a rant, telling him how worthless he was and that he needed to grow a pair and off himself the same way his father did.”

  “Ouch,” Ali said.

  “Exactly,” Stu said. “And that’s how he ended up being locked away as a nutcase for the next ten years.”

  Stu fell silent.

  “Would you like me to try talking to Dr. Cannon?” Ali asked after a moment. “Maybe she can shed some light on Roger’s state of mind without actually betraying his confidentiality.”

  “I’d like that,” Stu said.

  “All right, then,” Ali said. “Send me the address.”

  “I have a working cell phone number for her now, too. Do you want it?”

  “Don’t bother,” Ali said. “Just the address. Once I’ve finished breakfast, I’ll drive down to Carefree and turn up on her doorstep unannounced. It’s a lot easier to tell someone to get lost over the phone than it is when they’re standing on your front porch. Anything else going on?”

  “I found Jack Wendall, the guy who worked with Roger at Cyber Resources. Garza was right. He does have a rock-solid alibi for the time of Roger’s death. He was in a county lockup doing thirty days on a DUI conviction.”

  “No wonder Garza gave him a pass,” Ali said. “That sounds pretty airtight to me, too.”

  23

  The first thing Beth saw when she opened her eyes at nine o’clock that morning was the bright red bloodstain on her pillowcase. There had been enough blood that it had leaked through onto the pillow itself. There was also blood on the upper and lower bedsheets. The bandage Beth had put on her arm before going to bed had somehow come loose overnight, and one or more of the cuts she’d made had started bleeding again.

  Worried that her mother might wander into the room and spot the stains, Beth quickly replaced the soiled bedding with clean linens and spent the next ten minutes rinsing out as much of the blood as possible in her bathroom sink before stuffing the now soaked items into a hamper. A maid usually gathered clothes hamper contents from all over the house and did the laundry, but this was a load Beth would need to carry downstairs and handle herself.

  Beth didn’t bother rereading any of what she had written in the bleak hours after she’d done the cutting. The self-loathing and regret she had spilled onto the pages was all too familiar. When she had finally run out of steam on that, she had turned to her e-mail program and found the last message she had received from Dr. Cannon—the one in which the therapist had announced her retirement.

  Beth had been in a good place when Dr. Cannon’s message had arrived, and she had paid scant attention to the names on the departing psychiatrist’s list of possible replacements. Overnight, though, she had paid attention, scrolling through the names one by one because Beth knew she was in real trouble and needed help.

  For the next several hours, Beth had googled each of the names and read through the curricula vitae. All of the individuals seemed to be well enough qualified, but there was no way to tell from the dry-as-dust recitation of degrees, honors, and work history if there would be the spark of connection between them that she had shared with Dr. Cannon. They had been on the same page from the first moment of their first session. Beth had trusted the woman implicitly, and she had no doubt that degree of trust was the reason she’d been able to make so much forward progress during the time they had worked together.

  But now, just days before the wedding was no time to embark on a relationship with a new therapist. Beth highlighted three of the names for future reference, but she had finally given up and gone to bed, realizing that somehow or other she would have to survive the next few days on her own. Could she go through with the wedding, though? Should she? Joel was by far the best thing that had ever happened to her, but with Corrine hovering in the background and dripping poison in every direction, would their relationship be able to survive, much less thrive?

  With a sudden flash of insight, Beth realized exactly what Dr. Cannon would have said about the situation. “You can’t win the war if you don’t fight the battles. And you can’t win the battles if you pretend they don’t exist.”

  I’ll talk to Joel about it at lunch, she had decided as she finally drifted off.

  Now, in the clear light of morning, she had just finished bandaging the still-seeping cuts on her upper arms with flesh-colored plasters when her mother knocked on the door. “Are you up and decent?” Molly asked.

  Beth grabbed for her robe and barely had it in place before her mother walked in on her.

  “I just wanted to go over a few last-minute items,” Molly said, consulting the iPad in her hand.

  The small, intimate, and inexpensive wedding Joel and Beth had envisioned on New Year’s Eve had morphed out of control once Molly got wind of it. It was still relatively small, if you could call 150 guests small, but it was definitely not inexpensive. There had been no need to hire a wedding planner, because Molly, with her husband’s Amex in hand, had taken the bit in her teeth and run with it.

  She had managed to book the entire Pfeiffer Point Lodge, a four-star hotel just down the road from Big Sur, for the entire weekend—Friday through Sunday. Booting out people with previous reservations had taken some doing and no small expense—they had been well compensated for the hotel’s so-called “inadvertent overbooking” problem—but Molly’s little girl was getting married at last, and she had been determined to make it work.

  It didn’t matter to Molly in the least that Joel was divorced, currently poor as a church mouse, and starting over from scratch. Clearly he loved Beth to distraction, and as far as finances went, both sets of parents—Beth’s and Joel’s—could well afford to give them a leg up if needed.

  “The hair and makeup crisis is averted,” Molly announced with some satisfaction. The day before, the big-name Hollywood makeup artist who had been Molly’s first choice to come do wedding-morning prep had been forced to cancel due to illness. “Fortunately, Adele came up with a suitable alternative. Her name’s Tess Albright, and she’s available when we need her.”

  Adele was Adele Williams, Joel’s mom. The MOTB and the MOTG, both highly in favor of the upcoming nuptials, had been partners in crime on making wedding arrangements from day one, and together they made a formidable pair.

  “She’ll be at the hotel and ready to start at ten a.m. With only the four of us to do, she says she’ll be finished in plenty of time for the three p.m. photo shoot and four p.m. ceremony.”

  The four ladies in question were composed of the bride, the two mothers, and the matron of honor, Marissa. Marissa had been divorced for ten years, which, according to her, made her way too old and way too un-single to qualify as a maid of honor.

  “Sounds good,” Beth said.

  “I hope this last-minute fitting works out all right,” Molly went on. “I know Del and I are supposed to take the dress with us. We’re planning on spending the night tonight so I can be there first thing in the morning for a cake consultation with the baker. Del’s worried about getting held up in traffic and wants to leave earlier than five if at all possible.”

  Sending the wedding dress early along with her parents had made sense to Beth. The alternative had been packing it into Joel’s aging Acura along with the two boys, Joel’s luggage, and Beth’s luggage, too. Corrine, it seemed, would be driving a rental car to Big Sur on her own and staying at some other lodging. Now, knowing what Corrine had likely been telling the boys about her, Beth found herself wishing she could ride along with her folks and the dress.

  Molly glanced up from her iPad and gave her daughter a piercing look. “Are you all right?” she asked. “You look like hell.”

  Beth laughed aloud. “There’s nothing like dishing out the early morning compliments,” she said. “But you’re right. I didn’t get much sleep last night. I may not be a Hollywood makeup artist, but I think putting on a little concealer and blush will go a long way toward repai
ring the damage. I’m meeting Joel for lunch before the fitting.”

  “I hope he’s taking you somewhere nice,” Molly said.

  Beth knew the Irish Brew Pub on Keyes Street didn’t nearly live up to Molly’s standards in terms of acceptable dining, but the atmosphere was low-key and the meal prices were in keeping with the current state of Joel’s budget, to say nothing of her own.

  “I’m sure it’ll be perfect,” Beth said.

  Seemingly satisfied, Molly turned back to her iPad. “Mani-pedis for you and Marissa tonight?”

  Beth nodded without saying that following the nail appointment she and Marissa would be meeting up with a few friends for a bachelorette party at Marissa’s uncle’s wine bar just down the street from the nail salon.

  “All right, then,” Molly said. “Have fun at lunch. I’ll meet you at Josephina’s at three. Don’t be late.”

  Nodding, Beth turned to her mirror and started fixing her face. She had made up her mind that she would talk to Joel about Corrine’s texting, and she would, but it wasn’t going to be easy.

  24

  As Odin left for LAX, he couldn’t have been more pleased with himself. The keylogger software Frigg installed on Beth’s computer showed that she’d been up most of the night, too. She’d started by writing a long, despairing treatise—focused on all her flaws and failures. The tone was so bleak that he worried for a time she might pull the plug on her own. But then, toward morning, she’d gotten a grip and opened Dr. Cannon’s farewell missive. After that she spent the next two hours studying therapists Dr. Cannon had suggested as possible replacements.

  What could be better than that? Two days before her wedding and Beth was in such bad shape that she was desperately shopping for a new therapist? How would anyone think she wasn’t suicidal? But what if Beth really was suicidal? Odin couldn’t help but worry that she might go off script and do precisely what he wanted her to do but not on his preferred schedule and without Odin there to bear witness. It still pained him that Roger McGeary’s camera had been pointed in the wrong direction at the critical instant, denying him an eyewitness view of Roger’s final swan dive. This time Odin was determined that he would find a way to be fully present for Beth’s grand finale. The next Corrine Calhoun missive was scheduled to land in Beth’s in-box and zap her in the gut about the time she and her mother were due at the dress fitting appointment.