by Matt Coyle
Yeah, Sonny Hester was definitely growing on me.
“Did you ever get another bead on Benson after his purported death?” I asked.
“Radio silence for twenty-five years.”
“What about Keenan Powell? Anything hinky about him over the years?”
“By all accounts an upstanding citizen. Graduated Boise State with honors. Law degree at University of Idaho. Been an attorney in the financial sector for a number of years. I stopped paying attention to him well before June Sommers died. Maybe he got scared straight.”
Moira didn’t start the car right away when we got in it. She put her hand up to the side of her head. Her phone. She kept it there a full minute or so before she brought it back down.
“Don’t get your hopes too high about everything we learned today.”
“Did we both hear the same things? Keenan Powell helped Colt Benson perpetuate a fraud and possibly a murder. Twenty-five years later he shows up in Shay Sommers’ life and she’s murdered within a month.”
“I just checked my messages.” Deflated. “My inside man at LJPD told me Keenan Powell has a rock-solid alibi for the night Shay was murdered.”
The knot I hadn’t felt in a week returned to my stomach.
“How rock-solid? How does anyone have a rock-solid alibi from two to five in the morning?”
“He was at Scripps Hospital from approximately one a.m. until late that morning. Chuck Baxter, the CEO of Blank Slate Capital, had heart attack symptoms. Powell rushed him to the hospital and stayed with him the whole time he was there.”
My head snapped back like I’d inhaled smelling salts. “Chuck Baxter? I never noticed it before.”
“Noticed what?”
“CB. Colt Benson. Clint Banks, the alias Benson was using in Northern California—”
“Chuck Baxter is Colt Benson!” Moira spat out the name before I could.
“Benson’s not only alive, but he was in La Jolla the night Shay was murdered.”
“But both Benson or Baxter and Keenan Powell had rock-solid alibis.” Her head pointed toward her lap, like she was doing something on her phone.
“Pretty convenient. They could have easily hired someone to kill Shay and then Baxter complains about chest pains for a few hours so they both have an alibi.” I paused, knowing Moira wouldn’t like what I had to say next. “Maybe that’s where the Invisible Man comes in.”
“Not him again.”
“Him or somebody else.”
“It’s possible, but I’m not sold yet.”
“What if it’s Colt Benson who was staying up in the Sky Suite the night Shay went up there? Powell lives twenty minutes away in Scripps Ranch. It doesn’t make sense for him to stay at La Valencia. That’s where a rich out-of-town CEO would stay. Maybe Benson-Baxter came into town and Shay tracked him down through Powell.”
“Maybe.” Moira’s head was still down.
“What are you doing?”
“I just took a screenshot of Chuck Baxter’s picture from the Blank Slate Capital website and texted it to Jimmy Hunter to see if he thought Baxter could be Colt Benson.” Her head rose and turned toward me.
“You two exchanged phone numbers?” My voice rose with my eyebrows.
“He gave me his card.” Dismissive. “Back to Shay. She’d been meeting Powell for at least a month. That much we know about. They could have been talking to each other for the last twenty years. If he had her killed, why now?”
Moira’s phone rang.
“Jimmy? I put you on speaker so Rick can hear. What do you think, could Chuck Baxter be Colt Benson?”
“Maybe. It’s been twenty-five years since I last saw him.” A pause. “I think it’s him. It’s the eyes. Wolf’s eyes. His nose is different like he had some work done and his hair was brown back then, not gray, but, yeah, I think that’s him.”
“Thanks, Jimmy.” Moira, cheery. “Thanks for everything.”
“My pleasure, ma’am. Call any time.” Cowboy charm.
Moira hung up and turned toward me.
“All this is interesting, but it still doesn’t prove anything.” Her voice measured, trying to preemptively tamp down my enthusiasm.
“It’s another brick in the wall.” Moira could stand outside and reason everything out, but my gut told me I was right. The answers were in Idaho and we just found them. “One other thing I forgot to tell you—Fenton got a copy of Shay’s autopsy report and champagne and chocolate cake were in her stomach. She was celebrating something. Maybe she was blackmailing Benson, and he agreed to pay her off that night and then had her killed.”
“This is all speculation. It’s going to come down to the forensics. I don’t want Turk to be guilty either, but the facts will tell. Fenton would be lucky to get any of what Sonny Hester told us admitted in court. It’s mostly hearsay and speculation.”
“Then we need to get one or both of them to admit the truth.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“I haven’t figured that out, yet.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
MOIRA DROPPED ME home after we landed in San Diego the next day. She still wasn’t completely onboard with my Keenan Powell/Chuck Baxter theory. I’d have to make my next move alone.
I took Midnight for a walk after I picked him up from my neighbor’s house. We took the same route as the other night. Venturing beyond the bounds of the cul-de-sac. The limp from my twisted ankle was now just a slight hitch. The sun was uncluttered by clouds and throwing shadows I could actually see. Midnight’s body, doglike. His movements familiar. I could follow his head from side to side and down sniffing the sidewalk, then back up. Both our shadows angled to the right. I avoided a rock on the sidewalk and managed curbs.
We got back home and I sat in the living room with Midnight facing me. I pressed my face toward his snout. I looked at his eyes. Close. Millimeters away. I could see the curve of his eye socket. Blurred, but visible. Closer still, his eyeball, his pupil. He licked me in the face and I hugged his neck.
I allowed myself hope.
I went upstairs, got on my computer, and voice-searched Charles Baxter, Blank Slate Capital as a starting point on a paid investigative search site. There are a lot of Charles Baxters in the United States and the one who founded Blank Slate left very few breadcrumbs out in cyberspace. But, after a half hour or so, I tracked him down. Charles Lawrence Baxter was sixty-three years old and lived on a five-thousand-acre ranch outside of Casper, Wyoming. If he really was Colt Benson, he’d shaved six years off his age. I guess the nose job and whatever plastic surgery he may have had made him feel younger.
Maybe it worked because his wife, Lyndsay Katherine Baxter, nee Shutler, was twenty-five years his junior. No children. The earliest history I could find about Chuck Baxter was that he earned a degree in Business at the University of Montana Western in 1979. Nothing before that. The only job history I found was financial consultant until he started Blank Slate Capital in 2010.
The three consulting agencies he’d worked for were no longer in business. Convenient for someone creating a new identity and a fake history. Apparently, he began running his own one-man shop in 2000, then closed it to start day trading in the stock exchange full-time in 2007 until he founded Blank Slate.
No phone number other than the one that matched Blank Slate Capital. A very private man.
The only office I found for Blank Slate was in La Jolla, but Baxter lived in Wyoming. Maybe Keenan Powell ran the day-to-day locally and Baxter flew in a few times a year to check in and wrangle new investors from the La Jolla elite. His preferred hotel being La Valencia. He was staying in the Sky Suite the night Shay was murdered, not Powell. I was sure of it.
The police must have already known that and they didn’t seem to care. They had their man. Tunnel vision.
I was more convinced than ever that Chuck Baxter was Colt Benson. He stole $861,000 from June Sommers, faked his own death, then created a new identity that yielded little information for anyone
to find.
And he had Shay Sommers murdered when she figured it out.
I needed a closer look at Chuck Baxter.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
THE UBER DRIVER dropped me in front of La Valencia at 8:50 p.m. I needed to get my eyesight back in a hurry, get a full-time paying job, or wait for San Diego’s public transportation to spread out into the ’burbs, because Uber costs were bleeding me dry.
I tapped my way under the square arch, through the courtyard, and into the hotel lobby. The La Valencia lobby is actually on the seventh floor, even with Prospect Street, but higher than much of the property, which cascades down to Coast Boulevard facing the ocean in the back. The polished brick floor was slightly uneven under my cane and feet. Ahead to the right, I could make out a horizontal counter and a human form behind it. As I got closer, I saw a woman with long dark hair.
“May I help you?” Cheery young voice.
“Yes. Could you call Mr. Baxter in the Sky Suite and tell him Rick Cahill is here to see him on behalf of Shay Sommers’ family?”
“Certainly.” Movement, her hand to her head and she repeated my request, presumably, into a phone. Maybe ten seconds of silence, then her hand went back down.
“Mr. Powell will be down to greet you. There is a chair about ten feet behind you. I can guide you to it, if you’d like.”
I was right. Baxter was staying in the Sky Suite and Powell was his toady. Another puzzle piece snapped into place.
“I can find it. Thanks.” I turned, tapped over to the armchair, and sat down.
I was fifty-fifty on whether Baxter would agree to see me. But the Shay Sommers hook had snagged his attention. And concern. Powell, the front man, would be sent down to find out what I knew. Or find out if I knew too much.
I slipped my hand under the thin-fabricated blazer I wore and felt the cellphone in the breast pocket of my dress shirt. The voice-activated tape recorder app on my phone was turned on. I tested it at home in the same clothes and it worked perfectly.
I didn’t have a well-constructed plan. I had my gut instincts and a tape recorder. Moira warned me about my gut in Idaho. She’d tell me anything that I taped would be inadmissible in court and I’d be subject to a misdemeanor conviction. That’s why I didn’t tell her about going to see Chuck Baxter. The man I was convinced was Colt Benson. The shot caller on Shay Sommers’ murder.
Turk Muldoon was in the San Diego County Jail, unable to properly grieve the loss of his girlfriend and losing bits of his humanity an hour at a time. I had to do whatever it took to get him out of there.
If I got something incriminating on tape, I’d risk the misdemeanor and play it for Detective Sheets to get him to see the case in a new light. My light. Then I’d give a copy to Fenton. The recording wouldn’t be admissible in court, but if I had something incriminating enough, the DA might drop the charges against Turk and set him free.
That was worth the risk.
Five minutes later, a figure approached me. Male. Five-ten, five-eleven. In decent shape by his outline. Aggressive aftershave. I stayed seated until he called my name. I wanted to keep my abilities hidden in my disability.
“Mr. Cahill?” Confident tenor voice. Pleasant. A business-man used to greeting people he didn’t know. “My name’s Keenan Powell. I’m here on behalf of Mr. Baxter.”
Behind my sunglasses, I focused on Powell’s face. All I could make out were a couple dark smudges for eyes. I couldn’t tell if he was smiling, but I bet there was a forced one on his face.
I stood up and angled my head slightly to the left side of Powell like actors do when they portray a blind person. I stuck out my hand in the same direction and made him reach his own over to shake it. Firm, dry.
“Nice to meet you, Keenan. I guess you never got the message I left with your office last week to call me.” I smiled.
“No, I didn’t. Sorry.” He lied convincingly.
“That’s okay. I’m here to see Charles Baxter on behalf of Shay Sommers’ family tonight. Are you going to take me up to his room?” Polite. We were still friends.
“I wish I could help you, but Mr. Baxter is still recovering from a recent health scare and is not seeing visitors right now.” Calm as a psychiatrist with his legs crossed. “Why don’t we go into the bar and you can tell me what you wanted to tell Mr. Baxter.”
“I know all about health scares. I’m still recovering from one of my own.” I took off my sunglasses, but still kept my head slightly angled away from Powell. “But I still like to stay active. Like the trip I just took to Bellevue, Idaho. It’s important to stay engaged.”
No noticeable reaction from Powell. At least none that I could see, but I’d bet he didn’t give one. I thought of Kris Collins describing Powell as stoic while Shay Sommers was arguing with him at the Nine-Ten restaurant. I put my sunglasses back on.
“Beautiful country.” Nonplussed. Powell was either very good or I was wrong about who was responsible for Shay’s murder. “Let’s go into the bar and have that talk.”
A hand on my arm to guide me out of the lobby underneath a cement arch toward La Sala Lounge.
“If Charles Baxter wants to join us, fine. Otherwise, I’ll pass.” I stopped just above the stairs that led down into the lounge. “Shay’s family wants to know what she and Baxter talked about the last night of her life.”
I’d done my homework and found that Shay had distant cousins in South Carolina. I never talked to them and wasn’t even sure if they knew Shay had been murdered or had had any connection to her at all.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Mr. Cahill.” Overly polite tone.
“Oh, I think it is.” I matched his politeness. “By the way, the Hunter brothers at Smokey Mountain Ranch said to say hello.” The next word wasn’t so polite. “Billy.”
“What do you want, Cahill?” The mask slipped. His eyes blotted darker and his voice had a sharp edge. “Is this some kind of shakedown?”
“Nope.” I slowly shook my head. “Shay’s family has some questions that need answering. I’m the first option. I’m sure they could go a more official route if I don’t come through.”
“Wait here.” His hand went up to his chest, and he turned and walked through the lobby out of the hotel and disappeared into the courtyard. He must have grabbed his phone from his coat pocket. To call whom? His boss Colt Benson or his boss’s henchman, the Invisible Man?
I kept my eyes pinned on the entrance to the hotel and my nose sniffing for Dove deodorant. No scent of a killer. Powell returned a minute later.
“Follow me.” Powell walked past me to the right.
“Easier said then done.” I could see his shape headed toward the elevator, but I wanted to maintain the façade of total blindness. I’d have the element of surprise if the time came to defend myself. My only advantage.
A grunt from Powell. He took a step back toward me and grabbed my arm. Hard. Hard enough to leave a bruise.
“This way. Were going to the elevator.”
I let him lead me and tapped along beside him to the elevator.
We took the tiny elevator up to the tenth floor. I kept my eyes on Powell’s hands. No sudden movements. The elevator came to a stop and the door opened without incident.
“This way.” Powell turned right out of the elevator and led me down a carpeted hallway that changed to hardwood two-thirds of the way down.
He opened a door at the end of the hall and held it open for me to enter. “Straight ahead, Mr. Cahill.”
I tapped inside, purposely boinking the rounded plastic tip of the cane off Powell’s foot. I didn’t apologize. A tall figure stood across the room to the right next to a dark expanse. A window with a view to the ocean. One of many. I scanned my eyes around the suite without moving my head. No one else in the room. No Invisible Man.
“Mr. Cahill, welcome.” Baxter’s voice languid and friendly. “Have a seat on the sofa to your right.”
I turned to the right to match my body with where my eyes w
ere already looking. Baxter came away from the window and sat in one of the two chairs across from a sofa. His gait sure and smooth. Not the movements of someone still healing from a “medical scare.”
I tapped ahead toward the center of the room. Powell stayed behind me. There was something round and dark emanating from the floor right in front of me. The sofa was just to the left of it. I moved toward the dark shape in front of me and neither Baxter nor Powell said anything. A test of my vision. I bounced the cane against it, then shifted the cane to my left hand and felt below me with my right like I thought it was the sofa.
“Oh, that’s an ottoman.” Baxter’s dulcet tone. “The sofa is a couple feet slightly to your left.
“Thanks.” I followed his directions, tapped against the sofa, and did the feeling hand thing, then sat down.
Powell moved across the room and sat in the chair next to Baxter’s.
“Keenan tells me that you’re here on behalf of Shay Sommers’ family. The pretty girl who was murdered by her boyfriend.” Smooth, friendly. “Her murder is certainly a tragedy, but I’m not sure how I can help.”
“Did you know that Keenan, here, knew Shay when she was a little girl and that they were cousins?” I kept my head pointed slightly to the left of Baxter, actor style.
“Yes.”
“This question is for you, Keenan.” I moved my head to the right so it was aiming between Baxter and Powell. “Did you know Shay quit a job she’d studied for in college, uprooted her life, and moved down here just so she could find you? What did you two talk about when she finally tracked you down?”
“She just wanted to touch base. And she didn’t track me down. San Diego is a nice place to live. A lot of people move here. Does that about cover things, Cahill?” Powell.
“No. It doesn’t.” I leaned forward, my eyes, hidden behind sunglasses, darting between both men. “But I’m glad you brought up Shay’s mother. That’s the real reason Shay came to San Diego. To find the man who stole eight hundred sixty-one thousand dollars from her mother. Your uncle, her father, Colt Benson.”
