by Nancy Bush
He was in love with that smile. He was in love with her.
“Try your brother again,” she said.
“Sure.”
He fumbled with getting his phone out of his pocket. When he put through the call it went directly to voice mail again. He tried once more with the same results. “He’s not picking up. Maybe there’s someone you can call?” he asked reluctantly, holding out the phone to her.
She considered for a moment, then shook her head. “Nah, let’s just go for a while. Unless you’re tired.”
“Nope.”
“There are some shops down that way.” She pointed southward to where the road turned a corner and disappeared. Sam knew the area well and nodded as she added, “There’s a restaurant that I think stays open late.”
“The diner . . .” Sam said.
“Brest’s.” Jules laughed shortly. “Hap calls it Boobs. Every time we drive by. Like it’s news, or something. ‘Look, Jules. There’s Boobs.’”
Sam’s opinion of Walter Hapstell Junior dipped even further, though Hap wasn’t the only one who called it that. Lots of guys did, himself included. Sam just didn’t want to like Hap.
Jules headed down the road and Sam worked to keep up with her again.
“I’ve got about three dollars,” she said.
“I’ve got a twenty.”
“Well, then hobble a little faster, Sandy, and you can buy.”
“You got it, Sandy.”
And those were our nicknames right up until we split up.
He thought about that, the pain of it all and the outcome. God, it seemed like a million years ago . . . yet it felt like yesterday.
He’d hooked up with Tina after feeling ignored when Jules was dealing with her mother’s illness. He’d felt like a heel—he had been a heel—and he’d then doubled down on his mistake by sticking with Tina, for no good reason he could think of now. A year into their relationship she’d wanted to marry him and that had finally woken him up. He’d tried to see Jules again, seeking . . . what? . . . some kind of absolution? The chance to repair what he’d broken? Maybe make things right?
Not a chance. It was déjà vu when he showed up at her parents’ home; he’d stood in the same spot when they’d broken up and this time Jules had assessed him through the screen door, cool and disinterested. He knew she’d been seeing his brother, but he’d thought it was merely a friendship. Joe was not only in the same business as their father, he was in the same business as Peter St. James as well. It was only natural that he and Jules ran into each other.
By that time Jules’s mother was in a deep, almost comatose state, and Peter, Joe, and Walter Hapstell Senior were working on several real estate deals both in Portland and in communities along the Oregon coast. Jules’s father had thrown himself into his work, unable to deal with his wife’s illness, so Jules was the one to help her.
“Congratulations,” she’d announced to Sam through the screen, when he’d managed to choke out that he and Tina were talking marriage.
“It isn’t decided,” he assured her. “I just wanted to see you, and see how you are.”
“Well, I’m just fine.”
“You’re taking care of your mom?”
“Yep.”
“Is there any chance you and I could go out for coffee sometime? Talk over some stuff.”
She stared at him a long moment. “Nope.”
He’d flushed in embarrassment. He’d deserved everything she dished out, had pretty much expected it, but to see her and realize how little she cared about him, how clearly there was nothing left, had dug into his gut and heart. Somewhere inside he’d apparently harbored the hope that she could forgive him, that maybe they could be friends again, or something, but that was clearly not to be.
“Well, it was good seeing you again,” he managed to force out as he turned away.
“Same,” she said without inflection, then she closed the door.
A year later he and Tina were married. Right after that, Lena St. James passed away in her sleep. Six months later, Peter St. James left a good-bye note and then made his way to a bridge over the Columbia River. He spoke to a woman before he threw himself into the river, and she witnessed his fall, hysterically saying she thought he’d dived in. Sam’s own marriage had begun its death spiral, and he was already heading for divorce court when Joe and Jules said their “I dos.”
Now he exhaled heavily. Directly ahead was the familiar wooden sign, painted in tan, gray, and white, with sandpipers carved into its face, that always welcomed him to Sea and Sunset Retirement Living. He pulled into an asphalt parking lot that ran beneath a portico where a short bus with another sandpiper painted on its side was waiting for passengers. Sam parked in an empty spot that had writing painted into the asphalt: “For Future Sea and Sunset residents.”
His father’s studio unit was at the end of a short hall. A Lucite sleeve had been attached to the wall next to the door and the day’s newspaper lay in its embrace. Sam pulled it out and looked at the headlines. BOATING ACCIDENT RESULTS IN DEATH.
Swallowing, he knocked on the door but didn’t wait for it to be answered. “Dad?” he called as he stepped inside the room. The bathroom door was closed, the only other door in the room. He could hear his father inside, brushing his teeth. He walked farther into the room. His father’s bedcovers were thrown back and his clothes from the night before tossed over the back of the visitor’s chair, the only one in the room besides his dad’s recliner. Sam perched on the cushion and opened the paper, scanning the article, his chest tight. The reporter did not name the victim, just described him as male, and there was no mention of Jules. Sam had a moment of new respect for the Sheriff’s Department. They’d kept a lid on things.
And placing the guard outside Jules’s room said something about the accident; they hadn’t ruled out foul play.
Neither had Sam.
His father came out of the bathroom clad in a pair of striped pajamas that looked several sizes too big for him. The old man was shrinking. Age was shrinking him.
“Joe?” he asked in a voice that warbled slightly.
“It’s Sam, Dad.”
“Sam?”
“I came to see you. I want to talk to you.”
Donald pulled back at Sam’s serious tone and shuffled to his dark brown recliner. With a flap of his hand he motioned Sam to go on. Still holding the newspaper, Sam picked up the chair and positioned it directly in front of his father’s. The old man was barely seventy, but he acted a decade older, maybe even more. His in-and-out dementia was so random that at times Sam thought he was faking. It just seemed a little too convenient sometimes, because his father tended to fade out whenever the discussion turned to something he didn’t want to talk about.
“It’s about Joe,” Sam said, handing his father the paper.
“Are we going to breakfast?”
“No, Dad. I’m going to say this. I just need your attention.”
“We have to eat sometime. I think I might be too late.”
“Joe’s dead, Dad. He died in that boating accident yesterday.” Sam inclined his head toward the paper.
Confusion filled his father’s face. He looked at the newspaper and his face drained of color. His mouth opened in shock. Then he closed his jaws with a snap and said angrily, “Joe was just here.”
“Maybe yesterday . . . or the day before . . . not today. Because, Dad, he’s gone. I went to the morgue yesterday and identified the body. I saw him and I . . .” The wave of emotion took Sam unawares, sweeping over him, drowning him.
His father’s eyes moistened. “You’re lying!” he cried, but he knew . . . he knew.
Sam swallowed several times. His chest was tight. His eyes burning.
Meet me at my dock at noon.
“I’m going to find out what happened,” Sam stated. “I don’t believe it was an accident and I’m going to prove it.”
He hadn’t known what he was going to say. The words just popped out of him, but on
ce said, he knew they were right.
His father’s jaw trembled, but then it grew rock hard. He shot Sam a hard look and said, “It’s about the money.”
“What?”
“It’s about the money. They all think Joe swindled them, but he saved them. They killed him for it. They killed my boy.”
Sam stared at his father. He seemed stone-cold sober and in the present. Sam almost didn’t want to spoil the moment.
“You check with his partner,” Donald said grimly. “If Joe’s dead, like you say, then it’s because of the money.”
“His partner? In his company?” Sam asked with dread. He didn’t like the sound of where this was going.
“That’s right.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “And if you’ve invested with Joe, sell everything.”
“I didn’t know he had a partner.”
Donald waved a dismissive hand. “Your friend. You know.”
“Hapstell? He wasn’t a friend. He was a—”
“That’s the one,” he interrupted.
“You always said not to have a partner,” Sam reminded. “I heard you say that a hundred times. I heard you tell Joe that.”
“Partner, schmartner. They worked together, that’s all. Did some deals. Sometimes you need money to make the deal work, even if it’s a bargain with the devil.” His face clouded over. “Sometimes you get burned.”
Sam gazed at his father in a kind of suspended disbelief. His older brother had been the one who’d made good in Donald’s eyes. It was Sam who was the screwup. Sam who’d chosen a career in law enforcement and not the heady, elite world of finance.
“I’m not invested with Joe. What about you?” Sam asked him.
“Joe pulled me out months ago. The cabin’s free and clear, and I’ve got enough savings for this place.” He sank back in his chair and turned his eyes toward the ceiling, staring for several minutes, then he let out a long, drawn out sigh and asked, “Why did you come by again?”
Sam was still processing his father’s sudden sentience. Now he was snapped back to the moment. “You really don’t remember?”
His father frowned. “Something about Joe?”
Sam got to his feet. “I came to tell you he died in a boating accident yesterday.”
“Joe’s dead?” His father gazed at him in horror.
Sam turned toward the door. He didn’t know what to believe any longer. He saw a notepad and pencil on the small kitchen counter. Grabbing up both, he wrote: “Joe died in a boating accident yesterday.” Then he added his cell phone number, signed it, and handed it to his father.
Donald stared down at the words as if committing them to memory. “Does Georgie know?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Sam said. Georgie lived with Gwen in Portland. They needed to be informed, but Sam had wanted to tell his father first.
“What are you gonna do?”
“I don’t know, Dad. I don’t know what to think. But I’m going to find out why Joe died. I don’t think it was an accident,” he repeated.
This time his father was silent, and he seemed to shrink even further into himself. Sam asked him if he wanted to walk with him down to breakfast, but he shook his head and waved a hand to the counter where a stack of energy bars waited. Sam was too tired and his head too achy to argue the point.
He left a few moments later, reflecting that he couldn’t trust that his father would even remember their conversation, and he hadn’t had a hell of a lot of luck with Jules, either. Maybe today would be better.
His stomach rumbled, making him realize he couldn’t go much longer without food. He drove out of Sea and Sunset Retirement Living and turned the pickup south, heading toward the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department. There was a McDonald’s in Tillamook, if he could wait that long.
But then he spied the sign for Digby’s Donut Shoppe and he wheeled into the lot for a cinnamon cruller or two to tide him over.
Chapter Five
She woke up slowly, cautiously, opening one eye first to test the surroundings. No one in her hospital room. She swallowed, focused on the fluid being dripped into her vein, and realized vaguely that she must have a catheter, otherwise she’d be wetting the bed, because it felt like days since—
Nothing.
Panicked, she told herself to calm down. Days since . . . the boating accident. There’d been an accident. The man with the nice eyes seemed familiar, but he’d said Joe was gone.
Joe.
Her head ached like a son of a bitch. Hurt worse when she attempted to recall anything. But a blistering thought blasted through the pain: I can’t remember anything!
Not true, she told herself immediately. Not true. You know you’re in a hospital and something happened to put you here. You know you’ve been hurt. You know you’re a woman with brown hair and . . . freckles?
Who am I?
She cried out in shock, the sound seeming to echo off the walls. Fear ran like ice through her veins and she started shivering uncontrollably.
A young nurse peeked into the room and stared at her. “Did you want something, Julia?” she asked uncertainly. “You can push the button attached to the bed frame. Do you see it?” She stepped over to her right side and showed her the button inset into the white plastic box attached by a cord and wrapped around a bed rail to keep it from falling out of reach. “One of us will be here right away.”
“Thank you.”
You’re polite....
“No problem. Are you hungry? You’ve been sleeping awhile.”
“Not really.”
“We should get you something to eat. I’ll check with Laura. She’s the head ER nurse, but she wanted to know when you woke up.”
“Okay.”
The nurse disappeared and she lay back and stared at the ceiling, working hard to keep full-blown panic at bay. You’re passive. Accepting. Even though you want to scream your head off that something’s very, very wrong, you keep quiet. You’re scared to death because you can’t remember anything, even your OWN NAME.
“Julia,” she whispered aloud. That’s what the nurse had called her. Julia.
Ju . . . li . . . a.
Heart beating fast, she ran the name around in her head, but nothing clicked. He’d said he was her brother-in-law. Was she married? Did she have a sister and he was her husband? What was the connection?
Tears formed in her eyes and she buried her face in her pillow and cried softly, not wanting any of the staff to come to her aid and ask too many questions. You’re private . . . you may have secrets....
What had he said? Sam Ford. The man who claimed to be her brother-in-law?
You have to talk to me . . . don’t have a lot of time . . . Joe wanted me to meet him . . . something dangerous . . . how did the boat catch fire? . . . were you and Joe alone? . . . was someone else there . . . ?
Something shifted in her mind and she strained to reach for it, increasing her headache till she had to stop and cover her head with her hands. She encountered a bandage, wrapping half her head. Oh, God. What do I look like?
Moments passed and she worked hard to pull her emotions under control. Her own thoughts resonated through her brain.
What do I look like? Brown hair . . . freckles?
That’s all I remember? That’s it? she asked herself, feeling suddenly furious. That’s IT?
She turned her head to spy the call button, reached forward and pressed it. A few minutes later the young nurse returned. “We have scrambled eggs with ham this morning. It’s pretty good. I’m going to bring you a tray as soon as I can.”
“I’d like a mirror.”
The nurse inclined her head toward the full-length cupboard that was mounted on the wall by the door. “There’s a mirror on the inside of your closet.” She walked over to it and pulled open the door. A mirror was indeed hung on the inside of the door, but from the angle of her bed, she couldn’t see herself.
“Is there a hand mirror?” she asked.
“I’ll see what I c
an find,” the nurse said dubiously, looking around the closet. “I don’t see your purse. Do you carry a compact?”
“My purse is gone,” she said without thinking, then felt a leap of joy. She knew it was gone! Lost at sea . . . but she still had more questions than answers. How do you know that? Where is your purse? Why is it gone?
“Let me see what I can come up with,” the woman said again, with a quick smile as she left.
Why do you know your purse is gone? Why do you know that but you can’t remember that your name is Julia?
“Julia,” she said again.
The gray presence hovered over her, pressing down, a warning. It made her head hurt even worse. It didn’t want her to remember.
She closed her eyes. She couldn’t think about it anymore today. She needed to rest . . . recover . . . get better.
The young nurse returned to find her sound asleep again. She laid the hand mirror on the table beside her patient. She’d borrowed it from cranky Margie for an indefinite period of time, so there was no need to return it until cranky Margie started bitching, which would come, but maybe not for a few hours.
* * *
Sam sat down across from Sheriff Burton Vandra, feeling like he’d been called into the principal’s office. He’d met the newly elected sheriff on several occasions, not sure what he thought of the fifty-ish man with the short, silvery hair and military bearing. O’Halleron, the previous sheriff, had retired at the end of the year, a surprise and loss to the department, according to what he’d heard, and the jury was still out on Vandra. Sam couldn’t complain, however, as the sheriff had seemed interested in having him come on board when he’d tested the waters for a job. It was Sam who hadn’t jumped on it, so maybe the older man was holding a grudge. More likely it was just that he was running the show and this was his normal demeanor—a hard man who had little time for pleasantries.
Both Detective Savannah Dunbar, auburn-haired and somber, and Detective Stone, also somber, had been invited into the sheriff’s inner sanctum. Stone leaned against the wall, his arms crossed, his brows furrowed, and Dunbar, who was very visibly pregnant, stood up straight beside him.
