Too Near the Edge

by Lynn Osterkamp

“I agree.” I said. “And now that we’ve tied up that loose end, there’s something else we should think about. Elisa and I talked about your dad, and we both agreed it should be up to you to decide what we tell people about him and Adam. Now that your dad is dead, there may be more harm than good to be done by revealing he admitted he pushed Adam. The police might not believe us. We don’t have any proof. But mostly I’m worried about Nathan. He’s already lost Adam, and now his grandfather and Erik. I don’t want to make it worse for him. So we haven’t said anything about it and we won’t unless you want us to.”

  Sharon sat silently for a minute, gazing off into space. Then she turned to face me. “Thanks, Cleo. I think you’re right. It’s hard enough for me to accept that my father killed my husband. Why burden Nathan with that? It’s not as though it will change anything if we tell people.”

  “Right. I think as long as that Mexico experiment is closed down, we’ve done enough.”

  At that point Joel and Nathan came through the front door dripping wet from their tubing adventure. “Mom, it was so cool. We went over these big rocks, kind of like a waterfall, and I only turned over once. And that time I got back up really easy.”

  “He learns fast,” Joel said, rubbing Nathan’s shoulders with a towel. “Next week we’re going to try from farther up the creek where there are more rapids. You should come.”

  “Thanks Joel,” Sharon said.

  As I noticed the warm look that passed between them, I thought the resilience of human beings is our saving grace. Like the creek, life has its rocky spots and sometimes we turn over. But usually we’re up again and back for more challenges in no time.

  Chapter 42

  Monday morning I drove over to Shady Terrace. I hadn’t been there for a week, more time than I usually let go by between visits. In the main lobby area, most of the office doors were closed. It was quiet on the Alzheimer’s unit, too. The staff I saw were working quietly, the residents were calm.

  I found Gramma in her room looking at a book of paintings by Henri Matisse. She turned the pages quickly until she came to a picture of a fishbowl on a pink porch table, with plants and flowers in the background. Four bright orange goldfish swam in the small water-filled bowl.

  “Whose fish?” she asked, looking up at me.

  “I don’t know, Gramma. Matisse painted those fish a long time ago.”

  “Where do they live?”

  “In France, I guess. That’s where Matisse lived.” Not that she’d make any sense of that, but sometimes I can’t come up with good answers to her questions.

  “Who feeds them?”

  “Whoever lives there with them.”

  “I don’t like fish.” She looked slightly annoyed.

  “That’s okay, Gramma, you don’t have to like them.” I reached toward the book to turn the page, but she pulled it away from me.

  “James will take care of it later,” she said.

  I sat on her bed and watched her turn the pages, stopping at one or another for a longer look. She didn’t say anything more about the pictures. I wondered whether she had any thoughts at all about the art she looked at. Probably not, but it helped me to think she might.

  After about half an hour, I went out to the nurses’ station. Tanya was there charting. Surprisingly, she looked up and smiled at me.

  “Martha’s doing much better,” she said. “She’s been sleeping better at night and not wandering as much.”

  “Is she still on the Ambien?” I asked.

  “No. Dr. Dubose—the new Medical Director—took her off the Ambien. Didn’t anyone call you?”

  “I haven’t been around much. But I don’t recall any voice mail messages from Shady Terrace.”

  “I’ll make sure Dr. Dubose calls you. You’ll like him. He wants us to deal more directly with behaviors, without so many meds. We’ve been trying herbal tea with Martha in the evening like you suggested, and it does soothe her. And we’ve been keeping her more active during the days, so she’ll sleep better at night.”

  Amazing! Just when I least expected it, good news hit me in the face! I thanked Tanya for the information, gave Gramma a joyful kiss, and headed back to my office. It wasn’t easy to focus on clients, but I had to do it. All my Nancy Drewing had begun to affect my livelihood.

  I wondered what would become of Waycroft’s complaint against me, now that he was dead. I couldn’t see how it could go forward without a living complainant, so I called the Department of Regulatory Agencies to find out. Like any bureaucracy, they were unwilling to make a definite commitment, but I had the distinct impression I wouldn’t need to be worrying about it anymore. I called Bruce, my funder, to give him the good news.

  I’d been worrying all day about getting together with Pablo that evening to talk. I didn’t want to have an ugly argument, but I wasn’t ready to admit I’d made foolish mistakes, either. I knew I had taken risks, but how else would we have gotten to the bottom of this messy situation? And, Tyler had been insistent that I “ride the wave.” But of course I couldn’t talk to Pablo about Tyler.

  I decided I would at least try to stack the odds a bit in my favor by choosing a location that would set a festive, possibly romantic mood. So I called Pablo and made a couple of suggestions. We agreed to meet for dinner at Terrace Maya, a funky Mexican restaurant on North Broadway. It’s fairly convenient for Pablo coming from Longmont, and it has a huge outdoor covered patio, where we’d likely be able to talk without being overheard.

  I took time to change into a pale green cotton sundress with spaghetti straps. It’s one of my favorites because the color matches my eyes. I hadn’t been out to Terrace Maya all summer, but its kitschy cantina look hadn’t changed a bit. Strings of plastic beer signs for Corona, Cerveza and Bud Light decorated the fence surrounding the patio. The awning that covered the patio was hung with strings of twinkly lights, luminous colored balls and stars. Looking out to the south between the top of the fence and the bottom of the awning, you get an excellent long view of the city nestled into the foothills.

  A few people sat on barstools at a tiki bar with a wood-shingled roof on the southern edge of the patio, but otherwise it was sparse. North Boulder doesn’t have the cache of the Pearl Street Mall, where people tend to hang out on summer evenings. This place gets its main crowds on weekends for the live salsa music.

  Pablo showed up just after I got there. He wore a soft blue shirt that set off his blue-black hair, and he had that adorable just-out-of-the-shower look. We took a round glass-covered table near a fountain whose water bubbled cheerfully between two kissing ceramic birds, and ordered a pitcher of margaritas, and chile rellenos smothered with the restaurant’s famous green chili. I took a couple of big swigs from my margarita glass to fortify myself before I began.

  “Pablo, this has been such a long week, I can hardly remember back to the beginning of it. And it’s hard to remember what I’ve told you, and what I haven’t at this point. So tell me what you want to know.”

  “There’s a lot I want to know, Cleo. The last time we talked was on Thursday when you wanted me to arrest Erik Vaughn for kidnapping Sharon and Nathan on a camping trip, and then changed your mind and said they were okay. The next thing I knew I heard that you, Sharon and Elisa almost got yourselves killed at Donald Waycroft’s lab on Saturday. And now Waycroft is dead, Elisa’s in the hospital, and as far as I can tell Erik Vaughn has disappeared leaving his herb growers with no way to get their money.”

  “Right. It has been a tough week. Where do you want me to start?”

  “Let’s start with Erik. How much did his brother tell you about his background?”

  “He told me Erik has basically been ripping people off his whole life, he’s been married at least three times, and the people close to him have suffered a lot. Do you want the gory details?”

  Pablo wanted to hear it all, so I went through the whole story Harry had told me, as much as I could remember it. He refilled my margarita glass a couple of times, and we ordered
another pitcher when the waitress brought our food.

  “I’m surprised he told you all of that, Cleo. He didn’t want to say much when I talked to him. Maybe it’s because I’m a cop.”

  “Or maybe it’s because I went to Minneapolis and talked to him in person.”

  “Just one more part of your tough week? How come you didn’t tell me before this?”

  I chuckled at his surprise, and gave him the details of my trip, taking a few pauses to savor the spicy green chili. Pablo ate, listened, occasionally looked surprised, but refrained from making any critical comments. After I finished explaining, he asked, “So, did you ask Erik about any of this?”

  “Some. I promised Harry I wouldn’t tell Erik what he’d told me, so I couldn’t ask about most of it. But then Erik told me the police had been investigating him, and he was closing his businesses and leaving town. Was that your doing?”

  “I set a few things in motion. We were hoping to surprise him, get some proof he’d scammed people, and arrest him before he got away. But he’s a pro—saw what was coming and left without a trace. No more Vaughn Holistic Healing website. The phone at Natural Herbal Remedies is disconnected. His brother Harry doesn’t know where he is.”

  “I’ll admit you were right about him all along. It’s even worse than you know. Sharon’s husband Adam had invested in Erik’s business. She’ll never see that money again.”

  “So I guess you think Erik pushed Adam off that trail. Good luck trying to catch him and prove he did it. I’d say Sharon should accept the ruling of accidental death and move on. Especially now that she’s lost her father—although it may not be such a loss from what I hear. Tell me about him.”

  I went through the Donald story—leaving out the part about Adam—and told him how Elisa had caused the car crash. “I guess he didn’t know Elisa very well, or he wouldn’t have picked her as his hostage,” I said. “She never lets anyone push her around.”

  “I doubt if he’d been any better off with you, Cleo. You’ve been going after people pretty hard lately. Now that you almost got yourself killed are you ready to hang up your detective career?”

  “I never said I was a detective. I just did what I had to do in the situation. It wasn’t easy, but I’d do it again if I needed to.”

  “I wish you’d rethink that, Cleo. If you keep taking chances like you have been, you may be spending all your time with that Tyler character in the spirit world or wherever.”

  I let the Tyler slur go by. We’d had that discussion before, and I didn’t see it going anywhere new. The waitress came to clear our table, asked if we wanted coffee. I looked at Pablo. He looked at me. “We’re good,” I said. “Just bring the check.”

  Back at my house, our conflicts melted sweetly away, like ice cream in the sun. We didn’t talk any more about Erik or Donald or Adam or Sharon. We made love slowly, then dozed in each other’s arms.

  Around ten o’clock, Pablo’s snoring woke me up. He was out cold. I got up to get a glass of water. In the shadows of the kitchen, I saw Tyler, perched on a countertop. He was quiet, just watching me—which was actually a bit unnerving as I had on almost nothing.

  “Tyler! Why are you here? Can’t you see I’m not dressed?”

  “Cleo, stay cool. I don’t see your body, I see your soul.”

  “That’s strange. I see your body.”

  “You see what you want to see, Cleo.”

  “Are you saying I’m making you up?”

  “Whatever works for you.”

  “That doesn’t work for me. Are you real or not?” I heard my voice rising. All I needed was for Pablo to wake up and find me arguing with a ghost.

  “Okay, whatever, Tyler. I’m going back to bed.”

  “You did it, Cleo. You rode the wave.”

  Excerpt from Too Far Under

  Here's an excerpt from Too Far Under, the sequel to Too Near the Edge and the second in the Cleo & Tyler mystery series.

  Prologue

  Mirabel’s last day on earth was a late August scorcher, but the heat melted away when the sun slipped behind the mountains. The evening air had a delicious mountain crispness and piney smell. Mirabel was overdue for a soak. She dropped her clothes in a pile on the bathroom floor and slipped into a terry robe. On her way through the empty kitchen, she grabbed a chilled bottle of Chenin Blanc, a wine glass, and her ipod. Then she headed out to the secluded hot tub in the backyard of her house in the outskirts of Boulder.

  “My favorite part of the day,” she said to herself as she turned on the jets, tossed her robe on a chair and slid into the bubbling hot water. “Yes,” she sighed in relief as the throbbing in her muscles and joints eased. Mirabel refused to accept limitations to her active life, despite increasing arthritis pain. Some days it was all she could do to get moving in the morning, but she pushed through the fog and kept her commitments. Mirabel was proud that people who knew her said that once she set her mind on something she moved forward like a rocket and got things accomplished.

  Today she’d spent hours with the Prairie Dog Action group she chaired, working on strategies to take action against Hugh Symes, a vicious developer who plowed a colony of prairie dogs under—killing them instead of relocating them. Then she delivered meals-on-wheels, worked on promotional materials with the Colorado Sierra Club, and had a short Scientology session with India and Brian.

  As usual, her husband Derrick wasn’t around for dinner, so she and her daughter Angelica picked up some fruit smoothies and black bean tempeh burgers at the Boulder Co-op café. They ate downtown on the courthouse lawn while listening to a local jazz group at the weekly Bands on the Bricks concert. It was after 9:00 when they got home and by the time she’d checked her phone messages and had her usual bedtime heart-to-heart talk with Angelica, it was about 10:30, which was slightly past her usual soaking time.

  Angelica, an unusually perceptive ten-year-old, had offered to forgo the bedtime ritual so Mirabel could get right to the hot water. But Mirabel treasured Angelica’s nighttime confidences too much to miss one no matter how much her body ached. She wished she had spent this quality time with her three older children, but somehow life had gotten in the way and that opportunity was long gone.

  A familiar sadness overwhelmed her as she thought about her older children, now all but lost to her. Her ongoing arguments with her two oldest—Shane, twenty-four, and Lacey, twenty-three, left her frustrated and disappointed. Somehow neither of them had found a steady path in life. She had tried to teach them the importance of contributing to the community, but they insisted she had already contributed enough for all of them. Had she neglected their emotional needs to serve her social causes? She never meant to, but looking back she did have regrets.

  Worst was Kari, dead at thirteen. It had been two years now, but Mirabel still missed Kari every day and blamed herself for not doing more to save her. Tears trickled down her cheeks. Her precious babies. She may not have been the best mother, but she loved them all so much. At least she was close to Angelica. She vowed to do whatever she needed to do to keep that, and to redouble her efforts to reach Lacey and Shane.

  As Mirabel’s physical tension yielded to the swirling water, she turned her thoughts away from her family. Other worries nagged at her. Life was confusing lately and she didn’t know who to trust or believe. She wasn’t naïve. She was quite aware that money—or the desire for more of it—could motivate people to evil. But until recently, she’d thought she was a good enough judge of character that no one could take advantage of her or of people she loved. Now she wasn’t so sure. Things were happening that she knew she needed to stop. It was going to be an unpleasant month.

  As she soaked and sipped her wine, Mirabel tried to quiet her reactive mind and move toward clear as she’d learned to do as a student of Scientology. But it wasn’t working—maybe because of a combination of alcohol and painkillers in her system. She’d resisted taking any medications for at least a year after her arthritis began to interfere with her daily
life, and even now hadn’t found the courage to tell her fellow Scientologists that she was taking pills they believe to be poison. Actually, she had other issues with them these days that had eroded much of their mutual trust, so the pain killer thing was probably minor.

  She sat up to reach her wine bottle, poured herself another glass, leaned back against the side of the tub, and drank deeply. As the wine level dropped in her glass, Mirabel slid down further into the water, focusing on relaxing her body and again trying to clear her mind. Gradually her thoughts dimmed, her body loosened, and she felt the floating calmness she sought.

  She had almost lapsed into a stupor when she felt a hand touch her head. She couldn’t see who it was, but in her groggy state she didn’t really care. The hand squeezed her head lightly, which felt soothing and she drowsily wiggled her head to snuggle into it. But soon the touch felt too firm and aggressive. She roused herself enough to push back and finally tried to turn her head to see who was there. But the person behind her held her head tightly in both hands, thrusting her face under the warm water.

  Mirabel kicked at the bottom and sides of the tub, struggling to get a foothold to push herself up and raise her head out of the water. But it was too late. The pills, the wine and the hot water had left her body and her mind too slack to act forcefully in her own defense. The hands pushed her head deeper into the tub.

  Fear and panic came over her in waves as water gushed down her throat. Her chest burned and she gasped, trying not to breathe in the water that surrounded her. But finally the irresistible urge to breathe won out. Mirabel’s last thought before the water filled her lungs and she lost consciousness was that if she drowned she’d be letting down all the people who were counting on her to show up tomorrow and the next day and all the days after that.

  Chapter 1

  Two months later

  When I got the urgent early-morning call from Shady Terrace Nursing Home, I thought it was my boyfriend Pablo calling to say he missed me already. He had spent the night and was on his way to work while I dozed lazily under my puffy down quilt enjoying the afterglow and procrastinating getting up for a few more minutes.