by Kathi Daley
After everyone had been fed and played with I started loading the cats I planned to take to the cat lounge today. I had a black feral who had been grumpy when he first arrived, but I had been spending extra time with him and felt he might be ready for a forever home if I could find the right person. On a whim, I decided to take him with me today and was loading him into the car when Danny pulled into the drive behind me.
“Where did you come from?” I asked. “I didn’t even know you were gone. I just assumed you were still asleep.”
“No time for sleep,” Danny said with a huge grin on his face.
“I take it your meeting with O’Malley went well last night.”
“He had one other person interested in the bar, but I think we came to a very workable solution.”
I slid the crate I was holding into the backseat. “Oh, and what solution is that?”
“The other guy and I are going to be partners. We’re each going to put up half the money and provide half the oversight. He already has an apartment, so he was fine with letting me have the space over the bar.”
I frowned. “Are you sure about this? Business partnerships can be tricky. Tara and I are best friends and we still had some issues to work out when we first started working together.”
“I’m sure. I’ve known this guy my whole life. I think I know what to expect from him.”
I raised a brow. “Who is it?”
“Aiden.”
“Our brother Aiden?”
“One and the same.” Danny’s grin grew even larger. “Isn’t it great?”
I wasn’t sure. I loved both Danny and Aiden. They were fantastic people and wonderful brothers, but they tended to fight over pretty much everything the entire time we were growing up. Of course, Aiden and Siobhan fought all the time too, so I guessed it was a sibling thing, and it had gotten better once they were older and no longer living together. Still, they were so different. I wasn’t sure how this would work out.
Aiden was the oldest, and as the oldest, he assumed he was the boss and his opinion was the only one that mattered. Danny was a pretty easygoing guy who usually let Aiden have his way rather than argue with him. But with his money and livelihood on the line, I wasn’t sure that was going to be the case in the future. And even more important, while Aiden was serious—timely, methodical, and detail oriented—Danny had a laxer approach to life. Danny lived in a world where time commitments were approximations and doing something pretty well was more than well enough.
“I don’t know, Danny. I love you both and want you to be happy and successful, but you’re so different.”
“You’re kick back and easygoing like me and Tara is focused and organized like Aiden and you make it work.”
“That’s true. But I can’t help but wonder what will happen the first time you’re supposed to open at four and don’t show up until four twenty.”
Danny frowned. “I know I have a relaxed approach to timeliness, but I realize I’ll have to change. I’m going to be a business owner. I’ll need to think and act like one.”
“You’ve been a business owner, but you showed up to charters late all the time,” I pointed out.
“Okay, I get it. Aiden isn’t going to put up with me being a slacker. The obvious answer is not to be one. I really want to do this, Cait. Aiden really wants to do it. Be happy for us.”
Working out Aiden and Danny’s lives wasn’t my job; I let out a breath and smiled. “Okay.” I hugged Danny. “Congratulations. Is this a for-sure thing?”
“We still need to work out a few things, but we have a verbal commitment with O’Malley. I still need to sell my boat and Aiden needs to sell his. As long as there are no hitches, I should have the money from mine in a couple of weeks, so I’ll be able to give O’Malley the deposit while Aiden sells his boat. O’Malley really does want to sell to a local who won’t do anything to drive away the regulars, so he’s willing to wait for us to get our finances together. He’s even willing to finance part of it himself if we don’t come up with enough cash.”
“It sounds like you have a good plan. Just be sure to really talk to Aiden before you commit to make sure you’re on the same page.”
Danny kissed my cheek. “I will. I promise.”
I was about to close the car door when Danny stopped me. “Is that Whiskey?”
I looked at the black cat. “You mean the cat?”
“Yeah. I know you’ve been calling him Midnight or something, but I like Whiskey. Are you going to adopt him out?”
“To the right person. He’s not one to want to cuddle, or even to be touched much, but he no longer bites or scratches when approached, so I thought I’d test the waters.”
“Can you hold him for me? If this all works out and I get my own pad an independent cat who doesn’t want to cuddle will be a perfect pet for me.”
“Really? Are you sure? He’ll still need to be fed and cleaned up after.”
“I’m sure. I’ve been hanging out with the cats during the day when you and Siobhan are at work. I’ve never been a cat person, but Whiskey and I have bonded. We roll to the same drummer.”
“I think its march to the same drummer.”
“Whatever. Will you hold him?”
I lifted the cat carrier out of the car. “Okay. I’ll hold him for you. The more I think about it, the more I think you really are perfect for each other.”
I dropped the other cats off in the cat lounge and caught Tara up on the latest development with Danny and Aiden. She thought it was a wonderful idea and wasn’t concerned in the least about the differences between them. I pointed out that Aiden’s tendency to be overly serious combined with Danny’s go-with-the-flow approach to life didn’t necessarily mesh, and she insisted that my brothers were intelligent men capable of making the adjustments necessary to make the enterprise a success. Go figure. I was usually the one with the don’t-worry-be-happy approach, while Tara liked to plan and control everything. We seemed to have switched personalities.
Chapter 12
“I think I may have found something in Travis’s student file,” I said to Siobhan. We’d spent the past two hours looking through all the documents Finn had requested, but until now we’d come up empty.
Siobhan tossed the file she’d been looking through on the table. “Great. Because I haven’t.”
“When Travis was given an additional year to complete his research he also got a bill for an extra year’s tuition and housing. I found a note from Travis to the business office letting them know his student loans had run dry and he’d need some time to get the money together. They gave him until classes started in September to make a down payment, with the next larger payment due by the end of the calendar year. According to this, Travis’s tuition and housing was paid in full in December.” I looked up at Siobhan. “When I looked through his banking records I noticed he seemed to be pretty broke. I certainly didn’t notice a lump sum either going in or going out, so the money to pay for his schooling had to have come from somewhere other than his checking account. Even a loan would have been paid out to him and he would have written a check to the school. I thought about it and realized a parent or other relative might have helped him out and paid the school directly, so I went back and traced the payment back to its source. It came from a private party.”
“Okay, who paid the tuition?”
“A man named Mark Benson.”
“Why does that name sound familiar?” Siobhan asked.
“Drake Benson is one of the partners in Caldwell and Benson. Perhaps Mark Benson and Drake Benson are related.”
“Let’s find out,” Siobhan suggested.
After twenty minutes of surfing the web we were able to confirm that Mark Benson was Drake Benson’s brother. Mark had a son named Devon who also attended the University of Washington. A call to Travis’s assistant, Beth, provided us with the information that Devon and Travis had been roommates. She hadn’t been aware that Devon’s father had paid Travis’s tuition, but
she did say Devon’s family had money, and the two men were really close.
“What if Cody is wrong about the logging firm and they are the ones who tainted the water and drove the cats away? What if they spoke to their attorney about the cats and someone from Caldwell and Benson suggested they find a way to drive away the cats without making the water toxic? Maybe Drake mentioned the situation to his father, who might have met Travis on occasion, and he called Travis to work out a deal to taint the water in return for the money he needed to pay his tuition.”
“Seems like a long shot and kind of convoluted.”
“Maybe it didn’t happen exactly that way. But the link seems to be Caldwell and Benson. Thea was fired while temping for them, we believed because she saw something she shouldn’t. The logging company was working with Caldwell and Benson on their project. Driving the cats away would remove a roadblock, and the water just happened to turn up tainted. Travis knows all about water and pollutants and desperately needs money. He just happened to be roommates with Drake Benson’s nephew. It’s a sloppy theory, but the dots do connect.”
“So how do we prove it?”
I drummed my fingers on the table. “I don’t know. Maybe Finn can obtain information we don’t have access to. Or maybe he can get the logging guys to ’fess up and admit what they did.”
Siobhan looked doubtful. “Say this theory is right. Why kill Travis?”
I leaned back in the chair and crossed my arms over my chest. “Maybe he grew a conscience and threatened to tell?”
“I suppose it could have gone down that way.”
Siobhan texted Finn with an abbreviated version of my theory. He texted back to say he was almost done on San Juan Island and would stop off to have a chat with Peter Billings and Sam Stuart from the logging operation on his way back. He suggested someone should have a conversation with Devon Benson. He’d call to have Seattle PD handle the interview.
“What do you think?” I asked Siobhan. “Is there more to find with the information we have?”
“Probably not. Let’s grab some lunch. I’m starving.”
“By the way, how did your doctor appointment go?” I asked as we neatly stacked the files we had copied on Finn’s desk.
“It went well. I hope the baby comes early. I’m excited to be a mother, but I’m done with this whole pregnancy thing. As far as I’m concerned, Connor can’t get here soon enough.”
“They say the last trimester is the hardest, but it should go fast.”
Siobhan put her hand on her belly. “I hope so. Right now, three months seems like a lifetime. Of course, I’d hoped we’d be settled in our own home before he came so I could have the nursery all set up.”
“Still haven’t found what you want?”
Siobhan shook her head. “Finn wants four or more bedrooms and I want to be close to our jobs and the water. We both don’t want to overspend, but the houses that meet our requirements are way over our budget. Staying with Maggie has been fine. She hasn’t been home a lot and her house is close to both town and the water. At some point we’re going to have to find our own place.”
I put my arm around Siobhan’s shoulders. “Don’t worry. The perfect house is out there just waiting for you. In the meantime, I’ve enjoyed having you close. It’s been so nice that you and Finn are just across the lawn.”
“It has been fun,” Siobhan agreed. “Of course, eventually you’ll be moving out to live with Cody. Too bad the cabin isn’t bigger; it would be perfect for us in terms of location.”
“Hey, keep your nesting instinct away from my cabin. I’m not ready to move out yet.”
Siobhan turned and looked at me. “You aren’t having doubts, are you?”
“What? Of course not. Why would you even ask that?”
“You’ve been engaged for five months and you haven’t set a date or made a single decision regarding the wedding.”
“Five months isn’t all that long. And we’ve had a lot of things to deal with. We’re both committed to spending our lives together; we just aren’t in a rush to dive into all the planning that’s required. It isn’t going to be pretty.”
Siobhan frowned. “What do you mean by that?”
“Cody’s mother wants us to get married in Florida. In fact, she’s been quite insistent on it. She wanted us to get married this winter, but Cody managed to put the brakes on that idea, though she isn’t giving up on the Florida idea.”
“But your entire family is here.”
“And his entire family is there. There are a couple of elderly relatives, including Cody’s grandfather, who aren’t in good enough health to make the trip here. I understand her concern, but every time I even begin to think about trying to find a solution I start to hyperventilate. I just can’t deal with it right now. Maybe we’ll just elope.”
“That might not be a bad idea given the situation, but if you do Mom will kill you. Probably literally. And I’m pregnant, so I don’t know that I can protect you the way I did when we were kids and she came after you with that wooden spanking spoon she kept in her purse.”
I smiled at Siobhan’s attempt at humor even though her warning wasn’t all that far off. My mom might not do me physical harm, but she wouldn’t be happy. “Let’s talk about happier things and leave wedding planning to another time. I know you want to wait to buy furniture for the nursery until you have a place of your own, but you know you’re having a boy, so how about if we head over to the baby store after lunch and buy Connor a couple of outfits?”
Siobhan smiled. “I’d love that. I’ve been envisioning a sailor suit with a white sailor hat ever since I found out we were having a boy.”
“Like the photo of Dad that Mom has. He sure was a cute kid. I bet Connor will inherit something from him. Maybe his eyes.”
“I’d love for Connor to have Dad’s eyes as long as he has Finn’s smile.”
“And your hair,” I added. It was kind of fun to play build a baby.
******
I was at the bookstore helping Tara restock when my cell rang. “Hey, Finn, what’s up?”
“I spoke to Peter Billings and Sam Stuart. They claim to know nothing about the tainted water in the hollow, and I believe them. Cody was right when he said they’d done their homework and had a solid proposal to present to the island council. They did say they weren’t aware of the problem with the cats. They hired Caldwell and Benson to help them with the permit process and to anticipate any push back from the local population, and according to both of them, the only problem the law firm presented to them had to do with the intrinsic value a lot of the local population places on the Madrona trees for which the island is named.”
“Okay, so if they didn’t hire Travis to taint the water why did Mark Benson pay Travis’s tuition?”
“I’m not sure yet. According to the officer who interviewed Devon, he wasn’t aware that his father had paid Travis’s tuition, though he admitted Travis had been to his home many times and he and his father had a good relationship. Devon suspects Travis may have spoken to his father about his financial issues. I have a call in to Mark Benson. I guess I should have just spoken to him directly in the first place.”
“If the guys from the logging firm didn’t taint the water who did? And more importantly, who killed Travis?”
Finn sighed. “I don’t know. I do have some good news. I spoke to Travis’s adviser about the problem he was having with his project. I hoped having a better understanding of the issues would help me understand why Travis might be involved in the tainting of the water in the hollow. I explained about the rotten-egg smell you noticed and the adviser said the smell does come from sulfide gas. He said adding sulfur to the water in the hollow wouldn’t help Travis all that much because sulfur in groundwater is a common and easily remedied problem. I asked about a remedy and he said if the water was chemically altered, as we suspect, he had a filtration system that would counteract the chemicals that may have been added. He would need to test the water to see
exactly what was going on, but he felt our water problem would provide a teaching opportunity, so he offered to bring some students to the island tomorrow to test, filter, and clean up the contaminated water.”
“That is good news. Maybe once the water is clear the cats will come back.”
“I’m on my way back to the island. Maybe we should meet again this evening.”
“I think everyone is coming to the cabin. I’ll pick up some meat to barbecue.”
After I hung up I called Tansy to give her the good news about the water. She was happy the problem would be dealt with, but like the rest of us, she was concerned about the fact that we didn’t seem to be making progress with Thea’s murder, and the second one she’d just heard about. She asked if I was providing Apollo with adequate opportunity to show me what I needed to find, and I admitted I’d been busy and hadn’t spent as much time with him as I probably should have. I promised to make a point of working with him that evening.
“Did Finn have news?” Tara asked.
I filled her in on what he’d shared with me.
“So if Travis didn’t taint the water who did?” Tara asked.
I paused to consider that question. Finn had said Travis’s adviser didn’t think sulfur in the water or the presence of sulfide gas would help Travis with his project. I supposed that eliminated the project as a motive for Travis to have tainted the water, but despite what Devon had told the officer he spoke to, it still seemed like money for tuition was as good a motive as any. And if the motive was to drive the cats away but not to kill them, as seemed to be the case, whoever was behind the whole thing would need someone who understood the cause and effect of chemical additives to the water system.
“I’m still liking Travis for the one to taint the water. Cody and Finn both feel the logging operators weren’t involved in the water issue, and they both have good instincts. If not the loggers, we need to ask ourselves who else would benefit from the cats leaving.”
“The property owners,” Tara said. “Cody said the loggers planned to compensate the landowners for the trees that were taken from their land by giving them a percentage of the profits. If the cats become an issue, as we both know they will, the logging company will move onto another area and the landowners will lose the potential for what I assume would be a pretty significant payday.”
