Changing Tides

by Veronica Mixon

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Why would questions about Juan Cabral upset me? I hardly knew the man.” She stopped at the window and peered into a black sky. “We met when I worked part-time at Barry Real Estate.”

  “I didn’t know you worked in Granddad’s office.”

  “While your father was in Alaska. Before you were born.” Her gaze meandered around the room. She picked up her glass and downed the last drop.

  “Any chance Juan Cabral is a drug lord?” I asked.

  Mom gave me a short, impassive once over. “Juan Cabral was charming and handsome, but no drug lord. Dad didn’t associate with criminals.”

  “Juan and Granddad were close friends?”

  She gave a half-shrug. “Dad visited Juan in Mexico on occasion, and once or twice a year they traveled to remote fishing spots in Central and South America. They were two old friends with an expensive hobby.” Mom walked to the sofa and sat. “I’m glad you agreed to stay at my house in Savannah. Your office is in Savannah, and I’ll schedule tennis lessons, or golf, for Owen, introduce him to boys his age.”

  “I’m worried about changing Owen’s environment so soon. He’s just beginning to think of Spartina as home.”

  Mom glanced around the room. “There’s not a neighbor within a mile of this place. A drug ring is using the island. Those men are diving around the dock. I don’t like you and Owen living here.”

  “The dive boat is Calvin’s, and it was your idea for Owen and me to move back to Spartina.”

  “That was before I knew about a drug ring working across the river.”

  I eyed the stack of property appraisals on my desk and calculated the number of hours it’d take to get ready for my appointment with the Charleston appraiser “Spartina’s practically a fort. We have a good security system, and an onsite property manager. No place safer.” Maybe Mom’s agitation had less to do with Cabral and more about the drug ring operating close by. She was a city girl and had never enjoyed Spartina or Shell Hammock, our quaint fishing village down the road.

  “Even the marshal said it’s dangerous to stay here,” she said.

  “The marshal wants to use Spartina as a base for his team. We’re in his way.”

  Mom shifted in her seat, rearranged the pillow behind her back, and settled in for a long chat. It was getting late, and I still had at least two hours of paperwork to wade through.

  “You don’t think the marshal believes we’re in danger.”

  “No.” I pinned her with a stare that left no room for further discussion.

  She fiddled with the fringe on a throw pillow. “You don’t think he believes we have anything to do with what’s happening on the island?

  Meaningful stares rarely worked on my mother. “Us?”

  “Calvin.”

  “Cal’s reckless, not stupid.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  I leaned over and took her hand. “Mom, please don’t say anything to Owen about staying in Savannah for the next few days. The change could agitate him.”

  She grew quiet, and I didn’t interrupt her silence. She pushed a strand of loose hair off my face and cupped my chin. “Losing a parent is tragic. I remember how devastated you were when your father died. But children are resilient, and it’s best not to over-pamper them.”

  A lump grew in my throat and made it impossible to speak. Sitting at my father’s bedside during his peaceful passing hardly compared to Owen witnessing Adam’s horrendous death. I rose and went to my desk. “I’ll go see Calvin early tomorrow morning, then meet at your house around nine and explain to Owen why we’re going to stay with you for a while.”

  Mom agreed, and we hugged goodnight. I tried shuffling through the pile of correspondence on my desk, but I couldn’t get past the possibility our family name could be linked to a drug bust. Calvin wanted to cash out of the business, but that was impossible until the debt restructuring for the company was complete. Negative news would be a deal breaker for the banks. Any hint of our family being connected to a drug cartel and the bank would pull their offer to refinance the estateʼs nine Atlanta office buildings, and they might shut down our credit lines.

  I’d have a frank discussion with Marshal Parsi tomorrow. If I gave his team the use of my guesthouse, I wanted assurances there’d be no mention of Barry Island when he made his bust. Not one word to cast suspicion on our family’s name or Barry Real Estate and Development, a four-generation business that with Grandad’s death six months ago, passed to Calvin and me.

  I opened a FedEx package delivered by courier that contained an appraisal of company warehouses located in South Carolina. I flipped to the estimated value and groaned.

  We had twenty-one warehouses stretched across coastal Georgia and South Carolina, each one a profitable income-producing rental. This was the fifth appraisal of a property that had undergone extensive repairs, but according to the appraisal, the value of the property hadn’t increased.

  The bank debt restructuring package I’d worked on for the past year required verification of our company’s net worth, which equated to property appraisals. But the appraisals were arriving quoting values of less than forty percent of our book value. Something somewhere was seriously amiss.

  I shut down my computer, turned off the lights, and climbed the stairs to check on Owen. I opened his bedroom door and found him propped in bed watching a Disney movie with no sound.

  “Why aren’t you asleep?” I picked his bedcovers off the floor.

  He reached for his blanket. “I woke up.”

  “Watching movies keep you awake.” I found the remote and turned off the television. “Did you have a scary dream?”

  “No.”

  I sat on the edge of the bed. Owen appeared relaxed, no body tension, no evidence he’d been crying. “Was something bothering you?”

  He shrugged.

  I held up my hand and wiggled three fingers. “What are the things you can do if you wake during the night and can’t go back to sleep?”

  He sighed the long-suffering exhalation of a kid wishing to be left alone. “Draw a picture. Write a story about my worry. Or come to your room.” He slid down and rested his head on the pillow. “How many more days until my birthday?”

  Deflecting was a technique Owen had mastered early. I fastened him with my best motherly stare.

  He rolled his eyes. “Okay. I won’t turn on the television anymore when I wake up. How many days until my birthday?”

  I moved his ball cap off the wooden chest sitting on the nightstand and lifted the lid. We called it his worry box. The top picture was a car upside down in a ditch, flames lapping through the windows. He’d drawn this version of Adam’s car accident three days ago. I had a sharp gut-wrenching urge to shred every paper inside, all the monsters chasing kids and small animals, every rendition of the car accident, wipe away every last gory picture in the box. But the therapist insisted Owen’s memories were his to resolve, not mine. I longed to take him in my arms and promise nothing bad would ever happen in his world again. Instead, I tucked the blanket around him.

  “Mom.” He shook my arm. “How many days until my birthday?”

  “Ten.” I swept curls off his face and considered my afternoon appointments. Searched for a free hour for a much-needed haircut.

  He raised on one elbow. “Aunt Viv called. She’s going to take me to Disney World for my present. She’s coming to get me in two days.”

  “Your Aunt Viv called?”

  “You were busy, so Grandma talked to her. You’re supposed to call Aunt Viv back.” He scratched his legs under his blanket.

  I pushed off the cover, found the calamine lotion on the nightstand, and dabbed the liquid on the red welts covering his shins and ankles. “Do these burn, sweetheart?”

  “No. They itch.” He scratched his thigh.

  I held his hand and squirted more lotion on the welt. “I’ll speak to Aunt Viv, but this isn’t a good week for us to go to Florida. Maybe after your birthday, we can wo
rk out a trip to Orlando.”

  His eyes widened. “But I want to go.” He scooted to the top of the bed.

  I twisted the cap on the calamine bottle, placed it on the nightstand, and wiped my hands on a tissue. “I’m sure you do, but I can’t leave right now.”

  “You don’t have to.” Tears pooled in his eyes. “You weren’t invited—just me. It’s my present.”

  My heart stumbled. “And it’s a great present.” I motioned him back under the blanket. “I’ll talk to Viv, and we’ll work something out. But it can’t be this week.”

  “Aunt Viv said you’d say no.” Owen crossed his arms like a stubborn miniature Buddha. “You don’t like her because she’s Daddy’s sister.”

  “I like your Aunt Vivienne just fine.” Which wasn’t entirely accurate. I had liked her. Once upon a time, I’d even loved her. But Vivienne regurgitated her pain over Adam’s death in spiteful accusations.

  “I hate you,” Owen said the words in a calm, neutral voice, but his eyes were full of emotion. Anger. Hurt. Distrust.

  My heart dropped like a two-pound sinker. “Well, that’s okay.” I kissed the top of his head. “I love you enough for both of us.” Turning up the Sonos speaker sitting on his nightstand, I waited for the soothing piano sounds to fill the room. Tears threatened, but they weren’t solely from Owen’s disclaimer of love. My entire day had been one fight after another, but a group of bankers armed to the teeth with numbers was so much easier to navigate than real-life dramas.

  I placed Owen’s room monitor on my nightstand and sat on my bed with my phone calendar, still searching for a free hour in tomorrow’s schedule. The haircut would have to be delegated to Mom. I couldn’t keep my ex’s voice out of my head. Face it, Kate; your priority is your career, not your family.

  When the bank loans closed, and my property manager Joseph Lafferty returned from his month’s leave, my life could revolve around Owen. I closed my eyes and let the tranquility of Bach filtering through the speaker lull me to sleep.

  ****

  “Daddy,” Owen’s helpless cry blasted through the monitor. I jumped out of bed and flew up the back stairs.

  Owen cobra-wrapped his arms around my neck. “Daddy couldn’t find me.” His breath was uneven, and his pajamas were damp with perspiration.

  “It was a dream, sweetheart. Only a bad dream.” I cradled him in my arms and rocked. The clean scent of his shampoo mixed with the medicinal odor of calamine. I kissed his head, his neck, and assessed his keening on a scale of one to ten, ten being all-out terror. This particular episode fell somewhere in the middle, a four or maybe a five. Middle ground, the therapist had stressed, was progress.

  Each snubbing sniffle nicked my heart as if blood oozed from the chambers and blocked a full breath. I couldn’t stop Owen’s nightmares, no matter how many trauma books I read, no matter how many sessions with the therapist I sat through trying to grasp an understanding of my baby’s hurt and confusion.

  I rocked him until his body went slack and heavy. I tucked him in bed, and this time I remained by his side until he fell into deep untroubled slumber.

  By three o’clock I’d given up on sleep, pushed past the nightmare worries and Calvin’s hare-brained schemes, and turned my attention to a problem I had a reasonable chance of solving. Who was this friend of Granddad’s?

  There had to be a link between the Cabral family and the drug ring. Otherwise, Nathan Parsi would have no reason to ask about the connection to our family. But surely Juan Cabral, now close to eighty, wasn’t involved. Evidence that the relationship between Granddad and his friend was fishing and not drugs should be easy enough to prove. For the second time that evening, I rolled out of bed.

  Pale moonlight lit my granddad’s office. I stood in the doorway and breathed in the faint, sweet scent of my childhood. Danish Davidoff pipe tobacco permeated the rugs and furniture. Memories of Granddad’s booming laugh filled my head and trickled into my heart.

  If my grandfather had spent time fishing in Mexico, the most logical place to find proof would be his credit card statements, charges from a lodge, boat rentals, fishing equipment. I remembered seeing his personal bills in a Bombay chest in the far corner of the room.

  I began with the oldest invoices, skimmed through the pages, and found nothing attributed to fishing charges. That didn’t make sense unless Granddad charged the trips as a company expense. Maybe he’d entertained potential clients, and the records were on business statements at the office. I’d make a point to check in the morning.

  I opened a small silver box on the top shelf and found Granddad’s passports bound together with a blue rubber band. His most recent passport was in the safe, but these four had long since expired. These books listed trips to France, Belgium, London, one trip to Japan, and ten years ago he’d spent a month in Australia.

  My heart pinged at the memory. Granddad had invited me to join him, but Adam and I were trying to get pregnant, and I’d recently accepted a promotion at Morgan Stanley—two logical reasons not to head off across the world for a four-week vacation. Now, I was sorry I hadn’t made the effort.

  The passports covered forty years, but there was nothing to indicate Granddad had traveled to Mexico, or Central and South America. I opened the safe, checked his most recent passport. Not one stamp. Mom had been confident Granddad visited Cabral in Mexico and they’d traveled Central and South America to fish.

  I picked up my cell and searched my contacts for Ben Snider, the best private investigator I knew. Ben and I had worked together on several too-good-to-be-true investment vehicles for Morgan Stanley. If anyone could uncover the truth about Juan Cabral and Granddad, it was Ben.

  Chapter Six

  I’d turned the mystery of Juan Cabral and Granddad over to Ben, and I focused on another problem disrupting my life—what my cousin Calvin was mixed up in. I stared at his thirty-three-year-old three-bedroom, two-bath ranch that he’d inherited when my aunt died. Considered overlooking his three unreturned phone calls, knocking on his front door, and inviting myself in for coffee. But I couldn’t ignore the little whisper of warning whirling in my head that Cal’s wife, Beth, might not know about her husband’s new dive boat. Spill that secret and I could forget about getting his opinion on the island trespassers. I was confident, if Calvin was involved in something shady, I’d know.

  I stifled a yawn and wished I’d taken the time to make a thermos of coffee before leaving Spartina. I hiked my skirt to my thighs and tried to find a comfortable position, an impossible feat in the front seat of the Hummer, a vehicle I hated. Mostly because it had been one of Adam’s impulse buys I ended up owning. I couldn’t help believing if Adam had taken the Hummer instead of the Porsche in our divorce settlement, he’d be alive today.

  A light drizzle fogged the windows. I found an old tissue and wiped the windshield. The kitchen light came on, and Calvin stood at the window sipping from a cup. Five minutes later, the garage door rolled up. I reached for my jacket and gave myself a pep talk. Buttoning my jacket against the morning drizzle, I walked up the drive.

  Cal, briefcase in hand, walked to his black Escalade. Seeing him was like looking at photos of Granddad and my father as young men. Blonde straight hair, brown eyes, and a broad-shouldered swimmer’s build. I walked into the garage and Cal’s eyes turned into razor slits. “What are you doing here?”

  I closed the distance between us. “You’d know if you’d take my calls.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “With the dive boat?”

  “What’re you talking about?” His befuddled look didn’t play. The corner of his left lid twitched. Calvin was a third-rate bluffer.

  I reminded myself that conversations with Calvin could swing into screaming matches in a hurry. “I know you own the Grady diving around Spartina’s dock.”

  “Old man might’ve left you the estate, but the river’s public land.” He smiled. Actually, it was more of an I-have-the-upper-hand smirk. “My buddies can dive anywhere they pl
ease, and there’s not anything you can do about it.”

  “It’s not the diving I’m worried about. It’s what they’re harvesting. Is it legal?” I crossed my arms in an attempt to look in control and turned my back to a green trashcan shoved into a corner of the garage that smelled of day-old shrimp. “What’s in the black bag, Cal?”

  “You get bored running the trust?” Cal’s voice a testy challenge; if he was hedging, he had a reason.

  “Don’t throw this back on me.” I heard recrimination in my tone and pulled back. Accusations would never work. Begging had possibilities. “Cal, please. I’m all Owen has. I can’t work the hours and do the travel anymore. Our debt restructuring will cash you out and give me breathing room until all the properties sell. I need five more weeks. Just keep whatever scheme you’re working on under wraps for five weeks.”

  “The bank was your idea. Your problem.”

  “Untangling a trust isn’t magic. I can’t just wave a wand. If you’re looking to cash out, this is the fastest way. And it’ll more than make up for whatever piddling deal you’ve got going.”

  Cal opened his mouth. A lie wouldn’t be far behind.

  I held up my hand. “Something’s going on. The Feds have the island under surveillance.”

  His head snapped back. His jaw worked back and forth like a cow chewing cud. “Old man also left you the island. Your land—your worry.”

  The back of my neck pinched, like someone tweezing the fine hairs one by one. I’d missed something somewhere, a word, a gesture. Understanding Cal’s motives had slipped by me unnoticed. Barry Island, Spartina, me managing the trust, were issues Cal and I had to work out. “The company’s not as successful as you think.”

  His face turned skeptical.

  I rushed on. “It’s true. When I took over after Granddad had his stroke, all eleven commercial office buildings were practically falling down. Rental rates were abysmal. It’s taken me three years to renovate and overhaul our Atlanta portfolio. Occupancy rates are steady, but the company has debt. If you want to cash out, this bank restructuring is your best option.”