Changing Tides

by Veronica Mixon

  An itch crawled between Nathan’s shoulders. “Who has access to Lafferty’s computer?”

  “Other than Joseph, only me.”

  It would take a minimum of forty-eight hours to get a warrant for Barry Real Estate, maybe more. “I want a look at Lafferty’s computer,” he said. “There’s a good chance the data’s retrievable.”

  Kate nodded. “Of course.”

  He picked up the landline on the side table and handed her the receiver. “Call your assistant, ask her to meet my agent at the office and allow us access.”

  She made the call, articulated precise instructions, and stood.

  He rose and gripped Kate’s hand. Her icy fingers caught him off guard. He squashed an urge to warm them between his own. “Right now, I’m still on your side. But if you’re hiding something, anything I should know, now’s the time to come clean. Otherwise, this isn’t going to end well.”

  “I promise you. I have no idea where Joseph’s gone or why.”

  Nathan didn’t get the lying buzz. She looked straight into his face, no quick glance over his shoulder, no fluttering eyelids.

  “What did you find in Ben Snider’s car other than the photo of you and your son?”

  Kate inhaled a sucker-punch breath. “Nothing.” She tilted back, glanced away.

  He got the lying buzz. Didn’t make sense to close him out. With Calvin dead, she should want federal protection—unless telling him the truth was more dangerous.

  “Kate, help me understand why Joseph would lie to his wife about you being behind his sudden trip. Why you were summoned to find Calvin’s body. Why your private investigator has suddenly gone missing. And why the phone you gave Beth Thompson is now out of commission. If you want me to believe you’re innocent, you’ve got to give me something.”

  Kate shook her head. “I can’t.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I closed my bedroom door and slid into a chair. A murderer threatened my son and someone working for that enemy currently lived under my roof and watched my every move.

  Cold fear crystallized in my core, like water slowly freezing over a pond. My grandfather and Calvin were dead, and Joseph had vanished. I had no one left. No one to testify that I was innocent and had no connection to the Cabral family or any part in the money laundering.

  Everything Nathan had said in the atrium was true.

  Ben was missing.

  Calvin was dead.

  And Kathleen claimed I had sent Joseph on a trip in the middle of the night. The white notebook from his office sat on the bedside table, a vivid reminder of the secrets Nathan and his team would soon uncover. The possibility of jail and being forced to abandon my son paralyzed me.

  Accessing my shambled life brought agony in waves—stronger, then weaker, then strong again. All my hard work—the company debt restructuring, the Atlanta construction projects, the enormous amount of time required to turn those properties into substantial profit centers, all wasted efforts.

  But a kernel of hope simmered, then caught and blazed.

  During my tenure at the bank, I’d scaled the corporate ladder to vice president, busted the symbolic glass ceiling at the age of thirty, and negotiated five multimillion-dollar deals using one philosophy.

  If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.—Sun Tzu

  I had lived by that tattoo-worthy philosophy in my business life. And I had to do that now.

  I grabbed Joseph’s notebook and flipped to his bank statements. If my lying property manager had slithered underground, he’d still need money.

  I sat cross-legged on the bed, opened my laptop, and created a spreadsheet listing his liquid accounts. His checking and savings were joint accounts with Kathleen and the combined balances were just over fifteen thousand. An investment portfolio at Morgan Stanley, solely in Joseph’s name, had a value of forty-seven thousand. But the bulk of his holdings were housed in Surinvest Bank located in Uruguay, in a town called Montevideo.

  In banking circles, Montevideo was known as the Switzerland of the Americas. According to the Surinvest monthly statements, Joseph’s offshore account had a balance of over ten million dollars. All deposited since Granddad’s stroke.

  The last section in the notebook was labeled Additional Funds and held another Surinvest bank statement and a copy of the initial application that opened the twenty-year-old account. My hands stilled. I flipped back a page, reviewed the paragraph on account types and beneficiaries; Right of Survivorship had a check mark.

  I rested my hands on my knees and sucked in some very necessary oxygen. I must be hallucinating—the names, the numbers, they couldn’t be right. I read somewhere that the human brain, an amazing instrument no computer could duplicate, processed millions of stimuli in hundredths of a second. Mine went into deep freeze. Seconds passed, or I suppose it was seconds, then my brain raced forward.

  Granddad had laundered millions of dollars over the past twenty years. And according to this record, he had stashed his money in Montevideo.

  The beneficiaries listed on Granddad’s account were Katelyn Landers and Calvin Thompson. The check beside the Right of Survivorship box meant with Calvin’s death, the entire balance transferred to me. All twenty-nine million, nine hundred sixty thousand, twenty-seven dollars and seven cents.

  Based on my limited knowledge from television police dramas, in a murder investigation the police assumed family first, then business associates, then anyone who benefitted financially. Me. Me. And me.

  A stampeding hysteria swamped me. Nothing I could do would change what Granddad put in motion twenty years ago. Even if I disowned the Surinvest account, with all the evidence weighing against me, especially Calvin’s death, Nathan would never believe I didn’t know this money existed.

  My world bent and broke in two.

  I’d never be whole again.

  Joseph’s plan was ingenious.

  When I ordered the warehouse appraisals, Joseph knew I would discover the embezzlement scheme. Logical that I’d search his office and find this notebook, planted just for me. Joseph would figure that if Calvin and I screamed fraud, we’d have to give up the almost thirty million dollars. Joseph believed he’d jammed Cal and me against a moral wall—but Joseph had overplayed his hand. Cal was dead, someone was threatening to kill my son, and within a few hours Nathan Parsi would reconstruct Joseph’s emptied hard drive and discover his money-washing scheme. My grandfather’s Montevideo money held not one smidgen of interest to me.

  But if I stayed holed up in my room, immersed in the injustice of my situation, and gave Nathan time to fit the final pieces together, my future home would have bars. I couldn’t let that happen without a fight. I needed time and there was no way I’d leave Owen unprotected.

  My thoughts scurried with one idea after another, like a squirrel searching for the perfect place to hide an acorn. I fixated on a landscape of a field of poppies hanging over the sofa in my sitting area. Behind the artwork was the key to slipping away from Spartina undetected. I plugged the Montevideo account information into the spreadsheet, hit save, and emailed myself a copy.

  I removed my cell phone from my purse and placed it on my bedside table. Pulled on a pair of black jeans, a black t-shirt, and a black blazer, then laced up my black Nikes. I swung my purse over my shoulder and the poppy painting to the side. Ran the tips of my fingers over the cypress paneling and pushed a brown button hidden in the wood’s natural grooves. A section of the wall slid open. I stepped into a secret passage that ran from the master suite to my grandfather’s office, a narrow musty hall Calvin and I had played in as kids.

  ****

  I crouched under the bay window in Granddad’s office and peeked over the window ledge. Parsi’s sentry ninja marched by. I had fifteen minutes before he made another sweep of the perimeter.

  I opened the safe, picked up two tightly packed bundles of hu
ndred-dollar bills, and stuffed the fifty grand in my purse. I considered taking the Glock sitting on the second shelf before locking and turning the tumbler. But in my frame of mind, it might be better to forgo a deadly weapon.

  Nathan’s remand to remain on the grounds of Spartina hovered over my head like a black thunderous cloud. If I just kept breathing I’d be all right. I knew from experience, the only way through despair or heartbreak or treacherous fear was to dive straight through.

  Cedar said Joseph wouldn’t be anxious to stick his neck out on my behalf, lest the Cabrals chop it off. But my plan didn’t include convincing Joseph to cooperate, only to find out where he was hiding. Then I’d turn the spineless jellyfish over to the authorities and beg Nathan for clemency.

  I had no choice but leave Spartina and get Mom and Owen to safety. Then I’d use my banking connections to follow the money trail and find Joseph. I didn’t buy Kathleen’s story that her husband had disappeared in the middle of the night. She was Joseph’s wife; she’d cover for him. And Nathan didn’t know what I knew—Joseph had ten million dollars stashed in Uruguay.

  I refused to let the only person who could attest to my innocence slip away with millions in dirty money without a fight. But before I’d risk working with Parsi to find Joseph, Owen and Mom had to be safely hidden from the snitch on Parsi’s team. And I had no idea if the Cabral snitch was one of the men here at Spartina or one of the agents assigned to the security detail on Mom and Owen.

  I found the extra key for the caretaker’s cottage in Granddad’s desk drawer. I pushed against the end of the bookshelf and stepped back into the passageway. Halfway down the dimly lit hall, I stopped in front of a door impersonating a ceiling-to-floor window, the only Spartina exit not connected to the alarm system. It took four tries and a broken fingernail to pry the rarely used latch open. I moved from the passageway into the side garden, and quietly pushed the door back in place.

  I hugged the five-foot hedge covered in pink blooms and slipped down the walkway. The jet-black sky had no moon, and I leaned against the garden gate searching for a flashlight app on my burner phone. The smell of tobacco smoke didn’t register until the unmistakable rumble of speech echoed to my right. I stepped back and melded into the bushes

  The end of two burning cigarettes ghost-walked past me, continued down the path, and headed toward the koi pond.

  I stayed nestled inside the hedge and tried calming my racing heart. I hadn’t factored smoke breaks into my timeline. If I waited until the agents finished their cigarettes, the next security sweep would bring the sentry ninja within feet of where I stood.

  I peeked around the cottage wall. The cigarette guys walked along the viewing deck. I assumed their destination was one of the benches by the pond.

  Dropping to a crouch, I crawled. The hedges surrounding the cottage weren’t tall enough to hide me, so I didn’t use the flashlight. I reached the back steps, placed my back against the wall, and waited. No footsteps.

  I tried lining the key with the lock, but my fingers were slick with sweat and the key slipped. The ping of the aluminum hitting concrete sounded as loud as a tree branch tumbling to the ground.

  James’s Ford Fusion was the only vehicle on Spartina property not monitored by the security cameras. I had to get inside the cottage and find his car keys. I ran my hand over the steps. My knee pressed against something sharp—the door key.

  I risked turning the flashlight on, unlocked the door, and slipped into the kitchen. A man who insisted on changing smoke alarm batteries every three months would keep his spare car key in the most logical place, by the back door. A pegboard for hats and coats hung to my right. I plucked the ring with a silver Ford medallion off a hook.

  I stepped outside and relocked the back door. My hand was on the Fusion’s door handle when I realized the dome light would come on as soon as I opened the car. A quick check on the smokers verified they were still at the pond. I hurriedly slipped inside and turned the engine over, the rumble of the hybrid as soft as an electric golf cart.

  I turned right and drove without headlights through the back pasture. An empty hayrack loomed in my path, and I swerved right, then left, and came within inches of the water trough. I kept my speed at fifteen miles an hour, which in a bumpy, pot-holed pasture without lights, bordered on treacherous.

  Driving over the cow grate, I headed for the highway. The farther I drove from Spartina, the crazier my plan seemed. I had a better chance of winning the Boston Marathon than of finding Joseph.

  I thought of Owen, the custody battle, the divorce, Adam’s death, everything Owen had been through over the past three years. Having a felon for a mother was incomprehensible. I would do anything, legal or otherwise, to find Joseph, prove my innocence, and protect Owen.

  I’d find the scumbag all right. But first, I had to get Owen and Mom to a safe place.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Florida line loomed another twenty-five minutes down the road before my mind settled enough to call my mother. “Mom.” My pent-up anxiety rolled into sobs, and I pulled to the shoulder of the highway.

  “Kate, what’s happened?”

  Words padlocked in my memory wouldn’t budge, as though the left side of my brain dared the right to articulate the impossible truth of today.

  “Take a breath, sweetheart. Just say the words one at a time.” My mother’s intuition had always been uncanny. I was in my teens before realizing she wasn’t psychic. She couldn’t see beyond the veil or view the past or predict the future—she just knew me.

  “Someone murdered Calvin.”

  Her mournful, wounded-animal whimper pierced my heart. “Who killed him?”

  “Cabral. At least, that’s what Cedar thinks. I’m not sure what the police think; they don’t confide in me.”

  She struggled to catch a breath. “Cedar’s wrong. Juan wouldn’t kill Calvin.”

  “I didn’t say he pulled the trigger. But Cedar thinks the drug cartel is responsible, and Nathan’s convinced Cal was part of the Cabral drug cartel.”

  “Not every wealthy man of Mexican descent is a drug lord. Juan was a friend of your grandfather’s. He’d never hurt anyone in our family.” Not a trace of doubt entered her declaration.

  I agreed with her in theory. It was like a splinter my mind kept getting stuck on. Whoever killed Calvin threatened to hurt Owen if I went to the police. But if the Cabrals had a snitch on Nathan’s team, they knew the island and the warehouses were compromised. So why would they care if I told the police? Something didn’t add up. “Cedar thinks we should go into hiding until Nathan closes his case.”

  “We can’t leave. We have to bury Calvin.” Pragmatism—Mom’s undying strength. “Owen and I will leave for Savannah in the morning.”

  I ached to see Owen. Touch him. Hold him. You came close to losing him once. Will you chance it again?

  A sharp and fiery maternal anger spread. “You can’t go back to Savannah. Calvin’s murderer also threatened Owen.”

  “What?”

  “There was a note with Calvin’s body.” I recited the words seared into my brain, but by the time I came to the last two lines, I couldn’t breathe. I leaned my head against the steering wheel as hot pain ripped like a knife across my forehead.

  “Katelyn, you need to come to the island.” Mom said.

  I gripped the wheel and straightened my back against the seat. “That’s why I’m calling. I’m on my way. But Mom—”

  “Do the police believe Juan threatened Owen?”

  “The threat warned me against going to the police. Only Cedar knows. I’m—”

  “Have you talked to Beth?” she asked. “She shouldn’t be told her husband’s dead by a stranger.”

  “I left three messages.” I was worried about Beth. I was worried about Ben. Neither had answered my phone messages. But protecting Owen came first. “I’ve decided we should leave. Go out west until everything settles down. The authorities won’t release Cal’s body for a few days and
his burial won’t be scheduled for at least another five, maybe more.”

  “This house is safe. Two marshals are parked in our driveway.” Her tone seemed off, as if half her mind still tried to process Cal’s death. I didn’t want to dump any more on her, like the possibility that one of the men guarding them might be working for the Cabrals.

  “Cedar’s working on securing us a place in California.” I said. “But Parsi’s issued a remand for me to remain at Spartina, and I can’t risk coming to Stanley’s.”

  “Why would the marshal do that?”

  Too many reasons. “Cedar’s trying to work it out, but don’t say anything to anyone about me coming to Florida or that we’re planning a trip. Can you meet me at the club in the morning? They open the restaurant for the early golfers at seven. Tell Stanley you want to introduce Owen to golf, or something?”

  Mom exhaled a wearied breath. “Katelyn—we need to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Not over the phone.” Her voice broke.

  “What is it?” Mom never cried. She was silent for so long my curiosity began to put down roots and grow.

  She sniffled again. “I can’t talk anymore.”

  “Meet me at the club in the morning at eight o’clock. The marshals will follow you, so meet me in the women’s locker room. There’s a back door.”

  “Are you sure that’s the best thing?”

  “Mom, I have to get Owen to a safe place until this is over.”

  “Okay. We’ll be there.” Her voice resolved. “I have to go.” She disconnected.

  I stared at the phone. I wanted to call back, to make sure she was okay. I’d dumped a lot on her. Might be better to give her a few minutes to process, and then check back.

  Hoping Cedar was still awake at eleven-thirty, I dialed his number. He answered and didn’t wait for my greeting. “The house in California is in a town called Eureka.”