The Thanksgiving Trip

by Kathi Daley

  To say I was nervous about how this talk would go was putting it mildly, but it was time to bring Mike into the loop, and being here seemed to offer the appropriate opportunity.

  After we’d all gotten dressed, Bree and Mike came into Tony and my bedroom. We sat on the bed and they sat on the chairs that framed the fireplace.

  “Before we begin, I want you to know that I was never intentionally keeping things from you. I suspected something and asked Tony to help me dig around, but I didn’t want to bring anything up until I was certain, which I suppose I’m still not.”

  “It’s fine, hon,” Bree encouraged. “Just tell us.”

  I took a deep breath, blew it out slowly, and started to speak. “After Dad died and I’d had a chance to get over the shock of it, I began to think about things. I’m not sure why exactly, but thing just didn’t seem to add up.”

  “What sort of things?” Mike asked.

  “I just thought it was strange Dad died in this horrific crash, yet there was never any explanation about what happened. Was another car involved? Did he run into a ditch? Did he fall asleep at the wheel? Had he been drinking? And then there was the fact that there was no body. I get that he was badly burned, but all Mom received was an urn filled with ashes. She never even went to the town where the accident happened to view the body or verify that it was really Dad who died.”

  “There probably wasn’t much left to see, and I’m sure Mom didn’t want to leave us alone while she went to take a look,” Mike said.

  “Maybe. And maybe my questions just stemmed from an inability to accept what had happened. In those early days, I kept telling myself that maybe it was someone else who’d died in the crash and Dad was just fine. I even convinced myself the accident hadn’t occurred at all, that it was just some big cover-up.”

  “You always did have an active imagination,” Bree said.

  “That’s true. I did have a way of rewriting things in my head. The important thing, though, is that I was so sure something wasn’t right that I asked Tony to help me find the truth.”

  “You weren’t even friends back then,” Bree pointed out.

  “We weren’t. But once we started working together, we became friends.”

  “So, did you find anything?” Mike asked.

  “Not at first. In fact, not for twelve years. Then, last Christmas, Tony found this.” I handed Mike the photo of Dad in front of the building in Los Angeles. Tony had printed all the photos we’d come across and brought them with us in case we needed them.

  “That’s Dad,” Mike said.

  “Yes, it is. When Tony found this photo, Dad had been dead for thirteen years,” I said. “The building in the background was built ten years ago.”

  Mike went pale. He clutched the photo. “What are you saying? That Dad is alive?”

  “We still don’t know for sure,” I answered. “Despite Tony’s facial recognition software, which tagged the photo, we have no way to know for certain whether the man in the photo was Dad or someone who just looks an awful lot like him. You know, they say we all have a double. I didn’t want to cause a fuss if it wasn’t him, so I decided not to say anything until we knew more.”

  “And do you?” Mike asked. “Do you know more?”

  “Yes, but let me get to it in a logical manner. It’ll make more sense that way. Or at least as much sense as these very confusing things can.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry,” Mike said. “Go ahead.”

  I looked at Tony. He gave me a look of encouragement. “While it had taken Tony twelve years to find this first photo, it only took another two months to find the next photo.” I handed Mike the next one, of the interior of a convenience store. Behind the counter was a tall, skinny man with long, dark hair, a woman with a child of around five or six paying for a carton of milk and a box of doughnuts, and an older man standing off to the side. The latter, who looked like my father, was out of the line of vision of the camera but clearly visible in the security mirror. “This photo was taken in a minimart just outside Gallup, New Mexico. Tony already checked with the store, and no one there knew Dad. The store is attached to a truck stop, so we assume he was passing through.”

  “When was that one taken?” Mike asked.

  “Two years ago.”

  Mike lost the little color he had in his face. “Two years ago?”

  I nodded. “The frustrating thing about these photos is that they aren’t traceable.”

  “What do you mean?” Bree asked.

  Tony answered. “The photos I find with my software can be traced back to an origination point. Some were initially posted on social media, or maybe they appeared with a newspaper article. Other photos come from security or traffic cameras, or are associated with driver’s licenses or some other form of identification. When I tried to run a trace on those two, I got nothing. Obviously, someone took the photos and uploaded them to a site accessible via the internet, but the source has been masked. I think we’re looking at some extremely high-level security.”

  “So you’re thinking Dad is involved in the government in some way?” Mike said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “We don’t have all the pieces yet, but we do have something else.”

  “Go on,” Mike said.

  I considered telling him about Mom’s connection with Jared Collins but decided against it. He was so protective of Mom, and me too, for that matter. “We didn’t get any additional hits until last month. Then Tony’s facial recognition software tagged a photo that appeared to have been in real time.”

  “Real time?” Mike asked. “You mean it tagged a photo that was taken just minutes before you found out about it?”

  Tony spoke. “It appeared that way. The photo seemed to have been taken somewhere in Eastern Europe, and as if the man was boarding a plane.”

  “What are you not saying?” Mike asked.

  “The facial recognition program isn’t infallible. It initially tagged a photo of someone named Jared Collins as being a match for your dad.”

  “Do you have this photo?” Mike asked.

  I handed it to him.

  Mike narrowed his gaze as he stared at the image. “This does look like it could be him.” He looked up. “Have you had any other hits since then?”

  “No,” Tony answered. “Which isn’t surprising. It’s more surprising to me that we’ve gotten so many hits after years without any.”

  Bree ran her hands through her hair. “This sounds like the plot for a movie.”

  I glanced at Mike. “That’s most of it. The only other thing we know we found out today. We showed Dad’s photo to a man who winters here every year, and he recognized him. He knew Dad as Tuck, and he said he came to the lake to visit someone named Finn every year.”

  “Then we need to talk to this Finn,” Mike said.

  “He’s dead. He was shot in the head fourteen or fifteen years ago while standing on the shore next to Dad. Apparently, they never figured out who shot him, and the man never saw Dad again.”

  Mike closed his eyes and leaned his head on the back of his chair. He looked shell-shocked, which was to be expected. I’d unloaded a lot on him all at once. It was going to take him time to process everything. I tried to imagine how totally overwhelming it would be if I’d found everything out in one huge lump. I’d had time to try to deal with the uncertainty of it all. Mike would need that as well. “I know you need time to think this over. We’ll talk more tomorrow. But Mike,” I said in a stern tone to get his attention, “don’t say anything about all of this to Mom. She’s already upset about what we talked about this afternoon. The last thing I want to do is ruin her whole vacation. Our spending time together as a family is very important to her.”

  Mike opened his eyes and sat up. “I won’t say anything. Maybe the four of us can go for a walk tomorrow to go over things again. I’m sure once this sinks in, I’ll have questions.”

  “That would be fine.” I said. I got up and crossed the room, then put my arms around Mike
and hugged him. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but I’m very glad you know now.”

  I felt the tension leave my body as Mike hugged me back. It would take a while for him to wrap his head around everything, but I knew the two of us were going to be okay.

  Chapter 6

  Tuesday, November 20

  After everything we’d talked about last night, I figured that would be the most stressful thing I’d need to deal with that week. I was wrong.

  The next day started out okay. Mom, who was smiling and looked a lot better, had made everyone a spectacular breakfast. A storm had rolled in, so Tony and I had taken a quick and snowy walk with the dogs earlier while Mike built a fire, and Mom and Bree got food on the table. Mom’s quiche was delicious and her homemade biscuits totally melted in your mouth. Last night, we’d talked about taking a hike today, but with the storm, it looked like our plans would have to be adjusted to board games by the fire. I really wasn’t much of a board game sort of person, preferring the action of video games, but somehow, with the storm and the family together, they felt right. I should have known things wouldn’t turn out as we’d planned; things rarely did. We were just finishing up our meal when there was a knock on the door. Mike got up to answer it. When I saw that our morning caller was Officer Holderman, and that he wanted to speak to Mike in private, I knew our lazy day in front of the fire was going to be discarded completely.

  “Is everything okay?” Mom asked after Holderman left.

  “The officer was in the area talking to residents and a few other people who mentioned the black truck I saw yesterday. Because I actually approached the truck and spoke to the man, Holderman wants me to come to his office to describe the man to a sketch artist. I told him that I’d do what I could.”

  “Yes, of course,” Mom said.

  “He mentioned that the little town where his office is located has a bunch of cute little shops all decked out for the holidays, as well as some pretty good restaurants. I thought maybe we could all go. You can go shopping while I meet with Holderman.”

  “I’d like to go,” Bree said.

  “Me too,” Mom seconded.

  “I think Tony and I will stay behind,” I said when Mike turned to me. “We have the animals to think about. We don’t know how long you’ll be, and the dogs will need to go out again.”

  “Okay. Then it will be just the three of us,” Mike said. “Holderman was going over to speak to someone named Hans Goober after he left here, so we arranged to meet in an hour.”

  “Who’s he?” I asked.

  “The closest resident to this house, and Holderman says he notices things. He’s hoping he remembered seeing something on Friday night.”

  “Hans Goober must be the man Tony and I spoke to when we were looking for Leonard’s owners that first morning here. He told us he spent winters at the lake, and he sounded as if he did see something.”

  “Like what?” Mike asked.

  “He was sort of vague.”

  “Maybe Holderman can get more out of him. I have the feeling there could be something going on that we haven’t stumbled upon yet. I’m going to run upstairs to change.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Bree said.

  “Text us when you know when you’ll be back. If it’s going to be late, Tony and I will start dinner.”

  Mom, Mike, and Bree, layered up to be warm while walking around the little town, and piled into Mike’s truck and headed out. Before he left, Mike made a point of telling me to stay in the cabin, stay safe, and not to go sleuthing around on my own. Further proof, I decided, that my brother didn’t know me at all.

  “I’m assuming you aren’t interested in Monopoly,” Tony said after they left.

  “You’re assuming correctly. It seems to me if Doug Peterman was in the house when the killer arrived, as we suspect, and was killed for being here, there must be something going on that connects back in some way to this house or something that occurred in or near it.”

  “Agreed.”

  “I’d like to take a really good look around. I want to open all the drawers and cupboards, look for trapdoors and hidden compartments. If we don’t find anything that stands out as being relevant, we’ll head south and pay a visit to Conrad Bilson. The little store should be open from twelve to four today. I wanted to talk to him about my dad as well, so that’s another reason to go.”

  “Okay, but this is a big house. Where do you want to start?”

  “The seemingly empty conference room. My gut tells me it may not be as empty as it seems.”

  One of the things I love most about Tony is that he never balks or even hesitates when I ask him to do things that, on the surface, might seem slightly crazy. I get that my desire to investigate the death of a man who I don’t know and whose death doesn’t really affect me might not be the best use of my time off, but there’s something about an unsolved murder, or any mystery for that matter, that gnaws at my gut and just won’t leave me alone. I guess that’s why I was like a dog with a bone when it came to finding the answers I sought in my dad’s death or, more likely, it seemed, faked death. I liked things to be wrapped up nice and neat, and a state of ambiguity wasn’t one I tolerated well.

  “I don’t know, Tess,” Tony said when we entered the room. “This seems pretty empty.”

  I had to agree. There was a hardwood floor with an area rug under a large rectangular table. Chairs were placed around the table and a large monitor that measured at least a hundred inches on the wall, which was covered with pine paneling. Other than that, the room was barren. It did appear as if Peterman had locked himself in this room and then tried to climb out the window, but that didn’t mean he had started off in this room. He might have seen a car pull into the drive, recognized the driver as someone he wanted to avoid, and ducked in here.

  “This room feels odd to me,” Tony said as he walked around the perimeter and checked the paneling for sections that might have been disturbed.

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “The rest of the house is stick built, with a fairly large crawl space beneath the floor. I noticed when we walked around the exterior looking for Leonard the other night that while this room has the same log siding as the rest of the house, the foundation is built from cinder blocks. I suspect,” Tony ran his hand over the wall, “that behind this paneling is cinder block all the way to the ceiling.”

  “So this room was built of cinder block, which was then paneled on both sides to disguise that fact. Why?” I asked.

  Tony shrugged. “I would say it needed to be soundproof, or to provide extra security, but the existence of a hollow interior door and the addition of the window seems to negate that. I suppose it’s possible the block structure already existed, and the house was built around it, incorporating the existing room into the new design. If that were true, Conrad Bilson should know what was here before the house.”

  “We’ll ask him when we talk to him. Do you think there’s something behind the monitor?” I asked. “If I was going to have a safe or a secret hiding space, I’d put it behind something like a picture or a monitor.”

  Tony walked over to the monitor. He ran his hands along the side, then put his face against the wall to try to take a peek behind it. “The unit is mounted to the wall. We’ll need to lift this off, but it’s going to be heavy.”

  “I’m not worried about the weight as much as the height.” I looked at the clock on my phone. “Let’s head over to the camp store. By the time we get there, Bilson should be open for the day.”

  ******

  Conrad Bilson was twenty minutes late opening the little store and attached laundromat that day, but it was his business, so I guess he was entitled to open it whenever he wanted. In a way, I was surprised he was open at all in the off season. Based on the hike we’d taken yesterday, looking for people who might have information about the pup or my dad, it appeared less than a third of the cabins were currently occupied.

  “Can I help you?” Bilson asked as we
walked in and came directly to the counter.

  “I’m Tess Thomas. I’m staying in the house at the other end of the lake with my family.”

  “Yeah, I remember. Is there a problem?”

  I shook my head. “No. I guess you heard we were the ones who found Mr. Peterman’s body on our first day here. My brother, who’s a police officer back home, is working with Officer Holderman on a few leads, but Tony,” I nodded toward him, “and I have a few questions as well.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “What sort of questions?”

  “For one thing, we spoke to several long-term renters who seemed to think something odd was going on at the house.”

  “I wouldn’t pay too much heed to what folks around here say. If you’re looking for odd, consider the sort of person who would want to live all the way out here during the winter.”

  “You live out here during the winter,” I pointed out.

  He chuckled. “True. But I make my living here at the lake. Most of the folks who come back year after year with the intention of hunkering in until spring are loners who just want to be left alone. Which is a personal choice and perfectly fine, but the isolation does tend to get to some folks. Seems like there’s always some sort of conspiracy theory going around. Last year, Hans Goober was sure the meteor he saw streak through the sky was an alien invasion, and two years ago, Cliff Farmer got everyone riled up about lights on the horizon. Personally, I think these little ideas give them something to talk about.”

  “Are all your long-term renters single men?” I asked.

  “During the winter they are. Well, mostly. Tom Flanders used to be married, but his wife moved into town over the summer, and I haven’t seen her since.”

  I remembered the photos of the woman with dark hair on the bookshelves.

  “The rates for the cabins quadruple come late spring,” Bilson continued. “The higher rates stay in place through the summer, so the winter residents mostly move on. There are one or two, like Tom Flanders, who have the financial means to live at the lake year-round.”