A Lighthouse for the Lonely Heart: An Oregon Coast Mystery (Garrison Gage Series Book 5)

by Scott William Carter

  He barely heard anything after the word dad. She'd called him dad. First word out of her mouth. He doubted she was even conscious of it. In fact, he was quite certain she wasn't, considering how rarely she called him that, but it didn't blunt his joy any. She seldom spoke about her real parents, drug addicts who'd spent most of her childhood in and out of prison, both now deceased, and if she'd thought of anyone as a mother, it had been Mattie, her grandmother. Did she think of Gage as a father? Really think of him that way, after three years and all their ups and downs? How strange that a three-letter word like that could affect him so much. He'd never wanted kids—at least, that was what he'd told himself because Janet hadn't wanted them either—but right now there was nothing more important than being a father to the young woman in front of him.

  "I am excited for you," he said quietly.

  "You've got a funny way of showing it."

  "I just don't know what I'm going to do without my cat."

  "Ah, well. You can come visit him."

  "I can?"

  "Absolutely."

  "Tomorrow?"

  "Let's try for two weeks."

  "Hmm."

  "And I'll bring him down to visit you too."

  "He'd like that."

  They stood there for a while, nodding. The breeze picked up, stirring her hair across her face and neck. The tops of the arbor vitae shimmied against the deepening sky. At some point in the last few minutes, most of the fiery oranges and yellows, even most of the blue, had disappeared, leaving indigo fading into black. The color matched his mood, but he steeled himself against it. The big A-frame house was all lit up, every light on as she'd scurried from room to room packing the last of her things. It seemed incongruously bright for how empty it was. How empty it would be.

  "Well," he said, shrugging.

  "Yeah," she said.

  "Don't get too smart for me, all that book learnin' you're gonna do. I still want to be able to talk to you."

  "Uh huh. This coming from a guy who once read Encyclopedia Britannica cover to cover just for fun."

  "I was out of crossword puzzles that month. Besides—"

  Before he could finish, she burst into tears. She could have shot him with his Beretta and it would have shocked him less. While he was still fumbling around, trying to figure out how to respond, she seized him in a fierce hug. It wasn't exactly a loving embrace. It felt as if she was trying to squeeze all the air out of his lungs. Despite how small she was, she was certainly strong enough to do it. It took a moment to respond in kind, partly because she'd wrapped her arms in his own, and partly because they hugged so infrequently he always felt like he had to relearn how to do it with her each time they did. But he eventually got his arms around her, and he didn't want to let go, not ever.

  At some point he did. She got in her car, wiping her eyes, feigning a smile. She mumbled something about loving him. He mumbled it back. That was what they did. When it came to the important stuff, they mumbled. She shut the door and started the Toyota. He thought that was it, she was gone, and he felt as if a sinkhole had opened up beneath him, but then her expression turned puzzled.

  She pulled out her iPhone and answered it. There was a brief conversation he couldn't hear, then she clicked off and rolled down the window.

  "It was Alex," she said.

  "Oh?"

  "You really need to get a cell phone."

  He let this pass without comment. It would just bring another long-simmering feud to the front burner.

  "Anyway," Zoe said, "he wants you to come down to the bookstore."

  "Now?"

  "Now."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know, something about a woman who wants to hire you."

  "Did he tell her that I'm—"

  "Look, I'm not your secretary, okay? Just go down there. Maybe without me around all the time you'll finally have to get a phone."

  She rolled up her window and drove off. He watched her taillights disappear around the bend, listened until he couldn't hear the crunch of the tires on the gravel, and then stood there a while longer, wishing he could have ended their conversation on a better note. Then again, maybe that was appropriate. An argument, a hug, and capped off with just a bit of flippant attitude.

  It was all Zoe.

  Chapter 3

  Except for Books and Oddities, the rest of the little, ramshackle Horseshoe Mall at the edge of town was dark by the time Gage got there. The antique shop, the baseball card store, the auction house at the back—all the owners had long since gone home by seven o'clock on a Sunday in mid-September. This was true for most of the shops in Barnacle Bluffs. People would often stay late during the height of the summer, hoping to make one more buck when the sun was shining and Highway 101 was choked with tourists, but after Labor Day it was tough to find a storekeeper who even managed to stay true to his posted hours.

  The light from the store's front window spilled onto the boardwalk, a yellow rectangle on weathered wood. The neon orange open sign pulsed in the deepening darkness. Gage parked his Volkswagen van, his sputtering, grumbling, old beast, his mustard-yellow monster that he planned to drive as long as people were still allowed to drive, in front of the shop next to Alex's green Toyota Sienna and killed the engine. On the other side of Alex's van was a black Lincoln Navigator, a big SUV monstrosity with tinted windows and a California plate.

  He saw the woman right away. She saw him, too, or at least she looked in his direction from her place at Alex's front counter, probably drawn by the van's emphysema-like wheezing that persisted long after he'd killed the engine.

  And he knew, at a single glance, that he'd seen this woman before. He didn't know from where, but he definitely recognized her.

  She didn't make it easy. The banks of fluorescent lights may have been bright, even for a bookstore, but they hardly warranted the hazel-tinted sunglasses that took up half her face. She wore a black, oversized beret tilted low on her forehead, the mounds of curly, dark hair framing her face as surely as a hood. It was a nice face, what he could see of it, a little round but in a good way, exuding a sort of vibrant wholesomeness that penetrated even her concealing ensemble. She was short, even standing next to Alex, probably not much over five feet tall. A black wool trench coat, the collar turned up high, was big and bulky enough, especially with how short she was, to mostly hide her figure, but he did get a tantalizing sense of a bosomy, curvaceous form underneath.

  How did he know her? He sat there in the cooling van mulling it over until Alex looked over his shoulder at him, raising those big expressive eyebrows as if to ask just what he was doing. Then Gage donned his fedora—two could play the hat game—and went inside, hobbling up the steps with his cane. He wished he could have left the cane in the van. He always did when meeting a pretty woman. But the aches were just too piercing.

  The familiar scent of old books, an intoxicating odor if there ever was one, greeted him as soon as he stepped inside.

  "Took your time about it," Alex said.

  Bald, perpetually rumpled, and armed with the kind of thick, envy-inducing mustache that only a rare few men could ever hope to grow, Gage's old friend perched in his usual place on his stool behind his counter, mountains of dog-eared paperbacks, glossy kid books, and hardcovers with chipped and nicked jackets piled high around him. The day's trade, most likely. Gage barely acknowledged him with a glance, he was so distracted by the woman's smile.

  She'd lit up as soon as he walked through the chiming door, flashing him a row of pearly whites that would probably make men and women alike weak in the knees. And actually did, because it was her smile that finally allowed him to place her. He hadn't met her after all, though he did know her. Millions of people did.

  "Nice hat," Gage said. It was the first thing that came to mind.

  "Yours too," she said.

  "Nora West?"

  "You know me. I'm flattered."

  "I like your music."

  "Thank you."

  She smil
ed again. The compliment sounded inane coming out of his mouth, so pedestrian, the type of thing he was sure she heard dozens of times a day. He wished he could have said something more insightful, maybe something about how her music was a wonderful mix of jazzy R&B, modern pop, and solid folk music that gave it a timeless appeal. Her songs, not all of them, but most, were the rare kind that you could not only sing to in the shower, they actually stayed with you in a lasting way. If most of the popular songs on the radio were as fulfilling as fast food hamburgers, hers were home cooking all the way, the good kind.

  That was what he should have said. Yet her thank you was impressively genuine, or at least seemed so. It might have still been practiced, but she was good at it. In the way she spoke just those two words, she made him feel like he was her only fan. And he was, if he admitted it to himself, a fan, as much as Gage was a fan of anything.

  "Here buying books?" he asked. Another inane comment. He was really on a roll.

  She laughed and took off her glasses, placing them on the counter in front of her, looking at him with big brown luminous eyes that were just as rich and genuine as her smile. They were soulful, those eyes, and they were a perfect fit for her music. "No," she said, "though Alex does have a very nice shop. But I'm here to see you."

  "Ms. West surmised," Alex said, with a wry grin, "as most people who want to get in touch with you eventually do, that the best way to reach out to you is by contacting me."

  "It's that stupid series of articles Buzz Burgin wrote," Gage said. "He made you seem like my Dr. Watson."

  "That's part of it. The other part is your absolute commitment to a nineteenth-century hermit lifestyle."

  "Hey, I have Wi-Fi."

  "Uh huh. Are you going to keep it now that Zoe's moving out?"

  "We'll see."

  "Exactly." Alex looked at Nora. "I'm sorry. It's an old beef I have with him. I don't mean to make you feel bad for coming here. It's fine, really."

  "No, no, no," Nora said, "it's all right. You're old friends, obviously. That's nice. I always like seeing that, you know, the way old friends get along. Even when they bicker, they don't, you know? Anyway, it's good. It's fine."

  She'd tried to say this in a lighthearted way, but Gage detected a poignancy there, a barely detectable undercurrent of sadness, or longing, a hint of something missing or broken, and it was the first time, but not the last, that he realized something remarkable about Ms. West: she was lonely. Profoundly so.

  "Well," Gage said, "I do want to punch Alex in the face now and then. So far, I've managed to restrain myself—only because his beautiful wife would kill me if I made his face any less pleasant to look at than it already is."

  "Hey, I'm a handsome fellow," Alex said. "Back when I was a young man, still in the FBI, I had to fight women off with a stick."

  "Oh God," Gage said, "not more of the 'when I was a young FBI lad' stories … Nora, don't listen to a word out of his mouth. Most of it is about as true as what's in the novels in his store."

  "How about the part where I kicked you out of the academy?"

  "I dropped out."

  "You dropped out because I was going to kick you out."

  "No, I just didn't like the weather in Virginia."

  Alex shook his head and turned to Nora. "You better tell him quick why you're here. Otherwise this Abbott and Costello routine will go on for hours."

  Nora chuckled. "Abbott and Costello. Alex, that reference really dates you. Just how old are you, exactly?"

  "Ah," Gage said, "I think I'm really going to like Ms. West."

  "Nora," she said. "Please, just Nora."

  "Fine. Garrison for me. Alex. Or Old Man Alex, as we call him around these parts. That works, too."

  "Hey!" Alex said.

  "Anyway," Gage said, "I'm still waiting for the big reveal here. I assume you didn't come all the way out here to the ends of the Earth to meet me just because rumors of my dashing good looks and my one-in-a-million personality have finally spread far and wide?"

  "One in a million," Alex muttered, "that part's certainly true."

  "Would it break your heart," Nora said to Gage, "if I told you that wasn't the reason?"

  "A little," Gage said, "but I'll get over it. Can I ask you something? Is that a rental out there, or did you drive all the way from Los Angeles?"

  "I drove. It's mine."

  "Ah."

  "From San Francisco, actually. I have a place in LA, but I actually live most of the time in my condo in the Bay Area."

  "That's still a long haul. Ten hours?"

  "I went up the coast, so it took more like twelve. But I didn't want to risk the airports, not for this. The paparazzi, you know. I didn't want the attention."

  "Okay, now you've really piqued my interest."

  "I hope so," Nora said. "I really want to hire you. I know it's kind of crazy, me just jumping in a car and driving up here, but I had no choice. I'll pay any price, really. Money's not an issue. So whatever it costs—"

  "Hold on now," Gage said. "Before we talk rates, I need at least a sense of what you want me to do."

  "Wow," Alex said. "I'm surprised."

  "What?" Gage said.

  "You almost sound ready to say yes already. It's not like you. I warned Ms.—Nora, I warned Nora that she was probably going to be disappointed, considering how often you tell people no."

  "Maybe I need the work."

  "Uh huh."

  Gage, not liking his tone, let it pass. He nodded at Nora, encouraging her to proceed. She took a deep breath.

  "Do you know about the suicide at Heceta Head Lighthouse?" she asked. "Last Wednesday?"

  "Yeah. Just what I read in the Bugle. A volunteer there, an old guy, let himself in late at night when no one was around. He threw himself from the top—took a header right onto the … I'm sorry, did I say something wrong?"

  Nora's face had visibly paled. She swallowed as if she had tasted something unpleasant, started to say something, then shook her head and gestured for him to continue.

  "It'll become clear in a minute," Alex said.

  "Okay," Gage said. "I read they found a suicide note on him. Something about him having Alzheimer's and not wanting to wither away. I don't think the Florence police released his name, did they?"

  "No," Alex said. "Not officially. But Nora here already had an idea who it was, and I made a few calls to some of my friends in the FBI before you got here. Does the name Ed Boone ring a bell?"

  "It sounds familiar," Gage said.

  "I'll give you a hint. You know that hole-in-the-wall diner you like to eat at now and then?"

  "McAllister's?"

  "That's the one. You remember what it was called originally?"

  "Yeah, I think it was Ed's Diner … Wait. Ed Boone. That's where I'd heard it before. He was the original owner, wasn't he?"

  "Good job. Not many people even know that. He sold it over twenty years ago."

  "I didn't think he was alive."

  "I guess almost nobody did. Yet he's been living right here in town the whole time—not far from you, it would seem. You know that apartment complex on Driftwood Drive, the one on the other side of that undeveloped forest area behind your house?"

  "He lived there?"

  "Apparently."

  "And he volunteered at Heceta Head Lighthouse? That's an hour away." He looked at Nora. "Okay, what exactly is going on here? What does this have to do with you?"

  She no longer seemed like she might lose her dinner, but she was still having trouble speaking. She tried a couple times, shook her head, and then retrieved a wrinkled business envelope from the inside pocket of her trench coat. She handed it to him.

  "It's—It's probably easier if you just read this first," she said.

  It had already been opened. Both the address and the return address were handwritten in blue ink, the letters small but uneven, as if from a shaky hand. The sender was Edward M. Boone, and just as Alex had said, the address was the apartment complex not far from Ga
ge's house. Nora West's address was her condo in San Francisco. The T in her last name was slightly smeared, the paper around the letter warped, as if it had gotten wet but then dried. From the rain, perhaps. Or tears.

  The letter inside was a single sheet of white paper, folded twice. The text was typewritten—not from a computer, but an actual typewriter, the darkness of each letter faded and uneven, as if the ribbon was on its last legs. It was on the front and the back. Most of the lowercase t's were chopped off at the top, so they looked more like i's. A few of the words were scratched out with a blue pen, and Gage could see that most of them were just garbled versions of the words that followed. The letter was still filled with plenty of typos and other errors:

  Dear Nora,

  I am writing you now becaus I dont havemuch time before thingsreally go south and I cant remember even the important stuff. But Ive never been a very lucky man so I dont want to wait.

  I want to get the hard part out of the way straight off.

  Im your father.

  There I said it. Im sure you get all kinds of kooky letters from fans so your liable not to believe it. Thats OK. But keep an open mind now. I want you to know the truth. Its important I think. Your mother didnt want me in her life and I honord her choice. She didnt want me to never tell you and I honord that for a long time to. Even after I heard she died I didnt write you.

  Butyou deserv to know the truth. Your mother and I had an affair. It just happend. She worked at the casino as a waitress. I was married with two boys, had the diner, a lot of stress. Deedee was a lot of fun, easy to talk to. Then she got pregnant. She didnt tell me for a long time. She finally said I had to choose her or Kathy. I chose Kathy. My boys really needed their father and I still loved Kathy. I loved your mom too in a different way so it wasnt easy.

  So Deedee told me that was fine but I couldnt never see you. If I tried shed tell Kathy and the boys. I saw you aroudn town sometimes and you were so cute but I kept my distance like she wanted. Sad thing is things went south with Kathy and she moved to California with the boys. Most of it was my drinking but some of it was just us growing apart. I thought about trying to reconnect wiht Deedee but she was with that other guy by then and I saw you with him in the Jaybee's parking lot and saw the way you looked at him and knew he was the daddy you desrved. Then he got a job in Nevada I guess from what I heard and you all moved away.