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

by Scott William Carter

  "Hmm. I'm detecting a wee bit of judgment in your tone."

  "No judgment. Just stating a fact."

  "Or sounding a note of jealousy."

  "Now you're just being mean. Not that what you're saying isn't true, you understand."

  They laughed. While they ate, Gage caught Alex up on everything. When Alex learned about the Younger brothers breaking into the motel room, he wanted to call the police right then, but Gage made him see that nothing good would come of it, at least not yet. One of the store's regulars showed up, an older woman, and they paused their conversation while Alex tallied up the paperbacks she'd brought in to trade. When finished, Alex sank back onto his stool, shaking his head.

  "I agree this isn't a straightforward suicide," he said, "but it's hard to see how Elliott Younger is behind it. Why would he create a will that makes Nora the executor if he wanted the money for himself?"

  Alarmed at how loudly Alex was talking, Gage nodded toward the stacks, where the old woman was browsing the mystery section.

  "Oh, don't mind her," Alex said. "Sweetest lady in the world, but she's almost completely deaf."

  "Okay."

  "It really does make more sense that Ed wrote the will."

  "Yeah, but why backdate it?"

  Alex shrugged. "Maybe he had an original will with that date, and he destroyed it and put the new will on it with the same date. Who knows? We're talking about a man who was literally losing his mind, Garrison. Maybe that date had some significance to him. Maybe he was losing track of the days and he thought that was the real date. You shouldn't rule out the obvious."

  "I'm not. It's just … the whole thing is baffling."

  "It's one of your stranger cases, that's for sure." Alex hesitated, thumbing the edge of one of the paperbacks on the glass counter. "I know this is difficult, but you haven't ruled out the possibility that Nora, you know …"

  "Is behind it?"

  "Well?"

  "No. Of course not. I have a hard time seeing that one, too, and it's not just because we've been … intimate. So, what, she snuck up to Barnacle Bluffs, forged the will with the typewriter in the library, wrote herself a letter with the same typewriter, tossed him off the lighthouse, then showed up at your place hoping to cash in on his enormous fortune of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars? Even if she is in financial trouble, that's peanuts compared to what she can make."

  "People have done more for less."

  "Sure. You may be right, though. Maybe Ed was just confused. Maybe he didn't mention his dog in the will because … he didn't mention his dog. Right now, it makes more sense than anything else."

  "So what are you going to do?" Alex asked.

  "Keep poking around, but quietly. If nothing else, maybe I'll find out more about his life. That's what Nora's really after, anyway. At least, I think so. Hopefully we'll have the DNA results soon. One way or another, that will shed some light on the situation."

  "What if they show that she isn't his daughter?"

  Gage shrugged. "Well, then we have one hell of a confusing situation, don't we?"

  The comment hung in the air between them, the store quiet except for the soft whisk of a paperback sliding against pine shelving. Then the phone rang. Alex answered it, listened for a second, then handed the receiver to Gage.

  "The woman of the hour," he said.

  * * *

  She was fine. Worried about him but fine. She was calling from a gas station in Brookings, just north of the California border. She'd already contacted her people in San Francisco to tell them she was on her way. Lady was enjoying the trip, but, Nora insisted, she missed Gage.

  She promised to call Alex's cell phone a few more times, especially when she actually got home. Gage said he'd call from the gas station payphone near his house at least once a day to keepi her informed. Quite deliberately, neither of them said goodbye. Then, on his way home, he felt a pique of frustration with himself, and instead of turning onto his street, he drove to the shopping center and bought a pay-as-you-go phone from the electronics store plus a card for a hundred minutes of talk time.

  It was the first cell phone he'd ever bought for himself. Would he keep it? Probably not. But he wouldn't be able to live with himself if Nora wanted to get in touch with him in an emergency and couldn't.

  And someone else. That had been nagging him as well.

  He picked up some groceries and headed home, getting the phone working in short order. He didn't even let the confusing array of menus on the phone's tiny screen detour him. He didn't call anyone at first, just sat at the kitchen table staring at it. The house felt like a big, empty mansion around him, cavernous and still.

  Somehow the phone was in his hand and he was dialing. On the third ring, she answered, surprising him.

  "Hello?"

  Zoe. God, how he loved hearing her voice.

  "So I distinctly remember," he said, "you telling me you didn't answer your phone if you didn't know the number."

  There was a pause, not particularly long, but long enough that he was struck with a terrifying thought: she'd forgotten him. Or, worse, she was disowning him.

  And then: "Dad!"

  It was a breathless squeal totally unlike her, an exclamation of uncontained excitement. Dad. There it was again. He felt an ember of warmth in the center of his chest.

  "I know you've only been gone three days," he said, "but it feels like three months."

  She laughed. "You got a cell phone."

  "I also saw the Virgin Mary in my toast the other day."

  "Did you take a picture of it with your new phone?"

  "It's not that kind of cell phone. At least, I don't think it is."

  "What kind is it?"

  "I don't know. What are the kind that have a hand crank on the side?"

  She laughed, which was also a rarity for her, and he loved hearing her laugh because there was never anything phony or false about it when she did. He asked her how she was doing. She said she was settling in just fine, liked her roommates, bought her books, did a tour of the PSU campus, and was getting excited about her classes. She said the guy who worked at the coffee shop a block from apartment was pretty hot—hot, she actually used the word hot; who was this person?—and because of him she was already spending way too much money on nonfat lattes. Gage asked if she'd told this coffee boy that her dad had a concealed weapons permit.

  "No," she said, "but I'll be honest, I've used your line of work to, um, discourage unwanted advances in the past."

  Unwanted advances. That sounded more like Zoe. All was not lost. "Is that so? Does it work?"

  "It works beautifully."

  "Good to hear. So how's Carrot?"

  "He's … adjusting. He gets along with my roommates all right, but mostly he sits in the window looking sad."

  "Maybe he misses me."

  "I think he does. Maybe I should bring him down for a visit."

  "Or I should come up to see him. Listen, about that, it's one of reasons I'm calling. I don't think you should come back to Barnacle Bluffs right now."

  "Oh?" There was worry in her voice.

  "It's about the case I'm working on. I don't want you to worry too much, but there are some … malcontents wandering about."

  "Malcontents. Sounds like an Agatha Christie novel. Are you in danger?"

  "Nothing I can't handle."

  "I know. It's just … different when I'm not there."

  Gage understood the feeling. She may be safer in Portland, at least in theory, but in reality he worried about her more when she was a couple of hours away. What would he do if there was an emergency? He'd be helpless. But for the time being, he was more relieved than worried that she was far from the epicenter of his crazy life.

  "I'll come see you when this is all over," Gage said.

  "And Carrot, too."

  "And Carrot. Yes."

  "And you'll call me to check in?"

  "Sure."

  "Or at least text me."

&nb
sp; "What's a text?"

  "Funny. Well, I've got your number now. So if you don't check in with me, I'm going to call you."

  They talked for a few more minutes about nothing of importance. It was one of the few times in his life that he didn't want a phone call to end. He liked hearing her voice. Maybe there was something to this whole cell phone business. Maybe he'd buy another hundred minutes. Or go whole hog and get a monthly plan. It was worth considering, anyway. He wouldn't do anything rash.

  He also kept her on the phone because he knew how stark the contrast would be once he hung up. She may be over a hundred miles away, but at that moment, she was right there at the kitchen table with him, just as she had been so many times the past few years. Eating potato chips. Cursing at her algebra. Paging idly through National Geographic. Snorting at his stupid jokes. Calling him out on his bullshit. He knew that as soon as he hung up that his house, their house, which had seemed so empty before he called her, would seem desperately empty once he was alone. He hoped, as he finally wrapped up the conversation and hung up, that he would be wrong about all this. He hoped, as he set the phone down on the table, the word Dad still ringing in his ears, that the deep, abiding loneliness he thought he'd vanquished so long ago would not sweep back into his life with such fearsome and overwhelming force.

  But it did.

  Chapter 18

  The next few days did not provide Gage with new evidence that Ed Boone was murdered, but they did flesh out some surprising details of his life.

  Not every contact added anything. He talked on his brand-new cell phone to Ed's doctor at OHSU, but unlike the general practitioner in Newport, this man wouldn't divulge anything at all, and said all further inquiries should go through their patient affairs office. Gage had better luck with Ed's mailman. Carl Talmack had been retired a few years, but Gage tracked him down through his former coworkers to a little cottage in the hills overlooking Pacific City, where he was in the process of sanding down an old Dory boat.

  He was happy to talk. The Bugle had run Ed Boone's name as the identity of the suicide at Heceta Head, and Carl said he was still trying to wrap his head around it. While they drank lemonade on the porch, Carl told Gage everything he knew about Ed Boone from his years delivering mail to Ed's Diner, and it turned out to be quite a bit. The reason? They'd been in Gamblers Anonymous together.

  "He wasn't very talkative then either," Carl said, resting the lemonade on his rather rotund belly. Sweat and sawdust dotted his white T-shirt. He wore red suspenders and a red baseball cap. "But he was a real decent fellow. I stopped going to meetings years ago, so I don't know if he kept going or not."

  The wind whispered through the spruce trees surrounding his property and stirred the tall blades of grass in the field below. Gage caught the barest glimpse of the ocean between the trees, but they were so far from the water that he couldn't hear it. What he heard instead was the buzz of traffic from Highway 101, much closer to the east.

  "Were you his sponsor?" Gage asked.

  "No, no. There was some Indian gal. She had a weird name …"

  "Storm-Tree?"

  "Right! Deedee Storm-Tree. That was it. So you know about her, huh?"

  "Just a little. So she was his sponsor?"

  "Yeah. She even worked at the casino, which all of us thought was totally nuts. But she said it was tough to get a better job for somebody like her, and casino policy prohibited employees from gambling. She'd lose her job if she was caught. We were all plenty skeptical, but I have to say, it seemed to work. But she had bigger problems."

  "Oh yeah?"

  Clearly relishing the role of storyteller, Carl sipped his lemonade and wiped his lips with the back of his sleeve. It left a trail of sawdust around his mouth and on his chin. Gage thought about taking another crack at his own lemonade, but it had been so sugary that he feared another drink might instantly make him a diabetic.

  "Yeah," Carl said, "she was what you'd call a functional alcoholic. Drank all the time. She carried around a water bottle, but all of us knew it was probably vodka. I have to say, though, she held it together pretty well. But Ed did tell me there were lots of times when she'd call him and need him to drive her home from the casino because she was drunk off her ass. Some sponsor, huh?"

  "Interesting," Gage said. "I thought I heard Ed was kind of a drinker back then."

  "Ed? That would have been a shock to me. His own father was quite a drunk, and Ed said he'd never touch the stuff. Maybe I'm wrong, but … well, I did a fair amount of drinking myself back then. I think I would have seen him at least once at the liquor store or in one of the bars. Or one of my drinking buddies would have known him. We were a small club back then. What would make you say that, him drinking?"

  Gage thought about the letter Ed had written to Nora, how he'd talked about all the drinking he'd done during those years. Was it another sign that somebody else had written it? Maybe they'd known he was a recovering addict and assumed it was alcohol. "Just some other information that came my way."

  "Huh. Say, you never did tell me why you're investigating him. What's there to investigate if it's a suicide?"

  Gage thought he might get more help if he offered up at least a partial version of the truth. "I'm going to tell you something, Carl, and I hope you can keep it to yourself. There's a possible family connection to Ed who's having me look into his life. Let me ask you something. Do you have any reason to think that Ed and Deedee might have … had an affair?"

  Carl raised his eyebrows. "Ed and Deedee? Well, I guess I wouldn't be totally shocked. One-night stand, maybe. Ed was a pleaser, you know. Part of what made him so good running that diner. So I can see him giving in to her one night in a moment of weakness. Then regretting the hell out of it." He scratched his chin. "Now I think about it, kind of makes sense."

  "How's that?"

  "Well, remember, this is all conjecture. I didn't really know Ed that well."

  "I understand."

  "It's just they both stopped coming to the meetings at exactly the same time. I tried to ask Ed about it once, you know, when I was dropping off the mail, just to make sure he was okay, but it's not an easy thing to talk about in public. Especially when I wasn't his sponsor."

  Thinking about this, Gage raised the lemonade, remembered at the last second how sugary it was, and faked a tiny sip so as not to offend Carl. Even letting the tsunami of sweetness touch his lips sent a jolt through his body. "How did he seem when you tried to talk to him?"

  "Hard to say. We were interrupted, but I could see in his eyes he didn't want to talk about it. I worried at the time he'd gone back to gambling, but now I wonder if it was because he and Deedee had a falling out."

  "I see."

  "Understand, I don't have no real reason to think this. I'm thinking out loud."

  "I do most of my best thinking out loud. When I think at all, that is."

  Carl nodded. "I've followed a few of your cases. Must be an exciting life. A lot more exciting than delivering people's mail, that is."

  "Oh, I don't know," Gage said. "It's mostly just vast stretches of monotony and boredom punctuated by brief flashes of slightly less monotony and boredom. At least when you deliver the mail, you have a sense of getting something done. I almost never know if I'm getting something done until it's done."

  "Mmm. So not many Dick Tracy-like gunfights with two-bit thugs, huh?"

  Gage thought about his encounter with Elliott and Denny Younger in Nora's room a few days earlier. "Not many. Let me ask you something else. You were in and out of that diner a fair amount. Do you remember a waitress named Ronnie? Veronica Meyer was her full name."

  "Ronnie? Oh yeah, sure! Sweetest little thing. Rain or shine, she always had a smile waiting for me when I walked in. I wonder what became of her."

  "She passed away a couple years ago."

  "Oh, that's too bad. When she left, that's when things really changed at the diner, even more so than when Ed sold it. It was still a good place, but it wasn't quite
so special anymore, know what I'm saying?"

  "How did Ed and Ronnie get along?"

  "Fine, I guess. I mean, she got along with everybody." He arched an eyebrow at Gage. "What are you saying? Are you implying that they, you know …"

  Gage shrugged.

  "Well," Carl said. "You're really making Ed out to be some kind of Casanova, aren't you?"

  "Just trying to get a fair picture of him for my client, that's all. They really want to know the truth of what kind of person he was."

  "I see. Well, if he and Deedee were carrying on, they were sure good at hiding it. But I just don't see Deedee doing that. She seemed like the sort of person that if she tried to lie, she'd burst into tears. Naw. But who knows—the older I get, the less I seem to know people at all."

  "I know what you mean," Gage said.

  They talked for a while longer, though Carl didn't have much more to add. He gave Gage a few names of other employees that he remembered from the diner during the time, though he couldn't say where they all were now. Gage thanked him and stood to go.

  "You know," Carl said, "now I think on it, Deedee did have a child around about that time."

  Gage looked at him. Carl was studying him carefully.

  "I delivered mail to her little bungalow for a while," Carl said. "Actually, both she and Ronnie. They were just a couple blocks apart. Funny, never really thought of them having Ed in common back then. I didn't get this route until after Ed sold the diner, and he'd kind of fallen off the map. They were just two ladies living in the same neighborhood. It was only a year. I was covering for a gal who was on maternity leave. Yeah, Deedee had a girl. Pretty thing, too. I remember seeing her running around with these cute little pigtails, always in the middle of a pack of kids. She was often the youngest one, but they sure all followed her around. Boys, girls, didn't matter. Something about her was special. I can't remember her name. Natalie, maybe? Something like that."

  "Interesting."

  "Mmm hmm. Boy, Deedee had a lot of men coming and going. But if I do the math back to when she and Ed were going to meetings … Who'd you say your client was again?"