by Jean Martino
In a month he had been accepted by the board and joined the firm of McLean’s Investments Inc.
Charles returned with the sandwich and scotch and placed them on the marble table, handing him a white linen napkin and plate before leaving.
Wainwright ate hungrily, knowing he would not get home now till late. McLean had not finished with him yet. He downed the scotch, shuddering as the liquor burned his throat and esophagus. The five years had proven good financially and his wife had been happy with the increase in their living standards, but there had been many things that he had discovered over those years he was not privy to. Some of the top producers, Michael being one, had been able to go over his head and directly to McLean which annoyed him but which he had learned he had to keep out of. Just what that connection meant to them all and what was discussed between them he would never know.
Something told him now that McLean was deep into some things that could, if made public, pull him and the firm down. He desperately needed to know. It would affect his own livelihood, but he would have to walk carefully for now, not appear overly inquisitive. But there were ways he knew of that, if necessary, he could use to unravel the mystery surrounding Michael Brampton and his accounts, and the mystery surrounding his and his wife’s disappearance. He had friends too in the business.
CHAPTER 9
Wednesday evening June 18:
After moving Michael’s Camaro into the garage with Cindy’s car and closing the roller door and locking it, Scott went into the kitchen where Linda was preparing a salad and actually humming as she worked. He walked up behind her and kissed her on the back of her neck. She shivered with delight and gave a girlish giggle.
“Where’d all the fresh food come from?” he asked.
“I drove Cindy’s car to the market after you left this morning to go back to Dan’s,” she said, tossing sliced up tomatoes in with the lettuce. “I couldn’t survive any longer without fresh fruit and vegetables. I’m baking some potatoes and have green beans and carrots in that pot and in the refrigerator are two large pieces of fresh whiting.”
He reserved his lecture about her not driving Cindy’s car anymore for later. He hadn’t seen her so relaxed as she was tonight and didn’t want to spoil things for her. Another night there wouldn’t hurt. Everything was locked up securely and if anyone was watching the house they couldn’t get in anyway. “Check the answering machine?” he asked.
“Oh gosh, I forgot all about it,” she said.
“I’ll do it.” He walked back into the family room and saw the red button flashing and pushed it to rewind and start spurting out messages. Jessica had called from Australia. “Hi Linda,” she said, “just letting you know I checked your email accounts and still nothing from Cindy or Michael. Talk later. Take care. Love you.” Several were from Cindy’s girlfriends asking if she had heard anything yet. And one was from Michael’s father, Geoff Brampton. “Linda,” he said, “this is Geoff, Michael’s father. His mother and I are becoming very concerned about Cindy and Michael. We had a call today from the president of McLean’s Investments, a Mr. Wainwright, who was asking if Michael was here... said Michael had told him a week ago he had a family emergency and had taken two week’s off. We don’t know at this point what has happened to our son and your daughter but would appreciate your calling as soon as possible to enlighten us. Thank you. Bye for now.”
When he turned off the answering machine he saw Linda standing behind him, holding the avocado she had been about to peel when she heard Geoff’s message. She looked at him questioningly. “I have to call them and tell them what’s happened so far,” she said. “They must be going out of their minds with worry.”
He took the avocado from her and she wiped her hands on the dish towel. “Call them now,” he said. “Tell them everything. They have a right to know.”
As he finished the salad and turned on the vegetables, he could hear her talking to the Brampton’s from the living room. She explained everything in detail, leaving nothing out, even telling them about the scratch on the passenger side door of the car she had found in the Camaro and how she knew it was a sign that they were both ok. And then she told them about him and how he was a detective and helping her, and that somehow they would find Cindy and Michael and she was sure they were alright. She told them there was nothing they could do by flying out there but that was their decision and she promised from now on to call them every day or as soon as something developed.
As he listened he found his mind wandering to the fact that Wainwright had called them. It sounded to him like Wainwright had more on his mind than the disappearance of one of his staff. Tomorrow he would call his buddy, Max, in the Sacramento Police Department and ask him to find out what he could about Wainwright and McLean’s Investments from their data base.
Linda hung up and came back into the kitchen her face flushed. “I feel so bad for them,” she said. “They aren’t a young couple anymore and this will destroy them. I just wish I could have given them more hope.” Her face had started looking worried again and he didn’t like it.
“You have done more than anyone could ask,” he said, carrying the salad bowl into the dining room where she had set their places already.
She hadn’t moved when he turned around again. “What’s wrong, honey?” he asked.
She shrugged. “It’s probably nothing, but I just remembered something Cindy’s friend, Beth Ann, told me on the phone yesterday. She said Cindy had told them, at the farewell dinner they took her to, that she was working on a special assignment that involved some, as Beth Ann put it, unscrupulous people in the desert. I forgot all about it. Scott, what do you think Cindy meant? Beth Ann said when she asked what it was, Cindy said she couldn’t talk about it then.”
Casually walking past her to lower the heat under the vegetables, Scott remembered the yellow legal sheets he still had in his jacket pocket and the initials CD scrawled all over them. Making a mental note to have Max check if there was someone on their criminal data base with those initials living in the California desert towns, he forced a smile and turned to face her.
“I wouldn’t worry about it right now,” he said. “We can’t do anything more tonight. Tomorrow I’ll look into it some more. But now let’s try to relax and enjoy this great dinner you’ve prepared. Time to put the fish in the oven I think... want me to do it?”
“No,” she said, shrugging off her concern and determined that tonight they would relax for a couple of hours. “I’ll do it. You can open the wine and find some music on the radio. I feel like music tonight. And,” she gave him a shy smile, “I haven’t even had a chance to dance with you yet.”
* *
Wainwright had left McLean’s house in Beverly Hills around ten pm. On the way to his home in Huntington Beach he decided to swing over to Newport Beach to Michael’s home. He had written down the address from the Personnel Records at the office before he left for McLean’s that afternoon, his curiosity now increasing. McLean had given him explicit instructions to not discuss Michael’s disappearance with anyone else in the firm, and if any of Michael’s clients called in to talk to him then they were to be redirected to McLean’s home office number. He was also told to tell Waters and Bremerton to keep their mouths shut. But he knew the other brokers and staff would be discussing it by now and there were some things he could not control.
McLean had explained nothing to him about Michael’s accounts, only told him that from now on he would take charge of them. That seemed a strange decision to Wainwright. As president he felt he should have been the one to take control, but obviously McLean didn’t want him knowing certain things, and now he was beginning to worry that the company was being operated in a manner that could be considered unethical.
It was past midnight when he drove slowly down the street and found the house. It was in complete darkness but he could see, from the street lights and the look of the neighboring houses, that this was not the normal type house a stockbroker could have afford
ed. And what puzzled him more was the Mercury Monterey parked in the driveway. Without stopping he continued driving past the house and headed for Pacific Coast highway and his home. How, he wondered, could Michael have afforded a million dollar house at the least? And what was tying him in so closely with McLean that had made McLean behave so nervously when he heard he had disappeared? These were questions he needed to find answers to and soon, before his own career ended up disappearing also.
* *
Thursday, June 19:
Scott awoke at 5 am and couldn’t get back to sleep. Linda was curled up behind him in the double bed and very carefully he extracted himself from her embrace and got out of bed. She didn’t even awaken, she was sleeping well. He knew she had drunk too many glasses of wine last night that had completely, totally, relaxed her. He tiptoed over to the closet and slowly opened it trying not to make any sounds that would wake her. Taking his brown slacks off a hanger and a beige shirt, he collected fresh underwear from a drawer in the bureau then walked quietly to the door of the guest room, pulling it closed behind him.
In the bathroom off the master bedroom suite, he showered and shaved and redressed then headed quietly down the hall to the den, closing that door behind him also before turning on the desk light.
He unfolded the yellow legal sheets he had carried with him for two days now and studied them again. The only thing that looked strange besides Cindy’s hurried notes was the initials CD. Perhaps they could mean Compact Disc, he thought, or Certificate of Deposit, or something else... but the way she had kept writing them all over the notes he had a feeling they stood for something else... perhaps a name. He would run that by Max later when he called him.
Not needing the pages anymore he pulled out the hidden manila folder and put them back in there, not feeling it would be right to take them with him, then pushed the CPU back against the file again completely hiding it. As he did his eyes fell on something in the crack between the desk and the filing cabinet and he stood up and pulled the filing cabinet further away from the desk.
Reaching down he picked up what looked like a black travel document folder and quickly opened it to find Cindy’s Airline tickets and her travel itinerary. But there was no passport. Checking under and behind the desk again he found nothing. No signs of her passport. It all indicated to him that Cindy had not even tried to take that flight; that she had left in such a hurry she had been unable to find the travel documents even. But she must have taken her passport. But why would she need her passport if she was not traveling overseas? And why would she have left that current file hidden alongside the CPU? Was she hoping that a miracle would happen and her mother would somehow travel across the world to find it and left a clue? Not much of a clue at this moment, he thought, remembering the scratch in the car’s door that Linda had sworn was another clue, but perhaps she was too scared to leave anything more definite.
For several minutes he sat at the desk staring into space, thinking. He and Linda had gone through the whole house with a fine toothed comb looking for any personal papers, like the home ownership, insurance papers, credit card statements, utility bills, bank statements, receipts, work papers that Michael might have been working on in his job, even a hidden safe somewhere where they might have put them. But they had found nothing. Linda didn’t even know what bank they had an account with. “Any time I sent them money,” she had told him, “it was with American Express money orders, because I knew they would clear immediately and not have to go through a bank account.” But Wainwright would know. He would be able to find out on the back of endorsed salary or commission checks, something he would check with him on later.
The house had a mysterious feel about it to him. It was almost as though it had been deliberately stripped clean of any evidence showing Cindy and Michael had inhabited it. There wasn’t even one scrap of garbage in the outside bins or the inside waste baskets. But Cindy’s car was still there, and the couch and armchairs she told Linda she had bought with the money Linda had sent them and the file Cindy must have been working on hidden behind the CPU, and now Cindy’s travel documents, minus her passport. No sign of Michael’s passport either. As far as Cindy’s travel itinerary and ticket he thought they might have gotten missed somehow being as they were caught between the filing cabinet and the desk like that. And why were the hard drives removed from the CPU? There were too many unanswered questions. He didn’t like the feeling he was getting either.
If he had to make a profile of it all he would have said that Cindy and Michael had been in a desperate hurry to get away from the house and their lives there. Leaving the couch and chairs was not significant. But had they left Cindy’s car there deliberately to throw someone off the fact they had left permanently? If so, then someone else would have access to the house besides Cindy and Michael. And perhaps, also, Cindy had not meant to leave that file; perhaps she had hidden it from Michael for some reason and forgotten about it in their rush to leave there.
It was almost seven am when he walked past the guestroom and heard the water running. Linda would be up and showering and he went downstairs to start the coffee percolating while he called Max at his home in Sacramento.
“Sorry to wake you so early, Max,” he said when Max answered the phone groggily.
“Not a problem,” Max said. “How’s it going?”
“It’s a puzzle,” said Scott. “But I have a few things I want you to check out for me on the police data base if you could.”
“Sure, let me grab paper and pen.” In a minute he was back. “Go ahead,” he said.
“First,” said Scott, “I need some info on this house; who is on the trust deed as owner, and the name of the bank or financial institution that holds the mortgage if any.” He gave Max the address and waited till he had finished writing.
“Next?” said Max.
“This might be a bit difficult,” said Scott. “But is there some way you can find out if any criminal elements living in the California desert towns have the initials CD?”
“That’s all you’ve got? Just the initials?”
“Afraid so.”
“Ok,” said Max. “Anything else?”
“McLean’s Investments Inc.,” he said. “Something about that company, and their president, doesn’t sit well with me. Any info you could find on that firm would be good.”
He paused for a moment, allowing Max to finish his notes. “There’s just one last thing that might be difficult to check. Would it be possible somehow to find out if a certain American citizen left the country recently if one didn’t know where they went or when? I know this is probably impossible without calling every airline and having them check every flight over the last week, but is there some central point that would collect this information, like the CIA or FBI for instance?”
“Dunno,” said Max. “But I’ll check it out for you and see. Will call you back as soon as I have the information.”
“Thanks old buddy,” said Scott. “Talk soon.”
As he hung up, Linda came up behind, already dressed in beige slacks and a yellow top, her expression one of deep concern. “I couldn’t help hearing what you said,” she said. “Who were you talking to and why are you checking if an American citizen had flown out of the country recently? Do you mean Cindy and Michael?”
He turned to face her knowing he had to explain. “I found Cindy’s airline ticket and her travel itinerary stuck between the desk and the filing cabinet, but her passport wasn’t with them. I don’t know, honey, if they were left on purpose or just missed. But I am trying to cover all bases. That was my buddy Max I was talking to in the Sacramento Police department. He can check through the police data base.”
She nodded and said nothing as she walked into the kitchen and poured two cups of the freshly brewed coffee. Placing one in front of him where he now sat at the kitchen table, she sat down across from him with her own. “OK, Scott,” she said. “You’re obviously worried about more than that. I saw your gun and the holste
r on the bedside table. What is it? Tell me what else is going on in your mind.”
He took a sip of his coffee before answering then placed the cup on the table, holding it with both his hands. “I wasn’t trying to hide the fact I had my gun with me,” he explained. “It’s not unusual for someone in my profession to carry one. After over thirty years putting criminals behind bars one never knows when one of those creeps will get paroled and come looking for revenge. I also should explain that even though I am retired from the Police Department now, I still have the right to work as a detective, to arrest someone I feel is endangering others, to use my authority to maintain the peace, and to carry a gun to protect myself and others if necessary.”
Linda fought off her goose bumps, realizing that Scott was still a law enforcement officer and as such had earned the right to be respected, and was not someone to mess with. “I understand,” she said quietly.
“Several things about Cindy and Michael’s disappearance concern me,” he continued. “I asked Max to check on the initials CD I found on some yellow note pages I had found in Cindy’s current working file, which I accidentally found hidden alongside the CPU that I told you had had the hard drives removed from. You said Beth Ann had said she told her she was working on something involving some unscrupulous people in the desert and I wanted to see if “CD” was one of them.”
