Breaking Down Barriers

by Jean Martino

  “Nothing new from this end,” said Grant. “Our detectives are working on it now and hopefully they will come up with something soon. They said you and Mrs. Rossi had moved out of the house this morning.”

  Scott laughed. “They are on the ball aren’t they?”

  “Our motto is to serve and protect,” laughed Grant. “We’ve had someone watching that house since you moved in there. Don’t want word getting back to the Sacramento division we are not doing our job.”

  “Never happen,” said Scott. “Anyway, you probably know we picked up the Camaro yesterday from the impound yards.”

  “We do.”

  “We decided to move out of that house this morning because it’s got a strange feeling about it. Like I already told you, we went through it with a fine tooth comb and there’s not a paper in it to identify Mrs. Rossi’s daughter and her husband had lived there, every article of their clothing has been removed, and their personal things, the computer’s hard drive has been removed from the computer’s CPU, and the filing cabinet is empty in the den.” He didn’t tell Grant about that current file that he had taken with him when he and Linda moved out and was now in his car trunk along with Cindy’s airline tickets, and itinerary. For some reason he felt it would just muddy the waters of their investigation to bring those items to the fore right now and he wanted to do some more checking on his own first, especially on Carl Denholm and his link to McLean’s Investments.

  “Sounds to me like someone stripped the house of their identities deliberately,” said Grant. “The detectives here are now looking closer into that area. There’s a strong suspicion that the house could be linked somehow to their disappearance. If we find that to be the case we will get a search warrant to go through it ourselves right now.”

  “That’s for you to decide,” said Scott, realizing it was only a matter of time now before Grant’s team discovered what he had learned this morning from Max. He could have saved them that time but at the moment he needed a bit more time to pursue his own avenue of thoughts on the matter. “Right now I was hoping you could do something else that might shed some light on the situation.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I think it might be a good idea to find out where the couple, especially Michael Brampton, held a bank account, and if the funds in it have been withdrawn recently. Wainwright, the president of McLean’s Investments where Michael worked should have cancelled payroll and commission checks with Michael’s endorsement on the back.”

  “Actually we are one step ahead of you on that too,” said Grant. “We got that information from Wainwright this morning. Michael Brampton had an account with UCB here in Newport Beach and at this moment it contains the princely sum of $121.63.”

  Scott went quiet for a moment then said, “he has to have another account too then, perhaps at another bank that Wainwright isn’t privy to, because he wouldn’t have been depositing and withdrawing all the money he was supposed to have made just for expenses. Were you able to find an account for Cindy Brampton?”

  “Not yet,” said Grant. “But I take your point about the two accounts. Are you thinking that there is something illegal going on between Brampton and his banking and possibly his account activity with clients at McLean’s Investments?”

  Scott took his time answering. He wasn’t about to push any ideas on Grant. Grant was smart enough to figure it all out himself and it wouldn’t take long for his detectives to uncover the fact that Roger McLean owned the house Cindy and Michael had lived in, or that the FBI was doing undercover investigations on McLean’s Investments. “I’m not thinking anything at the moment,” said Scott, “except finding the couple and making sure they are safe so the lady’s mother will have some relief. I’ll leave your department to figure out what has been going on. It sounds like you have your finger on the pulse.”

  “Well get back to me if you learn anything that can push it along faster,” said Grant. “I’ll have a search warrant prepared and search the house but it sounds like you’ve exhausted that area. I’ll also have a squad car do a drive by every hour or so now we know it’s vacant and keep an eye on it.”

  “Just one more thing,” said Scott remembering the post office box. “Mrs. Rossi said she wrote to her daughter at a post office box in Newport Beach and it didn’t look like any mail was ever delivered to the house. Have you checked with the post office to see if a forwarding address was placed with them?”

  “Sure did,” said Grant. “They apparently had a post office box there but it was cancelled on the 10 of this month, and they left no forwarding address so any mail received since then has been returned to the sender.”

  “No utility bills even?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Talk to you later then,” said Scott, then hung up.

  When he went out to the kitchen, Dan was sitting at the table reading the paper. “Coffee’s ready,” he said, standing up and pouring some into a mug for his father.

  Scott sat down at the table. “How’s Maggie?” he asked, thinking he should call her that night.

  “Fine,” said Dan. “Missing you of course but understands and says to tell you to call when you have time. She sends her love and said to tell you to be careful. Oh, and she also said to say hello to Linda for her.” He smiled when he finished relaying the message. “So when are we gonna get to meet her anyway?”

  “Soon, son, soon. Right now her mind is focused totally on finding her daughter and son-in-law. Her emotions are still very raw. She’s a strong lady but the pressures of not knowing where her daughter is and if she is safe is tearing her apart. Something has to break soon on the case. Detective Grant at Newport Beach police department is doing a good job on it but he’s running into brick walls too.”

  “Poor lady must be going out of her mind,” said Dan sympathetically.

  Scott stood up and drained the rest of his coffee before putting the mug on the kitchen sink. “She is, and right now I have to buy some food and get back there before she thinks I’ve disappeared too. Talk to you later.”

  He drove off heading for the market, trying to decide how much he had learned from Max today that he should tell Linda, and how he was going to explain to her that Cindy and Michael didn’t even own that house she had thought was their home. If Roger McLean was the sole owner of the house then perhaps he was also paying the utility bills. But why? What was the connection and why was Michael getting the royal treatment?

  CHAPTER 11

  Thursday afternoon, June 19, 2003:

  Harry Parkinson was 67, retired seven years now from the Long Beach Police Department, making a good reputation for himself as a private investigator who got the job done in record time and who could be trusted to keep things confidential. At six feet four inches his body seemed to have been stretched to the limit with hardly an ounce of fat on his slender frame. His hairline had been creeping backwards for years now until now there was only a thin gray fringe above the nape of his neck. Blue eyes squinted behind horn rimmed glasses perching on the bridge of his nose and resting on bony cheekbones. To others he looked just like a normal retired going-on-old man who most people looked right past without a second glance. But, behind that helpless old man façade, Parkinson possessed the ability to analyze and make decisions with a swiftness that even amazed him at times.

  His office was in a nondescript building in Santa Ana on the east side of LA. He never spent much time there so to him it mattered not that the desk was cluttered with files and unread letters that spilled over onto the only other chair in his office that he had to continually clear off to allow a client to sit on. He could not be bothered with organizing paperwork. Everything he needed to know was filed carefully into his hyper active brain; stored there until needed when he could whip it out in seconds to fill himself in on necessary details.

  Wainwright walked into Parkinson’s office mid afternoon, having left his own office on the excuse of a doctor’s appointment. Parkinson was expecting him to look exac
tly as he did from the sound of his nervous voice when he had called for an appointment that morning; forties, slightly overweight, and edgy. Since then he had learned about Wainwright’s hiring by that head hunter in Newport Beach for the president’s position at McLean’s Investments. He knew also that Wainwright was no mover and shaker in the corporate world but had fitted the profile Mclean had wanted for the job; hard working, kept his nose to the grindstone and knew how to keep things organized, but lacking the ability to go for the jugular and push himself into situations that were not in his job description. In other words, he fitted the bill for McLean’s Investments, whose reputation for underhand dealings was not unknown to Parkinson.

  After the initial introductions and shaking of hands, Wainwright got right to the point, putting his cards on the table. “There are some things going on at McLean’s Investments that are making me feel uncomfortable and causing me to be concerned about my future with that firm,” he said.

  “Anything specific?” asked Parkinson.

  “Yes,” replied Wainwright and proceeded to tell Parkinson about Michael Brampton’s disappearance and Roger McLean taking over his accounts and him being kept in the dark, and the weird feeling he had that something was not right. “Yesterday I had a Detective Walker come to see me with Michael Brampton’s mother-in-law, Mrs. Linda Rossi. They told me she had filed a missing person’s report with the Newport Beach Police Department on Brampton and his wife, and his car had been found abandoned in a factory parking lot in San Diego. They wanted to know if I knew where he had gone but of course I had no idea.”

  He took an envelope out of his inner pocket containing two thousand dollars and placed it, with the business card Scott had given him, on Parkinson’s desk. “This is a down payment for work I want you to do. And the card Detective Walker left earlier this week when he and Brampton’s mother-in-law came to my office. He appears to be working independent of the NBPD; I don’t understand his involvement unless it’s of a personal nature with Mrs. Rossi. I need to know exactly what is going on behind the scenes with Roger McLean and Michael Brampton at McLean’s Investments, and who this Detective is. At the end of the job there’ll be another three thousand if I get the information I need and want.”

  Parkinson reached for the envelope, opened it and fanned the money, then put it in his pocket. Then he picked up Scott’s card and read it before placing it back on his desk. “Let me try to speed this up,” he said, tapping his pencil on his desk. “You think the company is doing illegal transactions which could end up having them investigated by the SEC and which could end up implicating you, even if you aren’t aware of what they are doing.”

  Wainwright was startled at the man’s understanding of his problem even though he had not explained it like that. It hadn’t even entered his mind about the Securities Exchange Commission getting involved, but now that Parkinson had put that idea into his head, he felt even more concerned. He had been steered to Parkinson’s office by a very trusted and old friend of his who had had dealings with Parkinson before and could vouch for his ability and discretion.

  “Exactly,” said Wainwright. “I want to find out what’s going on there and why this Michael Brampton has disappeared and why McLean himself has taken over his accounts and shut me out. Can you do it?”

  “Might take a few days,” Parkinson said. “But, sure, I can find that out for you. How far you want me to go with it?”

  “As far as you have to,” said Wainwright, “without causing anyone involved to suspect my involvement in your investigation.” He stopped and waited for Parkinson to reply. When he didn’t, Wainwright added, “I need to know what these people are up to and why I, as the president, have been excluded from knowing certain information.”

  * *

  When Scott arrived back at the beach unit loaded with bags of groceries, Linda almost wept with relief. “I was worried about you,” she said, grabbing two of the four bags and heading for the kitchen. “You’ve been gone so long and I thought something had happened.”

  Dumping the bags on the counter, he grabbed her by her waist and spun her around to face him. “Sweetheart, you have to stop this worrying. You’re gonna drive yourself crazy worrying about every little thing. I had to stop at Dan’s for something and we got talking and then I had to make a couple of calls and forgot the time completely. But I’m here now so nothing to worry about. OK?”

  “Oops,” she said, trying to smile. “I’m starting to sound like a nag aren’t I? Sorry about that.”

  “Already forgotten,” he said, helping her unpack the groceries; wondering how he could get her in the right frame of mind before dumping all that stuff he had learned today on her. He had to tell her. It was the right thing to do. “Hey!” he said, looking at the wall clock that registered three pm. “It’s still hot outside and the water is looking great. Let me just put something more casual on and we can go down on the beach and take that walk now.”

  In seconds he was back, wearing blue Levis, a white tee shirt and navy sneakers. “Ready?” he asked, grinning at her.

  She didn’t need a second asking. Tossing the meat and chicken into the freezer she grabbed his hand and pulled him to the door. He noticed she was wearing white shorts that showed off her shapely long legs, white sneakers, and a yellow tee shirt that hugged her full breasts. She had the full body of a mature woman without looking overweight, which he preferred to the skeletal frames the young women of today seemed to think was so sexy. Her skin was still firm, and her blue eyes, that had always fascinated him when he saw them peering at him through his computer screen, now lit up at the thought of getting outside again and feeling free. He realized how much she must have been missing the hills around her home in Adelaide where she had told him she walked for hours every day.

  His skin was as tanned as hers was fair. “Didn’t think to bring shorts with me,” he said, grabbing his sunglasses and keys as she pulled him out the door. “Tomorrow maybe I’ll buy some and some swimming trunks. Did you bring your bathing suit with you?”

  “I did,” she said as she waited for him to lock the door. “Don’t know why because never expected to use it, but it’s like well, automatic, to toss in a bathing suit when heading for California.”

  They hurried down the stairs and onto the beach, feeling the sand moving under their sneakers as they plodded down to the surf. The beach was narrow and the sand a beige color but it didn’t matter, they loved the feel of it and the sun on their faces and the breeze ruffling their hair. Scott rolled up his pant legs as far as they allowed and they removed their sneakers and waded into the water, holding hands as they walked around the sunbathers and children playing in the surf.

  Scott asked her about her home in Adelaide, knowing how much she loved it, and he told her about his home in Sacramento and the lake where he went fishing and caught trout and how he cooked them over an open campfire outside his RV. For an hour their minds were completely absorbed with each other and both of them totally forgot for that time the pressures of trying to find Cindy and Michael.

  They arrived back around five pm still laughing and feeling happy as they both shared preparing the evening meal, salads and grilled steak with fresh vegetables that he knew she loved and fresh fruit and ice cream for dessert. He also had bought several bottles of white wine and a bottle of scotch and they could see the ocean through the window as they ate and everything seemed so peaceful and perfect that for a while, as they watched the sun setting and the sky turning to red and gold, they lapsed into a comfortable silence.

  “It’s so beautiful, Scott,” she whispered, turning to smile at him. “I am so happy you found this place.”

  He grasped her hand and smiled back. “You’re beautiful,” he said, seeing the color back in her face from the sunshine and her eyes shining, her blond hair still tousled from the ocean breeze framing her face. Before they knew it they were in the bedroom making love on the king size bed, totally enamored with each other, not caring about doing dishes
or drawing drapes, and even the sounds of the revelers still on the beach nearby only served to enhance their feelings of sensuality.

  It was almost nine pm when they showered off the sand from the beach and shook it out of the bed sheets. Linda had put on her pink silk robe and Scott had on his gray bathrobe as they settled onto the couch, Linda curling up inside his arms, their feet on the coffee table next to their drinks.

  He didn’t want to ruin the mood but knew he could no longer hold back on telling her his news. “Honey,” he said, leaning forward to kiss the top of her head. “I called my buddy Max today when I was at Dan’s place. Remember you heard me talking to him yesterday morning and asking him to find out a few things for me?”

  He felt her suddenly stiffen. “Yes,” was all she said.

  “Well,” he continued, “he checked on the ownership of the house and said it is owned solely by a Roger McLean, who is majority stockholder in McLean’s Investments where Michael works.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, sitting up straight and drawing her robe closer around her. “Cindy and Michael own that house.”