No Way to Die

by Warren C Easley

  Pleased to hear we were now on a first name basis, I followed her strong, purposeful strides into her office and took a seat in front of a massive, cluttered desk that stood like a bulwark between us. Like the Ram truck, her bowling trophies gleamed in the overhead lights, dust free. “Like I mentioned on the phone,” I began, “I’ve got a few issues I was hoping you might help me with. I—”

  “You still think Kenny Sanders is innocent?” She interrupted, her tone impatient.

  “More than ever. But I’d—”

  “Who do you suspect?” She interrupted again, her eyes wide with curiosity, her intent clearly to dominate the conversation.

  I showed a patient smile. “I can’t discuss that. If you don’t mind, I’d like to circle back to Howard Coleman. You were, uh, going to make some inquiries about any connection between him and someone who might drive a dark-colored Peterbilt truck.”

  Her steel-gray eyes narrowed a fraction, and she waved a hand dismissively. “I didn’t find anything. We must have a couple of dozen Peterbilts on the books, nearly all dark-colored. None of them was running for us the day you had your accident.”

  “Thanks for checking. I’d still like to see your records,” I added, just to gauge her reaction.

  She huffed a breath and shot me a look of exasperation. “Look, Cal, my truckers work their butts off just to eke out a living here on the coast. This ain’t exactly a booming economy, in case you haven’t noticed. If they happen to be working something on the side—you know, a little black-market weed or cigarettes, that sort of thing—that fits with their delivery schedule, I’m not gonna pry. And I’m sure as hell not sharing any information voluntarily. They expect that from me.”

  I smiled at her brazen openness. “Do you take a cut?”

  Her eyes flashed at me, like light off gun metal. “No. I’m strictly legit.”

  “Of course. Let me ask you about something else—your relationship with Condor Enterprises. You were brought in to help finance the LNG real estate deal, right?”

  She blinked a couple of times, not a good poker move. “Who told you that?”

  I gave her the patient smile again. “It’s not exactly a national secret, Max. I’m curious. Why the sensitivity around your partnership in the company?”

  She paused, obviously deciding whether to respond or not. Finally, “Well, the LNG thing has the whole area divided in half, and the businesses we diversified into are not without controversy. A lot of my trucking customers are real straight arrows. Walter doesn’t really give a shit what people think, so we decided he’d take all the heat.”

  “When did you enter into negotiations with Twila Jenson to buy her share?”

  “Oh, a few months after Sonny died. I don’t remember exactly.”

  That tallies with what Twila told me, I said to myself. “Did you have any discussions with Walter Sanders prior to Sonny’s death?”

  “No. None.” No hesitation whatsoever.

  “Did you know Sonny was against the LNG deal you wound up helping finance?”

  She hesitated. “Now that you mention it, Walter did tell me Sonny was a holdout, but like I said, that was after the fact.” She shook her head. “Doesn’t surprise me. No disrespect for the dead, but Sonny Jenson was a fucking hypocrite.”

  “Hypocrite? How?”

  She twisted her mouth into a scowl. “Oh, you know, always playing the quintessential good guy around Coos Bay, anything to make him look good, get his name in the paper.”

  “Mr. Upstanding.”

  “Yeah, right. But he wasn’t all that innocent. Hell, I’ll bet the reason he balked on the LNG deal wasn’t out of love for the environment. It was a big play. He probably didn’t have the cojones to risk the money.” She caught herself and a look of dawning recognition spread slowly across her face. “Are you suggesting Walter had a reason to get rid of Sonny? Is he a suspect?”

  I ignored the question. “What else did Walter tell you about Sonny?”

  She looked to the side for a moment, then returned her gaze to me. “He told me Sonny was having an affair.”

  “With whom?”

  She paused as a sardonic smile formed on her lips. “With his wife, Krysta. I told you Sonny was a hypocrite.”

  “When did Walter tell you this?”

  “After he left Krysta, maybe a year after the trial.”

  “Did he tell you anything else?”

  Max shrugged. “No, not that I recall. I think I’ve already said too much about my partner.”

  “Why are you being so open?”

  She studied the clutter on her desk for a few beats. “I don’t know. First off, Walter’s a big boy and can take care of himself. And I don’t owe him a damn thing. If nothing else, that kid deserves to have the truth told about what happened. I think there was a rush to judgment.”

  That exchange pretty much ended the session. As I started toward the door, I noticed a photo on the wall of a thinner, younger Max standing with her arm around a teenage girl who apparently inherited all the beauty genes in the Sloat family.

  “That’s Annie, my kid sister,” Max said. “She passed fifteen years ago.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss. She’s lovely.”

  “Yeah, well, she was a beauty inside and out.”

  I looked around at the photos on the wall and didn’t see any of her father, Millard. “Your dad left you quite a legacy. I imagine he’d be proud to see what you’ve built.”

  She drew her lips into a tight line and looked away. “If he is, it’s not mutual,” she said in a voice I had to strain to hear. “He’s not mourned by me, Cal.”

  “I heard something about a boating accident.”

  “Yeah, he drowned right off Yoakam Point.” The sardonic smile again. “Makes you believe in poetic justice.” With that, she opened the door and let me out without another word.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  When I arrived back at the beach house that night, I found Claire on a conference call in her room with the door shut and Nando waiting for me with his bag packed. “I have a property closing tomorrow morning, and I need fresh clothing,” he said. “How did it go with the madam of trucking?” When I finished describing the meeting, he stroked his chin and lowered his thick eyebrows. “So, Maxine continues to deny any knowledge of the Brothers B, an obvious lie.”

  “Yep. No surprise there, if our interpretation of the tally sheets is right. She did admit some of her truckers might traffic in dope but played it down as black-market marijuana, something she turns a blind eye to.”

  “Such innocence. And she tells you Walter Sanders knew about his wife’s indiscretions.”

  “Yeah, that was a big surprise.”

  Nando flashed a knowing smile. “It seems Maxine is trying to point us in Walter’s direction.”

  “Right. Just like Twila Jenson.” I closed my eyes and massaged the bridge of my nose for a moment. “Who to believe? Max and Walter both have secrets, and we’ve got nothing tangible on either one of them.” I exhaled a long breath and looked at my friend. “Maybe this is a fool’s errand, Nando.”

  He shook his head. “It is not. You look tired. Get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

  “We haven’t talked about your fee yet.”

  He picked up his bag and opened the front door. “I am on vacation.”

  * * *

  Claire had already eaten, but Archie’s doleful look made it clear he hadn’t. I fed him and then threw a quick meal together—a three-egg frittata made with some asparagus spears, the remaining smoked salmon, and a generous amount of grated Gruyere. A bottle of Mirror Pond worked nicely for a beverage. After cleaning up, I wandered back to Claire’s bedroom and knocked.

  “What?” The response had an edge to it.

  I opened the door and looked in. She was sprawled on the bed with h
er laptop, surrounded by sheets of paper. Her eyes were red, her cheeks tear-stained. “You okay?”

  She looked away. “No.”

  “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

  “Everything.”

  I sat down on the edge of the bed. “Want to talk about it?”

  She stayed mute for a long time, staring at the seashell-patterned wallpaper across the room. Finally, she said, “It’s Gabriel.”

  “What did he do?”

  “It’s what he didn’t do. He hasn’t called or anything.”

  “I thought you broke up.”

  She snapped her laptop closed and looked at me, tears welling from her eyes. “Oh, Dad, I thought he was the one. Now it’s all screwed up.”

  “Do you love this guy?”

  She sighed, sat up against the headboard, and swiped the tears from her cheeks. “Did you know you loved mom, I mean, right away?”

  I smiled as the memory rushed back, vivid, undiminished. “It was lights out for me the first time I saw her. I was on campus, the Bear’s Lair, wolfing down a sandwich at one of those little stand-up tables. She came up and asked if she could share the table. I introduced myself, but all I got back was her first name and the fact that she was an art history major.”

  Claire smiled, and her eyes regained some sparkle. “Tell me what happened? I’ve heard this before, but it’s been a long, long time.”

  “I spent a week or so eating lunch there every day, just hoping to see her again. Finally, she reappeared, and when I went up to say hi, she didn’t even remember me.” Claire laughed out loud. “But I did get her last name and a phone number.”

  “What attracted you to her?”

  I paused for a moment, savoring a feeling I hadn’t allowed myself for a very long time. “The whole package, but if I had to name one thing, her eyes.” I looked at my daughter. “Your eyes.”

  “I’m not as pretty as she was.”

  I laughed. “Oh, yes you are. You got everything from your mom, well, except for your broad shoulders with freckles and being five-foot-ten.”

  “And your brain. I’m not prone to depression like Mom was. I don’t get depressed. I get angry.”

  “And now you’re angry with Gabriel.”

  She folded her arms across her chest and stitched her brows together. “Not so much angry as disappointed.” I waited for her to continue. “I don’t think he gets it. I’m not going to compromise my independence. Women can’t afford to do that anymore, Dad.”

  I nodded. “Give it some time. If he really cares about you, he’ll come around.”

  She looked away. “That’s what I’m afraid of, that he won’t. Did you and Mom go through any rough patches early?”

  I laughed. “Oh, yeah. We broke up twice before we ironed everything out. Relationships hardly ever ramp up smoothly, Claire.”

  She exhaled a long sigh, signaling that this particular conversation was over. I’d ventured about as much advice as I dared. My daughter kept her own counsel, and I knew it. We sat there in silence for a while, and I thought I could hear the muffled roar of the surf, but it was probably just some random buzzing in my ears.

  * * *

  Later that night, after the light went out in Claire’s bedroom, I poured myself a Rémy Martin and carried it into the dark living room. The moon, a waxing gibbous, hung low on the horizon, its reflected light beating a shimmering path back to the shore. I sipped the cognac and took some deep breaths to calm my mind. I ached for Claire, hating to see her in anguish over an affair of the heart, which was, of course, the worse kind of pain. My heart was like an old leather football that had been punted around, but hers was fresh, full of hope and expectation, and dangerously vulnerable.

  Maybe she’ll fare better than me, I said to myself. One can always hope.

  My thoughts turned to the Kenny Sanders case as I absently watched the moon sink below the horizon, extinguishing the lighted path. It was an apt metaphor. The momentum I’d felt just a few days earlier seemed to be extinguished as well. What we had was an embarrassment of motives without anything tangible to latch on to. My spirits sank with the moon until I thought of Claire. “Don’t get depressed,” I said out loud. “Get angry.”

  It was good advice.

  * * *

  By the time I finished the Rémy, the sea was dark, and my eyelids were heavy as lead. I drifted off, knowing full well that Archie needed a walk, but I was too far gone to act on the thought. A troubling dream set in. My dog was growling, a low, guttural sound signaling danger. Like a free diver coming up for a breath, I surfaced from the dream only to realize I wasn’t dreaming. Archie stood at the sliding door leading out to the deck, his hackles raised, his throat rumbling.

  Thump, then thump again. The muffled sound seemed to come from the north end of the deck. I came fully awake as the hair on my arms and on the back of my neck stood at attention.

  Where the hell did I put the Glock?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I’d left the Glock in the nightstand drawer in the bedroom. In pitch blackness, I took the stairs two at a time and came back down brandishing the weapon, a cold block of highly engineered steel in my hand. Archie hadn’t moved. I flattened myself against the wall next to him. “What is it, Big Boy?” I whispered. He looked up at me and whimpered a couple of times, a signal that he wanted out to investigate. Only the south end of the deck was visible from our vantage point. Nothing moved in the onshore breeze except the shadowy branches of the gnarled cedars beyond the deck.

  Thump, then thump again. The sound came from the direction of the gate that closed off the stairway down to the beach. Archie’s growl went up an octave. “Easy, Big Boy.” I slipped from the living room into the dining room, where a window afforded a view of the north end of the deck, then I moved along the wall and peered cautiously out the window. Thump, thump. The sound again, but this time I pinpointed its origin—the unlatched gate was catching in the breeze before the attached spring snapped it back.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, although I did wonder how the gate became unlatched in the first place. Had Claire left it that way? I would inquire in the morning. Meanwhile, I switched on the floodlights that illuminated the deck and watched for several minutes before venturing out to relatch it.

  That night Archie didn’t get his walk, and I slept with the Glock sitting next to me on top of my barely read Joe Nezbø like a bodyguard.

  * * *

  Ominous shadows of wind-swept cedars tumbled through my dreams that night, and when I got down to the kitchen the next morning, Claire was gone. A note on the table said,

  Meeting Kathy Harper in Coos Bay at 9. Wish me luck!

  Claire

  I fed Arch, drank a double cappuccino and headed down the outside stairs to the beach, with Archie leading the way. The cool breeze that kicked up the night before was still blowing, but the sky was achingly clear, and the slanting sunlight seemed to dance off the Pacific. Halfway down the stairs, Arch stopped to sniff an ugly brown spatter on the edge of a stair tread. I pushed him away instinctively.

  Nothing else caught my eye on the way down the stairs, and the soft, uneven sand at the base of the steps didn’t reveal any footprints, nor would I have expected it to. The plovers were out foraging in the wet sand, so I tethered my dog and walked north toward Yoakam Point, where a narrow gully—more of a trench, really—afforded access to Lighthouse Beach from the bluff above for those willing to make the steep climb. The base of the gully was littered with rocks, but the sand there was firmer. I saw what looked like fresh footprints between some of the rocks—by the spacing it looked like two sets of prints, one following the other. The footprints led down to the high tide line and disappeared, making it impossible to tell whether they headed north or south.

  As I studied the prints, Archie found another brown spatter, this one more voluminous. It looked l
ike partially dried spittle. With Archie scrabbling ahead, I started climbing up the trench. I didn’t see anything of interest except for three more brown patches that Arch stopped to sniff—two in the gully and one on the trail leading out to the Cape Arago Highway. I got down on my hands and knees, leaned in close to one of the patches and reluctantly took a sniff.

  Ugh! Chewing tobacco. No question.

  Twenty minutes later I was back at the beach house, completing a full circle. After finding a safety razor in a kitchen utility drawer and emptying a small aspirin bottle, I went back to the first patch of spittle I’d seen on the stairs and used the blade to scrape it into the bottle. Then I called Captain Harmon Scott at the Portland Police Bureau.

  “Oh, shit,” Scott said, “that friendly greeting means you want something, Claxton.”

  “You owe me, Harmon, and you know it.”

  “The hell I do.”

  “All I need is for you to run the DNA of a sample. See if it’s in the system. I need a name.”

  “Oh, is that all? You know I can’t do that.”

  “Yes, you can. Come on, Harmon. This is life and death stuff. I’m not kidding.”

  “Jesus, it’s always the same with you, Claxton. I heard you were on vacation.”

  “I am, but, uh, something’s come up.”

  The line went silent, and I feared he’d hung up. Finally, he heaved a sigh. “I suppose you need it like yesterday.”

  “How did you know that? I’ll overnight the sample to you. It’s a wad of spit and tobacco juice. I think it belongs to someone who tried to kill my daughter and me.”

  “Some vacation. Okay, I’ll see what I can do. A priority job done off the books, that’s gonna take a shitload of persuading.”

  “Who better? Thanks, Harmon.”

  “We’re flat even now, understood?”

  * * *

  Claire breezed in an hour later, and while I cooked brunch, she described her meeting with Harper. “She’s a nice woman, married now with a two-year-old and holding down a teller job at a savings and loan. I told her that as part of Kenny’s defense, we were conducting routine interviews of his friends at that time. She said she was shocked by the news and remembers that time vividly. She answered my questions and made it clear she never believed Kenny committed the murder.”