The Beachside Cafe (Saltwater Secrets Book 2)

by Sage Parker

  Alex gasped, looking offended for a moment. Then he laughed and pushed his chair back to stand up. “That sounds like a signal to leave the room. Cameron?”

  Cameron laughed, standing up. “Yeah, well, I suppose she’s right, though. I don’t really do that right. I’ve been told that for years, starting with my dear mother.”

  Jaymee gathered the dishes together, wondering what kind of woman Cameron’s mother was. She wondered if she would ever be able to meet her. She didn’t know if Cameron’s parents were still alive. She never liked to assume anything like that after her fortieth birthday. All of her friends parents were in their 60’s or 70’s. Sometimes more. That usually meant they had a better chance to have passed and Jaymee never liked to risk asking questions like that. It was something someone had to offer.

  Cameron’s voice faded as he and Alex walked away from the dining room.

  “I know what you did, Mom,” Cheyenne said, coming over to the sink where Jaymee was filling one side with hot water and soapy bubbles.

  Jaymee looked over at her. “Whatever do you mean, my dear?” She gave Cheyenne an innocent look but she knew what her daughter was talking about.

  “You asked Alex here so you could set me up with him, didn’t you?”

  Jaymee smiled, lovingly, dipping the first plate in the water and washing it off. She handed it to Cheyenne who placed it in the dishwasher. As she continued rinsing the rest of the dishes, Jaymee said, “I didn’t invite him here to set you up with him. I invited him here because he has become a friend of mine and is a long time friend of Cameron’s. Yes, I did think you’d like him. I thought so before. But you should always expand your horizons if you can. You would like him if you spent more time with him. I know you would.”

  “Well, I appreciate the effort, Mom.” Cheyenne leaned over and kissed her mother on the cheek. “I actually will consider it this time. I don’t know how he feels but I think Alex is… rather attractive, really.”

  Jaymee’s grin widened. She pictured Alex with his mop of brown hair, his sparkling eyes, his exciting demeanor. “You’ll have a good time with him, I’m sure. He seems so…”

  “Intelligent?” Cheyenne supplied. “I know you were always attracted to brains, Mom.”

  Jaymee laughed. “I suppose I am. Aren’t you?”

  “I am,” Cheyenne nodded. “And I think what you really like about him is that he’s energetic. He does have a positive vibe about him. If you want to invite him to dinner again, just let me know and I’ll make sure I’m here for it.”

  “That’s wonderful, Cheyenne. Just wonderful.”

  Her daughter smiled, taking the last plate from her and putting it in a slot in the rack.

  “I have to be at the office at 6am to prepare for a deposition with Mr. Stanfield,” she said. “Would you mind telling them that and excusing me?”

  “I will. Are you all right?”

  Cheyenne nodded. “I’m okay. I… I miss dad. I know you do, too, but… well, you seem like you’re not as affected as I am. I don’t want to offend you or anything, I’m just saying… It seems like you’re not real concentrated on bringing him home. You have gotten pretty close to Cameron, though.”

  Jaymee felt regret slip through her. “I’m sorry, Cheyenne. I… I have my reasons. I promise. I am trying to find him, I really am. But… well, the police haven’t found him. I don’t know why I’d be any better at it.”

  “You know him,” Cheyenne stressed. “You and I, we both know him. We should be able to find him when other people can’t. They’ve looked everywhere even for his SUV and it’s just nowhere.” She sounded like she was going to cry. It pulled on Jaymee’s heartstrings. She put her arms around her daughter and pulled her into a hug. She was gripping a towel to dry her hands and using it to keep Cheyenne’s shirt from getting wet while they hugged.

  “Oh, baby,” she said. “We’re going to find him, don’t worry. We will.”

  Cheyenne nodded, pulled away and left the room with tears in her eyes.

  “See you in the morning, dear,” she called out after her.

  “Okay, Mom. Goodnight.” She heard from the hallway.

  Jaymee finished loading the dishwasher quickly and took the towel and a bottle of Coke out on the porch to sit in the damp evening light with Cameron and Alex.

  They weren’t speaking when she came out and she didn’t get the feeling they’d stopped because they heard her coming. They were both just gazing out over the land, taking in the dark sky with the stars scattered across it like diamonds on black felt.

  “Nice out here tonight, isn’t it?” she asked, settling in a deck chair next to Cameron. Alex was on his other side.

  “It sure is. Cheyenne asked me to tell you she has an early meeting she has to get to so she’s gone to bed.”

  “I don’t blame her,” Alex said. “I probably should be heading out, too.”

  “Not yet, Alex, please.” Cameron leaned forward, resting his arms on his legs. “If you’ll stay and talk to us about this case for just a while.”

  “I’d be glad to.”

  “I haven’t told Cheyenne about her father,” Jaymee blurted out. She’d been holding it in for so long, she didn’t meant for it to come out so abruptly but it did. “And now… I don’t know what to do.” She turned her eyes to Cameron. “She’s seen something… between us. That we’ve grown close. She suspects it’s more.”

  Cameron nodded slightly. “I understand. Did you tell her there’s nothing between us?”

  “I didn’t really say anything,” Jaymee replied.

  “Was she close to her father?” Alex asked.

  Jaymee turned her eyes to him. “They were very close. That’s why I haven’t been able to tell her yet. I don’t know how she’s going to react. I mean, her father goes missing and then her mother says he was involved in blackmail and that she’s divorcing him? Those are a lot of blows to take at one time, don’t you think?”

  Jaymee noticed when she mentioned divorce Cameron’s eyes darted to her face. She met his eyes with her own and couldn’t help giving him the smallest smile she’d probably ever smiled. But he saw it and his eyes lit up. That made her heart flutter.

  “You’re right.” Alex nodded. “That’s a lot to take at once. She’s handling her father’s disappearance pretty well. And I think she’s a smart girl and would understand if you explained what was going on. She’s going to get hurt by all this anyway. That’s not something you can avoid, Mom. Sorry.”

  Jaymee looked at Alex when he called her mom. His expression was affectionate and made her feel warm. He meant the word with the greatest respect, she could tell.

  “I’m sure it’s got to be hard to accept but you can’t shield her from all the pain in life. You’ve got to tell her. She deserves to know.”

  “You’re right of course. I will tell her. I will. Not tonight, though.”

  Alex shook his head. “No, not tonight. In fact, you should probably not tell her until you have more evidence to show her. I mean, what you have is a lot of evidence but we don’t really understand it all yet.”

  Jaymee nodded. “You’re right. I’ll wait until we know what we’re talking about before I tell her anything about her father.”

  SIX

  Cameron was sitting at Doug’s desk, staring at the computer screen. He was using his phone to search online for information. He’d started with Martin G and gone through all of the documents he could find stored on the computer, doing searches for different version of the name. He didn’t find anything relevant.

  “Have you found anything at all yet?” Jaymee asked, coming around to look over his shoulder at the computer. He glanced back at her, swiveling slightly in the chair.

  “No, not really,” he said. “I haven’t got a clue about this Martin person. I’ve actually done a search through the computer looking for references to all the names. I’ve gotten a few hits but nothing that matches the last name initial and if it did, it was obvious they had nothing to
do with the lab or anything.”

  “How are you checking on people?”

  “Social media, newspapers, this computer’s hard drive…” He looked at her again. “You have an idea?”

  Jaymee nodded. “I think I might. Let’s pull up Doug’s website.”

  Cameron frowned. “His website? You mean he’s had a website all this time and you didn’t tell me?”

  Jaymee gave him a nonchalant look. “I don’t think he ever used it. He was a one-on-one kind of guy. And I don’t know if I have access to it other than read-only. I can’t get in to change anything. We can look at his social media accounts, too. Like we can search to see if any of these names match on them.”

  Cameron let out an abrupt laugh. “If I was going to blackmail someone, the last thing I’m going to do is have them as friends on my social media of any kind.”

  Jaymee stuck her tongue out at him. “It’s worth a try. They have to communicate somehow, don’t they?”

  Cameron shook his head. “Not on social media, they don’t. Everyone on the planet has a cellphone now. At least those in first world countries. That’s how people communicate.”

  Jaymee sighed, going around the desk to flop down in a chair near it. “All of this is giving me a headache.”

  “I’m sorry for being negative, Jaymee,” Cameron said quickly. “You’re right. Social media is a good idea. There might be a connection through pictures or something from before he started blackmailing them.”

  Jaymee turned her eyes to him. “Good thinking.”

  Cameron shrugged. “Your idea. Let me click on this and see what we can see.”

  Jaymee stood up again and returned to her position beside him. She put one hand down on the desktop to balance herself when she leaned forward.

  One of Doug’s social media pages came on the screen. Cameron began to scroll through, clicking on different parts.

  “You didn’t have any trouble getting in?” Jaymee was a little surprised by that.

  Cameron shook his head, not taking his eyes from the screen. “No, this being his computer, he stayed logged in. I guess he didn’t have anything he thought he needed to hide from you, Jaymee.” Cameron turned to look at her. “Unless you just never checked his computer.”

  Jaymee didn’t think twice about it. She shook her head. “This is his work computer and even if he did personal stuff on it, I didn’t care to look. I’ve never been a snoop. If you’re going to deceive me, you will be the one doing the wrong, not me.”

  Cameron looked impressed, which made Jaymee happy. She returned her eyes to the screen as he kept scrolling. Finally he clicked on a folder on the left side of the screen titled “Pictures”.

  Jaymee was immediately struck by how good-looking she thought Doug was. A tall man with broad shoulders, a light cropped style haircut that was only about an inch or two off his head all the way around, a strong jaw line, kind eyes.

  No wonder people were fooled. She wondered how many women he duped and if he did anything more with them than take their money.

  Her anger simmered in her belly. She couldn’t believe she’d been so fooled by the man.

  “Look, this one is labeled me and Martin. From two years ago.”

  The two were immediately focused on the picture, which Cameron brought to full screen.

  “Martin and I on the beach at Congo Beach Hotel, Site District Conference, East Hampton, Utah.”

  “I remember that trip,” Jaymee said. “He stayed with a group of men in that hotel and they celebrated each other’s successes the whole time. He called me a lot. He wanted to check in and make sure I was okay.” Jaymee smiled at the fond memory. “I remember thinking it was so sweet but I really thought he was checking to see if I was with another man. Like I’m going to let another man answer the doggone phone. Especially mine.” She laughed, shaking her head. “No. He stopped doing that a few years ago. What’s the date on this? I can’t remember how long ago it was.”

  “Well, Doug looks at least ten years younger,” Cameron said in a low voice, leaning forward to search for a date on the photo. “No date on the folder, let’s try the upload date.”

  “Oh that was five years ago. Surely this isn’t the guy he’s blackmailing.”

  Cameron didn’t respond. He clicked on different areas of the photograph until he came up on a name.

  Chills covered Jaymee when he pointed the cursor at it. “His last name starts with a G.” Cameron’s voice was deep. He swiveled in the chair to look up at Jaymee. “I think we may have found our first suspect. Martin Granger. Looks like he’s a biologist for a research company. They must have sent representatives to that conference you remember.”

  “Yes. That sound reasonable. But now how to do we go about finding a Martin Granger here?”

  “The best thing about it is that now we know a face. We can put a face to a name.”

  Jaymee frowned, pulling half of her lips down. “But wait. Even if we find this particular Martin Granger, how are we supposed to prove he’s the one Doug’s been blackmailing? And how do we tie him to Doug’s disappearance?”

  “I can think of a few ways.” Cameron’s voice sounded hollow and like he was talking to himself. “But we’ll have to get access to some things at the police station, like criminal records and stuff like that.”

  “We don’t even have an address.”

  Cameron shook his head. “We’ll have to start with the phone book.”

  Jaymee raised her eyebrows. “I don’t even know where to get a phone book.”

  Cameron laughed. “I do. You can get one at the library, I mean look at it anyway, if you don’t have one.”

  “I thought they stopped making them a few years ago because everything went online.”

  “Yeah, it’s a shame really. It’s hard to prank call people when you don’t have a phone book to open and randomly pick from.”

  Jaymee laughed.

  “So what’s the next step?”

  “I’m going to take a copy of this picture to the guys downtown and ask them to make a search for him in the database. If he’s a criminal, they’ll have his mug shot and then we’ll have all the information we need on him.”

  “If it’s current,” Jaymee added. “Those guys don’t like to stay in the same place for very long.”

  “That’s true they don’t. But if that’s the case, we’ll just follow whatever lead we can get. I’m sure we’ll find him. I’m not sure if he’s responsible for Doug’s disappearance.”

  Jaymee sighed. “Do you think… do you think Doug is still alive?”

  Cameron gave her a sober look. “I really don’t know, Jaymee. I just don’t know. Do you… have any female intuition telling you something?”

  Jaymee snorted. “No. I wasn’t close enough to my own husband to have a bond like that. He wasn’t a passionate man. Very cold, actually, didn’t like to give much affection.”

  Cameron nodded. “So you’ve told me.”

  “When are you planning to go to the police with this?”

  “I can go now if you want. You can come with me. It’s not like I’m due anywhere to work. I’m already at work.”

  “Which reminds me, I wanted to ask if you’re charging a fee for your services and how much I owe you.”

  Cameron stared at her with a blank expression that slowly and comically turned into soft laughter. “Payment? No, Jaymee. This job is pro-bono.”

  Jaymee couldn’t help laughing. “Well, thank you for that. I do appreciate it.”

  “Not that you can’t afford my fee,” Cameron added. “You’re loaded, lady.”

  “I’m not loaded,” Jaymee said. “None of that blackmail money came my way.”

  Cameron scoffed at the mention of the blackmail money.

  “Your café is going to be a big success and you’re going to be rolling in money. Don’t you worry about that for a minute.”

  SEVEN

  Cameron and Jaymee went together to the police station. They found the detectiv
es working on Doug’s case sitting at their desks. Detective Monroe was on his phone while Detective Spencer was reading through a folder, turning the pages as he searched for something.

  “Detective Spencer?” Cameron said, coming up behind him. “John.”

  John stood up as soon as he saw it was Cameron, holding out his hand. “Cameron. Good to see you. And you, Mrs. Lent.”

  “Jaymee, please,” Jaymee said quickly.

  The detective nodded, giving her an odd look before sliding his eyes back to Cameron. “You have something for me?”

  “I should be asking you the same thing,” Cameron responded. “But yes. We have found some things we think you and Lou will find interesting. Also, we need help.”

  “You’ve got our help, Cameron. Show us what you’ve got.”

  By the time chairs were pulled up to the desks and Cameron and Jaymee were seated, Lou was off the phone and gazing curiously at them.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Cameron laid out a folder on the John’s desk. “We found these photos on Doug’s computer. I have a friend who knows what company these people might be working for. It’s only a theory. But we’ve discovered that… well, Doug was blackmailing a half a dozen people. We’ve got partial names and a possible first suspect’s full name but we’re going to need access to your databases before we can move on. We have a picture…”

  Cameron leaned forward as he spoke, opening the folder and pulling out a stack of papers. He went through them and when he found Martin’s picture with Doug from five years back, he held it out to John. “This picture is of Doug and a man named Martin Granger. In the files we found on this flash drive…”

  He fished through his pocket until he found the small storage device and showed it to John and Lou. “This contains all the files needed of the six people being blackmailed. It shows a lot of numbers and dates but I’m thinking the rest is encrypted in some kind of code. I’m good at a lot of things but breaking codes isn’t one of them.”

  “Same with me,” Jaymee said.