Текст книги "Last Resort"

Автор книги: Jeff Shelby

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

THIRTY

“I thought you meant we were going to go have sex,” Jake said.

We'd left the Hackerman's lot and continued walking past our cabin, taking the long outer loop to stroll in the sunshine.

“That's what I wanted her to think,” I said. “I swear, I'm going to punch her in the face if she looks at you like that one more time.”

“Like what?”

“Like she wants to strip and throw you to the ground right on the spot,” I growled.

“I hadn't noticed,” Jake said, but he was grinning.

“Maybe I'll just punch you instead.”

“Back to my original question,” Jake said, squeezing my hand. “I thought we were going back to the cabin to—”

“I need to think,” I told him. “Clear my head. So you'll just have to keep your desire at bay for the moment. Unless you'd like to go chase down Rhonda Hackerman.”

He squeezed my hand again. “Stop. The only woman I'm interested in chasing down is you.”

“Good answer,” I said. “And I'm too distracted to have sex right now.”

“Why's that?”

“Because all of this is bothering me,” I said as we walked. “Those idiots stealing the router. The vandalism. The murder. What exactly is going on here?”

Jake didn't answer right away. “I have no idea, Daisy,” he finally said. “Maybe it's just not a great place.”

I shook my head. “I don't think so. Delilah loves this place. It's killing her to see this all go bad. She cares about it too much to not be a great place. Harvey loved it, too. I mean, even Hackerman sings its praises. It's not a bad place at all, but I think someone is trying to make it a bad place.”

“Maybe just bad luck then,” he said.

We turned the corner on the loop and I was about to tell him I disagreed when we heard a scream coming from the main office at the bottom of the hill. We looked at each other, then broke into a jog to get down the hill.

Delilah was sitting at her desk in the office, frozen.

I looked around. There was no one else with her.

“Delilah?” I asked. “Are you alright?”

She was staring at the phone in her hand.

“Delilah?” Jake asked.

She tore her gaze away from the phone. She looked like she'd seen a ghost. “What?” she said, her voice raw.

“We heard you scream,” I said. “Are you alright?”

Her eyes returned to the phone and she stared at it blankly. “There's no money,” she whispered.

I glanced at Jake. He was watching her with a puzzled expression on his face.

“There's no money?” I asked.

“There's no money,” she repeated, louder this time.

“Delilah,” I said gently. “What are you talking about?”

“I just called the bank.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “There's no money.”

“Your money?”

“Windy Vista's,” she said, swallowing hard. “The account is empty.”

“It's supposed to have money in it?” Jake asked.

She nodded slowly. “Harvey and I, we'd opened up an account. We'd taken both of our savings and put it together. We were going to use it to try and invest and see if we could make some more money. I didn't really understand it all. It was Harvey's plan. He said we could buy some stocks and if the stocks increased money, we'd make money. And if we did, then we'd have some extra cash for around here.”

That made sense. It was a bit risky, but if it they were investing money they didn't need, then I could see Harvey's thinking. Try to increase what they had in order to put it back in Windy Vista.

“But it didn't make money?” I asked.

She set the phone down on the desk, still looking at it. “It made a little. Not enough for him to cash out, but he thought in a few more months it might give us a little something.” She set her hands on the desk like she was trying to steady herself. Her knuckles were white. “But we're so low on cash right now and I have to pay our bills. I...I just checked the account so I could withdraw the money to pay them.” Her voice shook. “And it's empty.”

“Completely empty?” Jake asked, his brow furrowed.

“Completely empty.”

“Who had access to the account?” I asked.

Delilah set her head in her hands, staring down at the desk. “Just me and Harvey. That was it. It was our money. My savings and his. We were the only ones.”

I wanted to put my around her and hug her. Her streak of bad luck was unbelievable.

“Can you check the account?” Jake asked. “See when the last withdrawal was made?”

“I already did,” she answered. “It was two days before you found Harvey. And he made the withdrawal. I just called the bank after I logged into the account.” She paused. “It's gone.”

All of it had to be more than a coincidence. Jake had accused me plenty of times in the past about being an overzealous conspiracy theorist, but this was too much. A dead body. Missing money. I didn't believe for one second that it wasn't all connected.

I just wasn't sure I could do anything about it.

“Can you call your vendors?” I asked. “Tell them you'll be late with the bills? Ask for an extension?”

She shook her head slowly. “I've been doing that for the last two months. This was it. There will be no electricity, no water, no nothing. I'm not even going to have time to get it ready to sell. We can't even make it through the summer.” She coughed and even though I couldn't see her face, I knew she was crying. “I'm just going to have to close it down.”

I looked at Jake, pleading with him to do something. But he just held his hands up, like he had no idea what to do. He was just as helpless as I was.

Delilah finally lifted her face from hands and wiped at her eyes. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't apologize.”

“I don't mean to dump all of this on you,” she said. “I'm just at a loss.”

“We understand,” I said. “It's okay.”

Jake's hand touched my elbow. “We'll give you some space. We'll check on you in a little bit. Is that alright?”

Delilah was staring straight head, her eyes focused on something outside the window. “Sure. Yes. Of course.”

I didn't want to leave, but I wasn't sure what else to do. Reluctantly, I let Jake pull me out of the office and we left Delilah sitting there, staring off into space.

THIRTY ONE

“I know your bleeding heart wants to help,” Jake said, shaking his head. “But my head says we need to start making plans to leave.”

We'd left Delilah and stopped off at the pool. Not to swim, but to think. We'd found a couple of chairs under an umbrella. It was crowded, the blue water filled with campers. Most of the chairs were covered in colorful beach towels and discarded clothes. Water bottles and tubes of sunscreen littered the table tops.

“There's not a lot we can do here,” Jake continued. “We don't have money to give her and quite honestly, I don't want to get involved in this any more than we already are. I feel badly for her, but there isn't anything we can do.”

“We could donate,” I suggested lamely.

He frowned. “So, what? Write her a check for a hundred bucks?”

“Yes.”

“And what good is that going to do?” he asked.

I frowned at him.

“Think about it, Daisy. She needs way more than that. And we don't have it.”

“We could do a fundraiser,” I offered.

“She needs the money now,” he pointed out. “There isn't time to plan something.” He looked around. “And, again, I think the kind of money she really needs isn't going to come from a spaghetti dinner or a raffle. It sounds far more significant than that.” He shook his head. “She's in a bad spot.”

That was putting it mildly. She was about to lose her livelihood. She'd already lost her best friend. I tried to put myself in her shoes to sympathize with how it would feel. And it wasn't good. If it had been me, I would've been running around, shrieking and crying. She was actually far calmer than I would've been. But I knew how much it had to pain her. You couldn't fake caring about Windy Vista the way she did. I truly believed she loved it and that it was going to wreck her to lose it.

“I think the best thing for us to do is to start packing up,” Jake said. “Because it sounds like she's really going to have to close it down. And I don't mean to sound selfish, but I don't want to get caught up in that whole mess because it might not be pretty.”

I sighed. “I know. You're right. I just hate it. She's going to be ruined.”

Jake hesitated, then nodded. “I know.”

“What do you think happened with the money?” I asked, watching a little boy in neon green swim trunks cannonball into the water. “Don't you think that's odd?”

“I think everything that's happened here is odd, Daisy,” he said. “None of it makes sense. I have no idea what happened to the money.”

“Someone is doing this to her,” I said.

He watched the boy climb out of the water and launch himself in again. “Okay, don't freak out when I say this.”

“Don't freak out when you say what?”

He shifted in his chair. “She really could be the one responsible for all this.”

“What?” I looked at him indignantly. “No.”

“Just listen,” he said. “All that we really know, we've gotten from her. She had some relationship with the dead guy. They had money in an account together. They were already struggling. The sheriff found that deposit slip or whatever it was. You told me that. What if she's the one making this place look bad just so she can close it and then sell it?”

I thought for a moment, then shook my head. “No. Why go through all of the trouble? If she wanted to sell it, she could just put it up for sale and sell it.”

“But this gives her a reason,” he said. “So it doesn't seem like she's just trying to cash in. If she just up and announced she was selling, she'd have to deal with angry campers. And we don't know that she's telling the truth about the money. Or about anything, really.”

I wasn't buying it. “I think that's too much of a reach, Jake. I don't think she's lying.”

“I'm not saying she is,” he said. He drummed his fingers on the table top. “I'm just saying it's a possibility. And, the truth is, we're probably not going to ever know what's really happened. It's not up to us to figure it out. There are about a million different possibilities and we aren't here to sort them out.”

I hated the way he could be so logical.  “Sometimes I wonder if you have a heart.”

He offered me a smile. “Sometimes I wonder if you have three.”

I watched the cannonball kid try to boost himself out of the pool but his arms were tired and they failed him, dropping him back into the water. He tried one more time, they failed again. and he laughed and swam down toward the shallow end instead.

I knew Jake was right. It wasn't on us to help or figure out what had been going on at Windy Vista. We weren't detectives, no matter how much I nosed around like one. We didn't have the resources to fix all of Delilah's problems and maybe Jake was right about those problems, too. Maybe some of them were of her own doing and she'd shaded them in a different light. Maybe she was just as much to blame for what was going on at the campground as anyone else. I didn't think she was, but I couldn't deny that it was at least a possibility.

“Double trouble,” Jake whispered under his breath.

“What?”

He nodded toward the far end of the pool. “Looney Tunes squared.”

I turned and saw Mary and Carrie sauntering around the far end of the pool. One had on a red bikini top and black bottoms and the other wore a black top and red bottoms. Mix and match. Their faces were expressionless as they laid their towels down on the lounge chairs and surveyed the pool. When they noticed us, one whispered to the other and they both nodded. Then they waded into the shallow end, still whispering to one another.

“They creep me out,” I said to Jake.

“It's like they share one brain,” he said, adding, “A very small one.”

The twins moved slowly away from the far wall, toward the middle of the pool. They simultaneously dipped beneath the rope that divided the two ends of the pool and reemerged on the other side at the same time. They took synchronized strokes in our direction.

“It's like they're sharks,” Jake said. “And we're the chum.”

“Should we leave?”

“I like to think of us as brave chum.”

“I think you just like seeing them in their bikinis.”

“They're wearing bikinis?” Jake asked innocently.

I shook my head just as they reached our end of the pool. They both set their elbows up on the pool deck and looked at us.

“Hello,” I said.

They looked at one another and then the one on the left said, “Hello.”

A massive, awkward silence followed.

“Are you just enjoying the water or did you swim down here for a reason?” I finally asked.

They looked at one another and the same one as before said, “We swam down here for a reason.”

Another awkward silence.

Very, very small brain.

“We heard Chuck and Jaw got arrested,” the talking one said.

I nodded. “Yep.”

“Because of you,” the other said.

“Because they broke into our camper, yes,” I corrected.

They exchanged looks again.

“We don't like them anymore,” the one on the left said.

“Are you Mary or Carrie?” I asked, unable to stand it any longer.

“Mary,” she said, then pointed to her sister. “That's Carrie.”

“Good to know. Why don't you like them anymore?”

“Because they are weasels,” Mary said.

“Yeah,” Carrie chimed in. “Weasels.”

“Okay.”

“Do you think they did that thing to Harvey?” Mary asked.

“I have no idea,” I said honestly. “I don't know what happened to Harvey.”

“We heard there's no more money,” Carrie said. “To run the campground.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“When Delilah screamed 'I don't have any more money to run the campground' a little while ago,” Carrie answered.

“Oh.”

“Is that true?”

“We have no idea,” Jake said. “We don't know.”

“What will happen if there's no money?” Carrie asked.

“Again, no idea,” Jake said. “We're here on vacation.”

Carrie looked at Mary. “I wonder if that's why Harvey got so mad the other day.”

“Hmm. Maybe. He was really mad.”

“When was Harvey mad?” I asked.

“Remember how he was swearing?” Carried asked her sister, ignoring me. “And wouldn't stop?”

Mary nodded. “Yeah. And he never swore. But he said, like, every word that day.”

I snapped my fingers at them. “Hey. When was Harvey mad?”

They both turned to look at me.

“After we took him to Frenchie's,” Carrie said.

“What's Frenchie's?”

She stared at me. “Duh. The grocery store.”

The grocery store? I thought about my grocery shopping trip to the little convenience store. But now was not the time to focus on that.

“And you took him there?” I asked. “And he was cussing the whole way there?”

“Yeah. He needed a ride,” Carrie explained. “And he was, like, all red-faced and muttering to himself the whole way there.” She paused. “But that isn't really where he wanted to go.”

“You've lost me,” I said.

“He didn't really want to go to Frenchie's,” Carrie repeated. “Or he wanted us to think that's where he wanted to go.”

“Yeah,” Mary chimed in. “Like he wanted to fool us. But we were too smart for that.”

It was hard to think of them as being too smart for anything or anyone. “You've lost me again.”

Carrie sighed, like she couldn't believe she was still having to explain. “Okay. He came to us. Said he needed a ride into town to go to Frenchie's. But it didn't make sense, okay? Because he'd gone to the store the night before and he didn't need anything.”

“How do you know that?”

Carried looked at her sister.

“Um, we just know, okay?” Mary said. “We know things.”

“No,” I said, trying to be patient. “How did you know that?”

“She thought he was going to meet another girl,” Carrie said. “So she followed him into town. He actually went to get groceries, though. That time.”

Mary shrugged.

My temples throbbed. “Okay. Got it. So he tells you to take him to Frenchie's. But you said that isn't where he really wanted to go. How do you know?”

“Because we waited for him,” Mary said. “He told us just to drop him and that he didn't need a ride back, that he'd get back on his own. I didn't believe him.”

“So we parked across the street and waited,” Carrie said, dropping her voice a little. “Like, surveillance.”

Just like.

“At the ice cream place,” Carrie said. “I had strawberry while we waited.”

“I had bubble gum.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to stay patient. It was worse than waiting for Emily to get out of the bathroom when we were at home. “But then he came back out?”

“Yeah, like two minutes after we got our cones,” Carrie said. “And he totally looked around, like he was checking to see if we were still there. He didn't see us. And he didn't have any groceries.”

“So then you waited to see where he went?”

They both nodded.

“And where was that?”

“To Mr. Ellington's office,” Carrie said. “We had to drive slow and be tricky so he wouldn't see us.”

“Davis Ellington?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Mary said.

“Why would he go there?” I asked. I glanced at Jake but he looked like wasn't following or wasn't listening. Or both.

“I dunno,” Mary said. “We saw him go in there and then we waited and then we got bored so we came back here. We figured he was just gonna be mad if he saw us there, waiting on him.”

“We didn't want him saying any of those bad words to us,” Carrie said.

I leaned back in my chair, my brain working overtime. I immediately wondered if Harvey was mad about the joint account he'd set up with Delilah or if he was upset over another account. And I was curious why he wanted to go right to Davis Ellington after visiting the bank. What did one have to do with the other?

“I'm burning,” Mary said. “I need more sunscreen.”

“Me, too,” Carrie said. “I'll spray you first.”

“You're the best,” Mary said.

I watched the weird twins swim away toward the other end of the pool.

“Just stop,” Jake said, as they ducked under the rope into the shallow end.

“Stop what?”

“Thinking,” he said. “Or hypothesizing. Or whatever it is you're doing in your head right now.”

“I didn't think you were paying attention.”

“I wasn't,” he said. “But their words just ate away at my brain, anyway. Like zombies.”

I ignored his wisecrack. “Why would he have been so mad?”

“Daisy.”

“And why would he have gone to Davis Ellington's?”

“Daisy.”

“Aren't you the least bit curious?”

“No.”

“Liar. You have to be.”

“It's not for us to fix,” he said. “Or solve.”

“But she needs help. Delilah, I mean.”

“Not from us.” He was adamant.

“Then from who?”

He sighed and folded his arms across his chest.

“I think we should go talk to Ellington,” I said.

“We don't even know him.”

“Um...well, that's not entirely true.”

“What?”

I looked away from him. “I might've met him.”

“Met him? How?”

“Remember when I went to the store? And I was gone too long?”

“I knew I was right. I knew it.”

“I might've gone to his office and told him we were looking to buy property,” I said, ignoring his need to remind me he'd been correct at guessing I'd gone somewhere besides the store. “Which, in theory, could be true.”

“Daisy,” he said, his voice taking that tone it usually did when he was very, very irritated. “You need to explain. Right now.”

I sighed and told him about my excursion into town and our conversation.

When I finished, he was shaking his head. I'd seen that before.

“Daisy,” he said. “Daisy.”

“What? I was just trying to...help.”

“I think your definition of help is a lot different than the one most people use.”

“Probably. I'm very helpful,” I said. I stood up. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“To help.”

“Daisy.”

I tried to lighten the mood. “That's my name, don't wear it out,” I said, smiling at him. “And you can either come with me or stay here. It's up to you.”

“Daisy...”

“You're wearing it out.”

He mumbled something, a dark frown on his face, but he pushed himself out of the chair and stood.

Which was his way of conceding I'd won.

Yay for winning!

THIRTY TWO

“It's nice to see you again, Ms. Savage,” Davis Ellington said from behind his desk. “And I see you brought your husband along this time.”

We'd walked back to the cabin, with Jake trying to talk me out of doing anything other than packing as we walked. I smiled at him the entire time, walked into the cabin, grabbed the car keys to the rental and sat patiently in the driver's seat, waiting for him to get in.

He finally did and we'd driven to Ellington's office in silence.

“Yes,” I said. “This is my husband, Jake.”

Ellington stood and they shook hands. Ellington patted him on the back, congratulating him on all of his kids. Jake forced a smile onto his lips but he shot me a look.

Ellington gestured at the chairs in front of his desk as he sat back down. “Have a seat, have a seat.”

I had a momentary pang of guilt when it dawned on me that he thought we were there to discuss real estate.

“So,” he said, looked expectantly at each of us before settling his gaze on Jake. “Have you all been taking a look around the area? Find something you like?”

Jake turned to me so that I could answer. He leaned back in his chair, a small smile on his lips as he waited for me to talk my way through everything. I'm sure he took some small pleasure in watching me squirm a little.

“Well, not exactly,” I said.

“No?” Ellington said, eyebrows raised. He cleared his throat. “Well, that's okay because I've had several things come on the market in just the past day or two. I think several might interest you, based on what we discussed previously.”

He wasn't going to make it easy.

“Actually, we're here for a different reason,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. “I have a question for you.”

He looked again expectantly at Jake, like he might somehow clue him in as to why we were there, but Jake just kept forcing the same smile. “A question?”

“Yes,” I said. “About why Harvey might've come here a few days ago. Before he died.”

His smile faded, but more out of confusion than anything else. “I'm not sure I follow.”

Jake gave me a look that said, “You're on your own.”

I shifted in my chair. “I understand that Harvey came to see you a few days ago. And that he wasn't very happy when he got here.”

He blinked several times, then frowned. “That's correct. But why are you asking me?”

I had to think for a moment. I didn't want to lie, but I didn't feel like it was my place to blurt out everything that was going on with Windy Vista. That was for Delilah to share with people if she wanted.

“I've just been trying to figure out what happened to Harvey,” I said. “Since I was the one that found him, I feel like I have some sort of responsibility to him. And I know that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but sometimes I don't make a whole lot of sense.” I smiled at him. “So I'm just trying to get a picture of what was going on with him before...whatever happened to him, happened to him. If that makes sense.”

Ellington nodded slowly. “Ah, well, yes, I suppose it makes some sense. Harvey was...frustrated.”

I didn't say anything. In my short time as an amateur sleuth, I'd found that if I shut my big mouth once in awhile, people would feel the need to keep talking. Something about finding the silence awkward.

Ellington cleared his throat again and I wondered if he was a closet smoker. “I'd been trying to help Harvey. With some investing. And he was upset that the investments weren't coming along as he'd hoped.”

“Were the investments for him?” I asked.

Ellington pursed his lips. “Yes and no. It was his money, but he was willing to give it to Windy Vista. He was hoping that enough money would be generated in order to help bail out the resort.” He smiled weakly at me. “You saw me the other day with Delilah and probably, unfortunately, heard some of our conversation, too. She was upset and I understand why. But you're obviously aware now of the campground's financial struggles.”

“Yes,” I said.

Ellington nodded. “I assumed so. So what Harvey really wanted was to take a little money and turn it into a lot of money.”

“And so he came to you for that?” I asked.

Ellington nodded again. “Yes. I have a financial background and help some folks out on the side around town. Harvey knew that and he came to me to see if I could help. I told him I'd be happy to try.”

A ceiling fan high above our heads buzzed.

“You said try,” I said. “So you tried, but...?”

Ellington shifted his weight in the chair and the vinyl squeaked. “I told him it wasn't a get rich quick scheme. That, as with any investing, there was risk involved. A return wasn't guaranteed.” He paused, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I did what he asked with the money he wanted to invest. It did not...go well.”

Which would explain Harvey's anger and frustration.

“He wanted me to be aggressive because he was hoping for a quick return,” Ellington continued. “So I was. Unfortunately, being aggressive in the market also means that you can aggressively lose what you've invested. You see where I'm headed here?”

Both Jake and I nodded.

“So when Harvey came to see me, he'd apparently just taken a look at the accounts,” he explained. “The stocks we'd put his money into took a large hit.” He held up his hands. “It was all gone. He was angry, which I understood. But it was out of my control. He was disappointed.” He shook his head sadly. “But there was nothing for me to do.”

I could imagine Harvey's frustration. It was a desperate move and he'd pinned all of his hopes to it, no matter how unrealistic it was that the move would pay off. I was sad for a man I'd never gotten to meet, that he'd felt that strongly about a place that he'd put everything he owned into one shot at saving it. I thought everyone should feel that much love for something in their life, even it meant meeting with disappointment.

“What kind of stocks did you dump the money into?” Jake asked.

Ellington shifted again in his chair. “You familiar with the markets?”

“Eh, not really. Just asking more out of curiosity.”

Ellington reached up and tugged on his earlobe. “Sure, sure. Well, we, uh, looked at a variety of different options and, like I said, Harvey wanted to be aggressive, so we moved the money into some stocks that had a better chance of taking off. We did some research and those were the ones Harvey was most interested in.”

“So, like, tech stocks? Start-up stuff?”

Ellington nodded. “Yeah, like that.” Then he frowned. “But, as I said, there's always a risk. In order to make money, you've got to take some risks.”

“Right,” Jake said.

I could tell by the way he said it that he wasn't completely satisfied with the answer he'd gotten. But I wasn't sure there was anything else to ask. It all made sense. Harvey made a last ditch attempt and it failed. He blamed Ellington, fairly or unfairly.

I stood up and swung my purse over my shoulder. “Thanks for your time.”

Ellington sat there for a moment, his expression expectant. “Well maybe now we can talk about finding you two that property you were hoping to find?”

Jake got to his feet. “I think we're going to wait on that.”

Ellington reluctantly stood up and hitched up his pants. “Now's a good time to be looking. I'm sure I could find you a pretty good deal up here.”

“I'm sure you could,” I said, smiling. “We'll be in touch.”

We left before he could keep us there any longer.