32. Chapter Thirty-Two
MATT
Joseph Campbell had met his future wife, Donna, while attending USC on the West Coast. When Joe returned to Pine Ridge after graduation, Donna came with him. The wedding came shortly thereafter, and their son, Edward Joseph, was born shortly after that.
Unlike Joe, Donna was not fond of the East Coast. She did not like cold weather, snow, rain, or mountains. She had a particular distaste for her mother-in-law. The feeling was mutual, and this caused friction for Joe, who loved his mother and his wife and was often caught in the middle.
When Eddie was around five years old and about to start kindergarten, Joseph relented to Donna’s wishes, and he, Donna, and Eddie relocated back to the West Coast. He invited his mother to come with them, but she declined, saying that Pine Ridge was her home, and wished them well.
Joe and Donna moved into Donna’s parents’ Malibu beach house—which Donna’s great-grandparents had bought long before the Southern California property values skyrocketed—and Donna was finally happy.
For a while, Joe flew back to Pennsylvania with Eddie for his mother’s birthday every year. Then, Joe’s business took off, and it became more of an every-other-year thing. As Eddie grew older, the visits became fewer and farther between.
In lieu of those annual visits, Elsa started having annual summer barbecues. She didn’t tell anyone it was her birthday. She didn’t want presents or cake. She just liked having people around and invited everyone from the neighborhood.
It was at one of those summer barbecues that Matt had first met Eddie Campbell. Eddie was older than Matt, about twenty-five to Matt’s fifteen. It was a case of instant dislike. Eddie was pompous, arrogant, and rude. With his bleached-blond hair and deep SoCal tan, he’d strutted around like he was some kind of movie star and acted as if everyone else was beneath him.
Matt’s current opinion of Eddie wasn’t any better. Eddie was no longer that fit, tanned, hate me ’cause you ain’t me surfer boy, but he still had a superiority complex and a sense of entitlement that made Matt want to punch him in the face.
So, he did. Several times.
At first, Eddie wasn’t too keen on sharing, but he lost his bravado when he was surrounded by several well-built, pissed-off Navy SEALs—and Matt, whose special forces designation was highly classified and included knowledge of some very creative, very painful means of extracting information.
The punches to the face were the most satisfying though.
It helped, too, that Ian had been multitasking like a motherfucker and dug up enough dirt on Eddie to have the guy sobbing and pissing himself, even without the extra motivation.
Eddie admitted to making bad investments. He’d borrowed money from people he shouldn’t have borrowed money from. He’d made promises he couldn’t keep. He’d lost his parents’ house. The cars. The hefty inheritance they’d left him when their private plane went down on the way to some tropical island.
Desperate and with nowhere else to turn, he moved back to Pine Ridge and sought out his grandmother, pleasantly surprised to discover she was quite well off. Unfortunately for him, she wasn’t as indulgent with him as his parents had been.
The best thing about her was that she was old, and as her only living relative, he stood to inherit everything. To his dismay, however, Elsa was in extraordinarily good health for a woman her age, and it wasn’t likely he’d see any of her money in time to save his own ass.
Eddie was a weasel, but he wasn’t a murderer. He came up with a new plan. He’d convince her to move into an assisted living facility, give him power of attorney to handle everything, and then use her assets to try to dig himself out of the hole he was in.
Elsa wasn’t keen on handing over control, but she was at a point in her life when living alone was no longer a viable option. Eddie was sure he could convince a physician to have Elsa declared incapable of making her own decisions. Everyone had a price, he argued. Even doctors. Especially when it was for Elsa’s own good.
Then, Anna showed up and threw a wrench into his plans, and he had to get creative. He’d heard about Manny Falco, how he was a cop, rumored to do some sketchy shit on the side, and approached him. Eddie hired him to dig up some dirt on Anna and, if he couldn’t find any, to plant evidence and make some shit up.
Under duress, Eddie admitted that he had used his key to get into his grandmother’s house when she wasn’t there. He was the one to switch out the meds. He was the one to pick up Elsa’s watch from the jeweler and claim he’d found it at a pawnshop. He was also the one to take cash and jewelry and plant it in Anna’s room.
Unfortunately, Eddie didn’t seem to know anything about Anna’s disappearance.
Given their extremely persuasive methods of obtaining information, even Matt had to believe he was telling the truth about that.
Which left them no closer to finding Anna.