Chapter 5
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E lizabeth worked from home for most of the morning, getting buried in client calls and accounts. It was almost 11:00 a.m. before she looked up and realized just how much time had gone by. She got up, stretched, walked over to the kitchen to put on the teakettle, and stared out at her backyard.
She and Nicholas had planned to get puppies together at one point, hoping that, if one of them was traveling, the other could look after both. Having such a system in place, they could enjoy the benefits of having animals, yet share some of the load when they each needed to be gone.
And yet it hadn’t worked out quite that way. Her brother was gone more often than not, and she was home most of the time, and still they’d never quite got around to getting a pet. She could have had a puppy or a cat anytime, and yet something always made her hold off. Right now she could use the comfort of having a furry animal here on a constant basis.
She forced herself to not open the files that her brother had kept on that USB, wanting, maybe quite wrongly, to somehow double-check his peace of mind. Yet, if he were dead, that was completely foolish. However, the longer he was missing, the more that his death seemed to be a distinct possibility. She knew that’s what the initial investigators had thought, both at the base as well as among the civilian cops she had spoken to. She also figured they assumed she had been involved in whatever had happened to her brother. They probably figured they would wait her out until the body was found, then pounce. After all, there was no statute of limitations on murder.
Elizabeth sighed.
As far as she was concerned, that was just a lazy excuse so neither the civilian nor the military investigators had to look any further. It was the easy way to fob off questions they didn’t have answers for. She didn’t know how to make that clear to anybody though, because nobody gave a crap about finding Nicholas, but she did. She wondered how many other people were caught in such an ineffective system, such an uncaring bureaucracy that claimed they were right and you were wrong, with no recourse when you had no proof, when you had nothing but that feeling that something seriously wrong was going on.
And when her brother didn’t come back, and nobody believed her, she was stuck with no place to turn. The unexpected arrival of Masters had definitely brought hope back to Elizabeth again, though she knew it was dangerous. She’d gone down a spiral of never-ending torment to the point that she had nearly jeopardized her job because she hadn’t been able to focus on anything but finding her brother. Only in the last month had she pulled back and given her job the attention it deserved.
Other people didn’t have to pay the price for whatever had gone on in her brother’s world, and thankfully Elizabeth still had the means to support herself. That her brother was worth a fortune, leaving her an incredible inheritance upon his death, didn’t matter to her in the least. She would do anything to get him back. Just something about knowing she could be the last one left in a long line of family made her realize what was of value in life, and it had absolutely nothing to do with dollars and cents.
With a fresh cup of tea, she walked out to her front porch and sat down in her chair, just sitting in the sun, enjoying the moment. When she heard a woman call out, Elizabeth looked over to see her neighbor Dolly waving at her. Remembering what Masters had asked of her, Elizabeth got up and slowly wandered over to the older woman, hopefully in a casual and natural manner.
When she arrived at Dolly’s porch, the woman patted the seat beside her. “It’s nice that you’ve got your own cup of tea,” she greeted her in delight, “because I have a cup too.”
Elizabeth sat down on the big swing bench with the older woman and smiled at her. “How have you been lately?” she asked.
“Oh my, I’m fine,” she replied, with a wave of her hand. “Obviously you aren’t though.”
“I’m doing better,” Elizabeth muttered. “Time does help heal wounds.”
“Oh, I’m sure it does. I’m sure it does,” Dolly reiterated, with a gentle tap on Elizabeth’s hand. “I’m so sorry for all the problems you’ve been through.”
“Thank you.” Elizabeth gave her neighbor a small smile.
“It seems that you have a new man in your life,” Dolly announced brightly.
Inwardly Elizabeth groaned because, if anything caused comments in her world, it would always be about a new male. “He’s just a friend,” she compromised.
“And that is exactly what you need now,” Dolly declared. “We all need friends in our difficult times.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” she muttered. She looked over at her brother’s house, easily seen from her spot on Dolly’s porch.
“And no word on your brother, is there?” Dolly asked.
“No, not yet, but I keep hoping.”
“And hope is what keeps us going day to day.”
Hearing the same platitudes she heard from so many people all the time, Elizabeth smiled and nodded. Unless people had been through something like this, they couldn’t understand just how painful and difficult this was.
“I did notice you over at your brother’s house,” Dolly added.
“I should be going over more often,” Elizabeth shared. “There was a window open that I hadn’t noticed. That’s not something I want to happen.”
“Oh dear,” Dolly replied, looking at her with interest. “Were windows supposed to be open?”
She shrugged. “Unfortunately I don’t remember. With my being over there so much, I tended to not notice.”
“Yes, yes, that happens. And, of course, a couple service guys were over there,” she pointed out. “They probably left it open.”
Hearing her words, Elizabeth stiffened slightly and frowned. “I don’t remember bringing in any service workers. Do you remember when that was?”
Dolly frowned and stared off in the distance, as if trying to remember when it was, but then she shrugged. “It wasn’t this week,” she muttered. “I can’t be sure if it was last week either,” she added apologetically, “but it wasn’t too-too long ago.”
“ Hmm .” Elizabeth pondered that.
“Maybe you forgot to pay a bill for your brother,” she suggested. “When you’re dealing with so many things, I’m sure his bills aren’t exactly at the top of your mind.”
“No, that’s true, and I certainly found a few that needed to be caught up,” she admitted, “but I thought I got them all.” She stared off at his house.
Dolly added, “I was quite surprised at just how long they were there.”
“What does that mean, timewise?” Elizabeth asked in a wry tone, as she studied the older lady. “Was is ten or fifteen minutes, maybe thirty?”
“Oh no, they were there a couple hours.”
Elizabeth stared at her in shock. “Really? And did they take anything away with them?”
Dolly looked confused for a moment. “I don’t know. I didn’t see them walking to their vehicle,” she explained apologetically, “but I did see the van leave, and they were in a rush. It’s like they just—”
“They?” Elizabeth stopped Dolly for a moment. “When you say they , are we talking more than two?”
“No, I saw two men,” Dolly replied, “but I don’t know how many may have come and gone. It’s not as if I sat out here and watched them the whole time. If I had thought it was a problem, then I would have, but I didn’t think of it as a problem back then.”
“No, of course not, and any problems you noted would automatically be related to my brother’s disappearance.”
“That’s the thing though. I didn’t think about it,” she admitted apologetically. “Now that you’re asking me all these questions, I’m wondering why I didn’t think about it at the time,” she said, her voice rising.
“It’s fine,” Elizabeth replied, patting Dolly’s hand. “It might have been the police. I don’t know. They may have asked for clearance, and I thought they were coming in one day, and they came in on another day.”
The other woman relaxed at that. “Oh. Oh yes, that would make so much more sense,” she stated.
“Did you see anything on the vehicle itself?”
Dolly shook her head. “It was a white van. Like a delivery van. And I’ve seen the police use things like that on TV,” she noted, “so I’m sure that must have been what it was.”
The mention of TV as being a real-life representation of what was going on was a little much for Elizabeth to swallow, but she also knew that the older woman was just appeasing herself with it. “But you didn’t see that they took anything with them?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. When I first saw them entering the house, they had little toolboxes,” she shared, with a shrug.
“Right. And that makes sense, particularly if they were searching for something or setting up something,” Elizabeth noted. “I’ll ask them.”
“Oh yes, do that,” Dolly agreed. “After all, it’s your brother’s house. You should get the details of what they were up to,” she declared, indignation making her voice rise.
She smiled at her. “Not to worry. I’ll check it out. If you do see anybody else at the house, let me know, will you?”
“You mean, outside of that cute young man you had with you?” Dolly asked, a twinkle in her eyes, switching from one topic to the other, back to the whole romance thing.
“Something like that,” Elizabeth replied, with an eye roll. “Not that I’m saying he’s an important part of my world, by any means.”
“Honey, he stayed at your house last night,” Dolly exclaimed, with a nudge and a wink. “We already know that he’s important.”
Flushing at the immediate innuendo the other woman implied, Elizabeth realized just how little people could hide in some ways. Yet, in other ways, people could enter her brother’s house and be there for hours, and nobody noticed. Her brother’s house wasn’t in a direct line of sight from Elizabeth’s place, unless she stepped out onto her back deck. And sure, she did go out on her deck on an irregular occasion just to have a cup of tea and to enjoy the world, but it’s not as if she sat there, tracking anybody coming and going, and that in itself was upsetting.
She stayed for a few more minutes and asked a couple more questions. Not getting anything helpful, she made her excuses and headed back to her place. As soon as she got inside, she phoned Masters. He answered on the first ring. “Wow, that was fast,” she joked. “What were you doing, sitting on the phone?”
“Hey, maybe I was waiting for a call from you,” he replied.
“I don’t know why you would do that,” she muttered. “My world is a mess.”
“Did something else happen that made you worried about that mess?”
“I talked to my neighbor.”
“Oh, good. What did Dolly have to say? Wait. I’m not that far away. I’ll swing by, and we’ll talk about it.” Not giving her a chance to say yes or no, he ended the call.
She walked back to the front window, wondering just how far away he was. After all, he didn’t mention whether he was twenty minutes away or ten. She hadn’t had lunch yet, and now all she could think about was whether she was supposed to invite him to stay for lunch or completely ignore feeding him. She groaned at the etiquette of something like this, knowing that her grandmother, who’d been incredibly fastidious on that stuff, would have had a heyday just chastising her for even wondering.
Deciding that she would take the more hospitable route, and, if he didn’t want anything, that was fine. She could have it tomorrow. So she quickly made up a couple Dagwood sandwiches. She was just putting it all together when she heard the knock on her door. She walked over and threw it open, a smile on her face, only to freeze as she stared at a delivery man, holding out an envelope.
“I’ll need a signature, please,” he said.
She looked down at it and replied, “I’m not expecting anything.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know anything about it. I’m just the delivery guy.”
Realizing that he probably had no clue about anything, she quickly accepted the envelope and signed for it. Just as she went to close the door, Masters pulled up and parked on the other side of the street.
She waited until he approached and got inside, shutting the door behind him, before she shared, “I just got this envelope. I had to sign for it.”
“Are you expecting anything?”
“No.”
At that, he took the envelope from her and studied it more closely. “And it bothers you?”
“I’m not even sure that bothers me are the right words,” she clarified, “but it’s definitely not something that I was expecting.”
“Right. In that case, let’s take a closer look.” He motioned her into the kitchen.
He slipped on a pair of gloves and carefully opened the top, and a single piece of notepad-size paper slipped out and fell to the ground. He bent down and picked it up, setting it on the counter. She appreciated the fact that he didn’t even appear to be looking at who might have sent it. Resisting the urge to grab it, she gasped.
“What?” he asked, now reading the handwritten note out loud over her shoulder. “ Do not go to the police .”
“Don’t even ask me about this because I have no idea. Why would they even say that? After the investigators on base ignored me and my brother, I did go to the local police, but that was months ago. And they were of no help either.” She turned to face Masters, frowning. “Unless they think you’re the police.”
“I’m military police, at least one form of it,” he replied. “So maybe.”
“And that would assume that they knew you were,” she pointed out.
He smiled and nodded. “That’s a very good assumption.”
As she stared again at the note, she sensed something building inside her, realizing it was a flicker of hope. “Dear God,” she exclaimed, “does this mean Nicholas is alive?”
“No, it does not mean that.” When she glared at him, Masters shook his head. “It could mean something like that, but we don’t know enough to make that leap.”
“You’re just stopping me from thinking that way.”
“I’m stopping you from getting hurt,” he clarified. “It’s possible your brother is alive, and we’ve always known that could be possible. It’s also possible that he’s not and that he potentially has been deceased since day one. We don’t know yet. I just don’t want you getting your hopes up too high, not when he’s already been missing this long.”
Her shoulders sagged. “Even if he were alive, where would they have kept him, and why for many months?” she cried out.
“Exactly,” Masters noted. “For them to do something like that, it would be a very long-term plan, and they must have had a reason to keep him alive for such a long time. I’m sorry. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not possible though, right?’
He took a deep breath and nodded. “Right, but we don’t know that.”
She winced, her mind furiously churning through all the information she knew. Why would somebody take her brother and keep him hostage? That was the thing she didn’t understand. “If,” she began, “and I know you’ll say there are no ifs here, but, if Nicholas is alive, if they’ve been keeping him alive, what possible reason would there be for that?” she asked, turning to look at him directly.
“That’s what we have to find out,” he muttered. “However, this note changes everything.”
“But does it, or is it just somebody playing games? Somebody tormenting me?”
He winced at that. “Do you live in a world where you have people who would know about all this and do that?”
She stared at him. “I don’t think so, but the world we live in is full of people who do things like that for kicks.”
“Unfortunately you’re correct there,” he muttered. “I’ll get this over to forensics for their analysis and see if we can come up with anything on it.”
When he turned to leave, she asked, “Are you coming back?”
He nodded. “Yes, I’ll be back. I just don’t know when.” With that, he was gone.
*
Masters walked into forensics with the hand-delivered letter, then quickly explained what the problem was, and asked if they could put a rush on it.
The tech behind the counter just stared at him.
He smiled. “And, yes, I can get you all the authority that you want.” He pulled out his phone and quickly phoned Jasper. Having explained it on the way over, Jasper was waiting for his phone call. Masters handed his phone to the tech, and very quickly Jasper set out and put in place the hierarchy of who had the right to request what. It was a very minor department in the sense that most people didn’t even know any lab and testing went on here at the base. Yet, as Coronado had ended up with several cases happening right here, the navy’s investigation department had built up to the point that a lab on base had become a necessity, with the rest all contracted out. Luckily people were ready and available onsite. Masters handed off the note and wondered if he should just leave or what.
The lab tech noted, “You won’t get a result very quickly.”
“And when you say, not very quickly , what does that mean exactly?” he asked.
The tech hesitated. “I can work on it this afternoon, if it’s important.”
“It’s important,” Masters confirmed.
The guy winced but nodded. “Fine, go have lunch or something.” With that, he turned and walked into the back.
Not sure even what lunch would constitute in terms of a time frame, Masters stepped out of the lab, walked to a coffee shop across the way, ordered a coffee and a muffin and sat down, sending Elizabeth a quick apology. She responded with a similar text, saying it was fine, and she was just having a sandwich for lunch.
Then she phoned him. “Look. Instead of having your coffee and a snack,” she offered, “come over here for a sandwich. I made them before you arrived, but then you took off so fast that I didn’t have a chance to even tell you.”
He hesitated, checked his watch, and then realized that he might as well. He changed his coffee to a to-go cup, headed for his vehicle, and pulled up in front of her place a few minutes later.
As she opened the door, she smiled. “I had literally just made sandwiches when you walked in the first time.”
“Sounds good. If I’d realized it, I would have come right back.”
She pointed to the kitchen table and said, “You might as well sit down. I’ve got everything ready.”
When she brought over the sandwiches, which were big, he looked at them appreciatively. “When you say a sandwich, you meant a real sandwich.”
“I do like my sandwiches,” she shared, with a chuckle. “Most people today have no idea what a sandwich was meant to be. They put a little slice of ham and cheese between two pieces of bread and call it a sandwich,” she explained. “That is not my idea of a sandwich at all.”
He agreed and was grateful to have the moment to sit down and just take a time-out. He bit into the sandwich and realized it was quite worthy of taking a whole lot more than a time-out. He quickly polished off his first half and sighed with pleasure. She looked over at him, one eyebrow raised, and he nodded. “That’s a very good sandwich.”
She chuckled. “Thank you. So, how long do you have to wait for the forensics?”
And he realized he hadn’t even brought her up-to-date. “I was able to put a rush on it, so I’m just waiting to hear.”
“Good,” she said. “The sooner we can get answers, the better.”
“You just need to know that I probably won’t say anything to you about the results, not until we get this solved.”
She rolled her eyes at that and didn’t say much, and he felt as if he had betrayed her trust. But he couldn’t do a whole lot, not until he had a chance to examine everything else going on. She didn’t say anything, just continued to munch. He finished off his sandwich and still had no phone call from the tech, so he knew it could end up being a whole lot longer.
“Had you seen that courier before?” he asked, deciding he might as well make good use of his time while he was here.
“No, and, no, I wasn’t expecting him at all. I assumed it was you at the door,” she shared. “It was a surprise to see him.”
“You opened your door without looking through the window?” he asked, narrowing his gaze at her.
She paused, thought about it, and nodded. “Yeah, I sure did,” she muttered. “That comes from that whole living an innocent, blameless life thing.”
“Sure, except that now your brother is missing, so that innocent, blameless life is about to become not quite so innocent and blameless.”
“And that sucks,” she muttered.
“Sorry,” he replied, his tone gentle. “It’s just the facts of life.”
“I know. I get it. I really do,” she murmured. “Yet it’s not exactly anything I want to deal with.”
“From now on you need to be incredibly careful. This person, whoever sent that note, knows where you live, likely knows that I have been here, knows that your brother is missing—and potentially could have had something to do with his disappearance.”
She stared at him for a long moment, the color leaving her face, as she nodded. “I was hoping to ignore all that.”
“Ignoring this reality is something you do at your own peril,” he declared. “Right now, your brother is missing. What we don’t know is whether he’s dead and what the possible reason could be. And you’re in finance. I don’t know how big your clients are. I don’t know anything about it, but I’ll need to.”
She stared at him, slowly lowered the last bite of her sandwich, and nodded. “When I was initially dealing with my brother’s disappearance, a bunch of my accounts switched to somebody else,” she shared. “I didn’t think anything of it because honestly I wasn’t doing a very good job for my clients at that time. So I half expected that my client allocation would take a hit. Yet I figured I would get them back some day. One client hasn’t been returned to me, though most of the others have. That one client is big,” she muttered, “and from another country.”
“You want to tell me what other country that is?”
She winced and whispered, “Colombia.”
His eyebrows shot up. “So, what investing do you do?”
She shrugged. “The usual. I’ve been working with this bank for a long time.”
“And you’ve got no hesitation about working for them, nothing asked to be done under the table, nothing that would make you suspicious of any illegal activity? Nothing suspicious about this Colombia client itself?”
“No, not at all,” she declared. “I started working for the bank’s owner years ago. Then the owner’s son, Fred, took over, maybe three years ago, but everything’s been fine, and the transition was smooth. I still see the owner occasionally, but he’s thoroughly enjoying his grandkids and his retirement.”
“And the son?”
She shrugged. “Fred’s not my kind of guy, but that doesn’t make him bad,” she shared, with an uncomfortable laugh.
“When you say, not your kind of guy , what does that mean?”
“It means he fools around, like in terms of office romances. He’s cut a wide swathe through the females and has a tendency to change it up frequently.”
“Never you though?” he asked, point-blank.
“No, never me,” she stated, “and honestly I’m probably too old for him anyway. I’m thirty-two. He goes for the twenty-five-year-olds.”
“So, he definitely doesn’t want anybody seasoned and mature, who knows her own mind,” he noted, with a laugh.
“Most guys don’t,” she declared, with a pointed look. “They all want somebody they can train into being that submissive wife.”
“Not everybody,” he corrected. “A lot of us prefer to have someone with spirit instead of blind obedience.”
She nodded. “I’ll take that into consideration the next time I see one of these romances brewing around the office,” she stated bluntly. “Honestly Fred’s not the kind to give a crap whether she has brains or not either. Trust me that he’s looking more at cup size.”
“That’s because he hasn’t grown up yet either,” Masters pointed out, with a chuckle. “Not those women’s fault. It’s probably… I don’t know why those office romances happen with Fred, but I presume it’s the thrill of it.”
“Probably,” she muttered. “Not my scene, but it is one of the reasons I’m happy to work from home.”
“So, you don’t see a lot of what goes on at the office?”
“I see a lot. I just don’t see everything, now that I work from home full-time. So, I’m definitely out of the loop to some degree.”
“And this one client that you didn’t get back, is that a concern for you?”
“Not really,” she replied. “I think it may have been for the best anyway. He wasn’t exactly my… I didn’t get along that great with him. He was old money, and we always must be very polite and considerate and all that jazz,” she shared. “Yet some guys don’t think women belong in the workforce, especially when handling finances, and he always wanted a man to deal with his money,” she shared, with a note of self-mockery.
“Of course. I guess you probably get a lot of that.”
“Finance is still considered very much as a man’s world,” she murmured. “And most of the time I don’t give a crap at all. I just do my work, and I’m good at what I do. And I don’t make waves. Making waves makes life difficult, and I’m not into difficult. Right now, I just want solutions for my brother.”
He smiled and nodded. “Understood.”
“You find my brother,” she added, “and the whole world, my world, will completely change.”
“What if they’re not the answers you want?”
She winced. “Obviously I want him found alive, and every day that passes makes the chances of that seem even slimmer and less possible,” she murmured. “But hope? Hope is everlasting, and I just—I need that hope.”
“Of course,” Masters agreed.
She stared at him. “You come from a very different point of view, don’t you?”
“No, not at all,” he countered. “I agree that hope is everything, but I also know that, way too often, we can have as much hope as we want, and still the results are negative.”
“That’s your history speaking,” she replied, “and it’s probably why it makes you a good investigator. From my perspective that is something I don’t even want to contemplate. But I appreciate that you will be that influence of reality and experience, while I will be the hopeful optimist.”
He laughed. “Being an optimist is a good thing, particularly when your brother’s life is hanging in the balance. If he is alive, we also must consider the fact that he would have been kept as a prisoner somewhere, likely not in the most wonderful of places.”
She stared at him and nodded. “And that’s very disturbing.”
“It is,” he agreed, “not only disturbing, but he’ll probably need medical attention and therapy.”
“I don’t care about that. I’ll sell my house or whatever it takes to get him back on track.”
“Seems your brother has enough money to do that on his own.”
“Yes, he probably does.” She remembered that and brightened. “I contacted one of the companies that he invested in, a dot-com investment into a friend’s venture, and they’ve known each other since grade school. My brother gave him the start-up money, and he had a 50 percent share. So, when the company got big enough, they bought some of his stock to give the guy more of an ownership share, and that’s where some of Nicholas’s millions came from.”
“Good,” Masters stated, knowing this was a huge plus. “That is very helpful and will keep our train of thought away from something criminal going on.”
“It’s not illegal money. That’s what I was concerned about too,” she shared.
“Of course, and you were right to wonder when that much money is involved.”
“But you also know that, when it comes to some of these investments, it can be big money, massive money,” she pointed out. “And honestly it’s been huge confirming that Nicholas’s investment had netted him such a wonderful return on investment. And his friend did know that my brother was missing and told me that my brother still has a bunch of shares in the company, which would all probably come to me in the event of my brother’s passing. He asked if I have any idea what I wanted to do with it. I told him in no uncertain terms that I just wanted to focus on getting my brother home, which, as you can imagine, created an awkward moment. Then we talked a bit more, and I basically just ended the call.”
“Did you feel any sense of relief on his part that you didn’t want to do anything with Nicholas’s remaining shares?”
“I don’t think legally I can do anything unless we find a body,” she shared. “And I don’t think… I think he was hoping that I was correct to hold out hope, back-pedaling a bit, making it sound as if I wasn’t loopy for holding out hope when he’s been missing for so long. However, for me, there will always be hope.”
“I think every family member feels that way,” Masters noted. “And people who aren’t in this position don’t understand.”
When his phone rang just a few minutes later, she jumped.
He held up a hand and said, “It’s just the lab. It’s all right.”