Chapter 11
Daisy
I’m up late Saturday night, into the early morning, researching license plate numbers and registration tags.
The laptop screen burns my eyes, but I keep scrolling through ARGUS results.
Nothing. No interesting connections, not even hints of a lead.
It’s when the early morning light filters through the blinds that exhaustion finally wins, and my memory drifts back to my visit to Uncle Alvin’s apartment, the weekend of his funeral.
In my semi-lucid state, the details are crisp, so vibrant and real it’s as if I’ve returned.
Stubborn muted algae stains the corners of the dry pool, the concrete radiating heat even in the shade. The air tastes like dust and smells of mildew.
Uncle Alvin always sat looking over the cracked pool shell and concrete courtyard, over the tile roof of the two-story apartment building, to the palm tree fronds, for hours each day.
The weekend of his funeral, the folding chair sat empty, one leg slightly bent, the concave dip in the stretched woven fabric evoking the past.
“How’s school, little miss?”
That’s the question he’d ask on school days, when the weight of my backpack pulled on my shoulders, as I’d been too small and thin for the heavy weight of books back then.
Reed was never up in the morning when I headed off to the bus stop, but he never missed an afternoon when I got home. Didn’t matter if I didn’t come home for hours, he didn’t go inside until I got home.
That day, I did my best not to dwell in the past as I had two days to go through everything before the property management company would toss his belongings.
Alvin Reed wouldn’t have wanted me to cry anyway. Tears are for when something really bad happens, and you don’t know really bad, little miss.
Given I didn’t fight in Vietnam, by his barometer, I’ll never know really bad.
The worn brass doorknob burned hot under my palm.
Stale air hit my face—the cloying smell of closed spaces and Pine-Sol.
Light flowed over black and white vinyl squares as I stepped inside.
Closed metal blinds blocked the view of the empty pool.
The vinyl floor felt familiar under my sneakers—the same give and stick I remembered from racing around in socks.
My fingers found the avocado fridge handle automatically, and the rubber seal released with a soft sucking sound. I’d been surprised to find it clean. Well, clean-ish. There were no moldy science experiments occurring, at least. Did I thank my mom?
Through the other doorway, from the kitchen, I could see his mattress, stripped of sheets, sitting on a box spring.
Mom asked if I wanted his clothes and I said no, and I second-guessed that decision for days, for no good reason.
Sentimentality is not me. Plus, I move too frequently to become a hoarder in my thirties and holding on to an old man’s clothes is the definition of hoarding.
My fingers traced the solid wood grain on the old desk, worn smooth by decades of Uncle Alvin’s forearms. I curved my hands below the center drawer and tugged, testing the weight of the solid desk.
The desk edge cut into my palms, but the drawer didn’t budge.
If it wouldn’t have cost a fortune, I would’ve shipped it to Chicago.
Of course, maybe I shouldn’t have been such a cheapskate.
Maybe Uncle Alvin would’ve wanted me to keep that desk, as it was the place I did my homework for years, avoiding the loud TV and my crying baby sister.
Papers cluttered the desk and a charging cable snaked from the wall, stretching across to the far edge. Where was the laptop? He’d been so proud of that Chrome junk when he purchased it some ten years ago.
I shake my head now, refocusing on my laptop screen. The license plate database stares back at me, but all I can think about is that missing laptop. Did someone take it? The same someone who might have taken Jocelyn’s life? How many clues have I overlooked?
That day, I tugged on the drawer, wiggling the stiff joint.
The drawer fought me, wood swollen with age, but with a grinding noise, it gave.
Crinkled papers filled the drawer, almost to the point of overstuffing the narrow space.
Papers crackled like autumn leaves as I sifted through them, edges soft with handling.
Bold red letters drew my eye.
Collection notices.
It didn’t take me long to realize they were all unpaid bills. Utility. Rent. Credit card. Water. The collection notices whispered against each other as I sorted through Reed’s shame.
My chest ached with regret. I could still see him sitting in that folding chair by the pool, waving when I came home, making sure I was safe. He’d watched over me every single day of my childhood, and somewhere along the way, while I was busy living my life, I’d missed that he was slipping.
He should’ve asked for money.
But that was my fault.
I shouldn’t have complained to him about Mom asking for money. But I did, and that certainly made him feel like he couldn’t come to me. The twisted part of it is, I may have complained, but I always helped Mom and my sister, Lily. Always. Without fail.
Reed clearly slipped, I mean, those bills were a shit show. But the man I knew wasn’t too proud to admit when he fucked up.
“Messed up big time, little one.” That’s what he’d told me when I asked what happened with him and his wife. I never met her. He moved into the Hollywood Dreams Apartments after the divorce, a split that happened before I was born.
“There’s a lot of devils out there with a powerful pull.” One of his all-time favorite statements rings through my head, something he’d say in his defense of my mom.
Uncle Alvin always said I had every right to be mad at her, and that it was important I understand her actions were no fault of mine.
Even as a kid, I sensed his words carried weight, because they applied to his past. When he spoke those words, he wasn’t just saying them to me, the latchkey kid from across the courtyard. He spoke to his ghosts.
My curiosity, my need to understand what caused him to slip this last time is what led me to dig further.
He’d been the most frugal man I’ve ever known. He didn’t replace anything unless it broke and couldn’t be repaired. He stopped his daily trips to the beach when they raised the bus fare. How he could fall so far into debt didn’t make sense.
If I’d found his laptop, I could’ve gotten in because on his desk beneath yellowed scotch tape he’d pasted his login to an important site: Username: AReed Password: WildFlower1!
But I never found the laptop.
I did find a spiral notebook with scrawled names and dollar amounts beside them. At first, I thought it was a betting log. Tucked in the pages was a business card for a lawyer with a Los Angeles address.
Another file included articles that he must’ve printed in the library, as he didn’t own a printer.
The headlines offered clues: BitConnect, One Coin, Plus Token, Squid Game Token, Africrypt Heist.
His printed search queries with answers interwoven with ads with broken images offered more clues.
What is pig butchering?
The Wikipedia-like explanation described how scammers build trust through fake relationships before convincing victims to invest in fraudulent platforms.
Then I opened a folder with a handwritten tab labeled Sterling Financial. Marketing materials filled the folder. Buy “memberships” with minimum returns of 0.5 percent a day, with a 300 percent return over 600 days.
My coffee has gone cold beside me. Outside, the Sunday morning is perfectly quiet—no sirens, no emergency vehicles across the street. Just like the afternoon I realized Uncle Alvin had been scammed.
A thousand bucks incentive for recruiting new members with a $50,000 investment.
Stock photo images of smiling models and palm trees adorned a glossy folder that could double as an advertisement for a sleep aid.
That day, my fingers tingled with realization. Uncle Alvin met a modern devil—a scammer.
If he died of a heart attack, did stress bring it on?
My initial assumption had been that he was doing all the research to get his money back. But from what I’ve read, it doesn’t work like that. I’m sure he signed something stating he completely understood the risks he was incurring.
That day, I’d sensed he’d been wronged. I wondered how they found him, a Vietnam vet living in a shit hole. And I’d wondered if he’d given them everything—and he had.
I took photos of everything, even the spot on the linoleum where Mom said she found his body. The police officer called to the scene didn’t register surprise at an eighty-three-year-old’s unexpected death.
I agreed; never suspected murder. Given Reed thought doctors were too expensive and would rather die than complain about a health issue, I figured there was no telling what got him, what ailment he suffered from and never sought treatment.
With those bills, Reed would’ve had to have been in massive physical pain before he added to his debt.
And maybe he wasn’t murdered. Maybe I’m drawing connections that don’t exist.
I rub my eyes, the laptop screen blurring.
Jake’s still asleep upstairs, and I’m on a sofa connecting random dots.
But as I think back to that apartment, to everything I photographed but didn’t really see.
.. Was he murdered? Did they opt to not burn down an entire apartment complex, but instead count on no one caring about an old debt-ridden veteran?
I never found the laptop. Mom swore she didn’t sell it and given she wouldn’t know who to sell it to and it was basically worthless, I believe her.
Did they kill him, take the laptop, leave the charger out of carelessness, and leave the notebooks in the stuck drawer because they never found them?
Was Uncle Alvin a threat to these people that warranted murder?
And does that matter? Because the only explanation is that Jocelyn Faribault was murdered.
A part of me says I’m in over my head, outside of my expertise, and I should pack it up and go. But the other part of me says that Uncle Alvin wouldn’t want that. He had the courage to fight in Vietnam. I can find the courage to stick it out and figure out what happened.