Traces of Guilt

  “Almost there,” she replied. She added another date to her timeline. “What are the odds you could park a camper someplace for twelve years and no one would mention it?”

  “If the lot fees are paid on time, who cares how long a camper sits there?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. Like an old bank box. So long as the fee is paid, and the automatic transfer from a savings or checking account clears, the box can go dormant and no one would know.”

  “Are you thinking the cash is sitting in a bank box?”

  She turned at the remark, startled. “What did you say?”

  “The cash they were accumulating. Susan could have been storing it in one of the larger safe-deposit boxes rather than carrying it home. Forty thousand would fit.”

  She beamed. “Yes!” She spun back to the wall, grabbed the green marker, and wrote Bank box! on the first open area of white paper.

  Gabriel chuckled. “I think we just cross-communicated. What were you talking about?”

  “I think they unhitched the camper and left it at the campground—either at their destination or farther north, away from where the search would have started. Or maybe they parked it at a storage lot. But my gut says they just parked it at a campground. Swap it with one that hasn’t been moved for a couple months, has grass growing up around it, slap on some bumper stickers, swap license plates, and hide the camper in plain sight. One camper basically looks the same as the next.”

  “Who?”

  “Either the Florist family making a clean getaway or whoever killed them.” She picked up her root beer from the table. “Or maybe someone else who followed the Florist family to the campground. I do lean toward the fact they arrived at their destination before trouble happened. Anyway, that bank-box comment of yours is brilliant. What do you want to bet there’s a bank account and safe-deposit box in the name of Simon or May Carnoff? Susan could have opened an account once they had the false IDs. She opened new accounts as a routine part of her job. Seed the account with five hundred dollars and pay the box rent automatically as an account transfer. She handled accessing the safe-deposit box room too as part of her job. The money is still sitting in the bank here. Why carry that much cash home when she could just store it in a bank box?”

  “A great question,” Gabriel said, “but the bank is closed on Thanksgiving. You won’t get an answer until tomorrow.”

  “The banker in the family—is he high enough up the chain to have keys? All we need is a check on the name to know if it’s something to pursue.”

  “I’ll make a call. Now come on, Evie, close it down. Good turkey waits for no person, and I’m not giving up the wishbone without good cause—it’s my year to claim it.”

  Evie laughed and closed the files. “Tell security to come on over. I’m done for now.” She had leads to tug on and that felt good. She was also in favor of a good meal that wasn’t pizza.

  Joshua Thane

  Josh closed the grill, satisfied the turkey was coming along. His phone chimed a message, and he glanced at it. “Ann’s here. I’ll walk down and meet her, Mom, see if she needs help carrying anything.”

  “If you can carry it along with her stuff, bring me another bag of ice from the bait shop. Or if you see your father, he can bring it.”

  “Will do.” Josh headed down the path toward the pier to meet Ann, figuring he could share a quick update with her and ask about the Dayton family.

  He heard the ice cream truck’s jingle before he saw the vehicle in the parking lot. The campgrounds were full this holiday weekend with those who preferred a less traditional Thanksgiving celebration.

  Josh saw Ann walking toward the pier, eating an ice cream cone. It was a nice sunny day, probably one of the last this warm for the year. He bought himself a vanilla cone and headed after Ann, looking forward to a few private minutes. A small group of people were on the pier, an older couple getting situated in a boat, one of his staff helping them out, and a girl probably six or seven, who was peering over the edge of the dock at the water, a chocolate ice cream cone dripping onto her hand.

  Ann stopped beside her and said something to the girl, handed over extra napkins. Their laughter rippled out over the water. Josh stopped and watched. Ann hadn’t come here alone. He walked across the dock to join them, Ann glancing back over her shoulder as she felt the gentle sway of the boards. Her smile was calm and quiet and quintessential Ann. Another secret unfolding, he thought as he stopped beside the two. The child’s attention was on a sunfish just below the surface, producing an occasional bubble and flip of fin that caught the light.

  “Hello.”

  She looked up at him. Six years old, he thought, without a doubt. He struggled for words after hello. To give himself a moment, he settled to her height and looked down into the water with her. “Nice fish.” There were half a dozen small sunfish in the group.

  “I don’t want to catch them, just look.”

  “Okay.”

  He considered the little girl, saw her lick at her melting cone. “Try vanilla.” He held out his cone for her. She smiled and did so. “You’d be Little Grace. You’re adorable, like your mom.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  He grinned. “Like to swim?”

  “Will the fish nibble at my toes? Andy says they will.”

  He thought about how to answer. “Andy must like you a lot to tell you that secret.”

  “He gave me a valentine. I didn’t give him one.”

  “Maybe next year, if he’s still a friend, you can.”

  The fish moved toward the end of the dock, and she went with them, back to licking her chocolate cone before it was a puddle on the dock.

  “Major secret, Ann,” he whispered as he rose.

  “Yes.”

  They stood watching as the child finished her cone, then knelt down to watch the fish dart around the post of the dock. The boat was loaded with guests now and finally left the dock, its small motor sputtering away. The girl watched it go with interest.

  “Single mom,” Ann said softly.

  “A dad in the picture?”

  “No. Never will be.”

  Josh nodded, handed Ann his cone, and walked down the dock to join the girl. “Little Grace, come meet my mom. She’s fixing a feast, and we can sample if we’re quick about it.”

  She giggled. “My name’s Angel.”

  “Of course it is,” he said with a smile. “You can ride up top.” He swung her up to sit on his shoulders.

  She held on to his hands rather than his hair—someone had given the child lessons in how to be a good passenger. Paul probably, he thought, seeing the comfortable look Ann shared with the child.

  “Don’t forget to tell Josh about your vacation.”

  The girl leaned over to see his face. “Do you like horses?”

  “Yes.”

  “I rode on one that belongs to a real cowboy.”

  “Did you now, really?”

  “I flew in a big plane with lots of people, and Quinn taught me to laugh from my belly and throw a lasso at a post, and I ran around with old Blue, he’s their dog, and chased a cow back into the corral, and Lisa fit me with chaps for my jeans so I could be official and everything, and my cowboy boots are beautiful like me, ’cause Quinn agreed it was okay for them to be pink ’cause I’m a girl.”

  He grinned as he followed that report to interesting places. “Did you see any lambs while you were out there? My brother Will has a couple of those.”

  “Can you show me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you have lots of brothers? ’Cause I’ve only got me and Mom, and I want brothers, lots of them, so they can be my posse when we go after bad guys and gold and stuff.”

  “Are you a treasure hunter?”

  “Well, not yet, but I want to be.”

  “What else do you want to be?”

  “Oh, chipmunks!” Her slender body twitched around as he stopped and she watched two of them chase each other. When they had disappeare
d, he set out walking again.

  “I want to have adventures and see the sea, but I don’t think I want to go in caves, ’cause they’re creepy and dark and might have snakes, and the really old mines are grimy and might fall down on you, so I won’t go in those either, but old cellars and barns and dried riverbeds often hide stuff so I could look there for treasure.”

  “That would be smart for an adventurer.”

  She leaned over to look at him again. “I might want to go into space like Bishop, but you can’t tell Mom because she’s like ‘Keep your feet on the ground, Angel,’” she mimicked in a singsong voice, “but I think floating around without gravity would be a lot of fun.”

  “That’s a big secret to keep. What do I get in return if I do?”

  “What do you want?”

  He thought about it. “Could you make me a valentine?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then we have our first secret that I won’t tell your mom. Though maybe we can only have three or four of those, because I like talking to your mom about stuff.”

  “Okay. I only have a couple I could tell you.”

  “What’s another one?”

  “She thinks I don’t know her uncle made her sad.”

  He gently rubbed her knee and tried to swallow the lump growing in his throat. “Yeah. That would be an okay secret not to tell your mom.” He shifted his grip to her tennis shoes as they reached the level ground. “Do you like turkey?”

  “Yes. Is that what smells good?”

  He smiled. “I cooked it.”

  “You did? Really?”

  He swung her down from his shoulders. “Come and see.” He took her over to the grill. “Hold your breath, it’s going to shoot out smoke at you,” he warned and lifted the lid. She waved her hand and giggled.

  “Okay, what do you think?” He lifted her up so she could see the browning bird.

  She studied it. “It looks really good,” she declared.

  He kissed her cheek and set her back on the ground. “Compliments are accepted.” His mother, seated at the patio table, was watching them with great curiosity. “Angel, this is my mother, Marie.”

  Angel turned shy, keeping a hand on his jeans as she greeted the woman. “Hello.”

  His mom leaned forward and offered her hand. “Hello back to you.”

  They carefully shook. The girl tipped her head to look up at Josh. “She’s tiny,” she whispered. “How did she have you?”

  His mother laughed. “I have lots of photos of him and his brothers when they were small. Would you like to see some of them?”

  “Smaller than me?”

  “A lot smaller.”

  “Yes, please—then I can believe it.”

  Marie offered her hand. “Some of the pictures are on the walls inside. And I need to check pumpkin pies in the oven. Would you like to help me do that?”

  “Sure. Do you have that white stuff for on top of the pie? Because ice cream is okay, but that fluffy white is better.”

  “If I don’t, I will send Josh to get us some.”

  “That would be good.” The little girl slid her hand into his mother’s and they disappeared into the house together.

  Josh could think of a dozen questions, but he cleared up a fairly major one first. “Space?” he queried Ann, glancing over as she took a seat at the patio table.

  Ann smiled. “She’s spent time this last year over at Bishop Space Repair, Inc. with Jim Bishop. Grace works there on occasion when they need small hands to build one of their space bots. Angel hangs out in the workshop, helping out Jim, or Kelly Gold, his number two.”

  He knew astronaut Jim Bishop had retired after the last shuttle launch, but he hadn’t heard about the company. “They’re going to make it back into space as a private venture?”

  “Gina Bishop figured out how to 3-D print a rocket made of solid rocket fuels. They’ve been launching small-scale versions of it for months in all kinds of weather and wind conditions. You’ll see a big one launch into space next month on a test flight with the Navy. It’s dropped the costs from several million for a space launch to about two hundred thousand.”

  “That sounds like Gina.”

  Ann laughed. “It does. The Bishop brothers are going into business to repair satellites that otherwise would enter orbital decay, tumble into the atmosphere, and burn up. A satellite costs three to four hundred million to build, minimum; they’ll charge five or six million to go fix it. They plan to send up a couple of spider-like robots and a repair box of supplies, catch up to the satellite in question, use the bots to replace gyroscopes, swap out electronic boards and instruments, add more fuel so the maneuvering thrusters can keep the satellite in position, then lift the satellite back to its normal orbit. To listen to Bryce and Jim Bishop talk, it’s going to be a viable business doing four to six repair flights a year within three years. When Mark Bishop retires from the Navy, he’s going to join them as president of the company.”

  “The things being done in secret . . .”

  Ann smiled. “It won’t be a secret much longer once the big rocket flies. I figure they’re going to pour the profits of the satellite repairs into building a capsule so that Jim can go back into space himself as a privately funded astronaut. Give it a decade and it’s likely Angel’s going to have astronaut friends coming to her high school graduation party. If she really wants to dream of space, there’s going to be a door waiting wide open for her to walk through.”

  “A little girl should dream big,” he agreed. “I’m glad those dreams are being encouraged, Ann, rather than knocked down by events. Where’s Grace?”

  Ann’s smile faded. “She’s talking with Paul. He’s going to bring her out this way when she’s ready. I told her not to hurry. If she needs a few hours on her own, I’ve got Angel here with me, and a plate from Thanksgiving will heat up fine.”

  “Thanks, Ann, for giving her what she needs.”

  “It’s what I can do. She’s wrapping this up, Josh. I don’t think she’ll be here after today. Angel wanted to see the lake her mom talks about, and I think Grace needed to give you the rest of the story, which is why she asked me to bring her daughter here. Grace didn’t have it in her to explain all this. Don’t think less of her for that.”

  “I’m glad she let me in on the full picture. It doesn’t change things or push us apart. Probably the opposite.”

  “I thought it might. She’s a good kid.”

  “Grace without the shadows,” Josh murmured.

  “Exactly,” Ann said.

  He smiled. “It’s going to be easy to love both of them.”

  “Those around her already do. You’re welcome to be part of that circle if you want in.”

  He listened to the girl laughing inside with his mom. “I want in.”

  Gabriel Thane

  Gabriel watched the little girl laughing with Josh, and he thought Angel had transformed this Thanksgiving Day. Karen and Will looked quite content too, sharing an outdoor lounge chair and watching eagles soar over the lake. He saw Evie disappear down the hall with Ann, heard the two of them chuckling over something. The stress of the last two weeks was easing away, that was apparent. He didn’t see his father, Paul, or Grace, so the complete group had yet to arrive.

  The shock of learning that Grace had a daughter had worn off rather abruptly with a simple introduction from Josh and a meaningful brother-to-brother glance. Since Gabriel rarely met a kid he didn’t like, and the girl had a smile that could make a stone heart smile back, he thought he’d done fine with the introductions.

  He checked out the appetizers, picked up a cucumber slice with a green pepper mustache, red pepper lips, and black olive eyes. A spreadable cheese held the vegetables together. It was the first time he could remember laughing before he ate vegetables. Karen’s contribution, he was sure. He helped himself to a second one. Remarkably good, he decided.

  Evie returned, and Gabriel blinked at the color splash. She’d changed her shirt to m
atch Ann and Angel. They were now a vibrant neon yellow, hand-painted with what might be turkeys.

  Evie plopped a shirt in his hands. “You’re messing up the dress code.”

  He simply grinned. Why not? He stepped into Josh’s room and changed, looked in the mirror and winced. At least he wouldn’t have to look at himself. He found his mother in the kitchen, filling an ice bucket, sporting one of the yellow shirts, only this one had lots of feathers painted on it. Or maybe it was ears of corn.

  Casserole dishes were in the oven keeping warm, three crock-pots were lined up on the counter, the stove top held pans with noodles, corn on the cob, potatoes and gravy, and, on the far counter, pies were cooling. A true Thane Thanksgiving Day feast. As soon as Josh declared the bird done, this meal would be ready. “Mom, what’s left?”

  She glanced around. “You can set the tables, inside and out.”

  He opened the cupboard to get down plates. Evie offered to help, and he handed her the plates and gathered glasses together. He smiled at the two coming into the kitchen. “Your vegetables are good enough to eat, Karen.”

  “Thanks.” She saw what he was doing. “Will, you do the silverware.”

  Will obliged while Karen got out napkins and holders for the corn on the cob.

  His mom nodded her approval. “Karen.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’ve got something I’d like to say.”

  Karen looked over at Marie with a cautious smile. “I’d like to hear it. I think.”

  “I appreciate you bringing those cute vegetables even my sons are eating without a fuss. It shows you put some time and effort into the dish, but didn’t want to show up other cooks in the house. You’ve got a nice, tactful side to you, given I know you’re the best cook to ever step into a Thane house.”

  Karen blushed.

  “I’ve got three sons,” Marie went on, “and it’s wonderful to see one of them settling down.” Will was turning red. “You don’t need to be cooking great meals and inviting family over on holidays, Karen. You just show up here hungry and bring whatever suits your fancy and you’ll fit in this family fine. But just remember one thing. You want peace with a man’s mother, you bring him to church every Sunday, and when the kids come along, you bring them too.”