A Grave Mistake
highlight_author
Shirley Jump
highlight_reads
18,8K
highlight_chapters
13
Chapter One
The last time Mia Beaumont put on a dress had also been the last time anyone ever asked her to wear one, and for good reason. As soon as her mother had fastened the last button, Mia scooted out the back door and climbed the oak tree in the backyard, scuffing up her new shoes and turning the lacy edge of the pink-and-white skirt into a shredded tail. Somewhere in some dusty photo album there was a picture of ten-year-old Mia, sitting on the lap of the Easter Bunny—really, it had been kind Mr. Klein from next door, dressed in a once-white costume that had seen better days—with a smudge of dirt on her cheek and fresh scrapes on both knees and one elbow. Her annoyance with the dress showed in the scowl on her face, the crossed arms over her chest. After that day, her mother had given up on trying to tame her middle daughter.
The kettle on the stove started whistling. Mia crossed into Grandpa Louis’s cramped, sunny kitchen and turned off the burner. “Grandpa, do you want some tea?”
She fixed two cups, anyway, one with milk and honey for herself and one with just a sprinkling of sugar for her grandfather. She put the mugs on a tray and added a plate of shortbread cookies. Her feet were already complaining about the heels she’d put on to go with the dress.
“Grandpa?” Mia navigated her way through a house crowded with memories and photographs. She paused by a candid shot of her mother in the coffee shop, her hair up in a bun, an apron around her waist.
For most of Mia’s life, Anna Beaumont had been busy doing her level best to keep her head above water, especially back in those days. Mia’s father, who was gone more than he was home, had been a commercial pilot flying for a major airline based out of Dallas. By the time Mia was fourteen, her parents were divorced, and Anna was working two jobs, both as a waitress and at the family coffee shop, so she could hold on to the little house where the three girls had grown up. As soon as Chloe, the youngest, turned eighteen, Anna took a job in Chicago managing a restaurant. The little house had been sold and the girls were on their own.
All three of the girls had taken their turns working in the coffee shop that their maternal grandmother had started with her sisters and continued to run long after most people retired. Chloe stepped in to take over full-time shortly after Grandma died, while Julia worked part-time around her occupational-therapy schedule. They’d kept the moniker of Three Sisters Grindhouse, even though only two of the Beaumont sisters worked there. By that time, Mia had been off on her own, living in New York City, scraping by as an artist and doing her best to avoid her family.
When she’d left Crooked Valley, Mia had been angry, defiant and very, very stubborn. That she’d graduated high school at all was a feat in and of itself, and when she’d piled her guitar and all her most vital belongings in the hatchback she’d bought used from Cappy Winstead, her grandmother had shaken her head and told her that one day Mia would come home, full of regret.
Well, Mia had finally come home for longer than a day or two. Her paternal grandfather, whom she adored, had called, and when Grandpa asked something of her, Mia found it impossible to say no. Especially when that request involved a mystery and especially when Grandpa said he was worried someone might be following him.
Those words had been enough for Mia to drop everything and rush across the country. She watched her grandfather sleeping and knew she would do anything for him. His eyebrows knitted together, as if he was worrying about something in his sleep. How she wished she could take that worry away.
Thirty years ago, Grandpa Louis had been a suspect in the disappearance and presumed murder of his business partner, Richard Harrington. There’d been an investigation, a threat to prosecute and a financial blow to her grandfather’s business that he’d never really recovered from. He’d moved out of the investment world and into accounting, trading the career he loved for one that was a close second. For three decades, he’d never talked about the Harrington disappearance with his family. Until he’d been diagnosed with cancer and he’d realized his time to clear his name was quickly evaporating. On the anniversary of the disappearance, Grandpa Louis had done an interview with a local reporter, and three days later, he’d called Mia, convinced someone was following him.
Maybe someone was and maybe someone wasn’t, but either way, Mia intended to solve this mystery once and for all, which meant calling in a favor. Hence, the dress.
Mia picked up her shoes and headed down the hall. She stopped in the bathroom and checked her reflection. Given how infrequently she wore dresses, there was a good chance she had it on inside out or something.
The dark gray poplin dress nipped at her waist, exposing tanned and toned arms and legs, both the result of hours in the gym. She grabbed a claw clip out of her makeup bag and fastened her long, curly, dark blond hair into some semblance of order. All she needed was a strand of pearls and she could have been June Cleaver’s twin. Well, if the television mom from the fifties had ever played in a grunge band in New York City and spent her days hosting a YouTube channel about unsolved crimes.
Either way, Mia looked far more confident and put-together than she felt. She could do this. The past was the past. It didn’t have to impact her present.
She checked on her grandfather, who was still sleeping, thankfully, and then quietly left the house. As soon as she walked outside, she stepped into a sweet, crisp, early winter breeze of fresh mountain air that slid off the Rockies and deep into Crooked Valley, a town nestled halfway between Denver and Boulder. Crooked Valley Creek ran behind her grandfather’s modest ranch house, and then skirted the mountains that flanked two sides of the town, which left most of Crooked Valley lush and green for a good portion of the year while the mountains held the caps of white that attracted skiers from around the world. The morning had started out brisk, a typical late November day, then as the sun climbed over the mountains and shone through the thin air, the temps had risen to the high fifties. At night, the air would plunge into the forties again, a dichotomy that made everyone in Crooked Valley keep both a jacket and a pair of sunglasses in their car year-round.
Mia got into her CR-V, giving the Honda a mental apology for the miles it had traversed and the dust coating the wheels. On her way to her sister Chloe’s house for dinner later, Mia would take a run through the car wash and bring the white crossover back to its usual shininess. For now, there was the one stop that she’d dreaded for more than a thousand miles.
She drove through downtown Crooked Valley, a long red-and-tan patchwork of brick and stucco buildings, punctuated by a view of the Rockies rising above the end of Main Street. She pulled into a space in front of city hall, shut off the car, fed a few quarters into the meter and then headed inside the imposing marble-and-stone building. A gruff security guard waved her through the metal detector and then pointed at the elevator bank after she asked for the office she needed. She rode up to the fifth floor, where she found an expansive glass office emblazoned with a Colorado state crest and a familiar name.
Office of the District Attorney
Twenty-Third Judicial District
Hugh Levine, District Attorney
Raylan Westfield, Assistant District Attorney
A dozen years ago, Raylan Westfield had been her first kiss, her first love, her first everything. He’d made her head spin and her heart race, and for a second, the wanderlust-filled Mia considered staying in Crooked Valley. Then she’d gotten a job in New York City, and it became clear they wanted two different lives. Mia had left Raylan behind, along with the collection of stuffed animals in her room and her trophy from the seventh-grade spelling bee.
Raylan had stepped into his father’s shoes soon after Frank had retired a few years ago. Frank had been the DA for twenty years, and now Raylan seemed to be on the same career trajectory, if what everything Mia had heard was true. Levine was considering retiring in five more years, and Raylan was liked well enough in town to become the next DA, just like his father. From all Mia had read on the internet, Raylan was a great prosecutor, maybe even better than his father had been.
Except Raylan’s father had gotten one thing wrong—there was no way Grandpa Louis had a single thing to do with the disappearance of Richard Harrington. Now all Mia had to do was prove it. Hopefully with the ADA on her side.
Mia pulled open the glass door and strode into the main office area. The glass door snicked shut behind her. Another woman might have hesitated, at the very least spent a couple of seconds gathering herself or taking a few deep breaths before seeing her ex-boyfriend. Not Mia. Everything she had to do, she tackled the same way she jumped into a chilly lake—headfirst and without hesitation.
A gray-haired woman looked up from a desk, and her face broke into a welcoming smile. “Mia?”
“Mrs. Linscott, what a surprise.” Genuine warmth filled Mia’s voice. “I didn’t know you were working for Raylan. I thought you retired when Frank did.”
Mia’s old neighbor, office assistant to the former DA and sometimes weekend babysitter for the Beaumont girls, as well as the Westfield boys, waved off the words. “Keeps me out of trouble. I thought I wanted to retire, until I tried it. So I came right back here to work for Raylan when he was hired. It’s like starting all over again because Raylan is just full of energy and drive.” A familiar mischievous twinkle shone in her eyes and in her smile.
Mia had always liked Susan Linscott. The whole neighborhood had been friendly, the houses and families as interlaced as a spiderweb. The Linscotts had lived in a house at one end of the block, the Westfields at the other, with the Beaumont girls in the middle. When Mia’s mother had to work a weekend shift and her grandparents were unavailable, Susan Linscott had filled in as babysitter. More often than not, Raylan and his little brother had been there, too, since his father worked endless hours and their mother had been sick with cancer for many years before she died. Mia and Raylan had spent so much time together as children that it seemed like them ending up together had been a foregone conclusion.
“How have you been?” Susan got up from behind the desk and drew Mia into a warm, tight hug. Estée Lauder perfume filled the air. For a moment, Mia felt like she’d come home. “How’s life in New York?”
“Busy. Crowded. Gray. I’d forgotten how beautiful it is here.” Mia’s gaze landed on a broad landscape painting that dominated one wall of the ADA’s front office and featured three different Colorado seasons. The deep terra-cotta tones of the Rockies in the autumn, winter pastels of the mountains draped in snow and a bright blue sparkling river in spring. She had missed Crooked Valley more than she realized until she’d come back to all this beauty.
“It’s been so long since I saw you,” Susan said. “What, ten years?”
“Twelve. I left right after I graduated high school,” Mia said.
“And now...?” Susan arched a hopeful eyebrow.
“And now I’m back in Crooked Valley, but just for a little while, not forever.” That was all Mia wanted to say about her plans, since she wasn’t quite sure how she was going to pull off the next part. Getting Raylan to agree wasn’t going to be easy. As for her sisters...well, one mountain at a time. That was how the settlers got from here to California, right? “Is Raylan in?”
Susan beamed, clearly in matchmaking mode. “He is indeed. Did you want to see him?”
Not see him, see him. Just get him to agree to be...open to a wild plan. And if he wasn’t, she was going to go forward regardless. “Yes, but only if he’s not busy. If so, I can make an appointment.”
“Oh, no, he’s never too busy for you.” Susan picked up the phone on her desk and punched a button. “Raylan, there’s someone special here to see you. You’re going to be so surprised.”
Mia tried not to roll her eyes. He was probably going to expect either Sofía Vergara or Santa after that vague description. Clearly, Susan thought there was still something between Mia and Raylan, but she was wrong about that. “I can make an appointment, Susan.”
“Nonsense.” Susan waved off the very idea. “He’ll be thrilled to see you.” She listened a second more, then nodded and agreed. After she hung up the phone, Susan came around the desk and ushered Mia toward a door a few feet away. “Oh, and before you go in there, Mia...”
“Yes?”
“Raylan’s still single. Just sayin’.” With that cringe-worthy sentence, Susan opened the door. “Raylan! You’ll never believe who’s here.”
Raylan Westfield rose from behind his desk, all six foot two of dark-haired, muscular, why-is-he-still-so-hot man. Mia teetered on the unfamiliar heels and began to perspire under the dress that felt made for a stranger. Half of her had hoped that Raylan was sporting a balding head and a desk paunch, but if anything, he was in better shape now than in high school. He had on a pale blue shirt with a pair of pinstriped navy pants. His floral-patterned tie was loose at the neck, giving him an almost vulnerable, cozy look. The matching suit jacket hung on a coat-tree behind his desk. His wire glasses had been traded for a pair of dark-framed lenses that offset his square jaw. He looked handsome and relaxed, all at once. A powerful combination.
So much for there being nothing between them. There was definitely still something in the air, but since Mia was good at ignoring things she didn’t want to face, that something was not going to be a problem.
“Mia?” Raylan smiled. “Wow. When Susan said I’d be surprised, she wasn’t kidding.”
“I’m sorry for just showing up. I should have made an appointment.” She turned to go, but Susan blocked the doorway. How on earth could Raylan, of all people, leave Mia feeling flustered? Mia never got flustered. Lord, help me get through this meeting. Grandpa is counting on me.
“I’ll leave you two to catch up.” Susan gave Mia a smile, then shut the door. Mia had no choice but to turn around and stay.
“Come in, come in.” He waved her toward the desk. “It’s nice to see you. Have a seat.”
Mia sank into the soft leather visitor seat. He settled into the massive dark brown swivel chair on the other side of his thick mahogany desk. There was a mess of files on one side, a triple stack of legal pads with various scribbles in the middle, but otherwise the office was neat and tidy. Raylan’s doing? Susan’s? Why did Mia care? “Thank you for agreeing to see me.” She put her hands in her lap and did her best to look professional. “I’m here on business, of sorts.”
He chuckled. “Have you committed a crime in Crooked Valley? Because all I’m doing is prosecuting right now, and if that’s the case, I’ll give you the name of a good defense attorney.”
“Why is that the first thing you assume about me? People change, you know, Raylan.” She scowled and got to her feet. That man still managed to get on her nerves with a few words. “This will never work.”
“Mia, hold on. I’m sorry. It was just a joke.” He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Let’s try this again. How have you been, Mia? I’d love to catch up with you.”
The sincerity in his voice made her lower herself back into the chair, even though she was sorely tempted to bolt from the room. She reminded herself that impetuous, wild Mia was gone. More or less.
She took a deep breath. “I want to reopen my grandfather’s case.” Might as well get to the point sooner rather than later.
Raylan’s brow shot up. A moment of silence extended between them. “I saw that interview your grandfather did, and I’m not sure why he’s talking about the case now, after all these years. Your grandfather was never charged with anything so there’s technically no case to reopen. Nor was Richard Harrington ever found, so the case has fallen off the radar of the police department. It’s a cold case. Why would you want to reopen that investigation?”
“He’s getting older, and he wants to clear his name before...” She couldn’t say the words aloud, couldn’t bear the thought of losing her beloved grandfather. “Anyway, it’s time to do that.”
He shifted into the stiff posture of the all-business attorney he was reputed to be. “Have you come across evidence that the authorities should know about?” The friendly, eager-to-catch-up tone had disappeared from Raylan’s voice.
“Not exactly.” She thought of the file in her room back at Grandpa’s, the information she’d gathered in the weeks before driving down here, the thick stack of photocopies she’d received from the Crooked Valley Police Department after her Freedom of Information Act request last month. Grandpa had given her the bare bones when they’d first talked a few months ago, and from there, Mia had used her resources to find more information, but no solid answers. “I want to start at the beginning and retrace everything that happened.”
Raylan’s gaze narrowed. “And how do I figure in to this?”
Mia shifted in her seat. This was the hard part—the place where she expected Raylan to disagree or, worse, throw her out of his office. “I want you to investigate it with me.”
“You...what?” He blinked. “Why me?”
“Because no one knows the history of Crooked Valley better than you do, Raylan. I haven’t been here in twelve years, and frankly, I was never really fully here when I lived here, anyway. This town and I... We’re not exactly bosom buddies. But you’re like a walking encyclopedia, and if I’m going to go back in time thirty years, I need someone like you on my side.” Raylan was also one of the smartest, most fair men she knew, and if anything Mia discovered did point to her grandfather, Raylan was the only person she trusted to investigate first and indict second. It was a gamble—a huge one—but she had no choice. Going behind the backs of the police and district attorney on a case this legendary would only make Grandpa look more suspicious, not less.
But if she got Raylan’s buy-in from the beginning, maybe the real facts could be uncovered and Grandpa’s name could be cleared. Maybe.
“My father thought your grandfather was guilty,” Raylan said. “He just didn’t have enough evidence to take the case to trial.”
Raylan’s father hadn’t just thought Grandpa Louis was guilty. He’d shouted it from the rooftops. Frank Westfield had been a ruthless prosecutor, intent on throwing anyone he deemed guilty into jail forever. He’d called a grand jury to indict Grandpa, but thankfully the grand jury hadn’t thought there was enough evidence to take the case to trial. Nevertheless, Grandpa’s reputation had been destroyed forever, tarnished by a verdict that never happened. She prayed the Raylan she remembered had maintained the ethics and sense of fairness he’d somehow been born with, unlike his father.
“I know that. I was thinking maybe you’d want a little closure on it, too. For your dad. And, for old times’ sake.” She gave him a smile that she hoped was a bit flirty, but Mia had about as much flirt in her as she did elephant. She smoothed the skirt of the dress over her knees and wondered vaguely if Raylan thought she looked pretty. And then chastised herself for caring what he thought. The dress had been a way to butter up Raylan, maybe help him forget the past and agree to her plan.
Raylan pushed his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose. The dark-rimmed glasses served to accent the deep blue of his eyes, offset the roguish wave in his hair and draw her attention to his face, over and over again. “You know we’d be on opposite sides of this, right?”
“Would we, Raylan? Because I’ve known you a long time, and you’ve always been a fair and honest man. I know it’s a risk coming here to ask for help from the assistant prosecutor, but—” and here was why she’d worn the dress and pulled out all her feminine stops, including another rare smile “—I was hoping you’d help me because we’re old friends.”
“Is that what we are, Mia?”
“That’s the best definition I can think of.” She met his gaze, but his dark eyes were like storm clouds at night—unreadable. He’d always been that way, but then again, so had she. Neither of them had been big on sharing feelings or fears, which was part of what had led to them breaking up and Mia doing what she did best—fleeing the scene of the heartbreak.
The end of their relationship might not have had a big blow-out argument, but they hadn’t exactly been pen pals over the years, either. Whatever was between them was...complicated.
He leaned in and gave her an assessing gaze. “I noticed you wore a dress today. Beautiful, but not like the Mia I know.”
She raised her chin and avoided looking at him. “You haven’t seen me in a long time, Raylan. I have changed.”
As Raylan sat back in his chair, it let out a slight squeak of protest. “Your grandfather has always been considered a person of interest in this criminal matter, and if I help you with this, I will be compelled to use any and all evidence I uncover in the course of an investigation.”
“English, Raylan. Not lawyer.”
He sighed. “I can’t promise that I won’t prosecute your grandfather at the end of this.”
The idea terrified her, but Mia refused to let that stand in her way. Grandpa had been the one to propose involving Raylan, even knowing this could end up backfiring on him. Her grandfather was innocent in all that had happened. She just had to prove it. “All either of us wants is some answers. I’m willing to take that risk if you are. Do you want to solve this mystery with me or not?”
He rose and came to sit on the corner of his desk. She shifted in the chair and feigned disinterest. “Depends. You’re not still holding a grudge against me, are you? Because we were just kids back then. Barely out of high school.”
Her gaze met his and held. The clock on the wall ticked away the time. Outside the office, she could hear the soft murmur of Susan talking on the phone. “I don’t remember. It was a million years ago.”
“Liar.”
She raised her chin and looked him dead in the eye. If he thought he still had any hold over her, he was wrong. She didn’t feel a single blip when he smiled at her. Not a single one. “I’m serious, Raylan. I don’t remember the past. I’ve moved on. You’ve moved on. The whole world has moved on.”
“Of course. Who thinks about things like high-school romances, anyway?”
“Not me.” The dress had been a bad idea, she decided, because it knocked her out of her element. Made her feel too much like a girl and less like herself. “So...are you in or out?”
He shook his head and laughed. “You’re either incredibly foolhardy or wildly optimistic, Mia. I gotta admire you either way.”
“I’m not sure whether to thank you or slug you.” She gave him her sweetest, least-sarcastic smile.
He chuckled. The bemused expression still lit his eyes, as if he found her sitting in his office a clever ruse on her part to see him again. “How about dinner tonight? We can catch up.”
Mia got to her feet. She might have thought about him a couple times over the past few years, but she certainly wasn’t here to rekindle a dead fire. “We both said all there was to say a long time ago, Raylan. If you’re going to help, then be at the Harrington property tomorrow morning bright and early. Wear boots and bring gloves. We’re going to dig until we find something.”
Mia left Raylan’s office, kicked off her shoes and got behind the wheel of her car barefoot, despite the cold temperature. Those shoes sure had looked good in the store when she’d bought them, but in reality, they were torturous to wear.
She was about to put the car in gear when she saw something in the rearview mirror. A flash of something dark, a face maybe, but when she looked up, whatever or whoever had been behind her was gone. Mia shrugged off the goose bumps that rose on her arms and pulled out of the parking lot. She made a quick stop at the supermarket and then, a few minutes later, she arrived back at her grandfather’s house. She put the shoes on again just long enough to climb up the back staircase, unlock the door and slip inside the kitchen.
Then she braced herself, because every time she saw Grandpa, it broke her heart and made her regret staying away for so long. The Grandpa Louis that Mia remembered from her childhood had aged considerably and had lost his usual perky personality. Part of it had undoubtedly been the death of his wife a few years ago, a loss they’d all been saddened by.
He’d kept working until he was seventy-eight, filling the holes in his life, he said. A month after he retired, he was diagnosed with lung cancer, and the busy, hearty grandfather she remembered had disappeared. He’d finished his last round of chemotherapy last week, and Mia prayed it had stopped the cancer from spreading.
When Mia arrived last night, she’d barely been able to hide her shock at seeing the wizened, frail man who greeted her, so changed in the year since she’d seen him. The cancer had taken pounds off his frame, weakened his muscles and left him looking perpetually tired.
After her meeting with Raylan this morning, she’d gone to Mac’s Market and stocked up on all of Grandpa Louis’s favorite foods. Maybe she could get him to eat some spaghetti and meatballs or a pizza tonight, or anything he wanted to order. She hoped and prayed that focusing on the case would give him motivation to work on being as healthy as possible again, so she kept her voice bright and her smile on her face.
“Hi, Grandpa! I’m back!” She left her shoes in the corner and deposited two canvas totes on the counter. A half-eaten shortbread cookie and nearly full teacup sat beside the sink. Well, at least he’d taken a couple of bites.
“I’m in here,” her grandfather called back.
She ducked into the living room, where Grandpa Louis was sitting in his usual recliner, with an afghan over his legs and the remote in his hand. The blinds were drawn and the room was dark, save for the light from the television. Mia clicked on a lamp and perched on the love seat across from her grandfather.
Nothing in this room had changed in the years since Grandma died. Nothing had changed anywhere in the house. It was as if Grandpa had lost the love of his life and then stayed stuck in that moment. If Mia had known how bad it was here...
Well, there was nothing she could do about the past. All she could do was make the future better. “How was your day?”
“Exactly the same as all of them.” Grandpa muted the television and shifted toward her. “Did you talk to Raylan?”
The only time she saw her grandfather perk up and become a semblance of his old self was when he talked about reopening the case. That was one area where Mia could help him. It was almost as if God had pushed her along the path she’d been on for the last few years, investigating cold cases for her YouTube channel, because now she could put all those skills to use and help bring closure to her grandfather. Her channel had focused mainly on women who were leaving domestic-violence situations, but she knew she had enough investigative chops to hopefully help solve a disappearance. If nothing else, she could at least clear Grandpa Louis’s name and stop the whispers in town that said he’d had something to do with his business partner’s disappearance.
“I did. He’s skeptical, but I think he’s going to help me.”
Grandpa arched an eyebrow. “I can’t imagine his father would have been happy about that, if he was still alive.”
“I don’t know.” Mia shifted closer and put a hand on her grandfather’s knee. “Either way, we’ll have some answers, Grandpa, and maybe even find out where Richard went.”
“And where the money went.” Her grandfather scowled. “That man cost me everything. Your grandmother and I had to start over from nothing. It was a tough time.”
Grandma had gone back to work as a nurse, Grandpa to a small accounting firm, and the two of them slowly rebuilt their savings, barely keeping their house from foreclosure. Mia had never been very close to her father, who traveled a lot when the girls were young, but she had spent a lot of time with her grandparents. Now that Mom was gone, Grandpa Louis and her sisters were the only thing Mia had left that resembled a family.
That connection was what had made Mia hop in her car and put her life in New York on an indefinite hold. She’d solved several mysteries over the years with her YouTube channel show, but this was the first time it was personal, and it was ten times more important because it was Grandpa’s story. Now that she was here, she wanted to get right to work and lift the weight of suspicion off her grandfather’s shoulders once and for all. “If you’re feeling up to it today, I’d like to do a formal interview with you for my show.”
Her grandfather scowled. “I’m not much for that technology thing. What if I mess it up?”
“It’s just you and me talking. It’ll be easy. I promise.” And it would give Grandpa Louis a reason to get out of his pajamas and out of his recliner. “We can start after you have a healthy snack or an early lunch.”
“You’re always trying to get me to eat.” Grandpa smiled and reached for her hand. “And maybe I’m not as grateful as I should be. Thank you for taking care of an old man.”
“That’s because you’re my favorite old man ever.” She gave him a hug and held on a little extra, long enough to stop the tears threatening her eyes.
An hour later, Mia made a simple lunch of tomato soup and grilled-cheese sandwiches. Grandpa tried eating, but barely got four or five bites in him. Mia pretended that didn’t worry her at all as she helped her rail-thin grandfather change into a button-down shirt and sweater. She set up her ring light, phone camera and tripod, and created a vignette by moving a faux fern and a lamp into a corner of the dining room. She brought in the comfiest armchair she could find in the house and helped her grandfather ease into it. She clipped a lapel microphone to his sweater and brushed off a piece of lint. He looked so fragile and weak that all she wanted to do was hug him and never let go. “I promise to keep this short.”
Grandpa Louis waved off her concern. “Take all the time you need. I just want to get to the truth.”
“Okay.” Mia grabbed her notebook, sat in a chair opposite her grandfather and clipped a microphone onto her own shirt. The phone’s lens was set right behind her head, so that she was partially in the shot with her grandfather. She would intersperse the interview with some B-roll—footage of the town and the site of the disappearance—to give it more depth and interest. “Take me back to the beginning. How did you get involved in investing?”
Grandpa Louis chuckled, clearly happy to start with a topic he loved so much and had such a passion for. “When was I not into investing? I remember having a paper route when I was a boy. Thirty cents of every dollar I made went into a savings account. Back then you’d get an actual return on your investment from the bank. By the time I graduated high school, I had enough money saved to invest in a couple of stocks, which did pretty well, considering I didn’t know what I was doing. I went to college, majored in accounting and finance and learned all I could about money. I had made friends with this guy in my fraternity, Richard Harrington. He was majoring in finance as well, and was smart as a whip. He said he knew a way to double our money.” Grandpa paused, and Mia could see that the memory pained him.
“If it’s too difficult to talk about, we can do this later.”
“No. It’s waited long enough.” Grandpa shifted his weight and took a deep breath. She could see him struggle with bringing a painful past to the surface. “I trusted Richard because he seemed to know so much more than me, and he did. We went into business together after college, and by our thirties, the company was making over a million dollars a year.”
Mia let out a low whistle. “Almost three million in today’s dollars.”
Grandpa nodded. “And a lot of money for a couple of young men. Your grandmother and I had just started a family with the birth of your father. We were raising him in a nice neighborhood, sending him to private school, taking the occasional family vacation. We lived very well, your grandmother and I, and we were so grateful.”
“How was working with Richard Harrington? Did you like him?”
Her grandfather shrugged. “Richard and I got along pretty well most of the time. He handled the operations for the business, and I managed sales and customer relations. We met weekly to discuss the investments the company was making on the clients’ behalf, and I trusted that he was doing what he promised. Life was sweet...until it wasn’t.”
“Can you tell me what happened?” She already knew these answers, but it would be better for the show if she could get them on tape. Plus, allowing Grandpa to ramble with his memories might spark some other connection that would give her a good starting point for investigating.
“I would if I could, but I don’t really know myself.” Her grandfather shifted in the chair and spent a moment adjusting the blanket across his legs. “One day, Richard was here, and the next he was gone. And so was every dime the company had. Every investment people had made with us, all of our operating capital—everything was gone.”
“What did you do?”
He shook his head, and tears glimmered in his eyes. Mia knew how guilty her grandfather still felt about what had happened. Richard had broken the trust of their clients and, for some of them, stolen all of their retirement money and savings.
“I hired a forensic accountant to try to find the money,” Grandpa said. “I thought maybe Richard moved it offshore or something. Turns out the day before he disappeared, he transferred everything from the business into his personal account by forging my signature, since I was a cosigner. That morning, someone went to the bank and got a cashier’s check. Whoever that was walked away with close to four million dollars.”
“You said someone. Doesn’t the bank know for sure who had that check drawn?”
Grandpa shook his head. “Only a few banks had cameras in those days, and the video they did get was poor quality. Whoever withdrew that money knew exactly which window to go to, because it was the only window with the view obscured by a potted plant. The teller was young and new and nervous, which is why I think that person selected her to do the transaction. She didn’t remember many details. Of course, with a transaction that large, the bank manager had to sign off on it. That day, though, the regular manager was on vacation, and a manager from a different branch was covering for him. To that man, Richard was a stranger. All he could do was compare the driver’s-license image and signature with what was on the withdrawal form. The manager swears the license matched the man who made the withdrawal. And, it’s Richard’s signature on the withdrawal forms, too. For the most part.”
“What do you mean by ‘for the most part’?”
“The police think the signature was forged. Something about the way some of the letters were written seemed off to them.”
That could have been due to stress, Mia knew. If Richard was under a lot of pressure to get the money, his hand might shake when he signed the forms. It could also be because the person who had withdrawn the money wasn’t Richard Harrington at all. Without any high-quality video or still images, there was no way to know who went to the bank.
Mia paused before asking the next question. She hated putting her grandfather through this, but he was the one who wanted answers, and there was no way to get those without asking the hard questions. “Did the police suspect you had something to do with it? Especially because the signature was presumed to be forged?”
“Not at first. For a few days, they thought Richard had just flown the coop with all the money. I figured he was living on a beach in Mexico or something. But after they saw that signature, they came back around and asked more questions.” Grandpa Louis sighed. “I had no alibi for that morning, because I was here alone at the house. Your grandmother was at work, and I had taken a sick day. I’d come down with the flu a couple days before and was at home, in bed, sick as a dog.”
“But no one saw you at home at the time the money was withdrawn and can vouch for you?”
Grandpa Louis shook his head. “No.” He paused. “And then there’s the matter of the other money.”
“What other money?” Mia had no doubt her YouTube channel would love Grandpa Louis and feel bad for all he had been through, because her own heart went out to him every time he spoke.
“In the last couple of weeks before his disappearance, Richard seemed to become very suspicious and paranoid. He cleaned out his personal accounts, and he had a good amount of money in there, because he wasn’t supporting a wife and child. He had several withdrawals over those last few weeks, somewhere close to a half a million dollars. He never told me what the money was for, but he did tell me that he had hidden his money on the property.”
“He told you that?”
Grandpa nodded. “I think he wanted someone to know, in case anything ever happened.” He leaned forward, staring into the camera. “He said to me, ‘Louis, if anything happens to me, you need to search my house. Everything you’ll need is in there.’”
Mia shook her head. She already knew from the police report that Harrington’s house had been searched after the police began to wonder if Richard was dead, not on vacation. If there’d been that much money in the house, they would have found it. “That seems like an odd thing to say.”
Grandpa shrugged. “I don’t know if he was just talking or if he really did hide something at the house. The police searched that place top to bottom and side to side and never found any money. Maybe Richard did, as they first thought, run off to Mexico with all the money.”
“But you don’t think that.” Mia gently probed at the reason she had come here.
“No.” Her grandfather let out a long breath. “I think Richard is dead and that money is still out there.”
She wanted to ask him about his theories behind Richard’s possible death, but could see the exhaustion in her grandfather’s features and the slump of his shoulders. She reached over and stopped the video recording on her phone. “That’s enough for today. We’ll cover more ground later.”
“Are you sure? I can keep talking.”
She wanted to come back to her grandfather with answers the next time she did an interview, not keep hammering him with painful questions. They could get to the rest later, if she could finally wrap up this mystery.
No. There was no if—when she solved it. She refused to let her poor grandfather worry for one more day.
Mia helped Grandpa Louis back to his recliner and got him settled again. Even the short interview had taxed his energy. The doctor had told them to expect some weakness after the chemotherapy treatments ended, but to Mia, it seemed like her grandfather wasn’t rebounding like he normally did. Her heart worried, and her mind prayed for him to get better.
Mia gathered up her notes and told her grandfather she was heading up to her room to do some more research. “I’m going to Richard’s property first thing in the morning. It’s still vacant, so I’m going to poke around and see if I find anything.”
“Don’t go getting into trouble.” Her grandfather’s features filled with worry. “This family has had enough run-ins with the police. We don’t need someone else ending up as a suspect.”
“That won’t happen. I promise.” Even though she knew it wasn’t a promise she could guarantee.
