Black Otter Bay (29 page)

“Wow,” Marcy sighed, studying the ledger on the computer. “I had no idea this stuff was worth so much.”

Abby grabbed her file and walked over to the desk. She watched as Marcy scrolled through the entries. “Look at this one,” Marcy said as she brought up the current transactions. She read out loud. “Phillip Oberg,
Deep Water Passage
. Oil on canvas, framed.” She pointed to a column on the far right side of the monitor, and whistled, “Fifteen thousand dollars.”

Abby was stunned. “Mom never mentioned that one. She told me about selling a painting of the
Edmund Fitzgerald
for a thousand dollars. She made it sound like that was a big deal.”

Marcy scrolled down, and read, “
Sinking of the
Edmund Fitzgerald. Oil on canvas, framed.” She looked up at Abby standing over her. “Sold today for ten thousand dollars.”

“No way,” Abby declared. “It must be a mistake.” She dropped the file on the desk and opened it to the charge account receipt. “Look here, Marcy. One thousand dollars. Randall must have entered it wrong in the computer.”

“There's a big difference between one thousand and ten thousand dollars,” Marcy said. “It would be hard to make a mistake like that.” They studied the numbers on the monitor
and the smaller numbers in the file. Then Marcy slowly sat back and looked at Abby again. “Unless . . .”

“Unless what?”

“Unless he didn't make a mistake. He could be cooking the books.”

“What?”

“I don't know, Abby. I don't know. But he might be using the gallery to launder money for his buddies, like that mafia guy I saw in the casino.” She reached over to turn on the printer sitting on a tray table next to the desk. It buzzed and beeped, and when it settled down, she hit the print function on the computer and the machine went to work. “Your file there only goes back a few weeks, right?” she asked. “These computer records go all the way back through last year. I bet if we look closer, we'll find bank account deposits to match the higher figures on the computer.”

“Can he do that?”

“As long as he doesn't get audited. But I'm guessing that when you consider the characters he hangs out with, an audit is probably the least of his worries.”

“But what about these receipts?”

“He'll keep most of them, but the ones he alters in the computer probably get shredded. That's why there are so few of them, and this way he doesn't leave a paper trail. Anyway, I'm only just guessing. We need to get these files to someone who knows about this stuff.”

Abby's thoughts whirled through what they'd discovered. She didn't know exactly what Marcy was talking about, but she didn't need to. This could be the connection between Randall and that horrible fellow she'd seen out at Big Island Lake, the man carrying Rosie's body over his shoulder. The same man who'd come looking for her, but took her little brother instead.

Then they heard a key in the office door lock.

Abby froze. Marcy calmly canceled the print command and snatched a small pile of printed pages out of the tray. In
one smooth movement she shoved them into the file folder of receipts and closed it, looking up just as the door opened.

“Randall!” Abby exclaimed.

He looked genuinely surprised to see them, but downplayed his reaction. “What are you two doing in here?”

His voice may have sounded calm, Abby thought, but she could sense the monster lurking within. And she had no doubt that he carried the handgun on him somewhere. She looked at Marcy, who held Randall square in her field of vision while quietly typing away. They hadn't responded to his question yet, so Abby shut the file cabinet and said, “I'm just trying to learn my way around here. You know, getting used to the filing system and stuff.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, obviously not believing a word she said. “If you're not up to anything, why is the door locked?”

Marcy continued typing, silently pressing keys while watching Randall, ready at a moment's notice to shut down the computer.

Holding her breath, Abby took a step toward him to buy some time. His eyes were bloodshot, and his hair hung in limp strands along the side of his face. A mottled-gray sport coat hung loosely over a pale blue button-down shirt. He licked his lips, and with his long, narrow nose, Abby pictured a poisonous lizard confronting them. “It's scary in here at night,” she finally answered. “And we're not used to all the strange noises in a big city.”

He stepped quickly around the desk to look over Marcy's shoulder at the computer monitor. A game of solitaire was underway on the screen. To Abby, he asked, “Where's your mother?”

“She went out. Said she had a meeting. I was bored, so we decided to come down here.”

Randall snickered, then looked down at Marcy again. The knuckles on her hand holding the mouse were white. “Move,” he said. The smell of alcohol and stale cigars clung to the air around him.

Marcy rocked sideways out of the chair, leaning over the desk while sliding the manila file folder along with her. Randall shook his head as he fell into the chair. “Dear, sweet Jackie,” he said, chuckling, as if no one else was in the room to hear. “We just get you solvent again, and it's off to the card tables with you.” He closed the solitaire game, and brought up his work files. He turned an evil grin on Abby. “Sorry to tell you this, young lady, but your mother isn't at any meeting tonight.”

Abby stood her ground near the file cabinet. She noticed that the power light on the printer was still on, and now that she'd seen it, it seemed to glow like a beacon in the room. Meanwhile, Marcy backed away from the desk, slowly, her hands behind her back clutching the file folder.

Betraying a trace if belligerence, Abby said, “Well, Mom said that you were at a meeting tonight, too.”

Marcy winced. The room was completely silent while Randall studied the computer monitor. After a few tense moments he seemed satisfied that his files hadn't been compromised. He looked over at Abby again and laughed. “Jackie. You got to love her, don't you?” Then the smile disappeared, and he added, “I mean, if I didn't love her, why would I put up with all her crap?”

Now it was Abby's turn to get mad. Lately, she hadn't been so fond of her mother herself, but that didn't mean she would listen to snide comments about her from the likes of Randall. She looked over at Marcy, standing wide-eyed and frozen in the middle of the office floor. She seemed to have some sense that Abby was about to speak, and tried to will her to silence with a glare and a barely perceptible shake of her head.

Abby turned her attention back to Randall. While her fear may have subsided, the feeling that they were close to some answers rendered her temporarily speechless. She didn't want to jeopardize the information they'd already uncovered. Besides, even though she wasn't so scared right now, she certainly hadn't forgotten about Randall's gun, nor his wild shots in the bait shop.

Just as the silence in the room became awkward, Randall spoke up again. “The thing about Jackie is, everything with her is about money.” He leaned back and pulled a stray length of hair away from his face. “She thinks I care about the money.” Now he laughed, a sour-sounding cackle, and swiveled on his chair like a little kid proud of himself. Another pocket of stale, alcohol-scented air floated past Abby.

She looked at Marcy, who by now had backed her way across the office to the doorway. Abby gave her a slight shrug, as if to ask, “Why is he telling me all this?”

“I mean, it's only money,” Randall continued. “What's the big deal? Money is the easy part. It's like I tell her: it's the relationship that's important. Money comes and goes, but you take care of each other in a partnership. Hell, I don't care about Jackie's gambling.” He took a moment to refocus on Abby, waving a drunken hand of dismissal through the air. “No, sir, the gambling doesn't mean a thing to me. What your mother does have is an eye for class, which is something that is important to me. She has a knack for style, and she likes to have a good time.”

Randall stared into the computer monitor again, his sudden glassy-eyed silence making Abby uncomfortable. Was she supposed to say something? Was he going to pass out?

“No, it's not about the money,” he finally concluded. He sat up straight and pointed a wobbling finger at Abby. “I promised Jackie that I'd do everything in my power to keep Ben safe.”

Abby bolted to attention, standing up straight. “What have you done with him?”

Randall snickered. “I hope you're not going to screw this up for your mother.”

She was standing by the corner of the desk now, and noticed the difficulty he had in focusing on her. His breath once again assaulted the room. Marcy no longer tried to hide her feelings. She emphatically wagged her head in the negative while making faces at Abby, who saw her theatrics out of the
corner of her eye, but wasn't about to back off from this particular discussion.

“I'm not going to screw up anything,” she said. “I promise. Just tell me where he is, and I won't say a word to anyone.”

Once again Randall emitted his devious little cackle.

“Come on,” Abby pleaded. “You can trust me. I haven't told anyone anything yet, have I?”

Randall turned a questioning eye on Marcy, as if wondering how much she knew. Then he looked at Abby again, and said, “You know, if it hadn't been for you, none of this would be happening. The whole thing is your fault.”

Abby stepped back, stealing a glance at Marcy. This latest revelation had left her friend's mouth hanging open in shock. Then Randall said to Abby, “And now, for your mother's sake, I've had to argue on your behalf, too. Fortunately for her, I've been able to keep you two kids safe. You messed up everything for us, but so far I've managed to fix it. Now Ben is on his way home.”

There was a tremor in Randall's voice that warned her to be careful. She could feel his anger rising again. But it was Marcy who spoke up first. “So you really do know where he is? Ben is coming home?”

“Well, not exactly straight home,” Randall said, puffing up like a child who's proud of owning some privileged information. “But he'll be found soon, and if you two behave yourselves, this whole wretched mess will be over.”

“What do you mean, ‘he'll be found'?” Abby asked. “Where is he?”

Randall put the computer to sleep and rolled his chair back. Instead of getting up, however, he leaned back and put his feet up on the desk. He studied his shiny black loafers and swiped at a stain on the leg of his trousers. He looked at Marcy, standing silently again by the door, then swiveled back to Abby. Scrunching his face in thought, he scanned the ceiling for a moment. Then an almost friendly smile spread across his face as he said to Abby, “I hear you're quite a fisherman.”

Once again his words caught her off guard. She looked hard at him and thought how at this particular moment, in his casual attire and slouching posture, he could fit right in with any of the other middle-aged men from Black Otter Bay.

“I used to be a fisherman, too,” he continued. “In fact, I probably caught more fish by the time I was your age than you'll catch in your whole lifetime.”

Abby had heard stories about the commercial fishing done by the Bengston family, especially Randall's father Henry, and his uncles. The tales were near-legend around Black Otter Bay. Unfortunately, Henry had died before Abby was born, and Randall himself had no interest in the business, so the closest she'd ever come to seeing the operation was an inspection of their old handmade boat on display outside the municipal bar in town. But she didn't want the conversation to be sidetracked by fishing, so again she asked, “Where is Ben?”

Randall looked at his hands in his lap, ran a thumb over his fingernails, and then reached for the cell phone in his pocket. After checking for messages, he tossed it on the desk, sat back, and slowly swung his gaze up to Abby. “Anyway, we're both fishermen, right, Abby?”

She had no idea where this was going. Was it just more drunken rambling? She didn't want to be fooled by his calm familiarity. In some ways, he was like the Great Lake he used to fish: friendly and serene one minute, and a raging gale the next. But with nothing to say, she gave a brief nod in answer to his question and waited for him to continue.

Randall picked up his phone again. Before dialing, however, he said, “A real fisherman never gives away his secrets. Isn't that right? I mean, would you go around telling everyone exactly where you caught a stringer full of fish?” He turned to Marcy. “How about it, Marcella? You ever have out-of-towners come into the café telling where they just caught a boatload of fish? Hell, most times they won't even admit that they caught a fish, or what kind of bait they used.” He punched numbers
into the phone. “So I'm sorry, ladies. I know where the fish is, but I'm not going to tell you. Chances are, it probably won't make much difference now, anyhow.”

He held the phone to his ear, a clever, smug look on his face, like he was pleased with his fishing metaphor. A moment later he spoke into the phone. “Yeah, I have some company up at the office.” He listened, nodded and smiled, then changed the phone to his left ear while his right hand reached behind him under his sport coat. He nodded. “Sure, no problem.” Then he abruptly hung up and dropped his feet to the floor. The phone clattered across the desk. He sat up straight, his soft, drunken expression suddenly pale and tight. Looking past Marcy to the doorway, he rested both hands on the desk.

Abby asked, “What do you mean? Why doesn't it matter anymore?”

Randall didn't respond, just stared across the office at the doorway. When she finally followed his gaze, the sight of Leonard Fastwater leaning against the doorjamb came as a shock.

“Leonard!” Marcy announced.