Chapter 29
Walker was patrolling the roads,boring himself by looking for DUIs and speeders, when his personal cell rang. He was far enough down the mountain for reception, so he pulled over andanswered.
“I may have found something, boss,” Sofiasaid.
“I’ll be offduty early. Just shoot me an email,” he advised. Being a deputy might be the world’s dullest job, but he wouldn’t take the county’s money and shirk his tasks for his own personalgain.
“It’s got to do with now as well as then,” Sofia said, sounding excited. “You told me to see if anybody from eighteen or twenty years ago is still in Hillvale now, besides the ones you knowabout.”
Walker picked up his tablet and opened his notes. Getting Sofia off the phone would be faster if he listened. “Go ahead. I’mready.”
“He doesn’t live there,” she warned. “I’ll email you the file, but I thought you ought to know that an Alan Gump worked in the development department of Commercial Contracting before they went belly-up with the dissolution of the Kennedy mortgage company eighteenyearsago.”
“Gump, the real estate guy working with the Kennedys now?” Walker opened his notes, scanning the file on the condodeveloper.
“One and the same. He was prettier when he was younger,” Sofia said with a chuckle. “I’m comparing the old brochure with his current website. Definitely same guy, although that green coat they’re all wearing back then doesn’t do him anyfavors.”
Green coat? Why did that ringbells?
“Have Dave run a financial analysis of Gump and his condo company and look for connections to the bankrupt contractor. It could be nothing. He would have been a junior employee back then. That doesn’t mean he had any access to Hillvale at thetime.”
“He was in Hillvale all right,” Sofia said. “He was photogenic, so they must have hauledhim up for the condo brochure. It shows him in a group of smiling faces with Geoff Kennedy in front of the lodge. And one morething—”
Walker waited for the bombshell she’d saved forlast.
“There’s a Menendez listed on Commercial’s board in the old brochure. I think Dave already sent you their file. I’ve scanned the brochure intoit.”
He’d investigated the Menendez clan insideand out. They were mostly prosperous and scattered around the country. The only one of the family currently interested in Hillvale was Hector, who owned a small share of the family plot. He was too young to have been featured in a twenty-year-old brochure. But back then—one of the family patriarchs might have had a foot in thedoor.
“Good job, Sofia, thanks. I’ll start askingquestions.”
He hung up, opened his email, took a look at the brochure scan, and agreed the skinny blond kid in the green sales jacket and tie was the same Alan Gump he knew today. There was no photo of the Adolpho Menendez listed as adirector.
As far as Walker was aware, the Menendez land hadn’t changed hands in a century. They came out of the Kennedy debacle just fine. What reason would theyhave to want his fatherdead?
Alan Gump had been too young to be a major player in the commercial company that had collapsed when the Kennedy fraud caught up with them. Could he have had family wealth invested—money he’d lost when the company went bellyup?
If Xavier Black was the lawyer working with the Kennedys, as Cass had said, then he might know more about the contracting company.Xavier supposedly had all his wits backthen.
Deciding he wasn’t shirking his duty if he was working an open case, Walker forwarded the information on Gump to the detective handling his father’s file. Then he called the agent he’d assigned to follow up on Xavier. Xavier had to know more than he was sharing. Whether he was coherent or not was a differentquestion.
“He’s awake,” hisfield agent reported. “The cops have already been there and the facility is reluctant to let me in, said he was extremely agitated after the last visit. Want me to keep on it or do you need to check with yourbuddies?”
“Hold off unless I call you back. I need to see what they found out.” Hanging up, Walker put the car in gear and drove down to the office. He could finish a few reports andcheck on what they’d learned from Xavier before signing out for theday.
How was this new condo company planning on developing Hillvale? Had the Menendez family finally sold out? Sam and Valdis certainly hadn’t. Maybe the land under the town was sufficient for now, and they just planned to squeeze the Ingerssons outlater.
But the situation made Walker edgy. Eighteen years ago, hisfather had died while uncovering the fraud that had driven out half the town. Was this an extension of the same scam that had claimed the Ingersson property before that? The Ingerssons had died long before his father had come to town. They’d died while still fighting the bank, and even after the family had won, the daughters had scattered to the winds—for areason?
That’s what he kept comingback to. Sam had inherited a troubled legacy and been sent far away with no knowledge of it—as if someone hadn’t wanted her to know about her family farm. To prevent the land from beingsold?
And now she was back. How many people knew she and Valdis owned thatmountain?
Mariah’s question:Explain why being an Ingersson is a bad thing?still hung in the air. It was obvious not everyone knew about the farm’sownership.
“Walker is still working,” Sam told the others who waited expectantly for her answer—the one Cass refused to repeat. “Will Monty be in his office? I want to say this onlyonce.”
The sangria tea party had expanded and gone inside with the arrival of Amber and several of the other Lucys. While theytalked of how they could stop development with protests and hiring environmentalists, they weren’t telling her what she needed to know about her family and heritage. It was time to move mattersforward.
