Death by Sudoku (21 page)

Kevin shook his head. “Liza knows haystacks. You can’t live along the coast here without knowing them.”

“Then it’s too bad neither Liza nor Ava are here. They might have been useful.”

Kevin set his teeth in his lower lip, running over what the other man had told him. “Why a tourist T-shirt?” he suddenly asked.

“What?”

“You said Jenny was wearing a tourist T-shirt. What made you think that?”

Michael shrugged. “It just looked like something you’d pick up on a trip—cheap white cotton. Her arms were crossed, but part of a logo showed. She could have gotten it at school, or at a concert—”

“Or on the way up here with her kidnapper,” Kevin cut in. “The Santa Barbara cops would be sure to broadcast a description, including what clothes she was last seen in. Even the most backward bad guy watches enough cop shows to know about that. He probably would have made her change into something he bought along the way.”

“Huh. Right.” Michael made it sound as if he were annoyed at not having thought of that himself. He narrowed his eyes, as if trying to visualize something right in front of him. Then he closed his eyes entirely. “There was something there, but I can’t see it. I just get an impression of very loud yellow, and black.”

“Is the black around the yellow?”

“Yeah.”

“A very thick outline?”

“Yeah. That’s right.”

Kevin yanked a pen and a folded envelope out of his breast pocket. Bending over a side table, he sketched a rough outline of an ingot, then covered half of it with his hand before showing it to Michael. “Could it have looked something like this?”

Michael stared for a minute. “What the—? The answer is yes, except the outline was thicker. What is it?”

Taking his hand away, Kevin revealed the whole picture. “It’s a gold bar. The T-shirt shows a whole pile of them, surrounding the town name—Gold Beach. The place is a real cut-rate tourist trap, and that shirt is remarkably cheap, even for Gold Beach.”

“So how—?” Michael began.

Kevin’s lips twitched in a sour sort of smile. “Being in the hospitality industry, you learn things. I manage a fairly high-end place. If somebody in one of those T-shirts came in to ask for a room, I’d suspect they couldn’t afford to pay for it.”

He shook his head. “Well, now it looks as though we have two reasons to believe that Jenny is up here in Oregon, probably somewhere along the coast. The problem is figuring out where.”

Mrs. H. came bustling back with a pot of tea and two cups. “I’ll just freshen yours up a little,” she told Michael, pouring before he could protest.

Kevin knew better than to refuse. He did his best to look appreciative as he took a sip. “Something more than tea in here,” he said.

She nodded over her own cup. “I added a little sachet to the pot. Orange zest and some spices. What do you think?”

“I think you should give me the recipe. We’ll sell it at the inn as Oregon Coast Blend.”

They shared a smile, then turned back to Michael, who was searching the contents of a large manila envelope. “I brought along the puzzles that came out since Derrick Robbins’s death. We figured most of them out, but there’s one that made no sense.”

He pulled out a sheet and pointed to a cryptic collection of letters and numbers—EZK:26:5.

“This is a message?” Kevin gave Michael a skeptical look.

“It’s a passage from the Bible.” Mrs. Halvorsen went to the other side of the room and returned lugging a large family Bible. She sat on the sofa, resting the Good Book on her lap while patting the cushions on either side of her for the men to sit. Then, she unerringly paged through the Bible to the book of Ezekiel and the quotation.

“‘It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God: and it shall become a spoil to the nations,’” Mrs. H. read aloud.

Kevin glanced over at Michael. “I hope the other messages were less cryptic.”

“We were able to connect various events to the others,” Michael replied. “But there doesn’t seem to be an event here—more like it’s describing a place. We’re looking for a place on the coast, and this quote mentions the sea. I don’t know about the spoil of nations, but does the spreading of nets mean anything locally?”

Kevin shrugged. “Just about every coastal town with a decent harbor has a fishing fleet. They’re all out spreading their nets somewhere.”

“That’s what I thought.” Michael’s face mirrored Kevin’s frustration.

Mrs. H., however, remained silent, bowed over her Bible. She looked up. “I’m sorry, boys, I was reading around that passage. This whole section is held up as an example of Bible prophecy. Ezekiel spoke out against Tyre, which was one of the great trading cities of the Mediterranean. At the time, Tyre was thriving. But two hundred years later, Alexander the Great besieged the city. Now, Tyre had two sections, one on the mainland, the other on an offshore island. Alexander tore down the landward side of the city, literally throwing the rubble into the midst of the sea to create a siege bridge.”

“Interesting story,” Michael said in a “how exactly does this help us?” tone of voice.

Mrs. Halvorsen didn’t listen. “A city thrown in the midst of the sea,” she mused—then sat up straight. “Bayocean!”

Kevin stared at her. “That fits, doesn’t it?”

“Is this another thing that only locals know?” Michael asked.

“Well, it was before my day,” Mrs. H. began.

“About a hundred years ago, give or take,” Kevin put in. “A developer picked a spot on the coast here that was going to be the Pacific version of Atlantic City. He built a big hotel, and a resort town grew up around it. That was Bayocean.”

“They built some jetties out into the bay, and it changed the currents, or waves, or something,” Mrs. Halvorsen picked up the story. “The town was literally wiped off the map—washed away.”

“Yikes!” Michael said.

“As I said, this was well before my time,” the elderly woman went on. “But I heard about it as a girl. The place wasn’t all that far from here . . .”

“Just a long bike ride.” Kevin wondered if his face looked as numb as he suddenly felt. “When I was a kid, I used to go out there, exploring for ruins with my best buddy—Cal Burke.”

“Ma Burke’s son?” Mrs. H. asked. “I hired him once to repair my porch—then I had to hire someone else to fix the repairs.” She lowered her voice to a confidential tone. “He drinks, you know.”

Kevin nodded, admitting a painful truth. “It happens sometimes, especially if life doesn’t turn out the way you expect it to when you’re young.” He turned to Michael. “Cal was the town’s sports hero, a college star—for one semester. Then he wrecked his leg, and he wasn’t a hero anymore. He’s just sort of limped along—”

“Literally and figuratively, I guess,” Michael said.

“Walking wounded,” Kevin agreed. From the look on Michael’s face, he didn’t have to add,
The kind of sidelined, alienated, invisible man who might end up dabbling in radical conspiracies.

“Maybe we should go have a word with this Cal,” Michael suggested. They thanked Mrs. H. for her hospitality, then got into Kevin’s SUV.

“We’ll try Ma’s Café,” Kevin said, heading for Main Street. “Cal’s mother has been out sick, and he’s been filling in.”

He still didn’t want to believe what he was thinking—that his friend could be mixed up in this nightmarish plot. But things kept coming up to nag at him, like the clumsy break-in at Liza’s. Softhearted Cal would never hurt Liza’s dog. Kevin suddenly remembered Cal asking anxiously about the mutt. He was also the sort of computer illiterate who’d have to take the whole box if he’d been ordered to get the hard drive.

Kevin’s hands tightened on the wheel as he remembered the way Cal had turned up the night he’d been reunited with Liza.
He was right in the shrubbery outside Liza’s place—looking for Ma’s cat, he said. But he could just as easily have been casing the joint.

Kevin found a spot on Main Street not far from the café. “So how do we handle this?” Michael asked as they walked up to the door.

“Carefully,” Kevin replied. “For one thing, Cal is a friend, and I’m hoping he’ll convince us that we’re crazy. For another, even though it’s years since he attempted a pass rush, Cal is still bigger than both of us together.”

But when they got inside, they found Ma Burke back at her post behind the counter. “My legs finally unlocked,” she announced. “What can I get you boys?”

“We were actually looking for Cal,” Kevin said.

“Calvin? He’s probably home in bed,” Ma Burke replied. “Been pushing himself too hard, running things here by day and doing his own work at night. When I came in here a while ago, his face looked like two holes poked in a white sheet.”

“Well, maybe we’ll just stop by and see if he’s up,” Kevin said. “I’ve got something that needs doing at the inn.”

“Well, I know Calvin will always put you at the top of his list.” Then Mrs. Burke waved a finger at them. “Just don’t go waking him up, okay?”

“You got it, Ma,” Kevin promised as he and Michael left.

But when they got back in the truck, they almost rocketed across town.

The run-down little house where Calvin lived with his mother was dark. Michael took in the sagging porch. “Not exactly the best advertising for the local handyman,” he commented.

“That’s the least of Cal’s troubles.” Kevin went up the set of creaking steps and rang the doorbell.

“I don’t hear anything,” Michael said.

“Probably because it’s also on the fritz.” Walking carefully on the loose boards, Kevin followed the porch around the side of the house.

Michael trailed behind. “Are you sure—?”

“Cal’s bedroom is over here,” Kevin told him. “As long as you don’t tell Ma Burke I’m disturbing her boy’s slumbers . . .”

Using one knuckle, he rapped on the glass. Then he used his fist on the window frame, finally prying it up and calling inside. “I used to do this often enough, back in the day.”

“You don’t think he’s passed out in there, do you?” Michael asked.

Kevin reached further inside, lighting a lamp. “The layout of this room hasn’t changed since he was in high school,” he muttered. Glancing around, he shook his head. “Not here, and he’s supposed to be dead on his feet. This is not good, Michael. Not good at all.”

Dashing across the porch, Kevin headed back to his SUV.

Michael followed. “You know where he is?”

“I know where to look,” Kevin replied. They got in the SUV, turned back onto Main Street, and passed right through town again, this time hitting the underpass beneath the highway to head for the waterfront. Kevin peered up at the sky. “Dusk is coming on. I hope one of the fishermen may still be aboard a boat—and be willing to take us out.”

He glanced over at Michael. “Bayocean is located on a spit of land sticking out into the water. Anybody driving—or biking—out onto that peninsula would be spotted immediately. But if we pass in a boat, that might not necessarily make Calvin suspicious.”

“You think he’s at this Bayocean place?” Michael asked.

“I’m afraid he is,” Kevin admitted. “That’s why we need to get somebody—”

“All you need is something that floats,” Michael told him. “My dad was a commercial fisherman, and I grew up on boats, right through college. Out before dawn, hauling nets, loading and unloading fish, and then fixing nets and maintaining the goddam boat so we could go out again the next day.”

He shot Kevin a not-exactly-humorous grin. “Why do you think I became a freelance writer? You get up late in the morning, and however bad the work gets, it never actually stinks.”

Kevin spotted an acquaintance at wharfside. Mark Robusto was a fisherman who sometimes took guests from the inn out for salmon fishing. Years out on the water had weathered his round face to a sort of reddish mahogany color. Maybe that was why Kevin couldn’t make out whether the boat owner was coloring as he heard his client’s request. “Most days I’d take you out,” Mark said, his brown eyes not meeting Kevin’s, “but I really am half dead. I’d probably ram you into the Maiden.”

“That’s a pretty sweet boat,” Michael spoke up. “What is she, a Jacobsen fifty-footer?”

“Fifty-five,” Mark replied. “Used to be my father’s boat.”

“My dad had a Jacobsen, too.” As they talked, the two of them gravitated toward the boat. Either Michael knew his stuff or talked a good game, because soon enough they where pulling away from the wharf with Michael at the controls.

“So what is this Maiden I’m supposed to stay away from?” Michael asked as he glanced at the charts.

“Wait till you get to the mouth of the bay—it’s pretty hard to miss,” Kevin told him.

Before they got to sea, Michael spotted the large haystack right in the middle of the channel. “That is one big mother rock,” he said.

“If you squint a little, the additional section on the top looks sort of like a female figure, with the main body of the rock looking like an enormous hoop skirt. When they first sailed round here, sailors called it the Maiden, and the name got stuck on the bay and the town.”

“I’d say you’d have to squint a lot,” Michael harrumphed. “But after passing the Horn and coming this far north, those sailors probably had only one thing on their minds—and not exactly maidens, I’d imagine.”

He took the boat out to sea at a sedate pace, keeping well away from the rock formation. “Very picturesque,” he said. “But I’d hate having to find my way in if the weather decided to get rough.”

“We’ve lost some boats here,” Kevin admitted. “You can ask Mark about it when we get back.”

They had reached the open sea by now. Heavier swells made the deck rise and fall beneath their feet. Kevin ran a finger along the chart. “From here, you want to head south. Just follow the coastline until you see another inlet. Bayocean is—or used to be—on the spit of land to the south of the entrance.”