The Lies that Bind, page 9
John was a computer programmer for a software company based in Boston, and he’d worked at a number of tech companies over the past few years. I scanned his list of connections and located Amanda Duncan. They had one overlap; about five years ago, they’d both worked for the same company in California.
Had they been in a relationship? I wondered. Were they still, and had Amanda been with Charles just to get his money? Had she killed him thinking she was in line to inherit, so that she and John could be together?
I searched for both of their names together, but nothing came up. As I was putting in John’s name again, there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” I called, and Denise walked in. She was still wearing her Sea Beans t-shirt, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, but the ponytail was drooping. My friend looked tired, but defiant… and also worried. I stood up and closed the distance between us, pulling her into a hug.
“You okay?” I asked into her coffee-scented hair.
“No,” she said, squeezing me back, then releasing me. “But I will be.” She nodded toward the computer. “What did you find out?”
“Not much yet,” I said. “I know Amanda used to work with the guy who bought them lunch today, but that’s about all I’ve dug up so far. And there’s not much on Charles, either; he seems not to have existed before two years ago.”
“Did you look up Chad, too?” she asked.
“The son? No, not yet.”
“And what about his mom?”
“I don’t know anything about her, either,” I said. “Let’s start with the son. Do you know his full name?”
“Chad Carsten,” she said. I typed in the name. Unlike his father, Chad had quite the social media profile. We looked at LinkedIn first; he was the vice president of marketing at Venture Investments, his father’s company—and the one that was trying to buy Sea Beans. His Twitter feed consisted of a series of business-inspirational quotes, and he appeared to be active on Instagram, too. I reached for my phone, opened Instagram again (I used it largely to keep an eye on the girls, but should probably set up an account for the bookstore, I reflected) and pulled up Chad’s account.
“He’s got about a thousand followers,” Denise remarked as I scrolled through the pictures, most of which showed the young man wearing expensive-looking designer shirts, with his arm slung around a series of attractive women. In fancy restaurants, in bars, on boats… the theme was Chad with lovely female companions.
“See anyone who turns up regularly?” Denise asked.
“Not really,” I said. “He seems to have played the field.”
“A lot of yacht pictures,” she commented as I scrolled through. His job title on Twitter was the same as on LinkedIn.
“I don’t see that he works much, actually,” Denise said as we scrolled through his pictures. Picture after picture of Chad on his yacht in Maine locales. “The Monkey Business,” she commented, pointing to the name painted on the side of the wood-and-brass-festooned vessel. “I’ve seen that in the harbor lately. Must be nice to have oceanside property AND a classic yacht.”
“Wonder where their money came from?” I asked.
“I was wondering the same thing,” she said as we scrolled through his account. “Looks like he started his social media profiles only two years ago.”
“Nothing before that?”
“Nope,” she said.
I googled some more. Nothing that went beyond two years, for either Chad or Charles; neither of their LinkedIn profiles went beyond starting Venture Investments. “What, are they part of the witness relocation program?”
“I know, right? No sign of the woman who’s Chad’s mother, either,” I said, continuing to scroll through Instagram. “Wait… here’s one from Mother’s Day two years ago.” It showed Chad in mirrored sunglasses, posing with a glamorously made-up woman with high cheekbones and troubled-looking eyes. “Shout-out to the best mom in the world,” the caption said.
“That doesn’t look like Maine,” Denise said, pointing to a row of palm trees in the background. The two were standing in front of a yacht that looked remarkably similar to the Monkey Business, only this one was called Happy Hour. “He certainly does like expensive yachts.”
“And he looks young in that photo,” I said. He was decidedly more baby-faced than in his other photos. “I’m guessing it’s an old pic.”
“I wonder what his mother’s name is?” Denise said.
I scrolled to the next Mother’s Day, but there was nothing there. “That appears to be the only mention of her,” I said. “I guess he threw in with his father.”
“Maybe that’s because he was the one with the money,” Denise suggested. “And the plum job.”
“Although he doesn’t seem to spend a lot of time at the job, does he?” I asked, looking at the pics of Chad on his yacht. There were a few of him in classic cars, too… including one in the car that had gone over the cliff. I shivered at the image of him leaning back in the driver’s seat, a beautiful woman in the passenger seat beside him, one arm draped over the side of the car.
“It was a beautiful car, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” I said. “But Chad isn’t the one who died in it. We probably need to focus more on people who might have wanted Charles out of the way. We don’t know much about him, other than that he had a son and a girlfriend and liked classic cars.”
“He has an ex-wife, it seems.”
“But we don’t know anything about her. And if she’s an ex, why kill him? She probably wouldn’t stand to benefit if they were divorced.” I flipped back to Chad’s LinkedIn page. “What do you know about the proposed takeover? It was mainly Charles involved, right?”
“Actually, no,” she said. “I got the feeling it was Chad pushing things.”
“Did they have any other investors with them?”
“They did once, now that you mention it, when they first came to Sea Beans to talk to Margaret,” she said. “The other guy’s name was Edward MacIntosh, or McIntire, or something like that. He and Chad seemed really buddy-buddy. I actually heard the father and son arguing about him once, quietly, when they thought I wasn’t listening.”
“When was this?”
She pursed her lips, thinking. “About two weeks ago. They were sitting outside together, and I was bussing tables.”
“What was it about?”
“The father said something about this Edward MacIntosh’s history drawing attention. That it was too big a risk to take, that they needed to lay low.”
“Lay low?” That set my spidey senses tingling. “That’s an odd phrase to use.”
“I thought so, too,” she said.
“Maybe they were hiding from something,” I said. “That would explain why I couldn’t find anything before two years ago.”
I googled Edward MacIntosh; to my surprise, the first thing that popped up was a series of articles in the Boston Globe. “No wonder Daddy wasn’t a fan. Look at this.” I turned the laptop screen to face Denise, and her eyebrows rose.
“Edward MacIntosh suspected of embezzlement,” she read. “When was this article?”
“Three years ago,” I said. Apparently he’d been accused of funneling money via business loan from a small bank in Boston to a series of shell companies and then defaulting on the loans. “They dropped the charges, though, so it never went to trial.”
“Wonder why?”
“I don’t know,” I said, scrolling through, “but he had another issue about ten years ago with a small non-profit he founded. Apparently there was misappropriation of funds.”
“I wouldn’t want someone like that as a partner, for sure,” Denise said. “If they had so much money, though, why would they need a partner?”
“Maybe it was all for show?” I suggested. “What’s the name of the chain, again?”
“Epoch Coffee,” she said. I typed in the name and was directed to a swanky-looking web site. “This doesn’t look very small-townish,” I said, looking at the sleek logo and expensive, artfully photographed menu items. “Holy moly. Eighteen dollars for a salad? And who buys salad at a coffee house, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Denise said angrily. “This whole thing is a nightmare. It’s so wrong. Why not open up another location in town? Why take Sea Beans? This town can support more than one coffee shop.”
I blinked, processing the implications of what she’d just said. “Denise. What you just said. I think you’re right.”
“What do you mean?”
“It applies to you too. Why take over Sea Beans? Why not open your own coffee house?”
“I… I couldn’t do that. Compete with my old boss?”
“The boss who promised you the business, reneged and agreed to sell it to out-of-towners, and then suspended you without cause?”
“She had cause. Half of Snug Harbor thinks I pushed Charles Carsten off a cliff.”
“Have you been charged with a crime?”
“No,” she said.
“Did you actually push him off a cliff?”
“Of course not!”
“Then she suspended you without cause,” I said. “You don’t owe her allegiance.”
“But… where would I put it? How would I afford it? And everyone thinks I’m a murderer. Who would buy anything from me?”
“We just have to figure out the answers to all of those questions.” I looked at the screen, with its sleek logo, and wondered what the motive was for Charles and Chad Carsten to build a coffee empire.
I needed to find out a lot more about the Carstens. And the sooner, the better.
13
With Bethany and Caroline running the store, I decided to walk over to the harbor and see if I could take a closer look at Monkey Business, the yacht in all of Chad’s photos. I was hoping to have a chance to run into the man himself and ask him some questions. It was hard figuring out what had happened when I had no personal connection to any of the people involved. Was there some way to manufacture one?
It was a short walk down to the town pier. The tide was high, so there was no sea glass to distract me, and my mind kept moving to the rumrunner’s secret stash. As I walked, I spied the island Nicholas and I had visited the other day. With everything that was going on with Denise, I’d forgotten to pursue that any further. Maybe we could make plans for the next step during our date?
I was still thinking about Nicholas as I got to the pier. Sure enough, Monkey Business was moored in the first berth, its brass railing and wood decking gleaming in the late afternoon sun. As I watched, a young woman in a blue knit shirt and khakis stepped out onto the deck with a rag and a spray bottle. As I leaned against the dock railing, she went to work cleaning the windows.
“Nice boat,” I called out after a moment.
The young woman turned and shielded her eyes from the sun with a hand, smiling at me. “It is, isn’t it? I love these old vessels. I’m so glad this one is being taken care of.” She patted the cabin wall affectionately.
“Is it yours?”
She snorted. “I wish. I’m just crew, unfortunately. Hopefully someday I’ll be able to captain one of these, but for now, I’m just a deckhand.”
“Have you been doing it long?”
“About six months,” she said. “Although I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to keep this job.”
“What do you mean?”
She walked toward me, glancing over her shoulder as she leaned over the rail. “You heard about the guy who went over the cliff a couple days ago?”
“Everyone in town’s heard about that,” I said. “Why?”
“That was my boss,” she said in a low voice.
“Wow,” I said. “What do you think happened?”
She glanced over her shoulder again. “Well, I don’t think it was an accident.”
“Because the brake lines were cut?” I said without thinking, then added, “That’s what I heard happened, anyway.”
“That’s what happened,” she confirmed. “I heard Chad—my boss’ son—say it yesterday.”
“Any idea who did it?”
“Well, Charles’s ex-wife marched up the dock last week and boarded without asking, demanding to see him.”
“Wait… what? How do you know that’s who she was?”
“She asked if he’d forgotten they’d been married and had a kid together. He didn’t deny it, so I assumed…”
“That makes sense. So Charles was here?”
“He was,” she confirmed. “When he stepped out of the main cabin, he looked like he was seeing a ghost. He asked how she found him, and she told him his expensive hobbies had caught up with him. He hustled her inside, but before that, she told him if he didn’t take care of her properly, she was going to blow the lid on everything.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know, but he seemed… scared, almost. I’ve never seen him look like that before. He was usually quiet and kind of in-command, but he looked like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, if you know what I mean.”
“I do,” I said. “What about Chad?”
“Junior? He’s the playboy, likes to show off. Kind of new money-ish, if you know what I mean. Charles… he liked nice things, but he tended to stay under the radar. Not a lot of visitors, except for his girlfriend.”
“Was she here when the ex-wife showed up?”
“No, thankfully for her. She didn’t like the Monkey Business too much, probably because Chad was always trolling for women in town and bringing them back to show off. He was in that hot tub on the top deck every night.”
“I heard they were looking to buy some coffee shop in town.”
“They’ve been running a whole bunch of coffee shops. From what I could hear, it was Chad’s idea, and his dad was funding it.”
“I wonder how well they’re doing at it. I mean, can coffee houses fund a seaside house and a yacht?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but they seemed to have plenty. Charles did, anyway. Chad acted like a player, but the money was his daddy’s.”
“So you’ve worked for them for six months?”
“Yes, almost,” she said.
“Is it a good gig?”
“It’s good experience,” she said. “I’m hoping to be first mate soon. Or at least I was,” she said, shoulders drooping a little bit.
“Why wouldn’t you be?”
“Well, with Mr. Carsten gone… Like I said, I’m not sure how long I’ll get to keep this job.”
“You’re not sure they’ll keep the boat?”
“I don’t know if Chad will inherit it, or sell it, or what.”
“Does Chad have any siblings?”
“Not that I know of,” she said. “They were arguing about the will a few weeks ago, over drinks.”
“Who was?”
“Charles and his girlfriend. She said if he wasn’t going to marry her, he should at least do something to provide for her.”
Interesting. “How did it shake out?”
“I don’t know, but she looked pretty satisfied at breakfast.”
Had he agreed to change his will and then not gotten around to it? Did she think she’d been written in and then offed him? Was his ex-wife jealous when she found out about his new girlfriend? Or did his son find out he stood to lose at least part of his fortune and kill his father before he had a chance to change the will?
“Did his son know about the argument with the girlfriend?” I asked.
“He wasn’t here, so I don’t think so,” she said. “Amanda wouldn’t have told him, I don’t think. But the two of them don’t like each other.” She twisted the rag in her hand. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. I guess it’s good to talk to someone about it.”
“I get that,” I said. “Out of curiosity, do you know if Charles’ ex-wife was staying in town?”
“I saw her a couple days ago when I was buying provisions at the grocery store,” she said. “She didn’t recognize me.”
So the ex-wife was in town. And had likely been in town when Charles died. Had he been scared of her because of something she might say? I wondered. Or something he was afraid she might do?
Like murder him?
“Do you know what she’s called?” I asked.
“Josie Cole,” the deckhand said. “He called her Josie. She said ‘That’s Mrs. Cole to you.’”
Josie Cole, I thought, making a mental note of it. As she spoke, there were voices from behind me, and she suddenly started. “I’ve got to go,” she said abruptly, turning and hurrying back to the window she had been working on
I tuned to see Chad Carsten walking toward the Monkey Business, a pretty young woman with a variety of nose rings and a midriff-baring top leaning into him. She was talking happily, but he was focused on me, eyes narrowed.
“Can I help you with something?” he asked, interrupting his girlfriend. She stiffened and stopped talking.
“Oh, no,” I said. “I was just admiring your yacht. I love that you’re taking such good care of her; she’s just beautiful, and obviously in mint condition.”
“Thanks,” he said, relaxing a little bit. Then a little wrinkle appeared between his eyebrows. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, deciding not to mention our meeting at the bookstore. “I’m Max. I live in town.”
“Chad Carsten,” he said. The woman on his arm looked at him expectantly, as if waiting to be introduced, but he ignored her. “I’m afraid I have things to attend to,” he said, then walked past me and boarded the yacht. The deckhand, who had been so relaxed and chatty a few minutes earlier, turned, stood up straight, and said “Good afternoon, sir,” in a quiet voice. He nodded and walked past her, his girlfriend still hanging on his arm, and disappeared into the cabin.
Once the door had closed, I said, “Hey. Thanks for chatting… I hope I didn’t get you into trouble.”
“Please don’t share anything I said,” she replied in a low, anxious voice. “I think I work for him now, and I can’t afford to lose this job until I’ve found something else.”
“Got it,” I said. “Good luck with everything.”
