CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Noting the scent of coffee, Haddie stepped into the office and took a deep breath.

“Hey, Haddie.” Toby sat at her desk, scrolling through her phone which lay beside the mousepad.

Haddie stopped at the desk and peeked toward Andrea’s office. “How’s it going?” The door was closed.

“Good.” Toby noticed her glance toward the office door. “She’s gone.” She smoothed an eyebrow. “You went to Portland?”

“Yeah. A waste.” A rising anxiety pushed up her chest, and Haddie forced herself not to think of Dad. It hurt too much. Get to work. “Please tell me there’s some coffee left.”

“About an hour old.” Toby looked back to her phone. “Grace made it. It’s been quiet here, but Josh should be back soon — picking up some files from the DA.”

Haddie adjusted her satchel and pulled her hair from under the strap and smoothed it out. “Any bagels left from the other morning?”

Toby shook her head. “Josh.”

“Worth a shot.” Haddie should have stopped and bought lunch. She wasn’t thinking straight. Tying her hair back up, she sighed and headed around Toby’s desk.

“I’ve got Mapo tofu in the fridge, might not be too cold. You’re welcome to it.” Toby waved in the general direction of the kitchen.

Haddie spun. “You sure?”

Toby nodded and waved again.

“Thanks.” Haddie turned down the hall toward the kitchen.

Tofu wasn’t her favorite, but spices made it passable. The yogurt and apple in her cooler bag hadn’t dented her hunger on the way back from Portland. Her head reeled after the trip to the mortgage office, but she needed some food. Digging into Mark Colman’s finances would help get her mind straight again. Mel sat in jail, unable to raise a sufficient bond for the bail. Andrea wouldn’t be in a good mood.

The kitchen, little more than a sink, microwave, and fridge, always looked clean, almost unused. She grabbed a fork from the drawer and stabbed a piece of spicy tofu before finding her mug. Her stomach rebelled at first, but she’d been queasy over her dad. Once she got settled and working, it would pass.

With a full mug, she worked her way to their back office where Grace glanced up from her cubicle.

The delicate features of her face never seemed to wrinkle, perhaps because she never frowned and her smiles were light and gentle. “How was Portland?”

Dismal. “The building doesn’t exist. That should teach me to do more research — I should have looked it up on the property appraisers to see who owned it. Would have figured it out then, I’d imagine.” No notes from Andrea. Good. She could focus on Colman’s finances.

“Sorry.” Grace turned back to her monitor. “We’re supposed to get the witness statement today from the mail carrier who saw Mel Schaffer at the Colman residence.”

Haddie paused with her hand still on the mug handle after she’d placed it on the envelope she used as a coaster. “What?” No wonder bail had gone so high. “When do they say Mel was there?”

“Four that afternoon.”

Sliding Toby’s lunch onto her desk, Haddie shrugged the satchel off her shoulder and dropped it to the floor. The fire had been started at ten. Six hours later. Did they think Mel sat with the woman for six hours? Probably not. But her being seen around the woman’s house would not be good, in any case. Still circumstantial.

Logging in, Haddie froze when she saw she had emails. Dad would be sending her a link — one that would prove his identity, at least back a century. And if it was proof —?

Three spam and a text with a link from Terry. No email from Dad. No proof. Haddie let out a breath and reluctantly clicked the url. It led to a sketchy website with an accident report from a Russian scientist supposedly burned during a secret particle accelerator collision of photons. Not helpful. She closed out of the conspiracy website.

Her head spun with everything she’d gone through today. Portland had been a bust, and Dad — impossible and maybe crazy. He’d actually broke into an office, though technically so had she by following him in. Then there was David. She drew a deep breath.

It’s just coffee. Still, it gave her one positive thing to hold onto in this madness. Unless, of course, he was a serial killer.

She twisted her hair into a knot before typing to Terry. “Hey. Can you look up this number? See if he’s some kind of weirdo?”

“Date?” Terry replied.

“Maybe. If he’s not a sociopath.”

“Got it, Buckaroo.”

Haddie put the phone down, lining it up even with her mouse pad. Great, now I’m stalking him.

The clatter of Grace’s keystrokes broke through Haddie’s thoughts. Taking a breath in and out, she opened Mark Colman’s finances and her spreadsheet.

She’d notated his income from business accounts, and had begun adding in expenses to her calculations. He ran most of his purchases through Amex and paid house bills from his checking account. Opening his bank statements, she already knew that he didn’t make enough to cover a house in Cal Young — most started at half a million, and he’d had a nice one. Before it burned with his wife.

The mortgage payment was extremely low. Pulling up the property appraiser’s site, she paused to double-check her addresses. Sarah Colman had purchased the property two years prior for one hundred and sixty thousand, a fifth of the appraised value. Something wasn’t right. Haddie flipped through the statements just after the purchase. No major renovations, barely even furniture. Stabbing another piece of tofu, Haddie scrolled as she chewed, barely noticing the spice. She moved back to property appraiser and dug to find the corporation that had sold Sarah Colman the property.

Twenty minutes later, she’d finished her lunch, let her coffee get cold, and come no closer than a Panamanian company with no officers listed. Someone, possibly organized crime, had gifted the Colmans the house through shell corporations and left Haddie with a list of people to search through if she ever found the time.

Her searches had led to one oddity that she put to the side to follow up. Regular forty-eight hundred dollar checks to a vineyard in California named Jessup Farms. Perhaps the Colmans liked a fine vintage. From the company’s website, Haddie dialed them.

“Jessup Farms, Ellis speaking, how can I help you?” The man sounded pleasant, and young.

“Yes. Please. This is Hadhira Dawson from Andrea Simmons Law Firm. We’re working on the case regarding the Colmans’ deaths here in Eugene. We’ve found some large purchases from your company, paid via check, and hoped you could tell us what was invoiced? The last was for forty-eight hundred, cashed on September third from an account owned by Mark and Sarah Colman.”

“Customers you said. Dead? Sorry to hear. Forty-eight hundred, that’s more than I’ve seen except for a couple of our LA customers. September third? I’ll check invoices for August.”

Haddie could hear the keyboard clacking from the other end of the connection. After her latest failures, it felt good to have someone eager to help. Anything that would be a solid lead. Not that buying wine might be that, it just was an odd reoccurring cost that warranted a quick call.

Grace answered the phone on the other side of the cubicle. “Andrea Simmons —hi, Andrea. No, I asked —”

The vineyard employee cleared his throat. “Ms. Simmons? I don’t show anything for that amount, August, September, or even July.” The man sounded concerned. “Perhaps a different winery?”

Odd. She didn’t correct her name. That hardly mattered. Who was cashing these checks then? The owner perhaps?

Grace stood, catching Haddie’s attention. “She’s on the phone. Let me see if I can get her to take your call, Andrea. Or, if she needs to call you back.”

Haddie raised a finger. “Alright, well I’ll follow up on this. Thank you for your help. Bye.” She hung up without waiting for a response and nodded to Grace. When the line lit, she punched it. “Andrea, hi.”

“Got your text about Portland. That’s odd, but I don’t know that it helps us without anything else.” A cat meowed somewhere in the background; Andrea was at home. “What are you working on? Colman’s finances?”

Haddie swallowed. Earlier, Andrea had been perturbed over the idea, but that was when she’d been tasked with working on Mel’s alibi. Now, she sounded curious. “Yes. Sarah bought their home in Cal Young for one hundred and sixty thousand. Traced the seller through shell corporations to a Panamanian company.”

“Okay. You might be on a good track. Anything else?”

“Yes. I was on the phone to a winery that Mark sent forty-eight hundred to nearly every month. No record of them buying anything.” Haddie smiled hopefully.

“Okay.” Andrea paused, leaving the sound of something scraping. “Who owns the winery, are they connected to the Colmans?”

Haddie twisted her hair into a ball and looked at it. “I hadn’t got that far.”

“Alright, this is good, keep looking into his finances — you might be on to something.” A thump sounded over the phone. “Still waiting on the wife’s phone records. Did they send over the police interview with the wife?”

“No. Want me to put a call into the DA’s office?”

“Hit up Detective Cooper. If he sent them over, I want to know when. I’ll bust Dillard’s ass personally if they’re sitting on these reports.”

Haddie dropped her hair, swallowing. “Detective Cooper?” After her last call, she didn’t really want to stir him up. Should she tell Andrea about the previous call? That meant bringing up the strange situation around the fire again. That hadn’t gone well.

“Yes. Email me an update. I’m working out of home today.” The cat meowed again. “Anything else?”

My life is falling apart, and my dad is likely insane? “No, whatever I find, I’ll send you in the email.”

“Thanks. Good work.” Andrea dropped off the connection.

Haddie took a sip of cold, black coffee. The bitter flavor made her yearn for some unsweetened tea. She could make some, but didn’t want to lose momentum. Pulling up the police website, she found the investigation unit’s phone number. She just had to be diplomatic with Detective Cooper, and hopefully he’d forgotten about her previous call already.

She recognized his voice as he answered. “Detective Cooper? Hadhira Dawson with Andrea Simmons. Did the DA send in a request for us to get the police interview with Sarah Colman?” She could hit him for the phone records next.

“The intern?” So much for him forgetting her. He had that same annoying clipped tone as before. “I wouldn’t know. Check with records. I’ll transfer you.”

Haddie’s jaw tensed. “Wait. Have you looked at Mark Colman’s finances? Didn’t you see how little he, well his wife, paid for that house? And his business in Portland, it’s a fake address —”

His tone became more aggressive. “Ms. Dawson. Is this an inquiry from the defense attorney or her over-zealous intern?”

“We are looking more carefully —” Than the police did. Haddie stopped herself. Insinuating their incompetence would not get her the phone records, or anything else for that matter. “At the disparity between Mark Colman’s income and expenditures, as well as his business connections. I’m just hoping you might have more to offer on these topics.”

“If it was relevant, it was in our reports.”

Infuriating man. “Those reports are fairly thin. You still haven’t said if you investigated Mark Colman’s finances further.” If he wasn’t determined to find Mel guilty, he seemed to have no interest in following other leads.

“We’ve done our work, Ms Dawson. It’s up to the DA now. Put your inquiries through them. Just make sure you stay inside the lines during your investigation.” She could hear tapping in the background. “Your mother died when you were a child, in ’96? And your father, Ms. Dawson, he was born in Nampa, Idaho in 1971?”

The back of Haddie’s neck chilled. “Yes.” How did he know? All of this was on record, but why did he care?

“And he was adopted by a Ben and Laurel Dawson, deceased in ’78 and ’89, respectively?”

“Yes.” Haddie raised her eyebrows and took in a breath. “Why are you looking up my family?”

There was a pause, then a single click on keyboard. “I like to know who I’m dealing with, Ms. Dawson. Stay inside the lines.”

The connection cut off. Was this meant to threaten her somehow? How far would Cooper dig? She’d need to mention this to Dad. No, she couldn’t.

The phone still pressed against her ear, Haddie let out her breath. Shaking, she returned the phone to its cradle and pressed her fingers against the table. Her father’s history terrified her. No. What she didn’t know about it terrified her. Did that mean she didn’t think he was insane? Elbows on the counter, she pressed her face into her hands. Dad made this all worse — distracted her. But how could she ignore it? And — Detective Cooper? How had she let that devolve?

She took a deep breath and forced her concerns into a small pile. I’m not going to let these feelings own me. Dig in. She had work to do.

First, she had to call back and get records on the phone.