Simply Lies

Chapter 39

Stormfield looked as dreary and intimidating as ever.

Gibson pulled to a stop and got out. No police presence at all. A storm was coming in off the bay. The temperature was already starting to drop, and she tugged her jacket closer around her.

Unlike her father, she was packing, the Beretta riding snugly in her belt clip holster.

She bypassed the house for now and headed to the dock. She didn’t know if the cops had searched down here but she assumed they hadn’t.

She walked out onto the dock and ventured to the stern of the boat. She climbed on the rear teak deck pad and managed to duck under the cover and slide in on her belly through the walkway into the boat. It was dark enough under the cover and the cloudy skies that she had to pull a flashlight out and sweep it around in order to see. It smelled musty and her nostrils crinkled. She sat on her haunches next to the telescopic poles holding up the heavy winter cover and looked around. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but that was usually the case when she started on a search.

There were lots of compartments on the boat in which to secrete things, some obvious, others not. She had looked at the plans for dozens of yachts that debtors had tried to hide from their creditors. New names, new flag registrations, new paint colors, but you couldn’t really change the superstructure of the thing. That was like a fingerprint.

She made a careful search from bow to stern. The luxurious interior had pretty much every bell and whistle Formula offered. Gibson didn’t care about that. She focused on the fact that she had found exactly one thing of interest.

It was a note inked on the bottom of a fender in the forward storage hatch.

Look harder. It’s worth it.

Okay, that was something. She thought more about Harry Langhorne. The guy, by all accounts, was an asshole, a bully, spiteful, vindictive, manipulative, and cruel and maybe a pedophile on top. And he was also terminally ill with brain cancer. She could imagine him seeing this as a game, his last chance to screw with the world.

Gibson crawled back out to find that it was now raining. She hustled through the storm to the front door of the house to find it locked, and the key no longer under the cat statue. She pulled out her pick kit and defeated this obstacle quickly. As she went inside a crack of thunder made her jump.

She took out her iPad and went through all the photos and video she had taken before. Paintings, sculptures, some furniture, and rugs. She had logged all that inventory and gone online to get prices for them. She figured it was nowhere near enough to constitute the man’s stolen mob treasure.

She might have thought that he had sunk all his money into Stormfield. After all, five million bucks would have been big money back in the nineties. But she didn’t think that was it. The note confirmed this.

Look harder. It’s worth it.

So if his killers were Francine and Doug, had their father told them anything? If the treasure was in some bank account or safe-deposit box, or other financial hiding place, Gibson might have a shot at tracking it down. It was what she did for a living, after all.

But Langhorne’s note showed that he was well aware that people were looking for something he had. And he was egging them on, daring them to find it. Seeing if they were smarter than he was.

Am I smarter than he was?

She drifted through room after room, looking for anything that might be a clue or lead to a clue. She needed to know more about Langhorne and even more about his time as Daniel Pottinger. The first she could possibly get from Earl Beckett. The latter she might have to get from Clarisse.

If I ever call her back, and right now I’m not sure I want to. She didn’t like being shit on, not that anyone did. But she liked it even less from a person who was clearly enjoying pulling Gibson’s strings.

And what is the woman’s beef with me, anyway? It’s not just standard manipulation technique. Something else is going on. Something personal.

She heard the noise a second later and her hand flew to her gun. She aimed the Beretta in front of her and walked toward the sound. She wanted to meet the intruder on her terms.

Gibson rounded the corner and slipped down the dark hall. The sounds were coming closer and her finger edged to the trigger.

“Shit,” she exclaimed.

Virginia State Police detective Wilson Sullivan was staring at her.

“You don’t seem surprised to see me here,” said Gibson, putting her gun away.

He frowned and said tersely, “I’m not. I saw your van outside.”

“Of course.”

“But I want an answer as to what you’re doing here. And I want it right now.” He took a step closer. “Because the fact is, you shouldn’t be here. I could arrest you for being here.”

“It looked to me like you guys released the crime scene. And I thought we were working together. I was just trying to find a lead of some kind.”

He studied her for an uncomfortably long moment. “And did you find a lead?”

She told him about the message she’d discovered on the boat.

“So there is some treasure out there that he’s playing games with?”

“Sounds like it. Or he could be bullshitting everyone and there’s no treasure at all.”

“Which do you think it is?”

“You know as much about Harry Langhorne as I do,” she said. “He’s obviously a complicated guy. So I’m not sure which way to go on that question.”

He nodded and looked around. “Find anything else besides the note?”

“Not yet. Still raining hard out there?” she asked, noting his wet coat and hair.

“Bucketing.”

“We might want to stay inside then and go over the place.”

“Treasure in plain sight, maybe?”

“Maybe. But it all depends on how you define ‘plain sight.’ ”

“I thought you went all over with your iPad.”

“I couldn’t hit every room. That would have taken days. Have your people searched the whole place?”

“Yes, but they weren’t looking for treasure.”

“Any leads on the murder?”

He shook his head. “I have a feeling this one is going to take a while. Who’s watching the kids? Your mother again?”

“Both parents.”

“Shall we go room by room?” he asked.

She smiled and said, “Yes.” Inside, though, she was frowning.

Ninety minutes later the rain had finally subsided and so had their search. Without result.

“If there’s a treasure in here, I’m not seeing it,” said Sullivan.

“What about a safe-deposit box? Bank and other financial accounts? The normal hiding places?”

“We’re trying to access some of that. But we’ve had a hard time tracking anything down.”

“He didn’t bank with some local entity?”

“Not that we can find. And there were no financial records at the house, at least that we could uncover. He may have them somewhere else, but we can’t even find a checkbook or a list of bills. He could be renting a storage facility somewhere, but we have no idea where it might be. But these days, you can hide stuff anywhere.”

“Tell me about it,” replied Gibson dryly. “But no one has come forward? Law or accounting firm? Financial advisors who worked with him?”

Sullivan shook his head. “They might have worked with him under another name and have no idea the guy’s even dead.”

“His murder’s been in the news,” she countered. “It mentioned he was killed at Stormfield. You would think his financial people would know he owned it.”

“We got some names from the Turners’ Realtor. Big surprise, we can’t find a single one of them. It’s like they ran for it.”

Gibson looked around the dank interior of Stormfield. “Well, the note I found clearly shows he knew someone would be looking for something. Either he hid it somewhere, or he didn’t and it’s just a whole lot of nothing.”

“Maybe you can work your magic and crack it. If you do, let me know.”

She frowned again but wasn’t facing him when she did so. “I can give it a shot. Hey, you know anything about Nathan Trask?”

Sullivan looked taken aback. “Trask? What does he have to do with anything?”

“Maybe nothing. But he’s a big mover and shaker in the criminal world, though I need to watch my words or else he’ll sue me for slander and probably win.”

“You think he was working with Langhorne aka Pottinger?”

“He might have been.”

Sullivan said, “I was told about him when I moved up from Carolina. He has a bunch of politicians in his pocket who cover for him.”

“What a world we live in.”

“Isn’t it though,” said Sullivan, who was also now frowning as the rain picked up again.