Chapter 6: An answer to ‘Why?’

The following morning, Clair and I were once again having a late breakfast when the phone rang. It was Pete again.

“Dave? Am I interrupting you?”

“No, just finishing breakfast.”

“I thought I would update you on the most recent piece of information that I found. Remember how we figured that the notary who signed off on those POAs had to be part of the scam? Well, I tracked her down. Not where she is, but where she was.

“She was working as an assistant and a notary for another real estate company here in town. She was a gofer for the agents, running paperwork down to the County to register sales, doing minor clerical work and the like. And she recently got her state certificate as a notary.

“But she stopped showing up for work about a week ago. Her name was Claudia Rivera, but we did a little background check on her and we think she may have had a conviction that was a suspended sentence and was wiped off her record when she finished her parole, under the name ‘Claudia Riva.’ Take a guess at her crime? Forgery!”

“Oh, yes. Another thing: she wasn’t Costa Rican; she is Panamanian and people think that she was seeing Bruce on the side.”

“Unbelievable!” I agreed. “Have you let the DA know about her?”

“I’m calling from my car because I’m on my way to drop off the documents that we’ve collected with them.”

“Great. Pete, I think that I’m going to visit Bruce’s parents and see if they know where he is, or if they knew what he was up to.”

“Okay. Just let me know what they have to say. I don’t expect them to know much, because Bruce won’t have told them. You know his folks are honest as the day is long.”

“Yeah, I know it’s a long shot, but I’ll try anyway. Talk to you later.”

I had been on speaker phone, so Clair had heard our conversation. I went to get up and I leaned down to kiss her.

“Don’t bother getting up. Finish your breakfast,” I told her.

“Okay, sweetie. Good luck.”

As I drove over to Bruce’s folks’ place in one of the local retirement villages, I mused again on what could have gone wrong that Bruce had gone over the edge, losing his entire future.

His company seemed to be doing well, his wife and kids were doing well, at least until he decided to screw things up. What had changed? Was it this new puta he had picked up? Was she really worth the cost? I didn’t think so. Bruce was not a man who had ever been loyal to one woman and I didn’t think that would change.

Maybe someday I would meet her and know what it was that he saw in her. Although she would probably be in an orange prison jumpsuit if I ever saw her.

As I drove up to the small single home and parked in the driveway, Bruce’s folks, Jim and Maggie, stepped out to meet me. The cottage was nice and built fairly recently, maybe 10 years old. It was probably new when they bought it, in this ‘over 55’ community.

Maggie came up to me and gave me a big hug, “Dave, it’s so good to see you!”

Jim shook my hand and invited me in.

They offered me coffee and some of Maggie’s home baked blueberry muffins. I declined, telling them that I’d just finished breakfast before I came over.

We chatted for a while, they, asking after my parents, what they were doing and how the ranch was faring, while I asked them about their life in the plus 55 community and if they were enjoying being grandparents.

After a time, they looked at me, knowing what I had come over for.

“Dave, a deputy sheriff came by yesterday and asked about ‘Bruce’s whereabouts,’ as he phrased it. We had to tell him the same thing that we’re telling you. We don’t know and we haven’t heard a word from him for about two weeks. Not that it is that unusual. He doesn’t call us all the time, or come over to see us that often, even though we only live about five miles from the grove.”

That sounded kind of sad, but not that unusual anymore, as children seemed to ignore their folks as they got older.

“Has anything happened that might have caused Bruce to radically change?” I asked.

It was Jim who answered.

“Well about six months ago, he was diagnosed with, what was that, Maggie? It wasn’t MS or Parkinson’s.”

Maggie knew the name, “No, he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, ALS, I think they call it now, since no one remembers Lou Gehrig anymore.”

What could you say about that? “Oh, I’m really sorry to hear that.”

I didn’t know much about ALS, but I remembered that the course of the disease usually ran between three to five years, although with recent treatments, that could go as high as 10 years. It was a horrible condition, as your body deteriorated right before your eyes. You would gradually lose the ability to eat, and eventually you lost even the ability to breathe, and you suffocated to death. I guess that knowing that your future was going to be so miserable could untether you from moorings. Not that I was sure anymore that Bruce was entirely moored to what most of us considered the straight and narrow in the first place.

We talked about Bruce’s condition a little longer and one more piece of the puzzle came into place. His folks told me that about six weeks ago he informed them that he was going to start fulfilling his bucket list and that they might not hear from him very often. When they asked what things were on his ‘bucket list’, he started with taking a couple weeks and going to Hawaii, or maybe Fiji or Samoa; hunting for a brown bear in Alaska, or maybe a lion in Africa, seeing places in Europe where he had never been. Nothing specific, just ideas at that point.

His folks, who were in their mid-70s and still in good physical condition, talked about the sadness of having your child die before you. They did say that they were comforted that they would still have Consuela and the grandkids.

I kind of grimaced to myself when I heard them talking about that. I had a feeling that Consuela might take the kids and leave Vero, just to get away from the memories of Bruce.

As I was leaving, Jim said to me, “You know, we never raised him like that. I would never have done that: stealing from people who trusted me with their property and people’s livelihoods.” Clearly, he was sad and disappointed with his son.

“I know that, Jim. I’ve always thought of you and Maggie as ‘salt of the earth’ people. Thanks for talking to me. At least I know what may have set him off now.”

When I got back into my car, I noticed I had a message from the sheriff’s department, that I could come and retrieve my tractors. I knew Bubba needed them on the grove, so I started directly to the impound lot and phoned Bubba to meet me there with one of the other grove workers.

Bubba was standing at the entrance to the impound lot with a deputy when I got there.

The first thing we did was to inspect the tractors for damage and checked the VIN numbers to be certain that they were indeed the tractors that had been stolen from the grove. They were. Then I had to pay to get them released: $35 a day. Two of the tractors had been there for 2 days, and the third for 1 day. A total of $175 just to have my stolen property sitting on a county parking lot.

The manager laughed when I complained.

“Dave, just be glad that you’re paying for ag equipment. If these were cars, they would be $150 a day. The county sets the fee schedule and gives you grove guys a break.”

I thanked him and told him I understood, but that didn’t keep me from complaining a little.

When the paperwork was done, Bubba, me and another one of our employees, Raul, drove the tractors back to the grove. Yes, tractors are allowed on county roads, slowing traffic behind us because we just couldn’t go that fast. The drivers behind us were glad when we turned onto the grove entrance.

We parked the tractors where Raul and his buddies could do a quick check over to make sure the engines had enough oil, that there was fuel in tanks and all that sort of thing. Then they would get them back out working the grove.

Bubba grabbed one of the trucks and drove me back to the lot where I picked up my rental car.

Bubba dropped me off, and as I walked over to the car, the deputy who was on duty at the impound lot motioned me over.

“The report on your tractors said that Bruce McWilliams was the suspected perp?”

I nodded in agreement.

“I just heard over the radio that one of our units stopped his truck here in town about an hour ago. They pulled it over, and when they got up to the cab, there was a 19-year-old kid driving it. He was on his way to the DMV to change the registration over to his name. I guess this McWilliams character sold it to him yesterday afternoon. The kid and dad had been arranging a loan to buy it for a couple of weeks. They transferred the cash over to him yesterday, and he signed over the title. All completely legal. We just let the kid go to finish getting it registered. Just thought you might want to know.”

I groaned to myself. One more possible way of tracking Bruce down was out the window. Not that I didn’t expect it. That truck probably put another $25 grand into Bruce’s pocket. He was getting as much cash together as possible, and then he would try to disappear.

By the time I called Pete, he had already heard about the truck.

“Yeah, Teresa, that ADA, called me to let me know. But that was a legal transaction, so nothing to do about it. She’s on top of it, though. Just for kicks and giggles, she went onto the DMV database and found Claudia Rivera’s Toyota Camry. At least her license plate is out the on the cop’s radar now. But her car isn’t like Bruce’s was — like a flashing neon light. I think her car is a brown, 4-door sedan. The sort of car no one notices.”