Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels (20 page)

“By the way, I’m sorry to leave you so high and dry without any work to do,” he said. “I guess for future reference, we need to keep a few ‘back burner’ projects available for situations just like this.”

I agreed, thinking that whatever process Tom used in his selection of grant recipients, it had always been a wholly personal choice, one case at a time, dictated by him and then acted upon by me. That was our procedure, and I thought it had worked well thus far. It was his money we were giving away, after all. However he wanted to do it was fine with me.

“The time off hasn’t been so bad,” I said. “I’m doing a little pro bono work for a young woman at Advancing Attire.”

“Oh, good,” he replied. “Then I won’t worry about it. I plan to stick around here at least through the weekend. They’ll do another CAT scan in two days, to make sure the clot is dissolving. After that, they can move her to a regular room.”

“Great.”

“Between now and then, I’ll try to finish these files so I can get them to you by Monday. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to deliver them in person after all, since I need to get on to Singapore as soon as possible. I’ll be flying straight out from here.”

“I understand,” I said, disappointment settling around my heart. But at least now I knew I had the rest of the week off—which hopefully would give me enough time to find Eddie Ray’s killer.

Tom and I talked for a while longer as he reminisced about his mother and what a character she had been when he was growing up in New Orleans. She sounded like a strong and admirable
woman, which didn’t surprise me at all, considering the caliber of son she had raised. This was the first time he had ever said much about his family to me, and I swallowed up the impressions and details like a starving man with a good meal. Tom was an incredibly private person, and glimpses of facts about his life were rare indeed.

Once we said our goodbyes, I called Harriet, as promised, just to tell her that Tom and I had finally spoken, and that the big emergency was that his mother had had a stroke. I got Harriet’s machine, which was just as well. I left her a message, thinking I really didn’t want to talk to anyone else right now anyway.

I hung up the phone and then sat for a while longer in front of the fire, sipping my tea and thinking about Tom and the origin of our relationship. He had become such an integral part of me that I sometimes found it hard to believe we had known each other only slightly more than two years. Oddly, as wonderful as things were for me now, Tom had first come into my life at what could only be described as the lowest point of my existence.

Three years ago, my husband, Bryan, had been killed by a man named James Sparks, an alcoholic who was too drunk to have been behind the wheel of a speedboat one August afternoon. But he was, and the resulting incident left my husband dead and me utterly alone. The months following the accident had been a horrific series of depositions and grand juries and sentencing hearings. In the end, Sparks pleaded guilty, so we never went to trial. Because of his long history of DUIs, he got 16 years in prison for manslaughter.

When the sentencing was complete and Sparks was in prison, I realized that since Bryan’s death I had been driven by only one thing: procuring justice for my husband. Now that that had been achieved, all that was left was my own unspeakable loss. My heart sank to a depth of anguish I hadn’t previously thought possible. Living in our home in Virginia, surrounded by all of our memories, was simply too hard.

So, exactly ten months after Bryan died, I left Virginia and came here to the Chesapeake, a place where I felt I could remember Bryan without constantly facing memories of him—an odd distinction but one that was important for me. I bought this house, moved in, and stubbornly severed nearly all ties with friends and family back home.

At first I simply lived off of my savings, holing up here like a hermit. There were entire days when the greatest distance I covered was from the bed to the bathroom and back. In retrospect, of course, I know I was still deep in the throes of mourning and suffering from a nearly crippling depression. At the time all I could think about was Bryan—how much I had loved him, how close we had been to starting a family. I had cried a lot of tears over the babies we would never have, over the milestones we would never celebrate. Even God seemed far away from me at that time, a selfish, vengeful entity who had taken away the person in the world I most loved.

But God was working in my life, even if I didn’t know it. Eli Gold, the private investigator who had been my mentor, employer, and dear friend for many years, was really the only person who refused to be rebuffed by me. Now retired and living in Florida, Eli called me almost every day during that time, reading me Scripture, praying for me, and eventually forcing me to confront my misery.

Once he could sense that my depression was lifting somewhat, Eli began to insist that I could forge a new life—one without my beloved husband, but one that could still be rewarding and fulfilling. He insisted I go out and find a good local church, which I did, and then he talked me into taking up canoeing again. The canoeing ended up being a godsend for me, a way back to physical and emotional health. Out on the water, I found the freedom to reconnect with my past, contemplate my future, and reflect on all of God’s beautiful creation.

Finally, about four months after I had moved to Maryland, Eli called and told me about Tom, a young techno-whiz friend of his
who had made his fortune in the computer industry and was looking to share his wealth by creating a philanthropic organization.

I thought I wasn’t interested in pursuing either of my former careers of law or private investigating, but I could see how this position with Tom’s brand-new J.O.S.H.U.A. Foundation would be an unusual combination of both professions. I prayed about it and finally decided to give it a try. Once I started, it didn’t take long at all for me to realize that my new position and I were a perfect fit.

Truly, it was this job that had saved me from my grief. At first, simply being forced to get back out into the world and interact with other people had seemed a monumental task. But slowly I had begun to cope with, and then eventually even enjoy, the contact my position necessitated. It also helped that the people I interacted with—both in the company I worked for and in the companies we donated to—were for the most part exemplary human beings, folks who had dedicated their lives to helping others. Sure, there were plenty of bogus nonprofit groups out there, and many who were merely trying to cash in on their tax-free status. Since it was my job to ferret out those groups, it was always a distinct pleasure for me when their applications were denied. But I had found that the majority of the nonprofit groups I encountered were full of selfless, dedicated people who worked hard to make the world a better place. To me, it was an honor to be able to help Tom further their efforts, and the familiar little speech I gave every time I donated the money was always said with the utmost sincerity.

Tom, also, had been a great pleasure to get to know. In the beginning, our telephone conversations were brief and to the point. He hired me without ever meeting me in person, taking on faith the recommendation of our mutual friend, Eli. Together, Tom and I established the routine we would follow: He would screen the grant applicants, pass along to me the ones he was interested in helping out, and I would investigate them. I think together thus far
we had given out nearly ten million dollars. Apparently, there was plenty more money where that came from, for the end was nowhere in sight.

The only question that remained for me, then, was who exactly was Tom, and why was everything about him such a secret?

In the beginning I didn’t think that question was terribly important. He was a friend of a friend, a business genius, a multimillionaire many times over due to the invention of some integral part of the inner workings of the Internet. I even thought it was quite admirable that he chose to remain anonymous. In a world where everyone wants recognition, here was a man who refused it! But after I began to get to know him, other questions began to surface in my mind. Where did he live? Was he married? Did he have kids?

I tried asking the foundation’s office manager, Harriet, and she told me she didn’t know much about him either as she, too, had been hired over the telephone and had never met Tom in person. Though he traveled to the East Coast sometimes for business, she said he had made it clear to her that he wanted to remain separate from the mechanics of the foundation’s operation, and thus he had never come into the foundation offices in DC. She knew his computer company was primarily based in California. Beyond that, she hadn’t a clue about his personal family ties, married or otherwise.

Growing ever more curious, I realized it wouldn’t be that difficult to turn my investigating skills toward my boss. At the very least, I could go online and search driver’s license records, social security, things like that.

Or so I thought. I don’t know what sort of security systems he had in place, but I hadn’t done much digging at all one day when the telephone rang. It was Tom, and he was angry.

“You can work for me, or you can investigate me,” he had said. “But you may not do both. Take your pick.”

I was stunned. Never, ever, in my entire investigating career had I been caught red-handed poking my nose in where it didn’t belong. Mortified and embarrassed, I responded defensively.

“It’s very difficult to work for a man who is such a mystery,” I said. “I was just trying to get a better feel for who you are.”

“Does who I am have anything to do with how you do your job?” he challenged. After a moment of silence I had to admit that, no, it did not.

“Then leave it be, Callie. I really, really don’t want to let you go, but you can’t have it both ways.”

I agreed that I wouldn’t investigate him, but only because of our mutual connection with Eli. Eli had said that Tom was a good, but very private, man, and I would have to leave it at that.

Since then, surprisingly, I
had
been content to leave it alone, to get to know Tom on his own terms—slowly and carefully. The only mystery that still really bugged me was the acronym for our company. I had no idea what the “J.O.S.H.U.A.” stood for, and according to Tom, I never would know.

“It’s personal,” was all he said the only time I ever asked him, though I frequently tried making up answers to that mystery on my own.

For a while, too, I had wondered if there were something wrong with Tom’s appearance that kept him from meeting me face-to-face. I asked Eli straight out, but he just laughed and said no, Tom was a good-looking fellow with no facial scars or humpback or anything. Not that it would’ve mattered, really, but that was one more theory put to rest.

Now our relationship was two years deeper, two years stronger. In the intervening conversations, we may not have discussed many of the details of life, like how we spent our weekends, but oddly that left more time for talking about other, more intangible things. Slowly, I felt that I had come to know him as well as or even better than many people I did see frequently face-to-face.

Of course, the more I knew about Tom, the more I wanted to know. Over time, I had put together enough small clues from our
conversations to figure out that he was in his mid-30s, that he wasn’t married, and that the only children in his life were his sister’s twin daughters. The ultimate mystery that remained was why we never could seem to get together. More importantly: Why did it even matter?

Two months before, we had nearly met in Philadelphia when we both attended the same funeral. Tom had known I was there, but at the moment he was ready to approach me, he saw that I was crying. According to what he told me later, he had wanted to come to me, to comfort me, but he was afraid that would have made me too uncomfortable.

“I realized it wasn’t the right time and place for us to finally meet in person,” he had told me later, over the phone. Such an important event, we both knew, needed to be just right. “Trust me,” he had said then. “It
will
happen, eventually.”

I clung to that promise more strongly than he could imagine.

For now, I thought to myself as I stood up from the couch and stretched, the potential for what we could, eventually, be to each other hovered out there on the horizon, sort of like the promise of springtime in the dead of winter. I was aware that there were many things I could work on in the meantime—like my reluctance to make friends, my tendency to isolate myself. Harriet was correct. I didn’t have many friends anymore. I had cut most of them off when I moved here. But each day I prayed that the Lord would continue to heal my heart. If Tom had issues of his own, I felt sure he was dealing with them in the same way.

I closed the glass screen on the fireplace, picked up my empty mug, and turned off the lamp. I rinsed my cup in the kitchen and placed it in the dishwasher, wiped the counter next to the stove with the sponge, turned out the lights, and walked down the hall to my office. I decided I would work on the research for Verlene for a while and then go to sleep, content to know that Tom was okay and that we had finally been able to touch base.

Twenty-Three