The Big Sister

By Emory Cosgrove

Down-and-out Vietnam veteran Fred Beary sets out to find his twin daughters, Megan and Rachel, whom he hasn’t seen for forty-six years. When Fred and Megan turn up dead, Rachel is contacted by Danny Louvain—a private detective who claims to be a brother she never knew she had. Together, they search for answers, but with each answer, they encounter more questions: What was the killer’s motive? What happened to the mother? Who is mother’s “friend” Clarice? How does Danny’s glamorous girlfriend fit in? Who will collect a rich man’s fortune? Who can be trusted? How many people need to die before we find out?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Emory Cosgrove
• Release date: Sep 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370433407

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Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot

Oceanside, California – Near US Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, 1975

Thursday, June 5

Carolyn Rathers was a streamlined blonde with blue eyes, a cover-girl face, and a smile as warm as the California sun. Shortly before 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 5th, she returned home from her job at the Bestway supermarket and turned on the living-room TV. While the TV was warming up, she went into the kitchen to make herself a drink. She mixed a gin and tonic (half gin/half tonic), squeezed a wedge of lime into it, and carried it back into the living room. She eased into her recliner, kicked off her shoes, and turned her attention to the early-evening news broadcast. Instinctively, she placed a non-filtered Pall Mall between her lips and struck a match to light it.

No booze, no cigarettes, she said to herself aloud. What are you thinking? This morning, she’d learned that she was pregnant. She studied the burning match briefly, then blew it out and discarded both the match and the cigarette. Old habits die hard. After the newscast ended, she thumbed through the current issue of Life magazine and eventually dozed off.

A few minutes before 8:00, her telephone rang and woke her up. She trundled across the floor and answered it.

Carolyn speaking.

Hi, Carrie. This is Barbara—you know: Patti.

Oh, sure… Patti. —So what’s goin’ on?

I need a place to stay for a couple’a days. Can ya help me out?

I suppose…. Aren’t you in Illinois anymore?

No.

Are you in trouble?

No, not exactly.

Where are you?

I’m in Temecula right now. I can be at your place in an hour or so. I’ll tell you everything when I get there. You’re still livin’ in the same house?

Yeah.

Is Trace there?

No. Trace isn’t here.

I’ll see ya around nine or nine-thirty.

Okay, Patti. I’ll leave the garage door open. Just pull your car in next to mine. The neighborhood association’s made a new rule against parking cars in the street overnight.

* * *

At 9:35, Patti parked her car in Carolyn’s garage and let herself into the house through the laundry room door. She was carrying two suitcases, a medium-size and a small.

Your place looks swell, Carrie. You’ve kept it real nice. You said Trace isn’t here. Where is he? Has he been shipped out to somewhere again?

Carrie’s answer came slowly. No…. Trace’s dead. He was killed in a helicopter crash three weeks ago—a night training exercise. Two tours in Vietnam without a scratch and he gets killed five miles from home. Just like that.

I’m sorry, Carrie. You really liked him, huh?

I loved him, Patti. Even when he was off somewhere, I was happy because I believed he’d be back. But this time, I know he won’t be coming back. I miss him every minute of every day.

I wish I could’ve felt that way about Freddy. Things just didn’t work out between me and him.

I know they didn’t. That’s why you ran off and changed your name seven years ago. But tell me: What brings you back here to California? What about that doctor you were involved with in Illinois? You said he was crazy about you…. And what about your kids?

Things got real sticky with the doc. You already know that he and his wife adopted the son I had—Freddy’s son, I mean. Well, about two weeks ago, his wife found out that the doc and me were seein’ each other. She pitched a fit and threatened to make me take the boy back. Can you imagine that? The boy’s six years old and he wouldn’t know me from Adam. Isn’t that the most selfish thing you ever heard? The doc talked her out of it, but he started treatin’ me different after that. Things just didn’t work out between me and him. He gave me fifty grand in cash to leave town, though. Patti opened the smaller of her two suitcases and showed Carolyn the money. See! —I’m gonna use this to start a new life. Not here in Oceanside—too many Marines—but somewhere in California, I ’magine.

What about your daughters—the twins?

"Those girls got to be too much for me to handle. They kept pesterin’ me for new clothes and what-not. Buy us this kind’a backpack. Buy us those kind’a shoes. Take us to the carnival. Buy us tickets for rides. Buy us cotton candy…. They wanted more from me than I had time for. Things just didn’t work out between me and them. I shouldn’t’a taken ’em with me in the first place—when I left here in ’68, I mean. But I left ’em behind this time. They’ll be taken care of. There’s Child Protective Services and foster homes and such in Illinois. They’ll be fine."

Carolyn took several seconds to process what she’d just heard. How could I ever have been friends with this self-centered nitwit? Freddy didn’t work out. The doctor didn’t work out. Her daughters didn’t work out. Nothing’ll ever work out for her, and everything will always be someone else’s fault. Eventually she asked: How long will it take you to decide where you want to start this new life of yours?

A few days, a week at the most. Meanwhile, you and me can have some fun—just like old times.

Right now, we’d better get some shuteye, Patti—or Barbara, or whatever you want me to call you. I have to work an extra half-shift tomorrow morning; and you must’ve had a long day behind the wheel.

Yeah. I started from Gallup, New Mexico, this morning—one helluva drive. Where do I sleep?

Carolyn showed her to a guest bedroom and bade her goodnight.

Friday, June 6

The next morning, Carolyn forced herself out of bed at 4:30 and left for work before 6:00. Patti awoke shortly after 10:00 and decided to celebrate the beginning of her new life. She made her way into the kitchen and searched the cabinets for something to drink. She found an unopened bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream and a half-empty quart of vodka. She turned on the TV for background noise and made herself a Bailey’s martini—half Bailey’s/half vodka. It went down smooth and fast. She made several more, and by 11:00 the Bailey’s was used up. She fetched a bottle of barbiturates from her handbag and washed three tablets down with what was left of the vodka. It was time to go to the store.

She threw on some clothes, grabbed her car keys from her handbag and a fifty-dollar bill from the small suitcase, then set out for a liquor store to replenish her supply of alcohol. A mile and a half into her trip, she dozed off at the wheel and veered head-on into a fully-loaded gravel truck. Her new life was over.

* * *

Late that afternoon, Carolyn heard an account of the accident on her car radio as she was driving home from work. According to the report, the driver had been pronounced dead at the scene, and the police suspected that the incident was alcohol related. The driver hadn’t been carrying any identification, and the nature of the accident made it impossible for investigators to make a positive identification; but the person behind the wheel was judged to be a Caucasian female in her mid-to-late-twenties. The license plate and VIN number of her vehicle suggested that she might be a resident of Port Byron, Illinois. Anyone who could shed light on the identity of this woman was asked to contact the Oceanside police immediately. Miraculously, the driver of the gravel truck had sustained only minor injuries.

Carolyn had no doubt about the identity of the woman and she fully intended to contact the police the moment she got home. But when she arrived at the house and saw the suitcase full of money on the coffee table, she had second thoughts. She initiated a serious conversation with herself. Fifty thousand dollars. Patti has run out on everyone in her life—her husband, her kids, her doctor boyfriend. This is a chance for her actions to benefit someone other than herself. I’m going to have Trace’s baby. I’ll never abandon my baby…. Fifty thousand dollars…. With that and Trace’s death benefit from Uncle Sam, I can start a new life for myself—and my baby. No gum-chewing babysitters. No need for daycare…. Keep the money, Carrie, and keep quiet.

She closed the latches on the suitcase, placed it in her bedroom closet, and cleaned up the mess Patti had made in the kitchen. Then, as she’d done the day before, she stretched out in her recliner and kicked off her shoes. After she finished watching the 5:00 newscast, she dozed off while thumbing through the current issue of Life Magazine.

PART 1

Family Values

I sometimes feel as though the gods have turned their backs on certain people.

Dr. Daniel Godwin, in The Chill

Ross Macdonald

Chapter 1

Maricopa County, Arizona

Thirty-eight years later

2013

Tuesday, September 10

Jeff and Connie Fletcher were wealthy people—not billionaires by any stretch, but wealthy by most standards. Things hadn’t always been this way for either of them. Jeff had gone through university on the GI Bill, Connie on an athletic scholarship. Jeff had done very well for himself in a software business and retired in his early forties. Connie was in her early thirties and still working as a veterinarian when they met in the summer of 2012. In the following year, they were married and they mutually agreed that she also should give retirement a try—just to see how she liked it. They were thankful both for their wealth and for the fact that life had given them each other.

Sandy Santoro lived with the Fletchers in their Scottsdale home. Sandy was the daughter of a dear friend who had been murdered in February, when Sandy was still nineteen. She was twenty now, and enrolled in the pre-veterinary program at Copper State University. She’d selected the veterinary program because Connie was a veterinarian. Sandy looked up to Connie and wanted to be like her in as many ways as she could.

As an expression of their gratitude toward life, the Fletchers contributed generously to charities. Their favorite local charity was St. Leo’s Rescue Mission in Mesa, Arizona, to which they regularly donated money for food, clothing, and other supplies. They also donated time by working in the kitchen and manning the foodservice line for breakfast and lunch on Tuesdays. Sandy joined them when it didn’t interfere with her schoolwork. She was with them on this particular day.

An older man showed a special interest in them while they were working the foodservice line. The man was in his mid-to-late sixties. He had tousled white hair and two weeks’ growth of scraggly white beard. His clothes were rumpled, and his heavily lined face was set in a sadly grim expression. He studied each of them in a friendly but intense way as he passed slowly through the line. He struggled to speak as they filled his tray, but he formed no words other than thank you. Jeff noticed the man and sensed that he wanted to say something to them.

When their shift at the service line ended, Jeff steered Connie and Sandy toward the table where the old man was sitting and eating alone. Jeff asked if they could join him.

Please do, the man said.

I’m Jeff Fletcher. This is my wife, Connie… and this is Sandy.

It’s a pleasure to meet you. My name’s Alfred Beary. I’ve noticed the three of you serving food here on Tuesdays. You look like a nice family. Beary shook hands with Jeff, then Connie, then Sandy. The young woman is your daughter?

No, Jeff said. She’s not our daughter, but we love her anyway.

Beary seemed puzzled by the phrasing of Jeff’s answer.

Connie said: Please excuse Jeff’s unusual way of saying things, Mister Beary. Sandy’s mother died several years ago, and she came to live with us after her father died this past February. He was a dear friend. Her parents were wonderful people, and out of respect for them, we don’t refer to Sandy as ‘our daughter.’ But we’d be proud if she were.

Beary cocked his head slightly and gazed at Sandy as if he were asking a question.

Sandy said: Jeff was my father’s oldest friend. They were in the Marine Corps together as teenagers. The three of us are very close. If you had asked me if these people are my parents, I would’ve said something similar to what Jeff just said: ‘They’re not my parents, but I love them and I’d be proud if they were.’

Beary smiled and nodded approvingly.

Where were you in the Marine Corps, Mister Fletcher? Who were you with?

Sandy’s father and I were in the infantry, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines. So we were at Camp Pendleton, California, then Kuwait. —And let’s use first names, shall we? Do you prefer to be called ‘Alfred’ or ‘Al’?

Neither one. Most people call me ‘Fred.’ —I was with the 1/1, too—in Vietnam.

So you were in Hue? I understand that was plenty rough.

Yeah, plenty rough, like you just said. It was during my second tour in ’Nam, and toward the end of my enlistment. For Connie’s and Sandy’s benefit, he offered a brief explanation of Jeff’s reference to Hue. "In the early morning of the Vietnamese New Year in ’68, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong launched coordinated attacks on all the major cities and military installations in the South. Hue had been the old imperial capital, and it was one of their main objectives. They attacked Hue with two regular army regiments, an elite assault battalion, and several Viet Cong units. They took control of the place within a few hours.

"When the attack occurred, we were in a place called Phu Bai, about ten miles south of Hue. Our headquarters received a call for help, and my company—Alpha Company—was loaded onto trucks and sent up there. We were ambushed and stopped cold on the road from Phu Bai by what seemed like a full battalion of North Vietnamese regulars. They hit us from all sides with automatic weapons, mortars, RPGs—everything you could think of. Reinforcements from the 2/5 Marines had to come help us fight our way to the US military compound, which was located just south of the Old City. This was different than anything I’d seen before. Up ’til then, our engagements with the enemy had mostly been at the squad-, platoon-, or company-level—what our commanders called ‘small-unit warfare.’ In Hue, we were facing seven or eight thousand well-organized enemy troops.

"That was the beginning of the longest twenty-six days of my life. We were way under-strength. Our company commander was a 2nd lieutenant because our captain’d been wounded during the ambush; and our platoon commander was a sergeant E-5 because our regular platoon commander and our gunny had been killed a week earlier. The E-5’s name was ‘Freddy’—same as mine—Freddy Gonzalez. Freddy was the bravest man I ever saw. He was killed three days later.

By the time it was over, we had sixteen battalions fighting in Hue—eleven South Vietnamese, two US Army, and three Marine. A lotta casualties, and a lotta dead, on both sides. And after the fighting ended we found God-knows-how-many mass graves with thousands of civilians in ’em. Many of ’em’d been shot in the head with their hands tied behind their backs. Others looked like they’d been beaten and buried alive. Those graves were prob’ly the worst thing I ever saw in my two years in ’Nam. I still have bad dreams about that.

Connie touched Jeff’s forearm and nodded toward the door at the far corner of the dining hall. The director of the Mission, Father Tomás, was motioning for them.

"Please excuse us, Fred. The padre wants to see us."

It was a pleasure meeting you, Beary said, all of you. I hope I see you again.

I’m sure you will.

* * *

They followed the padre down the hallway and into his office. Tomás spoke first. I see you’ve become acquainted with Fred Beary, or he with you.

"I asked him if we could join him, and he invited us to sit. He mentioned that he’d been with the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines in Vietnam, and I asked him about the Battle of Hue. He answered like it had occurred only a few days ago. What’s with him, Padre? He seems a little jangled, but not off the rails. He speaks well and he has good manners. He doesn’t have PTSD, does he?"

No. Not exactly.

He has very vivid memories of Vietnam.

Yes, he does. But so do a lot of other people, and Vietnam wasn’t what sent him over the edge. It was what happened after he came back.

What was that?

Several things.

Such as.

"For starters, in 1968, he came home from Vietnam to an empty house. His wife had pulled out and neglected to tell him about it. No note. Nothing. She’d run off with their children—two daughters, twins—toddlers named Megan and Rachel. I’ve had several conversations with him about this. He was deeply committed to his wife and daughters, and to the idea of raising a family. There’s no doubt about that. He tried several times to locate them, but failed. The wife covered her tracks very well. He hasn’t seen her or his daughters since he was home on leave in 1967.

"He and his wife had agreed that he would go to college after he was discharged from the Corps. He intended to become an accountant and they were supposed to live happily ever after—a nice house with a white picket fence, a two-car garage… you know the drill. Evidently, she decided to opt out of that plan.

"After that, he started school at UC Escondido on the GI Bill. But that didn’t go well for him either. His dreams for the future of his family had been shattered, and he felt like a stranger in a strange land at UCE. In 1969, the anti-war movement was in full-swing, and a lot of people—especially people on college and university campuses—were very angry. When they learned Fred was a veteran, his fellow students and instructors directed much of their anger toward him, as though the war had been all his fault. He told me it was like he’d passed out and come-to on a different planet. ‘Everybody was talking about love,’ he said. ‘But all they showed me was anger and hate.’ They called him ‘baby killer’ and waved Viet Cong flags in his face. Girls were jackin’ up on drugs and running around naked. And so forth. If this was the society he was supposed to reintegrate himself into, he didn’t want any part of it. He became totally disenchanted with the people around him, and he was drowning in self-pity for what had happened with his family. If I were an armchair psychologist I’d say he was without hope and drifting into depression. He quit school before the end of the first semester.

"After he left UCE, he worked a series of miscellaneous, nondescript jobs. He knew he was going nowhere fast. Then, in 1972, his father died and left him some money. He used that to make a down payment on a two-pump service station on the old road between Escondido and Del Mar. Business was good for a few years but when the Highway Department built the new State Route 56, traffic stopped coming by his place, and he ended up with nothing but a mortgage he couldn’t pay off. He abandoned the service station and walked away without a penny in his pocket.

"Before I became a priest, I was a cop in Escondido for five years. I know that area very well. If you drive along the old road, you can still see the remnants of Beary’s service station—a monument to bureaucratic highway planning, progress, and a man’s broken life.

From what I can piece together, that was his tipping point. He compared the life he’d dreamed about with what he had after the gas station went toes up—which was absolutely nothing—and he went over the edge. He started drinking, living on the street in San Diego, and doing petty crime. He spent several years in and out of jail. He still thinks about family. The concept of family is important to him, but he’s a realist. His rational side tells him he’ll never have one.

"That’s interesting, Padre. The first thing he said to us was that we looked