Family Secrets: A Jake Badger Mystery Thriller Read online

  Family Secrets

  A Jake Badger Mystery

  Book 1

  Glenn Rogers

  Copyright

  ©

  2014

  Glenn Rogers

  No Part of this material may be copied in any form

  without the express written permission of the author

  ISBN 978-0-9903940-1-3

  Published by

  Simpson and Brook, Publishers

  Estherville, IA

  Chapter 1

  The phone rang. Mildred answered it. “Badger Investigations and Assistance Agency,” she said.

  A moment later my extension buzzed. I picked it up.

  “A Mrs. Morrison,” Mildred said, “on line one.”

  “Mildred,” I said, “we only have one line.”

  “I know. And that's the one she's on. So answer it.”

  Mildred is my office manager, a wrinkly, loose skin, feisty little widow, five four, one fifty, gray hair, blue eyes, who was married to a cop for almost forty years. She’s a unique blend of tough and tender. Mildred is my employee, but she’s also my friend. I couldn’t run my agency without her.

  I pushed the button on the phone and said, “Jake Badger.”

  “Mr. Badger, this is June Morrison. I'm in need of your services and wondered when I could come by and see you.”

  I looked at my watch. It was five after nine. “Anytime, Mrs. Morrison. I'll be here in the office all morning.”

  “Would ten o'clock be convenient?”

  “It would be perfect,” I said.

  It was a beautiful spring day. The temperature was sixty-eight and there was a mild breeze. I opened one of my office windows to let in some fresh air. The complex manager where my office is located on Coldwater Canyon in Studio City had planted lilac bushes along the edge of the building. They were in bloom and the breeze filled my office with the gentle fragrance of the blossoms. I liked it and figured Mrs. Morrison would, too.

  The past few days had been quiet. Wilson, my four-year-old black and white border collie, and I had gone fishing off the Malibu pier a couple of times and had driven up to Big Bear one day just to get out of L.A. The previous week, however, had involved a flurry of activity. William Ryan, a very successful businessman running for governor of California, had realized that his campaign funds seemed to be disappearing at an alarming rate. He had asked me to look into it. Turns out his campaign manager, Albert Leventhal, was using his own companies to do campaign work and charging the campaign exorbitant rates for the services rendered. Millions of dollars had been paid to Leventhal’s companies for thousands of dollars worth of work. The investigation had been mostly bookkeeping until I figured out what was happening. When I confronted Leventhal with the evidence of his fraudulent behavior, he became unreasonable. His very large assistant, Franklin, produced a handgun and things went downhill from there. Eventually the police came. Leventhal and Franklin were arrested. Leventhal went to jail. Franklin had to go to the hospital for a few days first. The next day, Ryan handed me a nice check for services rendered.

  *****

  June Morrison arrived right at ten. The surveillance camera that kept an eye on my front entrance sent a crisp image of her as she approached to one of the three monitors in my office. Mildred showed her into my office. I came around from my desk and shook her hand. She looked familiar but I didn’t immediately place her.

  “Jake Badger,” I said.

  “June Morrison.”

  I had her sit in one of my guest chairs.

  She was a mature woman who looked fifty but may have been a few years older. She was about five-nine and slim, tan and in shape. Maybe she played tennis. Her modest gray skirt came just above her knees. Her red hair was beginning to show a little grey, but it made her more interesting. Her makeup was tastefully applied and tended to highlight her intelligent, friendly blue eyes. Though probably twenty years older than me, she was quite attractive. Beauty knows no age.

  “Would you like some coffee or tea?” I asked.

  “No, thank you. I’m fine.”

  I sat down.

  “So, Mrs. Morrison, how can I help you?”

  “Please, call me June.”

  I nodded and smiled. “How can I help you, June?”

  She took a brief moment to gather herself and began.

  “A couple of weeks ago, my twin sister, Jane, passed away.”

  “I'm sorry to hear that,” I said.

  She nodded and continued. “About thirty years ago, Jane walked away from everything: from her family, her job, her future, from everything that had been important to her. One day she just didn't come to work. We didn't know what had happened. Of course, we thought the worst. We filed a missing persons report. But four days later, she called. All she would say was that she was all right but was not coming home. She wouldn't say where she was. She said she loved me, but insisted that I respect her decision to leave and not try to find her. She called Dad, too. They had essentially the same conversation.”

  June paused. When I didn't say anything, she went on. “I want you to find out why she left,” she said.

  “Thirty years ago,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “That won't be easy to do. It'll take a lot of time, which means it will be expensive.”

  “Money's no object,” she said. “I need to know.”

  “Why?”

  “Morrison is my married name. My maiden name was Lindell.”

  “As in Lindell Industries?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  That’s why she looked familiar. She’d been on the covers of both Time and Newsweek. They’d said that she was one of the smartest, toughest women in America.

  Chapter 2

  “I used some of your equipment in Afghanistan,” I said. “Laser targeting, satellite links, night vision, GPS, communications, field computers, all sorts of goodies.”

  “I thought you might have,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “I had our people do some background on you.”

  “And you came to see me anyway?”

  She smiled. It was a pleasant smile.

  “Jake,” she said, “not Jacob. Jake Badger, former Marine sniper with one hundred twenty-eight confirmed kills. Purple Heart. Silver Star. Former FBI agent assigned to the organized crime unit, with an impressive arrest record for the brief time you were with the Bureau.

  “Three and a half years,” I said.

  She nodded. “And currently, a private investigator who has a reputation for getting the job done.”

  “Did they overlook two years of cage fighting?”

  “No. I chose to omit it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think the reason you fought was probably an intensely personal one. And it wasn't something I wanted to bring up.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “But if your people can do those kinds of background checks, why not have them look into why your sister left?”

  “Background checks and discovering where someone lived and what they did to make a living is easy. I want to know what actually happened thirty years ago. I want to know why my sister left, why she broke my heart. And I don't want company people or resources involved.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because my father is still alive. Jane's leaving hurt him deeply and outraged him at the same time. He saw it as a form of betrayal. Many of our people are very loyal to my father. I don't want any of that to get in the way. I want to know the truth. All of it.”

  I nodded. “Okay. I'm going to need as much background information as you can give me.”

  “I'll tell
you everything I know.”

  “I'll need a retainer.”

  She got her checkbook from her purse. “How much?”

  I told her how much per day plus expenses and explained that it might take two weeks or it might take a month. She wrote a check retaining my services for one month.

  “If takes me less than a month,” I said, “I'll refund the difference.”

  “We'll discuss that,” she said, “should the occasion arise.”

  “As I said, I'm going to need as much background information as you can give me. Do you have time to do that now, or should we reschedule that for another time?”

  “One of the nice things about being CEO of a Fortune 100 company is that I can set my own schedule.”

  “Funny,” I said, “I've said that same thing about being the CEO of a small detective agency.”

  She smiled her pleasant smile again. “Well, then, we seem to have all the time we need.”

  “Let's get to it, then,” I said. “You're on.”

  June talked for almost an hour. Mostly, I listened and took notes. Basically, what she told me is that her father, Lyell Lindell, now eighty-three, had started Lindell Industries in 1957 when he was twenty-six. He got his first government contract in 1967, and by 1989 Lindell Industries was worth one billion dollars. Today, she explained, it’s worth a little over one hundred and twenty billion.

  In February 1958, Lyell married Judith O'Brian. In November 1958, she gave birth to identical twin daughters, Jane and June.

  In the early years, before their father became wealthy, Jane and June had very normal childhoods, going to public schools in Downey, California. When the money began coming in, Lyell moved his family to Beverly Hills and put Jane and June in an exclusive private school. From there they went on to Harvard where each earned a BA, an MBA, and a law degree. When they'd finished at Harvard, they went to work for the family business, starting in entry-level positions, Jane in research and development, June in marketing.

  While at Harvard Law, June had begun dating Greg Morrison, who was working on his Ph.D. in history, also at Harvard. Greg graduated from Harvard at the same time Jane and June did. He was offered a faculty position at UCLA and moved to Los Angeles at the same time the girls were returning home, which made it easy for Greg and June to continue their relationship.

  Jane and June had been working for Lindell Industries for about ten months when Jane went missing. Jane sent June a Christmas card each year, each one from a different state.

  Over the years, June explained, life began to take its toll. First, their mother died of a brain tumor; then June's husband, Greg, died in a scuba diving accident off Catalina. She and Greg never had children. Explaining that she and Greg had not had children seemed especially difficult for her. Then, a few weeks ago, June had gotten a letter from Jane. In the letter, Jane had had explained that she had a brain tumor. The doctors had told her she had only weeks to live. She was sorry, she’d said in the letter, for how things worked out. She had never meant to hurt June. A week after June received that letter, she got an anonymous letter from someone explaining that Jane had died.

  Telling the story had taken its toll on June. She seemed somewhat diminished from the effort. At first she sat quietly, staring off into nothing. We sat for a while without speaking. Then, finally, she looked at me, her eyes swimming in years of pain.

  “I'll find out what happened,” I said.

  She nodded and said, “Thank you,” so quietly that I could barely hear her. Then she got up and walked out.

  Chapter 3

  About ten minutes after June Morrison left, my father called my cell phone.

  “Hi Dad.”

  The mechanical male voice said, “Jake, you’ve got to do it. My partners don’t have a brain between them.”

  I knew there was more coming, so I waited.

  “They’re going to run my firm into the ground,” the voice said. It was a less mature voice than my father’s own voice had been. And certainly less powerful.

  “Dad, I don’t want to be an attorney. How many times do we have to have this conversation?”

  I waited for him to type his reply. When he finished typing and hit the speak button, the supposedly human sounding mechanical voice said, “As many times as it takes for you to do the right thing.”

  I took a deep breath. “What did Colin do now, Dad?”

  After a moment, the voice that didn’t sound anything like my dad said, “They are not maintaining the proper focus on estate planning.”

  More typing. Dad’s stroke last year left him, at seventy-three, with his considerable intellect still intact and his formidable personality undiminished, but he’d lost the ability to speak, walked with a limp and odd kind of twist because of his left leg, and had lost use of his left arm and hand. He can only type with his right hand. Slows him down.

  “It has always been twenty-five percent of the firm business,” the voice said. “Colin has let it slip to under twenty and does not seem to have a plan to address the issue.”

  “Have you told him he needs to address the issue?” I asked.

  Typing.

  “I should not have to tell him.”

  More typing. I could envision what was happening at my sister Della’s Santa Monica home where dad lived now. Dad was probably sitting at the kitchen counter. He had called me on his iPhone, turned on the speaker, laid the phone down next to his laptop and started typing. The process slowed him down and frustrated him, but it was better than having to write everything down on a piece of paper. At least this way he could make a phone call.

  “As the associate managing partner,” his computer said, “he should know what he needs to focus on.”

  “Dad, you’re the one who hired him and made him the associate managing partner.”

  Typing.

  “He is all I had to work with. He was the smartest guy I could find and he is a half wit.”

  Typing.

  “I have spent over twenty years trying to train him and I might as well have been talking to a chipmunk.”

  “Dad, you know that’s not true. Colin is a very capable attorney, a good partner, and a loyal friend.”

  “He is a dolt. I need you, son.”

  I waited.

  “I need you to go to law school, become an attorney, and take over the firm.”

  The last I’d heard, my father’s law firm was worth about twenty-six million. Nothing to sneeze at. But I just wasn’t interested in being an attorney. “Not gonna happen, Dad. I’m a private investigator. I like being a private investigator. I’m not going to stop being a private investigator. I’m afraid you’re stuck with Colin and the rest of your partners.”

  “Ahhh!”

  “What about Finton,” I asked. “Train him to run the firm. At least he’s family.”

  “I love your sister,” his computer said. “She is a smart and capable woman. Like your mother was. But she married a nitwit and a wuss.”

  I took a sip of my tea while dad typed some more.

  “I have made Finton a millionaire. But I will not hand my law firm over to him. I need you, son.”

  I wanted to say that there were times when I was a boy when I needed him, too. Times when I needed a man to talk to, a man to help me figure out what being a man was all about. But he had been too in love with the law and his firm to be much of a father. Sometimes I really wanted to say that. But I couldn’t. I loved him too much to hurt him, and I respected him too much to belittle him with such a self-indulgent comment.

  “Son?”

  “No, Dad. I’m not going to become an attorney. I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you.”

  After a moment, his computer read his words. “Is that what you think? You think I am disappointed in you?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “I am not disappointed in you. I am proud of you. A marine. An FBI agent. A world class fighter. And now, a successful investigator. I am proud of you. You are smart, strong, and determine
d. That is why I want to give my firm to you.”

  Tears filled my eyes. He’d never said anything like that to me before. Still…

  “Dad, thank you for saying that. You have no idea how much that means to me. But I don’t want to be a lawyer. I’m good at what I do and I like what I do. I’m sorry.”

  “Do not be sorry. I do not want you to be sorry. I just want you to change your mind. This is not over.”

  Chapter 4

  My father’s call unsettled me … if unsettled is the right word. I had to make a concerted effort to refocus so I could think about June Morrison’s story. I decided to take Wilson for a walk. Walking would help me think. As we walked, I thought about talking with people who had known Jane thirty years ago. How much and how well would they remember? Would they have any insight into why Jane had left? Whatever her reason, it seemed to me that for her to have acted as she had, something serious must have happened. The Jane Lindells of the world did not just walk away from their lives unless something was very wrong.

  The next morning I drove to the corporate offices of Lindell Industries in Century City. The massive modernistic complex was forty-seven stories of steel and glass that reflected the sun like a lighthouse offering a point of reference to the shuffling masses below. I parked in the underground parking structure and left the front windows half way down so it wouldn't get too hot in the Jeep for Wilson. I took the elevator up to the main lobby and found the information desk. A slightly overweight middle-aged guy was on duty. The nameplate on the desk said Sandra. I looked at the nameplate and then at him and smiled.

  “Sandra is off today,” he said drily. “What can I do for you?”

  “I need to see June Morrison.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, but if you'll tell her Jake Badger is here, I'm sure she’ll see me.”

  He looked doubtful but picked up the receiver, punched in an extension, explained, waited, listened, hung up and said, “Top floor.” Pointing to my left he said, “Elevators are over there.”