Deceived - Laura S. Wharton Page 0,4
he sometimes kept a list of what he was going to do to bring a higher price.” Jenny paused, then continued. “We were thinking maybe it was time for a house, with a yard. We were thinking, you know, about starting a family.” Sam knew, all right. Lee had talked with him frequently about what it would be like to raise a child on the beach. It might be fun, sure, but Lee was fearful of a toddler running out of the screened door and into the ocean before Jenny or Lee could get to the child. Sam and Lee had been part of one too many rescue efforts to know those sorts of accidents happened all the time.
Jenny got up and walked to the screen door. She ran her hands over the smoothed edge of screen that just moments before was rough. “Thank you for fixing that, Sam. I do appreciate it.” She walked into the condo, and Sam followed.
It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the darkness and to see that Jenny had crossed the living room and disappeared into the den.
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s been in here, Sam. Are you sure you saw somebody?”
Sam entered the den. There was nothing out of place, nothing disturbed. “Yeah, I know what I saw. Do you see anything that looks…weird?”
“No, Sam. Everything looks the way it did yesterday afternoon when I was in here doing the bookkeeping.” She opened the top desk drawer and pulled out a folder full of bills to be paid. In the drawers below were files filled with statements and paid invoices. “There’s not anything in here worth getting shot over, Sam; I can tell you that. Lee earned just barely enough for us to live on while I worked on my paintings, but he insisted I keep at it. He encouraged me to pursue what I loved, and so I tried to make things easier for him by tending to tasks he didn’t like to do…like paying the bills.”
“What about his to-do list? Where do you think he put that last?” Sam watched Jenny move to the closet in a smaller room, her studio. He watched as she looked in the closet filled with tools.
“This closet was his workshop,” she smiled. “We thought the next house should have a bigger garage so he could have some real woodworking equipment. We love living on the beach….” She caught herself, stopped, and started again. “I love living on the beach, but now, I don’t think I can stay in this place without him.” She paused and then rooted around on the makeshift shelves on cinderblocks that held Lee’s tools, tennis balls, and racquet, and some spare parts for their boat. “He kept his list of stuff to do for the boat in here, and a second one of projects he wanted to complete on our condo. Here’s the boat book,” Jenny produced a small green journal with a photo of their 1989 thirty-foot Catalina Stormy Monday on it. Flipping through tattered pages, she tossed it to Sam.
“What will you do with Stormy, Jen?” Sam asked as he reviewed the maintenance log for the boat’s engine, glanced a few pages further to see the fuel and radio logs, and then closed the book.
“I really hadn’t thought about it yet. There’s too much to think about. I just wish….” She turned back to the closet shelves, now digging furiously through Lee’s duffle bag, then his toolbox. “Here. Here’s the condo list.” Jenny held up a small, royal blue spiral-bound notepad, and handed it to Sam.
Sam immediately recognized it. He’d seen it dozens of times before, peeping out of Lee’s shirt pocket when they went to the local hardware store to get supplies for various projects.
Most of the pages were filled with scratched off projects. Sam remembered helping Lee with many of them: rebuilding the small steps and deck with the outside shower; installing privacy partitions around the shower to keep the wind, sand, and curious eyes off Jenny (she liked to shower outside after swimming each day in the ocean); regrouting the tiles in the master bathroom’s shower. Lee was meticulous about keeping all receipts for supplies, and they were stapled to each of the separate project pages.
“Do you think there’s something there, Sam?”
She looks tired, Sam thought. “I don’t know. Would you mind if I held on to it for a few days?”
“Take it. Take the boat book, too. Oh, the boat! Sam, I