4. An Early Departure

An Early Departure

I don't see Sam at the gate.

I board the plane without him and settle myself into the window seat. Sam has gotten us business class tickets. This is something I don't normally treat myself to, Jack and I choosing to invest our earnings back into my firm, into his restaurant. I sit back and stare out the window, watch the flurries that are starting to pick up, water plinking on the glass. After my mostly sleepless night, it's all I can do not to doze off. I down the rest of my coffee and reach into my messenger bag, pulling out the blue folder. I want to share with Sam what I learned about Windbreak. At three in the morning. At five.

My father had two different architects draw up plans to expand on Windbreak's original footprint. The first time was more than two decades ago, when he was still married to Sam and Tommy's mother, Sylvia. It doesn't surprise me that Sylvia's plans involved razing the house and building a ten-thousand-square-foot Mediterranean palace in its place, a four-thousand-foot guesthouse by its side. Everything my former stepmother did was ostentatious, large. I'm also not surprised they didn't move forward with doing any of it. After marrying my father, Sylvia stopped working, but she remained wedded to New York City and her society events and her very active social life. While she probably liked the idea of a West Coast estate in theory, Sylvia has been to Windbreak even fewer times than I have.

What did surprise me was that my father also had a set of design plans from a little less than a year ago. Instead of razing the bungalow, the plans called for updating it: pitching the ceilings in my father's bedroom, expanding the galley kitchen so it was a place to gather. The design choices were simple and elegant, much closer to how I would choose to renovate the house myself. But I have no idea what (or who) motivated my father to consider renovating the house recently. What motivated him to stop.

Which brings me back to that recent conversation with my father. He wanted me to fly with him to Windbreak. He wanted my opinion on it, all over again. I'm looking to make some changes. Was he planning to have me reenvision a version of the most recent plans? Or was he going to ask me to start with him all over again? Either way, why now?

"I wanted the window."

I look up to see Sam standing above me in the aisle, wearing jeans and a Minnesota Twins baseball cap. He is struggling to catch his breath, his forehead dripping with sweat.

He throws his backpack into the overhead compartment and drops down into the aisle seat.

"I almost missed the flight…" he says.

"Nice to know this is important to you."

"It is important. I'm just not used to flying commercial. And I forgot about, you know, leaving enough time for security."

"You're kidding, right?"

"I thought about flying us in the company jet, but I wanted you to know I'm a regular guy."

"A regular guy doesn't say those words in a sentence."

He buckles himself in. Then he motions to the flight attendant, who is holding a tray of orange juice and champagne.

"Can I trouble you for one of those? Thanks…" He picks a glass of champagne off the tray. "I'll also take a whiskey when you have a chance. Straight up, please."

Sam takes a large pull of the champagne. I stare at him.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" he says.

"It's ten a.m."

"Which makes it early for a lecture," he says. "Besides, if it's all the same, I could use some latitude. I'm going through a breakup."

I look at him, surprised. "You and Morgan broke up? Since yesterday?"

"Who said I was talking about Morgan?"

Sam downs the rest of the glass as I look at him in disbelief. I seriously consider whether it is still possible to get off this plane.

"You know," Sam says, "I can feel your judgment."

"I'm not trying to hide it."

This is when the captain comes over the loudspeaker and announces the snow is coming down a bit harder. And I think I'm about to have a get-out-of-jail-free card. That the next thing the captain is going to say is that we are grounded because of the weather. But, no, he says while we may hit a few bumps, we'll be on our way soon. Boarding completed. The plane door closed and locked.

I sit back, take a deep breath in.

"Anyway," Sam says. "It's not what you think."

"I think that it's none of my business."

"So maybe it is what you think."

"Let's just stick to talking about Dad, okay?"

"Fine by me."

I stare down at the Windbreak information that I have analyzed and tabulated, the property map and the design plans ready to be further dissected.

"There are a bunch of things we should get clear on before we talk to the police," I say. "I also have some questions about the perimeter. And we should loop in Tommy too, don't you think?"

"Why?"

"It affects him, for starters. And maybe he'll have some insight."

"No. He won't."

He shakes his head, shutting it down.

"You know that's the second time you've responded like that when I've brought up Tommy," I say. "What is going on with you two?"

"Nothing worth getting into."

He puts his arm over his forehead, wipes at the sweat there. And I notice that he's wearing a brace on his wrist, a thick black brace. On that wrist. The one that he broke, the one that ended his baseball career.

He shrugs. "It always acts up in the cold. Alcohol will help."

"I don't think that's how alcohol works."

He keeps his arm on his face, lowering it over his eyes, a makeshift sleep mask. "Can we pause on the chitchat? I'm just not in a great place at the moment."

"You're aware that you're the one that wanted to be doing this?"

"I am," he says.

"You sure about that?"

"I will rally."

I turn toward the window as the plane jerks forward, then back, and then we are heading away from the gate and toward the runway. The plane picking up speed, about to leave the ground behind.

"You let me know when," I say.

It takes us just over ninety minutes to drive up the coast to Windbreak from LAX, Sam curling our rental car along the Pacific Coast Highway and the 101, roadside signs starting to appear for Carpinteria.

I look out the window as Sam takes the exit into town, climbing over the railroad tracks until we are driving down Padaro Lane. The afternoon sun disappears beneath the tree shade, the light slipping through the fog and the dome of branches, the world around me entering a permanent kind of shimmery dusk.

And it happens, like it always seems to happen when I turn onto this road—I am six years old again, seeing it for the first time.

My father took me here on his own, my parents already at the beginning of their end. And he was nervous—I could feel that he was nervous. He wanted to make sure I was comfortable and happy. The whole drive from the airport he'd talked about how we were going to drop our bags and head straight down to the beach, straight into the ocean. But the clouds started setting in as we got closer to Carpinteria, and by the time we got to Padaro Lane, there was heaping rain and crushing thunder. So we raced into the house, drenched, and waited for it all to stop.

After the rain let up, it was too late to swim. But my father took me out to the cliffside and we drank milkshakes and ate tomato sandwiches and watched the sun set, a silvery-orange hue.

Maybe not the best first impression, Nora-Nu, he'd said, kissing me on the forehead, calling me what he always called me. But she's showing up now .

Then we took those creaky steps down to the beach and the ocean some eighty feet below, my father not letting go of my hand the entire time. Not on the way down, not on the way back up. My hand in his, safely. And I asked him if we could move there. He loved to tell me, every time after, that I asked him that. Does he remember what he said in response? Why did he say it? Windbreak doesn't just belong to me.

"We're here," Sam says.

Sam's voice pulls me from the memory, as he turns down a driveway, a large gate greeting us. We pull in front of it and Sam reaches out the window to tap out the alarm code onto the keypad.

The gate creaks open and the property comes into view behind it. The driveway taking us over the stones, toward the expansive lawn, the open sky and ocean beyond it.

And the house itself. This cottage, proud and hopeful, holding its own against the expanse, the light in the trees, all that showing off. This small, perfect cottage: two bay windows circling the front door, a wraparound porch, the rocking bench perched on the corner, oceanside, taking in the bluffs.

"It gets you, huh?" Sam says.

I nod, feeling uneasy.

He pauses, looking straight ahead. "So you think you'll keep it?"

I turn and look at him. "What?"

"I'm just asking," he says. "?'Cause if you sell it, it's worth a lot of money. The land alone is worth eight figures…"

"I'm not thinking about that, Sam."

"No reason to be testy. Dad knew you didn't want any part of the company, and you'd never take any money from him, so maybe this is his way of trying to make it, I don't know, even."

I turn away from him, my skin suddenly on fire, my nerves heightened. The last time I was here was a little over two years ago. The last time I was sitting on that rocking bench, Jack was sitting there with me. It was the only time Jack had come to visit Windbreak. My father handed him a glass of wine, kissed me on the top of my head. A hazy and warm recollection. Jack's hand resting on my knee, my father's smile.

My voice catches in my throat. "The red-eye leaves at eleven fifteen tonight," I say. "I'd like to be on it."

"Can I put the car in park before you make an exit plan? We can always stay at Uncle Joe's place, if we need more time. Or we can stay here."

"Why would we need more time?"

"Once again, I'm going to need to actually get out of the car before I know how to answer that."

Sam kills the ignition. And two men walk out of the front door to greet us. The one on the left I recognize. His name is Clark, and he has been taking care of Windbreak since before my father even bought it. It's been years since I've seen him in person, but he hasn't seemed to age. He is still strong, tall and wiry, in his jeans and work boots. His skin tanned and uncreased, his smile keeping his face young.

The other man I don't know. He is linebacker large and burly in a too-tight suit, his hair buzz-cut short, his skin red and ruddy. He is also much younger than Clark, probably close to Sam's age.

Close to his chest, he holds a clipboard. I can see, even from here, that it's covered with police department decals.

Sam motions to him. "That's Detective O'Brien," Sam says. "He's our liaison at the police department."

"So, he ran the investigation?"

He opens the car door. "Apparently not well."

"You took a long flight for me to tell you what the report lays out," Detective O'Brien says. "We're confident we don't have a lot of unanswered questions…"

Clark has gone back inside and we are walking the property with Detective O'Brien. Or rather, O'Brien is walking several paces ahead of us. He moves quickly, not stopping as he looks down at his clipboard and the police department's incident report. A report that is tucked into my blue folder.

"The fall happened between approximately eight fifteen and eight thirty p.m.," he says.

He keeps walking toward the southwest edge of the property. We all know, without him saying it out loud, that he's moving in the direction that the police department ascertained our father was walking that night. In the direction of the spot where he fell.

"Considering that it was a rainy night, we are lucky that there were people on the beach to corroborate."

"I don't know if lucky is the word I'd use," Sam says.

Detective O'Brien turns back, offers a small smirk.

"There were three pedestrians on the beach. A couple was walking their dog and approaching the accident site from the west," he says. "And a jogger, who circled back from Loon Point…"

He motions up the beach as we arrive at the edge of the property, the grass ending, rocky stones leading to the small stone palisades, the edge of the cliffside just beyond it.

"Their witness statements locked in a tight timeline."

I look down to see a yellow stake in the ground, so inconsequential it could signify anything—plants, a rosebush, where you lost your father.

I step past the stake and grind my sneakers into the rocky edge, slippery even when dry like this. And I can imagine it so easily: two steps too many and you are clinging to that cliffside. But why would he stand so close? He wouldn't, unless he didn't realize he was so close, a drink in his hand, a trippy look over the edge, and suddenly he was plummeting down the eighty feet to the beach below, the rocks catching him almost before he knew what was happening.

"Our conjecture is that your father fell from right near here," he says. "And that he was killed on impact…"

Killed on impact. The words feel harsh and clinical coming out of his mouth.

"How did you determine that?" I ask.

"Excuse me?"

"That he died on impact?"

"No one could survive that fall," he says, as though that answers the question. As though that addresses my concerns.

But it's becoming more and more clear that Detective O'Brien doesn't have a lot of interest in our concerns—nor does he care that we are grieving. Maybe he even thinks what I thought of Sam when he showed up at the brownstone yesterday. That whatever we are here about, it's not about what we are saying it is.

I try to take a different tack to make him less defensive, to move him closer to our side. Shouldn't we all be on the same side here?

"Detective, you're certainly much more well-versed on all of this than I am, so I really do appreciate you taking the time to go over it again," I say. "But… could we back up a bit? It feels to me like we are still missing large pieces of this puzzle."

"What puzzle?"

"We don't think he was here alone that night," Sam says, less diplomatically.

"I can assure you that he was," he says.

Detective O'Brien looks back and forth between us, like that seals it.

"Okay. Why's that?" I ask.

"Noone Property's internal security confirmed early on that it was a last-minute change in his itinerary for your father to be out here," he says. "He was supposed to be at an event in New York. No one on his team was informed about his impending arrival at Windbreak. The property's caretaker just reconfirmed that he wasn't even made aware."

That seems off. Because, at least the handful of times when I've been here, Clark is always the person who opens the house for my father.

Sam looks at him, confused. "Clark is always informed," he says.

"Apparently not this time," O'Brien says.

Then he flips to a different page on his clipboard.

"My team ran out your father's entire day. A driver picked up your father from the Santa Barbara airport and drove him directly to Windbreak. They keyed into the property at twelve fifteen. Your father was the only one on property from twelve fifteen until the time of his death."

"Except for the driver," Sam says.

"The driver keyed out at twelve thirty-two," he says, his tone tightening. "The limousine company showed us his records for the rest of the day…"

"I wasn't suggesting it was the driver," Sam says.

"What are you suggesting?"

"You said my father was the only person on property," Sam says. "And right away that's not accurate."

Detective O'Brien gives Sam a warning look. I put my hand on Sam's arm, trying to regulate his tone. But I'm feeling heated myself. Even if I don't want to admit it, these explanations are raising more questions for me than answers.

I look over the palisades, the massive cliffside, the ocean and the sand swirling below, and try to picture his fall. My father would be the first to know how to do it, if he started tipping toward the edge. How to catch himself, steady himself, move quickly to safety.

"I spent a little time looking over property maps last night," I say. "Am I correct that there are no cameras along the perimeter?"

"Yep, that's right." Detective O'Brien nods. "There is an alarm system in the house, linked directly to the precinct. But the only camera is by the front gate."

"Isn't that unusual?" I ask. "My experience in working on properties of this size is that most have some sort of security on the grounds themselves. There are over a hundred yards of bluff front, alone…"

"Well, that's a question for the alarm company. But it's my understanding that your father refused to even consider a guard by the gate, so the keypad to enter and exit is pretty much all there is in terms of perimeter security."

I look left, into the distance at the neighboring property—the closest property, which is hard to even see from here. I don't think I've ever met the family who lives there. The only neighbor of my father's that I've met lives farther up the road. Benjamin King. A real estate investor of some kind. He and my father went to college together and he was the reason my father even knew about Windbreak. My father loved telling the story about how he saw Windbreak for the first time when he was sitting on Ben King's deck, discussing a business proposition.

But I've never heard my father say much about his next-door neighbor, one way or the other. There is a stone wall separating the two large plots of land—theirs nearly consumed by a Tudor mansion, large and ponderous, big enough to swallow three of my father's cottages.

"Did you speak with the family next door?" I ask. "Do they have cameras on their property that we could access?"

"We did access them," he says. "We watched down the footage for the whole night and unfortunately, the cameras are only pointed so far as the wall that separates the property. We have no sighting of your father at all." He pauses. "I can confirm that no one scaled the wall."

"In the footage you saw," Sam says.

"Again, my team watched the entire evening's footage." He turns to his clipboard, starts flipping pages. "Actually, we watched down the afternoon as well."

"Did you check the day before?" I ask.

"We have no indication of anyone else on the property the day before your father's arrival."

"So no," Sam says.

I scan the rest of the cliffside, eyeing the antique gate leading to the large set of wooden stairs, rickety and old, winding into the cliffside, eighty feet down to the rocky beach below.

"Someone could have entered this way…" I say. "They could have taken the steps from the beach."

"Only if they knew the code to the door. Which would've had to be someone your father knew."

"So maybe it was someone he knew," I say.

"Why would someone he knew enter from the beach and climb up dozens of stairs in the dark of night, just to enter the property?"

Sam points at him, smiles. "That right there," he says. "That's the first good question you've asked."

Detective O'Brien doesn't like this and gets busy looking down at his clipboard again.

I walk over to the break in the palisades and down to the landing where the gate is, set into the cliff itself. I pull on the gate's rusty knob. There is a small lock over the opening, a keypad to set it free.

"What if they did know the code? From my father or some other way. Is there any electronic catalog of who entered that way?"

"No. It's just a keypad, a manual lock. It's not connected to the rest of the security system."

I look up at the detective and Sam on the cliff's edge. "Why?" I say. "That doesn't seem particularly safe."

Detective O'Brien offers a tight smile, failing to hide his increasing irritation. "That's a question for your father," he says. "It was his decision. As I said, it's my understanding that privacy was of the utmost importance to him."

"Did you at least look into who had access to the code?" I say. "It doesn't seem like a bad idea to run out the scenarios as to who could have entered this way. Check their alibis…"

"Only if you believe that there is real evidence of foul play," he says. "Which I do not."

"Well maybe you should consider doing it now," Sam says. "So we can all be that sure."

O'Brien raises his eyebrows, like this is (next to continuing this conversation) the last thing he intends to do. And while I'm not at all convinced that anyone entered from these stairs, that look is the final nail in convincing me that his only concern here is keeping the case closed. Which is why I decide to press.

"Could you tell us a little more about the pedestrians, Detective?" I ask. "The three people who found my father? The couple and the jogger."

O'Brien flips through his clipboard, lands on his witness reports. "The couple, Meredith and Nick Cooper, were house-sitting for the Velasquez family at 2082. They'd been there for the last several months while the Velasquez family was at their home up in Ross," he says. "And they were doing their regular evening walk with their golden retriever when your father fell. Nick was the person who contacted 911."

"And the jogger?"

Detective O'Brien pauses, as if not wanting to share what he is about to. "He was no longer there by the time the police arrived."

Sam notes it at the same time I do. He meets my eyes.

"What do you mean no longer there?" Sam asks.

"Meredith, the wife, used to be a volunteer EMT, so once she determined that your father hadn't survived impact, they decided she and her husband would wait for the police to arrive. They didn't need his help."

"You don't think that's suspicious?" Sam says.

"I think people choose to live here because they want privacy. And your father was clearly no longer alive, so it wasn't like there was anything to do. He probably didn't want to be involved."

Or he was involved, I think before I can stop myself. I walk back up the landing, holding his gaze.

"But the Coopers didn't recognize the jogger?"

"No, they didn't recognize him, but again they aren't homeowners. They are just house-sitting, so…"

"For several months, though, yes?" Sam says. "You just said they had been staying here for several months."

He nods reluctantly, and I know he recognizes what Sam is suggesting, even if he doesn't want to see it himself. Something about that doesn't track. If the Coopers walk their dog every night and this man jogs with any frequency, you would think they'd have run into each other before that night. Or since that night. It's a fairly safe bet that people living on this small strip of beach would run into each other more than once.

And then there is this: Why is this the first time we are hearing that one of three people on the scene, who apparently wasn't recognized by the other two, left before he could be interviewed?

"I thought you said that you obtained witness statements from all of the witnesses?" I say.

"That may be what you heard."

"That's what we both heard," Sam says. "Because that's what you said."

Detective O'Brien sighs. He actually sighs. "Look, guys, I lost my father last year. I get that this is all painful," he says. "But I learned early in my training, when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras."

"Sure. And I get why you'd want that to be the case," Sam says. "If a horse turns out to be anything other than a horse, then someone didn't do their job very well. And this neighborhood, on your watch, doesn't get to be as safe as property values need it to be."

"That's ridiculous," Detective O'Brien says.

"Maybe. But what sounds ridiculous, to me, is everyone suggesting that a potential victim forgot how to walk the line on his own property," Sam says. "Not to mention that one of three people there that night apparently is still unaccounted for. Plus, you know, we still have no information on anything that happened to our father from the time a driver dropped him off at noon until he fell eighty feet to his death that night."

I can see Sam clenching his fingers, clenching them right over the brace. So I step in beside him, in case I need to step between them.

"But, please, feel free to enlighten us," he says. "Which way is the horse?"