The Case of the Vanished Lover
a Stealthboxxer Mystery



Chapter 6



Monday morning. I awoke at 5:48am from a fitful night of sleep. I had had a very strange dream. I dreamt that I was I was in the cab of a steam train engine with Buddy. The train was pulling several flat cars loaded with loggers riding to work in the forest. Each man had an axe or saw in his hands. We were riding along the rail line headed into the Black Hills. We turned a corner and I could see that we were headed toward a tunnel in the side of a hill. I glanced back to the flat cars and all the loggers were putting on miners helmets with lights on them and their axes and saws had become picks and shovels. As soon as we went into the tunnel it became pitch dark except for the lights of the miners helmets. Suddenly the train stopped inside the tunnel. I turned to Buddy and he was not there. In his place was a cow that said, "Death contract. Come, Enigma, help me repair the tunnel." Then I heard the horrible sound of the tunnel collapsing and the screams of the men and the mooing of the cow and I awoke.

Dreams. They rarely mean anything other than what you ate the night before was undercooked or overspiced. I put no stock in dreams. Real detective work took shoe leather and lots of research. I was determined to not let the dream bother me. Still, the image of a cow speaking to me like my grandfather stuck in the back of my mind and made me shiver. Or was it just that I had left the window cracked to clear the room of the smoke from my burnt dinner the night before.

It was still dark when I got up and ready for the day's investigations. I would need to go by the bank and exchange some of the gold coins for paper bills. There is a certain satisfaction in feeling to the heft of gold coins in a pocket but they don't spend very easily. I also needed to go back by the maritime museum and get the transcribed notes on the Escalate, Geraldson Corporation, and Sam McCaw from Laurel. I also planned to visit the regional office of Geraldson Corporation and snoop around a little and see what I could come up with. However, I didnt want to arouse too much suspicion so I decided to pull out an old alias that I used from time to time to assist in these kid of undercover investigations. I would need to go to the office and get my gear together for this ruse. But first I would need to make up with Phyllis. I wanted her to do a little phone work for me and try to track down information on McCaw, Geraldson, and Davis McPhetridge. If there was any record of these people in Olympia Phyllis could find it through her network of contacts at the phone company, the county clerk's office, and assessor's office, and the DMV.

I left the apartment at 6:30 and was met in the hall by the front door by my landlord, Mr. Grimm. He had that look in his eye and I knew I was cornered. "You owe me $85 Stealthboxxer and if you don't pay me today I will kick you out on the street!"

Talk about the direct approach. "OK, Mel, here you go. Sorry it took me so long to get the money for you." I reached into my pocket and pulled out 5 coins and handed them over. "Here's $100. That covers last month and fifteen down on this month."

Funny how holding gold changes people's attitude instantly. "Well, thank you Mr. Stealthboxxer, have a nice day." He practically skipped down the hallway.

I picked up my car and drove to the office. Phyllis would not be in until 9am so I took advantage of that fact and left her a note detailing my request to look up any info on Geraldson, McCaw, and McPhetridge. I told her in the note that I would be back in the afternoon to see what she might have found. I also told her about the $40 I left for her in the desk drawer. I left her another $20 coin as well to sweeten her up a bit too. Then I got my fake ID and business cards for my alias and left the office again.

I drove back across town to the maritime museum and library. It was still only 7:30 and the museum didnt open until 9am so I parked my car in the lot and decided to take a walk along the waterfront since the rain had finally let up. It was a little chilly but the wind was not too bad and the sun was actually shining for the first time in weeks. I descended down the wooden steps from the museum to the waterfront. I began walking northward up the waterfront. I passed several small work boats moored at the west side docks and stopped at a bench overlooking the harbor. A ship carrying logs was being made ready to depart the port and a tug was being brought in to tow it into the deeper waters of the bay. I watched the men on the ship haul in the tow line from the tug and tie it off on the bow. Soon they untied the ship from the pier and it began to move away slowly. The port had been built by dredging out the mud of the shallow bay and filling in adjacent areas of the bay with all kinds of fill. Gravel, dirt, sand, rock, and garbage was used to fill in the mud and create a narrow peninsula for the port. Much of the fill was actually the rubble of old buildings that had collapsed during an earthquake as well as old street cars, train cars, and other industrial garbage. The port of Olympia was a veritable cemetery of South Sound business and industry, a thousand sad stories of failed dreams buried in the mud making room for a ten thousand more dreams to be tried out. In fact, the entire downtown area of Olympia was built on top of former failures and disasters. The city would be stricken over and over with catastrophy but refused to die.

My mind drifted away with the ship as it was slowly towed to deeper waters and then released from it's tow and sent on its way under its own power. I awoke from my daydream and looked at my watch. Quarter to nine. Time to get to work.

I walked back southward along the waterfront toward the museum. At the base of the steps to the museum I found the old sailor that I had seen a couple days prior feeding the gulls again. This time he spoke first, "a might awful weather were havin."

"Worst kind," I replied. He chuckled at that and tossed a couple of bread scraps toward the water as the gulls dove in for their snack. I made my way up to the top of the steps and turned and admired the sight of the sun directly over the Capitol Dome. For all of it's ugly and hastily buried past, Olympia can be a very beautiful city at times.

I decided against waiting outside the museum entrance and went back to my car. I only had to wait about five minutes before the museum curator, a white haired man in a black pea coat and a captains cap drove in and parked a few stalls down from me. He got out and, carrying a worn dark leather satchel, walked to the front of the museum and unlocked the door. Soon lights were on inside. A few minutes later, Laurel showed up too. She parked next to me and waved when she saw it was me. I got out of the car and met her in front of her car.

"Mr. Stealthboxxer, I didnt expect you until later this afternoon." She went to the back door of her car and began piling books into a cardboard box that had spilled all over the backseat.

"I can come back if you havent finished transcribing the notes..."

"No, I have everything ready for you inside. I just didnt expect you this early."

"Well, I decided to get an early start this morning. Can I help you carry your books?"

"Certainly. I will need to check in with Mr. McDonough before I open the library. It will take a few minutes and you can wait in the foyer."

"Alright." She continued to pile books into the box. She put in the last one and I moved up and picked up the box. She must do some heavy reading over the weekend, my back was aching from the load. We walked across the parking lot and she opened the door for me and motioned to a large heavy table in the foyer where I could rest the books while she checked in. I stayed in the foyer and looked over the artifacts displayed near the entrance. Several ship's bells, anchors, clocks, and carved wooden figureheads that once adorned various ships that had plied the waters of Puget Sound over the last 100 years or so. She returned after a few minutes and we moved down the stairs to the library entrance. Again, she motioned to another table where I could put the box of books. After I placed the box I straightened up and my spine popped in several places.

"Well, Mr. Stealthboxxer." She walked behind the counter to the desk and retrieved a thin notebook and then returned to where I was standing next to the table. "I have all the notes you asked for transcribed in this notebook as well as some other information I was able to find about some of the other frequent shippers using the Escalate over the years. Is there anything else you need?" She stood smiling very attractively in front of me. I hadnt noticed it when she first arrived but the mild mannered librarian was looking quite different than she had two days before. The brown dress was replaced with a white and red floral pattern, the dark brown knit sweater was now a pink shawl and the typical bun hairdoo was replaced with curls and ribbons. She was also wearing lipstick and pearl earings and her glasses were nowhere to be found. She was obviously dressing up for someone. When I smiled back at her I knew it was me.

"Thank you, ma'am. You have done much more than I had asked. I am not sure if I will need any further assistance at this point but I may return in the future."

"I certainly hope that you do, Mr. Stealthboxxer."

"Please, call me SB."

"Alright, SB. And you can call me anytime you like." She walked up next to the table and wrote down something on a slip of paper and handed it to me. She smiled and then walked to her desk, hips moving rythmically. I stood there looking at the piece of paper, her name and phone number. I glanced back at her as she sat at her desk still smiling at me. I tipped my hat, smiled back at her, and turned and walked up the stairs and back to my car. I stowed the phone number in my wallet and made a mental note to call on her the next time I needed a date.

I drove back to town and stopped at the bank to change some coins. Of the $900 that the lady had given me on Friday I had spent about $250. I still had 32 coins left. I changed out $300 worth into bills and put the rest of the coins in my safe deposit box for a rainy day which happens more frequently than not in Olympia, Washington.

After the bank I turned west again on State Avenue and headed up and over the hill and toward Mud Bay. The address of the Geraldson Corporation which was also the former office of the McCay Logging Company was on Mud Bay Rd right where it crossed Eld Inlet at Mud Bay. The terminus of the logging railroad was here and it was here where logs cut in the black hills around Bordeaux had been dumped into the bay and rafted together and towed to the mills further north on Puget Sound.

I drove down the steep grade toward the bay and turned on the driveway leading toward the water that marked with the sign to Geraldson Corporation. I pulled down the drive which was lined with maple and alder trees, trees that grow quickly and take the place of firs and cedars once they are cut down. I rounded the last bend in the drive to find that there was no building at the end of the drive, only a recently exposed foundation and a few piles of wood scrap rubble. Apparently the Geraldson Corporation had just moved out and demolished the building as well as several smaller outbuildings on the premises. I parked my car and decided to poke around a little.

I stepped out of the car and the smell of sulphur hit me like a sudden dip in a sewage cespool. The tide must be out. Mud Bay, really the southern end of Eld Inlet, is a very shallow intertidal area where McLane Creek empties into Puget Sound. The tide levels fluctuate as much as 12 feet at times and most of the time the area is exposed black mud composed of rotting organic sediment and ocean creatures. Twice daily the mud flats are washed with salt water to further amplify the smell. Several oyster farms are located further up the bay where the famous Olympia oysters are raised commercially by diking the shallow gravelly areas to keep in the sea water. These Olympia oysters were known as the Succulent Lobbyist as they were regularly served to politicos in the early days of Olympia's history as the State Capitol.

I walked around the area and found nothing. There were a few pieces of rusted railroad machinery behind one of the former outbuildings but nothing that could give me any clues to the dissapearance of a nameless man. There was a walkway that led away from the office toward the bay. I followed it down to the waterfront. There was nothing left there but rotting pilings where the old rail pier used to stand. Another industrial corpse to add to the pile of failed dreams that line the banks of South Puget Sound. It was depressing me. The site of the rotting pilings, the smell of the rotting stench in the bay, the abandoned and demolished buildings. There was nothing here.

I walked back toward my car. Maybe Phyllis would turn up something. As I turned the corner of the pathway back toward the former office and to where my car was parked I noticed someone standing next to my car peering in the windows. I approached quietly but a crow in a maple tree cawed as it flew away toward the bay and he looked up and saw me walking toward him. "Hello! You must be looking for the Geraldson Corporation. Afraid you're a little late. They cleared out of here about the end of September. Demolition crew just finished up last week." He was a man in his mid thirties dressed in jeans, work shirt, and boots. He had a friendly face and didn't seem wary of me at all.

"Yes, apparently I am too late. Do you know if they moved to a different office in town? "

"Nope. They closed up shop for good. Moved everyone back to their headquarters in Colorado I hear. You a salesperson or something?"

"Yeah." I decided to go into my alias. No sense in giving this person who I really didnt know any information about myself or the case. "I'm Arthur Fredrickson, Regional Sales Rep for Henderson Associates." I handed him a fake business card with the name of Arthur Fredrickson and Henderson Associates with a non existent address and phone number. This was usually nondescript enough to get me into most business offices without too many questions. The card didnt say what the Henderson Associates were involved in or what Arthur Fredrickson was selling but it usually gave folks enough false security to get me in the door to ask questions without raising suspicion too quickly. It was especially useful in insurance investigations since most cases involved suspected fraud on the part of business owners. Businesses are very used to having salespeople call on them unannounced and giving a receptionist or secretery a printed business card of a fake salesperson is much better than the direct approach.

"Well, Arthur Fredrickson, I'm Davis McPhetridge. I live just down the way. I was out mending a fence post out by the road that one of my cows knocked down and saw you drive in. I figured I would come over and let you know that Geraldson had moved out. Looks like you found that out yourself."

"Davis McPhetridge you say? Are you related to the Davis McPhetridge that worked as a railroad fireman for the McCaw Logging Company?"

He looked at me with a very surprised look and his tone changed to hesitancy when he replied, "Yes, he was my father. But McCaw closed up operations back in '27 and Dad retired back around '17. How did you know about my father working for McCaw?"

"Mr. McPhetridge, I must apologize for misleading you. I'm not really a salesman for Henderson Associates. And my name is not really Arthur Fredrickson. My name is Enigma Stealthboxxer and I am a private investigator."

"Well, Mr. Stealthboxxer, that still doesn't tell me how you know about my father."

"It's a long story but I have recently come to find out that your father was a friend and co-worker of my grandfather before your father went to work for McCaw. I am investigating a case that involves both the Geraldson Corporation and the McCaw Logging Company. If you don't mind I would like to ask you some questions about them."

"Wow. Dad always said it would happen some day. I figured that after he died it wouldn't really matter anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"My father told me that someday someone would come around asking for information on the McCaw operations. He said that there were things that had happened there that had been hidden from the public but that some day they would be made known and when they did someone would come asking him about them."

"Are you saying that your father had information about some wrong doings involving McCaw?"

"Not Mr. McCaw. Dad always said that Sam McCaw was a good man. No sir, Mr. Stealthboxxer, what he was referring to was the McCaw Company and its real owner, Geraldson. I think you had better come to my house and see somthing that Dad left for an occasion like this."

I had McPhetridge get in the passenger seat and we drove my car to his farm house which was adjacent to the old McCaw/Geraldson property. Maybe there was something worth coming out here for after all.




To be continued . . .







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