Cole Dust Cole Read online

  COLE DUST

  __________________________

  A Cole Sage Mystery

  MICHEAL MAXWELL

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2013 Micheal Maxwell

  Ebook formatting by Robert Swartwood

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Micheal Maxwell.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Cole Dust

  About the Author

  Also by Micheal Maxwell

  Copyright

  COLE DUST

  DEDICATION & EXPLANATION

  This book is a work of fiction.

  The use of names, places, and people living or dead, is either by accident or to honor their memory. If you see yourself in this book you have a very active imagination.

  I want to dedicate this book to my grandparents whose picture graces the cover. They, like all those who impacted Cole Sage in the story, have impacted my life far deeper than they could have ever imagined. Their triumphs and tragedies have helped shape who I am.

  Some in my family may read this story and feel that they see parts of their history, or something someone told long ago. That is what we call myth, legend, oral history or family tradition. If you are one of those, embrace your memories. They are who you have become.

  I also want to dedicate this book to the remaining Dust Bowl refugees that, like their homes, crops and land, will also soon be gone with the wind.

  ONE

  The crisp white paper of the examination table crunched under Cole’s elbows. He stood in the chilly examination room, briefs around his ankles, bent over at a right angle. Once a year as much as he hated it, Cole made the appointment and went to the doctor for his annual physical. His father was a doctor-hater, but Cole’s mother always made him go. Even though he had no caring wife willing to fight tooth and nail like his mother used to do assuring the appointment was kept, the tradition was so ingrained in Cole he kept it like Christmas, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. Once a year he suffered through the twenty-five minutes of prods, pokes, coughs and “say ahhs” for the assurance he just might make it through another year.

  “OK let’s have a look here.” Cole heard a latex glove snap around a wrist as the man behind him spoke.

  Cole grimaced and stared at the pastoral print above him of two boys with fishing poles walking across a grassy field down toward a river. How he wished he was going fishing. The feel of the doctor grabbing Cole’s left buttocks, and inserting his KY jellied fingers deep into his backside, interrupted Cole’s thoughts.

  “Everything feels OK up there. Prostrate is normal size. No problems.” Cole heard the gloves snap again. “Here you go.” The doctor handed him a tissue. “You can clean yourself with that. Then get dressed.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Well Mr. Sage, it would appear that you are in pretty good shape. I am a bit concerned with your blood pressure. Is there a history of high blood pressure in your family?

  “Yeah, my dad took blood pressure medication every day for years.”

  The doctor scribbled on a white pad and spoke without looking up, “Well, looks like you’ll do the same. One of these every morning, come back in a month when they run out and we’ll see where we’re at.” The man in the long white coat handed Cole the prescription and was out of the room before he could respond.

  As Cole made his way to his car he felt the slick unnatural feeling of the KY jelly with every step. He had a meeting back at the Chronicle in fifteen minutes and it would be a long time until he could get a shower and wash away the extra glide in his stride.

  The editorial meeting with Chuck Waddell lasted for almost two hours. The publishers wanted a tightening of editorial content. Chuck was eager to get input from his chief columnists and department editors. The bottom line was the publishers felt the paper drifted away from hard news features in favor of more editorialized commentary. This shift was no problem with the World and State desks, the City Desk editor couldn’t quite figure out what it all had to do with him and the Arts and Entertainment guy kept nodding off while pretending to doodle on his yellow legal pad.

  Cole and the three other featured columnists offered ways to appease the publishers without giving up what made their special brand of journalism unique, their opinion. Such shifts in policy were nothing new and came with clocklike frequency when the readership figures came out. If the numbers went up, it was “stay the course,” but if the numbers went down, the publishers cried out for a change of direction usually back to basics, “news and nothing but news, that’s what the people want”.

  The truth is that readership had been shrinking since the dawn of the Internet. Instant news from around the world made the printed page “yesterday’s news,” no matter how fast they tried to get the paper on the street. What made the local newspaper a viable source of news was opinion. Local writers with a local twist on major news stories. Issues that were of concern to the varied groups that made up the cities diverse population needed to be balanced and not favor one over the other. Left or Right, Gay or Straight, Black, White, Asian or Hispanic everyone needed a voice.

  Cole Sage’s career was built upon his willingness to cover any story, listen to those it touched and give them a voice. He often found himself in the uncomfortable position of providing a platform for issues he was opposed to. That is not to say he betrayed his beliefs, far from it, it was the way that he told the story that gave the balance between his feelings on the matter and those he interviewed. Love him or hate him, Cole was never accused of bias or unfair representation of the facts. His secret was in presenting the facts. If both sides of an issue were clearly represented by the facts, as their proponents saw them, fairly and directly, no matter what Cole’s read on the issue, both sides of the argument felt they were heard. “Let the facts speak for themselves” was often the opening of any opinion Cole offered.

  His opinion was never seen as taking sides but as one man’s evaluation of the facts as he saw them. The coin was always shown by Cole to have two sides and the decision as to who was right or wrong was left in the hands of the reader. It always amused Cole how both sides of an issue would call him and ask him to cover their story. It was the humanity of Cole Sage that Chuck Waddell valued so much as editor.

  Cole found a home at the Chronicle and the fit was good. After the meeting he went to his office, grabbing a chocolate glazed doughnut as he passed the long table in the break room. Cole was a sucker for a pink bakery box and never missed the chance to investigate its contents.

  The mail holder on the front of Cole’s door was bulging with letters, catalogs, magazines, newspapers and inter-office manila envelopes. How could so much paper accumulate in just one weekend? Cole pondered as he struggled to hold the mail and the doughnut, and open the door. He tossed the mail on the clutter atop his desk, took a bite of doughnut and began thumbing through the stack.

  His system for sorting was simple: Newspapers and magazines in one stack, letters in another and office mail in a third. He took another bite of doughnut as he scanned the periodicals. Nope, he thought, no time for those, and he scooped them up and tossed them into the recycle box in the corner. The office mail received closer inspection. Accounting, must be expense account; marketing, requests for stories with corporate advertising accounts, Cole always declined the opportunity to yield to requests for product placement. Well, those can wait too.

  One last gooey bite of dough
nut and a quick lick of the fingers, and Cole picked up the stack of letters. Two months before, in his hurry to sort the mail he tossed, an invitation to a dinner where he would have met Al Pacino. A week later, he threw away tickets to the opening night of American Buffalo at the American Conservatory Theater. Since then he began to take his mail more seriously and gave it the scrutiny it was due.

  Down deep, Cole was a mail hater; it was an invasion of his time and privacy. Personal correspondence excluded, of course. All other mail was an intrusion; if he wanted to buy something he would. He never made a purchases from mail solicitations. He paid all his bills online. In his younger days, he would stuff the contents of a mail advertisement, envelope and all, into their self-addressed, prepaid, return envelope and send it back. The novelty of this soon wore off when he realized he was wasting additional time dealing with it. On some level they were still winning; this too was unacceptable. Still, the memory of returning junk mail to the sender delighted Cole.

  Today there were two offers of credit cards, an invitation to speak, a burial insurance advertisement, an update of his retirement fund, a bunch of political advertisements and an oversized envelope from the Chicago Sentinel.

  The retirement fund update went into his top drawer; the mutual funds he invested his retirement money in dropped nine percent so the report would be read later, when he felt worse. The envelope from Chicago was oversized for a letter and felt like something smaller was enclosed within it. Cole took the letter opener, given him by the Sunrise Downtown Rotary Club for speaking to their group at the ungodly hour of five a.m., and slit the top of the envelope. Inside was a second envelope. On the front was a yellow return sticker stating that the forwarding on his mail expired. Over it was a white sticker addressed to Cole at the Sentinel. The return address was C. W. Langhorne, Attorney at Law, Lawton, Oklahoma.

  Cole carefully looked the envelope over. The expensive buff linen stationary showed the wear of the thousands of miles it traveled and re-traveled to get to him. He slit the end of the letter open and withdrew its contents and frowned as he began to read:

  Dear Mr. Sage,

  It is my sad duty to inform you that your second cousin Doreen Sage, late of the Oklahoma Home for the Mentally Disabled, has passed way. She died in her sleep after a short illness. The autopsy report gave kidney failure as the cause of death. Let me offer my sincere condolences to you.

  The purpose of this letter is to inform you that you now are the sole beneficiary of the estate of your late cousin George M. Sage. As the oldest, and as far as we can tell, the only surviving member of the Sage family, all properties real and monetary are passed to you.

  Please contact me at your earliest possible convenience for the swift and complete resolution of this matter.

  Yours truly,

  C. Winton Langhorne

  Attorney at Law

  “Well wha’dya know!” Cole said, with a chuckle. Suddenly he saw visions of himself driving a new, silver Audi TT across the Golden Gate Bridge with the top down, stereo blasting, on his way to see Kelly Mitchell. And just in time for vacation, he thought, this couldn’t be better.

  Cole reached for the phone and dialed the number at the bottom of the letter. After three rings he heard a woman’s voice cheerfully answer the call.

  “Attorney’s Office, good afternoon this is Laura, how can I help.”

  “Hello, this is Cole Sage...”

  “Way up in Chicago! Boy you are one hard fella to get ahold of,” Laura chirped.

  “California actually, I’m in San Francisco.”

  “Well either way, we gotcha now. Let me see if Mr. Langhorne is in.”

  Cole only heard three or four notes of fuzzy on-hold music before the line picked up again.

  “Mr. Sage! This is a welcome surprise. We were afraid you would never call.” The voice that came on the line was pinched and rang with a slightly southern twang.

  “Just got your letter five minutes ago. Looks like it went around the block a couple of times, but better late than never.” Cole was trying to stay calm. He knew his cousin George became very wealthy when he sold his asbestos removal business. Cole was dying to ask how much he was going to get but was biting his tongue.

  “Sad thing about Doreen. She never knew it though. She was a retard, you know. I remember when she was born. Sad deal; only kid they ever had and she wasn’t right. You know they’re bad when they gotta be put in a home. George paid through the nose for years for her upkeep. She’s gone now. That’s where you come in I guess.”

  “I guess so,” Cole replied softly. He was a bit surprised at the brusqueness of the lawyer.

  “Here’s where we are with this thing, Mr. Sage. Doreen’s upkeep ate up almost all the money.”

  Cole’s heart sank.

  “But,” the lawyer continued, “the property, at least the farm, is left. Sandy, George’s wife, sold the house in town after George died and moved to Enid to be near the girl, for all the good that did. So when Sandy went I was made ward of Doreen even though she was forty-eight years old, and my instructions were to keep her at the ‘Happy Willows’ or whatever the place was called, ‘Shelter Cove’ or some damn thing. Anyway, the money ran out and we had to put her in the state hospital. Not the one for crazies, mind, the one for retards and mental deficients. And that’s where she died. Trouble is she lived too long for you to get any of the money.”

  “Well, I’m sure I don’t begrudge her anything, Mr. Langhorne.”

  “Not at all, not at all, I can see you’re a fine fella. I’m sure George would be proud of your concern.” The lawyer coughed loudly and cleared his throat. “Here’s what ya got.. There is a five acre farm and the house of course, two lots in town, and twenty-five percent of an office building in Norman that brings in about thirty-five thousand a year, so that’s about $8,750 to you. The money is held in escrow and paid out on July first of the following fiscal year. That’s why Doreen had to be put in a state facility; ‘Happy Acre’s’ wouldn’t wait. You’d have thought after the million or so George paid those folks over the last twenty years they would have let her stay forever just out of the goodness of their hearts, but no sir, no bucks no bed.”

  “This is certainly a surprise, Mr. Langhorne. I’m not quite sure what to say, except, thanks for not giving up on finding me.”

  “Saw ya on CNN one night gettin’ that award from the President and I knew you were no slouch. So we found your address there in Chicago and when the letter came back we sent it to the paper. How’d you end up with it out there in California?”

  “Someone at the Sentinel forwarded it on to me here. So, what happens now? Do you send me paper work or...”

  “Paper work is fine for the lots and office building; you need to sign the deeds and transfers, that’s easy. Oklahoma has no inheritance tax so you’re in the clear there. Federal, now that’s another matter. Have your tax guy call me. Way I got it figured is, the money from the office building will just about cover what you’re gonna owe, but hey, I’m just a hill country lawyer, your San-Fran-Cisco CPA may figure it different.” Langhorne said the name of the city as if it tasted nasty in his mouth.

  “Well, that’s all pretty good news. I can hardly believe the “rich uncle” story is finally about me,” Cole said jovially.

  “Now about the farm,” Langhorne coughed long, hard and raspy. “Damn cigarettes are going to kill me.” He cleared this throat before speaking again. “We have an occupancy ordinance in this county. In order for the deed to transfer on a residency, the property must be occupied for a period of no less than thirty days. Otherwise, the taxes go through the ceiling and you might as well give it to the county.”

  “Five acres and a house? I would hardly want to give it to the county!”

  “Well then, if I file on next Monday, we’ll fudge a bit and pretend you called me day after tomorrow, which gives you until a week from Friday to take possession and begin the thirty days.”

  “I’m supposed to leav
e for vacation this Friday, can’t we postpone this until...”

  “Nope, once the will is filed with the county recorder the clock starts tickin’.”

  “I do have some time coming,” Cole said, thinking out loud. “Can’t we fudge a bit more?”

  The lawyer laughed. “We sure as hell don’t need a blood test to see that you’re a Sage, no sir-ee, you sound just like George. Always playin’ the angles. Thirty days. So you got a few days to get here and start enjoying our fair community.”

  “OK, I’ll be in touch.” Cole squeezed the cord on the phone until the coils interlaced. “Thirty days, huh?”

  “Thirty days. See you soon.” The lawyer hung up.

  “Thirty days,” Cole repeated.

  Cole left his office and went back upstairs to tell Chuck Waddell the news and try to figure out if it was even possible to get a month off. His vacation was planned for two weeks. Two weeks of sightseeing in the Canadian Rockies, relaxing, hiking and he was even going to try his hand at fishing. He would stay a week in Jasper and Banff in Alberta. There goes my four hundred dollar deposit, Cole thought, plus air fare too... It was then he realized he didn’t really know where the farm was.

  “Are you making this up?” Chuck Waddell laughed.

  “No, I’m not making it up. I told you about my cousin. He played golf with a bunch of big wigs and overheard them talking about asbestos removal in schools and public buildings becoming law, right? He set up a company with a clever name and started lining up contracts for removal of asbestos in four states. Funny thing is he had no idea how to do it. Before the first job was scheduled, he sold the company and made several million dollars.”