Heart of Cole Read online

  Heart Of Cole

  A Sage Cole Mystery

  Micheal Maxwell

  Contents

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  The Sage Cole Mystery Series

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  About the Author

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  Also by Micheal Maxwell

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  To receive your free copy of Death of Choice, click here.

  The Sage Cole Mystery Series

  Diamonds and Cole (Cole Sage Mystery #1)

  Cellar Full of Cole (Cole Sage Mystery #2)

  Helix of Cole (Cole Sage Mystery #3)

  Cole Dust (Cole Sage Mystery #4)

  Cole Shoot (Cole Sage Mystery #5)

  Cole Fire (Cole Sage Mystery #6)

  Heart of Cole (Cole Sage Mystery #7)

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  If you have enjoyed Heart of Cole please take a moment now and leave a review. Readers like you are the best advertisement in the world!

  “If what I live for and value most dies when I do, then I've wasted my life.”

  Chapter One

  “All my friends are dead or have moved away,” the old lady said mournfully into her flip phone.

  There were only a scattering of people in the park. A man in a pale green warm-up suit was walking a dachshund that insisted on stopping at every tree for a sniff. The old lady frowned as the dog relieved himself against a Poplar.

  “I know Atlanta’s a long way from San Francisco.”

  The bench down the walk was occupied by a sleeping homeless man, wrapped, mummy-like, in black plastic garbage bags. His gravely snoring was punctuated by gasps and sputters.

  “It has been nearly three years, sweetheart.”

  Since the old lady arrived in the park, only the occasional bicyclist interrupted the otherwise slow pastoral setting. This was her park. Every morning and sometimes afternoon, she strolled the narrow walkways. It was her habit for over sixty years. As a young woman, she brought her children to run and play. For two brief years, she brought her granddaughter to the park while her daughter finished her graduate degree at the University of San Francisco.

  “I know, I know, soccer, ballet, I know. If it’s important to her, I know, your yoga classes help pay the bills.”

  Over the years, she saw the park’s landscape change. Trees that were old friends, grew sick or tired and broken, and were removed. The carefree dancing, singing, hippies of the sixties, were replaced by the junkies of the seventies. The emptiness of the eighties brought the death of her husband, her children moving to the far corners of America, and a lot of the people she knew moved to the Central Valley. During the nineties, a flood of “people of color”, as they liked to be called, invaded her park. They too have grown old like her, and like her, their children disappeared in the new millennium.

  “No, my,” the old lady paused, “my money is tied up in CDs, and it is all I have to pay my bills. Social Security is nice, but things are expensive here.”

  As she approached her eighty-second birthday, she ached for the days gone by. Sometimes she would look across the grass and see her children running, chasing a ball, or making bubbles with dish soap and plastic hoops—a good life. Now, it seemed a slowly repeating cycle of morning coffee, dressing, not remembering what she wore the day before, walking to the park, soup and half a sandwich for lunch, a nap, the five o’clock news, toast and a bit of jam and a hot cup of cocoa in the evening, an old movie on TV, waking to find the movie over, and going to bed, only to repeat the process the next day.

  “What if I came to Atlanta? Are things cheaper there? No, I know you don’t have room for me, I know your house only has five bedrooms.”

  The weekly call from her son in Atlanta was more drudgery than pleasure. She tired quickly of his litany of complaints about his, job, wife and kids. Too little money, too much work, too many demands, and she rarely got a word in. Perhaps she coddled him, she wonders. At least he calls. Something his sister hasn’t done in two years.

  “Uh huh,” the old woman responded but no longer listening.

  Across the park, a black dog attempted to join the dachshund, but was met with snarls and barks from the dachshund, and a series of yelling curses from the dog’s owner. The old woman was so distracted by the dogs she didn’t notice the person who approached the bench.

  “Mind if I sit down?”

  The old lady smiled and motioned to the stranger to be seated on her right. She wasn’t afraid of people; she loved to talk. The bum in the plastic ensemble, on the other hand, should have been shooed away.

  “Alright, I’ve got to run, too.” The old woman snapped her phone shut.

  “I haven’t seen one of those in a while,” the visitor said, pointing at the flip phone.

  “I take a lot of ribbing about it.” The old woman held up the phone. “But if it ain’t broke…”

  “…why fix it.” Her guest finished her sentence.

  The two strangers sat on the bench and watched the man with the dachshund leave the park. No words were exchanged for a long time; they just sat in the morning sun.

  The silence was broken when the stranger spoke. “What’s your greatest regret?”

  The old woman turned and looked at the stranger for a long moment. “Having children. Shocking thing for a mother to say, isn’t it? But, I must have done something wrong somewhere. They turned out totally self-absorbed, selfish shits.” The old woman chuckled.

  “I’ve heard that before. So what’s your greatest joy?” the visitor asked.

  “You’re a funny one,” she said. “Let’s see. I would have to say marrying my husband. We had a wonderful life. He’s been gone almost forty years now and I still miss him. It hurts like a toothache in my soul.”

  The new friend looked at the old woman for a long moment, and then asked, “Are you a religious woman?”

  “I like to think I know where I’m going when I die.”

  “So…you’re ready to go?”

  “You know the old story about the bus to heaven?” The old woman smiled with the anticipation of telling a story to a good listener.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “I’m not really good with stories but, a preacher once gave a rousing sermon and as he closed, he said with real dramatic flair, ‘The bus to heaven is waiting at the front door!’ But, nobody went to get on.”

  “I don’t get it.” The stranger frowned.

  “Nobody is really ever ready to die, are they?”

  “I guess not.”

  “So, what is your greatest regret?” the old lady said cheerfully, fully enjoying the conversation.

  “That you have to die.”

  At that moment the stranger’s left arm flew across at the old woman. A faint flash of metal glimmered a second before an ice pick was driven deep into her heart.

  The old woman’s last act on earth was a disgusted humph, and a sneer. Her chin went down and gently rested on her chest. The stranger withdrew the five inch spike and wiped the small amount of blood on the old woman’s coat, where it covered her thin thigh.

  “I guess you missed the bus,” the stranger said.

  The stranger reached the sidewalk that ran in front of the park and turned to look back to where the old woman sat. The late morning sun cast a broad swath of light on the bench. The old woman looked as if she were napping in the warmth o
f the light.

  The stranger’s blank stare showed no emotion, no sign of satisfaction, no remorse, or conscience at all. The park was the same idyllic scene, there was just once less soul inhabiting it.

  Across town in Golden Gate Park the sun was just as bright, but the atmosphere was completely different. Families picnicked, kids played, lovers strolled, and bicyclist of all styles cruised in the sunshine. The air was clean and the magic that was San Francisco was in full display.

  “What a beautiful day”

  “What a beautiful girl.” Cole Sage replied rolling on his side to face Kelly Mitchell.

  A few yards away their granddaughter Jenny did summersaults down a small grassy knoll. She surrounded herself with a group of children that look like the cover of a UN pamphlet. Cole watched as Jenny showed and coaxed the other kids into rolling and tumbling down the hill. How could a seven year old have leadership skills? He thought. She must get it from her grandmothers.

  “Those chocolate chip cookies taste like more.”

  “Too bad you already ate the last one!”

  “Really?”

  “About a half hour ago.”

  “You should have told me.”

  “Why?”

  “So I wouldn’t live in anticipation of having another.”

  “Poor baby,” Kelly sympathized.

  “You know, we have a pretty wonderful life. I feel such peace. It is all because of you.”

  “That’s sweet, but I think it is the life we have been given. We are so blessed that Erin and Ben found each other. Then we found each other. It is pretty amazing when you map it all out.”

  “Kind of like that old song. Up from the ashes, up from the ashes, grow the roses of success!” Cole sang.

  Cole rolled back and looked up at a big polar bear of a white cloud crawling slowly across the sky. So many things in their life could have gone so wrong. Tragedy was averted time and again. Kelly’s houseboat burning, Cole being thrown into harm’s way too many times—they truly were blessed. Because here they lay, in the soothing spring sun, on a blanket in one of the most beautiful places on earth, without a care in the world.

  Gratitude was an attribute Cole Sage began to embrace far too late in life. Now it was something to share, encourage, and offer thanks for. The sermon he heard the previous Sunday came to Cole’s mind.

  “I am not a Bible scholar.”

  “Where did that come from?” Kelly sat up.

  “I was just thinking about the Sunday sermon.”

  “And?”

  “Well, the pastor said Satan accused God of building a wall of blessing around Job so that Job couldn’t help but be thankful to God. The devil said God spoiled Job, so of course, he loves God.”

  “But it wasn’t true. God blessed Job because he loved Him and lived a righteous life. A bit different, don’t you think?” Kelly studied Cole trying to figure out where this conversation was leading.

  “I don’t think that spoiling a person necessarily brings gratitude. It’s more likely that people who are given everything become self-centered, selfish, jerks.”

  “OK, I guess that’s true for the most part.”

  “I just hope we’re not spoiling Jenny.” Cole watched the little golden-haired girl leading the play on the hill.

  “Wow! Sometimes your thought connections amaze me. No, I don’t think we spoil her that way. We don’t bury her in gifts. We do give her a lot of love and attention. Not the same thing.”

  “We are pretty blessed. I hope I am not guilty of just thanking God for what He does for me. I wasn’t brought up in a church like yours.”

  “I think you have a huge heart and are seeing God’s blessings in your life and you appreciate them.”

  “You lost your houseboat and everything in it. You didn’t complain once. You just went on with life.”

  “Well, I was plenty angry. I prayed some pretty angry prayers. But, in the end, I was grateful I didn’t end up barbequed.” Kelly laughed and slapped Cole on the leg. “Come on, that was a good one.

  “Did you ever wonder what you would do if you had lost everything like Job?”

  “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him. I think that’s the lesson to be learned from Job.

  “I wonder if I lost you, or Jenny, or Erin, if I would be able to still love God?” Cole lay back and gazed up at the clouds.

  “I hope you never have to find out.”

  Chapter Two

  Cole Sage looked around the third floor of the Chronicle building and took in the exodus toward the elevator. Like a zombie march, fifteen to twenty men and women, with boxes of pictures, plants and mementos in their arms, silently joined the group huddled at the shiny, reflective doors of the elevator.

  Hanna Day looked up at her boss. “Good Morning. Quite a sight, huh?”

  “It looks like the Israelites fleeing Egypt. What’s going on around here?”

  “A blood bath. Pink slips taped to their monitors when they arrived.”

  “And you?” Cole asked.

  “Safe so far,” Hanna replied.

  Cole leaned back against his secretary’s desk to watch the occupants of the third floor cry, laugh half-heartedly, and chat around their cubicles. These were the lucky ones. The bomb dropped on the house next door. They were safe, but they lost friends, co-workers, and the familiar faces they saw every day.

  In the early seventies Cole worked briefly for a newspaper that went under. He was among the displaced and unemployed. He was young, however, and got another job within a month. That new job set the course for the rest of his life. Many of the people at that bankrupt paper ended up as clerks in department stores, or tried their luck as realtors, or became insurance salesmen. Most never worked in their first love again.

  The guys gathered at the elevator were lifers. More salt than pepper. They gave their youth, and life, to the newspaper that had now crumpled them up and tossed them aside. The purge couldn’t have come as a complete shock to anyone. Revenues were down. Advertising took a body blow that it still hadn’t recovered from. Craig’s List, eBay, and Facebook, garage sales—these all but replace the classifieds.

  The Internet was an enemy to print that Gutenberg could never have begun to imagine. A world of information was a few keystrokes away, and news reports were instantaneous. No matter how up-to-the-minute the newspaper was, it was always hours, sometimes a day, behind online news sources.

  Sheltered behind the buffer of opinion and editorial journalism, Cole Sage walked a thin line between relevance and obsolescence. He maintained a strong following in print, and to his surprise, when the number of hits was reported from the webpage, he topped most of the other columnists and certainly the world and national news sections.

  As he watched another elevator full of the redundants leave their home away from home, he couldn’t help but wonder why no one looked out on the room. Was it embarrassment, anger, or fear of making eye contact with the survivors?

  Because of his unique position with the paper, Cole was isolated from the fact checkers, proofreaders, and copywriters with no bylines. He sat day after day in his corner office, secretary at the ready, and did what he did best: telling the stories of the city. Feature articles splashed across the Sunday editions about people wronged by a system from which they had no protection, officials trying to pull a fast one on the people they were supposed to represent, and the well placed, powerful, and connected, who abused that privileged place in the food chain.

  Group by group, the cogs that had made the machine work were loading into the elevator and exiting the floors below into a world with no demand for their talents. Cole turned and went into his office. Before he could be seated the phone on his desk rang. He turned and looked at Hanna. She shrugged and shook her head. The desk phone almost never rang on its own.

  “Hello?” Cole said.

  “I need to see you.” Before Cole could answer the line went dead.

  “That was Waddell. Be back in a bit. Maybe.” C
ole didn’t like the feeling of being summoned in five curt words.

  “You don’t think…” Hanna’s voice trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence.

  The air on the top floor was thick with grief. The past was dead and the future seemed to be on life support. Stunned people sat at desks, in cubicles, and could be seen staring into empty offices. The heavy sword of termination cut a wide swath through the executive floor as well.

  “What’s going on in here?”

  Chuck Waddell looked up and gave Cole an insincere smile.

  “Chuck?” Cole pressed.

  “It seems my services are no longer needed.” Waddell picked up a small, hand carved, ebony dolphin. “This was the first thing Chris ever bought me.” He gently placed the dolphin in the file box sitting in his office chair.

  Cole was not sure how he wanted to proceed. He was expecting his pink slip to be personally delivered by his old friend. It was not to be the case.

  Chuck spoke first so he didn’t have to decide. “You need to think about your future, Cole. The Internet has changed the news business. We’re dinosaurs, old friend. Print is dead and the bottom line is blood red around here.

  “Is that what this is about?” Cole moved toward the desk.

  “I make too much money. God knows you make way too much.” Waddell laughed and put a small model of a rider and motorcycle in the box.

  “This is so sudden. Have you even had time to think? What’s your plan?”

  “Costa Rica. Chris and I always planned to retire in Costa Rica. We would have if…” Waddell stopped short.

  “He would have liked that.” Cole felt a wave of emotion come over him. He felt a lump lodge in his throat, and he moved to the bookcase against the wall. “Maybe I’ll write a book,” he said, running his fingers over the titles. “Seems everybody I know has.”

  “You need to write a book, Cole. It would sell. I think you’ve lived three lives.” Chuck nodded as if thinking that he should try writing. “Get out of here before some smartass little punk from HR puts a pink slip in your pay envelope.”