Page 45 of Delusional

It did make me feel a little better. But I was still anxious. Anxious about what might happen here, and anxious about the bombing case. I didn’t want to dwell on it.

I called Mary Catherine back and FaceTimed with the kids for a few minutes, regaling them with stories of Fido the spitting llama and promising to send photos.

After the exhaustive events of the day, I fell deeply asleep, and woke up a little confused to find myself in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar house. I checked my phone and saw that it was nearly 7:30.

I’d slept ten full hours. That was something that didn’t happen very often. I was used to missing sleep when I was on a big case, not oversleeping. I didn’t feel the usual excitement at attacking the day and solving a case.

Instead, I dressed in the nicest clothes I’d brought, to attend an impromptu memorial for Gary’s friend and bookkeeper, Lillian Mathis. Not having anticipated anything like this, Rob Trilling borrowed a suit and tie from his brother. I hadn’t met Lillian but knew I couldn’t miss the event. The whole Trilling family might need some support.

By 8:15, the three of us were all over at Mona Trilling’s house. She must have been up all night prepping. The kitchen was lined with disposable foil pans filled with casseroles, sandwiches, bags of chips, and a separate box holding liters of off-brand soda. I had no idea how the woman had managed to make so much food in such a short amount of time. It was all intended for the reception at the hall, following Lillian’s memorial service.

By the time we loaded everything into her Dodge Ram 1500, there was barely enough room for passengers. Mona insisted we all ride together, so I crammed into the rear seat with the Trilling brothers, each of us balancing foil pans on our laps.

Chet Trilling sat in the front passenger seat. He looked dapper in a simple blue suit with a dark tie. He also wore a fedora. I didn’t see many fedoras in New York anymore. He made it look classy and interesting.

The service for Lillian Mathis was held at a small nondenominational chapel outside the town limits of Palm Island. As soon as we parked, Mona recruited a half dozen younger people to help bring food and drinks into the small reception hall next to the church.

There were probably fifty people in the church. Gary mentioned to me that all the residents of Palm Island were in attendance. Most of the other people here were friends and relatives. Lillian had been popular; you could see it in the response of the mourners.

I sat in the second row, with Gary and Rob Trilling on my right. Lillian’s death had clearly hit Gary hard. I appreciated the way Rob had his arm around his brother’s shoulders, trying to comfort him.

A young woman squeezed down our aisle and took a seat next to Trilling. She had long, straight black hair and a beautiful face.

I leaned toward Chet to ask who she was.

The older man glanced down the aisle and said, “I’m not sure about her name. I know she’s always nice to me. I think she might be dating my grandson Rob.”

I did a double take and looked more closely at the woman. She’d taken a seat right next to my partner, and they clearly knew each other. She reached past him to pat Gary on the leg in a show of support—then leaned so that her whole body was pressed against Rob Trilling’s arm.

Certainly, I had a hard time grasping how young people dated today. I wasn’t even that good at it when I was on the dating scene myself. But this confused me completely.

Admittedly, when it came to Trilling’s relationship with my daughter, I wasn’t even entirely sure if they were actually dating or just very good friends. Rob Trilling never struck me as a womanizer or a cheater. But this seemed over the top.

On the other hand, I did note that my partner didn’t look at all comfortable with this girl being so close to him.

But right before a memorial service was not the moment to ask questions. It was all something that could wait for another time.

CHAPTER 55

IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THE service, virtually everyone who’d attended went over to the reception hall. I was introduced to so many people, my head spun. Several other Palm Island proprietors came by to console Gary.

One thing they all had in common, Mona pointed out to me, was that they’d each already sold their business to Arnold Marks.

A man named Steve Charpentier, who owned an outdoor recreation store on the far side of Palm Island, lamented that he was still waiting for someone to make him an offer on his business. He’d bought the property cheaply seven years ago, hoping to capitalize on the area’s biggest growth market: tourism.

Steve, a lean man whose age was hard to judge, said, “I wish this rich LA businessman needed a building on the other side of town too. I’d sell in a heartbeat. As it is, I’ll probably have to go back to practicing law to make a living.”

I looked at him. “You’re an attorney?”

“I practiced in California for twenty-two years. Just got to be too much. I was riding my motorcycle up here and realized this is the place to be. I moved before the latest rush. Now I try to hide the fact that I’m a Californian from the locals,” he admitted to me. “They don’t like the way the new residents have changed their culture and raised the cost of living so high.”

It might be a good time to get some info from a different source, I decided. I asked, “Why do you think the real-estate developer isn’t interested in the other side of town?”

Steve leaned in close to me, like he had a secret. “I have friends on some of the tribal lands outside of town. They’ve been talking for years about putting in a casino. Now somehow they have funding for it. I wonder if someone from California is bankrolling the casino, and this developer is trying to get a hotel and resort in place so that anyone coming from the direction of Bozeman would find it a perfect place to stay.”

I asked the obvious layman’s question. “Why not build on land between this town and the reservation? Gotta be cheaper and a lot easier than the way he’s been picking apart Palm Island.”

“That’s what you’d think. But most of the land between here and the tribal lands is owned by the state or federal government. They’d restrict any kind of building like that. The fact that Palm Island is already incorporated as its own town and has a set of bylaws that separates it from the county administration means that anyone who tried to build something here would only have to deal with the town. The way he’s buying up property, he already has enough votes to run this place. These guys throw around money because they believe money solves all problems. I don’t think they understand how people think in places like this. I don’t think they can comprehend that locals get attached to local traditions and businesses.”