Randy was on his way within a few minutes, shaking with anger and half tempted to hunt Joel up at work and beat the living shit out of him, although his better instincts prevailed. He found a nearby Burger King, pulled into the parking lot and pulled out his cell phone.

"I didn’t expect to hear from you quite this soon," his father said. "Did you learn anything?"

"All too much," Randy told him. "She’s being emotionally abused, and badly, physically to a lesser extent. He watches her like a hawk, doesn’t trust her with anything, especially her money, which I think he thinks is his but she won’t let him get at it. He’s gone a lot and she’s stuck at home with no chance to get out, no car, no friends, and he’s trying to keep her isolated from us. I don’t know all that much about all the signs of spouse abuse but what I see makes me think that she’s got to be a classic case of it."

"Sounds like it," his father replied. "You’re sure about it?"

"As sure as I can be. I always thought Joel was an asshole, but he’s even worse than I thought."

"I wonder why this didn’t come out when they were here in January?"

"Beats the hell out of me," Randy said into the cell phone. "He may have been watching her too closely too much of the time. She says it’s gotten worse since Brent’s legacy came down, so I suspect he wants her money real bad. I don’t know why Ruth hasn’t picked up on it, but Rachel says she hasn’t talked to Ruth very much, either. She ran me the hell out of there, too, saying that she didn’t want Joel to know that I’d been there."

"That’s bad," Ryan replied. "It’s all bad. I guess you were right on your gut feelings. Now, the question I have is what do we do now?"

"Beats the hell out of me," Randy told him. "You get right down to it, there’s not much we can do. I reminded her that she still has family in Spearfish Lake, and she can count on us if she needs the help. It’s going to have to be up to her if she leaves him, but I can’t think of much we can do till she makes that decision."

"Damned if I know what to tell you," Ryan sighed. "Maybe I can call her up and say pretty much the same thing, for what good it’ll do. I think we need to bring your mother and Ruth in on this, but I think I’ll want to be careful about how we do it. Your mother is going to pitch a shit fit."

"I don’t doubt it," Randy agreed. "But maybe she can use some logic we can’t. A woman thing, you know. One thing, though. I’m sure Joel wants to get his hands on Rachel’s money, and that means the land is going to have to get sold. Could you maybe call up Binky and have her hide that listing in a file drawer or something, and not advertise it?"

"I’ll do it," he replied. "That’s a little under the table, but we’re good enough friends that I think she’ll go along with it. So what do you plan on doing now?"

"Damned if I know," Randy said. "Maybe I can call the airline and get my flight back changed from Sunday to Saturday. That way I can get home that much quicker. I’m a little worried about being gone from Nicole right now."

"Could be, but the airlines are getting a little sticky about changing reservations. So how’s the weather out there?"

"Not bad, maybe about sixty. Short sleeve weather for me for this time of year. I think I’m going to find a big box store and find a short sleeve shirt."

"Well, you’re in one of the more interesting towns in the country," Ryan advised. "Why not do a little sightseeing? I’m sure you can find something to kill a day in San Francisco."

"I’m a little reluctant to do it with Nicole not with me. I’m sure it’s something she’d like to see."

"I can understand that," Ryan sighed. "But how much stuff has Nicole seen that you haven’t? She’s forever trying to push you out the door to do these things, and I know it. Here’s a chance to take advantage of it."

"Yeah, I know, but that doesn’t mean I want to do it, especially with this stuff with Rachel on my mind."

"Me either, now that you put it that way. Keep your cell phone on, we may come up with something for you to do. On that subject, do you think there’s any percentage in hiring a detective?"

"I don’t know what they could pick up that we don’t already know in general. It’d just be a way to waste money."

"Maybe, but maybe not. You said he’s gone a lot. Do you think he’s seeing someone on the side? If he is, then maybe that would be a way to convince Rachel to get the hell out of there."

"Not impossible," Randy told his father. "Rachel didn’t say anything about that, but I didn’t go anywhere near that issue with her. She might not have a hint of it even if he is. I get the feeling Joel is managing her like a mushroom."

"You mean keeping her in the dark and feeding her shit? I wouldn’t put that past him, either. I always knew there was some reason I didn’t like the guy, and he’s turning out to be even worse than I expected. Even if we leave Joel’s alleged business ethics out of it, I think it might not be a bad idea just to turn a detective loose on him, just on general principles. I don’t have any idea how I’d find one, other than having you go through the phone book out there. That’s really taking a stab in the dark."

"You may be right, but . . . hey, I got an idea. How about asking Blake if he could weasel out a lead? He knows the security business a little, and he used to have some contacts out here."

"That’s a better idea than anything I’ve come up with," Ryan said. "I’ll give him a buzz as soon as I’m off the horn with you. Go see the sights and check out your graders."

"If there’s anything I can do, let me know."

Randy clicked off the cell phone and sat back in the seat of the rental car. Sightseeing really wasn’t on his mind, and going to the construction equipment show had only been an excuse in the first place. The real purpose of the trip had been to check on Rachel, and now that he’d done it everything else seemed to take a back seat. But what else could he do? He was tempted to go take a swing by Joel’s business just to see if he was there, but realized that was fruitless – he knew he couldn’t identify Joel’s car, and Joel would know who he was if he saw him. Rachel had said that it was best if Joel didn’t know that Randy was in town, and being recognized could really screw things up for her. That left just about nothing constructive that he could think of to do.

Well, there was one thing. It was the middle of the day now, so late afternoon back in Spearfish Lake, and he hadn’t had anything to eat since a cup of coffee and a doughnut some silly number of hours before. And here he was in the parking lot of a fast food place – might as well do something about that, he thought. A Whopper and fries beat airline alleged food any way you cut it.

Randy got out of the car and went inside. It was close to lunchtime, and the line at the counter was long. Now that he was standing upright, he realized that it was a good time to use the bathroom, so he headed around the counter and down a short hall. It only took him a moment before he was heading back out to wait out the line. He glanced around the room on the way back to the counter and saw a sight that brought him to a dead stop: Joel, sitting in a booth across the room!

Come on, Randy thought. This kind of stuff only happens in bad movies. He looked again, and sure enough, it was Joel or his twin brother, sitting and talking to a nicely-turned-out blonde wearing a pencil skirt, frilly blouse, black glasses, hair up in a bun, almost looking like a parody of a business person. Joel’s attention was entirely on the woman, and Randy didn’t think he’d been seen. One thing was clear, though – this wasn’t a good place to be standing around in a long line waiting for service. He headed for the door, noticing that the two were picking up the trash from their lunch and were close to getting out of there.

Back out in the car Randy’s mind was whirling. It was entirely possible that the two were having an honest business lunch, although Burger King didn’t seem like the kind of place that they’d want to talk stocks or taking someone to the cleaners, whatever it was they were discussing. It would have been nice to be a bug on the wall, or just have a bug on the wall, but there was no way he could have gotten close enough to pick something up without running the risk of being noticed. But what to do now? One sighting of Joel having lunch with a woman could easily be perfectly innocent – there were plenty of legitimate reasons it could have happened.

He was still sitting in the parking space, watching the front door in his rear view mirror, when he saw Joel and the blonde come out and head for a car – Randy noticed that Joel and the woman were walking hand in hand. That, he thought, doesn’t look quite as innocent.

Between the mirror and the corner of his eye Randy watched the two walk across the parking lot to a white BMW. Joel courteously held the right side door for her, then walked around and got in the left side.

Randy knew he was a total amateur at this kind of thing, but there was no way he wasn’t going to tail him, at least for a ways, and see what was happening. All of his knowledge of how to tail a vehicle in traffic came from movies and TV and novels, but summarized, it came down to not following too close and trying to avoid being noticed. He watched as the BMW backed out of the parking space, then started his rental car and backed it out to follow.

Son of a bitch, I don’t believe I’m doing this, he thought as he made a right turn into traffic, coming out three or four cars behind Joel and the blonde on the busy street. Tailing a car without losing it in heavy traffic proved to not be as easy as he’d thought it might be, but as fortune had it they only went a mile or so, not making any turns until they turned off into a motel parking lot. Randy knew better than to follow, so drove right on by, went around the block, and saw the BMW parked toward one end of the building, a motel where the rooms’ doors opened onto the parking lot.

Yep, not very innocent, he thought. That’s a nooner if ever there was such a thing. Again, he drove right on by and around the block, not that it was likely that he’d been noticed, and wondered what to do next. A couple times he almost reached for his cell phone to report in to his father, but decided to put it off for a bit to see if he could learn a little more. He made up his mind he wasn’t going to tail Joel any further – luck had already been much better to him than it had any right to be – but it would be nice to know how long the two were in there.

This time around the block, he pulled into a Taco Bell next to the motel. He was still hungry, after all, and this would be a good place to sit and watch. Although it seemed unlikely that Joel had noticed him, and the rental was about as anonymous as a car could get, he parked on the far side of the Taco Bell and went inside, glancing up occasionally to check that the BMW was still there. After a few minutes with his order in his hands, he found a table by a window on the motel side of the building to keep watch while he ate.

It seemed very surrealistic to Randy as he sat there eating. They weren’t very far from Rachel’s home, only a couple miles, he thought. But then, if Joel doesn’t let her have a car there’s not much chance she’d be out and around to see anything out of the ordinary, anyway. It seemed pretty ballsy to him, in any case.

Get real, he thought. That might not be Joel. He hadn’t had all that good a look; it could have been someone who looked a lot like him – but how many people who looked like Joel drove a white BMW? Randy could remember Joel talking about his Beemer last January, but couldn’t remember him mentioning the color. On a hunch, he pulled out his note pad and jotted down the license plate number, for what good it might do.

Randy finished his lunch, which seemed to taste like cardboard and wasn’t very satisfying – not necessarily because of the food, but because he was worrying about the ramifications of the scene he’d just witnessed. If this was really happening, then there was even more trouble for Rachel than he had been expecting. He sat there sipping at the large drink, occasionally glancing at his watch or at the BMW parked a short ways away, and wondered how to handle what he had just learned.

After about forty minutes, he noticed one of the doors of the motel opening. He watched as Joel and the blonde came back outside. He didn’t feel like he could make any honest observation of their expressions, but had the impression that they weren’t unhappy. Again, Joel held the door for the blonde, then walked around, got in the car. In a minute they were gone.

Well, that’s about the size of that, Randy said as he gathered up his trash, threw it in a garbage bin, and headed back out to the rental. Now that he was alone again, there was no putting off the phone call that he knew had to be made. He pulled his cell phone out and hit one of the autodial numbers. "You’re not going to guess what I just saw," he told his father.

"Let me try," his father teased. "You saw Joel heading into a motel with some cheap blonde."

"I wouldn’t call her cheap," Randy said. "She was dressed pretty business-like, but they were in there for about three quarters of an hour."

"Huh? I was joking."

"I wasn’t," Randy told him, and explained what had happened over the last hour. Finally, he summed up, "So, while I don’t exactly have photos of the two of them in the act, it seems pretty clear to me that Joel is running around on Rachel."

"Well, I guess I’d have to say I wouldn’t put it past him," Ryan replied. "So, now what do we do?"

"Damn good question. To be honest, I’m not a hundred percent certain it was Joel. It could have been a look-alike, but I thought I’d screw around for an hour or so, then take a drive past his office and see if there’s a white BMW with that tag number parked nearby, just to be on the safe side. If there is, I think there’s a real good reason to find an investigator to see if we can come up with some real evidence. Then, maybe you and mom and I could present it to Rachel and see if we can make the chips into waferboard."

"I talked to Blake," his father reported. "He doesn’t know of anyone out there off the top of his head, but he’s going to bounce the idea off a couple of his buddies. But, I have to think that on something like this you could probably just find someone out of the phone book."

"That’s kind of what I was thinking. I’m about to go looking for a phone book, but I think after I find some names I’ll take a little while hunting for white BMWs."

"Do it," Ryan said. "Have them bill me on this, but have them get solid, irrefutable evidence. And keep me informed."

About two hours later Randy was sitting in the office of Scott Brayton at Dunstein, Brayton, and Howell Investigations, which happened to be located not far from Joel’s office. From the information in the phone book there was no way to tell the specialties of one from another, but this company got the nod because Randy could get an immediate appointment.

Brayton proved to be in his fifties, and Randy learned that he was a retired police detective. Randy soon found himself explaining what he had found out and what he was trying to find out.

"Well," Brayton said after Randy summed up what had happened, "My guess is that you did the right thing in breaking off when you did. If you’d gone on much further you could have been found out, and that could have led to trouble. But all in all, this doesn’t sound like a hard investigation. My only question is whether this was a onetime thing, or whether there’s a regular pattern."

"I sure can’t help you on that," Randy said. "Like I said, I just happened to stumble on the whole thing with Joel, but it looks pretty suspicious to me."

"From what you tell me, it sounds pretty suspicious to me, too," Brayton nodded. "And I’m not talking about just the possible affair. It seems pretty clear to me that what you saw was the result of systematic emotional abuse against your sister. It’s more common than you might think, and in this case, he’s managed to get her isolated from her support people by more than half the country, and not giving her any chance to build any other kind of support network. Do you think he’s after the emotional control, or the money?"

"Good question and I don’t have an answer," Randy said, "Other than he wants to get his hands on the money without her having any control of it. Whether that’s to get her more isolated or cast her adrift is something I’d like to know."

"People like him, when they get their hands on something like that, they’re not likely to let it go easily," Brayton pointed out. "My guess is that it’s just as well that you weren’t identified, because the trouble would come back on your sister."

"Right, and that’s one of my concerns. We don’t want Joel finding out about this until it’s pretty well a done deal. She says he hasn’t hit her, but she’s worried about it. If he had, I’d be tempted to stick around and teach him a lesson or two, and I have the black belts to do it."

"You say he’s bigger than you are," Brayton pointed out.

"Yeah, but he doesn’t have any fighting skills that I know of," Randy said. "I mean, he has all he needs to beat up on a woman and maybe that’s all he thinks he needs. He always looked down his nose at my martial arts hobby, but then he looks down on anything he isn’t directly involved with."

"To tell you the truth, I’d advise against taking physical action," the detective warned. "Out here, you’re as far away from your support people as your sister is, and you could get into trouble very easily."

"Well, yeah, I can see that. But I’m not sure what I need to do."

"Basically, I’d tell you to keep out of it until we get the information you need. Now, it could come quickly, or it could take a while. Just be patient and let things take their course, and don’t tip him off that you’re on to him. Otherwise, it could be a lot of trouble for your sister, maybe more than any of us want to handle."

"Yeah, I know, but it’s going to be hard."

"These things are never easy, but remember that your sister has one big thing going for her. She has a family who, no matter how far away, still cares about her and has the resources to do something about this situation. I see all too many cases that aren’t like that, and sometimes the outcome isn’t pretty."

"All right, help me out on this, since you’ve seen more of this kind of thing than I have. Are we going about this the right way? I mean, get the goods on him, present it to Rachel with several family members present, and be prepared to move her out before she changes her mind?"

"It sounds like a reasonable plan," Brayton nodded. "Just remember that she may have some fears about leaving him, and probably justifiable ones in her mind, so she may not want to drop everything and go running home. If that happens, frankly, you’re screwed and there isn’t much else you can do about it. That one is going to have to be up to you and your family, although if you need extra confirmation or security when you bring it up to her, we’ll be glad to provide it."

"That probably will be wise, but we’re going to have to wait till the time comes and see what happens," Randy said soberly. "Anyway, like I said earlier, I’m out here to look at graders, but that’s secondary to this. If there’s anything I can do to help you out while I’m still here, you have my cell number."

"There may be some questions," Brayton replied. "Some you may be able to answer, and some not. The first thing I’m going to need to do is talk to your father and get his take on this. We may find ourselves having to talk to your other sister, Ruth, since she still has some line of communication with your oldest sister."

"I’m not too sure how good it is," Randy said. "Rachel told me a lot in a short time that apparently Ruth never found out. Or at least if she did, she never mentioned it."

"Could be either way, but someone is going to have to talk to Ruth before we talk to her to tell her not to spill the beans, and probably your father is the most likely person to do that. Anyway, if we have any questions you can answer you’ll get a call. Beyond that, go take a look a graders or whatever it was you were going to do, and don’t do anything else that would alert Joel that you’re on to him. That means stay away from him, and don’t do anything that would let him know you’ve been out here."

"Yeah, I guess it’s go look at graders and be a tourist," Randy sighed. "Damn, it’s hard to sit back and do nothing on this."

"You’ve already done a great deal and doing more could make things worse. We’ll keep you and your father informed."

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