by Dawn Dugle
The front desk looked like a swanky hotel lobby and a young woman wearing a conservative navy suit and a French twist looked up and smiled. "Can I help you with something?"
I showed her my badge. "Sergeant Ward and Officer Davis to see Conner Hudson, please."
"Right away," she picked up the phone and placed a call. "Mr. Hudson, I have a Sergeant Ward and Officer Davis out here to see you.... Yes sir."
She hung up and looked at us. "If you'll have a seat over there, he'll be right out to collect you."
Bodie and I went to the nearest conversation area. He chose a leather club chair, while I was landed on a settee. It was a lot more comfortable that I expected. An older blonde man strode toward us. He was short and wore his own version of a conservative navy suit that must be a uniform around here. His hair looked like he had shellacked it in place so it wouldn't move. The only piece of jewelry he wore was a shiny gold watch that might have been a Rolex. He looked more like a Wall Street tycoon than a country club manager.
"Sergeant Ward?" He stuck out his hand towards Bodie. "I'm Conner Hudson."
Bodie shook his hand and laughed. "I'm Officer Bodie Davis, this is my partner and supervisor Sergeant Wysdom Ward."
Mr. Hudson blushed and shook my hand. "My apologies. Goodness, this is the 21st century! Girl power and all."
It was all I could do to not roll my eyes. "Yes. Well, Mr. Hudson..."
"Conner, please. Call me Conner."
I looked around. "Okay. Conner. We have some questions we need to ask you, but perhaps you'd like to talk in your office?"
He followed my gaze, seeing the golfers trickling in from their morning rounds. "Yes, yes. Good idea. Follow me."
Conner Hudson's office was on the far side of the country club, away from the restaurant, but next to the gym and spa. As we got closer to his door, I could hear a woman teaching some sort of yoga class and telling the class to "breathe through the pose".
Hudson took as seat behind his desk and gestured to two visitor chairs. We sat down.
"Mr. Hudson... Conner. We want to talk to you about Claire Rousseau's murder," I started.
He bowed his head and folded his hands as if in prayer. "What a terrible tragedy that was."
"Indeed," I nodded. "You called Detective Ward and told him you heard Ms. Rousseau arguing with someone earlier this month."
"Detective Ward. Any relation?" He asked.
"My brother."
"Oh how splendid! It must be nice to have an older brother paving the way for you," Hudson gave me a condescending look.
Bodie grabbed my arm and said: "He's actually her younger brother. Sergeant Ward outranks him."
Conner Hudson paled and I showed him my teeth. "What can you tell me about the argument Claire Rousseau had earlier this month?"
"Well, Ms. Rousseau is... was... a member here, rest her soul. And every Friday, she has lunch with her friends. On that particular day, though, she didn't sit with her group of friends. She had a guest."
"Do you know the guest's name?" I asked.
"Nicole... something."
I wrote Nicole Something down in my notebook. Oh yeah, that will be easy to track down. Don't roll your eyes. Don't roll your eyes. "What were they arguing about?"
"They were arguing about paper."
I looked up at him and he was dead serious. "Paper?"
"Yes, paper."
"As in... newspaper?" Maybe this Nicole Something was a reporter.
"No. Paper, paper."
"What else can you tell me about the argument?"
"That was all I could hear, because Mrs. MacInerny came up and needed tickets to the theater," he said.
"The ladies that Ms. Rousseau ate lunch with every Friday, are they here today?" Bodie asked.
Conner Hudson pulled up his computer screen and tapped a few keys. "Yes, they're scheduled for an 11:30 seating this morning."
I looked at my phone. We had a few minutes to kill before then. "Great, we'll wait."
Mr. Hudson looked horrified at our brand of riffraff being allowed to roam free in the hallways.
"We'll wait outside the restaurant for them, but in the meantime, can you point me to the ladies' room?" All that coffee was running right through me.
"There's one right across the hall from my office," Conner Hudson said. "I'll show you the way.”
∞∞∞
Another thing I wasn't too keen on with this getting older crap was the lack of bladder control. I used to be able to go hours at a time without needing a pitstop. Now, it's more like two. And forget about sleeping through the night. I'm lucky if I sleep four hours without needing to get up to pee.
I had just finished my business and opened the stall door to wash my hands, when the outside door opened. In walked an attractive older woman with jet black hair pulled into a pony tail wearing yoga pants and a tank top that said: I'm the SHE to your NANIGANS.
I stared at the tank top, then slowly raised my eyes to the woman's face. I was looking straight into reptilian green eyes and froze. "Captain Sweeney?"
She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
I took another look at her, reading the t-shirt again and my eyes narrowed. "Nice shirt."
"Ah.. thanks."
I smelled a rat and was just about to give her the chance to lie to me, to keep me in the dark about what had been going on under all of our noses, when Bodie knocked on the door. "Sarge! It's 11:25, hurry up!"
"Well, I guess we'll finish our chat later then," I narrowed my eyes, tilted my head and stared at her. She gasped. Wait. Had I finally gotten it right? Had I figured out the Abreo Stare? Damn it! How did I do it?
"Sarge! Come on! We're going to miss them!" Bodie knocked on the door again and I stepped outside.
"Did you see..."
"Yeah." He eyed me as we walked toward the restaurant.
"Then, I'm not having hallucinations bought on by brain damage from two bombings?"
"Nope."
"Holy hellfire. What has Dixon gotten into?"
Bodie smiled and laughed at me. "Apparently Captain Snake's pants."
I cringed, plugged my ears and stomped my feet. "NOPE! Lalalalalalalala!"
Ugh. I didn't have time to be sick, we needed to talk to some ladies who lunch.
We walked toward the restaurant and found Mr. Hudson had beat us to the hostess stand. He was talking to a group of women in their 60s and 70s. It was like looking at an older version of the Fashion Plates from The Squad Room the night of my brother's promotion party.
Instead of long hair and short skirts, these sassy seniors all wore their hair in a bob and different versions of the same Chanel skirt suit. Each one of them also sported a high-end tote or purse that probably cost more than my house and was dripping in sparkling diamonds and other gemstones.
As we neared the group of women, Mr. Hudson lightly touched a platinum blonde woman on the shoulder and pointed towards us.
"Mrs. Sykes, this is Sergeant Ward and Officer Davis," Hudson said as he introduced us to the woman.
"Oh please, Mrs. Sykes was my husband's mother. I'm Dolores, but you can call me Dottie," she waved him off and stuck out her hand. She gave me a firm handshake and her blue eyes twinkled at me as she dismissed the manager. "That will be all Mr. Hudson, I think we can take it from here."
I liked her already.
"We have a few questions about Claire Rousseau," I said to her.
She shooed her companions into the dining room. "Girls, you go on in and order me a chardonnay. I'm going to talk to this nice policewoman and join you in a minute."
"We promise not to keep you too long," I said.
"Nonsense, those old broads only ever gossip about the same old shit, different day. I can miss a few minutes of that to help you." She motioned us toward another comfortable seating area outside the restaurant. I guess when you cater to senior citizens, you need a lot of places to sit down.
"How long did you know Claire Rousseau?"
I asked.
"I knew her when she was Cathy Reddy," Dottie laughed. "I met her when I was buying some art at her cousin's gallery and just took to her right away. She had such a free spirit about her, and a great eye for color. I kind of adopted her."
"Adopted her?" Bodie questioned.
"Yes. You know, took her under my wing. My husband had just passed away and left me with a boatload of money. I wouldn't have to work another day in my life, unless I wanted to. I was bored. When I met Cathy, I thought she would be someone worth investing my time into. And I was right!" Dottie chuckled.
I raised my eyebrows. "How so?"
Dottie got a far-off look in her eyes. "She had such talent! Cathy just knew what colors worked together and what didn't. I discovered that one day when she was over for cocktails. She helped me rearrange my sitting room to be more comfortable and she made some suggestions for a color palette, which were spot on for my taste. When I asked her where she was trained, I realized it all just came naturally to her."
"And you encouraged her to start painting?" I prompted.
"No, that was her idea. I thought she would be a great interior designer or perhaps staging homes for sale. But she had always wanted to paint. I asked her what was stopping her. The answer was - nothing! She started painting in her free time and her pieces were magnificent, even from the beginning. I suggested that if she had an exotic-sounding name, she could charge more for her paintings. That's when she came up with the moniker Claire Rousseau," Dottie laughed again. "Boy did that tick off that little pissant of a cousin of hers."
"Seth Campbell?" I wrote in my notebook, even though I knew exactly who she was talking about.
"Lord yes. That poor man couldn't paint something interesting if his life depended on it. When he learned I had bought Claire's first painting, he lost his mind and sent me a bill for his cut. Naturally, I unleashed my lawyers on him and he backed down. Then he tried to go after Claire, but my lawyers made him back down on that too. The nerve of that jackass," Dottie's eyebrows knitted together. "He couldn't stand that she had more talent right out of the gate than he ever had."
"We understand Claire argued with someone earlier this month at the club," Bodie prompted her.
"That would be Nicole Burns."
I wrote down the name in the notebook. "And what does Ms. Burns do for a living?"
"She's a wallpaper sales person," Dottie sniffed and shook her head. "Very gauche if you ask me."
"How so?" I tilted my head.
"Nicole wanted Claire to license her artwork to the wallpaper company that she worked for so that they could have murals of Claire's artwork," Dottie shook her head. "Can you imagine? Fine art as a mural?"
"Do you know what they were arguing about?" I asked.
Dottie shook her head again. "No. I didn't hear what started the argument, just how it ended. Nicole told Claire she would be hearing from her lawyers and left the restaurant."
"And what did Claire do after that?" Bodie quizzed her.
"Nothing," Dottie shrugged. "She finished her wine, then left without even saying good-bye to the rest of us."
I thanked Dottie for her help and gave her my card, in case she remembered anything else. When we turned to leave, she stopped me: "If you'd ever like to join us for lunch and a glass of wine, come on back and be my guest. I can tell by the way Mr. Hudson was all riled up that you really got under his skin. That is entertaining to me and I would love to see it first-hand."
That made me laugh and I shook her hand. "It would be my extreme pleasure. You got a deal!”
∞∞∞
Chapter Twenty-Nine
After we left the country club, we headed towards Bellissimo to see if we could find anyone on the surveillance video that stood out. Sol met us at the front door.
"Sol! Good to see you again," I shook his hand.
"You too," he smiled at me.
"Jake Solomon, this is my partner, Bodie Davis," I introduced the men who shook hands and Sol insisted Bodie call him by his nickname.
"How can I help Flamingo Cove's finest?" Sol asked me.
"You heard about the bomb at Luke's house?" I started. Sol nodded. "It was placed inside the front door, right before we got there. We think someone must have known we were headed that way and got there ahead of us. The only place we were before that was here in the restaurant."
Sol lowered his voice and looked around. "Do you think one of my employees did it?"
I shrugged. "I don't know, but my gut tells me no. I think someone ran into us in the restaurant, or overheard our conversation, and saw an opportunity."
"You want to look at my surveillance video?" Sol didn't even wait for my answer. "Roger that! Follow me."
We followed Sol to the back of the restaurant to the kitchen entrance. The kitchen was actually open to the dining room, instead of being hidden behind swinging doors. If you looked towards the back of the restaurant, you could see through a large window into the sauté station. Presently, two men were setting up their areas for that night's rush.
Beyond the kitchen was the rest of the food prep area, where employees were chopping vegetables and rolling out dough for bread. The smell of fresh-baked bread had hit me as soon as I entered the restaurant, but now, back in the kitchen near the warmth of the ovens, the aroma was causing my mouth to water. I might have drooled a little bit. Don't judge. Their fresh-baked bread was to die for.
To the right of the prep area was a room full of huge sinks and dishwashers that were steaming away. And somewhere inside, rap music blared out of someone's phone.
"Hey!" Sol hollered into the dish room. "I told you, no music in the kitchen!"
"Heard!" Someone shouted back before they turned off the music.
Sol shook his head and turned to me. "Damn young people think the rules don't apply to them."
I lightly tapped Bodie on the arm. "Tell me about it."
My partner stuck out his tongue, then laughed as we followed Sol into his office. His tiny office was too small for him, much less all three of us.
If Dr. Jackson's office was the "after" look from an organization show on HGTV, Sol's office was the "before".
Stacks of paper covered every surface. On the desk, there were haphazard stacks about a foot tall. More paper piled up on the floor and as Sol entered his office, he tripped over one pile, scattering the paper into every corner. He kicked some paper out of his way, then pulled a stack of menus off of his chair and sat them on top of an already precarious pile of paper on his desk. It was like watching a game of paper Jenga. I wasn't even sure what we were doing here, until he unearthed a computer under all that mess.
"Sorry for the mess. It's the maid's century off," he laughed and woke up the computer. Three clicks later, he pulled up the surveillance footage from the night before, and let Bodie sit down in the chair.
We went through all the footage at regular speed, noting the moment when Luke and I arrived for dinner. No one seemed to take any particular interest in us, besides the women on the wait staff that is.
"Damn, they're just falling all over themselves," Bodie remarked.
I rolled my eyes, then froze. "Wait. Go back."
He scrolled back until I pointed at the screen. "There. That person. Do you have a view of their face?"
The person on the video, I wasn't sure if it was a man or a woman, was wearing bulky dark clothing and a baseball hat. Every time it looked like we would get a clear view of the person's face, they turned away from the camera, like they knew how to avoid getting caught on video.
Sol stood closer to me and stiffened. "He's using evasive maneuvers like we were taught in the Marines."
A cold chill went down my spine. "Do you recognize this person?"
"No. I can't even tell the gender or race," Sol pointed to the screen. "They're wearing gloves."
More cold chills. At this rate, I might stave off a hot flash today, but at what cost?
"Bodie, can you see when that person entered the re
staurant?" I asked.
He scrolled back to the moment our mystery person entered. "He or she got there before you."
"Time of exit?"
"Before you left," Bodie said. "Is it possible this isn't even related to the bombing?"
"It's possible, but given the way this individual avoided the cameras and wore a camouflaging outfit, I would say not." I turned to Sol. "Do you remember a person wearing dark clothes, gloves and a baseball hat last night? Seems like someone like that would stand out."
"Not really. We were pretty busy, and unfortunately wearing a baseball hat inside the restaurant wouldn't necessarily make someone stand out, especially if they didn't stay for dinner. We can be pretty casual around here. Sorry I can't be more of a help," he apologized. "Maybe the hostess remembers the person."
When we talked to her, she didn't even remember me coming into the restaurant, much less our mystery person. The one person she did remember? Luke. Of course.
We thanked Sol and asked him to send a copy of the footage to my police email address. I wasn't sure if our tech guys could find anything else, but it was worth a try.
We were about to get into the car when my contact at the park service called me. They found a strange illegal burn site that may be what we were looking for. He texted me the coordinates and we headed that way.
∞∞∞
When I pulled up the coordinates on my phone, it was surrounded by green on the map. Lots of green, meaning the Withlacoochee State Forest. The closest we could get the car to the site was about three miles away.
Today, I was wearing my running shoes with my "detective" outfit, but Bodie couldn't help himself. He looked at the trail ahead of us, down at his thousand dollar shoes and then back at me. "Maybe I could stay in the car?"
I shook my head. "No dice Fashionista. I've been telling you for months, you need to wear more practical shoes."
"But these look amazing with my suit!"
"Not after we trek through that," I pointed to the trail. You could barely see it from where we parked. Trees and vines created a canopy that plunged the path into shadow. Today's weather was warm for winter in Florida, about 65 degrees. I was already hot and left my jacket in the backseat. I grabbed two bottles of water and passed one to my partner. "Let's get going."