The Dollar-a-Year Detective

by William Wells

  “That’s a confession booth, aka confessional. A concession booth is where they sell beer and hot dogs at Wrigley. When’s the last time you were in a church?”

  “Not since my mother’s funeral service. As I was saying before being so rudely interrupted, the priest was found by a cleaning lady in whatever that box is called, shot three times in the chest. Clearly by someone in the opposite side, given the three bullet holes in the partition.”

  “Hhmm,” Stoney said. “So if the doer had no sins to confess on the way in, he definitely did on the way out. Any leads?”

  “The Trib story notes that the good father had been accused of sexually abusing altar boys in a parish in South Dakota. Never charged, but the church paid the families an undisclosed amount of hush money.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Eight years. Jacoby did a year in one of those rehab centers the church runs, this one in Arizona, and had been at Saint Mary’s ever since.”

  “I thought the church didn’t give pedophiles another shot,” Stoney said. “Maybe, due to the shortage of men of the cloth, not to mention nuns, they’re changing that.”

  “Remember the case in Joliet some years ago? An altar boy grew up, did a stint in the Marine Corps, came home and gutted his former parish priest with a combat knife? Claimed the priest had abused him.”

  “Yeah,” Stoney said. “So maybe a trip to South Dakota is in order.”

  “If nothing else, we could see Mount Rushmore,” Delahanty said.

  Without having been to Mount Rushmore, my uninformed opinion is, you’ve been there once, you’ve been there one too many times. But maybe I’m wrong about that. At any rate, I didn’t have to head to the Black Hills of South Dakota to get back to the mystery of the Hendersons’ deaths.

  What I know so far, or think I know, is that the Henderson murders are apparently not related to Larry’s connection to the Manatee National Bank or to Marion’s activities as an environmentalist. I realize that I haven’t dug very deeply into their personal lives after thinking I’d solved the case.

  I decide to start with Larry. During the next week I reinterview the Hendersons’ neighbors and an updated list of Larry’s friends provided by Tom Henderson, and also the pastor at the church the Hendersons regularly attended. Larry and Marion helped build Habitat for Humanity houses. He did not serve in the military, attended weekly Kiwanis Club meetings, was active in the University of Florida alumni organization, liked to fish, and coached his son Nathan’s Little League team.

  Well, that was new information. I guess Tom forgot to put that team on the list the first time around.

  And, as it turned out, it was while interviewing that team’s assistant coach, a man named Hector Diaz, that I learned the father of one of the players had threatened Larry for not playing his son enough.

  “We didn’t take the threat seriously,” Hector tells me when I visit him at the auto body shop he owns in Fort Myers. “When you get involved in youth sports, that kind of thing isn’t unusual. Some parents become irate if they think their son or daughter is spending too much time on the bench during baseball or basketball games or soccer matches. The kids don’t seem to mind, it’s the parents. It makes you sorry you took a coaching job.”

  “Who’s the father?” I ask Hector as we stand beside a Toyota Celica that’s been involved in an accident.

  “A guy named Alex Kramer. He’s a fishing guide.”

  “What was the threat?”

  “After one of our games, Kramer approached Larry in the parking lot. I was just getting into my truck nearby. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he was shouting and poking his finger into Larry’s chest. Later Larry told me that Kramer said Larry was favoring his own son over Kramer’s, they both played center field, and that Larry would regret it if he didn’t give his kid equal playing time.”

  “Was that true, about the playing time?”

  “I don’t really know. I mainly work with the pitchers and catchers and organize the schedule. I don’t pay much attention to how often other players are rotated.”

  “Where can I find Kramer?”

  “I don’t know where he lives, but he keeps his boat at Turtle Key Marina. It’s a Boston Whaler, I think.”

  40.

  Captain Kramer

  Turtle Key Marina is located in Cape Coral, a city just west of Fort Myers on the gulf. The marina’s main building is a corrugated-metal Quonset-type structure. There is a large shed for inside boat storage and four long docks. There is something familiar about this marina, but I don’t know why. I’ve never been here and I don’t know anyone who keeps a boat here.

  I enter the building and ask a woman who is stocking shelves with marine motor oil where I can find Alex Kramer.

  “Captain Kramer’s out on a morning charter,” she tells me. “Should be back about one.” She looks at the counter and adds, “His card’s over there if you want to book a charter.”

  That’s two hours from now. I thank her, take one of the business cards, and drive back to Fort Myers Beach to see Cubby Cullen.

  “Sounds promising,” Cubby says when I tell him about Kramer and the threat. “I suppose you could take over as coach of that team, bench Kramer’s kid, and see what he does.”

  He’s smiling when he says that—not serious.

  “What are you really going to do, Jack?”

  I take Kramer’s card out of my pocket and put it on Cubby’s desk. The card has a drawing of a tarpon and Kramer’s name and contact info.

  “I think I’ll do some fishing.”

  That night Marisa prepares one of her gourmet meals for me and I tell her the latest about the case.

  “Wasn’t there something like that involving cheerleading?”

  I’d read about that case. “A woman in Texas tried to hire a hit man to kill the mother of her daughter’s junior high school cheerleading rival. The man she tried to hire turned her in.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “As I recall, she got ten years in prison but only served six months, with the rest on probation. She also had to pay a ton of cash to the family to settle a civil suit.”

  “I remember that,” Marisa says. “There was a movie about the case starring Holly Hunter.”

  “Yeah, and a TV movie and a novel.”

  “I saw the movie but didn’t read the book.”

  Note to self: don’t go into the book publishing business.

  The next morning, I call the number on Kramer’s business card. He answers on the fourth ring.

  “Captain Kramer,” he says. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’d like to book a fishing trip,” I tell him.

  “Sure. I’m fishing the flats with a customer right now. Let me check my book.”

  He’s gone for a minute or two, then says, “I’m pretty busy this time of year, but I had a cancellation for Wednesday morning, if that works.”

  “Okay. What time?”

  “Meet me at the marina at seven.”

  I was afraid of that.

  “Got anything in the afternoon?”

  “No, that’s it for the next two weeks.”

  “Okay then, Wednesday morning it is. How’re they biting?”

  “Getting some good snook, redfish, and snapper,” he says.

  There’s a pause, then he says, “Gotta go, customer just hooked something big.”

  Just like I hope to do on Wednesday.

  I pull into the marina at ten to seven. I witnessed the eastern sunrise on the way over, something I haven’t seen since my Marine Corps days. Okay, more recently than that, but I hope to not see it again anytime soon.

  I park and enter the marina building. The same woman is standing behind the counter, ringing up a purchase for a male customer. A man is scooping minnows out of a large aeration tank. He is tall and sinewy, built like a rodeo cowboy, and wearing a baseball cap that says “Rapala,” a brand of fishing lures, a black tee shirt, jeans, and worn boat shoes. He has sunglass
es pushed up on top of the hat and is deeply tanned on his face, neck, and arms.

  I walk over and say, “Captain Kramer?”

  He nods at me. “The snapper were biting on these yesterday. We’ll take some leeches and earthworms along too and go to lures if those don’t produce.”

  I offer my hand and say, “Jack Starkey.”

  “Figured that,” he answers, returning the handshake. He finishes with the minnows, takes two containers out of a cooler on the wall near the counter, and says to the woman, “On my account, Alice.”

  “Good luck, Alex,” she answers as she turns to stack cigarettes in a rack behind the counter.

  I follow Kramer outside and down onto one of the docks. He steps aboard a Boston Whaler skiff with a Yamaha outboard, puts the minnow bucket and containers onto the deck, and offers me a hand. Do I look too old to make my own way onto a boat?

  Kramer appears to be about my same age, late forties, but I outweigh him by maybe thirty pounds, so I don’t take his offer of help as an insult. I step aboard without help as he attends to the mooring lines, sits in the captain’s chair, starts the outboard, pulls away from the dock, and says, “We’ll try some spots I know in Matlacha Pass that were hitting yesterday, and then maybe go into the river, depending.”

  I take the chair beside him and say, “You know best, Captain.”

  He looks at me and says, “I believe that I do—at least out here on the saltwater.”

  I’d asked Cubby to have someone run a background check on Kramer: married, one son, some arrests over the years for fighting in bars, with fines but no jail time, no felonies. Graduated from Cape Coral High School, did a stint in the Coast Guard, serving in Alaska and Washington State. Active in the American Legion and a dues-paying member of the NRA.

  The report didn’t say “cold-blooded killer.” That was up to me to fill in.

  We’re drifting in the pass, casting minnows toward mangroves. When Kramer took the poles out of a locker under a seat I saw a shotgun in there. Not unusual to have a weapon on a boat. If it had been a .22-caliber semiauto pistol with a suppressor on the barrel, it might have given me pause. I was wearing my S&W in a belt holster hidden by my untucked tee shirt.

  “You live down here, or just visiting?” he asks.

  “I was a commodities trader in Chicago,” I answer. “Got tired of the stress so I moved to Fort Myers Beach, where I own a bar.”

  “Which one? Been in most of them, if not all.”

  He has been in The Drunken Parrot, he says, but isn’t a regular or I’d have recognized him.

  He hooks a nice redfish, boats it, and asks, “Keep or catch and release?”

  “I’ll keep that one.”

  I’m thinking of how Marisa will prepare it for us. He puts it in an ice cooler.

  The charter runs from seven to eleven. We fish the pass and then the Caloosahatchee River and together boat four more redfish, a snook, and a sheepshead, switching to leeches in the river. I only need the one snapper for dinner and tell Kramer he can keep any of the rest he wants.

  “Thanks, but I don’t like fish,” he says. “I’m strictly meat and potatoes and fried chicken.” So they are all released.

  He sees me giving him a look—a fishing guide who doesn’t like fish?—and adds, “Don’t have to like ’em to know how to catch ’em.”

  Back at the marina, Kramer cleans my redfish at a metal table on the dock, puts the fillets in a plastic bag with ice, and we go to the marina building, where I pay him his fee of $300 plus a $20 tip because of the good catch.

  “Just give me a call if you want to go out again,” he says, “and tell your friends.”

  I assure him I will, but maybe the next time I see him it won’t be to fish, it will be to arrest him for the murder of Larry and Marion Henderson. I didn’t get a sense of whether he could or could not be the killer during the fishing trip. There is no “look” for someone like that. When interviewed by police, the neighbors of a serial killer with bodies buried in the basement or under the tulips inevitably say, “He seemed like such a nice young man. Always polite and kind to animals and children.”

  If Kramer doesn’t have an alibi for the evening of the Henderson murders, that is only the vaguest of circumstantial evidence. And how did he know that the couple would be out on their boat, and where to find them?

  Maybe he’ll have a bout of conscience and walk into the police station and confess.

  41.

  Game Day

  It is an unspoken understanding between Hector Diaz and me that I am following up on his comments about Alex Kramer when I call to ask the day and time of the team’s next game.

  The Fort Myers area Little League teams are named for MLB clubs. Diaz’s Marlins were playing the Tampa Bay Rays on Saturday morning at a field near a small airport named Page Field. The Marlins had been given a good spanking by the Cubs during their last game, Diaz told me. Apparently the success of the big club has a trickle-down effect.

  I arrive at the ballpark after the game has started, spot Kramer sitting in the bleachers, and take the seat beside him.

  “You got a boy on the Tampa Bay Rays?” he asks me. He’s drinking a can of Rolling Rock.

  I nod toward the Tampa Bay Ray’s bench and say, “That’s my nephew, Sam. His father couldn’t make it today.”

  “My boy Teddy’s in center field.”

  So Diaz, who just inherited the head coaching job, now is playing the boy. Wise move. Teddy is short and pudgy. When it’s time for his team to bat, he takes a very long time to make it to the bench.

  We watch the game for a while. I notice that there is a wooden shed behind the bleachers selling food and ask Kramer if I can get him a hot dog. He says sure, and I bring back two dogs and a diet root beer for me. As we’re munching, I say, “You know, my brother, Sam’s dad, is aggravated about the playing time Sam’s getting.”

  Bait’s in the water. Will Kramer bite?

  “That’s a bitch,” he says. “That coach should be horsewhipped.”

  “Anything like that ever happen on your team?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Nah, our coach is pretty good about that.”

  Meaning Hector Diaz—now that Larry Henderson is out of the way? But how to prove that? I’m going to ask Hector to bench Kramer’s kid to see if Kramer makes a run at him, in the way that I got Lance Porter to assassinate Mitchell Gordon’s My Pillows.

  A high fly ball is hit toward center field. Teddy Kramer stares up at it and stands transfixed, as if watching a comet that has nothing to do with him. The left fielder runs hard and catches the ball as it descends about ten feet from Teddy.

  “He lost it in the sun,” Kramer says.

  The sky is overcast with a thick layer of low-hanging grey clouds. By the end of the seventh inning, the Marlins are ahead, twelve runs to none. The umpire invokes a statute-of-limitations rule and ends the game.

  THE NEXT morning, while running along the beach, I remember that something had struck me about Turtle Key Marina, but I still don’t know why. Kramer works his guide business out of the marina and he is now my main suspect.

  After my run, I drive straight to Fort Myers Beach PD headquarters, get the murder book from the property clerk, and head for the conference room.

  I encounter Cubby in the hallway. “Are you going undercover as a distance runner?” he asks.

  I’m wearing a sweat-drenched tee shirt, shorts, and running shoes. “I didn’t know you have a dress code.”

  “We don’t, but we do have a smell code, and you just flunked it.”

  Ignoring that, I hold up the murder book and say, “There may be something in here I’ve overlooked.”

  “Get to it, then, but I’d suggest a shower and change of clothes as next on your to-do list.”

  I nod and sit in the conference room leafing through the book. Everything is familiar. But then, in one of the Coast Guard reports, I see that the Hendersons kept their sailboat, the Joie de Vivre, at Turtle Key Ma
rina. That’s why it seemed familiar. I guess Harlan Boyd was already out the door when he said he’d check out where the Hendersons kept the boat, and if anyone had seen anything the night they were killed. That’s why we never heard any more about this.

  I’ve already established a connection between Kramer and Larry Henderson from the baseball team. But now I see that there is a way Kramer could have known that the Hendersons were going sailing on the night they were murdered. He might have followed them to Pine Island Sound from the marina, or maybe he was out there with a charter, spotted the boat, told his customer they had to cut the trip short for some invented reason, and gone back to the sound alone.

  I call the marina on my cell phone from the conference room. A woman answers who is probably the one I saw manning the counter. I identify myself as a detective, tell her I’m pursuing an unspecified investigation, and ask if the marina keeps a log of the comings and goings of the boats docked there.

  “No, we don’t do that,” she tells me. “If a boat is in dry storage, the owner calls to tell us to put it in the water. If it’s kept at the dock, the owners just take it out. Either way, we don’t keep a record.”

  I thank her and end the call.

  Sometimes, if you have no solid evidence on a suspect, you can get him to make a mistake by shaking him up. I go back to my boat, find Kramer’s business card, and dial his number after entering the code that blocks my number on his caller ID.

  “This is Alex Kramer,” he says when answering on the first ring. “How can I help you?”

  “I know what you did, Alex,” I tell him, disguising my voice as best I can.

  “Pardon me?”

  “I know you killed Lawrence and Marion Henderson.”

  “Who the hell is this?” Kramer demands.

  “Your worst nightmare,” I answer. I think a character in a movie I saw said that.

  “You know nothing like that. If you did, you’d have gone to the police.”

  Which isn’t a denial. “I didn’t because I think we can settle this man-to-man.”

  “Whataya think you know?”

  “I know that you went out on Pine Island Sound, tracked down the Hendersons on their sailboat, went aboard, and shot them each once in the head with a .22-caliber pistol.”