I made a disgusted sound. “At the Cove she’s a minnow in a tank of cichlids and parrot fish.”
“Is she slow?”
“Not at all. If I had to guess I’d say she’s of average or above-average intelligence. But she’s a shy, quiet woman, and in a country of shouters quiet people are often thought slow.”
“I don’t know about that, but she was confused as hell for the interview. It was like only half of her was there. Hell, you saw her. It was like she was miles away.”
José had described Mel in almost the exact same words. What had been going on in the Dick household in the weeks before Mel’s murder?
“Anita had a reason to be distracted, Sheriff. Her husband was just murdered.”
“It was more than that, and I gotta consider if it’s selective confusion. She told me that after Mel left her at the pub, she went home alone. Mel returned sometime around eleven or twelve—she’s fuzzy on the time—and they get into a big argument. He left in his cart and that was the last she saw of him.”
“Did she say what the argument was about?”
“Not at first, and when she did admit to knowing about the girlfriend, she was still pretty short on details. That woman is hiding something.”
“How did she find out that Mel was dead?”
Spooner gave me a look. I feared I’d stepped over some invisible boundary, but then he leaned back in his chair. “It’s quite a story, but I don’t buy it for a second. Anita claimed that someone left a message on Mrs. Sable’s voice mail this morning in which the caller referred to Mel’s murder.”
“And Anita overheard the message—sounds reasonable enough to me.”
Spooner scowled. “Maybe, but Mrs. Dick didn’t recognize the caller’s voice, couldn’t even say if the voice had been male or female. I had Berry check with Mrs. Sable and at first she told him there weren’t any messages on her machine. Then a few hours later she called back and said she may have accidentally deleted her phone messages, so there could have been a message after all.”
“That’s a little twisted,” I admitted, “but Anita’s story could still be legit.”
“Or Mrs. Sable wants to help a friend,” Spooner said.
“Fairley doesn’t impress me as the type who’d lie to the police, but who knows?” Fairley had made a point of telling me that she was loyal to her friends—had she been trying to tell me something? I felt the sheriff’s eyes on me. I knew that look well enough. It was the way a prospective buyer might appraise a used car. It seemed like a good deal and was cheap enough, but what about the hidden costs? There were always hidden costs.
“I need your help,” he said.
“Uh, Mystic Cove Security will assist GCSO in any way we can.”
“No, I need your help, you personally. If I have the full measure of your boss, Jud Richt—and I believe I do—he’s going to be a royal pain in my ass. He won’t go as far as obstructing justice, but he’ll push it as far as he can.”
I had to smile. “Richt has already warned me not to be overly helpful with the GCSO.”
“He strikes quick.” Spooner said.
“But Richt isn’t the reason you’re asking for my help. At least not the only reason.”
“No,” Spooner admitted. “Last week Mel Dick called me to request a meeting. He refused to say what it was about but I agreed to meet with him. In my dealings with Dick, I’ve learned it’s easier to give him what he wants, if at all possible. So we made an appointment for the next day, but he doesn’t show. I just assumed he’d changed his mind and hadn’t bothered to cancel.”
“A reasonable assumption. Mel Dick wasn’t exactly considerate.”
“I forgot about it until yesterday morning when I came into work to find this voice mail waiting for me.”
Spooner put his phone on speaker and pressed a button. A shiver rolled down my spine as Mel Dick’s voice filled the office. It was definitely Mel, but he sounded different. He was slurring his words, as if his mouth were full of mashed potatoes. The message was brief—less than a minute—and much of it incomprehensible, though there was a patch near the end that was clear. I asked Spooner for a replay, and then I was sure.
“You heard it,” Spooner said.
“It’s...it’s right before he hangs up. Mel Dick says, ‘There’s a murderer among us. There’s a killer in the Cove.’”
Chapter Six
Ignorance and Innocence Play Together
I grimaced. Cop coffee was even worse than I remembered, and what I remembered was pretty bad. Spooner pushed additional packets of creamer my way, but I pushed them back. I had already added a ton of creamer, and the stuff was still the color of dirt. Yet Spooner drank his black and, if not with pleasure, then at least tolerance. I did the same.
“So Mel was proven right. There is a murderer in the Cove. What does Berry make of it?”
Spooner laughed without mirth. “Oh, Berry doesn’t see it that way. He’s certain the murder was a botched robbery. Some meth monster snuck into the Cove with robbery on his mind. Berry’s not a bad cop, but he does suffer from a serious lack of imagination.”
“How does he account for Mel’s message?”
“The neighborhood canvas revealed that our buddy Mel has been acting pretty strange lately—some folks even called it crazy.”
“Jesse Potts mentioned that Mel had been acting...weird lately.”
“Huh—that wasn’t in his statement. But Berry thinks Mel’s midnight message is more of the same. Delusional talk from a senile old man.”
“Any evidence to support Berry’s theory of the murder?”
“Nope,” Spooner said. “Like you observed, there were no defensive wounds or posturing, no signs of struggle. Cash and credit cards were still in Dick’s wallet. ‘’’Course Berry argues that the killer was interrupted before he could clean out the wallet.”
“I guess it’s possible.”
Spooner gave me a look and we laughed. He pointed to my empty cup and I nodded. “The problem is Berry has decided the perp is an addled crackhead and nothing this side of hell is gonna change his mind.”
“A common mistake.”
“I got a bad feeling about this case, Addie.” Spooner’s chair squeaked as he shifted in it. “There’s a lot against us, most of all Mel Dick himself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mel had a knack for shoving his nose into other people’s business. He liked to think he was a real reporter but he was just a nasty little piggy who messed in people’s business. I’ve read that newspaper of his and those nasty letters to the editor he’s always sending to the Newnansville Sun. In a lot of ways he was a man begging to be murdered.”
“You got Mel pegged. He always styled himself as a journalist. Say, do you think it’s possible the old guy stumbled onto a real story?”
“Such as a murderer hiding out in the Cove?”
“It sounds ridiculous when you say it that way, but it’s possible Mel uncovered a secret, a secret worthy of murder.”
“It’s possible,” Spooner said, but his tone suggested it was more likely that monkeys would fly.
I wasn’t sure I agreed with him. The sheriff saw Mel’s irascible personality as an obstacle to solving his murder. It just might be the key that would unlock the mystery. Mel Dick was just smart enough to dig up somebody’s secret, but too arrogant to see the danger until it was too late.
“It’s a lot to take in,” I said. “A cryptic midnight message left by an intrepid amateur reporter who later turns up dead. Now I understand why you dropped by the G and G last night.”
A little smile and Spooner said, “Oh, you know about that, do you?”
“We’re not good at keeping secrets in the Cove.”
“You’re wrong there. Somebody in Mystic Cove is damn good at keep
ing a secret.”
“So how did you wind up at the G and G last night?”
“Like I said, yesterday morning I got Mel’s message. Right away, I called the old man’s house, but nobody answered. I left a message, but I still got that nagging feeling that something’s wrong. You know the feeling?”
“Sure.” It was a feeling every police knew and dared not ignore, if she wanted to stay alive, that was.
“I sent Deputy Berry to Dick’s house, but nobody’s home on Admiral Street. Next stop was Mel’s office. Same story—nobody answered. At this point Berry checked in with me. I could tell he was sick of the wild-goose chase I sent him on so I told him to let it go.”
“But you couldn’t let it go.”
“No, I couldn’t let it go. On my way home I dropped by the Cove—I had to see Dick with my own eyes, just to be sure. You know,” he said, giving me a nasty look, “I had to push your guard pretty hard to get him to let me inside Windbound Harbor. I kept telling him this was official business and not a social call. By the time I got to Dick’s house I was either too late or too early. Nobody home.
“Next I decided to check Mel’s office. I was on my way there when I spotted the cruisers in front of the G and G. The OSCO deputy told me they had sent a cruiser to Dick’s home. The deputy had found Anita at home, but no Mel. There was nothing more to be done. Barracas refused to press charges and there’d been no damages. I took a stab at talking to some witnesses, but your friend Tyler Andrews fixed that.”
“Sorry.”
“By then, I was done—put a fork in me. I had chased Mel Dick all day long with nothing to show for it. Then this morning I found out that Dick was dead. Sometime between him leaving the restaurant and you finding him in that clearing, somebody put a bullet in Mel Dick’s head.”
“And right now Anita’s your prime suspect.”
“At the top of the list. She wouldn’t be the first wife to shoot her husband in a jealous rage.”
“Nor the last, but don’t forget about Gigi Tajani. Girlfriends are also prone to jealous rages.” Since we were now partners of a sort I told Spooner about my conversation with José Barracas. “According to José, Gigi and Mel were on the outs.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep an open mind about suspects.” Spooner drank coffee and cupped his chin in his hand. “But you know, when I was in the Dick house today, I got a really bad feeling. Most homes reflect the people who live in it, but this place was different. Too cold and too quiet and too full of Dick, as if his ego was so big it left room for nothing else.” He looked at me. “There was nothing of Anita in that house. Living like that would wear a person down.”
“I can’t see Anita putting a gun against her husband’s head and pulling the trigger.”
Spooner snorted. “She practically confessed.”
“Like hell!”
“She denies shooting Mel and then admits that she wanted to—that’s edging pretty close to an unqualified confession.”
“Close, but no bull’s-eye. All Anita said was that all wives think about murdering their husbands. What’s the big deal?” Now Spooner looked at me as if I were covered in pink polka dots. “If you don’t believe me, check with your wife.”
“What do you know about it?” He pointed at my unadorned left hand.
“True, I’m not married. I’m also not a murderer, but I can think like one,” I said, tapping my forehead. Spooner cracked a smile, and I did the same. “Say, have you got time of death yet?”
“I haven’t got shit,” Spooner said, his face darkening. This man was changeable as the Florida weather. “Coroner Blanding hasn’t even started the autopsy, though he promised to get on it tonight. That’s why I’m still here.” The morgue was in the same sixties-era compound as the sheriff’s office.
So the murder investigation was in limbo until Coroner Blanding got his ass in gear. The coroner had a piss-poor reputation among law enforcement. Some years earlier a body had been pulled from Okpulo Lake. Blanding determined cause of death as an accidental drowning, somehow missing the bullet hole in the man’s neck. I mentioned the case to Spooner.
“That was our last murder in Grubber County, and unfortunately you got your facts right.”
“Can’t someone else perform the autopsy? Dolores Rio seems competent.”
“She is and I suggested that to Blanding but he refused to assign the autopsy to Dr. Rio. He said a murder case requires his particular expertise, whatever that is. It’s a shame. Dolores Rio is smart and a real pathologist.”
“And Blanding isn’t?” Maryland had medical examiners. My experience with coroners was limited to the crime novels I’d devoured as a kid.
“Blanding’s an old-fashioned general practitioner.” Spooner’s twisted grin deepened—rictus sardonicus. “I suppose we should be grateful he’s an M.D.”
“You’re kidding!”
Spooner awful smile deepened. “Having a medical degree is not a job requirement for Grubber County coroner.”
“So I could be coroner then.”
“Sure, if you can charm enough people to vote for you. But given your personality, I think that’s a long shot.”
“No argument here.”
“It’s a bad system. Forensic pathology is a complex field, and Blanding was always more politician than doctor. For the life of me I can’t figure why he wants this case. Rio performs ninety-nine percent of the autopsies. Blanding is a slippery bastard, but I’m damned if I can figure what he’s up to.”
“You seriously think Blanding has an agenda in all this?”
“I don’t know what I think. Like I said, I’m spooked. It’s not even twenty-four hours since Dick’s death and I already feel like I’ve run into a brick wall. You see why I need your help? You know these Cove people—I don’t. I need you to keep your eyes and ears open. Keep me informed of anything out of the ordinary. Can you do that for me, Addie? Will you?”
There were a thousand reasons to say no. I was putting my shitty job at risk and I had my hands full with Pop. It was easy to step into the muck but not so easy stepping out.
“We got a deal?” Spooner offered his hand.
I stared at his outstretched hand and wondered what this man really wanted of me. It was never as simple as their promises. Did Spooner want a partner, a patsy, or something else altogether? The whole thing felt suddenly unreal, almost a dream. But after the emptiness of the past few years, a dream didn’t seem so bad.
I shook his hand.
Then I noticed the time. If I wanted to catch the guys at Eddie’s I needed to haul ass.
Spooner gulped the dregs of his noxious brew and pushed back his chair. “I may as well hit the road too.”
While we walked, Spooner vented about Blanding. I got his frustration, or thought I did. He longed to search Anita’s house and hoped the autopsy would give him probable cause. Once outside, we paused, the cold shocking both of us. Suddenly vulnerable fingers buttoned and zipped and then jammed into pockets.
“We’ll talk tomorrow then,” I said, already shivering. It was another clear night, the stars scattered like cut glass in the darkened sky.
“I’ll let you know when I get that search warrant,” Spooner said.
“You’re pretty confident.”
“There is one piece of information I didn’t mention earlier. Given his deep admiration for the second amendment, I wasn’t surprised to discover that Mel Dick had a permit for a handgun, a thirty-eight special to be specific.”
“A thirty-eight special, huh?” I was no expert by any stretch, but the hole in Mel’s head was consistent with a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight special.
“Exactly,” Spooner smiled, reading my face. “I’m pinning my hopes on the bullet buried in Mel Dick’s brain. If it’s not damaged too badly and the lab can identify it as b
eing from a thirty-eight, I got my search warrant. And if we find the gun...”
He didn’t need to finish. If the gun was found in her possession, it would go hard on Anita Dick.
* * *
Like always the crew was huddled in the shabby back room inexplicably called the banquet hall. I got a couple of pitchers and headed back. It was a small but promising group. There was Tyler of course, and Jesse Potts, but I was most excited to see Billy Blake and Oscar Wall, both of whom regularly worked Admiral Street.
“Just in time!” Billy said, taking control of the pitchers. Oscar gave Billy a sour look and shook his head. The two septuagenarians loathed one another.
We got the small talk out of the way and turned to the main event: murder.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Billy said with an evil grin, “it was about time somebody killed Mel Dick.”
“Stupid talk,” Oscar muttered, the lilt of the Caribbean in his voice. I never could figure why Oscar came to these drinking sessions. He drank little and spoke even less.
“Why is it stupid?” Billy asked, taking the bait.
Oscar rolled his eyes. “It’s stupid for a man to say he’s happy a murdered man is dead.”
“Are you saying I killed Mel Dick?” Billy’s slight frame bristled.
Oscar shrugged and sipped his beer. “I’m just saying it’s a stupid thing to say. It’s obvious to any fool that one of Mel’s friends killed him.”
Billy slapped the table. “Mel Dick didn’t have any friends.”
“You’re wrong there,” Tyler said over raucous laughter. “Busy Rhodes came to see the chief and me today and, according to Busy, her and Mel were bosom buddies.”
“Friends with benefits?” Billy said. Another burst of laughter. Billy topped off everybody’s glass, even though only his needed it.
“Come on, guys,” I said. The meeting I’d had such hopes for was quickly deteriorating into a drunken bitch fest. “This is serious.”
“None of this—” Billy pounded the table for emphasis, “—not a damn bit of it is any of our business.” A rumble of assent.
Murder in Mystic Cove Page 6