Crash Tack

by A. J. Stewart

  The judge pursued his lips as he considered this news. I didn’t take that as a good sign. He turned his attention to Allen. “Mr. Allen?” It was as simple a loaded question as I had ever heard.

  “Your honor, may I conference with my client?” asked Allen.

  The judge leaned back in his chair and looked over his glasses at Allen. “You may, Mr. Allen. In the county lockup. I am going to agree to Mr. Edwards’s request to hold the defendant in custody. Mr. Edwards, I shall demand a greater burden of proof at arraignment, and I expect such hearing to happen as promptly as possible so as to not impinge the accused’s liberty unnecessarily.”

  The judge wrapped up proceedings and Ron was escorted from the courtroom. Lenny stood and wandered out of the gallery, but I stayed seated. I was having a hard time processing what had just happened. I had expected Ron to walk from the court a free man. I wasn’t naive enough to expect the SA or the sheriff to give up the investigation, so I expected Ron to remain in the frame, but I was also confident that Lenny and I would find enough evidence ourselves to clear Ron of suspicion. But it hadn’t panned out that way. Ron was staying in the slammer, and that was unthinkable. I was roused from my rumination by a hand on my shoulder. I looked up to see Allen standing in the aisle, briefcase in hand. The courtroom was moving quickly to the next case, so I stood and followed Allen out into the hallway. Lenny was waiting for us. Allen dropped his case on a seat alongside two men waiting to appear in the court, and turned to us.

  “Did you know about the Jamaica thing?” he asked.

  Lenny nodded. “His father was a US diplomat, based in Jamaica when Ron was born. But to suggest Ron is anything other than American is ridiculous.”

  “It might be ridiculous, but it was an effective tactic today. ”

  “Will it work at an arraignment?” I asked Allen.

  “No. The state will have to show more for trial, and more than a passport for flight risk. Push comes to shove, Ron could surrender his passport.”

  “I don’t think he even has a Jamaican passport,” said Lenny.

  “That might have been useful to know, but bygones are bygones. That brings us to the future.”

  “What about it?” I asked.

  “You need to know that I can’t represent Ron if this goes to trial. I’m not a criminal trial lawyer. I can do a hearing, but defending a murder case is outside my scope. If things go beyond arraignment, you’ll need to find someone better qualified.”

  “How do we stop this going to trial?” asked Lenny.

  Allen thought for a good long moment. “Same plan. We muddy the water. The state needs to show evidence that a crime has been committed, and then that Ron committed it. The first part is usually self-evident, but that’s not the case without a body. So your job, gentlemen, is to find plenty of alternate explanations for events.”

  “Felicity Havill says Will was drinking before she went to bed,” I said.

  Allen nodded. “Good, good start. That’s what I’m talking about. If we can show that an accident is just as likely as foul play, then reasonable doubt becomes unreasonable. But there is more. Alternative hypotheses mean even if they establish that there was foul play, we show the possibility that any of the other crew could have committed the crime.”

  “How do we know who did it, though?” I asked .

  “Irrelevant, Miami. We don’t have to prove who did it, we just have to show that there is equivalent probability that anyone committed the crime.”

  “Everyone else on the yacht had means, didn’t they? So what we need is a motive for each of the rest of the crew.”

  “Precisely,” said Allen.

  “So where do we start?” I asked Lenny.

  Lenny nodded to himself and then looked at me with a firm set jaw.

  “We start at home.”

  Chapter Eleven

  THE NEXT MORNING brought one of those days that tell a South Floridian that the joyous few weeks of spring are done, and the heat is about to ramp up and fry them like a Thanksgiving turkey. The sky was as clear as Polish crystal everywhere except the eastern horizon, where the fog banks clung to the Gulf Stream that seemed to be so important right now. We drove toward it as Lenny pointed us across the bridge to Palm Beach. When he said we should start at home with our ongoing investigation to free Ron, he didn’t mean his home or my home. He meant the victim’s home. Which, as Detective Ronzoni had conveniently pointed out, was at the Biltmore.

  The Biltmore was opened in 1925 as the Alba Hotel, and during the seventies was renovated and turned into condos that overlooked the Intracoastal Waterway and now started at a cool million bucks, shooting all the way up to ten million or so. This was how the other half lived, at least in the Palm Beaches. We decided that a drop-in visit to Mrs. Colfax was the best, so Lenny parked on the street and we walked up the raised driveway. About halfway up we saw someone walk out in a sun-bleached cap and shorts. It was the walrus from Will Colfax’s boat, Drew Keck. He didn’t stop for a chat, striding away down the circular driveway in the opposite direction.

  We told the building concierge we were investigating Will Colfax’s disappearance, but neglected to mention we were investigating for the defense. A maid met us at the elevator and walked us into a plush living room with expansive views of the Intracoastal. This was not one of the cheaper pads in the building, and from our vantage point I thought I might be able to see the Gulf of Mexico. The condo was directly across the water from the Palm Beach Yacht Club, and I wondered if Mrs. Colfax had stood at the window like a New England widow when her husband’s boat came in without him. I turned away from the sparkling view and took in the room. It might have been called a condo, but the word had a different meaning from where I lived. The living room was twice the size of my entire apartment. The dining room was half as big again. It was furnished tastefully but richly, heavy fabrics that looked expensive but didn’t really say Florida to me.

  Celia Colfax came in, wearing a simple blue dress that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a red carpet. She was a little too thin, and her cheekbones pushed at her skin like they were trying to escape. The sleeveless dress showed off toned but sinewy arms, and the blue fabric played off her auburn hair in a way that suggested great consideration had gone into the color choices. She wore a string of pearls around her neck, which seemed overkill for midmorning, and which drew attention to her neck, which was the one part of her that was truly showing her age.

  “Mrs. Colfax, my name is Miami Jones, and this is my colleague, Lenny Cox.” We shook hands as she looked us over. We had independently both decided that a trip to the island demanded trousers, so we wore matching chinos. I wore a solid blue Tommy Hilfiger shirt, but Lenny had stuck with a print, a conservative number with fifties-style cars all over it. Mrs. Colfax seemed neither impressed nor unimpressed by us.

  “How can I help you, gentlemen?” She pointed toward a linen sofa and took a wing-backed reading chair for herself.

  “First of all, please let me say I am sorry about your husband,” I said. “There’s still hope.”

  “Not according to the Coast Guard. They said he’d be halfway to Africa by now.” She said it matter-of-factly, as if it were a verbatim quote, and I found it hard to believe that it was the kind of image the Coast Guard would use with the family of someone lost at sea.

  “Be that as it may, there are questions about events out there.”

  “I heard the police made an arrest.”

  “The sheriff, yes. One of Mr. Colfax’s crew, Ron Bennett. Have you met Ron?”

  She nodded as she glanced out the window toward the shining water. “Yes, once or twice. I didn’t spend a lot of time with the boat people.”

  I left the boat people reference alone. “Do you have reason to believe Mr. Bennett would wish to harm your husband?”

  She glanced back at me and raised a well-sculpted eyebrow. “I thought he seemed nice enough. Perhaps charming to a certain set. But anyone is capable of anything, are they not?
”

  I had to admit, in my experience, that this was true.

  Lenny leaned back in the sofa, looking as comfortable as he did at Longboard Kelly’s. “Celia, did you tell the sheriff that your husband was having an affair with Mandy Bennett? ”

  Mrs. Colfax’s lips tightened, and I wasn’t sure if it was the question or the use of her first name by the likes of Lenny that caused it.

  “I answered their questions.”

  “Was your husband having an affair with her?”

  She smoothed the fabric across her thigh. “Probably. William had many excursions .”

  Excursions. That was a new one.

  “Did that upset you?” Lenny continued.

  Mrs. Colfax smiled. “Mr. Cox, if you are inching your way to asking if I had a motive to make my husband disappear, the answer is no.”

  “This looks like a pretty nice place,” he said, glancing around the room.

  “I like it. And I own it, Mr. Cox. It’s in my name.”

  “Nice,” said Lenny. “What did your husband do for a living?”

  “William bought and sold things.”

  She made it sound like he was the owner of the general store in Carson City.

  “What sort of things?” I asked.

  “All sorts of things. William found companies that were in trouble, and he bought them and sold off their assets. Or he bought whatever they had left in their warehouse, and he found a buyer for those things. It really wasn’t my interest.”

  “Looks lucrative,” said Lenny.

  “Putting the right people together often is. Look, gentlemen, please excuse me, but I have a lunch date that I do not wish to be late for, so let me get to the point for you. My husband was lost at sea. Do I think Ron did it? No. I suspect he just fell overboard. But who knows? Like any successful businessman, William had enemies, both within and without. So could it have been murder? Possibly. I suspect we’ll never know. And you may find me cold, but frankly, I don’t care.” She stood and we stood with her, and she smoothed out her dress again. Then she looked us both in the eye, stopping on Lenny.

  “I loved my husband, Mr. Cox. I just wasn’t in love with him anymore. And he felt the same. But neither of us wanted a divorce, so we agreed to give each other a long leash. I know William had dalliances. I don’t care. You may find it hard to believe, but I liked my life. Unlike most marriages, I knew exactly where I stood. There were parameters, and there was absolute trust. I didn’t wish my husband harm, and I don’t benefit from it. This home is in my name, not William’s. So is our estate in Pound Ridge. And yes, William had life insurance, we both did, but with no body recovered, I can’t access it until he is declared legally dead. And how long does that take without a body? Seven years? Mr. Cox, if that were my motive, I assure you a body would have been found.”

  She lifted her chin and took a long breath. It was quite a speech, but I believed every word of it. We could and would check the facts of ownership and so on, but I expected them to be exactly as Mrs. Colfax had presented them. What I was struck by wasn’t the lack of grief over her husband. I suspected she had done her grieving many years before. What struck me was that she didn’t seem lonely. She was alone, but appeared comfortable with that fact, as if she had been that way for a long time. An image of a human heart flashed across my mind, and there I watched it slowly transform into granite, then crack and crumble and blow away on the wind. I shivered at the thought, shook it out, and offered my hand to Mrs. Colfax.

  “Ma’am, do you know Drew Keck? ”

  I saw her eyes narrow. I got the feeling she was calculating whether it was a stab in the dark, or if we had seen Drew leave the building.

  “Not really,” she said. “He did some work for my husband. Boat maintenance, I think.”

  She walked us to the door. As we were about to leave I turned to her.

  “Can I ask, what will happen to Will’s yacht?”

  “It was registered in Cyntech’s name, so I really don’t know. I certainly don’t want it.”

  “Cyntech?”

  “My husband’s company. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

  We thanked her again and took the elevator down to the lobby. The concierge wasn’t at his desk, so instead of turning to the street, Lenny headed for the rear of the building. We walked out into the sunshine along a path, by grass that might not have been putting green smooth, but it would have made a wonderful fairway. There was a swimming pool and tennis courts overlooking the Intracoastal. We wandered out to a small dock, where a collection of motor and sail boats waited patiently for someone to take them out. Several of the docks were empty, and I suspected some of the owners had moved their boats out of the water and into storage when they headed back north for the summer. One dock had the nameplate Toxic Assets . It sat open. I assumed the boat itself was still moored across at the yacht club. I looked back up at the building, a grand feature on the Palm Beach skyline, and wondered what kinds of happiness and what kinds of loneliness hid behind its gilt-stained walls.

  Lenny looked long and hard across the water back toward West Palm, and I wondered what was going through his mind.

  “You were pretty direct with Mrs. Colfax,” I said .

  He nodded. “What is it Lucas says? She’s just not my cup of tea.” He looked at his watch and then ran his hand through his hair.

  “It’s visiting time,” he said, striding toward the street.

  Chapter Twelve

  VISITING HOURS IN a jail deliver the best and worst of humanity. There are all sorts of inmates, from those who are actually innocent, or those who made mistakes they are paying for, to those who killed in cold blood, and everything in between. And there are all sorts of visitors. Attorneys, some who wear their cases on their sleeves, others who are jaded and can’t remember their clients’ names. There are wives and girlfriends who blame everyone: the system, the guards and especially the inmate they are visiting. And there are families, torn apart but holding together as best they can, small children who get to see Daddy once a week or once a month, or maybe less if it’s a federal prison and the family lives in another state. Entering the visiting area is like going through airport security in the worst airport in the country. The guards eye everyone with suspicion, their firm-set jaws and pinched brows setting the tone for the whole place. I felt like a criminal just for being there, and it wasn’t a feeling I enjoyed one bit. We sat and waited for Ron to be led in. He was still in a section with other men yet to go to trial, so not the worst population, but not a church picnic either. The fact was that all of the men in with Ron were yet to be tried, but when they were, most of them would be found guilty, because most of them were.

  Ron looked like he had developed kidney disease. He shuffled in, the gray pallor of his face matching the institutional walls. He was in need of a shave, and his hair looked like it had been combed with his fingers. That was my method, and it suited me well, but then I had spent the majority of my life underneath a ball cap or a football helmet. Ron’s grooming was of a higher standard altogether, and it pained me to see him that way. He sat with a forced smile and as he did a flicker of light came into his eyes. I looked around me and watched similar embers spark around the room. Hard-looking men walked in, but the façade was broken by the sight of loved ones. The guys who had little kids were the best and worst. Their metamorphoses were complete, and more than one broke into tears. It was beautiful, and tragic, and I wondered what the men must think as they transformed back, led away into the concrete bowels of the prison, to become hard again.

  “How’s digs?” Lenny smiled.

  “Could be better, could be worse,” Ron replied.

  “How’s the food?”

  “Worse than your cooking.”

  Lenny grimaced.

  “We’re gonna get you out,” I said. It sounded hollow and false, as if I didn’t have anything better to say. Fact was, I didn’t. I wasn’t sure if I should get to the point, or tiptoe around it. Fortunately I had Le
nny.

  “Allen says they’ll have to prove a case at the next hearing, and our job is to muddy the water.”

  “Show it was an accident,” said Ron.

  “Right. ”

  “Or show one of the other crew could have done it,” I added. Lenny turned slowly and creased his brow at me.

  “I don’t like that idea,” said Ron. “Those people are my friends. I know they didn’t do any such thing. This is just a horrible, horrible accident.”

  “Understood, but MJ’s right,” said Lenny. “We’re not going to try to frame anyone, just show that it is possible someone, anyone could have done it.”

  “Alternative hypotheses, Allen called it,” I added, helpfully.

  Ron nodded. “What do you need from me?”

  “Background. Who are the crew, how they know the deceased.”

  “Okay, I can do that.” I noticed that doing something proactive had given Ron some color, and I realized that for most people tied up in the legal system the battle wasn’t just against the system—it was a battle against hopelessness.

  “Start with Felicity Havill. She’s the only one we’ve spoken to so far.”

  “Nice girl. She came to the club to learn to sail, and did. I think she met Will at the club, and he invited her onto his boat.”

  “They involved in any way?” asked Lenny.

  “Will didn’t mind having pretty girls crew his boat, but there’s nothing wrong with that. I didn’t mind crewing alongside them. But no, I wasn’t aware of anything more.”

  “Okay. Next?”

  “There’s Amy. Amy Artiz. She’s a lovely girl too. She’s actually a pro sailor. Even done an around-the-world race, did you know? She teaches at the club.”

  “How did she know Will?”

  “Again, just through the club, I think.”

  “More eye candy? ”

  “Knowing Will, probably. But there was more to it as well. This was an ocean race, and while it’s not the wildest part of the ocean, you need to take it seriously. Amy was experienced, and I think that mattered to Will.”