“So, there’s nothing to it?”
Poe’s eyes grew wide, the ticking even more noticeable now. “You’re goddamn right there’s nothing to it.” He slammed a palm against the glass, and the guard stepped forward, his hand moving toward the baton on his belt.
I waved off the guard, indicating everything was okay.
“Relax, Jeffrey or he’ll take you back to your cell.” He shifted his eyes toward the guard and raised a palm to show he meant no harm. The guard shuffled back to his spot by the door.
“It happened at a fraternity party in college. A couple of drunks got into a fight, and one of them hit the other with a beer bottle. I tried to break it up and got into the middle of a free-for-all.” Poe blinked twice trying to stop the tick that had moved into high gear.
“The police came and arrested everyone, and I was initially charged with the others. It was a big mistake and they eventually dropped the charge after hearing from all the witnesses. I can’t believe they dredged up that old story.”
I shrugged my shoulders as if to say, what do you expect? “I’m glad you cleared that up. I’ll pass it along to Wannaker and he’ll make sure it doesn’t pop up in any more stories.”
“Is there anything else?” Poe asked.
“I’m planning to attend tomorrow night’s special city commission meeting.”
“What for?” For the first time his eyes flickered with life.
“Henderson seems to think Marrano called the meeting because he’d changed his mind about the Matanzas Bay project. I know there’s probably nothing to it, but I’d like to hear what they have to say.”
Poe stared through the glass as though waiting for me to continue, to offer him some possibility of hope. When I didn’t add anything, he sighed deeply and let his forehead fall against the glass again.
TWENTY-FIVE
The next morning I spent some time in the office trying to whittle down the stack of skip traces piling up. Charla was at the county courthouse prowling through public records on a couple of cases, while I held down the fort. I made good progress, working steadily for three hours, before taking a break to pour myself another cup of coffee. That’s when the phone rang.
“Mitchell Investigative Services.”
“Shit, son, that sounds real official.”
“Hello, Jack. One day you need to get out here and I‘ll show you how a real investigative agency works.”
Fuller brayed into my ear. “You need to take that routine on the road, boy.”
“Have anything new for me?”
“Like I told you before, Henderson left the twins with his aunt and before the year was out the kids were up for adoption. He apparently signed them over to a shyster by the name of Sternwald. Lester Sternwald. At one time, Sternwald was legit, although small time. He handled adoption cases, but somewhere along the line he ran up a huge gambling debt. The bookies threatened to realign his spine and he decided to make some quick money with an adoption scam.”
“Hmm. I take it he didn’t get away with it.”
“Ended up wearing a state-issued jumpsuit.”
“So, what happened to Henderson’s kids?”
“It looks like his daughter, Amelia Faye was her name on the birth certificate, was adopted by a couple in the area.”
“And the son?”
“Christopher Henderson didn’t make it. A note in the file said Sternwald reported the boy died of …” I heard pages being turned, “… complications from scarlet fever when he was eighteen months old.”
I still found it hard to believe Henderson cast away his children like giving his old clothes to Good Will. “Henderson doesn’t strike me as that kind of person,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“You have to meet him to understand. He’s a charming old guy filled with personality. Great storyteller. The kind of guy you’d want to have a few beers with.”
“Sounds like you two hit it off. Be sure to send me a card when you announce the engagement.”
“I mean, there must have been something else going on. Maybe he had a nervous breakdown after his wife died and couldn’t take care of them.”
Silence greeted me for almost twenty seconds before he responded. “Sure, or maybe he didn’t give a rat’s ass for the twins. He had his wife’s eight million. The two kids were just extra weight.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “How much time did Sternwald get?”
“He served sixteen months and got time off for good behavior. Then he went back to Huntsville and did some small time paralegal stuff since he lost his bar license.”
“Is he still around? I’d like to talk with him.”
Fuller snorted. “Funny you should ask. The world’s a better place with one less lawyer. Mr. Sternwald was beaten to death behind a strip club about a year ago.”
***
Later that day I returned to St. Augustine under a darkening sky. A nasty weather front was rapidly approaching from the northeast, and dark circles of threatening thunderclouds were forming like a mob of vigilantes in a vicious mood.
Fuller’s conversation flitted through my head as I drove. Sternwald must have been a sleaze ball of the first order. Any number of people must have celebrated the news of his passing. Still, I wondered if his death had any connection with Henderson.
What if Henderson had a late-life conversion and wanted to make amends for his daughter and deceased son? Perhaps a twisted sense of guilt caused him to blame Sternwald and he had the attorney killed to even the score. Maybe there lurked an evil streak beneath his aura of charm and genteel sophistication. The links to Henderson may be coincidence, but coincidence can only be pushed so far in my mind and too many trails seemed to be leading me back to the old poet.
Henderson’s connection was only speculation at this point, but Denny Grimes was another story. He apparently had a strong motive for killing Marrano, and he struck me as a hot head with a mean streak. I’d looked up Grimes’ phone number and address before leaving the office. I called him and asked if it would be okay to drop by and talk a little business. I may have given him the impression that I was interested in setting up a website, and he told me to come over.
Grimes lived in an old two-story house near De Haven Street, just south of the historic district. At his front door, I listened as heavy metal shook the windows. Metallica, maybe. The image of Poe’s near-death experience returned, and for a moment I saw him hanging from his bunk, orange jumpsuit coiled around his neck, squeezing the life out of him as he jerked to the raucous rhythms of the band. Let Grimes be the one, I told myself before knocking on his door.
After a minute I knocked again. Louder. The music faded away and the door opened.
“Hey, dude. Didn’t take you long to get here. Come on in.”
Grimes wore a pair of blue running shorts and an orange polo shirt hanging loosely over his hips. We entered a spacious living room with a twelve-foot high ceiling. It was surprisingly neat, although the furniture was dated. I’m not into antiques, but several pieces looked like they may have some value.
“This used to be my mother’s house,” he said. “She died a few years back, and I moved in. You want to see my office?”
He padded away before I could respond. I followed him into a long hallway with several rooms on either side. We passed an open door and I spotted a large four-poster bed. Another room was bare except for some plastic storage tubs and a set of weights. His office was a dimly lit twelve by twelve room with a threadbare oriental rug covering the hardwood floor. Three computers, two Dell PCs and an iMac with a large monitor, were lined up on an eight-foot folding table; their power cords neatly bundled with plastic ties. Along with two filing cabinets and a bookcase, the room had four speakers mounted in each corner connected to a compact audio system. A tall rack of cd’s hovered over the components.
“This is where the magic happens,” he said with a sweep of his arm. “I already have some great ideas for your website. Man, you’ll be amazed wh
at this will do for your business. Quint Mitchell, super PI.”
Grimes grinned and spread his arms over his head as though unveiling a banner advertising my business. I almost hated to tell him why I was really there. Almost.
“Denny, I’m not here to talk about a new website.”
“You’re not? But I thought you said—”
“Maybe I misled you. I needed to talk to you about William Marrano’s murder.”
He stiffened, his mouth working like a fish out of water. “What the hell,” he sputtered. “What the hell, man. Do you think I had something to do with that jerk-off’s death?”
“I didn’t say that, Denny. I’m just following up on all possibilities. That includes talking to people who might have had a motive for—”
“You’re full of shit if you think I had anything to with killing Marrano. Poe’s the man, isn’t he?”
“I don’t believe Poe killed Marrano, and neither does Marrano’s wife. She hired me to help find who did it.”
“You can believe what you want, but you’re not laying this on me.”
Grimes’ arms were at his side, fists clenched. His knees were slightly bent, making him even shorter, and I eased one leg behind the other, adjusting my body weight, in case he charged me. He may have been eight inches shorter than me, but he was compact and muscular. I’d seen the damage some of these small guys could do when you pissed them off.
“Cool down, Denny. No one’s accusing you of anything. I’ve been talking with a lot of people. Someone is framing Jeffrey Poe and I’m just looking for leads.”
“I should lead you out the front door. After I kick your ass for lying to me.” He scratched at his bearded chin, and I heard him inhale, his chest rising and falling.
“Hey, I’m sorry about lying. I just want to talk.”
Some of the tension seemed to leave his body. “So let’s talk.”
We returned to the living room where he dropped into a large easy chair. I sat facing him on a high-backed couch covered with a faded floral design and matching pillows.
“Sure, I had a hard-on for Marrano,” he said. “The prick got me fired. I’d been with the city for twelve years. Worked my way up to head of the IT Department.”
“Why did he have you fired?”
“You want the official reason? Gross insubordination. Failure to follow city guidelines. Fucking goats on city time. You name it. It was all bullshit.” Grimes glared at me, all the while pressing one hand down against his other hand, doing some kind of isometric exercise while he talked. The muscles in his forearms bunched and corded like strands of steel cable.
“So tell me the real reason.”
He thought about it for a few seconds, his face going slack. “I’m not sure. Guess the piss ant just didn’t like me.”
“Come on,” I said, “there must be more to it than that. What was the last thing you worked on?”
“Marrano asked me to pull together everything in our system on a piece of property the city owned.”
“You mean the property the St. Johns Group bought?”
“No, I’m talking about Ripley’s Believe It or Not. What the hell do you think?”
I ignored his sarcasm and asked, “What did he want to know?”
“How long had the city owned it. How much we paid for it. Other real estate surrounding the city’s property. He wanted to know the entire history of the site, whether any toxic chemicals had been stored there. What had been on the property before we bought it? Like I said, everything I could find.”
“This doesn’t sound like a job for IT.”
His eyes met mine, narrowed. His shoulders hunched as he leaned forward. “You think I’m just some button pusher? All hardware and no software? I have lots of smarts, asshole. Probably a higher IQ than you.” The tone of his voice told me this was one of Denny’s hot buttons. Poor little man, underestimated and underappreciated.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply anything,” I said.
“My job was more than showing screw-ups how to use their email or loading new software into the computers. Before I took over the IT department, I coordinated a project to gather information files from every department and construct a central database. It took us almost three years.”
He puffed out his chest and thrust his jaw up in the same defiant gesture I’d seen at Poe’s house.
“That was it? You ran a report on the old motor pool property and they fired you?”
“Pretty much. Remember this was before the city announced they were going to sell the property, but I’d heard the scuttlebutt. Hard to keep secrets in city hall. I figured Marrano’s a real estate guy, right? He was probably looking for a way to cash in. He knew the area would take off after the developers began turning dirt.”
“Seems like Marrano could have found this out himself since that’s his business.”
“That’s what I thought, so I asked him.”
“What did he say?”
“Asshole gets all huffy with me. Tells me it’s none of my business. I might have said a few things back to him in my defense. Next thing I know, Mayor Hal comes to me and says they’re cutting my budget and I have to take a twenty-five percent pay cut.”
“That’s pretty steep.”
“You think? They weren’t paying me a hell of a lot to start with. I told them to go fuck themselves. Well, not in those words, of course. Next thing I know, I’m out on my ass.” Grimes released his hands and settled back in the chair, his legs dangling inches above the floor.
“Sounds like you got royally shafted,” I said. “Are you sure Marrano instigated your early retirement?”
“Had to be. So, yeah, I didn’t exactly grieve when I heard the news Poe had killed him. He did us all a favor.”
“Except Poe didn’t do it.”
Grimes attempted to stare a hole in my face before breaking into a lopsided smirk. “Loyalty is one thing, Mitchell, but you’re setting yourself up for a big disappointment.”
“How so?”
“I’m just saying that Poe’s the man, whether you want to believe it or not.”
I’ve interviewed hundreds of people in my job. Maybe thousands. After listening to so many people, hearing their excuses, absurd alibis, and bald-face lies, I’ve developed a pretty good bullshit detector. Most liars are easy to spot. Body language, facial expressions, even eye movements give them away. Grimes was telling the truth.
“You seem pretty sure that Poe killed him. Almost like you know something.”
Grimes folded his arms across his chest and remained silent. I saw his face shift imperceptibly, lips pursing as though running a search program through his head, finding the data he was seeking, and deciding whether to tell me or not.
After a minute of silence, he finally said, “I’m an insomniac, okay. Sleep about three hours a night. Helps me get a lot of work done while the rest of the world is sleeping.”
“Okay,” I said, not sure where this was leading.
“When I get tired of playing with my computers I run. You probably didn’t know it, but I’ve run a few marathons; even did a triathalon last April.”
Grimes knew how to milk the moment, build the suspense. “Go ahead,” I said.
“I love to run through the old city in the middle of the night. No sun. No traffic. I hardly ever see anyone, but Sunday morning I did.”
He held my gaze, expecting a response from me. I didn’t disappoint. “You saw someone Sunday morning. What time and where?”
“I like to vary my route. Makes it interesting,” he said, ignoring my questions. “Sometimes I run along the bay front all the way up to the Visitor’s Center and back. That’s a great run. Sometimes I run through the center of the district, right in the middle of the street, not having to worry about traffic or those damn horse carriages.”
I tried again. “And on Sunday morning?”
He nodded to let me know he was getting to it. “The moon was nearly full, made it easier to see, which was why
I selected the historic run, turning and twisting through the side streets instead of the main thoroughfares. It was about three-thirty in the morning and I was running full out along Cordova, not another soul around. I turned right onto Hypolita down by Scarlet O’Hara’s, raced through St. George Street, then Cathedral Place, my breathing steady and—.”
“I get the picture, Denny. You’re one running stud. Get to the point.”
Grimes jumped off the chair, and I thought he was going to do something foolish. I was right.
“Hey, watch this,” he said.
Grimes dropped to the floor and proceeded to do one-armed push-ups. He did fifteen of them before standing and displaying his bicep to me. “I can do that all day,” he said.
“Very impressive. Let’s go back to why you believe Poe killed Marrano.”
He smiled, all of his facial muscles stretching. A liar has a hard time with facial expressions. Their muscles tense up and a smile is obviously forced, using just their mouth rather than the entire face.
“Right. You know where Artillery Lane intersects with St. George?”
“Sure.”
“There’s the Parish Hall, a parking lot, and that fenced in area.”
“Uh huh.”
“Here’s the part you’ve been waiting for. I was hoofing it past the fenced area, heading toward the bay when I saw him.”
“Saw who?”
“Poe. Haven’t you been following me?”
“Back up a minute. Where was he exactly and how do you know it was Poe?”
“He was behind the wall walking away from me toward your survey site. He probably heard my feet pounding the street, but he kept walking. A tall guy, carrying a shovel. One of the long-handled kind.” Grimes’ head bobbed a few times, and he shrugged as if that was the end of it.
“Let me see if I understand this. You’re hoofing it behind the church and you see a tall man walking away from you carrying a shovel. It’s the middle of the night. You don’t even see his face, but you know it’s Poe. Do I have it right?”
Grimes did his jaw-jutting trick again. “Glad to see you’ve been paying attention. Sure it was the middle of the night, but like I said, there was a moon and there are street lamps every hundred feet or so. And yes, I know it was Poe.”
Matanzas Bay Page 15