by AJ Basinski
“Hey Mike,” Shipley began.
”Hey chief,” Schafer replied in a dull monotone that suggested that he was completely uninterested in talking to Shipley and certainly not to me. In fact, he never even looked up from his self-propelled Honda mower. Nor did he even stop mowing the grass.
Obviously frustrated at Schafer’s indifference, Shipley yelled over the roar of the self-propelled mower, “Can you please shut down the damn mower? We need to talk to you now.”
Schafer mowed another complete row of the lawn in front of the house before turning the mower off. Schafer apparently was not a man to be intimidated, even by the police.
Finally, with the mower shut down, he walked over to us.
Shipley said to him, “We’re here to talk to you and ask some questions about what happened to Amanda.”
“It’s a terrible thing,” Schafer responded. “I wonder now who’s going to pay me for cutting the lawn and the other chores I do around here. It really adds up quickly and I sure can use the money.”
I thought that Schafer’s comments suggested an indifference that I found hard to believe. One of his employers turns up dead with a bullet in her back and all he seems to be worried about it getting paid for his work. Something’s fishy here, I thought. Mighty fishy.
“When was the last time you saw Amanda?” Shipley asked Schafer.
Schafer took off his John Deere baseball cap and scratched his balding head for a moment before finally answering Shipley’s question. Very theatrical, I thought. It was almost like he had studied his lines and gestures, which really made me wonder even more whether maybe he had something to do with these murders. Certainly, he wasn’t helping his case with his attitude if he was somehow involved.
You can tell a lot by how a witness or a suspect looks and positions himself as he responds to questions, particularly about a crime they may have committed or been a witness to. Sometimes, I have found you can learn a lot more from just watching the reactions and body movements of the witness than you can from what the witness actually says. And Schafer’s actions said a lot more than his words.
“I ain’t seen her in about a week,” Schafer said. “Yeah, must be a week. My, how time flies.”
“Weren’t you concerned that you hadn’t seen her? And what about Elsa? When was the last time you saw her?” I chimed in.
Shipley could see that Schafer was reluctant to answer a question from a stranger like me, so he piped up, “This here is Lieutenant Mario Morales. He’s a friend of mine. We used to work together years ago with the LAPD. He’s helping me out with these two damn murders we got here now.”
Schafer ignored me and looked over at Shipley and said, “Last time I saw Elsa was the same time I last saw Amanda. Elsa paid me two weeks in advance and said that she was going to be gone for a while. And no, I didn’t miss them because I don’t live on the island. I live over in Cape Coral, across the bridge. Other than cutting the grass once a week or so, I usually only come over to the island when I’m asked to by Elsa to do some work around the place. It’s a real old place, so there is always something usually that has to be done.”
“Did you ask Elsa where she was going?” I asked.
“Look, I’m just the handyman here. It sure ain’t my place to be asking questions like that. I just do what they tell me to do. They want me to fix something, I do it. I don’t get involved in their personal lives and they stay out of my business.”
I decided to push Schafer a little harder. “Did you notice anything unusual about the two women when you saw them last?”
“What do you mean?” Schafer asked me, finally acknowledging my existence.
“I’m not sure I know what I mean myself,” I admitted. “But I was hoping you saw something that might be able to shed some small light on how it was Amanda ended up dead in Palm Island Sound and Elsa is nowhere to be seen. Did they have any kind of argument? And what is the connection between these two women and Mark Sullivan?”
Schafer again paused before answering. “That last one I think I can answer you. There was this guy who was staying here at the house the last time I saw Amanda. He showed up a couple of days ago before they left. He was driving a fancy new truck and wearing some fancy clothes that it looked like he had just bought somewhere. He sort of looked out of place and uncomfortable in those clothes. Like he wasn’t used to wearing them. The guy said to Amanda that he needed a room for a couple of days just to get away for a while. So Amanda put him up in the Mombasa room, the nicest room in the house. That’s all I know.”
From the tone of his voice, it was clear to me that Schafer obviously was not too impressed by this man. I assume he knew that man was Mark Sullivan. Nor did he seem too upset about the deaths of Sullivan and Amanda. From his demeanor, I suspected that he knew a lot more than he was telling us.
When Shipley and I left Schafer, I asked Shipley whether he believed Schafer was telling the truth.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I am wondering whether he had something to do with all this.”
“I was thinking the same thing, Ed,” I said. “Curiously, he never said anything about not being involved with the two deaths. You would think when two police officers come asking questions about a couple of murders, a witness like Schafer would make sure he told us he had nothing to do with the murders. I know if someone confronted me like that, I sure as hell would do that. I would want them to know in no uncertain terms that I had nothing to do with those murders.”
“Good point. Excellent point,” Shipley said as we drove back to his office in his patrol car that obviously had seen better days. The Crown Vic’s upholstery was torn in several place and the floorboards of the car seemed to be covered in spilled soft drinks or something else gooey that caused my shoes to stick to the floor mats.
Shipley seemed quite pleased with himself as I could see a slight smile on his face out of the corner of my eye as I watched him drive. Or was it a smirk?
Chapter 23
That afternoon, based upon that little bit of information we were able to get from the handyman, Mike Schafer, Shipley got a search warrant from Judge McAndrews in Fort Myers to search the B&B for clues as to what may have happened to Amanda and maybe Elsa also. Quite frankly, I was somewhat surprised that Shipley hadn’t thought of getting the search warrant before this. Very strange police work. Very strange. But then again this was not my case. I was just along for the ride. Or so I thought.
I went with Shipley to the B&B which was located about a mile or so from the Bonita Inn. Shipley also brought with him a locksmith to open the door to the house since we didn’t have a key and we didn’t want to destroy any potential evidence. As Shipley said, he didn’t want to just bust down the door.
The locksmith fidgeted with the door, which was double locked, for almost fifteen minutes. When he finally got the door open and we went inside the house, Shipley dismissed the locksmith and said to me, “It looks like nothing is out of the ordinary here.”
We had been inside the house all of ten seconds before Shipley made his pronouncement. We barely had time to look around the hallway yet alone engage in a serious search of the premises. I seriously began to question Shipley’s method of investigation. He seemed almost uninterested as we began to walk around the first floor of the B&B. I told myself that I will have to keep an eye on him.
The inside of the B&B looked like what you might expect it would look like when run by two women of a certain age as they say. There were chintz-covered chairs in the living room and a set of cherry wood dining room furniture, including a table and six upholstered chairs. Everywhere you looked, were knick-knacks of various sorts. Here a Lladro piece, there a faux Tiffany lampshade on a table lamp, etc. You get the idea. The place was filled with those type of gewgaws and many more---dust collectors, I like to call them. But none of them looked the slightest bit out of place as far as I could tell. Nothing was turned over or pushed aside. Everything appeared to be in its place. Maybe, Shipley’s observatio
n as we entered the house was correct: nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary.
“Why don’t we take a look at the registration book?” I said to Shipley after we had both satisfied ourselves with a very preliminary examination of the first floor.
“Good idea,” echoed Shipley.
The registration book was sitting on a small mahogany table just inside the foyer of the house. I opened the book and immediately saw Mark Sullivan’s name written on the last page of the book in a small, cramped handwriting. No computer generated documents here. Everything obviously was done the old-fashioned way: by hand. The registration book showed that Sullivan had checked in on December 31, but did not show that he had checked out. The book said that he was assigned to the Mombasa room, one of three upstairs guest bedrooms.
“Interesting,” I said, shaking my head. This clearly confirmed what Schafer had told us. The man he saw was indeed Sullivan. “Now why in the world would Sullivan be staying here? I thought you said he had his own place, Ed? Well, let’s take a look around here and see what we can find,” I said.
“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Shipley said. “Why don’t you take the upstairs while I continue to check out this floor?”
“Sure,” I said. “That makes sense to me.”
I climbed the creaky wooden stairs to the second floor and looked around the landing at the top of the stairs. There were three guest rooms on the second floor, each with the name of the room on a brass plaque beside the door. There was one bathroom with an open door that apparently was shared by all three guest rooms. On the landing was a small sofa and a mahogany coffee table. On top of the table were several fishing magazines. I opened the door to the Mombasa room where Sullivan had apparently been staying. The room was decorated with artifacts which appeared to have come from the two women’s visits there. On the neatly folded chenille bedspread sitting at the foot of the bed was a small duffel bag. The leather luggage tag hanging on the side of the bag read “Mark Sullivan.”
I opened the bag. Inside were two Cutter and Buck polo shirts, one red and the other green. Christmas colors, I thought to myself. The price tags were still on the shirts. It appeared from the receipt inside the bag they had been purchased at the Macy’s in Fort Myers at the Edison Mall on December 31. Also inside the bag were a new pair of Levi jeans and two pairs of khaki pants, also new and unworn. Curiously, there was no Dopp bag for personal toiletries or any underwear. At the bottom of the bag, I did find something a lot more interesting than Jockey underwear: a .38 caliber, silver-plated Smith and Wesson revolver.
I carefully lifted the gun out of the duffel bag using a pen I had in my pocket just for that type of purpose. I inserted the pen in the barrel of the gun to avoid getting my own fingerprints on the gun and maybe smudging someone else’s prints. I then placed the gun on the dresser which was covered with a white lace doily. Before putting it down, I did put the muzzle to my nose to see if I could tell if it had been fired recently. I wasn’t sure if I could smell anything or not. That will be for the forensics lab to decide, I said to myself. I did note that two bullets were missing from the revolver’s chambers but the remaining four chambers looked like they were still loaded with live shells. I recalled that Sullivan and Amanda were each killed with a two bullets. Other than the duffel bag, nothing in the room seemed the slightest bit out of the ordinary.
After checking out the other two rooms on the second floor and taking a quick look at the shared bathroom (still no Dopp bag), I then went downstairs, leaving the gun on the dresser. I intended to tell Shipley about the gun when I got downstairs and have him call Palm County CSI to retrieve it. As I was coming down the steps, I could hear two voices. One I recognized immediately as that of Shipley. The other voice was a woman’s voice, a very soft, cultured sounding woman’s voice. I was very interested in finding out who belonged to that voice.
“Mario,” Shipley said as I got to the bottom of the stairs, “I’d like you to meet Elsa Pierce. Elsa, this is Lieutenant Mario Morales. He’s a friend from way back who’s helping me with the investigation of Mark Sullivan’s death. Mario is a former homicide detective for the Los Angeles Police Department and one of the best.”
Chapter 24
Within the hour, the Palm County CSI were inside the B&B, scouring every square inch for clues as to what might have happened to Mark Sullivan and Amanda Blakely in that building and who might be responsible for their deaths. At least we now knew that Elsa was still alive.
While the CSI crew was working the B&B, Shipley and I talked to Elsa Pierce while sitting on the chintz-covered couch and love seat in the living room.
“Elsa, I have some bad news.” Shipley said without any preliminaries. “Amanda’s dead.”
I looked closely at Elsa, not sure what exactly to expect. What did happen caught me completely by surprise.
“Yes, I know,” she said. “I know.” But it wasn’t what she said that bothered me; it was how she said it. Elsa said these words like she was acknowledging the death of her pet hamster rather than the death of what I thought for sure was her best friend and certainly her partner in the B&B.
I looked for some semblance of emotion, maybe a tear or a twitch in her face, but Elsa Pierce was as stoic as any person I had ever seen when I had delivered news of a death to a family member or friend, whether the death was by accident or a homicide. And believe me I had done that lots of times in the past. It was never easy and you never knew to expect. In this case, though, her reaction was downright shocking to me. But Shipley seemed not to notice her complete lack of emotion.
When I asked her why she hadn’t reported Amanda missing, Elsa explained that she had been in Las Vegas for the last week. She claimed that she had learned of Amanda’s death when she arrived at the Southwest Florida Regional Airport in Fort Myers and saw a newspaper account on the front page of the local paper at the news stand at the airport.
“I just couldn’t believe it,” she said, finally showing some small semblance of emotion as she said this. Maybe that was the way rich people dealt with death, I wondered. It was certainly not the way I had seen it back in Salinas where I had grown up. There, at funerals, mourners practically threw themselves on top of the casket of a loved one before it was lowered into the ground. Sometimes even after. I seriously doubted that Elsa was going to throw herself on Amanda’s casket at her funeral. To my mind, seeing her reactions now, I wondered if she would even attend her funeral.
“I picked up the newspaper as I was leaving the airport and saw the story about Amanda,” she repeated. “And Mark Sullivan too. I was just flabbergasted. You know, he was a guest in the B&B,” she offered. “He checked in just as I was leaving to catch my plane to Vegas.”
“Do you know why Sullivan was checking into the B&B when he had his own place on the island?” I asked her.
She looked at me rather sharply and then averted her eyes as she said, “No, no. I have no idea. No idea.” I think she could tell I was skeptical of her answer but I decided not to pursue it for now. There would be plenty of time to question her later I was sure.
I wondered why she didn’t ask anything about the circumstances of Amanda’s death or explain why she hadn’t called the police while she was in Vegas to find out what had happened to Amanda. Surely, I thought, she would have tried to reach Amanda while she was gone.
But when I asked her about that, she explained that she and Amanda had a fight right before she left for Vegas. Amanda, it seems, disapproved of Elsa’s gambling habit and particularly objected to these periodic junkets to Vegas that Elsa took. Amanda thought they were a complete waste of time and money.
“I was all excited about seeing Amanda when I got back” she responded, with a complete lack of any excitement that you would certainly expect to see and hear. “I thought we could patch things up once I got back, particularly since I won eleven thousand dollars playing the Wheel of Fortune slot machine at the Bellagio. I was going to tell her that we could use the money to renovate the kitc
hen. You’ve seen the kitchen, I’m sure. We really do need a new one. Now, of course, it’s sort of meaningless, isn’t it?” Elsa looked at me very quizzically as she said this, as though she wanted affirmation of her thought.
I nodded my head and reached over and placed my hand on top of Elsa’s. It was cold as ice.
As we were leaving the B&B, one of the CSI investigators came up to Shipley. They exchanged a few words and the investigator showed Shipley what looked like a map. But when I asked Shipley about it as we drove back to his office, he said it was nothing, just some paper that the CSI people had found in the room where Sullivan was apparently staying. Despite his comment, I could definitely see that the document was something Shipley was very interested in. Very interested. Could this be the map that would unlock the gold mystery? I also wondered why I hadn’t seen it before when I went through Sullivan’s room earlier.
Chapter 25
When I got back to the Bonita Inn later that same day at around 7:30 p.m., Zeke Chandler was waiting for me at the door.
“Mr. Mario,” Zeke began. “I got something here for you. I think it’s from your lady friend.” Zeke handed me a letter addressed to me care of the Bonita Inn. I took the letter and sure enough it smelled of Sun Li’s rose water perfume that I always found so intoxicating. I noticed that there was no return address on the envelope. I then tore open the envelope and read the short letter inside very quickly.
The letter read as follows:
“Dear Mario,
I am so sorry that I left you in the lurch a few days ago, but I could not stay with you at the time. I just was not ready for any type of relationship with anyone. By the time you get this letter, I will be on my way back to China. My mother is very sick and my father can no longer take care of her. I must go and see her.