Lenore set aside her knitting. “You three could practice on the songs you intend to play at the memorial service. Putting it off won’t do any good. We’re just waiting for the medical examiner to…” She couldn’t finish the last part. “I don’t think we should wait much longer to hold the service. I vote to have it next Monday at ten o’clock.”
Tanner took in the sad look on his wife’s face. “You’ve given this some thought.”
“I just want it done with. The service is separate from the burial. The painful truth is we won’t get to take Blake and Ally trick-or-treating this year. Thanksgiving won’t be the same. I’d already bought Christmas presents for the kids. And someone has to go into that house and start packing up everything. That’s something I’m not sure I can handle doing right now or even down the road. And then there’s the fact that Tanner and I will eventually have to head back to work soon.”
Garret chewed on that. “Shouldn’t we have found a will by now? We’ve turned the house upside down before, been through it twice. We didn’t find one.” He looked at his brothers. “Want to get everyone together and go back in there?”
“Might as well. It beats sitting around staring at each other and doing nothing on a rainy day.”
The brothers were on their own without help from the women. Raine and Tessa were swamped with the lunch crowd at the restaurant.
And Anniston had just gotten started.
She took her Ford Explorer over to Prospect Street where Baskin owned his auto repair shop, Baskin’s Auto Clinic. She pulled up to the entrance behind an older model Buick. The “clinic” had three bays, all of which were occupied with an assortment of vehicles raised off the ground so the mechanics could do their thing standing underneath.
She cut the engine and hopped out without waiting for the tech to approach with his clipboard. When a man did emerge from the garage area, he sized her up. “What can I help you with?”
“Need an oil change.”
“You have an appointment?”
“No. Do I need one?”
“It cuts down considerably on the wait time.”
All Anniston wanted was to get a look at Baskin’s office on the inside. “How long?”
“We’re backed up. Probably an hour at least.”
“Would you mind if I gave it a shot? The car’s really overdue. I should’ve taken care of it before I left Miami, but I had no idea the case I’m working on would drag out this long.”
Beginning to warm up, the tech nodded his head. “You’re that private eye the Indigos hired.”
“That’s me.” She rocked back on her heels. “You guys do a brisk business.”
“We do. There’s a body shop around the corner if you ever need that. And Roger also sells used cars from a lot down the street.”
“Good to know. But all I need right now is an oil change.”
“Then give me the keys and go wait inside. There’s a place to get coffee and watch TV that helps pass the time.”
She handed over her keys and crossed the lot.
The waiting room was tiny with six uncomfortable plastic chairs crowded along one wall. A simple coffee bar shared space with the ancient model TV that sat on a metal stand. There was a table jammed in the corner covered in car magazines. The walls were decorated with posters, all having to do with luxury cars.
She looked into a glass window where a female cashier stayed busy with paperwork. The office was smaller than the waiting room. It was easy to spot the huge printer at the woman’s back because the machine took up an entire desktop. Anniston decided it looked like the right size and shape of the HP.
She strolled over to the beverage station and took her time fixing a cup of strong, stale coffee. She’d taken cold medicine that tasted better. She lingered, trying to make out the type of printer the woman used to spit out the invoices.
The woman looked up and caught her staring. “Can I help you?” she said from behind the glass.
Anniston shook her head. “Sorry. I was just looking to see if they’d gotten to my Explorer yet.”
“We’ll call you when it’s ready.”
Patience, Anniston reminded herself. She had a long wait time. The woman had to go to the bathroom sometime.
About thirty-five minutes into her wait, she spotted the tech guy driving her Ford into the garage. She stood up, only to realize the cashier was nowhere in sight. She stepped up to the glass and took out her cell phone and pretended to punch in numbers.
In a matter of seconds, she’d captured the images she needed. She went back and sat down, picking up a magazine from the table to hide her phone. She brought up the camera roll, zoomed in on the printer image and could make out the 9500 series and the logo. It was older than the model at the church, but it was still the same type of laser jet.
She sat back, got comfortable. Now she was stuck waiting until they finished with her SUV.
Once inside Livvy’s front door, the brothers stood in the entryway and considered the daunting task ahead of them.
“Where do you suggest we start?” Jackson grumbled. “Since we’re three pairs of eyes short, I’m not sure this will yield much.”
Garret picked up a ceramic Athena statue off the hall table. “Think about packing all this crap up. I’m not looking forward to that chore. Knickknacks everywhere, a dozen years’ worth of collecting household junk.”
“Yeah. This is one reason I don’t get married and stay in one place for too long,” Mitch admitted. “Who needs all this clutter on a daily basis? Livvy must’ve spent half her life keeping it dusted. I don’t think she threw anything away.”
“Maybe this is a waste of our time,” Garret decided. “We’ve been through all this stuff before right down to the books on the shelves and the linen closet upstairs. The last time we were here we tore up Livvy’s bedroom, dismantled the bed.”
Jackson put his hands on his hips. “You guys even went through the garage. So where does that leave to search?”
“We could go tear up Walker’s office again,” Garret suggested. “Maybe we missed something the first time. I’m not really in the mood for a long-drawn-out scavenger hunt on another trip through the house.”
“Sure. We have to start somewhere. Might as well make it Walker’s man cave.”
The trio sauntered outside to the breezeway in between the main house and the detached garage. It was Garret who unlocked the door of the guesthouse and flipped on the lights. The studio-sized apartment was like a fancy lounge where Walker could relax and watch anything on his built-in seventy-inch, flat-screen TV.
Jackson dropped into one of the soft brown leather sofas and stared at the black granite fireplace, then the Murphy bed encased around the bookshelves. “Something bothers me about this layout. It did from the first time I saw it.”
But his brothers ignored the comment. Instead, Garret immediately drifted to Walker’s desk and printer, decided it wasn’t the same model used to print the note and moved on to opening each drawer. He rifled through the contents and it reminded him of something else. “Why haven’t we searched the Vitamin Hut? That’s where Anniston found his credit card statements.”
Mitch was in the process of rummaging through Walker’s wet bar when his hands went still. “That’s a good question. We’ll make it our next stop.”
As Jackson continued to sit and stare at the wall unit and built-in bookcase, Mitch had had enough. “Do you intend to move your ass off the couch any time soon? We could use a little help and the emphasis is on little.”
“In a minute. Does that bed look like it fits into the corner of that bookcase snugly enough to you? It seems like it bulges out too much. It seems warped or something.”
“Instead of staring at it, pull the damn thing down and take a look.”
Jackson finally got up, went over and tugged on the handle. He lowered the bed down to the floor. The design wasn’t too complicated. There was nothing fancy about the way the space had been utilized. He ran a hand
between the mattress and the frame, ran it clear around the length of one side until he hit a lump. “Hey guys, I think I found what made the mattress so bulky.” He pulled out a brown paper sack, weighing what felt like five pounds or more.
“What’s in there?”
Jackson drew out a bundle of cash and then another. “I’ve heard of stuffing cash under the mattress but this is a new one. Saving for a rainy day?”
Garret jerked one of the bags out of Jackson’s hand. “There must be four hundred grand in here, stacks of twenties and hundred-dollar bills.”
Jackson cocked his head, studied the painting on the wall where the Murphy bed had been. The print was nothing special, a landscape depicting a beach scene available from a dozen retail outlets in the Florida Keys geared toward tourists. He reached up to get rid of the artwork. Behind the frame was a wall safe.
“That’s weird. Why wasn’t the sack of cash tucked away in there?”
“Good question. The only way to answer that is to get inside. Can you do it?” Jackson asked.
For a few minutes Garret stood there staring up at the metal box shoved into two feet of wall space that looked similar in size to a microwave oven.
“Well…any problem getting into it?” Mitch wanted to know. “It needs a digital code. How much do you think Walker spent on this thing?”
“No idea. Probably four hundred bucks. It’s not worth ten,” Garret decided.
“Really?”
“Yep. It looks like he cheaped out and bought an electronic strongbox they sell at most major retail chains. I’ll have this puppy opened in less than three minutes.” Garret brought out the key ring that held the torque and other gadgets he carried wherever he went. “It’ll be a piece of cake.”
He climbed up on the bed and went to work. He unscrewed the nameplate first, removed the bolts that hid the lock mechanism. In less than two minutes, he had the first side popped and then the second. The word “opened” appeared on the digital display. “There you go.”
Mitch slapped him on the back. “Should I worry you might be a cat burglar in your spare time?”
“Nah. I make a good enough living on the water.”
Inside was a stack of insurance documents, the will, a trust, a stack of maps, and notes. Jackson held up an old leather-bound book that looked like a Bible. They spread out the other stuff and began picking through the paperwork.
“The will’s pretty standard,” Jackson said as he reviewed the document line by line. “In the event one of them dies, the other inherits everything. If they both die, Mom and Dad get the kids. Walker set up a trust for the kids, again standard. None of it applies now. There are no surprises with the insurance policies. It’s pretty routine stuff. Since Royce helped them get the house, the deed reverts back to him upon the deaths of both. According to some of these bank statements, most of the estate is mired in debts.”
A ball of sarcasm knotted Garret’s gut. “Was that before or after the bundle of cash showed up? Because I’d say that kind of money would go a long way in taking care of final expenses.”
Mitch had his head buried in maps. His head whipped up when he realized what he was looking at. “Guys, some of these drawings include Walker’s handwritten notes. He must’ve jotted down Hugo’s directions all over the blue, indicating ocean.”
Jackson studied the scrawled words and what seemed like the handwriting of a desperate man. “Please try to convince me this stupid ranting isn’t what got them killed.”
“I have no idea why people would be after these maps. They aren’t even regulation, but hand-drawn. They look useless to me,” Mitch asserted. “I can let Walsh take a look at them and see what he thinks. He’s a whiz at that sort of stuff. But these are so badly disproportioned, I’m not sure how they’d help locate a navigational point, let alone a sunken sub.”
Garret looked at his watch. It was getting time to go. “Can you guys box all this up and we’ll go through it later? I have somewhere I need to be.”
“Sure. What about searching the Vitamin Hut?”
“You guys go without me, or wait until tomorrow. Your choice.”
“We’ll wait until you can go with us. Who knows? We might need you to crack open another safe.”
Chapter Fifteen - Heat
By six o’clock the rain had stopped. But a thick, milky fog had rolled in and settled over the coastline.
Before Dack headed north out of town he texted his girlfriend, Shonna, to let her know he was on the road. It’d be another forty-five minutes past the rest stop to Key Largo.
He’d met Shonna—a home health care nurse—back in Tallahassee at a Super Bowl party one of his coworkers had given last February. They’d hit it off immediately. For eight months now they’d been moving toward cohabiting, mostly talking it to death. This assignment had been an opportunity to make that happen. Since Shonna owned a little bungalow so close to Indigo Key, it seemed the right time for them to take that next big step together.
And now, come the weekend, he was excited about taking her home to Miami to meet his mother. And tonight after dinner they were supposed to kick back and watch the new Mad Max action movie on cable. In a thousand years he would never have believed he was considering making the move to settle down.
The beam of his headlights hit the mile marker nearest the rest stop. He took the exit and pulled off into the parking lot. There were no other cars around, but he did see the lights of another vehicle slide into the spot at the very end of the pavement next to the roadway.
He checked his watch before verifying the time with the clock on the Ford’s dash. Both read 6:59 p.m. He was so tired his neck hurt. He leaned his head back and decided this case kept tying him in knots. He scrubbed his hands over his face and wished for coffee.
“Come on, Anniston. Don’t make me wait. I want to go home,” he uttered to himself.
Through the haze he caught a glimpse of a figure in the shadows. He assumed it was Garret since it looked like a male. Annoyed that Anniston hadn’t come with him, he got out of his vehicle, stood with hands on his hips waiting for the man to get closer.
He called out, “Where the hell is Anniston?”
There was no answer. “Hey, Garret, is that you?”
By the time the man got close enough for Dack to make out his face, he knew he was in trouble. Dack reached under his suit jacket for the weapon strapped at his hip.
But it was too late.
The man raised a SIG pistol and fired. The bullet whizzed out of the gun and straight into Dack’s heart. His knees hit the ground first before his body fell forward. Dack Hawkins ended up face down in a puddle of mud at the edge of the asphalt.
Garret and Anniston had done a lot of running around that afternoon. Because of it they were doing their best to be no more than five minutes late for their meeting with Dack. Especially since Anniston had picked him up and exceeded the speed limit all the way up US 1.
“I can’t believe you let those guys touch your car. What if they did something to it, like mess with the brakes? Or put a tracking device on it?”
She slanted a look at him from behind the wheel. “I watched them through the glass. All they did was change the oil.”
“How can you be so sure?”
She let out a sigh. “Are we getting that paranoid?”
“You mean me?”
“No, I guess I mean everyone involved. I noticed Dack leaned a little toward that this morning. I’ve never seen him so amped up.”
“Dack did look stressed out, like this case is getting to him. I refuse to believe it isn’t solvable. And today you found that Dandridge has access to a laser jet printer and so does Baskin.”
“Not to mention the entire town. I discovered the library’s technology room uses that same HP model so anyone in town could’ve had access to that printer. Anyone could’ve walked up to one of the workstations there, slid in their flash drive, and printed out that note. It’s like a salesman came through town and offered a fi
re sale on HP printers.”
“I guess I see where Dack’s coming from. Just when you think you have another piece of the puzzle figured out, it goes south and loses strength. The question is why would Dandridge or Baskin bother writing the note in the first place unless it was to brag about the murders. Jackson immediately believed the letter was genuine. Which man possesses the ego and type of personality to share details about the murders with the victims’ families?”
“Let’s not get tunnel vision,” Anniston cautioned. “Let’s say Baskin tried to get into the Vitamin Hut at 9:09 p.m. the night of the murders. He almost gets caught in the act and decides to go to the Buchanan home instead. He’s looking for something and confronts Walker and Livvy at the house. He comes up with a good enough story to not only gain entry inside, but he somehow manages to get the entire household into the minivan, including the kids.”
Garret picked up the narrative. “Then Baskin takes them to an unknown location where Dandridge is waiting. Both men begin beating and torturing Walker and Livvy, ostensibly with the purpose of getting information out of them. They threaten the kids to get what they want. Then one, or both men, take it up a notch and kill the captives, beginning with the kids. I mean, what else are they gonna do with four people who can so easily recognize them?”
“So they put the bodies in the fifty-five-gallon drums and take them out to the Gulf. They didn’t use Walker’s boat, the Misty Dawn, because the tracklog doesn’t show it ever moved out of the marina. So, who owns a boat that Dandridge and Baskin would have access to?”
Goose bumps formed along Garret’s arms. “That’s easy. Dave Oakerson owns a string of them. The boats take tourists out on fishing expeditions and sunset cruises every day. Take your pick as to which one Dandridge or Baskin might’ve used to dump the bodies. And afterward, Dandridge has to get rid of the van to make it look like the family took off on their own. So he gets caught speeding toward the Tampa Bay airport, sticks it in a satellite lot where it takes a week to locate it.”
The Indigo Brothers Trilogy Boxed Set Page 50