The Indigo Brothers Trilogy Boxed Set

by Vickie McKeehan

  She watched as Mitch neatly whipped up a batch of guacamole. “Let me taste that.”

  He obliged by scooping up a spoonful and holding it up to her lips.

  “Not bad, Mr. Indigo. Maybe by the end of the week I’ll have you making your infamous macaroni and cheese casserole and put it on the menu.”

  “Happy to.”

  They worked like that—Raine cooking and plating while Mitch carried the orders out to the dining room—until the packed house thinned out.

  They were wiping down tables together when Jessup Sinclair swaggered in ten minutes before closing, wearing his uniform, complete with gun.

  “What can I get you, chief,” Charlotte asked him.

  “Got any more of those carnitas? I know it’s late, but I’ve been out on patrol. One of my deputies called in sick.”

  “Sorry. All we have left is pork, ran out of the steak hours ago.”

  “That shows your owner ought to plan better,” Sinclair complained.

  Raine went over to where Mitch stood and whispered in his ear. “Do you see Sinclair’s right hand? Look at the ring he’s wearing. That’s the ring I remember the night he grabbed me.”

  Mitch cut his eyes toward the cop, stared at Sinclair’s right hand. There on the ring finger was the black and gold insignia of the Florida Highway Patrol. “Are you certain?”

  “Positive.”

  Mitch left his bussing duties and wandered over to the counter. “How’s it going?”

  “It’d be going a lot better if I could order steak carnitas instead of pork. Never mind. I had my heart set on those. I’ll take four shrimp tacos to go,” Jessup barked out. He looked over at Mitch, then at Raine. “You got a new job now? What happened to the big treasure hunter?”

  “Haven’t you heard? That didn’t pan out. No gold anywhere around here anyway,” Mitch popped off with a wink.

  “You Indigos are just full of sass, aren’t you?”

  “Be careful, chief. I’m no longer sixteen and afraid of going to jail. Why don’t you chill? Have a seat and enjoy those delicious tacos you ordered.”

  After Sinclair ate his meal and left, Mitch went over to clear the table and wipe it down. He gathered up the trash the cop had left behind. Just before he got ready to toss the garbage into the can, he hesitated. Instead of getting rid of the paper cup, he took one of the plastic bags used for waste and dropped it into the bag.

  “Did you just save that paper cup?” Raine asked.

  “Yep. I’m covering all my bases. Let’s get Anniston to send it to the lab she uses for analysis.”

  Chapter Twelve - Justice

  Lenore insisted on keeping Livvy’s plants from dying. Tanner indulged his wife’s trips to their daughter’s home because he didn’t want to see her sad. But for him, it was painful to go inside those four walls. The entire house seemed like a macabre memorial to Livvy and the kids.

  This day, he used the spare key to let them in, and found Royce Buchanan already there, sitting alone on the couch in the living room.

  “We came to water the plants,” Lenore explained. “What are you doing here?”

  “Missing my son,” Royce replied, sadness laced on every word.

  “I didn’t see Baskin or your Maybach parked at the curb,” Tanner noted.

  “I took a taxi here.”

  “Anniston told us you’ve been helping keep an eye on Baskin by letting us bug your guesthouse. Thank you for that,” Tanner managed.

  “She says she thinks he’s the one who killed Walker, beat him to death.”

  “Beat them all to death,” Tanner amended.

  The trio found themselves in an awkward silence.

  Royce had muttered something and Tanner had to get him to repeat it. “I said if y’all can’t figure out a way to kill Baskin, I will.”

  “Now, Royce,” Lenore began. “You don’t want to do anything quite so drastic as that.”

  “Why not? I’m an old man. What’re they going to do to me? Lock me up where I wait for my execution twenty years down the road. I don’t have twenty years left in me.”

  Tanner took a seat on the opposite end of the sofa, something he’d never thought would happen before this moment. “You don’t think I’ve thought of doing that same thing? Believe me, I have.”

  Lenore’s eyes got big. “Tanner Jackson Indigo! You would do that to me?”

  “I said I thought about it. Baskin’s still alive, isn’t he?”

  “Not for long,” Royce cautioned. “I’m serious. You still have some of your family left, three sons, a wife, potential. I have no one, nothing really left to live for.”

  Lenore scooted over to sit in the club chair next to him. “I’ll tell you what you have to live for. Justice. Seeing those awful men pay for what they’ve taken, what they’ve destroyed.”

  “You know Dietrich is dead, right?” Tanner heard himself saying.

  Royce cocked a brow. “When? How?”

  “I don’t know the particulars,” Tanner said, lying through his teeth. “All I know is he wasn’t a very good person.”

  “I knew that already,” Royce spat out. “Anyone with half a brain knew Dietrich was as sneaky as a shark.” When he realized what he’d said, he hung his head. “Oh God. Why didn’t Walker know that? Why couldn’t he see that for himself? You think your children, hope really, that they’ll listen to you, heed your cautionary tales.” He let out a mournful sigh. “Walker obviously thought he could outsmart the shark. Walker going to Dietrich and Baskin for anything was a mistake. Plain and simple, I think they double-crossed him.”

  “By any chance did Anniston talk to you…recently?”

  “She came to my office this morning. We had a long talk about my political contributions to Oakerson, the loans I made to Carson Frawley for his doughnut shop, and the audacity of me giving Baskin a job. She went on to blast me about the business loans I’ve dished out over the years. I’ll tell you the same thing I told her. It’s what I do. Business loans aren’t always obtained via the First National Bank. When the bank turned down Baskin, I stepped up. Same with Carson. They both came to me with problems and like any businessman, I saw an opportunity to own half their businesses if they didn’t pay me back. I gave them both the loans because I wanted to—”

  “See the town grow,” Tanner supplied. “Yes, we know. And I’m just the lowly carpenter who wants to see my hometown crash and burn. You couldn’t be more wrong about that. My family’s been on this island for more than three hundred years. That means something to me. I never wanted to see it turned into a Pottersville by your high-handed, backdoor dealings. I didn’t want to see families living in squalor, sleazy bars springing up around town, kids hanging out at dingy pool halls, a line of strip clubs dotting the business district like they have down in Key West. I didn’t want to see you beating down hardworking families.”

  Royce looked appalled. “Is that the way you see me?”

  “For good reason,” Tanner shot back, leveling a finger at him. “Don’t deny it. You’ve bought almost every other home in Indigo Key and turned it into one of your stinking rental properties. Then you and Baskin jack up the rent. What do you think that does to local families who can’t afford a starter home these days? You’re like a feudal lord sitting in his castle ruling over the serfs and making them pay double, or pay dearly, time and again.”

  “That was never my intent.”

  “Maybe not, but it’s sure the way Walker tried to follow in your footsteps. I have nightmares thinking about what might’ve happened if your son had ever found his way. You could’ve left a legacy, Royce, a good one. You could’ve left something behind to be proud of. Instead, you hooked up with men who’ve tried to swindle and steal their way to this town’s ruin. You gave loans to people who took down your own son. That’s a fact.”

  “Tell me how to correct it. Tell me what to do about it,” Royce pleaded. “I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever you want to correct it.”

  “If you really mean
that, then let’s get down to a serious discussion.”

  Mitch kept his eye on Raine while hanging out at the eatery. His duties were simple. He filled salt and pepper shakers, rolled up silverware in paper napkins, made pots of coffee, one after the other, all while forced to breathe the continual odor of fried foods cooking in a vat of trans fats all day. He was beginning to realize Raine had a point about the greasy smell.

  But he was bored out of his mind bussing tables and washing dishes. If he had to do this for months or years at a time, he’d go stark raving mad.

  After the lunch bunch cleared out, Mitch glanced up from wiping down a table to see Walsh walk in with Prentiss trailing after him.

  “How’s the Magnum PI slash Wolfgang Puck personalities meshing for you?” Walsh wisecracked.

  Mitch cracked a grin. “Raine doesn’t trust me much in the kitchen yet. She keeps dangling a turn at the grill, but so far, nada. So the Wolfgang Puck thing is a pipe dream. And I could seriously use that Ferrari and moustache to pull off the Magnum persona.”

  “You wish,” Walsh said. He leaned in so only Mitch could hear. “As long as it’s paying off for you in other ways, and something tells me it is.”

  “What we do for our women,” Mitch lamented. “What’s up?”

  “Prentiss here has something to tell you. Why don’t you both have a seat at his clean table and I’ll go put in my order for a couple of those fire-roasted shrimp tacos.”

  Mitch plopped his butt in a chair and motioned for Prentiss to do the same. “What’s on your mind?” He was pretty sure he already knew. The young man hadn’t been happy the whole trip here. He supposed it was time for him to go back to his family in San Diego. That’s why he was shocked when Prentiss finally sat down and started babbling.

  “I think I heard something two nights ago at the bar we were in, Lime in the Coconut, that might be important. The night Walsh gave Jenkins and me shore leave, we hung out there for about three hours. The place had a packed house. But there was this one guy everyone referred to as the mayor, sitting at the bar, who kept throwing back shots of rum until he was plastered.”

  Mitch sat up straighter. “Oakerson. And?”

  “The mayor’s already so sloppy drunk he can barely stand up when this other man shows up to help him get home.”

  “You know who it was?”

  “Sure. When I told Walsh about it, he showed me a picture of Baskin. It was him. But Baskin can’t seem to keep this Oakerson guy from running his mouth about some car accident that went down last year. The mayor’s scared that the same thing will happen to him that happened to some woman named Winnie. He kept talking about what a brilliant idea Baskin had to make it look like a car accident when it really wasn’t. But the mayor was also afraid that if he didn’t keep cooperating and doing what Baskin wanted, he could end up like the woman.”

  Mitch’s eyes grew wider. “So how does Baskin get Oakerson to shut up?”

  “This is where it gets interesting. Baskin hauls off and raps the mayor right across his mouth, hard enough to bust the lip and make it bleed. Baskin grabs up a couple of cotton napkins. The bartender drops in some ice and rolls the cubes up so the mayor can hold it up to his busted lip like it’s no big deal, happens all the time in there.”

  “That’s because it probably does. What happened after that?”

  “Baskin tells the mayor that he doesn’t want blood in his car and drags the guy through the back doorway by his shirt. Meanwhile the mayor’s cussing a blue streak. But he’s also begging Baskin not to mess up his face any more. People would talk about black eyes and the like.”

  “Not exactly keeping a down and low profile,” Mitch noted.

  “But that’s not all,” Prentiss added. “Right before Baskin hit him in the mouth, the mayor kept talking about a tourist who’d ended up dead, shot and killed…by the very guy who had hold of his shirt.”

  “Baskin. You don’t think the mayor was faking it, do you?”

  “Nope. That man was genuinely scared for his life. You could see it in his eyes.”

  “Jeez, that’s the closest thing we’ve come to hearing any of them mention Ryan. Did Oakerson say why they had to kill him?”

  Prentiss lifted a shoulder. “The mayor did a lot of laughing and said they didn’t want to cut this stranger in on the gold. Apparently someone else had promised him a share. But these guys—Baskin and Oakerson—weren’t about to let that happen. Where I come from it’s called pure and simple greed.”

  Mitch ran his hands through his hair. “So much for my hometown. It’s like these guys don’t even have the decency to hide anything they’ve done, not anymore. They’re flaunting it publicly, talking about Winnie Buchanan’s car accident and Ryan’s murder in a bar as if it were common knowledge and no one does a thing about it.”

  Prentiss apologized. “I’m sorry. What could Jenkins and me do? Oakerson was surrounded by a group of friends.”

  Mitch shook his head. “I’m not talking about you guys. You two did the right thing. By sitting there and letting Oakerson run his mouth like that, it paid off. What ticks me off is that in a crowded bar, no one picks up the phone to turn them in.”

  “Who they gonna call? Sinclair?” Walsh pointed out, sliding his basket of shrimp and fries on the table and dropping into a chair across from Mitch. “Maybe they’re afraid to speak up. Think about it. Baskin and Sinclair have run this place for twenty years without any opposition. That’s a long time to work on keeping the natives in line. These guys are used to having everybody kowtow to them, do what they say without questioning it. The people you grew up with know the consequences of bucking Sinclair’s system. Baskin and the like don’t have to keep their mouths shut because no one’s had the guts to stand up to them.”

  “Until now,” Mitch finished. “Yeah, well, that’s about to change. Their dynasty is coming to an end.”

  Mitch stewed on that the rest of the afternoon until he picked up the phone to call Jackson. He went over the story from Prentiss that night at the bar and then told him the part about Ryan. “You know, the whole time Prentiss is telling me his account of what happened, Tessa’s working behind the counter, not thirty feet away. The thing is, I thought you might want to be the one to tell her.”

  “Thanks for that. She’s been so downhearted because nothing we’ve turned over tells her why they killed Ryan. Up to this point, all we’ve had is supposition.”

  “Now we have more. We know for certain our dipshit of a mayor was in on it. We build our case and keep piling on until we bury the bastards.”

  “I can live with that. Do you ever think about settling here back in Indigo Key once this is over? I mean, you must’ve thought about it now that you’re back with Raine.”

  Mitch glanced over, caught sight of the pretty blonde taking care of a problem at the register. “Let’s just say I’m considering a lot more options than I did when I was eighteen and leave it at that.” He paused. “I have a favor to ask.”

  “No problem. What is it you want me to do?”

  Mitch detailed the plan and when the call ended, he went out of his way to finish up his tasks with one purpose in mind.

  He noticed Raine was happiest when she distanced herself from her mother. A sad fact, but a clear truth. It was one reason his mind went back to their teen years. He recalled how many times she’d made excuses just to get to hang out at his house, spend time with his folks. It explained a lot.

  Even though he would’ve preferred getting her alone back on the houseboat and keeping her all to himself, he knew she needed that social setting for reassurance. Everyone needed to know they were cared for and loved, even if it didn’t come from the one person that she needed to hear it from—her mother. That way, when he left to pick up his life, to go back to the Bahamas—

  No, he couldn’t bring himself to think like that now. How could he leave Raine behind when he was in love with her? Only a fool would walk away from someone like Raine twice. There was a sacrifice to
be made in that line of thinking, somewhere.

  Was he ready to make it? Was she? She hadn’t actually declared her love for him, not in so many words. But then, she probably didn’t want to risk putting it all out there again.

  Yet.

  So he made a point to plan an evening where the two of them could kick back and relax without the pressures of dealing with murder or the added boilerplate of making decisions about the future.

  Maybe they’d do something completely normal, like watch a movie. He just had to phrase the invitation where she’d leave work early and spend the evening in a stress-free environment that wasn’t all about sex. Not that he didn’t want to get her into bed. But it seemed to him there had to be more to their relationship this time around than hitting the sheets.

  He waited for her to take a break on the patio before approaching her with the idea. Under a pergola filled with trailing honeysuckle and budding orange blossoms, he took a seat across from her. “I got a text from Mom. She wants us to stop by the house after you’re done here. She says Dad wants to talk to us about something.” It wasn’t a complete lie, he reminded himself.

  “Oh sure. Sounds good. I can break away around six. I’ll make sure Tessa is free, too.”

  “Perfect. It works best if the gang’s all present and accounted for when Dad delivers his news, whatever it turns out to be.”

  “I should start more rice and beans,” she said, starting to get to her feet.

  Mitch grabbed her around the waist and plopped her in his lap. “I’m crazy about you.”

  She started to object to the display of public affection and then told herself it didn’t matter. She patted his lean face and said, “Hmm, funny how that works. I think you’re just plain nuts.”