+++
“Bill? Bill??” she said as she shook me hard. I woke up, and the head-pounding started again though a lot duller than before. “Bill! What the hell happened to you?”
I looked up and there was Jessica, wearing nothing but a filmy nightgown, her blonde hair pinned up. She was beautiful.
“Hiya doll, been lookin’ for ya,” I said as I got to my feet. “Tried knocking but got no answer. Figured I’d wait up here ’til you came home. Guess I fell asleep.”
“I was home,” she said, “I was just sleeping…I took a valium before I hit the hay, and when I do that even the roosters can’t wake me up.”
I got to my feet. “Can I come in?” I asked pleasantly.
“Um, sure…just a sec,” she said, and closed the door in my face. Noises of a few things being thrown around, drawers being shut, and the door opened again. “It’s not very big I’m afraid, just a place to lay my head. But I do have an icebox with some pop. Would you like one?”
“Sure,” I said, and she gave me a cold bottle of Coke. It hit the spot. “So what are you doing here in Key West, Bill? Taking in the sights or did you just miss me?” She took a long pull of her soda, and pressed the cool bottle against her cheeks. The filmy negligee left very little to the imagination. There’s no describing that sight, so I won’t even bother trying.
“Little of both. Actually I have to make a run up to Islamorada, and I could use some company. Thought maybe you’d join me. I have a convertible.”
“Ooh, nice, she said, “But I’m supposed to work tonight.”
“What time?”
“Eleven.”
“Can we make it up there and back by then?”
“We might but it would be pushing it.”
“Then call out sick. If you need the dough, I’ll spot you a day’s pay. I’m loaded, since I don’t have to pay for anything at the Island.”
“I don’t know Billy, not so sure an insurance investigator can afford me.”
“Try me, What do you make as a hostess, fifteen, twenty dollars a night?”
“Try a buck-fifty,” she said, and got a sort of strange look in her eye.
“A buck-fifty?” I repeated, and almost choked on the Coke. “Where do you hostess at, the Ritz?”
“No,” she laughed, “I just know how to bring in the tips.”
“Tips? Wait a minute, what kind of hostesses are we talking about here?”
“The kind that look pretty, and have nice conversations with rich men to make them have a fun time. Usually at golf clubs, country clubs, and sometimes even at parties over on Tiki Island.”
Of course she was lying, but I didn’t know that at the time. I was barely listening to what she was saying. It was hard to listen with nothing between us but a thin layer of see-through silk.
“And they give you money for being pretty?”
“Sure,” she answered, “And for making good conversation, of course.”
I had no reason to doubt her, so I continued on.
“Well look, if you can swing it, I’d really like the company on the drive. If you want, you can stay with me...at the uh...you know, at the suite.”
She gave a little giggle, and took another drink of her Coke. She lifted the bottle high, which lifted her breasts high too. It was all I could do not to jump her right there.
“Sure,” she said, “Monday night was fun. I don’t get to have fun like that much. And I could use a nice drive too. I haven’t been in an open car in a long time. Just give me a minute to change.”
“Ok then, should I wait outside?”
She slipped off the nightgown exposing her fully-nude self to me. “Don’t be silly, Billy. There’s nothing here you haven’t seen already.” She turned and slid into a sundress and sandals. I downed my Coke in one long gulp, wishing it was spiked with Bourbon.
+++
The late afternoon sun was drifting down into the west, but at four-thirty it was still bright as could be. By now in the city, the sun would be almost gone, hidden by the tall buildings then hidden by the horizon. The days were longer here, somehow. Like perpetual summer.
We motored down the Overseas Highway in the ragtop Chevy with the top down and radio on. I had it set to a Rock ’n’ Roll station, and Jessica didn’t seem to mind. She sat in the passenger seat wearing a pair of big, pink, cat-eyes sunglass and an oversized yellow straw hat the flapped in the breeze (don’t ask me how the hell she kept it from flying off, just a dame thing, I guess), and bopped along with most of the tunes that came over the noise box.
The temperature dropped a good five degrees as we started over one of the smaller bridges near Bahia Honda.
“So this used to be all train tracks, huh?” I asked.
“Before my time,” she yelled over the wind and the radio. “I don’t remember it at all.”
“Were you born in Key West?”
“Born and raised. I never went north of Key Largo until I was eighteen.”
“What happened when you were eighteen?” I asked, just making conversation. She looked away, over the Atlantic. I looked straight ahead at the long stretch of flat bridge.
“I met a boy,” she finally said, “He lived in Miami and invited me to come up to South Beach. Said he liked me and he’d help me get a place and a job there.” Jessica looked back out at the ocean again, away from me.
“So how did you wind up back here?”
“Things didn’t work out,” she said quietly, and I knew not to push it any farther.
An hour later we were pulling into Islamorada. I wouldn’t have time to follow up the lead Fernando gave me, so I headed for the address Roberts scribbled down. I found a sign for Sunset Dock and turned off a little side road paved with clamshells. It led back to the Gulf side of the island, to a little set of weather-worn gray docks with a shingle-clad shanty at the shoreline. The shanty was small, only about thirty feet wide and fifteen deep, and was covered with rusting metal signs adverting everything from Nikkle Pop to Shell Oil. Various oars, barrels, fishnets, old fishing rods and coils of rope completed the decor. The words “Bait and Tackle” were painted in a semi-circle of faded white letters on the single, large-pane window, a window so dirty you could barely see the yellowed curtains behind it. A wooden sign nailed to the door read “Sunset Docks, Cap’t Reams, Proprietor.”
“Are you sure you got the right place, Billy? This joint’s a far cry from Tiki Island.”
“This is it. I’m not here to rent a boat. I’m here to get a story.”
Jessica didn’t ask any further questions, which sort of surprised me. We headed up to the dock and over to the shanty. A small garvey boat was docked behind the little bait and tackle shop. It was the same color gray as the dock and the shop. Next to the building, however, sat a forty-foot fishing trawler with a net crane and a big sign that read ‘Charters’. I saw movement behind the sign.
“Hello? Captain Reams?”
A man, rough around the edges and dressed in green rubber overalls came out from the cabin of the boat.
“Aye, that’d be me,” he said, not sounding like an islander at all, but more like a cross between a New Englander and a pirate. “Charter’s done fer today, closin’ up shop til mornin’.”
“I’m not here for a charter,” I yelled back.
“I reckon I could open up the shop for ye, ifin’ it’s bait or fish line or the like yer needin’.” He walked up the gang plank to the dock, and met me in front of the store.
Captain Reams was not a young man, and not a particularly handsome man either. The years of salt and wind had eroded his face like so many chasms on a mountainside, but his eyes were bright and alive. He couldn’t have been more than five-foot six, but he seemed much bigger.
“My name is Bill Riggins, I’m an investigator from New York, down here on vacation, and have offered to help Sheriff Jackson with an investigation. I was asking some questions around Key West when the Police Chief, man named Roberts decided he didn’t like that idea t
oo much.” Jessica let out a little gasp but took it back quick. Seemed she wasn’t too kool when it came to mentioning the cops. Good thing I hadn’t told her I was one, I guess.
“Oh yeah, Roberts. Nasty man he is, but not too rough when you get to know him. He send you here, son?”
“Yeah, he said you might have some answers for me.”
“Well, I’d imagine that would greatly depend on the questions. Come on inside, I’ve got cold beer and I could use one. You too missy,” he said to Jessica, “Or I’ve got pop if you ain’t old enough to imbibe,” he said with a wink.
Jessica flushed a little. I said, “Sorry, I’ve forgotten my manners. This is Jessica, a friend.”
The old man took her hand and shook it gently. “You look a might familiar, Miss Jessica. Have we met? Possibly on Key West?” She looked over at me sort of jerkily, then looked down.
“No sir, I’m sure I would have remembered you,” she answered sort of timidly. Little gears were clicking away in my head. I ignored them. I said,
“I think we’ll both take you up on the beers Captain,” and he led us inside the shop.
Once inside, the aroma of fish and seawater assaulted me like a slap in the face with a wet mackerel. It was fairly dark, and every inch of every wall was covered in shelves stacked with fishing gear, or hooks with hanging fishing gear. The exposed rafters were draped with giant fishing nets, and cork and glass floats hung from every available nail. Sets of oars, probably not used for decades, criss-crossed above the front window. The back of the shop had no windows, only a door leading out to the dock with the garvey. The floor was just like the dock except covered in crates and barrels, probably filled with more fishing gear and bait.
A refrigerated tank stood by the wall. Captain Reams retrieved three Pabst Blue Ribbon bottles from it, and as he did I could see packages marked “Squid”, “Eel” and the strangely vague “Baitfish”. He directed us to sit at a table (actually a giant wooden cable spool that was doubling as a table) and we pulled up a couple crates and sat.
“So how is ole Lem,” Reams started.
“Lem?” I asked?
“Roberts. We call ’eem Lemon Head, Lem for short. You know, on account he has lemons for brains.”
I laughed, and so did Jessica…a lot more than she should have, maybe.
“That’s great! Well, ‘ole Lem’ has a busted nose and a couple of loose teeth at the moment, Captain.”
Reams looked square at me, rocking slightly back and forth on the chair. He was still wearing his weathered, grayish-white Captain’s hat. He tilted it back off his face, and lit up a pipe. “Messed with the wrong man, did he, ole Lem?”
“That he did Captain.”
“Don’t you trust ’eem son. He’s a sneaky sort. Lawman or not, iffin’ he don’t take a liking to ye, he can make things pretty hard for ye.”
“I’ll keep my peepers open, but I ain’t too worried. I can make things hard for guys like him too,” I said, and lit two Camels. I handed one to Jessica. Her hand had the slightest tremble in it when she took it.
“So what was it the Chief thought I could oblige you with, Mr. Riggins? Islamorada is a long way from Key West, and I ain’t been down that way in nigh-on fifteen years, I’d imagine.”
On a feeling, I looked over at Jessica. Her usually calm, cool demeanor was slipping. Her eyes were a little wider than they should have been, but I didn’t really notice. A gear clicked. I ignored it.
“I’d like some information on Mr. Eliot Hawthorn,” I finally said. I got no reaction.
“I never knew the man personally.”
“Roberts seemed to think you might know something that could help me.”
“Well, son, maybe that’s why we call him ole Lemon Head.”
He had me there. But that wasn’t it. This old salt wasn’t the talking kind. You had to ask the right questions to get what you wanted out of him.
“You ever work for Hawthorn?”
“That I did,” he said, and took a puff on the pipe. The scent of cherry pipe tobacco filled the air, overpowering the odor of the bait.
“When?”
“Twenty-seven through Thirty-six, I’d imagine. I was an officer in the Navy, put in my time during the first World War. Then, after it was over, I was diagnosed with a TB. I lived through it, as you can plain see, but my career in the Navy was over. I wandered down here one winter when the fish weren’t bitin’ up in Maine, and ended up stayin’. I bounced from job to job, fishery to fishery, boat to boat until Eliot Hawthorn found me workin’ on a trawler. He needed someone to build and oversee his docks for him out a Hawthorn Island, and said he didn’t want to pay a rich firm when he could give the money to some folk who really needed it. So he made me the man in charge of his docks, and eventually his boats, and I ran the docks and boats until the Great Hurricane washed it all away back in thirty-five.”
“I though you said you never met him.”
“I said never personally. On a business basis, I know him well.”
What a kook this guy was.
“You ever been to any of his parties?”
Reams shook his head, “Nah, nah. Hawthorn was a nice man, a generous man. But he knew where the line divided friends from employees, and stuck to it. The only ones on the payroll that got invited to parties were the few who helped him uh…import…stuff.”
“Like booze and hookers from Cuba,” I said. I noticed Jessica, who had been very quiet, shot a very faint look of surprise. Click, click.
“Yes, son, like booze and…ladies of the evening, from Cuba.”
“Ok, well did you ever hear of anyone getting roughed up at those parties…bad I mean, like a rape, or possibly a murder?”
Another laugh from the old man; this time he slapped his knee so hard I thought his bones would crack. “Murder? Rape? No sir, not on Eliot’s Island. Miss Vivian would never have put up with such things. Remember, they were high society. Least the fact is that Eliot Hawthorn was. Vivian was a showgirl from up north, I believe. But she could be very lady-like. She’d never have forgiven anyone who committed such a crime at her home. She’d not hide it, either. If there was a murder back then and either Hawthorn knew about it, they would have had the murderer strung up by the nearest palm. Funny thing to ask a man, Mr. Riggins. Why, may I ask?”
It occurred to me just then that I hadn’t told any of this to Jessica yet. I planned to tell her about it on the ride down, but it slipped my mind somehow. Now I had to lay it all out for both of them. No sweat, I guess.
“Well, Captain, and I meant to tell you this on the ride down Jessica but just didn’t get the chance…”
Jessica tensed up, noticeably.
“Yesterday a skeleton was found on Hawthorn’s Island, in the garden. It was buried down about four feet, and appears to be a woman. Also seemed to be she was buried there purposefully, not just thrown in a shallow grave.”
Jessica’s tenseness relaxed but was replaced by an expression of shock and a little horror. Reams just looked at me.
“Now I know why Lem sent you down to see me,” he said, taking another puff of his pipe.
“Why’s that?” I asked, not catching his drift.
“Well, he likely thinks I might have been the one to burry her, I’d imagine.”
+++
The early years of Tiki Island were some of the best of Eliot’s life. For the first time, Eliot Hawthorn was not just squandering his days sipping gin, playing golf and enjoying the luxuries of the rich. He was working, something he thought he’d never want to do. Eliot ran the day-to-day operations of the resort, along with a general manager and several assistants, of course. Marietta worked too; as Food & Beverage Manager she was in charge of all the resort’s restaurants, bars and snack shacks. Melinda, of course, was the unofficial Entertainment Director, a good-will ambassador who often greeted the guests at the dock wearing a traditional Hawaiian Hula skirt and lies. She learned to dance several authentic Hulas before she was ten, and performed o
nce a week in the main dining room with the seasoned professionals. She was so enamored with the idea of being in charge of the Island’s entertainment at such a young age, that Eliot even went as far as to change the real Entertainment Director’s title to Showroom & Special Events Manager.
Then in December of 1941 the war came to America. Suddenly people were cancelling vacations, and soon Tiki Island was losing employees to the draft. The sounds of fighter planes on training missions from Fort Lauderdale filled the afternoon skies, and fuel for the water taxies became difficult to find, even for a wealthy man like Eliot Hawthorn. Several hurricanes, no where near as strong as the Great Atlantic Hurricane of Thirty-Five but destructive nonetheless damaged areas of the Island and the hotel. With less than half the money coming in and the mounting costs to repair damage and operate the resort on war-time rations, Tiki Island went into the red for the first time.
And of course, there was the war itself. America was at war with the Japanese, and the war was being fought in the Pacific on the shores of the islands that Tiki Island had embraced. Now when people thought of Hawaii, instead of thinking of pretty Hula girls and luaus, they thought of Pearl Harbor. When they saw a palm tree on the news, it often had a wounded soldier leaning against it. Eliot and Marietta feared their Island getaway would be seen in a very bad light, an insult to the men who fought and died in the Pacific.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
Eliot had started seeing things.
From the day they landed on the Island in 1938, he had a strange, foreboding feeling that had him looking over his shoulder and keeping nightlights on in every room. The feeling was weak at first, but it was there. But soon after they opened the resort Eliot saw the first apparition, nothing more than a white, wispy cloud hovering over the garden but something that definitely didn’t belong there. It didn’t look like anything in particular, but Eliot could feel it was a presence; he somehow knew it wasn’t just fog, but something that once had a soul.
Murder on Tiki Island: A Noir Paranormal Mystery In The Florida Keys (Detective Bill Riggins Mysteries) Page 13