Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 01 - Lickety-Split

by Kathy Hogan Trocheck

  “Kill?” Bobby looked mildly surprised. “Hell no. Is that what you thought?”

  “You killed Rosie Figueroa, didn’t you?”

  Bobby’s lace flushed. “That was Tammi’s idea.”

  “You cut her throat.”

  “Shut up,” Bobby said savagely. “Shut your goddamn mouth.”

  He shoved Truman and then Jackie to the floor. He took out the rope and used it to bind their ankles tightly together.

  “What are you going to do?” Jackie asked quietly.

  “Me and Tammi, we’re going out to the track, gonna win us the Festival of States race,” he said in a conversational tone. “It’s up to two hundred thousand dollars, you know? Should be enough to get us to South America. We got the computer program. They love gambling down there. Especially horse racing. We’ll be rolling in it.”

  “What about us?” Truman asked.

  Bobby stood up and surveyed his handiwork. “You? You’ll be out of here by, say, midnight. They got phones on planes now. We’ll call Cheryl and tell her where to find you. See? I’m not as bad as you thought, am I?”

  “Bobby?” It was Tammi’s voice.

  He went out of the cabin to see what she wanted.

  “Honey, you go ahead and change out of that uniform,” she said. “I want to run by and check on Wade, make sure he’s not misbehaving, then I’ll pick you up at your place.”

  “Suits me,” Bobby said.

  The boat rocked gently as he climbed down. Soon afterward they heard him start the car and back out of the driveway.

  Five minutes later they felt someone else climbing aboard. The cabin door opened.

  “Hey there,” Tammi said brightly. She knelt down and tested the ropes. “He does nice work, don’t he?”

  “Bitch,” Jackie spat.

  “That’s right,” Tammi said. “Rich bitch after tonight.”

  She looked around the cabin, moving ropes and other debris until she found what she was looking for. A rusting red gasoline can.

  Jackleen and Truman watched as she unscrewed the cap and began sprinkling the can’s contents on the life preservers. The air in the cabin filled with gas fumes.

  “I’ll bet Bobby told you we’d call the cops and tell them where to find you, didn’t he? He is just way too sweet to be true, don’t you think?

  “Shit,” Tammi said after a moment. “Out of gas. Ain’t that always the way?” She set the can down. “I’ll be right back. Don’t y’all go anywhere.”

  “We’ll burn to death,” Jackie said when she was gone. “This thing is all wood. We’re going to burn to death in this boat.”

  “Hush,” Truman said. He looked wildly around the cabin, searching for anything that could be used as a weapon.

  “Grandpa?” Chip stirred, then sat up groggily. His hands and feet were tied too. “What’s that smell? Is that gas?”

  “Hey, buddy,” Truman said tenderly. “We’re here, Chipper. We came to get you.”

  “I’m scared,” the boy said, his eyes filled with tears. “I want to go home.”

  “We will, son,” Truman said. “Can you wiggle your hands a little bit?”

  He held them out. The ropes were looser and he could maneuver his hands slightly.

  Truman’s eye caught something, something shoved way up in the V of the boat’s hull.

  “Chip,” he said urgently. “See that hunk of metal stuck up there? It’s an anchor. Are you strong enough to move that anchor?”

  “I’m tired,” Chip said, yawning. “I want to sleep.”

  “See if you can move that anchor,” Truman said, trying to keep the desperation from his voice. “Try, Chip. Show us how strong you are.”

  “Okay,” Chip said. With his legs extended in front of him, he scooted up to the V of the hull, reached in, and grabbed the anchor. They heard the rattling of the anchor’s metal chain, then the scraping of metal on wood.

  “It’s heavy,” Chip said, grimacing.

  “You’re strong,” Truman urged. “See if you can drag it back here.”

  Slowly, the child dragged the anchor backward, scooting again on his haunches.

  “Over there,” Truman said, nodding toward the side of the cabin where the ladder was. “Push it over there as far as you can.”

  Chip kicked the anchor into place with his feet.

  “Attaboy,” Truman said.

  “What are you doing?” Jackie asked. “That child can’t pick up that anchor and hit nobody with it.”

  “He won’t have to,” Truman said.

  They heard the kitchen door close and then Tammi’s voice. She was humming as she climbed the ladder.

  “Lie over here beside us,” Truman told Chip. “Hurry now. Bring the life preservers. Put them around your head.”

  “What on earth?” Jackie asked.

  The boat rocked and leaned slightly from Tammi’s weight on the ladder.

  “Now!” Truman yelled. “Roll that way!”

  Bending elbows and knees, the three of them rolled sideways, toward the other side of the boat. Toward the anchor. The boat rocked wildly and then they were falling,falling over and over as the boat dipped and crashed over on its side.

  The last thing Truman remembered hearing was a woman’s terrified scream.

  Chapter THIRTY-NINE

  Wade Hardeson glanced at his reflection in the car’s rearview mirror and startled himself. The face of a stranger stared back at him. The stranger was pale and unshaven, with bags under his eyes and a nervous tic that made his right eye flutter uncontrollably.

  He got out of the car, locked it with shaking hands. Tammi’s demands were too much. She’d ordered him to print out a set of charts for the Festival of States stakes race tonight. “Get it right,” she’d screamed, “or I’ll kill you myself.”

  Enough was enough. He couldn’t think, couldn’t sleep. He’d stop by Nana’s long enough to grab his stuff and get out. It was two o’clock, she should be at one of her club meetings. He felt bad about taking the car, but not that bad. Nana was loaded. She could get another car. He had to get away from Tammi and those other two thugs.

  He took the elevator up, got out the key she’d given him, slipped inside.

  “Wade?” He froze.

  His grandmother came out of the bedroom and beamed at him. She wore a pale aqua pantsuit and a string of pearls.

  “Oh, good. You’re back. I was just about to call a cab to take me to my bridge club. Now you can take me instead. And we’ll just run by the bank too, all right?”

  Wade smiled weakly. “Just drop you off, right? I’ve got a business appointment I need to get to.”

  She looked at his wrinkled clothes and scruffy face and shook her head. What kind of business was her grandson doing looking like a homeless person?

  They went through the drive-through window of her bank. “So nice, Saturday banking hours, don’t you think?” she said. She scribbled a check and handed it to him to give to the teller.

  “Why nine hundred?” he asked, glancing down at the check. “Why not go ahead and get a thousand if you need it?”

  She giggled. “If I write a check bigger than that, they notify Jock McGowan, my lawyer, immediately. And you know how tedious Jock can be. Always questions, questions. You’d think it was his money I was spending.”

  “Yeah,” Wade said. “You’d think.”

  He pulled the car up to the curb at Sarah Austin’s house on Snell Isle. It was a huge beige stucco Spanish Colonial number, only a block from his old man’s house.

  “I’ll be ready to come home at four,” Nana said, leaning in the window to kiss her grandson’s cheek. “Think you can make it back by then?”

  “I’ll try,” Wade said.

  He doubled back to the Bayfront Towers. It didn’t take long. He knew where Nana kept the cash. There was still a hundred in the drawer, along with the blue velvet cases that held his grandfather’s coin collection, a burgundy leather case that held some of Nana’s jewelry, and two books of
checks. He put all of it in a pillowcase.

  He ripped the page with the list of her bank’s branches out of the telephone book. His first stop was at the branch downtown. The check was made out to him in a decent imitation of her wavery handwriting. For nine hundred dollars. He glanced down at his watch. It was 3 pm. He’d have to go all the way to the beach to find the only other branch with Saturday banking and it closed at four.

  No time, he decided. He headed for the interstate. Miami, he decided. He had a full book of checks, and Nana’s bank had branches all over the state. He patted the laptop on the car seat beside him. Miami had horse racing, dog racing, jai alai. But what it didn’t have appealed to him most. No Tammi.

  Butch Goolsby shifted on the thin mattress, trying to find some inch of comfort in a comfortless world. He turned over on his side and saw Curtis sitting at the table in the middle of the cell. He had his headphones on and was bobbing his head to some song they were playing on the radio.

  They’d been in this cell since last night, since he’d taken the bolt cutters to that gate at the Florida Marine Patrol dock. They’d made it through the gate, nearly to the dock when the alarm went off. They might have gotten away if it hadn’t been for the goddamned ski masks.

  Curtis had insisted on the masks. “It’s a full moon,” he’d pointed out. “This way our faces won’t show in the dark. And the stink won’t be so bad.” Butch had allowed himself to be persuaded, and for that he sat now in a cell in the Pinellas County jail.

  In the dark like it was, neither one of them had seen the shrimp boat tied up alongside that barge full of rotting fish. Anyway, Butch asked himself, how was he to know the captured shrimp boat held two tons of marijuana, a load the cops called Colombian gold, seized by the Coast Guard only the day before as it chugged its way to the Mayhall dock?

  Butch sighed and turned on his back. It didn’t matter much now one way or the other. In a way, he told himself, it was kind of a relief. If he and Curtis kept their mouths shut, nobody would ever know anything about what was on that barge. They’d do, what, six months for breaking and entering? He thought about what Tammi would have to say about their bungled escapade. About Cookie and her last tirade.

  Jail, he thought, was infinitely preferable to both.

  Jewell Newby was looking over the week’s sales activity reports. “Excellent,” he said to himself. Sales were ahead of projections. Two of Jeannette Boynton’s closest friends had come into the office and picked out penthouse units like their friend Jeannette’s. That left only three units unsold. Pure profit.

  His office door swung open. He hated being interrupted like this. “I told you no calls,” he said, looking up, annoyed.

  His expression changed when he saw who it was. “My dear,” he said. “How’s your head?” “Full of numbers,” Cookie Jeffcote said. “Shall we talk?”

  epilogue

  Fundamentalist Fleeces Flock, Flees Florida

  By Truman Kicklighter, Special Correspondent

  ST. PETERSBURG—A controversial fundamentalist minister who sought to establish a financial empire by converting a downtown hotel into a high-priced senior citizen condo complex has fled the country, taking with him hundreds of thousands of dollars in “down payments” made by unwitting church members.

  Pinellas County State’s Attorney Emory W. Crist said Monday that state and federal authorities believe Jewell Newby, 48, pastor of the self-founded Church of Cosmic Unity, may have duped a dozen or more investors out of nearly $800,000 in a scheme to sell them condominium units in the Fountain of Youth Residential Hotel, a run-down retirement hotel located on First Avenue North in downtown St. Petersburg.

  “Our office issued warrants for Newby’s arrest this morning, but when we arrived at the church offices, they had been cleaned out,” Crist said. “We subsequently learned he may have flown to the Cayman Islands late yesterday. The FBI and the IRS have been alerted about his disappearance. Our investigation continues, and we will not rest until we bring this charlatan to justice.”

  Crist said that Newby, a charismatic figure who started similar ventures in Texas and Arizona, is also wanted for questioning by authorities in those states. He said authorities in New Mexico have reopened an investigation into the 1992 death of an 87-year-old Scottsdale woman who legally adopted Newby and made him her sole heir shortly before her death. Newby inherited nearly a million in cash and real estate upon the woman’s death.

  Crist said his office was alerted to Newby’s activities by a local attorney representing a wealthy St. Petersburg woman who had arranged to sign over the bulk of her share of a large family estate in return for ownership of a penthouse condominium.

  Although Newby apparently escaped arrest, Crist said authorities have arrested Newby’s alleged accomplice, 39-year-old Corinne E. “Cookie” Jeffcote, of St. Petersburg Beach. The woman, who was Newby’s second in command, was apprehended after attempting to flee to Grand Cayman. Jeffcote was detained by airline personnel at Tampa International Airport after boarding a Cayman Airways jet. When a flight attendant accidentally jarred the wig she was wearing, Miss Jeffcote became agitated and physically assaulted flight personnel.

  Police responding to reports of an altercation at the airport discovered $30,000 in cash, a gram of cocaine, and documents outlining the real estate scheme in Jeffcote’s bag.

  She is being held without bond in the Pinellas County jail, charged with mail fraud, racketeering, income tax evasion, possession of a controlled substance, and aggravated assault. Crist said Jeffcote will also be questioned about the disappearance of a Tampa man, Michael J. Streck, 37, a reputed organized-crime figure whose family has not seen him since last week. He said his office received an anonymous phone call tipping police to Jeffcote’s involvement with Streck.

  It was hot in the card room. A fan whirred languidly overhead, stirring the warm, humid air only slightly. Ollie Zorn finished reading the story in the St. Petersburg Times and set his beer bottle on top of the folded newspaper.

  Their voices echoed in the nearly empty hotel. The snowbirds had flown back north.

  “You mind?” Truman asked, moving the wet beer bottle off the paper. “That’s my first byline. I need it for my clip file.”

  “Special correspondent, huh?” Ollie dealt the cards, slapping them against the tabletop one by one. His shirt was unbuttoned, exposing his round, hairless belly. “What’s that mean, special correspondent?”

  “It means he’s special, that’s what,” Jackleen retorted, sipping her tea. “Means those fools figured you don’t put a prize specimen out to pasture.”

  “It means I’m a stringer,” Truman said, sliding the cards off the table, rearranging them to his liking. “Get paid by the piece. Seventy-five dollars. Plus a byline, plus gas money and tolls, but no meal money.”

  “Not bad,” Ollie admitted.

  Jackleen picked up a card from the deck, considered, then discarded it. “Ask Mr. K who sicced the cops on Newby and Cookie in the first place?”

  “Okay,” Ollie said. “I’m asking.”

  She jumped back in before Truman had a chance to answer. “You know those Boyntons, the rich ones, run all the banks and all that? Mr. K called the Boyntons’ lawyers on those church folks, told ‘em Miss Jeannette Boynton was fixin’ to give away the farm. That’s what stopped ‘em.”

  Truman picked up the card Jackie put down. He smiled. Threw a card down from his hand.

  “Just some discreet questions, that’s all. Good heads-up reporting. Nothing I haven’t done a thousand times before.”

  Ollie’s hand hovered over the deck and then the discard pile, his face a study in indecision.

  “Take one or the other,” Truman said. “We’re not getting any younger here.”

  “You get a notice from the Mandelbaums?” Ollie asked.

  “About the rent increase?” Truman snapped. “Hell of a thing, after all they put us through.”

  “You ask me, new carpet and paint and half-new wiring
don’t mean they can get away with another fifteen dollars a month,” Ollie said. “You’re a reporter, TK, why don’t you write an expose? Or hey, I could call the TV station again.”

  “That’s not how it works,” Truman said.

  “‘Course, I guess you can afford it,” Ollie said slyly. “Way I hear it, you got a nice little nest egg stashed away, account of you used that computer program that dead girl came up with.”

  Jackie stared intently at her cards. Truman’s face flushed red.

  “Had a nest egg,” Jackie said quietly. “Had. All gone now. Good thing you got that newspaper job, Mr. K, even if it is only now and again.”

  “What happened?” Ollie asked.

  Truman picked a card off the top of the deck and pursed his lips. “No harm in talking about it now, I guess. As long as it doesn’t leave this room. It was a sure thing. Marian, this woman who works out at the track, she helped us win all the money that first time. Went back out there the next week, after everything with Chip quieted down. She gave us a tip. A sure thing. Twenty-to-one odds. It was a big black dog. Name was Lickety-Split. We’d have won too.”

  “Except Lickety-Split got bumped a mile coming down the home stretch,” Jackie said. “Lickety-Splat, that’s more like it. We lost every cent. All of it. Had to borrow bus fare home from Marian. Now what do you say about that, Mr. Truman Compulsive Gambler Kicklighter?”

  Truman laid his cards on the table. Three aces, three kings, three jacks.

  “Gin,” he said. “Another hand?”

  ####

  OTHER BOOKS BY KATHY HOGAN TROCHECK

  Happy Never After

  “Fast paced, entertaining.”

  —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “Callahan and her cohort of continuing characters (her mom, Edna; the ancient cleaning ladies Baby and Sister) are great company. If Happy Never After were a song, we’d all be dancing in the streets.”