I didn’t understand why he spoke in a snarky tone, nor why he radiated disapproval. “Did you question him yet?”
“He wouldn’t give me the time of day. Said he’d meet us here at three o’clock. We’re here and on time, but I don’t see him. I wonder if he played me.”
My phone rang. I recognized the name on the caller ID display. It was a new name I’d entered yesterday. I selected the speaker phone option. “Justin? Where are you?”
“Can’t tell you, River. Stop looking for me. I don’t know where Chili is.”
Behind me, I heard Pete doing something with his phone. Really? He was taking a call now?
Lance crowded closer to my phone. “This is Deputy Lance Hamlyn. We need you to come in and talk with us at the station.”
“No way, Deputy. I changed my mind. I like walking around on this green earth. I haven’t done anything wrong. I trust River, but I don’t know you.”
“Justin, I want to know where Chili used to hunt,” I piped in, anxious to get results. “Did he have any favorite places?”
“He could be anywhere.” Justin listed a couple of properties. “Take those with a grain of salt. We haven’t hunted together in years.”
“Thanks,” I said, as if he’d given me vital information. He hadn’t. The places he’d mentioned were large tracts of land that even I, a nonhunter, knew were common hunting grounds. We had so many hunting seasons down here, that it always seemed to be hunting season. My gut told me Chili wouldn’t hide in a place with frequent traffic. He’d find someplace away from the public eye and wait out the trouble, whatever it was.
“Keep your head down, River,” Justin said. “The people after the Bolz family are mean as timber rattlers.”
“What’s this all about?” I asked.
“Can’t talk anymore. Gotta go.”
The phone clicked off. Pete gazed around at me with a sheepish expression, phone to his ear. “Yeah, I can’t talk right now. Handle it. Gotta go.”
“Really, Pete?” I asked, my irritation focused on him. “You took a call just now?”
He shrugged. “Something came up. I dealt with it.”
I heard the whine of an engine in the distance. “What’s that sound?” I asked.
The men stilled as we strained to listen. Pete spoke up. “Outboard motor.”
I leapt at that possibility. “Could’ve been Justin. Maybe he’s headed somewhere in a boat. Is there a marina near here?”
“No,” Lance said. “I checked the county maps before I drove out here. There’s a tidal creek behind the main house on this property. The Bromfields have a dock. Even if that is a boat, and even if it is Justin, there are too many marsh islands and hammocks where he could hole up with a minimum of supplies. Too many private fish camps out there. We’d never find him.”
“Is he going wherever Chili is?” I asked.
“Doubt it,” Lance said. “The sheep are fleeing the big bad wolf, whoever that is. Typically, when that happens, they hide out alone. They think they’re invisible that way.”
I dismissed his puzzling remark and mentioned the crux of the matter. “So far we have Chili missing, his mother dead, and two mobsters with Italian sounding last names. Since our leads are few and far between, I’m inclined to believe you that this is linked to organized crime.”
“Seems pretty disorganized to me,” Lance said. “All we’ve got are Ferarrelli and Barnegas and they aren’t talking. Their fancy lawyers got their cases moved up the court docket. Both made bail and are wearing electronic monitoring devices at Ocean Crest Plaza. The Ocean Crest, of all places. I can’t even afford to eat lunch there.”
“Maybe crime does pay after all,” I said flippantly, knowing full well that all of us could afford a lunch that cost twice the usual rate, but who would do that unless they had money to burn?
Lance growled and Pete looked thoughtful.
“What a waste of time,” Lance said, glancing at his watch. “Quitting time coming up soon. Meet you guys for a beer somewhere?”
“We have other plans,” Pete said.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“I appreciate you saying we have other plans,” I said as we retreated to the comfy sectional in my living room. “I only wish I knew what they were.”
Pete pulled out his phone. “Our plans are to get to the bottom of this case. You can’t stop thinking about it, and the deputy keeps dogging you. We need to solve this case and get our privacy back.”
“Are you making another call?” I asked in a pointed tone.
“Nope. We’re going to listen to Justin again. I faked the phone call and used my phone as a recording device.”
“Oh! And there I was getting testy with you for not paying attention. That’s a great move.”
“I have some other moves you may like,” he said with a sly grin.
My face heated. “Oh, you! Later, definitely, but for now I want to hear that recording.”
“May not get us anywhere. I planned to listen for background noises.”
He played the recording a few times. There was a distant sound I thought was a bird call, but what if it was a child? “Can you go back to the part just before he hangs up? I can’t tell if that’s the shrill of a bird or a kid.”
We listened a few more times. “Could be a kid,” Pete said.
“In that case, his girlfriend and her kid went with him. I don’t know who he’s seeing. Lance didn’t mention her name. We could ask him.”
“Information is power,” Pete said. “We keep the power centered between the two of us. If we start asking about the girlfriend, we may trigger the wrong kind of attention on her family. Unless we need Justin again, we’ll keep this audio file to ourselves.”
“Lance doesn’t want me on the case unless he needs me to grill people, and if he found out about the recording, he’d be upset. He may even think we’re taping him. That wouldn’t be good.” It was hard to put a positive spin on our actions today because we struck out. “Okay, so recapping, the whole trip to the tree farm was a bust.”
“I wouldn’t say that. Your cop buddy is frustrated. He wants this resolved too. Must be up for a promotion.”
“Nailed it. He’s angling for the chief deputy slot. I didn’t care for him when Doug got arrested. He was so hard on my brother, but Doug turned his life around after his arrest. I’ve worked with Lance a few times now and he seems fair and decent, so I’ve changed my opinion of him. He wasn’t responsible for Doug’s troubles. Doug was.”
“He wants me out of the way. He wants you.”
“Just so you know, I did nothing to encourage him.”
“You’re a walking, breathing woman who crossed his path. For some guys, that’s all it takes.” An odd look crossed his face. “But you’re so much more than that.”
I batted my eyelashes at him. “You don’t think he admires my brain?”
He folded me close with his good arm. “We’re together. Whatever he’s admiring, he’d better get used to doing it from a distance.”
A while later, I stirred, thoughts about Chili Bolz pinwheeling in my head. Chili was out there, alone in the woods. That was what I hoped. I couldn’t consider the alternative. There was a fifty-fifty chance he’d been hurt. He was afraid to come out of hiding. Also true or we’d have found him by now, but why go to ground? Was the mob gunning for his family? What business did the Bolz family have with criminals? Why did my intruder ask about money?
My disconnected thoughts chased each other round and about until the endless looping caused me to rub my aching temples.
“What’s wrong?” Pete said, his voice husky with rest and relaxation.
“The case. We know some of the pieces, but the missing pieces are the crucial ones. You were right earlier. We’ve missed something.”
“You have good intuition and judgment. Let’s
review what we know, focusing on the people involved. Who gives you a bad feeling?”
“Aside from the two mob associates, I’d say Garnet Pierce, the marina master. She tried to hustle us away from the docks the other day. I’ve been at Bayside numerous times before to pick up fish from Chili and she never budged from behind the shop counter.”
“Good enough for me. Let’s run over to Bayside again.”
We drove to the marina and found the shop locked up tight with a closed sign prominently displayed. I searched for an hours-of-operation posting, but it wasn’t there. Garnet’s big red truck was gone. Granted it was late afternoon, but shouldn’t someone be at the dock on a sunny afternoon like this?
“Look for Chili’s boat again. Maybe Garnet lied to us before, and it was here all along,” Pete suggested. “What was the vessel’s name?”
“The Reel Fine.” I shaded my eyes and scanned the dozen boats, yachts, pontoon boats, and sailboats moored at the dock. “It’s not here.”
“Neither is the dockmaster. Is she usually here this time of day?”
“I don’t come here enough to know.” I shrugged. “We’re the only car in the parking lot. That’s odd for a sunny afternoon in warm weather.”
“It makes sense if this whole place is a front,” Pete said.
I remembered about the cameras, shielded my mouth, and spoke softly. “Let’s discuss this on the road.”
We pulled away, and Pete turned to me. “The dock must be a sham. We should assume organized crime owns the dock and all the boats moored there. The fishing charters Chili pulled in were icing on the fake window dressing.”
“Islanders would say your statement is too incredible to be true, but nothing in this Bolz case has been as I assumed it was all along. I agree, the marina should be busier. It used to be busier. Even though I occasionally went out there to see Chili, I didn’t notice the level of dock activity. The concept of the dock being a front feels right, but at the same time, how’d I miss that?”
“Why would you have reason to look beyond a dock of moored boats? That’s the benefit of me coming in cold.”
“I need to think.” Grim reality driving my thoughts, I made random turns on familiar roads, circling a large residential neighborhood. “Okay. If we assume the mob owns or controls the dock, it follows that Garnet works for the mob, which explains how she affords that expensive truck. That also means Chili worked for the mob, and not only him, his entire family, since they were all threatened or hurt. Plus, Estelle’s house was nearly dismantled.”
“That fits the facts we know,” Pete said.
I thought it through some more and shook my head. “That’s where the scenario falls apart. Mobs typically move guns or drugs, but we have a low crime rate here and no major problems with drugs. What’s the point of owning a marina?”
Pete didn’t answer for a long moment. “This island could be a way station. The deserted marina is fifteen miles from an interstate highway. They could transport drugs or guns anywhere from here, and no one would know. Or they could be laundering money. If that’s the case, it’s likely they ran the money through the marina office.”
“Maybe that sufficed until they had too much money for the marina to absorb without detection. They had the marina do double duty at first, both a controlled entry point and a laundering facility,” I said, warming to the new theme as I returned to the main road. “Estelle had a dry-cleaning business. I’ve heard criminals target small operations like car washes and dry cleaners to funnel money into banks.”
“Could be,” Pete said, “but I keep coming back to the destruction of Estelle’s house. That is a fact and the men who did it are likely mob-connected. Makes me think it wasn’t guns or drugs. Money stacks easily in the dead zone between walls. If a money shipment went missing, and the mob thought Estelle took it, how’d it get into her house? The ladies next door would notice strangers coming and going from Estelle’s house.”
“If money flowed through her business the sisters next door wouldn’t have seen anything at the house,” I countered. “For all we know, Chili and Kale moved the physical money around. They would have good reason for going in and out of her home or business.”
“If she was laundering money, it wouldn’t have to physically enter her business, only her business’s financial records.” Pete sighed. “It’s too easy to stray from the facts. We’re guessing.”
I maneuvered through a traffic circle and heavier traffic as I drove south. “Maybe, but laundering money fits. The cops searched her house. A drug dog would’ve found traces of illegal substances if vast quantities of drugs moved through that house. Guns take up a lot of space. How would those have gone in and out of the house or her tiny dry cleaners without notice?”
“Hmm. Good point. Did the cops search her dry cleaners?”
I shrugged. “If they thought her death was a home invasion, why would they? Besides, her shop has plaster walls. That’s not easily accessed or repaired. It would make no sense to hide money in a plaster wall, and I know for a fact that neither Chili nor Kale ever tried to plaster a wall.”
“We need a fresh angle, something to help us nail her killer.”
“We could visit her shop.” I hadn’t connected the shop to Estelle’s death before now. As a kid, I often went to work with Estelle and her sons at the dry cleaners. An idea sparked. “I remember a deer trail through the woods behind that shop. Kale, Chili, and I played there all the time.”
“Thatta girl.” Pete patted my leg. “Tell me about the trail. Is it wide enough for a car?”
Could we have solved this case by driving around and brainstorming? My pulse quickened. “Used to be a narrow path. We need to see it.”
“Where does the trail lead?” Pete asked.
“It runs adjacent to an old drainage swale. We never went to the end because it cut behind a parking lot for a spooky abandoned building. That place has since been torn down, and the Beach Supplies shop is there now.”
“Let’s check it out.”
I drove behind the beach novelty store and a rusted dumpster sat where the trail used to end. Thick brush ringed the dumpster, suggesting it hadn’t moved in years. “Rats,” I said. “No one’s used this access point lately. So much for the secret passageway theory. Let’s visit the dry-cleaning shop.”
“You’re welcome to look at anything you like,” Kendra Gillies said when I explained why we wanted to look around. “We keep thinking someone will shut us down any minute now.”
“How is everyone getting paid?” I asked as I looked around the customer side of the business. It used to seem twice as large.
“One of the employees knows someone at probate. They said to petition the court to get our wages when Estelle’s estate is settled. So we’re keeping track of everything. I hope it gets resolved soon. I can’t go more than a couple of weeks without a paycheck.”
“I hope it’s settled soon too. If you don’t mind, I hope it’d be all right if we look and see if there’s any place Estelle could’ve stored valuables here. I’m hoping to figure out why someone killed her.”
Kendra shrugged. “Suit yourself. That island cop already came around asking questions and rapping on the plaster walls. Couldn’t help him either. Estelle didn’t have an office here. She did all the bookwork at home.”
Pete and I lapped the inside of the building in a few minutes. “Nothing extra here,” I said confidentially to Pete. “I hope they keep this place open. It’s the only dry cleaners on the island.”
I thanked Kendra for allowing us to look. Back in the van, I rolled my stiff neck. “That was disappointing. I was hoping to find a bright neon clue.”
Pete reached over and rubbed my neck. “No such thing. But I know how to fix this.”
“You do?”
“Ice cream time,” Pete said. “I think better with ice cream.”
I
brightened. “Me too.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
We waited our turn at the bustling Island Creamery. All around us, people chatted happily, kids dashed in and out of the café style table and chair sets. Outside, two dogs were tied to trees, and the bicycle rack was jammed with bikes.
“You could make a killing in a sweet setup like this,” Pete said. “The location and vibe are perfect.”
The sun no longer seemed quite so bright. “I’m not interested in running a storefront. Too many details would keep me from cooking. I am a caterer.”
“Got it.”
His curt answer surprised me. “I didn’t mean to sound critical, but I like what I’m doing now. I don’t want to change careers.”
“I’m used to fixing things, hon. Didn’t mean to imply you weren’t perfect as you are. I did say the words ‘you could make a killing’ but I meant the universal you. Perhaps I should become a shop owner as I favor regular income.”
“Ah. I get it. You’re trying to fix yourself.”
“I need a new direction, but I’m in no hurry to decide anything. I’m right where I want to be. With you.”
“Aww. Don’t make me get all weepy in public. I’m where I want to be too.”
We ordered and sat with our choices. Mocha caramel cone for me, mint chocolate chip for him. A family with a toddler and an infant sat nearby and my gaze kept going to the sweet baby the mom held in her arms.
Pete reached for my hand and squeezed it. “I know,” he said softly.
Recent months kept me off-balance emotionally. I’d buried my mother, dealt with a brother getting arrested, reunited with Pete, and now I was helping the Bolz family. I shouldn’t be thinking about starting a family, but that was all I could think about. My biological clock wasn’t just ticking, it was going super nova.
Pete polished off his ice cream quickly while I savored mine, licking off small bits at a time to make it last.
SEAS THE DAY Page 18