Shallow Grave

by Karen Harper

  “As for Jackson, it’s a big enough place with lots of sight barriers. Probably chance or bad timing, but what a character the old woman is, one we may have to watch.”

  “A real frontier woman,” Claire insisted. “If I question her again—on her turf—who knows what she might tell us about the tiger or if she resented Ben Hoffman. Those ‘boys’ of hers would probably do anything she asked.”

  “You mean sneak in here like storm troopers, hit Ben on the head and shove him in the cage, and not be noticed? Wouldn’t they be scared that Momma only wants her Thunder to have possums, not humans? But, yeah, she sure calls the shots. And no, don’t even suggest you’re going anywhere near Everglades backcountry to question some old woman or those two with her.”

  Claire heaved a huge sigh and leaned against him. “I think we’re both back on a case—accident or murder or suicide—aren’t we?”

  “I guess I am, but you’re pregnant.”

  “No kidding. And don’t be sexist. If I go anywhere dangerous, I’ll take Bronco or Heck—or even you—with me.”

  “Let’s just get Ben Hoffman’s stuff and get out of here before something else happens. I’m starting to think I need some of that calm-down herbal tea of yours.”

  * * *

  Nick had their master bathroom so steamed up from his shower Claire could hardly see in her vanity mirror to take her makeup off. Sitting in the low-backed padded chair, she leaned closer to the glass. “You know,” she said as he stepped out of the shower to dry himself off, “this tiger cage case we’re working on now—”

  “It’s not an official case. It doesn’t mean we’re all in for it.”

  “Nick, you said different earlier today. What if that old woman gets blamed for harassment or even murder? And Stan Helter wants the BAA land, maybe at any cost. Lane didn’t get along with his father, and also wants his family out of there. We have plenty of places—people—to start with. Anyhow, I was going to say that Ben’s murder—if it’s murder—is kind of like a classic locked room mystery. You know, like Poe’s ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ or Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.”

  “Haven’t read those,” he said, tying a dry towel around his waist and quickly running his electric shaver over his day’s growth of beard. Her antenna went up. They hadn’t made love for a while, and he usually didn’t shave until morning. So why was he being difficult if he had that in mind? In general, she was learning to pick up on his actions and body language, so why couldn’t she figure out what he was really thinking about Ben’s death? She had to keep prying and prodding.

  “Well, I haven’t read them either,” Claire told him, “but my mother’s years-long mania reading instead of taking better care of Darcy and me means I know all about them. You know, a locked room murder would fit this—the cage was locked, and anyone who got in to murder Ben would have been attacked too, and why would he go in there on his own? The place is double fenced, and the entry wasn’t open that morning except for our group. Nick, we’ve got to find some serious reasons and answers, and it can’t be something stupid like the Poe story where a woman was murdered in a closed upper room because an escaped ape got in there with a razor and killed her.”

  Nick looked at her in the blurry mirror where he was now combing his wet hair back. “You’re kidding,” he said, straightening to face her. “An ape with a razor? Next we’ll be thinking the tiger jumped through the bars and pulled Ben in because it was missing roadkill possum.”

  He tossed his comb on the counter and leaned stiff-armed on the marble sink top while she began to smooth moisturizer on her face. The intensity of his perusal of her made her feel she wasn’t wearing a nightgown and her terry-cloth robe.

  “Sorry for that,” he said, straightening and coming over behind her to put his big hands on her shoulders. His thumbs stroked the back of her bare neck. Every muscle, every thought, began to go lax. He whispered, “The thing is, I’m still torn about spending time on this case with the baby coming, and now that we’re finally safe to have family time.”

  “Maybe Heck will ferret something out of Ben’s records you gave him. He often does.”

  “And you’re itching to ferret out something about Ben—if he had an enemy hateful enough to kill him—from talking to people he knew. But enough of all this right now. Let’s go to bed. Talking about locked rooms, I think I’ll lock ours for a few minutes so we don’t have Miss Lexi in here asking me why I’m kissing Mommy places besides her cheek or mouth.”

  A jolt of lightning shot straight to Claire’s belly. She might be pregnant, she might be married, she might have made love to Nick Markwood for months now, but it was always like that first time on the yacht when she gave herself so totally to him—and, she believed, conceived this child. When he bent to kiss her throat, she twisted in his arms and kissed him back hard and hungry.

  He loosed the towel around his hips, helped her out of her robe and nightgown, and lifted her into his arms. In their bedroom, he bent to click the lock on their door, then laid her on the bed and got in beside her.

  Everything fled—disappeared—except Nick when he touched her, when he took over like this.

  “I’ll be careful,” he said, keeping his weight off her.

  “Yes. Tonight, but also with getting too involved...”

  Her words weren’t making sense.

  “I’m always too involved with you,” he murmured in her ear as he slid his tongue from her neck to her breasts.

  She shut out everything except their love, but when he had her purring, she thought of that tiger again and went so crazy with passion that she accidentally scratched his back.

  9

  The next day, Nick called Grant Manfort and asked to meet him for lunch at the Chops City Grill in downtown Old Naples. As he sat at the bar, waiting for Grant and glancing at the menu, a chill ran down his spine. Not from their prices for aged beef but at the tagline on the menu: “A steakhouse that’s a cut above.”

  He was still nervous from the almost-attack by butcher knife and hatchet from that wild woman and her backwoods sons yesterday at the BAA. If he was going to look into what Claire was calling the Tiger Cage Case, she was right: they needed a lot more background on possible perps.

  His techie Heck’s combing through Ben Hoffman’s laptop and paper files was one thing, but Nick needed some insider info about the Trophy Ranch’s Stan Helter. As far as he could guess at this point, Helter had the most to win if the Hoffmans were forced to sell the BAA land. Of course, if Gracie Cobham was out for revenge, she’d be a possibility too. But Ben’s son, Lane, as a suspect? As a son who had adored his own father, Nick couldn’t get his brain around that. Besides, Lane had a very public alibi, though, of course, Nick had seen overly smart and entitled guys like him hire people to do their dirty work for them.

  “Grant, good to see you,” Nick said, and got off the stool to shake hands with him when he entered.

  The few times he’d seen Grant lately, Nick had always been impressed with how in charge the man seemed. He looked strong yet almost ascetically lean. The guy was a runner and extreme hiker, the type who probably ran ten miles to get here and would eat the Paleo caveman diet, though he’d be a pretty polished-looking one with his business suit and his dark brown hair slicked back. No wonder he’d built his company, Florida Gulf Coast Life Insurance, into a profitable behemoth. To sell insurance, you had to look like you knew what you were doing but also have a comforting, friendly persona. The insurance biz was a murky mess to Nick, but then law was like that to most people.

  Actually, the company had not been Grant’s from the first. Just as Nick had eventually taken over his deceased father’s law firm, Grant had taken over Florida Gulf Coast Life from his mentor. That was another reason Nick had always felt a bond with Grant: Nick had lost his father, then carried on for him as Grant had for his lost mentor. The older man had gone
fishing with his granddaughter, a young woman Grant was dating. Some accident on board had taken her and her grandfather. The boat was found but no trace of the two on it despite an extensive coast guard search. From a beginning insurance salesman, Grant had quickly stepped up to build the company after that tragic double loss. Grant was evidently crushed and had never married.

  Nick didn’t really believe in lawyer’s lunches à la booze, but he recalled that Grant liked to drink—an exception for a health nut—and Nick could understand why with the double tragedy in his past.

  “Haven’t seen you in ages,” Grant said as they were seated at a table. An old habit from when he was being stalked, Nick sat where he could still see the front door. “And,” Grant went on, “I hear, another professional bachelor bites the dust, but congrats on that. Someone said you were out of the country for a while too.”

  “All business—except for my marriage. Beautiful wife and I inherited a lovely little daughter, and we have a baby on the way.”

  Grant nodded, looking unsurprised, as he ordered a dry martini with an anchovy olive. “So did you ask me here to talk about family coverage life insurance?” he asked Nick.

  “Actually, I’ve had heavy coverage for years. Can’t be a criminal lawyer without it these days. It’s a career in which one makes loyal friends but, on the other hand, makes some very bad people very unhappy.”

  “Gotcha on that. With my passion for high trail hiking and mountain climbing, I believe in insurance, insurance, insurance, so I’m fully covered too. Last year I climbed Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Hell of a climb—fantastic experience. Just call me the Hemingway of our times. Ever read his short story ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’?”

  “No, but I’ll bet my wife has.”

  “I’d like to meet her.”

  They managed some talk about local events. Nick hoped he could get Grant to open up about Stan Helter or at least finagle an invitation to the ranch through Grant. Although Helter had invited him, he didn’t want to suddenly go waltzing in there alone without one or two people he could trust. He had the strangest, angsty feeling about that vast place.

  But right now, he figured he’d better try to make an end-around approach when the small talk was over and they got down to it. They ordered salads and steak sandwiches. Nick told the server to put it on one check.

  “We’re currently planning a wedding on our new property,” Nick told him. “You know—talk about adventures—the groom is an employee of mine who not only has hunted gators but was part of the team that caught the escaped Burmese pythons in the Glades. Any of those monsters encroaching on your property out in the Vineyards?”

  “Hunts gators? No kidding!” he said, wide-eyed. “And those huge snakes too? Nothing around my place like that yet, but Stan Helter says they’re here and there on the ranch. He said a thirteen-foot python scared some rich desert-sheikh-type guy out of his mind a couple weeks ago.”

  “Speaking of Stan, I saw him just the other day, and he mentioned you. He said to come to the ranch as there was always something going on. He had stopped by the BAA where his neighbor died in the tiger cage.”

  “I read in the paper that you and your wife and some kids were there, made statements to the police. Anyhow, yeah, I made an early investment in the Trophy Ranch and consider Stan a friend. I think of the place as protecting a huge stretch of Florida wilderness. I’m big on that as you know from our time on the Save the Glades committee. I hate to see pristine land eaten up by new developments, the animals too. The ranch is a bulwark against that—a wall, a fence of its own kind.”

  “Yet animals are hunted and killed at the ranch.”

  Grant’s dark eyes darted away. “At least their animals are bred and live in the wilds. When I was in Tanzania for the Kilimanjaro climb, I also went on safari. Saw amazing, exotic—some endangered—animals. Animals should live free that way, not be in tight, fake places like petting zoos or even some of the best zoos in the world. They’re still trapped, still prisoners, and I can’t stand that. I think we can all agree on that.”

  So he didn’t like petting zoo places like the BAA? Or even big zoos. But Nick couldn’t argue with him on some of that, despite how much it educated humans about the natural world.

  “At least the Africans,” Grant went on, “are waking up to their shrinking heritage and trying to protect wild animal turf, kind of like the defensive line in football. You follow the Miami Dolphins or Tampa Buccaneers?”

  As they talked pro football and tucked into their salads, Nick thought, Bingo! He felt he’d scored two points already. He’d managed to open the topic of Helter and the ranch without being too obvious. And wasn’t that a sign that he—as Claire kept insisting—was meant to work this as a South Shores case? It made him feel lucky and a little reckless.

  “Actually, I do have an insurance question,” he told Grant.

  “Shoot.”

  “Not a lawyer question about insurance fraud, at least I don’t think so.”

  “Rampant these days. All kinds, mostly by customers, not the companies—not mine, for sure. People can trust the company and me to be completely trustworthy in more ways than one.”

  “Years ago when my father’s death was ruled a suicide—I was just a boy—his insurance company had language in his life insurance contract about death benefits. Suicide canceled those, and the company never paid my mother, who is now deceased. But since his death has finally been proved to be murder, can there be restitution?”

  “Check the old contract for a time limit. Insurance firms have to watch cases where someone sets up big bucks for death coverage, then actually kills himself or hides out so next of kin can collect the money, maybe share it with the so-called deceased. It’s called pseudocide. I looked into that when I lost my friend and boss Steve Rowan, but no one benefited from his death since his heir evidently died that day too. Or sometimes a spouse or child takes out a policy on their supposed loved one, then knocks that person off to get the funds. So that’s really why you asked me here today, right—for info about that?”

  “And I appreciate it,” Nick told him, not quite answering the question.

  But that mention of a family member cashing in on a victim’s life insurance made him think of Claire’s comment about Lane resenting his father. Lane was prickly and pompous, but they’d need to look into that father-son relationship too, despite the fact that Lane was twenty miles away in front of hundreds of people when his father died.

  Grant was saying, “I’ll bet, clever lawyer like you could find an escape clause on that suicide-murder denial. You and your firm manage to take some big public cases, and the last thing insurance firms want is bad cred in the media or on the streets, believe me. It was a nightmare for the firm when Steve and Leslie died and their bodies were never found,” he said and his voice broke.

  “Thanks, Grant. That helps and earns you dessert.”

  “Not me, pal, thanks. But your hosting me today earns you an invitation at the Trophy Ranch. I’ll see what’s going on there and let you know next time I’m going.”

  “Maybe I could bring my snake-and-gator guy with me. I wouldn’t be interested in a hunt, but I’d love a tour.”

  He wouldn’t be interested in hunting wild game, that is, Nick thought, but he admitted he was now on the hunt for human game in a new South Shores case, and he couldn’t wait to tell his warrior woman Claire.

  * * *

  Claire and Nita were having a great time, planning the wedding and reception. Lexi, back from afternoon preschool, was so wound up about being the flower girl, getting a fancy “princess” dress and walking in with the rings on a pillow, that she was driving them crazy.

  “I’m good at that, Nita, really,” Lexi assured her former nanny, “’cause I was at Dad and Mommy’s wedding too. That was kind of scary, but it was pretty,” she added with a slanted glance at Claire. “And you both sai
d you and Dad might have another little wedding here in Naples, right? Then different people can come who like us.”

  Those childish comments sobered Claire a bit. Although they had been very much in love and would have likely had their own wedding eventually, she and Nick had been forced to marry when they did by Nick’s nemesis. He’d wanted to threaten her and Lexi’s lives if Nick didn’t go along with his nefarious plans.

  “We thought about it, but with the baby on the way, not for a while,” Claire said. At the least, they might have a much delayed reception, but no time to explain all that now. “Lexi, how about you just listen to Nita and me for a minute while we figure out how many guests we can put out by the gazebo in chairs.”

  “I’ll go out and make a count—a guess,” she said, and darted away.

  “And do not now or ever get near that pool without me or Nita or Dad there!” Claire called after her.

  “I won’t, even if I can swim!”

  “Now,” Claire said, doing another rough sketch because it helped Nita to visualize things better, “I think we’ll want to have the tables with the cake, sandwiches, et cetera in this room.” She looked out the patio window to watch Lexi. “We’ll move these couches out, have the two buffet tables over there in front of the hearth, the card tables with tablecloths for seating in here and some on the patio if the weather’s good that day.”

  Nita gently grasped Claire’s wrist with her hand as Claire glanced outside again. Good. Lexi was heading back in.

  “I—both of us—can never thank you so much for this,” Nita said. “For all you do for us.”

  “Nita, mi amiga, you both do a lot for us too. We are proud and grateful to have you work for us. I could not have made it this far without your care of Lexi, and Bronco has been our friend since our first South Shores case in St. Augustine. He’s come a long way since then and so have we all.”