Shallow Grave

by Karen Harper

“You see his good heart?” she asked, frowning. “He seems all rough, but he is so—well, sweet.”

  “Of course he is. We’re happy for both of you. We want to make the wedding in the gazebo and the reception here and in the back as lovely as—”

  They both jolted stiff at a screeched “Mommy! Mommy!” from the back door. “Mommy, is that gator here visiting from the BAA place?” Lexi shouted. “Are we taking care of it for a while?”

  Claire leaped up from the table so fast she almost fell. The child had a great imagination, but could an alligator have come into the yard? They were sometimes seen on golf courses and came through big drainage pipes.

  She tore outside with Nita behind her.

  “I didn’t go near it, just saw it,” Lexi cried, pointing into the pool.

  In the deep end floated a good-sized alligator, five feet at least as it surfaced and glared, dead-eyed, at them.

  It wasn’t just dead-eyed—it was dead! Claire pulled Lexi back behind her.

  “Is it sick, Mommy?”

  “Maybe he got lost and fell in,” Nita said, her voice shaky. “Then he drowned. Bronco, he would know what to do.”

  “Nick should be home any minute, or I can call him to ask but—”

  When, slowly, the dead animal turned belly up, Claire saw its pale throat had been slashed into red ribbons of flesh. No, not slashed—clawed.

  10

  Nick and Bronco arrived in separate cars about the same time. Nita stayed in the house with Lexi, who kept asking how the gator scratched his neck, and Claire led the men outside. On their way through the house, Nick tossed his suit jacket, ditched his tie and rolled up his shirtsleeves but he still looked in lawyer mode to Claire—until he saw what was in their pool.

  “You’ve got to be kidding!” he shouted when he saw the dead animal floating belly up.

  “Man, oh, man!” Bronco said, kneeling on the raised concrete near the edge of the pool to look down into the water. “It’s no accident this beat-up guy wandered in here, no way.”

  “And no accident that it got those claw marks on its throat,” Nick said, his voice hard and angry as he pointed at the large, lurid scratch marks. “I’m glad it’s dead, since Lexi found it.”

  Claire said, “Could it have been nearby and was attacked, then more or less fell in the pool? I’m thinking of that Florida panther we saw down the street last week.”

  Nick shook his head as Bronco said, “Panthers don’t like a fight. Some call them ghost cats, they’re so loosy. That the word, Nick?”

  “Elusive,” Nick said. He tugged Claire down on a lounge chair and perched on the end of it, knees spread with elbows on top of them and chin on fists, as he glared into the water. “I don’t know whether to leave it like that or if we should pull it out. The retrieval net for leaves and stuff is over there—it’s not big enough for it, but we should at least put the net around part of it so it doesn’t sink. I’m going to call the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission number.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pants pocket.

  “Did you represent that group?” she asked him. “It seems like everyone owes you a favor.”

  “Only the ones who aren’t out to get me for sending them to prison. No, I just know that’s who you call if there’s a dead wild animal. Here’s their website. Call ‘nuisance wildlife, FWC-GATOR,’” he read off the screen, then punched in the number. He got up and walked around the pool as he talked, peering carefully behind the crotons, blooming hibiscus bushes and clusters of dwarf palms as if another beast would jump out.

  And maybe it would, Claire agonized. Her stomach must hurt from nerves, because she hadn’t missed her meds or her herbal tea. Oh, maybe it wasn’t just nerves. She distinctly felt the baby move. When she’d noticed it before, Nick had put his hand on her stomach to experience the thrill too, but this time the little one really moved as if upset, as if trying to tell her something. She crossed her arms gently over her belly as Nick finished his circuit of the backyard and Bronco netted the gator to draw it slowly over to the side of the pool.

  “Since it looks like the gator’s been attacked,” Nick said, “and they told me on the phone they doubt it would have been by a panther, they’re sending over a couple of their law-enforcement officers. If it had just been an untouched dead one, they ask the property owners to dispose of it.”

  “That’s a good one,” Claire said. “Like put it down the garbage disposal or out in the trash? I’m going inside to see how Lexi’s doing. If she asks one more time why the gator scratched his own throat, I’m out of clever answers.”

  Nick walked to the back patio door with her. He told her, “Before the wedding and reception—and before you or Lexi are out in this yard again—I’m going to have a fence put up. The foliage will hide it, especially when it matures a bit. Don’t worry. We’ll get one to fit the decor, not some plain wire thing.”

  “The tall fences didn’t help with the tragedy at the BAA,” she said, turning to face him before they slid the glass door open.

  “You’re thinking this may be tied to the tiger clawing Ben somehow?”

  “Aren’t you? Or is it just that, like you’ve said before, you still have enemies out there you’ve prosecuted? And I felt so safe in our new neighborhood.”

  “You know, I just said more or less the same to Grant Manfort when I saw him for lunch today. I’d just write the whole thing off to edge-of-the-Glades living if it wasn’t for those scratches. Maybe someone thinks I’m going to take the tiger case—”

  “Which you are. If so, is it a message to steer clear of it? Or are we just being paranoid because of all we’ve been through?”

  “You know what I’m afraid of? That the answers are ‘yes’ and ‘yes.’ But I still say we need to carefully question what the cops like to call persons of interest surrounding Ben’s death.”

  He kissed the tip of her nose. “Bronco and I will wait for them out here. Meanwhile, I’m making a second call and ordering a sturdy, tall backyard fence.”

  “Robert Frost had a line that said something about fences making good neighbors.”

  “I’m just hoping fences at the BAA meant maybe Ben Hoffman did die from an accident or even suicide. If someone got in somehow and hit him over the head, then shoved him in the cage—that someone likely wants to stop anybody from looking into that.”

  * * *

  It took the two Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers only about an hour to arrive, but it was starting to get dark. Nick had turned the pool and patio floodlights on. Claire had sent Nita out with soft drinks and sandwiches. Bronco had downed his fast, but Nick could hardly eat, knowing what was weighing down the net Bronco kept an eye on. Without the buoyancy of the water, the net and gator might have gone straight to the bottom. Nick was also shaken by the approximate price of the fencing he’d just been quoted on the phone.

  When the two FWC officers arrived through the side gate, he thought they looked a bit like regular police in their drab olive military uniforms. The younger of the two sported a firearm in a side holster.

  “It would be really rare for this alligator to have tangled with a big cat,” the older of the two men told them as he played his flashlight over the wounds of the gator, still in the water and the net. “The way an alligator would fight back would not tend to expose its throat to be raked by claws. ’Course the blood could have washed away, but those cuts look deep and would have bled. My guess is it’s been dead awhile, since you say the pool water didn’t look tinted. Contrary to folklore around here, gators do bleed red and not green.”

  “A Florida panther was spotted in the neighborhood,” Nick told them.

  “Nah,” the younger guy said, shaking his head. “Puma concolor coryi, to use the Florida panther’s scientific name, would run, ’less it was protecting kittens. Like I said, can’t see a wrestling match between a bi
g feline and a gator.”

  “So, we’ll report this,” the senior officer told them, tapping a message onto the screen of his phone. “I’ll take a coupla photos. Then the four of us can haul him out. We can drag him on a tarp to our vehicle, get him up our ramp, take him back with us for a necropsy, if they want, then disposal. He’s pretty big to bury in a backyard, and the refuse guys don’t want any part of even a dead one.”

  “Nor do we,” Nick said. “Thanks, and let us know if you figure anything else out.”

  The younger officer took a camera out of their gear and bent over the side of the pool to take photos. The camera’s bright flash seemed to explode in the water, making Nick see colors.

  “Let’s get him out, and I’ll get better pics on the pool deck,” the officer told them.

  Nick glanced at the back of the house before he helped them drag the net up, then roll the gator out onto the tiled surface. Claire had closed the patio drapes a while ago so Lexi wouldn’t keep staring out. He could see vague silhouettes moving inside. He just hoped that someone else wasn’t watching them in the darkening night.

  * * *

  “Sorry I was late, boss, and missed all the action,” Heck said in the house after they’d told him what had happened. The wildlife officers, as well as Bronco and Nita, had left. Nick had finally changed his clothes.

  “There wasn’t much action from the gator,” Claire put in.

  “I didn’t fall asleep or nothing like that,” Heck explained. “I just didn’t want to leave Gina earlier. She’s on another guilt trip over leaving her parents in Cuba since her brother’s dead and they got no one else. Caramba, the truth is she’s scared about starting med school in Miami when her training’s all been Cuban. She needed me,” he explained, his voice breaking as he blinked back tears. “I needed to hold her, not go for my phone to call you.”

  “Just glad you could help her,” Nick told him. “She needs you more than that, Heck, and she’ll figure out how much. Just give her time.”

  Claire’s eyelashes were wet. Nick, the counselor and comforter. Maybe he was taking that softer approach from her. She thought Heck looked exhausted and emotional, but weren’t they all? It had taken her a lot of talking and hugging to get Lexi to relax and go to sleep tonight. She could have used some protective hugs herself, but at least she was going to get something done right now. This was to be a preliminary report on what Heck had found on Ben Hoffman’s laptop, because the police had his phone and Nick was going to look through files from Ben’s desk himself.

  “Thanks,” Heck said as Claire brought him a cup of coffee. “Sí, a few interesting things on his computer. One, Ben Hoffman still freelanced some for his advertising agency he s’posedly retired from. Must’ve needed the money. He actually borrowed some cash—which he paid back—from that Jackson guy, their fix-it man at the BAA. The guy’s run a janitorial service for years and is really handy. Retired, ’cept he loves being outdoors and does all kinds of stuff at the BAA for his buddy Ben—his dead buddy Ben.”

  “The BAA needed money in general,” Nick put in. “Brittany said she was hardly taking any salary there.”

  “Sí. Or maybe Ben, he used his moonlighting or this Jackson’s money to pay for his insurance package, an expensive one. His wife and daughter the sole beneficiaries of it—no mention of his son. Bitter waters run deep.”

  Nick asked, “Did you see if there was any info in the insurance contract that his death had to be accident or murder—not suicide—for the beneficiaries to collect? Of course, so far the coroner has ruled the cause of death ‘accidental.’”

  “Just skimming documents, no, but we can check that out,” Heck said, taking a long drink of his coffee, then pulling a digital backup USB stick out of his pocket. “Just in case the authorities do look more into cause of death and we have to hand stuff over, I thought we’d better keep the info.”

  “The insurance company wasn’t Florida Gulf Coast Life, was it?”

  “No. Another name, can’t recall, but that wasn’t it.”

  Nick nodded. It wasn’t like Heck to let any detail slip through that brain of his, but the guy was really shaken by Gina. Yeah, he could understand that, he thought, as he glanced at Claire. She was leaning forward, listening intently, but she looked tired and more pale than usual. He had to get her to bed.

  “What about this zoo overseer, Jackson?” Claire asked. “What’s his full name?”

  “James Jackson,” Heck said. “What about him?”

  “I don’t recall the police questioning him. He showed up after we’d petted the animals awhile, but he no doubt had the run of the place, and who knows what he saw earlier before he left to run an errand when Ben was killed—and can he corroborate that errand?”

  “Good point,” Nick said, “though he’s supposed to be a long-time friend of Ben’s. I’ll make a note to talk to him. Better that than asking Brit everything.”

  “I went through stuff pretty fast,” Heck admitted, rotating his coffee mug in his hands. He handed the USB to Nick.

  “So what else did you find?” Nick asked, grabbing a notepad from the coffee table.

  As if he’d taken his finger out of a crack in the dam, Heck talked so fast that Nick could hardly jot notes to keep up. “Ben left money to his female relatives, but he and his son got along like oil and water. Picked that up from a lot of negative emails back and forth, from his laptop. Other thing, though don’t see how it relates to a murder—though maybe to carelessness that could cause a fatal accident—Ben Hoffman drank enough to belong to an online Alcoholics Anonymous group. Oh, yeah, he’d had some back and forth emails with the guy that runs the Trophy Ranch too.”

  “Bingo,” Nick said, writing STAN HELTER LAND GRAB? in big letters under the names of the dead man’s family members, as well as GRACIE COBHAM and JACKSON, just as the doorbell rang.

  “I’ll see who it is,” Claire said, getting up.

  “Not alone—not after all that’s happened tonight,” Nick said, and jumped to get ahead of her to the front door. He turned on the porch light and looked out to see who was there.

  Jace. This late? He must know Lexi would be in bed. For once he didn’t have Brittany with him, but then surely she was with her mother planning Ben’s memorial service, since the ME had released the body.

  “Jace. Everything okay?” Nick asked after he unlocked and opened the front door and they shook hands. Jace stepped inside.

  “I should have called but I was nearby,” he told them. “Whose car is that in the driveway?”

  “Heck’s here updating us on some things Brit gave us. Come sit down.”

  “No, gotta get going. But glad Heck’s on it. Listen, I found out a couple things from Lane Hoffman being so damn hard on Brit after all this. I—oh, Claire, thought you’d have turned in by now, baby and all,” he said when he saw her in the entryway behind Nick.

  At least, Nick thought, Jace was smart enough not to go down memory lane right now about the two of them sharing Claire’s first pregnancy. Or had he been away on international flights a lot then? That had been one of their problems, Nick recalled.

  In the awkward silence, he said, “We’re still all wound up from finding a dead alligator in our pool out back—one with what looked like deep claw marks on its throat.”

  “Hell, no one needs that! Lots of idiots around these days. Be extra careful then, but I know you’re both good at that by now. I just have some things I wanted to tell you in person. I guess I’m still paranoid of tapped phones after our earlier adventures. Just file this away in that lawyer brain of yours, since you’ve promised to help Brit if worse comes to worst.”

  “We do want to help her,” Nick assured him.

  “We, meaning Claire too? Well, sure—good. I know you guys are a team, and our ladies seem to like each other.”

  Nick just nodded.

  “For
one thing,” Jace went on in a rush, “Lane let slip and Brit explained later that her father was a recovering alcoholic and had some wild friends in his good old drinking days. Also, Lane let on that there was some big life insurance policy on Ben’s life. From the way Brit reacted to that, I don’t think she knew. I hate to say this about the guy—Lane, not Ben—but he’s a jerk, to put it nicely,” he said, with another glance at Claire. “I get it that guys can hate their fathers—I had problems big-time with mine—but he still carried on about it shortly after he learned his dad was dead.”

  “And then gave a violin lecture and performance at the BAA the next day,” Nick put in. Damn, did everyone he knew have father problems that still haunted them as adults?

  “Listen, Nick—Claire, you too. If you guys get into this, which I’m glad to hear you will—Brit had nothing to do with this mess. She loved her father, but she also loves that tiger, wants to help wildlife of all kinds, especially big cats.”

  All that sent Nick’s suspicions spinning back to Stan Helter again, the guy he’d heard had the nickname Big Cat. He had the weirdest feeling—call it criminal attorney’s intuition—that Helter was as dangerous as some of those trophy animals he bought and bred so they could be killed. And one of the things the ranch advertised it had for anytime hunting was gators.

  11

  “I think the hand signals lesson—and from a scuba diver in full gear—will make a great program for the Comfort Zone kids this weekend,” Claire told her sister as they headed out to Darcy’s car. They had to talk loudly since workmen were installing the new fence in the backyard.

  “And he said he’d teach it in your pool. That’s handy—after the lesson we can have them practice with us and each other.”

  “It’s possible this will be more than just fun. If one of the kids is being threatened or abused, someday hand signals could be a way for them to ask for help without saying a thing. I keep thinking how awful it must have been for Duncan to be out with his dad somewhere, to want to get help for himself and his mother, but be afraid to say something in front of him. Which reminds me, I’ve been telling Lexi it’s a big secret that there was a gator in our pool. She has promised not to tell the other kids anything about that, though we can hardly forbid tiger talk.”