Shallow Grave

by Karen Harper

  “You do keep a lot of things in a small space here,” Nick noted as he scanned the interior of Jackson’s storage building, which was lit by hanging bare light bulbs. Metal shelves went floor to ceiling in tight rows, something like a small hardware store. Nothing was labeled. In his dark work outfit with his dark skin, Jackson almost disappeared when he went to the end of a row. Nick noted that taped to metal dividers and dangling to the shelf below were several photographs of Jackson with his wife and two daughters—and one of Ben and Jackson deep-sea fishing, both grinning and holding a big tarpon together.

  “Only kind of animal he’d ever hurt,” Jackson muttered, seeing where Nick was looking. “Truth was he threw even good eatin’ fish back in after he caught them. Loved animals from the day he was born, he said.”

  Nick watched as Jackson lifted a large can from what looked to be a row of paint cans and removed a flat, zipped plastic sack from under one. A white piece of paper lay within. Nick was pleased to see Ann or Jackson had thought of preserving what might be evidence. There could even be fingerprints or DNA on that paper.

  “You should see my filing system,” Jackson said, replacing the can. “My banking system too. Got more than one thing stashed in here, including a weapon I got me a permit for—the one I would have used to corral that Cobham clan if I’d needed to. If I’d been here when that big cat attacked Ben and could have gotten to the gun—well, Brittany woulda killed me for it, but I woulda killed that cat.”

  “You and Ben go way back.”

  “He was ’bout the only one treated me like I had a brain in my head when I first met him. Ran things by me for my opinion when I was custodian of the first advertising company he worked for. Drinking buddies after work.”

  “And did he still drink—maybe too much?”

  “Not if you mean he was too drunk to realize he was stepping accidentally in Tiberia’s cage—no way.”

  Realizing that was not quite an answer, Nick regretted not bringing Claire with him. Since that day he’d seen her shot, he’d been protective of her, especially with all they’d been through. But now that she was pregnant, was he being overly defensive about her?

  “So,” he said as Jackson handed him the plastic envelope with a handwritten note in it, “did Ben run anything by you to make you think he was feeling low lately?”

  “Feeling worried,” he said, nodding. “Sure, about this place. But, I’d say, something deeper. You can read it in the lines there and between the lines.”

  Nick thanked him and went out into the morning sunshine. Strangely, he felt chilled despite its warmth. Claire was trained to read between the lines, but, unfortunately, this letter had been printed, which he knew was harder to evaluate.

  He glanced through the tall BAA wire fence and the ranch fence at the dense foliage edging Helter’s property. And had the feeling, when the palmetto leaves shuddered in the wind, that someone had just been there, watching.

  * * *

  Claire leaned over Nick’s shoulder as he read the letter aloud through the plastic bag. She could read it from here, though, as it was quite neatly done in large, handwritten print with black ink.

  DEAREST ANN: I WANT YOU TO KNOW I RESPECT LANE’S OPINION. HE BELIEVES THAT HIS RIGHTFUL LEGACY HAS BEEN GIVEN AWAY TO BRITTANY BY OUR BUILDING THE BAA, BY OUR SQUANDERING HIS INHERITANCE ON HER. I REALIZE I HAVE MADE MISTAKES WITH HIM, BUT HE CAN’T ACCEPT THAT OUR DREAM IS THIS PLACE, AND IT IS NOT ALL FOR BRITTANY, BUT I SEE IT’S BEEN WRONG THAT WE FAVORED HER.

  I SUPPOSE HIS ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT, EVEN THE EMOTIONAL, PASSIONATE MUSIC HE IS MOST DRAWN TO, DICTATES HIS PERSONALITY. I REALIZE NOW THAT BRITTANY’S INSISTENCE ON THIS PLACE AND HER LOVE FOR THAT TIGER THREATENS OUR FUTURE FINANCES. AGAIN, I REGRET I HAVE MADE MASSIVE MISTAKES AND BLAME MYSELF FOR SO MUCH THAT I WISH I COULD MAKE UP FOR IT ALL BY JUST ENDING

  Nick turned the paper over.

  “Nothing on the back,” Claire observed. “Did he imply ending his life? It’s as if he was interrupted, though the sentence could end there. No period, though, when the earlier punctuation is obvious. Maybe something or someone interfered, and he quickly stashed the paper in the old Bible where Ann found it.

  “Ann,” she said, turning toward her where she sat in the chair, gripping her hands together on the desk, “did Ben always print like this?”

  “Not really. I thought of that too, but maybe he wanted to be sure it was legible. It’s written carefully and the letters are big.”

  “But this is such an emotional outpouring, and people usually write quickly to get that out.”

  “Well, his handwriting’s gotten worse, like mine, and, like I said, he didn’t usually print. And the Bible—well, it wasn’t kept in a public place in which he’d be interrupted. A drawer in our bedside cabinet. I’ve gone through all the pages, and there’s nothing else but my notes in the margins.”

  “Is there anything here to date the note?” Claire asked. “Anything in what he says about Lane that sounds current?”

  “No. All those problems have been ongoing,” she said with a sigh. “From when Lane first liked to stay indoors to practice and was afraid of animals. See, the boy accidentally closed a house cat in a door one time and hurt it something awful. It yowled and cried so bad. Ben took it to the vet, but it died. I guess that might have—what’s the word—terrified him. Ben was pretty upset about it.”

  “Traumatized?” Claire asked, and Ann nodded, though she was now blowing her nose.

  “And Lane thought his father blamed him?”

  “Lane never liked cats big or small after that, no animals, really. And there was a long string of sad things between Ben and Lane. I guess I should tell you about the car exhaust,” she said with a huge sigh. “Last spring, Lane left our car running in our attached garage one night when he drove me home in our car from a concert. His wife followed him, picked him up from there and he hurried away with her. But then he always was so absentminded about—well, about practical things.”

  “So, obviously, no carbon monoxide poisoning,” Nick said. “Is that what you were going to say? How soon was the running car exhaust discovered?”

  “Not until Ben went out to the kitchen to have a nightcap and heard something in the garage. He turned it off, opened the garage door to air it out, had a real row with Lane the next day. Like I said, Lane was absentminded.”

  “Any other unusual incidents?” Nick asked, handing the letter, still encased in plastic, to Claire. She wondered if Ben had forgotten about it or had died before he could retrieve it. She planned to study it closer since Ann had said they could take it with them for now, as long as they returned it eventually.

  “Not really unusual incidents,” she went on, almost drawling her words as if hesitant to share more. “Well, distracted driving when he was with us once, but then he would have been hurt too, so we didn’t think much of it. That was always Lane, head in the clouds, hearing music, not watching where he was going. But—but he did yell at his father just last week, that—I know this is dreadful and I don’t mean to accuse him of anything, really... He had an argument with his father and said he could go to hell, and he wished he were dead.”

  “He wished Ben was dead, not he wished himself dead?” Nick asked.

  She nodded and started to cry. “It’s one of the reasons I nearly collapsed when I saw Ben in that tiger cage. Thank God Lane was miles away in front of a big audience. Brittany deeply resented Lane too, but I can’t—I can’t believe I could even think that he would hurt his father, no matter what their differences.”

  “So Brittany knows all this?” Nick pursued. “The car exhaust, the distracted driving with you in the car?”

  “She told Lane to shape up or else.”

  Or else what? Claire wondered. But what was also bothering her was a forensic document examiner case she recalled from college where a murderer had printed a fake suicide note for
his victim because he knew he could never replicate the victim’s handwriting. Lane might have been miles away when Ben died in that cage, but could he have really wished his father dead? And then, as smart and talented—and as bitter and angry—as he was, somehow arranged just that?

  * * *

  “Baby, wake up,” Jace said, rolling over in bed and reaching backward for Brit in the bright daylight. “Clock says almost eleven.”

  The other side of the bed was empty. He heard the shower going in his bathroom. He’s the one who should be waking up, he thought, stretching and groaning. They’d made crazy love last night, and it had nearly knocked him out, and here he had to fly at one o’clock. But she’d been so needy—desperate, grasping—and that wasn’t like her, though he understood why she felt that way right now.

  He rolled out of bed and grabbed for his shorts and T-shirt on the floor. He’d just hop in the shower with her and hope that didn’t lead to something more. He felt a stab of guilt that she’d been here last night with him instead of with her mother, but Ann had told Brit she finally felt she could sleep and wanted peace and quiet.

  He knocked on the bathroom door, then went in. The place was steamed up, and he felt like he was fighting through a fog. “Mind some company?” he called to her, then realized the sound he heard was not just the jet shower spray. Was she crying? Sobbing in there?

  “Brit, honey?” he said and knocked on the glass shower stall. It was frosted glass, and he could only see her outline, a bent elbow, hands to her head like she was scrubbing her face or washing her hair. He gasped as she seemed to slip and fall.

  He shoved the shower door open though the steam and spray splashed out into the room. She was soaked and sobbing, curled into a fetal position on the tile floor with water pounding her and swirling down the drain. This was not like this woman—no matter what had happened recently.

  “Brit, honey, talk to me.”

  He sat on the shower floor, holding her in his arms while she clung to him. He could hardly hear what she was saying at first—broken gibberish in the crash of water.

  “I—the last time—we talked... I—you know Dad and I had a huge fight. But you’d gone out to your car for something—maybe didn’t know or overhear it all. I told him we could lease the land back from Stan Helter after he paid big for it. Keep the place, run it for Dad’s lifetime... Make Helter sign, ask Nick to take care of the legalities. But he refused.”

  “You mean you went to him without your dad knowing? When I came back in, I knew you were both upset, but why didn’t you tell me why?”

  She choked out, “I didn’t think you’d understand either, my dealing with Helter, but it was a way to keep the BAA going, build it up. But Dad flipped out at me, just because I brought it up as a possibility. He didn’t know I had already seen Helter about it.”

  “I hear he’s a ladies’ man. You tangled with him?”

  “I bargained with him!” she shouted and tried to pull from his embrace. He let her, steadying her so she wouldn’t slip as she struggled to get up.

  He got to his feet. He should talk, he knew. He hadn’t told her that he and Ben had a near knock-down, drag-out fight right after she left the house. He thought Ben was drinking too much and was scared what that would lead to. Ben became an almost different person then—not only drunk but dangerous. The water pounded on them, at them. His thoughts, mingled with new fears, pounded on him too.

  14

  When Bronco and Nick followed Grant’s Jeep through the tall wooden gates of the Trophy Ranch early Saturday morning, it seemed they left the civilized world behind. As the stockade gates swung closed automatically behind them, Nick saw a heavy dew glistening on the grass and trees where pelicans and ibis roosted, ready to fly away for the day’s fishing. No dust on the road with the recent rain. Expectation hovered in the air.

  “Bet we could drive half the day and still be on his land,” Bronco said as he steered his new truck down the road. “Hey, look, boss, vultures on the carcass of that big boar. Think someone shot it and left it?”

  “I don’t know the rules around here, but we’re about to find out.” They passed the vultures stripping the carcass bare on the berm. The big birds didn’t even move or look up as the vehicles passed close by, but Nick craned his neck to look back. “Maybe there’s a worker coming to clean it up,” he told Bronco. “I see a bearded guy wearing camouflage watching either us or the vultures. I think I glimpsed a guard station hidden back in that foliage, so maybe he’s the same guy who controls the gate.”

  They parked about a half a mile in where Grant pointed when he got out of his Jeep, its top and sides zipped up today. They all got out to shake hands. Nick saw a horseshoe-shaped cluster of buildings dominated by a sprawling lodge that looked like it was made from cedar logs. Some buildings appeared to be wooden cabins. He spotted—and smelled—what might be a big smokehouse. A kidney-shaped swimming pool sporting a tiki hut bar with palmetto roofing glinted at them—rustic chic in South Florida. Two dark-haired women were washing off the poolside lounge chairs.

  Another bearded man wearing camouflage—so that was the uniform of choice around here—waved to them and motioned them over toward the lodge. “Stan’s waiting,” he called, and moved his arm in a windmill motion. “Come on in. How ya doin’, Grant?”

  As they walked toward the lodge, Nick noted a dark green swamp buggy pulled around to the side, maybe one to take them on the tour he’d been promised. With their big balloon tires, the motorized, ramshackle-looking vehicles could slog through any swampy terrain. Claire had said Irv Glover had worked at the ranch years ago, driving a buggy to take hunters to shoot the game featured here. That had been news to Nick. It hadn’t come out in the trial where he’d helped get Glover sent to prison for aggravated assault.

  Inside the lodge, he saw what he’d call rustic grandeur. Lots of leather couches and reclining chairs, walls heavy with the heads of mounted game such as big rack stags, boars, and more than one gator head or just toothy, jagged jaws. Last night when he’d studied the ranch’s website, he’d seen a photo of a guy who had shot a stag with a massive 46-point rack that was worth more than $100,000. Big money here, one way or the other.

  Also, the website had boasted that guests were guaranteed a gator kill anytime of the year on private land, despite that the state-wide hunting season for them on public land closed yearly on November 1, in just a few days. He might have been a lawyer for years, but Nick hadn’t known about that. Evidently, rules were to be broken here. He couldn’t help but wonder if that applied outside the boundaries of the fence—like maybe those who opposed Stan Helter were always open season too.

  “Hey, glad you could spend some time with us,” Stan told them, appearing from a back room beyond an open area with tables for both eating and gambling, and an extensive bar that was not staffed now. Grant must be familiar with it, though, since after greeting Stan he went over and poured some tomato juice—then grabbed the vodka bottle, evidently to make a Bloody Mary. He plunked himself in a leather chair and put his feet up on the ottoman as if he owned the place.

  Stan wore jeans, a Western-style shirt and denim jacket. He extended his hand. Nick shook it and introduced Bronco, then they shook hands.

  Stan said to Bronco, “I hear you’re a retired gator guy who’s also snagged those bastard pythons that were mating like crazy.”

  “Yes, sir. Working for Nick now. Getting married soon.”

  “Congrats on that! So, we’ll have to talk. At the least, maybe you could come in sometime, train some staff about handling gators, but especially those honker snakes. They hide out in armadillo holes and wreak havoc on deer and other game. Like to knock off every last one of them, cut them up for gator food.”

  So, Nick wondered, were all animals here fair game? What about the human ones who got in the way?

  * * *

  The Saturday craft fair a
t Cambier Park near downtown Naples sported booths around the edge of the tennis courts and public area. People wandered here and there, some leaving with purchases in their arms, while others came in from parking or walking from uptown.

  As nervous as Claire was about facing Gracie Cobham again, she was keeping an eye on how Gina and Heck interacted with each other. Not being nosy, of course, but after all, she was trained as a people watcher. So far, it seemed they were touchy with each other—both kinds of touchy. Holding hands, eye contact, quick little pats, but they seemed also on edge as if they were just getting over an argument.

  When they passed kids sitting at tables, learning crafts like decoupage, origami and macramé from instructors, Claire wished she’d brought Lexi, but then this was serious business, and Lexi was happy at Darcy’s for now. At least at this busy, crowded venue, she didn’t have to worry about being in a dangerous, isolated situation with Gracie and her “boys.”

  “If I’d been onto this event earlier,” she told Heck and Gina, “I could have brought the Comfort Zone kids here to learn crafts and kept the scuba diver hand signals lesson for another day.”

  “You’ll find something like this hands-on fun for them again,” Gina said, patting Heck’s shoulder. “Right, mi hombre?”

  Talk about hand signals, Claire thought, as she watched the two of them exchange a deep-soul glance at the mention of “hands on.” It made her miss Nick. Why were these two sending mixed signals right now?

  “Some good wood carvings of wild birds over there,” Heck noted, clearing his throat and tearing his gaze away from Gina to look around.

  “That artist, he carves fish too, see?” Gina said. “Makes me think of mi padre, fishing all alone in Cuba now. So sad my brother died. So you said the woman who is the tiger tamer, she has a brother too, Claire?”

  Claire nodded as she picked up a brochure at the information booth and skimmed it for anything about orchids. Yes, this had to be it: Home Grown Orchids, booth 37.