That’s why Clancy remained completely focused and slowly placed his palm on top of the gator’s upper jaw.
Incredibly enough, he was successful. With his palms on both the gator’s upper and lower jaws, Clancy pushed the gator’s mouth shut.
I was all ready to take a deep breath until I realized there was more to come. Clancy moved one of his hands so that he was holding the gator’s mouth shut with only one hand, then signaled for his brother.
“Travis,” he said.
Travis tossed the roll of electrical tape to his brother, who caught it with his free hand. From there, Clancy wrapped the tape around the gator’s mouth a couple of times to make sure it was securely taped shut.
Once that was done, Travis came over, grabbed the gator from behind, and picked it up, then the two of them loaded the gator into the bed of their pickup truck.
While all of that was occurring, my brother and I stood in our kitchen, looking completely stunned. I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. It had happened right before my eyes, yet it didn’t seem real. I felt like I had just watched a magician performing an unbelievable trick, only I had no idea how he had just pulled it off.
While the Sumpters were at their truck, Joe and I tried to make sense of what had just happened.
“Do you have any idea how they just did that?” I asked.
“I was going to go with magic,” Joe said.
I didn’t have a better explanation to offer, so I just went along with my brother’s theory. “That sounds about right to me.”
Joe decided to pat himself on the back. “I told you they were professionals.”
“You can’t blame me for not believing you at first,” I replied.
“It just goes to show that not everything is as it seems.”
“You can say that again. I can’t believe what just happened, and I just saw it with my own two eyes.”
Chapter Four
When Travis and Clancy returned from their truck, I thanked them profusely. I offered to pay them handsomely for their amazing work, but they just wanted me to make a donation to their alligator rescue sanctuary. How could I not? For one, they had safely removed the gator from my backyard. On top of that, as someone who ran a rescue shelter for abandoned dogs and cats, I knew how important donations were. I just never expected to be donating to a place that rescued gators.
Then again, my expectations had been wrong about practically every part of the gator-wrangling process, so why should the surprises have stopped there? In addition to writing out a nice check to the Sumpters, I also made them breakfast. I figured it was the least I could do after all the trouble they had gone to.
When Travis and Clancy finished up their scrambled eggs and toast, they went on their way while my brother and I sat back in our chairs and decompressed. There was so much going on in my mind. I remained quiet as I tried to make sense of it all. That silence worried my brother.
“Are you okay?” Joe asked.
I was very candid with my brother. “Yeah. I was just thinking about how wrong I was.”
Joe scrunched his nose. “About what?”
I elaborated. “About everything. This whole morning has been a reminder that life is never done surprising you.”
“Spotting an alligator in the backyard would throw anyone for a loop.”
“It’s not just that. At first glance, I thought those gator wranglers were just…”
I had trouble finishing my sentence.
Joe had a guess as to where I was going with my thought. “Hicks?”
I nodded. “Yeah. But they turned out to be good guys. Not to mention the most professional alligator wranglers I have ever seen.”
“Just how many alligator wranglers have you seen?” Joe joked.
I gave him the stink eye. “You know what I mean. After all the things I have seen in my life and all the people I have met, I figured I wouldn’t make the mistake of pegging two people so incorrectly.”
“Don’t get so down on yourself. I did the same thing.”
“I know you’re trying to make me feel better, but a situation like this makes me wonder who else in my life I may have misjudged.”
“Don’t look too far into it. Like you said before, life is full of surprises. Besides, it’s hard to think straight when there’s an alligator trying to break into your kitchen.”
“Isn’t that the truth? The only thing I was thinking was how lucky I was that my poor little Buster didn’t become that gator’s next meal.”
Joe gave my Labrador Retriever a pat. “What a tragedy that would have been. I think it’s time to get rid of that doggy door of yours.”
“Don’t worry. That’s at the top of my list.”
Joe gave Buster another pat. “Good.”
“That’s not all. It turns out Buster isn’t the only one with good timing on his side.”
My brother furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”
“It’s Saturday, which means Benjamin Norton is supposed to come by and clean my pool. If he had shown up a little early, he would have run into that gator.”
Joe grimaced.
“Exactly.” I then checked the time on my phone. “Speaking of, Benjamin should already be here.”
“Well, when he does get here, tell him to use a lot of chlorine. Who knows what germs that alligator brought with it.”
Blech. I got grossed out just thinking of the germs and bacteria that could be living in my pool now.
Joe changed the subject. “But hey, you have always joked about other people’s alligator-in-the-pool stories. Now you finally have one of my own.”
“It’s safe to say this wasn’t on my bucket list,” I deadpanned.
Joe chuckled.
I took a deep breath, hoping that things had finally calmed down for the day.
My brother had other plans. He seemed to be determined to goad me with sarcasm. “It’s a shame it’s been such a boring day, huh?”
I stared him down. “Don’t even joke about that.”
“Too soon?” he asked.
“It’s too soon and too early in the morning. I’m going to need more coffee before I laugh at a joke like that.”
“If you’re going to make a pot of coffee, I’ll take a cup.”
I got up to turn on the coffee machine while my mind indulged in happier thoughts. “Come to think of it, after the insanity of the morning, I deserve a nice spa day.”
Before I had a chance to get any deeper into my daydream about getting a massage, my brother got a call over his police radio.
“Detective Hadley,” the dispatcher said over the radio.
Joe picked up his radio and answered the call. “This is Hadley.”
“I just received a report of a dead body being found,” the dispatcher replied.
Like that, it suddenly became clear that the craziness of the day was far from over. Instead, it seemed to just be getting started.
Chapter Five
My plans for a quiet spa day were instantly shelved. How could I relax after hearing the news of another dead body being found in town? After the incident with the alligator, I was already on edge. This new revelation just made it impossible for my thoughts to be anything but distracted, and no massage or mud bath was going to change that.
I had to hand it to the state of Florida. It knew how to outdo itself. The discovery of a dead body was the only thing that could be more shocking than finding an alligator roaming my backyard. So naturally that was the situation I was faced with.
At the same time, my curiosity had a way of getting the better of me. Originally, I hadn’t planned on leaving with my brother to investigate the dead body. Then I heard the identity of the deceased—Benjamin Norton. The same Benjamin Norton that had been running late to clean my pool. No wonder he never showed up.
The question was, what had happened to him? Joe and I hadn’t even arrived at Benjamin’s place before my mind went to work concocting possible answers. I kept them all to myself, mostly because it was
nothing but wild speculation on my part. Theoretically, we would be getting a number of answers when we arrived on the scene.
Joe was quiet on the drive over to Benjamin’s house, which gave my mind an open playground to run around in. My brother hadn’t even put up an argument when I told him I wanted to go along with him. If anything, he seemed to welcome my input. I was glad we had reached a point where he no longer viewed me as just a meddling amateur sleuth but rather as an investigative equal.
In regard to the deceased, for a man who had come to my house once a week for the last year to clean my pool, I knew surprisingly little about Benjamin Norton. During his weekly visits, we had made pleasant small talk, and he had always been nice to me, but that didn’t exactly give me any great insights into his character.
My dad always used to say that any serviceman who couldn’t be nice to his customers probably wouldn’t be in business very long. Ultimately, all I was to Benjamin was a customer. Who he really was around friends and family was just as much of a mystery as what had killed him. As Joe’s car pulled into the driveway of Benjamin’s Spanish-style tan-colored house, I hoped that the next few minutes would shed some light on that.
The police presence at Benjamin’s place was already strong. A deputy’s car was parked on the street out front, as was the coroner’s van. Benjamin’s familiar blue pickup truck was in the driveway, with various nets, hoses, and other assorted pool-cleaning supplies cluttered in its bed.
Joe and I walked through the house and onto the back patio, where the coroner and the majority of the police activity was taking place. Todd Kelty, the fifty-two-year-old coroner, had recently moved to Hollywood, Florida, because the high crime rate in Miami had taken its toll on him. Yet here he was, examining another dead body.
Todd was convinced that the stress of his job back in Miami had accelerated his hair loss. If that wasn’t enough to deal with, the long hours on crime scenes and at the morgue had done nothing to curb his yen for fast food, further contributing to his growing waistline. But it was the world-weary look in his eyes that really struck me. I couldn’t imagine the things he had seen during his career as a coroner.
As I spotted Benjamin Norton’s lifeless corpse on the back patio beside his in-ground pool, my thoughts shifted to the case. A number of forensics specialists wandered around the backyard, searching for evidence and trying to pull any fingerprints they could.
My focus was on Benjamin’s dripping-wet body. He didn’t seem to be bleeding at all. I actually saw no gashes on him of any sort. Naturally, that led me to believe that he had drowned.
My brother preferred to eschew assumptions and asked Todd directly.
“What do we have?” Joe said.
“Deceased male, early forties, found face down in the pool,” Todd replied.
“Does that mean he drowned?” Joe asked.
“It’s funny that you bring that up. On first appearance, that seemed to be the case. But upon closer inspection, I found this red mark around his neck,” Todd replied.
I had to look closely but finally saw the thin red mark the coroner had been referring to.
Joe jumped to a new conclusion. “Are you saying the cause of death was strangulation?”
Todd nodded.
“So much for an accidental drowning,” I said.
My brother looked discouraged. “I’ll say. So is your best theory that the killer strangled Benjamin to death then pushed him into the pool to make it seem like he’d drowned?”
“That’s safe to assume,” Todd replied.
“Do you have any idea what he was strangled with?” Joe asked.
“Judging by how thin the red mark is, I’d say a piece of wire maybe,” Todd replied.
“Has your team found any wire here?” Joe said.
Todd shook his head. “No. But it wouldn’t matter anyway. The wire would be too thin to pull any prints from.”
“Speaking of, have your guys been able to pull any fingerprints from the scene yet?”
“Only Benjamin’s.”
Joe groaned. “It figures.” My brother switched gears. “Time of death?”
“It’s looking like sometime between nine and ten o’clock last night.”
“All right. And who found the body?” Joe said.
“His maid came over this morning to start cleaning the place. That’s when she spotted his body in the pool.”
Chapter Six
Joe and I went over to talk to Benjamin’s maid, Rosa Flores, who was still really broken up about finding the body. My heart went out to her. I still remembered the first time that I saw a dead body in person. It was a jarring experience—one that sent a shiver down my spine. To this day, it was an image that I couldn’t shake from my memory. Of all the things to have burned into my brain, that was one that I would do almost anything to get rid of.
While the diminutive forty-seven-year-old had been the one to find the body, unfortunately, Rosa didn’t have much else to offer in terms of this investigation. She relayed to us that she had come in to start cleaning, spotted the body, and had called the police. Since she was far too petite to be able to strangle Benjamin, had no discernable motive, and had a verifiable alibi for the time of the murder, in my mind, her involvement in the case ended right there.
After speaking with Rosa, Joe and I decided to pay a visit to Benjamin’s direct neighbors. We were hoping to get a few leads out of them. Maybe they had seen someone suspicious skulking around. Perhaps they had spotted a person fleeing from the scene. Or maybe they had heard something out of the ordinary. Anything that we could use to solve this case.
Joe and I questioned three different neighbors but ended up with nothing to show for it. It was almost baffling how empty-handed we ended up. None of the neighbors had heard or seen a thing.
It was incredibly frustrating to talk to so many people and not turn up a single nugget of information. Luckily, while the neighbors were no help, my memory was. As I thought back on the previous years’ worth of pool cleanings, I recalled at least a couple of times when it wasn’t Benjamin who had done the cleaning but rather his assistant, Landon Thorpe.
Murder suspects were typically drawn from two different pools—the victim’s personal life and their professional one. Discontent at the workplace was a common motive for murder. Were Benjamin Norton and Landon Thorpe in the thick of any disagreements at the time of Benjamin’s death? Joe and I headed over to Landon’s place to find out.
***
Landon Thorpe lived in a green, single-story ranch-style home that looked like it hadn’t been updated since it was built in the fifties. This was more than just wear and tear. It was deferred maintenance at its most brazen. Not to be outdone, his front lawn was begging to be mowed. The grass was so tall and thick that I was surprised the city hadn’t cited him for negligence. Or, maybe it had and Landon had just ignored it. For someone who cleaned pools for a living, he put astonishingly little effort into keeping up the appearance of his own home.
What he did seem to care about was surfing. As we arrived, he was in his garage waxing a surfboard, oblivious to the jungle of weeds that was growing in his front yard. The weeds weren’t the only thing that failed to grab his attention. Joe and I were able to reach the open doorway to his garage before he even noticed us.
Landon curled his shoulder-length, wavy brown hair behind his ear as his hazel eyes looked quizzically at us. The trim twenty-six-year-old was wearing a wetsuit and appeared to have his mind solidly on catching some waves.
“Can I help you, dudes?” Landon asked.
I couldn’t help but groan. That wasn’t exactly the best start to the proceedings. Had he really just called us dudes? Seriously? Did he not notice that I was a woman? Or did he just not care? My vote was for him not giving a hoot.
I wasn’t alone. Joe did not appreciate being called a dude, either. He pulled out his police badge and spoke with authority.
“Joe Hadley, Hollywood Police Department.”
La
ndon was nonplussed. He shrugged his shoulders. “Okay. What are you doing here?”
“We have some questions we need to ask you,” Joe replied.
“About what?” Landon wondered.
Landon was either as out of the loop as he let on or he was putting on a really good act. I couldn’t tell quite yet. I kept my eyes peeled for any strange body language. After all, I had been dead wrong in how I had judged the gator wranglers earlier, so I didn’t want to make the same mistake when it came to a potential murder suspect.
My brother tried to cut through the haze of confusion. “Are you saying you didn’t know that your boss had been murdered?”
That drew an interesting set of reactions from Landon. His eyes immediately darted open at the mention of the word “murder.” Such a candid facial expression made me believe this truly was the first he had heard of it. My opinion began to shift as he hesitated in responding.
The longer it took for a reply to come from his mouth, the more I questioned what was causing the delay. It definitely wasn’t grief. That emotion was completely absent from his face.
Finally, Landon answered my brother’s question. “No. This is the first I have heard of it.”
If I hadn’t been suspicious of him before, my concerns were only heightened now. He had taken an awfully long time to come up with such a short response. Why were the gears turning so slowly in his brain?
From there on out, I had a hard time taking Landon at his word.
My brother played things straight and carried on as if Landon had been telling the truth.
“Benjamin was murdered last night at his house,” Joe said.
“That’s crazy, man. How did it happen?” Landon asked.
By that point, I had the sneaking suspicion that Landon was trying to pull the wool over our eyes.
It was time to set things straight. “We’re the ones asking the questions here.”
“All right. Whatever you say, dude,” Landon replied.
Sweets, Suspects, and Women Sleuths Cozy Mystery Set Page 13