Rising Fury: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 12)

by Wayne Stinnett

  The previous summer, he’d found a guy in Miami who could get him anything he wanted. But when Cedric Harper had found out that Steve was a cop, he’d vanished from the streets. Steve tracked him down and became a regular customer, making the trip to Miami at least once a week.

  Cedric had introduced him to Ballinger, who didn’t give his name at first. The man was in the information-buying business. Steve knew that if this man was involved with Cedric, the information he’d give him would be used to break the law. But the amount the man was offering was substantial. Eventually, Ballinger let him into his inner circle.

  Gene Ballinger had invited Steve to a party on his yacht. There were a couple of minor celebrities aboard, along with a few of Ballinger’s closest business friends. There were also half a dozen women dressed in very skimpy swimsuits. Liquor, sex, and drugs flowed freely.

  At the height of the party, Ballinger had sat down next to him. Steve had a cute blue-eyed, barely-legal blonde bouncing on his lap and laughing at everything he said. She was excited and amorous, the result of a snoot full of coke and a hit of ecstasy.

  “I need you to do something for me, Steve,” Ballinger had said.

  He offered Steve more money than he’d make in a month, just for a few scraps of information. The money was tempting. Ballinger continued to ply him with the dulling influence of good tequila. The supple twenty-two-year-old spent the rest of the night on his lap or between his knees, and that took care of the rest. The blonde turned out to be a call girl, but Steve didn’t care. They now had a standing date every Sunday night. Today, if Ballinger told him to jump, he jumped.

  Cedric had called the night before, as Steve was watching a football game. Ballinger wanted to see him, and it was important. Steve told him he could be in Miami by nine o’clock.

  Cedric said no, that Mister Ballinger would meet him halfway, in Islamorada. Cedric had given him the address of a strip mall and told him that Ballinger used it as a small retail distribution hub for his legitimate business. Steve had agreed to meet the man there at eight.

  The GPS on his phone warned him that the address was just ahead, and he slowed the car. He was right on time. The parking lot of the strip mall was nearly empty. Eight o’clock on a Monday morning, that was to be expected. It looked like most of the stores were retail shops catering to tourists and probably didn’t open until noon. The business on the end had three cars parked in front of it, a big black Suburban, a yellow Jeep, and a large, boxy SUV.

  Recognizing Cedric’s Toyota parked in front of a small store in the middle, Steve pulled in next to it and got out. There was only one other car in the whole lot. An old Honda with a flat tire was parked at the far side of the lot, backed up to the sidewalk that ran alongside the highway.

  As Steve approached the store, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He glanced over and saw a woman getting in the driver’s side of the ungainly truck at the far end of the mall.

  The door in front of him opened, and Cedric stepped out. “He’s just a coupla minutes away,” he said, lighting a cigarette and extending the pack.

  Steve stepped up on the curb and accepted the cigarette Cedric shook loose. Lighting it with his own lighter, he drew the smoke deeply into his lungs. His car was department issued, and they took the no-smoking policy to the extreme.

  “What’s he want?” Steve asked, as the blonde drove by in what he could now see was a very old Land Cruiser.

  “Dunno,” Cedric replied. “He just told me to meet him here, and to tell you to come, too.”

  A car coming from the north slowed and turned into the parking lot, stopping in front of them. It was a newer model Cadillac with tinted windows and a deep burgundy shine. Cedric turned and locked the door as the passenger’s side window of the car buzzed down.

  “Get in,” Ballinger ordered.

  Cedric got in the backseat. That left Steve the option of walking around the car and getting in behind Ballinger, or getting in the front seat and having Cedric behind him. Ballinger seemed impatient, so Steve got in the front seat beside the man.

  The window went up and the car turned around. Ballinger turned back onto the highway, continuing south. Just ahead, Steve saw the Land Cruiser turn into a small café, just off the highway.

  “There’s a problem,” Ballinger said. “And I need you to make it go away.”

  When we arrived at my island and turned into the little channel, I could tell by the look on her face that Savannah was impressed with the simplicity. On the ride out, I’d told her a little about how I’d built the structures and developed the island, keeping things simple and functional. She’d asked a few questions, seeming honestly interested.

  “Where’s your charter boat?” she asked, as I gently nudged El Cazador up to the long dock behind Angie’s boat.

  Pushing the button on the key fob, I heard the click of the release latch. The doors started to slowly swing outward on their spring-loaded hinges. Under the left side of the house lay the Revenge, taking up most of that berth. The smaller boats were all tied up under the right half.

  “Wow!” Florence exclaimed. “That boat’s bigger than ours.”

  “A little longer,” I said, as Savannah and I tied the dock lines to cleats on the pier, “but I bet yours is a lot sturdier.”

  I stepped up onto the pier and offered Savannah my hand. She took it and stepped up beside me. “Welcome to my island.”

  “Does your island have a name?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” I replied. “It didn’t have one when I bought it, and I guess I just haven’t come up with a reason to change that.”

  We went up the steps leading up to the deck, where we met Charlie coming up the other side. “I thought I heard a young voice.”

  “Charlie, meet Savannah and Florence. We knew each other some years back.” I turned to Savannah. “This is Charlie. She and her husband Carl take care of things around here.”

  The two women shook hands and exchanged pleasantries, then Charlie knelt in front of Florence. “My kids are a little younger than you, but they’re at school,” she said. “Finn’s around somewhere. He’s Jesse’s dog.”

  “Flo is home-schooled,” Savannah said. “We’re never in the same place long enough for her to attend classes.”

  Charlie rose and faced me. “Angie went with Carl to pull the lobster traps and Jimmy’s wading in the garden. I never realized that boy knew so much about plants.”

  He’s probably grown his share of marijuana, I thought.

  It suddenly occurred to me that Carl and Charlie might not even know about Jimmy’s pot smoking. It’s not exactly something a woman would reveal to her dad and step-mom about her boyfriend.

  “Jimmy’s a smart guy,” I said. “No telling all the stuff he’s picked up along the way.”

  “I have one more box to get from the boat,” Charlie said, heading toward the front steps.

  “Need any help?”

  Charlie waved me off. “Nah, it’s just one little old box.”

  “Garden?” Savannah asked.

  Leading her over to the rail, I pointed to where Jimmy was standing in calf-deep water among the vegetable plants. “We raise our own food in one tank, and grow freshwater fish and crawfish in the other tank, mostly to sell to restaurants.”

  “It’s beautiful,” she said, looking out across the island’s interior. “Which house is yours? This one?”

  “Yeah,” I said, then pointed to the Trents’ house. “That’s where Carl and Charlie live. But they’re moving next week, and it will be Jimmy and Angie’s house then. Angie is Carl’s oldest daughter from a previous marriage, and Jimmy works for me from time to time. The other two buildings are just bunkhouses, but Kim is going to remodel the one on the left for her own use.”

  Finn came loping across the yard and up the steps. He stopped at the top and sat. He doesn’t meet new people very often, especially out here, but I’ve at least trained him to remain calm around visitors.

  “
This is my buddy, Finn,” I said, touching Florence’s shoulder. “He loves to chase sticks out in the water.”

  Florence looked up at Savannah. “Is it okay, Mom?”

  Savannah looked at me and I nodded. “Sure,” she said to the girl. “And introduce yourself to Mister Jimmy when you get down there.”

  “You’ll keep an eye on her, Finn?” I asked.

  He barked once by way of reply, turned, and started down the steps, the girl following behind him.

  Florence and Finn ran across the yard in halting gaits, neither very sure about the other. She stopped near the garden and said something to Jimmy, who smiled and waved at her.

  “Is it safe out here?” Savannah asked.

  “Sure, Finn wouldn’t hurt anyone. Or did you mean something else?”

  Savannah turned and faced me. “She won’t come across any guns or bombs, will she?”

  “Guns? Bombs? I don’t know what you’re—”

  “I’m not naïve, Jesse. I heard about Earl Hailey’s escape. It’s one of the reasons Flo and I started moving around when she was little. I also heard that he disappeared into the Everglades. I seem to remember you grew up in that area, right?”

  Savannah wasn’t without means. From what I’d gathered in the short time we were together, her family had money. Could she have hired a private detective? Would he have spoken to Peter Dietrich, the Lee County detective that was working the case? It bothered me that she’d felt the need to run and hide from the man.

  “Earl Hailey is ancient history,” I said. “He’s long gone and will never go after anyone.”

  She stared into my eyes for a moment. “A part of me would like to believe that,” she said. “Another part is afraid of the why.”

  Looking into her eyes, I could see no subterfuge. “Earl’s dead, Savannah. Of that I’m certain. But I didn’t kill him.”

  Turning, she looked over to where Florence and Finn were on the little beach in front of the Trents’ house.

  “Why did you bring me out here?” she asked. “Though you barely made any contact with that female detective, I could tell you and she are together.”

  I pointed out over the bunkhouses. “It happened about four miles out there,” I said.

  Her eyes moistened, as she gazed out over the Gulf. “Can you take me there? The exact spot?”

  “Yes, but you have to know something first.”

  She turned and looked at me, the same hurt showing in her eyes. The pain of loss. “What?”

  “I think the boat she was on was a floating meth lab. A big one.”

  There, I’d said it aloud. Having looked at pictures and diagrams on the internet, I was certain that’s what the equipment was that Marty and I had seen bolted inside the shrimp hold.

  “You think Sharlee was involved in making it?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “Can I ask you something? You don’t have to answer if it’s none of my business.”

  “What is it?”

  “How much money did Charlotte take from your mom?”

  Savannah hesitated a moment, before answering.

  “Three hundred thousand dollars.”

  Exactly the number Doc Fredrick had given me. Multiplied by three boats.

  “To a bank in Fort Myers?” I asked. She nodded. “Did you report it? Family or not, it’s stealing.”

  “No,” she said, as we walked down the steps. “Mom wouldn’t, and I couldn’t. She was my sister. My only sibling.”

  Jimmy stepped out of the garden pool, as we approached. “You and Carl are raising some primo veggies, man.”

  I introduced Savannah to him, then we walked out to the north pier. She was quiet as we walked. At the end of the pier, she looked out over the water for a moment.

  “What makes you think they were making meth?” she finally asked.

  “Carl and I were sitting right here,” I said, then pointed toward Content Passage. “We noticed the shrimp boat out there, headed east. Carl owns one. Shrimpers need flat grassy bottoms to drag their nets across. We thought it strange that a shrimp boat was going that way, because there’s no good place to trawl out there.”

  Pointing toward where the boat had gone down, I said, “We were talking, and the flash of the explosion caught our eye a second before we heard the blast. I’ve seen an explosion or two. Carl, also. There was something unusual about it. It was a lot bigger than exploding diesel tanks should be.”

  “So that means they were making meth?”

  “Later that evening, Kim, Carl, and I were diving a sinkhole I’d found last week. After the first dive, we noticed a slow-moving boat out near where the wreck went down. Marty showed up out of nowhere to check us out; he’d been watching the wreck site on his radar from over in the Contents. Since the wreck was beyond the three-mile limit and he was actually off duty, he joined us on my boat and we approached the wreck site. Another shrimp trawler was using its nets to drag the wreck away. We followed, and then waited for them to clear out. They’d dragged the wreck two miles north.”

  “Why would they do that? To hide any evidence?”

  “That was what we thought,” I said. Marty and I dove on it and found equipment that could be used to manufacture the drugs. Everything was hidden in the boat’s shrimp hold.”

  “Could it have been something else?” Savannah asked.

  “In the hold of a fishing boat? You grew up around them, used to skipper one. What was in your hold?”

  “Fish and ice,” she replied. “And I kept it sparkling clean.”

  “Yesterday, after we ran into each other in Key West, I went back out there. A dive boat was on the wreck, with divers in the water. I again waited for them to clear out and dove down to have a look.”

  “What’d you find?”

  “The equipment in the hold was gone,” I replied. “And they’d left a bomb to blow up any other evidence.”

  She turned suddenly toward me. “Jesse, you could’ve been hurt.”

  “I was,” I said, matter-of-factly. “Damned near got myself killed, but I managed to drag the charge away from the boat before it blew. Everything’s still as intact as it was before those guys dove on it and took the evidence. But I did find half a pound of meth.”

  “The package I saw you hand to your girlfriend?”

  “Yes, on both counts,” I replied. “Devon and I have been seeing each other for a few months. She’s a detective sergeant with the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office.”

  “So the sheriff’s office is investigating Charlotte’s death as it relates to the manufacture of illegal drugs? Is that why the coroner won’t release her body?”

  Taking her by the shoulders, I looked into her eyes. “There are a lot of moving parts, Savannah. The explosion happened outside of territorial waters, so it’s the Coast Guard that’s investigating. It was probably them that ordered Doc Fredrick not to release the body.”

  “So, what is it that your girlfriend is investigating?”

  “Devon’s exploring something related and involves Marty. I can’t say anything more than that.”

  She moved into my arms. It felt natural and comfortable. Her body convulsed in small spasms as she cried on my shoulder. I had a feeling that she’d been holding it all together for her daughter’s sake. I held her and gave her the time she needed. Finally, she stepped away, turning, and wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand

  “I don’t have a hankie,” I said, opening the small cabinet Carl built on the floating dock. I handed her a beach towel. Savannah burst out laughing, drying the tears from her cheeks.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Leave it to you to use a ten-pound sledge where a tack hammer would do.”

  My phone vibrated in my pocket. Taking it out, I saw that it was Chyrel calling. “I hope you don’t mind,” I said, holding up the phone, “but I asked someone to look into a few things about Charlotte’s death. This is her.”

  Answering the phone, I put it on speaker. “Hey, Chyrel. I’m with Savannah
Richmond. You’re on speaker.”

  Chyrel knew me well enough that she understood that I was conveying to her that I trusted Savannah.

  “I did some digging into Ballinger’s background,” Chyrel said, her voice sounding tinny over the small speaker. “He’s solvent, but just barely. His business is all legit, but it’s failing, and he won’t let go of the lifestyle it provided through the eighties and nineties. And you were right about the warehouses he sold.”

  “In port cities?” I asked.

  “One city,” Chyrel replied. “Two warehouses on the Miami River. He sold them four months ago. They were small and run-down, but he got just enough for them to buy three shrimp boats.”

  “Good work,” I said. “Anything else.” There was always something else with Chyrel.

  “Maybe you’d better take me off the speaker,” she replied.

  Pushing the button, I held the phone to my ear. “Okay, what is it?”

  “I followed the money,” Chyrel said. “That’s where they usually screw up. After buying the boats, Ballinger’s business was down to nothing, flat broke, and in debt to his eyeballs. But the very next day, a single large deposit was made into the operating account of his business in Fort Myers. It was almost immediately transferred to Ballinger’s main bank in Miami, and within hours, every cent was spent ordering new industrial equipment from several manufacturers. And that ain’t all.”

  “Let me guess,” I said, looking at Savannah. “You dug deeper and found where Ballinger’s money came from. It was a three-hundred-thousand-dollar bank transfer from the Richmond family’s business account.”

  “Oh, you’re gettin’ good at this,” Chyrel said. “I take it the other Miss Richmond knows that her sis was mixed up in drugs?”

  “She does,” I said. “Thanks, Chyrel.”