A Secondhand Murder

by Lesley A. Diehl

  “I did not.”

  “Well then, do you know who did and why?”

  “I’ve got a good idea.”

  “You know the cops are looking for you, right?”

  “Looking for me? Why?”

  “For attempted murder and kidnapping.”

  There was silence on the line. “I’m shocked. And innocent.” He sounded genuinely taken aback, but Jerry was a master at feigning surprise.

  “Who did I kidnap and attempt to kill?”

  “Me.”

  More silence. The only way I could tell that he hadn’t disconnected was that I could hear breathing interspersed with gulping noises.

  “Now that’s crazy. Why would I do that? Who said I did?”

  “Sanders told the police you were the one who threw me into a car trunk and drove me off into the Everglades.”

  “Figures.”

  “Is that all you’ve got to say. Don’t you want to hear what happened to me? I could have been killed.”

  “Sorry, honey. Listen, I’m parked in a strip mall in Ft. Lauderdale and … Cops. Gotta go.” He clicked off.

  “You okay in there?” Grandy tapped on my door. “I thought I heard you yelling. Are you having a bad dream?”

  A bad dream? That would have been nice.

  Maybe it was the quiet descending on the marina that woke me, a startling silence after a long night of rain lashing against the windows and palm fronds rattling in the frenzied wind. Then I heard soft footsteps on the deck above. A tap on my door soon followed.

  “I heard it, too,” whispered Max through the door. “I’ll take care of whoever’s up there.”

  Max was seventy-eight years old and in good shape for a man of that age, but handling an intruder would take strength as well as stealth. I opened the door and grabbed a heavy skillet from the galley. Max might require support.

  When I stepped onto the deck, I could see that my help was superfluous. Max was standing against the cabin with a spear gun in his hands, pointing the ugly thing at a man in the bow.

  “This guy says he knows you.”

  Grandy came up the companionway, a flashlight in her hand. She pushed around me and pointed the beam of light at our intruder’s face.

  I expected Alex or Jerry, but the face I saw was a complete surprise.

  “Dwight Sanders. What are you doing here?”

  “Hold this.” Max handed me the spear gun. “I’m going to search him.”

  I handed Grandy my frying pan and took Max’s weapon.

  Dwight didn’t move while Max thoroughly patted him down. When he was finished, I handed the spear gun back.

  “The cops are looking for you. They think you killed your stepmother. I think you kidnapped me and left me in the swamp to die. I’m puzzled. Why are you here? Trying to get another shot at me?”

  “No. No.” He held out his hands and moved toward me.

  Max menaced him with the spear gun, and he backed away again.

  “Could you tell the old guy to put that thing down? Do you have any idea what that could do to a man if it went off?”

  “Yes, I do, son.” The spear gun remained pointed at Dwight’s chest. “Eve, call the cops.”

  “Wait. Give me a little time here. I didn’t kill anybody. I can prove it, too.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “In my car. I’ve got a tape of a conversation between my …”

  Suddenly an explosion ripped through the air, and a fireball shot into the night sky.

  “That was close. It looks like it came from the parking lot of the Mariner’s Motel,” said Grandy.

  Dwight groaned. “That’s where I left my car.”

  Grandy, Max and I watched as flames shot into the air. Charred and burning pieces of debris fell onto the dock nearby.

  Another sound, like hands clapping, rent the air.

  “Get down,” yelled Max. “Someone’s shooting at us.” The three of us hit the deck.

  “Oh, crap!” yelled Dwight. “They must have followed me here.”

  I heard a splash and Dwight was gone.

  We waited but heard no more shots. The fire lit up the marina, and many of the boat owners who had moved up to their decks when the commotion began were now running down the quay toward the conflagration.

  I peered overboard, expecting to spot Dwight’s body, but there was nothing there except the eerie reflection of undulating orange and red flames in the black water.

  The sound of fire engines and emergency vehicles filled the night air. The fire was now giving off mostly sooty smoke. As firefighters and EMTs flooded the scene, my thoughts were carried back to Sabal City and the night my car had met a similar fate.

  By the time the police had finished interviewing us and the firefighters had completed their work on the burned car, it was close to morning. A wedge of sun appeared for a moment on the horizon, but a line of gray clouds slapped it away. The rain began again and the temperature dropped another ten degrees.

  Instead of going back to sleep, we stayed up and drank several pots of coffee to kick our brains into gear. Seated around the galley table, we were playing yet another hand of Pitch, probably our fiftieth of the morning.

  “You think he got away?” Grandy shuffled the deck and dealt.

  “Absolutely, or we would have found a body this morning floating in the canal,” said Max.

  “I still don’t get why he came here to talk with me. How did he know where I was?”

  “It was no secret that you were coming down here with me.” Grandy threw her ace onto the table and took my two of trump.

  “It sounds to me like he was trying to finish what he had messed up by leaving you in the Everglades.” Max examined his hand and scowled.

  “I just don’t get any of this. Once he had botched the kidnapping and I had the opportunity to identify him as the man by Valerie’s car at my shop, he should have stayed out of sight. There was no reason for him to come here and try again.”

  “You don’t believe he’s innocent, do you?” Max tossed a junk trump card when Grandy led with her jack. “You better come back at me with trump, honey.” He waggled his bushy eyebrows at her.

  “Forget it. I’ve made my three points.”

  I sat at the table, looking at my cards but not making any sense of what was in my hand. I had thought for sure that Dwight was the one who’d kidnapped me and killed his mother. It all fit so nicely. Except for motive. Why would he kill her?

  “You still playing, Eve?” asked Grandy.

  “I got nothing. I’m just marking time here.”

  Several minutes later, Grandy made her points, for the fourth time in a row, while Max and I both sat empty handed. At least Max had some points on the board from other hands. My score was minus eight.

  “Time for lunch.” Grandy busied herself making tuna sandwiches while I put the cards away and wiped the table. Their moods were absurdly buoyant on this lousy day, and I couldn’t figure out why.

  “You beat the pants off both of us at cards, Grandy, so I can understand your cheerfulness. But, Max, you surprise me. No charters in this weather, and it doesn’t look like it’ll clear soon. Yet you’re as chipper as she is. What’s going on?”

  Just then someone yelled, “Permission to come aboard.”

  “Aha. Come on. We’re below,” Max yelled back.

  The companionway door opened with a rush of wind and salt water, and Alex’s head appeared.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

  “You didn’t tell her you called me?” He removed his jacket, held it back out the door and shook the rain off.

  “We wanted to surprise you, Eve,” Grandy said. “You seemed so down, we thought that Alex might cheer you up. He can give you a ride back to Sabal City. He’ll be much more interesting company than I would be.” Grandy’s eyes twinkled.

  Their heightened spirits irritated me. If I wanted to be upset, I had the right. After all, someone had tried to kill me. More than once
.

  “If you didn’t want to drive me back, you should have said so. I can take a bus.”

  Three faces settled hurt looks on me.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I felt bad about lashing out at them. After all, they were just trying to help.

  “No, honey, we’re the ones who should apologize. You put on such a brave front, I guess we didn’t realize how shook up you were over what happened,” Grandy said. “I assumed you were out of sorts because of the weather. We wanted to make this weekend better for you, so we called Alex.”

  Part of what she had said was true. She did want me to have a good time. The Alex part? Well, that was the matchmaker in her surfacing. It had nothing to do with what I wanted.

  “I can leave,” offered Alex.

  “You can, but I bet you won’t.” I bit my tongue. I was in a foul mood. “Anyway, I think I’d like to get back to the shop.”

  “Why? It’s Saturday. By the time you arrive, it’ll be closing time. Tomorrow is Sunday. You aren’t open,” Grandy said. “Let’s take in a movie at the local cinema and have dinner out. You can leave early tomorrow.”

  My shoulders slumped in resignation. Then I glanced at Alex. I’d forgotten how appealing he could look. It was absolutely yummy the way his damp hair curled over his forehead and ears. “Sounds good.”

  The movie we saw was a romantic comedy and it would have been funny had it not been for the temperature in the theater. Nobody invests in central heating in the Keys, and the movie theater was no exception. On the other hand, the cool temperature did have its perks—Alex wrapped his arm around me to keep me warm. I wanted to stay for another showing.

  Instead of staying for a double feature, we decided to go to a local eatery for wings. For some inexplicable reason, that place had a furnace, and, to my disappointment, it was on. I sat next to Alex and the warmth from his body made the place even toastier.

  It was after eleven by the time we got back to the boat. Alex took the cabin across from mine. I thought that I might have difficulty sleeping, that his proximity would send out waves of attraction, luring me toward his berth, but I fell quickly into a dreamless slumber. I didn’t even stir until the next morning when Max shouted that he had the Sunday paper.

  “You’re gonna want to see the headlines.” He tapped on my door.

  I threw on a tee shirt and a pair of jeans. Running a hand through my hair, I appeared in the galley, where my shipmates were already devouring the news.

  “Let me see that.” I grabbed the paper out of Alex’s hands and read.

  “Looks like our murderer got murdered,” he said.

  Chapter 20

  “Body Found in Canal,” I read aloud from the headlines then quickly perused the front-page article. “It says here, ‘The man, who was shot in the head, has been identified as Dwight Sanders, a prominent West Palm Beach businessman.’ Businessman? Dwight? It goes on to say that he was a person of interest in the murder of his stepmother and that he was last sighted in Key Largo.”

  “I guess that’s the end of that,” said Alex.

  “The end of what? Somebody killed him, wanted to keep him from telling what he knew about Valerie’s murder. It’s not the end of anything. It’s merely another piece of this confusing puzzle.” I tossed the paper on the table.

  “You mean, you believe what Dwight said?” Grandy turned to Alex. “This girl, sophisticated in so many ways, is dumb as swamp water about men, especially bad boys like Jerry and Dwight.”

  “Motive, Grandy. Why would Dwight want to kill his stepmother?”

  Max shrugged. “The usual. Money, maybe.”

  “She didn’t have any.” Alex said it quickly and with certainty.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Uh, Jerry told me. We talked about the investment thing that he had gotten the Sanders into and how they had lost millions.”

  He looked so guilty when he said it.

  “Now why would Jerry confess that to you? He lied to me about any involvement with Sanders and his family.”

  “He was drunk when we had the discussion.”

  “See. What did I tell you? Here she is cross-examining the wrong guy,” said Grandy.

  “Oh, I intend to have a chat with Jerry, too. When I find him. Hopefully that will happen before the cops get to him.”

  Grandy set a plate of sandwiches on the table and ordered us to “Eat up.” I continued to eye Alex with skepticism, but he was too busy engaging Max in boat talk to notice. Grandy kicked me under the table and whispered a “Be nice” in my direction. I screwed up my face but kept my mouth shut.

  I ate only half of my sandwich, then left everyone at the table to finish their coffee and Key lime pie leftovers while I packed my overnight bag.

  Grandy handed me a brown paper bag. “There’s a piece of pie for you in here. Another one for Alex, too.” Then she hugged me goodbye. “Call me when you get home.”

  Alex and I drove the “strip,” the twenty-plus miles between Key Largo and Homestead, without speaking. As we turned onto the Florida Turnpike, Alex broke the silence.

  “Why do you dislike me so much?”

  I couldn’t tell him that I distanced myself to protect my poor abused heart, broken years ago by Jerry and jump-started every time the man had cheated on me. He would have said that was irrelevant. Maybe it was. I didn’t know the rules for having a relationship with anybody other than a bad boy. What did one do with a nice guy who treated you with deference and respect? One you wanted to wrestle into bed every time he so much as looked at you. So I told him part of the truth, the part that kept me from throwing myself at him.

  “I don’t dislike you. I just don’t trust you, and I think I have good reason for that, don’t you?”

  “Do you? Like what?”

  “You know. You’ve had relations with the Sanders family.”

  “As a private investigator only.”

  I gave him a long, hard look. “Really? You kept the PI job even after Valerie was murdered. What was that about? Didn’t Sanders believe the police were good enough to solve the crime? Then when he found out that you and I were friendly, he fired you. Why? See, I’ve got a lot of unanswered questions about you. Are you going to answer them for me? I don’t think so.”

  As if on cue, my cell rang. Good old Jerry, but would he tell me the truth? Or was I just going to hear more lies?

  Alex and I waited in front of a Starbucks in the West Palm Service Center. After a half-hour of swiveling our heads each time a lone man entered the center, I told Alex I had to use the ladies’ room. “You know Jerry. You can spot him as well as I can.”

  “Yeah, but you lied to him. You told him you were alone, driving a rental back to Sabal City. I don’t think Jerry will be happy to see me.”

  “I gotta pee. We’ll have to take the chance.” I turned my back and ran for the restroom.

  I felt immeasurably more relaxed when I left the stall. I was washing my hands when a woman wearing far too much makeup pushed up to the sink next to me, shoving me off balance.

  “Sorry, honey. I tripped. How you can balance on those heels is beyond me.”

  I shot her a dirty look, but she shouldered me out of the way, reaching across the sink to grab a paper towel.

  “What’s your problem?” I asked. Then I took a good look at her. “She” was no “her.”

  “Hi, Evie. Pretty good get-up, huh? It got me past Alex. Say, what’s going on between you two, anyway? How come he got an invite to the boat, but I got left out?” Jerry’s smile revealed lipstick-covered teeth.

  “Alex is not wanted by the police. Grandy seems to prefer her guests that way.”

  Jerry pulled me away from the sinks and into the corner by the changing table. He was wearing stiletto heels as high as mine and a coral dress that clung to curves I knew he did not have. A pair of oversized sunglasses sat atop a blond wig. I reached out to touch it. It felt like real hair. Catching my gesture, the washroom attendant rolled her eyes
. With Jerry’s hand on my arm and mine in his hair, this must have looked like more than a casual conversation.

  “I’ve got a few questions for you,” he said.

  “Oh, no, not until you answer some of mine. Like, why did you sell Sanders our condo, house, and boat?”

  “You got the papers on you?”

  “I told you. I don’t. Someone snatched them from under my pillow back at the boat.”

  Jerry groaned. “Don’t you know better than to hide important stuff in the most obvious place?”

  “I guess I didn’t take the same ‘How to be a Clever Criminal 101’ course as you.”

  “Who do you think took them?” he asked.

  “My first guess was you.”

  “Wrong. Sanders must have sent someone down.”

  That made sense.

  “The papers, Jerry. Why did you sell the stuff at such a reduced price?”

  “He threatened to go to the Securities and Exchange Commission and tell them that I had known the investments I recommended were part of a Ponzi scheme. You know, where the early investors make money because the consultant pays them from the later investments.”

  “You didn’t know about it, did you?” I leaned in, as if getting closer to his heavily mascaraed lashes and pancaked face would allow me to discern the truth.

  “I didn’t know squat about that scheme, but Sanders was rightly pissed when he lost all that money. Someone had to pay. He made that someone me.”

  “I don’t see how taking those documents changes anything.”

  “Mr. Napolitani recommended that I get them back. He said it would give us some wiggle room when talking with Sanders.”

  “Wiggle room? What kind of ‘wiggle room’?”

  “Never mind. Listen, I’ve got to go.”

  “One more question. What’s the relationship between Alex and the Sanders family?”

  Jerry hesitated just a moment too long, then applied another layer of paint to his already thickly powdered face. But this layer wasn’t cosmetic, this one was the illusion of innocence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. Then he walked out.