The Quick Adios (Times Six) (Alex Rutledge Mystery Series)

by Tom Corcoran

  “Except you knew more about the potential danger than he did,” I said.

  “What was he supposed to watch?”said Beth, calming the dialogue.

  “They started a new pattern. Ocilla began opening new accounts, depositing the checks she got from Caldwell, then pulling the money out in cash either inside the banks or at ATMs. That one has the FBI baffled, but we began to wonder if she wasn’t turning the scam into her own venture. Maybe she was going to build a nest egg and boogie to Bolivia herself. Anyway, he was helping us keep track of the banks and her daily schedule, near as he could tell and when he wasn’t occupied elsewhere. He held another job as well, at some restaurant.”

  I looked at Sam, we locked eyes, then he looked down at the table, focusing on nothing. I read his passive reaction as distrust with a touch of loathing.

  “How often did Caldwell visit and leave Key West?” I said to Max. “Did you track his air flights for the past few months?”

  “His schedule was so random, it could’ve been generated by a computer,” said Saunders. “He came and he went, but never back to Canada.”

  “What got Greg Pulver killed?”

  “We have no idea. For all we know, he broke into Emerson Caldwell’s computer. Or spilled his guts to Ocilla. We know they became lovers, though his track record in that regard was right up there with the rock stars. He could put Tiger Woods in the minor leagues. We certainly wouldn’t put him in place to be murdered.”

  “Why are we being made privy to this information,” I said, “aside from the fact that Liska hasn’t found the courage to include us?”

  “Two reasons,” said Max. “One, Ocilla Ramirez came to your home twenty-four hours ago.”

  “Right,” I said. “She followed Detective Watkins so she could plead her innocence in the deaths of Pulver and Caldwell.”

  “She told me that she had been followed and observed,” added Beth.

  “Yes,” said Saunders, “we figured she was onto us when she dropped out of sight two days ago. At the time she also was being shadowed by two private investigators dressed as street people.” He looked at me. “We assumed they were working for the individuals who engineered the scam.”

  “They weren’t,” I said.

  “Thank you for being forthright,” said Max.

  “Does that mean you’re happy that I didn’t bullshit you?”

  Max nodded. “Liska has explained the men he calls the Bumsnoops, which gave us a little relief. And that brings up our second reason to invite your help.” He faced Watkins. “We need to separate Sheriff Liska from the Caldwell case. It’s time to arrest Ocilla. For that, Beth, we need you.”

  “Now you’re setting up Fred Liska?” I said. “If you don’t already know, I’ll tell you that he’s not just an associate of mine, he’s a personal friend.”

  Sam, without looking up at anyone, dropped his clenched fist on the table. A well-controlled exclamation point.

  Max hesitated then said, “We know that, Alex, and we respect Detective Watkins’s allegiance to both you and Sheriff Liska. We’re not trying to sully his name, but we need, for prosecutorial reasons, to distance him from Emerson Caldwell. Liska has been aware of this from the moment the bodies were identified.”

  Just then, no one had a comeback for Max.

  “Our associates have been watching the man in Bartow,” said Max. “Watching him cash checks and meet with Caldwell. He’s been acting normally this week, so he may not know about these deaths. I plan to make him a guest of that county tonight.”

  “Under what statute do I arrest Ms. Ramirez?” said Beth.

  “Charge her with too many hangnails, whatever,” said Max. “This is to save her life, not harass her. She’s our last link to a resolution, at least from the American end. If the people at the top understand this, and they ordered the whack on Greg Pulver, Ocilla’s walking under a very dark cloud.”

  “Okay,” said Beth, “I arrest her. She bonds out in forty-five minutes, you lose your witness, she takes a bullet. What have we accomplished?”

  “You hold her for a warrant check,” said Saunders. “We already have her on video cashing one of those checks and accepting fifties with random serial numbers. We’ve got the bills photocopied, you compare them to money she’s carrying and continue to hold her at our request.”

  Beth said, “What if someone shows up at our cop shop, wants to see her?”

  “She moves to the county at the city’s request. Visiting hours prevail. If shit goes wrong, I can bring in our equivalent of a Seal Team.”

  “That’ll play poorly in Key West,” I said.

  “What?” said Max. “Will someone accuse us of cheating?”

  “How will I find this woman?” said Beth. “Look under every bush in the Lower Keys?”

  “You’ll fly back in the morning, right? We’ll know where she is by noon. Let’s talk around eleven-thirty. Please let me know before then if you decide not to help us.” Saunders pulled a business card from his shirt pocket, handed it to Beth, stood and crossed his arms to signal that our discussion was over.

  Beth remained seated. “This will backfire if you arrest the man in Bartow before I find Ocilla. If he calls his handlers, they might find a way to take him out and Ocilla, too.”

  “Excellent point, detective,” said Saunders. “We will wait for your move.”

  I stood to leave, and Max turned toward me, a solemn expression on his face.

  “Hemingway survived two air accidents in one week in 1954, in Africa,” he said. “The residual pain fueled his alcoholism and led to his suicide.”

  “I guess I’m just lucky,” I said. “I have a friend who is a one-woman pain clinic. It’s drug-free, and she gives me discounts.”

  He patted me on the shoulder, an attempt to be my pal. “Of course,” he said, “the old buzzard might have driven himself nuts figuring out who fucked with the planes and tried to kill him twice in one year.”

  “That’s perceptive, Max,” I said, stepping away. “Where did I get the stupid idea that Ernest took himself out because J. Edgar Hoover’s shadowing tactics drove him crazy?”

  We walked out of Starbucks and stood beneath the mist-shrouded streetlights of downtown Fort Myers. The meeting with Max had aged me more than the airplane crash.

  Sam said, “Company man, vaguely unclear.”

  “You stayed two steps ahead,” I said.

  Beth pulled her coat tighter. “You gents talking in code here?”

  “Why did we just hear an FBI agent admit that their only success came through luck? Since when does the FBI cut civilians into their operation, their confidence? They don’t even let local cops know what they’re doing.”

  “Thank you, Alex,” said Beth. “That last idea was raising its hand in my brain, trying to get attention the last five minutes we were in there.”

  “Finally, call me a wussy, but I don’t want to stay in a hotel room that a detective has arranged for me. He may have visited the room to make sure it was suitable. May have left small devices in place to listen to my praise of the accommodations, my TV selections, and my snoring.”

  “Our pilot should be okay to fly,” said Sam, checking his watch. “I asked him to get a room anywhere he wanted, chill out for the afternoon. He said he’d be happy to leave anytime before ten o’clock.”

  Beth looked at me, my eyes and face.

  I felt a distinct need to head south. I looked up again at the streetlights, noticed that even trees sway differently with a cold wind. I nodded.

  “Excellent,” she said. “We’ll stop at a Wendy’s for six fish sandwiches then sleep in Key West and wake up in our own beds.”

  “Food,” said Sam. “The detective reads minds.”

  The rental car courtesy van dropped us at the flight service center. I could tell how cold it was by the sound of its tires on the pavement. Our pilot was ready to fly. Sam and Beth had chartered a Cessna 340A, a plane similar to but smaller than the King Air now quarantined in a han
gar in Cape Coral.

  As we walked to the aircraft, a phone in Beth’s handbag rang a familiar tone. She extracted the Ziploc bag that held my wallet, house keys and cell. My phone had survived the crash and the water. Beth handed it to me. Its touch screen told me the call was from Glenn Steffey.

  “Detective,” I said.

  “Just wondering what time you were going to check in to the hotel,” he said. “I still haven’t left town and I had two or three more questions for you.”

  “Sam and Beth wanted to leave so they wouldn’t have to pay for their pilot to stay in a hotel, and I wanted to be closer to my doctor and my own bed. Sorry if I’m wasting Manatee County’s money, but I’m flying back with them.”

  “Gotta say, I wasn’t counting on that,” said Steffey.

  “I’m sure we can talk tomorrow, or you can email me the questions, right?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “But one other thing,” I said. “I can pass along something I’ve just learned, and you may find it helpful.”

  “Anything, please.”

  “Amanda was Beeson’s second wife,” I said. “His first wife was murdered many years ago, somewhere in your part of the state, and it’s still an open case.”

  The silence on his end weighed a ton. I was sure that he knew the case and knew that his father had been removed from the investigation. Sounding exasperated, he said, “You came up here this week just to take pictures of Beeson’s building?”

  “That was the job description, detective.”

  “One guy is barfing, Rutledge, the other man is screaming with grief, and you’re taking pictures like a walk in the garden? Do you ever worry about yourself?”

  “Good night, detective.”

  I switched off my phone and looked at the January sky, blacker and colder than the tarmac. Orion’s Belt looked back down from ten o’clock in the east-southeast. It was the constellation that had guided my night sails in the Bahamas years ago, in the days when I really got to know myself, when the elements tested my judgment and strength, when I pledged never to stop being curious and to quit worrying about me and to get on with my life, full speed ahead.

  22.

  I woke on the twin-engine Cessna with no idea how long I had napped. I could see a band of lights in the distance and guessed I was looking at Big Pine and a few islands to its west. The sooner we reached the island the better. I needed sand in my shorts and beer in my shoes, and a year’s worth of second thoughts about returning to the mainland.

  After our departure from Page Field in Fort Myers, fatigued, not wanting to fight the engines’ hum, we had escaped into silence. Sam sat next to the pilot, a fishing client he had known for years. Beth leaned back in her seat, staring out, studying the darkness, the back of her head illuminated by the instrument panel’s pastel glow.

  Over the years I had been fortunate to find photo jobs that paid well and lucky to work for low-stress repeat clients. In the past few months, however, I had felt jealous of Beth Watkins’s regular paycheck. Every fifteen days her checking account caught a deposit, minus a lump for insurance and the state retirement flim-flam. It wasn’t so much the amount of her salary as its regularity.

  Then I would think again. If all she had to do was show up at work, put in her hours and leave, that would be glorious. But the job came home with her each day without fail—much as mine had haunted me for the past six days. Early in our love affair I had chosen not to pester Beth about moments when she would drift off in thought, distracted by cases in progress, the workload and the legal finesse it took to secure an arrest, then a conviction. A relative newcomer to Key West, she was not bogged down by local politics, not impressed by big money and the established families of the island. She wanted only to be effective, to do her job and make a difference.

  Not that she wasn’t effective at home, in every room. Early in our relationship, realizing that we could practically read each other’s mind, we promised ourselves that we wouldn’t let that limit our talking, our interaction. She was my fourth lover in twelve years, though I hadn’t broken up with any of them. The women had moved off the island or become restless and strange. While I knew that nothing was certain and everything changed in big or small ways, I wanted this one to work. She pleased me more than any of the others, I trusted her completely—and I didn’t want to be on the hunt for the next twenty years, if I lasted that long.

  She had great taste in motorcycles. And dimples on her bottom.

  Beth turned her head, saw my eyes open, and smiled.

  “You didn’t get a chance to tell me,” I said. “What did Wiley Fecko have for you?”

  “A mid-level criminal named Bobby Fuck No.”

  It took me about ten seconds, but she waited me out.

  “Robert Fonteneau?”

  “The Aristocrats did some very good work on the Internet,” she said. “They found his former address in a gated community on the outskirts of Toronto, Ontario. Ten years ago, when he lived there and got his nickname, it was called Mimico Detention Centre. It was recently expanded to include a maximum security building constructed of stackable prefab concrete cells. It’s now the Toronto South Detention Centre.”

  “In for what, this Bobby Fuck No?” I said.

  “Multiple motor vehicle theft, and he made the most of it. His incarceration was his free ticket to the equivalent of a master’s degree. He now owns a small chain of Canadian auto parts stores, and they specialize in repairing alternators, generators and small engines. His employees are all ex-cons and parolees.”

  “Skills they learned while basking in the Mimico glow,” I said.

  “Fonteneau now works with a private prison outfit to teach skills inside and he employs only parolees outside. He coordinates with a group of halfway houses and rehab operations. Canadian magazines and newspapers write praise-filled articles about him. He ships a lot of alternators into the States.”

  “Where did Wiley go, inside an Ontario Provincial Toshiba?”

  “No,” said Beth, “he found the jail records and he gave me some background on Caldwell’s business activities—info he discussed with you three days ago. I found more this afternoon while the doctors assessed your condition. I think Fecko already told you that twenty-five years ago Caldwell and two partners formed a company in Ottawa called Currie Forms. The firm owned plastic manufacturing plants in Canada and in the States. Twelve years ago Caldwell bought out his partners and quickly sold Currie to a huge company called Branchdale. He made a fortune. The partners didn’t see the sell-out coming, and both sued Caldwell. One case was settled out of court. The other partner committed suicide, and that case eventually was dropped.”

  “Convenient,” I said.

  “Yes. That partner’s name was Richard Fonteneau.”

  “Richard? His brother?”

  “No, he was Fuck No’s father.”

  “We should invent a game called Information Whiplash.”

  “Follow it up with a game called Cold Revenge.”

  “If that’s his game, he’s got huge balls to show up in town to close out Caldwell’s affairs,” I said. “Especially since Mrs. Caldwell is here in town, talking with the same lawyer who took Fonteneau to breakfast on Thursday.”

  “Name?”

  “E. Carlton Gamble, the man we spoke about this afternoon.”

  “I can’t wait to speak with him,” said Beth. “I also can’t wait to speak with Mr. Fuck No.”

  “On another subject,” I said, “my brother called this morning with an opinion.”

  “Two bits says he believes Darrin Marsh killed Teresa Barga.”

  “He strongly suggested it,” I said. “He thinks that she was more than capable of giving him reasons to be jealous.”

  “An argument for which you had no argument?”

  “Correct. You said there were two 911 calls, right?”

  “Yes,” said Beth. “The first was a hang-up and the second was from Marsh.”

  “From Caldwell’s
landline?”

  Beth nodded. “Both calls came from Caldwell’s phone.”

  “And he reported only two bodies?”

  “I’d have to double-check, but I think that’s right. He hadn’t seen Pulver yet.”

  “But he saw Greg’s body at some point. He told me… Today’s Saturday, right? He told me that yesterday afternoon.”

  “That stands to reason,” she said. “He may have looked around after he placed the call.”

  “I don’t buy it,” I said. “Walk through it in your mind. He’s just come across the body of his neighbor slumped on the floor, then found Teresa dead in the kitchen. He knew for sure that she’d been killed within the past however many minutes. Let’s say thirty minutes. And it’s his day off. He probably wasn’t walking around the condo’s interior hallway with a weapon on him. Any cop worth a shit would have gone back to his own condo, called 911 from there, returned to Caldwell’s with a weapon, and made sure the murderer wasn’t still around. At that point he might have found Pulver. Then he would have backed out of the place and waited for the responders. Above all, he would have armed himself as quickly as possible.”

  “I have no problem with your reasoning,” said Beth, “except you’re assuming that Marsh, as a cop, is worth a shit.”

  “I have no knowledge of that,” I said, “but I think he’s a bad murderer.”

  “Because he killed Teresa in a condo with two other bodies?”

  “We made a point of not discussing Marsh twenty-four hours ago,” I said, “so let me preface my string of logic with something he told me yesterday. At some point in the past few months, Marsh sneaked into Teresa’s belongings and read her diaries. He found proof that she’d had a fling with some tourist, but he didn’t confront her about it because he was afraid she’d go ballistic about his snooping. He said he was afraid of losing her, and I believed him. Now I think it was all a half-truth. I think he wanted to go ballistic but was too ashamed to admit that he was a sneak. I think he was looking for another way to prove her infidelity, and he happened to discover that Teresa and Greg were a secret item. I think he killed Greg Pulver first. I think Teresa discovered Greg’s body and accused Marsh, threatened to expose his crime, so he had to kill her too. I have no idea how Emerson Caldwell fits into any of it.”