by Tom Corcoran
Beth didn’t respond immediately, but after a minute of thought said, “I have to think like a cop and combine theories with facts and proof. You’ve just given me a first-rate scenario.”
“Without a speck of proof, I know,” I said. “How about a little more depth that may lead you to proof?”
“Please.”
“Pulver had been dead two days. With this check-cashing scheme going down, if Ocilla or Emerson learned that Pulver was reporting back to the Sheriff’s Office, they might have killed him or found someone else to do it. But not in Caldwell’s condo. A dead man would draw police attention, exactly what they didn’t want. Even if one of them had killed Pulver in the condo, none of them would want his body found there. They would have figured a way to get him out of there.”
“Okay,” said Beth. “I feel a punch line coming.”
“Darrin Marsh is the only one on your radar who wouldn’t care if a murder victim was found in Emerson Caldwell’s condominium.”
“That’s a strong point, Alex. I wish I could take credit for it. The only problem I have with that takes us back to Fonteneau. If he was coming south from Canada the evening you returned from Sarasota, he couldn’t have killed Pulver two days earlier. But what if he arranged for someone to kill the guy so we could blame the murder on Caldwell? That would be a nasty damn revenge, wouldn’t it?”
“Except that Fonteneau would gain nothing financially. A perfect revenge would be to clean out Caldwell’s life savings, not send him to prison.”
I said, “Maybe he hired Pulver to rip off Caldwell, then… Hell, this is getting far too complicated.”
Beth reached to the armrest behind her, raised a plastic bottle, unscrewed its cap and chugged down half the water. “I came up with an idea while Max related his version of the background story,” she said. “I checked the Caldwell condo security keypad for the day the bodies were found and each of the three days before that. But you told me that Marsh had been an electrician, and I didn’t check how many times the system went down. How did you learn that about him?”
“Carmen told me.”
“Right,” she said. “Are you thinking that he could have disabled the system or just Caldwell’s keypad?”
“The company that monitors the system would know.”
“And they wouldn’t tell anyone,” she said. “It would be bad for business if their customers found out.”
“You just solved a murder case.”
“Maybe so, and thank you,” said Beth. “Who was that weasel who spoke to you in the hospital lobby?”
“His name is Edwin Torres,” I said. “He’s a mechanic who works for Beeson, the man that hired me in Sarasota. He wanted to warn me that Beeson was trying to set me up for something.”
“Is he a flake?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so until today. As of now he’s either correct or crazy.”
Our approach into Key West International was quick and deliberate. The runway lights came on when our pilot clicked his radio mike five times. Simple automation. He explained while we taxied to his tie-down that the tower had been closed for forty minutes.
I asked if that meant that the airport was empty except for us.
“No,” he said, “the security in that terminal would make the Secret Service proud. Someone knows we’re here because I called ahead, but they still would know, even if I hadn’t.”
We descended the ladder to a chill breeze, the wind direction and scent promising cooler weather for the next couple of days. After Sam’s friend locked the Cessna, we hiked three hundred yards to the flight service center where he had parked. Rather than waiting and paying for a taxi, we had accepted his offer of a ride.
“Someone knows we’re walking out here, too?” I said. “Are we being observed though night-vision goggles?”
“I can’t imagine so,” said the pilot. “I doubt if they’re up in the tower, but you never know. When the answers don’t concern me, I don’t ask the questions.”
I said, “How can you…”
Beth elbowed my arm, a shut-up signal.
Sure as hell, we drove past The Tideline on our way into town but my memory spared me another replay of time spent with “the late” Teresa Barga. Perhaps the throng of ideas in my head had crowded out my grief and nostalgia.
Or postponed it all until a murderer was found.
23.
On Sunday morning Beth and I rose early at her house on Passover Lane and walked around the cemetery to Sandy’s Cafe on White Street. It was cool, bright and not too breezy—the sort of day that paid back locals for the past year’s nor’westers, tropical waves and hurricane watches. A day that was sure to piss off every tourist whose vacation was ending, who had to head back north that afternoon. We ordered two cafés con leche, split a ham and cheese breakfast wrap, then sat on red vinyl-padded stools on the sidewalk and watched joggers, bike riders, dog walkers and traffic.
I had left my phone back in her kitchen. Beth brought hers in case Max Saunders called with news on Ocilla Ramirez’s location. Just when we had reached the point of flipping a coin for the last bite of food, Beth’s phone rang. It was Marnie giving us a one-hour warning of a mandatory brunch of colby lasagna and pinot noir.
“Perfect,” said Beth. “We’ll be starved.”
Back in Beth’s kitchen my phone was rattling on the countertop. A text message awaited me—from Wiley.
R U Dead? Just saw on internet you survived crash. Where R U?
I also had missed a phone call from Justin Beeson. I decided that returning to his world would spoil a good mood. For that matter, Wiley knew I wasn’t dead. I didn’t feel like confronting humanity’s problems. I pocketed the cell, and Beth and I walked to our fashionable lunch. The whole town had come outside, and the sun, right there in January, made me wish I had worn SPF 30.
Marnie Dunwoody and Sam Wheeler’s home on the south end of Elizabeth Street smelled like a fine Italian restaurant. I heard Jesse Winchester on the stereo, noticed that Marnie was drinking a tall iced coffee. She handed us half-full wine glasses and sent Sam and Beth to the back porch to roast veggies on the grill. She waved me into the kitchen to chat while she toasted English muffins.
“See the paper this morning?”
“No offense, since it’s your employer,” I said, “but I’ve succeeded in avoiding it since I woke up.”
“E. Carlton Gamble issued a press release on behalf of the estate of Emerson R. Caldwell,” said Marnie. “We agreed to print it as a letter to the editor. It calls into question the offensive actions of the FDLE, the Sheriff’s Office and the city police in ordering an autopsy for a gentleman with a history of age-related health issues. It was heartbreaking for the family and a financial burden because they had to postpone a funeral and burial in Toronto. While the family conceded that Mr. Caldwell’s fatal heart attack took place at a tragic crime scene, the autopsy was a waste of taxpayer money.”
“Excellent,” I said. “He perfectly ignored the fact that the Canadian consulate asked for the autopsy. Now I will turn off my brain again.”
“You’ve had a bitch of a week,” she said.
“It’s weird to think that twenty-four hours ago I swam out of a plane wreck.”
“Sam said that Sherwin has two broken ankles. That ought to slow him down a notch.”
“You know Rodney, my ace pilot?”
“Not until the night before you flew with him,” said Marnie. “He was on the verge of rockin’ the night away at Captain Tony’s. I was there around six, having a beer with Rob O’Neal while Rob pissed and moaned about not being able to join in my multiple-murder scoop.”
“Why was that?”
“When that call came on Monday morning, the boss had already sent him to Boca Chica to shoot a change-of-command ceremony. That’s why I needed you. Anyway, the night before last, your pilot was right next to us at the bar when he got the call. He repeated your name as he wrote himself a note, then hung up and complained about havin
g to stop his happy hour so he could fly in the morning. The guy drinking with him checked out the note and read your name aloud, said he knew you. He thought you were a fine person, and the island needed more like you.”
“Who is my new best friend?” I said.
“His name was Fontaine.” She knocked her knuckles on her forehead, tapped her memory. “Robert Fontaine.”
“Please say it wasn’t Fonteneau,” I said.
“Right, that’s it. You gave him the names of three great local lawyers because he’s here to close out some real estate matters.”
“Fonteneau and I shared a taxi from the airport on Tuesday night. He said that he’d come to town to settle the estate of a colleague who had died of a heart attack, a Canadian businessman.”
“Oh, shit,” said Marnie. “Emerson Caldwell?”
“I assumed that, but I didn’t ask,” I said. “I didn’t give him names of attorneys, either. I told him to find one who’d been in town a while… Son of a bitch. He knew at least twelve hours ahead of time that I was going to fly on that plane. Did you tell him that you knew me?”
“I did not offer that information.”
“How could he have known that I knew diddley about Caldwell?”
Marnie pointed toward the back porch. “Your connection to the investigating detective?”
“Okay, it’s possible. What would he gain by killing me?”
Sam walked inside with a plate of hot squash, peppers and mushrooms. “Kill who, kill what?” he said. “Will it wait until after we eat? I’ll help you kill this afternoon.”
It got weirder after brunch.
After we pitched in to rinse dishes, we returned to their open front porch where Marnie showed off her new pocket-sized Nikon. She returned my camera along with a bottle of contraband Havana Club Añejo Reserva Rum. “A shot of appreciation,” she said. “You saved my ass, I’ll attack your liver.”
“Wish I’d had this in Starbucks last night.”
“Sam told me about your awkward meeting in Fort Myers,” said Marnie. “Now, I have a couple of questions about the shots you emailed to me early in the week.” She handed me a print, and I recognized the scene. “This one’s no big deal, Alex, but why did you take a picture of my car on Josephine Street?”
“That’s where I parked my Triumph. I always fire a random before I begin work. Make sure my camera’s functioning okay. Your Jeep happened to be there.”
“I just wondered,” she said. “That’s not the real question I had.”
I looked closer at the print. The car in front of Marnie’s Jeep was Ocilla Ramirez’s green Honda Element. I handed the photo to Beth, told her what it was.
“Do you still have this on your computer?” I said. “I’d like to see it blown up to full resolution.”
“Sure, let me boot it up.” She started into the house.
“What’s your real question?” I said.
Marnie stepped back outside. “One thing at a time. It’ll be simpler if I point to another picture on the screen.”
A minute later she opened my Josephine Street “random.” Helped by the glow of the laptop’s screen, we saw the outlines of two people inside the Honda Element. The driver sat low in the seat, a match for Ocilla’s stature.
“Oh, shit,” said Beth. “It’s the victim’s business partner.”
“Murderers who’ve returned to the scene of the crime?”said Sam.
“Or never left,” said Beth.
Looking through the glass of the Jeep’s windshield and the rear window of the Honda, I couldn’t tell if the passenger was a man or a woman, but it was someone at least six inches taller.
“Nice hit, Marnie,” I said. “What’s next?”
“After that discovery, this may not be so remarkable.” She selected and opened another image. “When you were taking photos for my story, why did you aim at cars across the street? You documented fifteen or twenty cars and vans in visitors’ parking at the 1800 Atlantic condo. This filthy white van is particularly artistic. Let me zoom in closer…”
It was a fairly new van mottled with dried road dirt, its Ontario rear tag speckled by the salt employed to melt ice on northern roads. It wasn’t unusual to see Canadian plates in the Keys, all year long, but if its owners could afford to stay at 1800 Atlantic, why hadn’t they driven though a car wash south of the Snow Belt to rinse off the corrosive grime? Even rainstorms during the previous week would have washed away some of the salt, so the van must have been new in town.
“Two for two, Ms. Reporter,” I said. “We’re Canada-sensitive this week.”
Marnie grinned with pride. “You think your new best friend Fonteneau has other friends in town?”
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “It could be Caldwell’s van.”
I gave Sam and Beth my version of Marnie’s story from Captain Tony’s about the pilot and my new friend and my new friend’s elegant nickname.
Beth wagged her cell phone at the laptop. “I need that tag number.”
I read it aloud while she repeated the numbers to a colleague in the police station who promised to call back when they had identified the vehicle’s owner.
“You asked about airport security last night,” said Sam. “Could Fonteneau and his possible friends have gone onto the airfield and messed with the King Air?”
“Someone got to the plane,” I said. “Rodney Sherwin was adamant about never losing two engines for the same reason. He told me not to think about sabotage, but later he said, ‘If you make it and I don’t, kill Beeson for me.’”
“There’s another possibility,” said Beth. “Didn’t you tell me that this Luke Tharpe from Sarasota is an ace mechanic?”
“Old carburetors are a world away from turbojets,” I said, “but there’s aptitude. Maybe he went to night school.”
“We left through that key-coded gate last night,” said Sam, “but it’s a big, fenced-in airport.”
“How about a Google satellite view?” said Marnie. She was already pressing buttons on her keyboard. “Zooming on Key West International and the Salt Ponds…”
“There’s a north-side road parallel to the runway?” I said. “What’s it leading to, a baseball stadium?”
“Government Road?” said Beth.
“I’ve never heard of it,” I said.
“It runs south off Flagler like an extension of 7th Street,”said Marnie. “It runs past the Cuban airliner and leads to the Little Hamaca nature trail. A few homeless people hide in the woods. That stadium-looking area is the old Hawk Missile Bravo Battery. These days it’s a paintball field, so the war goes on.”
“A missile battery, a Cuban plane and a paintball field? I feel like a stranger in my own city.”
“A lot of water hazards around that airport,” said Sam. “But someone could get to those planes between the runway and A1A.”
“That’s where the King Air was parked,” I said. “In the middle of that group.”
Sam nodded. “Must be dark and lonesome out there in the wee hours.”
“Before you shut your laptop, Marnie,” I said, “can you see if it snowed in Toronto early this week?”
“Getting off-topic here, Alex?” said Beth.
“Fonteneau said something on the plane Tuesday about having to shovel his way to his car so he could drive to the airport. I wondered at the time why he hadn’t taken a taxi.”
Marnie clapped her hands. “It hasn’t snowed in Toronto since December 30th.”
Beth read my mind, stood and patted my belly. “We’ve had our good eats. We’re sure that Fonteneau’s full of shit. Let’s walk back and take a ride.”
“Please let me set the pace this time,” I said. “I’m starting to feel like I survived a freak airplane crash yesterday.”
Beth and I hiked up United and wove our way through the back streets toward Windsor and Passover Lanes. A car drove by, music flowing from its open windows. For once it was classic Steely Dan instead of a bass-thumping mindless rant. A
s we crossed Olivia, no more than four hundred feet from Justin Beeson’s elegant cottage, my phone buzzed: it was another call from Beeson.
“Maybe he’s right down the street,” said Beth.
“Or in Paraguay.” I took the call. It was Justin’s daughter, Eileen Beeson.
“I need your address, Mr. Rutledge. I heard that you were in a plane crash and I painted you a get-well card. Can you guess? It’s a tropical tree limb, so don’t guess too many times.”
Beth and I had started past the Key West Cemetery, its discolored crypts and sad, plastic flowers. “Eileen, I’m thinking right now that you’re the one who might need to recover.”
“Oh yeah,” she said, “but I’m okay.”
“How is your father getting along?”
“Not so good. He cries. He started going through my baby clothes yesterday like it was me that died.”
“Have either of you talked with Anya?”
“I have, twice on the phone. She’s in Key West. I don’t know about my dad.”
“How about a detective named Steffey? Has he talked with you?”
“Oh, God, yes. He couldn’t, you know… He asked about the men who delivered my mom’s cars from Daddy’s workshop.”
“The mechanics, Luke and Edwin?”
“Yeah, those guys. My mom told me that Luke was okay but Edwin was nervous around us. She could tell because he always rubbed his thumb against that tattoo on his neck.”
“How did you like those men?” I said. “Were you okay with them?”
“Oh, Luke was just another man. I didn’t think about him, even when my mom said she liked him okay.”
“How about Edwin?” I said.
“He creeped me out. One time I tried to draw his face and the drawing looked really scary. I tore it up right away.”
“Why did you draw his face?”
“It’s an exercise I do. I draw faces from memory. I draw my own face at least once a day, but I usually look in the mirror. Everyone else, I try to remember.”