Old Bones Never Die

by Lesley A. Diehl

  “Now you’re reading my mind too?” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was just about to call you.”

  “Yes, well I thought I’d save you the trouble. Congratulations.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Well, I think everyone in Sabal Bay knows by now.”

  “How can they?”

  “Max went fishing this morning.”

  “He was supposed to be napping.”

  “And your grandmother has a lot of friends in the community.”

  “She was supposed to be napping also.”

  Why did I think Grandy would do as I’d suggested and get some sleep before she took over the store for me? Because she was my grandmother and we shared DNA, especially the stubborn strands of it, and she and I did as we pleased. We could have been identical twins except for our ages and outward appearances.

  “Big party this coming weekend to celebrate, I guess,” said Nappi.

  “What party?”

  “Oh, I guess I goofed. I didn’t know it was to be a surprise. I was calling to see if you had decided on a place to hold it. Or even a place to hold the wedding. When is the wedding?”

  “I just said yes last night around ten or so. Let a gal catch her breath, will you?”

  “Sure, no problem. I’m just offering my yacht for the party or the wedding or the honeymoon, whatever you’d like. Let me know. Chow.”

  Just as Madeleine predicted. Once I knew my heart, things between Sammy and me were easy. Working out the details might be more difficult.

  We could always elope.

  Chapter 17

  I didn’t sell much in the morning, but I sure had a lot of visitors who all had heard about my impending nuptials and wanted to congratulate me. Jay Cassidy and his foreman Antoine stopped by. As was the cowboy way, they each removed their hats when they entered. Cowboys can be hard men, but they are gentlemen in the old-fashioned sense. I wasn’t sure if our tiny store catering mostly to women could hold all the testosterone the two of them generated. They were cowboys—lean, handsome, ride-the-range cowboys—whose spurs jingled as they entered. I was honored they stopped by. It couldn’t have been easy for them to enter this den of femininity.

  “I’m saying congratulations, Eve, but I’m not really happy about this.” Jay wrapped his arms around me and squeezed. Oh durn, was he going to say something about his barely hidden prejudice against Miccosukees, an attitude I tolerated but didn’t condone?

  “He means,” said Antoine, speaking up quickly before I could jump to any conclusions, “that there’ll be one less eligible gal in this town. Actually, the most eligible gal.” Antoine blushed. He was another cowboy who liked to flirt with me.

  “When’s the wedding?” Jay let go, leaving my ribs intact. “I’m just asking because I intend to pursue you until that, uh, man puts a ring on your finger saying hands off.”

  I ignored his comment and changed the subject. “Nice of you boys to stop by. Can I offer you a discount on something while you’re here? Maybe a nice pair of earrings for that special woman in your life?”

  Jay clapped his hat back on his head, and without saying goodbye, left, Antoine at his heels. As Antoine strode past me, he winked. “Don’t mind him. He likes to growl when he doesn’t get what he wants, and he wants you.”

  Jay made a sound very much like growl. I laughed, and they were gone.

  Grandy arrived exactly at noon, perky as if she had slept eight hours instead of the two or three she and Max had gotten. I could tell she’d washed her hair, because it shone brilliant white in the sunlight, and her usual curls were frizzy in the Florida humidity.

  “Bad hair day,” she said, fluffing her locks. “I can’t tame this stuff.”

  “Cut it shorter, gel the hell out of it, and maybe you’ll look like me. Easy.” As if a new hairdo would make her grow inches taller, years younger, and pounds lighter. I liked my Grandy the way she was, frizz and all.

  “Well, you’re off to restock the store, so get busy.” She almost pushed me out the door.

  “But I haven’t had lunch yet. You were supposed to bring me something.”

  She handed me a paper bag with a logo on it from one of the fast food places in town. “Here you go. You can eat on the road.”

  Grandy seemed eager to get me out of the store. Oh well. I shrugged and headed to the truck. It had no air conditioning, so I rolled down the windows to keep cool.

  I turned left out of the parking lot to get on the Beeline to West Palm. As I passed by a local campground, I caught the smell of brush being burned to clear an area for expansion of their facilities. The smell reminded me of the whiff I’d gotten of Frida’s clothing after she returned from investigating Connie Russo’s burned cabin. It was not unlike the odor in Eddie’s tiny cabin with its wood-burning stove, and it jarred that memory just out of reach in my mind—the smell my intruder carried on him when he invaded my house and attacked me. It was the smell Connie Russo had picked up from his cabin. Aha. Now I knew. Connie Russo was my attacker, the man who had warned me to stay out of the hit-and-run, the man someone had hired to warn me off. Russo had taken a job with a construction company, according to his cousin Ed of the many last names. Could that company be Gator Way? It made sense to me.

  I did a U-turn and headed back toward the Kissimmee River and the construction site. I wanted to nose around Danny Cypress’ business digs. The construction company had to be the one Connie—our toasted and dead creep and my attacker—had been working for. Did he steal the watch for them? I couldn’t figure out why they would have him do that, but I was certain the company was involved in stealing those bones. Did Connie kill Walter on their orders? Again, I couldn’t make sense of why. Danny Cypress had been a mob lawyer at one time. There was every chance he ran into Connie and knew he was the kind of guy you could send after a loose end. And remove it. Was Walter a loose end? I had no idea why the company would consider Walter such a threat, but I’d work that out somehow.

  The company had their headquarters somewhere beyond the river bridge on a road to the north. It wasn’t hard to find. The buildings were a mere several hundred yards beyond the turn, and they could be seen from the highway. The sign at the entrance read: “Coastal Development Company, Gator Way Site.” It sounded as if the development company had other locations around Florida. I pulled through the gate and into the parking area. Part of it was dedicated to the company cars with spaces allocated by number for their black SUVS and trucks all bearing the company logo. The assigned slots wrapped around the front of the building and partway down the right side. I selected a space labeled “visitors” and noticed a police car in the next slot. Frida stood at the entrance to the building, watching me pull in.

  “Hey!” I called out.

  “Hey, yourself. What are you doing here?”

  “I guess I’m doing what you’re doing. Snooping. Except I’m unofficial, so I’m paying a social visit to Danny Cypress.” I laughed to let her know I wasn’t really serious about the social part of my call.

  She wrinkled her nose in distaste.

  “Not a fan of his, I gather?”

  “I was here after the bones were stolen to talk with his boss and other executives as well as the foreman from the construction site. They claim to know nothing about the theft. Now I’m here to see if they might know something about Walter Egret’s death. Eddie the pawnbroker said his cousin was working for some construction firm. Like you, I’m betting it was this one.”

  “Speaking of Connie Russo, I think he was the one who attacked me.” I told her about connecting the smell when I came into my house with the odor on her clothes from when she investigated the fire at Russo’s cabin. “It’s a reach, I know, but the guy’s voice was familiar, too. I’m certain it was Russo’s. He also had the watch Walter found at the site. It had to come from Walter’s body.”

  Frida agreed. “The warning he delivered to you sounds like it came from this company, but I’ve got
nothing else to connect the company with that hit-and-run, the bone theft, or the homicide in that burned-out cabin. I’d love to get a search warrant and tear this place apart. But for now, I’ll play nice and ask to talk again to the foreman and Danny Cypress because they were in that area when Walter was killed. Maybe they saw something.”

  “Or maybe they did something.”

  “Maybe they need someone to jog their memory.”

  “Right. And that someone would be you.”

  Frida nodded. “You might nose around while I talk with Danny and pals.”

  I looked puzzled.

  “Danny has a secretary who dresses well. She might like to talk bargain designer clothes on her salary.”

  I gave Frida a jaunty salute, and we entered the building. The offices we wanted were on the second floor. On the stairs, we ran into Danny coming down. He looked surprised at our visit and none too pleased. His lips were set in a tight line.

  “Cops. Again,” he said.

  “Just tying up some loose ends. Got a minute?” Frida said.

  “Come on up. We’ll get this over with, and then Eve and I can chat.” Danny took us past a desk where a young woman with curly dark hair and a cute little kewpie-doll mouth was seated at a desk. She wore a teal blue silk dress. It had to be Ralph Lauren. I saw what Frida had said about her. If new, that dress cost her.

  “Love your dress,” I said.

  “My secretary, Liz Coyle. This is Eve Appel. And you already know the detective,” said Danny.

  She nodded politely at Frida and then her face brightened. “Oh, I know you. You run that consignment shop with that little redheaded woman. I love that place. I wish I had more time to drop in, but I work long ….” She let the remainder of her sentence go and looked embarrassed.

  “Do our hours interfere with your shopping, Liz?” asked Danny.

  What a mean-spirited thing that was to say. As if realizing how unpleasant his comment was, Danny quickly smiled and added, “I’ll leave you two gals to talk haute couture while I answer the detective’s questions—questions I’m sure you’ve already asked and I’ve already answered.” He showed Frida into his office.

  Liz and I chatted about her favorite designers and her addiction to shoes, a compulsion I shared. As we talked, I looked out the window, behind her desk. From the second story, you could see the river and a part of the lake. Today was sunny, and the lake, usually a brown color, shone blue with sparkles like diamonds bouncing off its surface.

  “Beautiful,” I said.

  I noted that the parking spot directly below us was painted with the name “Cypress.”

  “So, does everyone have an assigned place to park?” I asked.

  “Oh, no, only the executives and some of the managers like the construction foremen. The rest of us don’t drive company cars, so we park out there.” She pointed to the back of the building and lowered her voice. “That’s where the pavement ends. It’s all pea rock and dirt back there.”

  “It must be hell on your shoes trudging through dusty gravel.”

  “You have no idea. I carry my shoes with me and wear my sneakers to work. And when it rains? That place is all mud. You need boots, hip waders almost.” She laughed.

  “You can see if Mr. Cypress is here at work even if he’s not in his office.”

  “Yep. If his car is down there, then he’s around someplace.”

  “And the day the bones were found at the construction site?”

  The laugher drained out of her eyes. She lowered her voice. “He left here after he got the call from the boss telling him about those bones.”

  “And when did he come back?” I asked.

  “Oh, I think it was soon after that. When I returned from lunch, his car was back in its parking slot. His car was there the entire afternoon. He was either in his office or with the boss. Those bones scared the hell out of everybody here.”

  “We had nothing to do with that,” said Danny. Neither of us had noticed that he and Frida had emerged from his office because we faced the window and had our heads together, whispering.

  “Get back to work, Liz. And now, Eve, what can I do for you? Or are you here to snoop along with your cop friend?” His tone of voice was pleasant, but his expression registered something else. Fear? No. it was anger. I’d have to be very careful how I handled this man.

  As I followed Danny into his office, Frida managed to pantomime a “call me” message. I nodded.

  “So what did you want to see me about?” asked Danny, and added, “Not that a visit from you isn’t always a delight.”

  “It’s about your mother’s dress. I got several others in that I thought she might also like, so I was wondering … would you mind if I brought them also? She can choose, or she might like them all.”

  Danny roared with laughter. “Ever the little business woman, aren’t you? Sure. Bring them over. You could have called me to ask that. Was there something else?”

  “Not really. I was in the area, and I thought I’d drop by to see the operation. I assumed you wouldn’t mind. I can call next time before I show up if you’d like.”

  Putting him on the defensive had the desired outcome. He hurriedly assured me that he welcomed the visit. “Not much to see here.”

  “I wasn’t expecting it to be as entertaining as Disney, but it certainly is a big operation.”

  “From your tone of voice, I gather you’re not impressed.”

  He was enjoying our war of words. He was good at it, but so was I.

  “Oh, the size is impressive. It’s what you do that concerns me.”

  “You’re assuming we dig up Indian bones and hide them from the authorities so we can proceed with the project. I think we’ve proved we do not do that. It took only minutes after I was called before I arrived at the bones.”

  “And then, they went missing.”

  “Vandalism?” he offered.

  “Or perhaps something even more sinister. Murder, perhaps.”

  We were rehashing the entire discovery of the bones and murder of Walter Egret in a few sharp sentences.

  “What do you think about Walter’s murder?” I asked.

  “It was an accident. A drunk driver.”

  “In the middle of the day? Really?” As much as I was enjoying matching wits with him, this conversation was getting me nowhere.

  He shrugged. “I suppose we’ll never know unless the person who did it comes forward. That probably won’t happen.”

  How could he be so sure?

  “Frida has a lead. She located the owner of a pawn shop where we found the watch Walter mentioned in his telephone call to Sammy right before he was hit. It was their father’s watch, you know.”

  “I didn’t know anything about a watch, and I don’t see how it figures into his death.”

  “We’re working on the connection.”

  Danny turned his back on me as if he was interested in what was happening outside the window behind him. Or perhaps he was trying to hide the expression on his face. Had I said too much about the pawn shop owner? Or just enough? When he turned back to me, he had assumed a blandly pleasant expression, the kind of social face that put me off with its emptiness.

  “Well, then,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow at your ranch.”

  “Dad’s ranch.”

  “Yes. I’m looking forward to meeting your family.”

  He took a few steps forward. “Let me get the door for you.” He reached around me and pulled open the door. As I began to walk through, he turned his body so that I was wedged between him and the door. We were so close that I could smell the garlic and mint on his breath and the smell of his deodorant as he sweated through it. Something I said had gotten to him. This was a man who didn’t sweat easily.

  I waved goodbye to Liz, hopped in my car, and sped out the gate. About a hundred yards beyond the entrance, I saw Frida’s car at the side of the main road. I pulled over behind her, and she walked back to my car.

  “Find out a
nything?”

  “Nothing that you probably don’t already know. Liz said his car was parked in his space from shortly after he returned from the construction site until he left around five.”

  “So he told me, too.”

  “From Liz’s window, you can see only the line of company cars parked on that side of the building, but the ones around the corner aren’t visible.”

  Frida shrugged. “So?”

  “So. There are a lot of company cars parked in those slots, and they all look exactly alike.”

  “Good point, and I know what you’re thinking, but like I said before, none of this will get me a search warrant to take a look at all those cars to see if one of them might have been involved in a hit-and-run.”

  “Maybe I can sneak a peek at Danny’s tomorrow if he drives it to the ranch for Shelley and my meeting with his mother.”

  “I can’t see how that could be the car, but take a look if you can.”

  I nodded, happy to help Frida with her investigation.

  “But, Eve,” Frida said, as I put the truck in gear, “be careful. Danny Cypress is a suspicious man, and he’s dangerous.”

  “Roger that,” I said and took off. As much as I loved this sleuthing work, I was late for my appointment with my consignor in West Palm. My paycheck still came from selling used items, not from tracking down killers.

  I loaded two accent chairs upholstered in a zebra print, a table with a glass top, and four matching bamboo chairs into the back of Sammy’s truck. Someone in Sabal Bay would gobble these up fast.

  “I’ve decided I don’t like the island look, so I’m going with lighter colors, more South Seas tropical. I mean, everyone is doing Tommy Bahama now. It’s become common.” Mrs. Graymore flipped her hand in the air, her nails flashing silver in the sunlight. “They’re all yours. Oh, I almost forgot … I’ve got some clothes too.” She ran back into the house and came out with an armload of dresses, tops, and capris, some with the tags still on them.

  “Great,” I said, taking them from her and laying them on the passenger’s seat on top of the other clothing I’d picked up this afternoon.