Danny showed us to our car, slammed the door, and waved goodbye. Would he call Frida and tell her what he had told me about the company vehicle? Or would he simply assume I’d talk to her?
On the road back to the shop I tried to contact her by cellphone, but her number went to voicemail. That might be a good sign. Maybe Danny was talking with her right now. I left a message for her to get back to me.
Shelley was uncharacteristically quiet on the way back to the shop.
“Something bothering you? I asked.
“I know it was necessary for me to come out here and fit Mrs. Cypress, but I got the feeling we were here for more than that.”
“Oh, you’re right. We were. Danny Cypress took the opportunity to lay on me a story about one of the construction company cars. I don’t know if it’s true.” I told Shelley what he had said.
“I think Danny has a crush on you.” Shelley laughed. “Does he know about Sammy?”
“Yes, he does. And his crush gives me the creeps.” I paused for a minute before adding, “I think his father was sizing me up, and not in a friendly way either. Danny gets his creep from Daddy, I’m afraid.”
“Such a sad family. So much loss. Mrs. Cypress was eager to get to the cemetery. Danny told you about her dog, right?”
“Yes. I guess when you’ve lost a son, you hold on to what you can. He said the dog was her favorite. Now the cemetery has become the spot where she grieves, but finds solace of a kind. You’d think Danny would feel some guilt at being a part of a company that destroys the natural habitat the way Gator Way does.”
“There’s nothing he could do about that.”
“I guess not.” I wondered how torn Danny’s loyalties were. On one side his mother’s love for the lake. On the other his duty to protect the company he worked for. The latter duty might encourage him to go outside the law to ensure construction proceeded on schedule. I couldn’t yet put it all together, but I was certain Danny Cypress’ loyalties didn’t extend to the truth.
The morning visit to the Cypress family was still on my mind when I met Sammy and Grandfather that night by the airboat business. We had built a small fire in a fire pit between the house and the business only feet from the canal. The boys were with us, and like all kids, they had fun roasting hot dogs over the fire. I’d brought the makings for s’mores, and soon everyone was eating the gooey marshmallow and chocolate concoctions. Sammy dripped hot marshmallow down his chin, making it look as if he had grown a white goatee.
I reached out and wiped away the sticky mess. “You’re worse than the boys. Didn’t I say to let it cool first?”
Sammy pointed to my blouse, which held a glop of marshmallow and melted chocolate. “I hope that’s not some designer brand.”
“Of course it is, but it only cost me fifty cents at a yard sale. And it’s washable.”
Grandfather had been silent until now. “You have something on your mind, Eve.”
“You tell me.” I leaned over and gave Grandfather a kiss on his cheek.
“I can only read so much. With you, there are always too many things going on in your head. It’s like a swarm of mosquitoes.”
I told them about my visit to the Cypress ranch today.
“Successful Miccosukees.” Grandfather spat into the fire.
“You don’t like them?”
He said nothing for a minute. “I don’t know them anymore. I liked her. She’s a good woman and doesn’t deserve losing her son.”
“And now her dog.”
“I heard about that. That dog was from a litter we gave them years ago. I knew she loved animals and thought it might be a comfort to her to have the puppies to raise. Her husband allowed it, which surprised me, but as severe a man as he is, I think he’d do anything for her.” Grandfather stirred the coals in the fire pit. Flames leaped up, and the boys grabbed their sticks for a second round of s’mores.
“I didn’t meet the other two sons. I gather they were out working in the fields.”
“They’re hard workers, doing what their father wanted for them. As for Danny, I guess his destiny was elsewhere.” Grandfather grimaced.
“You think Danny is a bad seed?” I asked.
“I think they all do their father’s bidding, the daughter included. The boy who disappeared got himself into a lot of trouble stealing, but the old man bailed him out time after time. I don’t think any of the children have a very close relationship with their father, but they respect him. His word is law. The family now keeps to themselves. They have nothing to do with the tribe, never come to our celebrations or funerals. They’ve left their old friends behind. They tell everyone it’s because of the mother’s illness, but there’s more to it.”
I held my hand out to the fire and watched my pearl ring take on the orange glow of the flames. “Maybe pulling the family close and keeping others out is the only way he knows to prevent another child from taking off.” That made some sense from the father’s point of view, but it was unhealthy for the children.
“Love is what keeps family safe and close even if they are far away,” said Sammy. I knew he was thinking of his missing father and of his mother out in Las Vegas. Sammy gently shifted his arms around Jeremy, asleep now but still holding his sticky treat.
Grandfather took a puff on his pipe, then looked at the bowl. “Fire’s out.”
Sammy and I looked across the fire pit, smiled and read each other’s thoughts. Embers can always be relit with a little fuel.
Chapter 19
The next morning Frida slammed through the door of our shop, making the bell attached to the door bang back and forth and jangle so furiously I thought it might crack the glass. She was more excited than I’d seen her for a long time.
“You’re going to love this one, Eve. The front-end damage on that car from the construction company? Well, it matches with what you’d expect with a hit-and-run. Now we’re looking for transfer from Walter’s body to the vehicle and vice versa. We got ’em.”
“Who have we got? We don’t know who was driving that car.” I hated to bring her down, but if Danny’s story was true, it could have been anyone behind the wheel.
“Fingerprints might give us a lead. I’m thinking it has to be someone associated with the company, so I’ll compare prints in the car with those of company employees. I should find the garage man’s, the VP’s, and whoever drove it into Walter that day.” On that happy note, she slammed back out the door.
She was being overly optimistic if she thought those were the only prints she’d find, but she knew that and would handle it when the prints were identified.
“Call Sammy and tell him,” said Grandy.
I did, but didn’t find him in the office at the hunting ranch, so I called the airboat business. Grandfather answered, so I told him the news
“Uhm,” he said.
“Is that some kind of Indian chant for good luck or for good for you, Frida?” I asked.
“No. it means ‘uhm’ like you white folk do when you have no idea what to say. But here’s a thought ….”
I waited expectantly.
“I can understand why the company wanted to steal the bones, although in the end it might not do them any good. It’s shortsighted and odd, but why would they kill Walter? And why would they have that fellow who’s the cousin of the pawn shop owner on the coast steal the watch? And why is he dead?”
Those were the very questions that had been buzzing around in my mind for days. Grandfather was right. It was as if I had a swarm of mosquitoes in there.
Maybe I was wrong to see this crime as motivated by business concerns—a company wanting to prevent a possible shutdown. Maybe it was something else. I needed to swat those mosquitoes away and try another approach.
No one knew how to think criminal like my friend Nappi. It had been days since I’d talked with him about this case. He was someone whose head was mosquito-free.
“Hey, Nappi. I’ve got an hour for lunch.” I tucked my cellphone under my
neck and looked to Grandy for confirmation of my lunch hour. She nodded. “How about we grab a sandwich and meet at the construction site where those bones were found?”
I heard a chuckle from the other end of the line. “You want to talk bones over lunch? Great. I’m on my way from West Palm to your area. I’ll see you there at noon. Don’t worry. I’ll bring lunch.”
“Don’t make it a salad. I’m so hungry I could eat a side of cow.”
“Salads accompany a meal. They are not a meal.” With an additional chuckle, he disconnected.
“Only an hour, Eve,” Grandy said. “Madeleine will be here around one with the twins. We’re supposed to talk wedding plans. Remember?”
I did. It was something I dreaded. I didn’t want a big wedding. What was there to plan? I was certain they’d want to know if we’d set a date and gotten a venue, sent out invites …. I sighed at the thought of how complicated all this might become. Elopement, anybody?
It was a kind of salad, but not like any I’d eaten before. It was filled with vegetables, yes, but it also contained several kinds of cooked seafood, including shrimp, scallops, lobster and calamari, all doing a tango with penne pasta and brought together with Italian dressing. We sat at a picnic table, one of the few remaining in the area. The construction equipment was silent, awaiting some official determination of whether the project could continue.
Nappi handed me a piece of crunchy bread. “Dip it in the dressing at the bottom of your salad.”
I did, and after I’d finished that piece of bread I took another. He’d also brought along an Italian white, Soave, chilled enough to make my teeth hurt, but still flavorful.
“Someday I’d like to visit Italy,” I said between mouthfuls.
“Maybe your honeymoon?”
“Not you too. I’m supposed to talk wedding stuff this afternoon with Grandy and Madeleine. I can hardly wait.”
“So elope.” He poured me another glass of wine.
“Where did you get that idea?”
“Isn’t that what you were thinking?”
Well, yes it was, but I was tired of everyone reading my mind, being able to hear through all that buzzing noise that I couldn’t seem to get beyond.
“The state has been delayed but soon it will send out an archaeological team to dig the area. The lost bones may remain lost, but it won’t matter. Either that place is an old burial ground or it’s not. If it is, then that will mean construction will be delayed or permanently halted. It’s as if the bones don’t matter, yet they belonged to someone alive at one time and that person, whether or not it was Sammy’s father, might hold the key to his whereabouts. It makes me mad on two levels. First, the bones are missing so we can’t find out about Sammy’s father. Second, the beauty of the area is being destroyed. Once that sporting complex is finished, no one but the very wealthy will be able to enjoy this. Why should beauty be accessible only if you have money?” I gestured to the lakeside and the expanse of lake beyond. “But my anger is doing nothing to answer any of these questions. Talk to me about what you see, Nappi.”
He took the linen napkin he’d provided and wiped his mouth.
“This is what I see. Look beyond this physical setting. What does it mean to people? To people you love, Eve.” He waited while I considered what he said.
“This was a place of comfort, once a place where some found peace and serenity, a place where …” I stopped, then completed what I was going to say, “a place where bones should lie undisturbed. That’s what the Egret family would have wanted for Sammy and Walter’s father, wherever his bones were buried.”
“Sadly, no one knows if it was Sammy’s father lying here.”
I shook my head. “Why would the construction company have Walter killed? What did he see that they didn’t want him to see?”
“The only other person to see those bones was the construction foreman.”
“That’s a dead end. Frida has talked with him and asked him over and over what he saw there. He still claims he saw only buried bones.”
“I’d go back to him and try again. You do it, Eve. You talk to him. This is your family now. It’s personal for you.” Nappi reached out and patted my knee.
We bussed our table and loaded the empty wine bottle, plates, utensils, and other items back into Nappi’s picnic basket.
“I wonder if I was any help.” Nappi stepped forward and put his arms around me.
“You’re always a help.” I relaxed in his embrace for a moment, then looked up at him. An idea came to me. “How well do you think Danny Cypress knew Connie Russo when Danny was a lawyer for the mob in Miami? Didn’t you tell me they used Connie for some work there?’
“I’ll get right on it,” Nappi said.
I knew he would.
I couldn’t sniff around the construction company site. Someone might spot me, and I didn’t want Danny to know I was so interested in the place. I knew I was a coward for avoiding the afternoon discussion of wedding plans with Grandy and Madeleine, but I couldn’t think of an excuse for not showing up, so I didn’t get in touch with them. I was always of a mind that you never got permission to do something you knew you shouldn’t do; it was better to just do it and take the consequences later. Meantime I stopped off at some consigners in Sabal Bay to see if they had items for us. If we could provide the service of pick-up for our West Palm customers, I reasoned, why not for the ones in Sabal Bay? I killed the afternoon and collected some lovely dresses and a few pairs of shoes. Grandy and Madeleine couldn’t be mad at me if I was working, could they?
My cell rang several times. I didn’t need to look at the caller ID to know Grandy was trying to track me down. I’d ignored the calls until now, but I couldn’t dodge them forever. I tossed my phone onto the passenger’s seat and let the call go to voicemail.
The construction company site continued to call to me. Late in the afternoon I parked my car down the road from the company and waited until I spotted the construction foreman leaving the building. I assumed that he, like all men who put in a rigorous day’s work out the Florida sun, would stop by some watering hole for an icy cold one. I was right. I followed his truck to the Rusty Nail Bar, a place Madeleine and I had danced on Saturday nights before she was married.
The inside of the place was as I remembered it, dark and smelling of smoke and stale beer. It didn’t have a kitchen, so all they sold for food was chips, pretzels, and some odd-looking flat concoction that passed for pizza the bartender slid into a small oven.
The foreman took a seat at the bar. I pushed my way beyond several men entering the door and sidled up to the empty stool next to my quarry.
I extended my hand to him. “Eve Appel. I thought you might be willing to talk with me about the day you uncovered those bones at the construction site out by the river. I’m Frida’s associate.”
He groaned and looked as if he might want to put his head down on the bar and leave it there until I went away, but I wasn’t going anywhere.
He gave a tired sigh. “I’ve told the detective everything I saw, which wasn’t much. Why can’t you leave me alone?”
“Look, I’ll let you in on a little secret. We found one of the company cars had front end damage. We think it’s the one used to run down your backhoe operator.”
“You think I did that?”
“No, of course not. Well, I don’t think you did that, but the detective might. I need something I can give her so she’ll look at someone else, not you.”
“What?”
“Just walk me through that morning. Tell me everything, not just what you did and saw, but what you were thinking, what the backhoe operator said to you.”
He pulled his cap off his head for a minute and scratched his sweaty head. “Okay. I’ll try. I didn’t know the guy real well, but he was a good worker, real competent. He almost made me change my mind about working with Indians. And he was smart, maybe too smart. When he uncovered those bones, he was the one who pointed out that we had to stop because
of that damn law. He knew the name of it and everything.”
“Most Indians do. It’s important to them that their burial places not be disturbed.”
“Yeah, well, he jumped off the machine and into the hole to take a close look at what was there. I yelled at him to get out, but he hesitated and bent over the bones. I thought maybe he touched something, and I was worried I’d get in trouble if he moved anything in the hole.”
Maybe I was getting somewhere. I was pretty certain he hadn’t told Frida he suspected Walter found something interesting enough in the hole to touch … or remove it.
“Anything else? How was he after that? Any change in him. Fear or excitement?”
“I think he was as eager as I was to get out of the hot sun and stop work. I immediately sent him home, and I think he was glad to leave, to go home to his family.”
“Think, will you? There had to be something.”
“Don’t push me.” He took a swig of his beer and stared across the bar into the smoky mirror.
I wanted to shake him, but knew better than to move. I’d wait him out.
“Okay, well, he kept saying to me the whole week, ‘Lenny,’—that’s my name—‘Lenny, I got the feeling someone is watching me. I figured he was complaining because I was hanging around too close to his work. Maybe he thought I should just go back to my truck and sit and watch him from there.”
“ ‘Someone is watching me’ is what he said?”
He looked down at his beer, picked up the bottle and stared across the bar. “Yup.”
“Did you see anyone?”
“Nah.” He slammed his empty beer bottle on the bar and motioned to the bartender for another.
“Put it on my tab,” I said to the bartender when he delivered the bottle.
The bartender gave me a weary look. “I didn’t know you had a tab. You have to drink something to have a tab, lady.”
Old Bones Never Die Page 19