by Ang Pompano
“You have to go in.” I used my deepest and sternest cop voice. It didn’t intimidate him.
“Bullshit, I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to.”
Okay. Stay in his reality, I reminded myself.
“No, you don’t. Tell me what you do want to do.”
“Stay with you.”
“Don’t you want to tell the chief what happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
“You don’t remember the guy who got hurt? There were cops all around.”
He thought a while. “Right. I think he got shot. You killed him.”
If I’m ever on trial for something, I’ll have to remind myself not to call on my father for a character witness.
“I did not kill him. He was killed when someone tried to rob him.”
I didn’t believe that, but I was beginning to realize that when dealing with Big Al, it was best to keep things simple. I was thankful that he didn’t remember that at one point he had thought Hicks was his son-in-law. That would have opened up a whole new bunch of problems.
It dawned on me that Big Al may have seen the shooter. Would he remember?
“Did you see anything unusual when you were across the street?”
He twisted his face as if he were trying to squeeze something out of his brain.
“I didn’t see anything.”
“So, you should tell that to the chief when you go inside.”
“Nope. I’d rather go with you.”
“Fine, you can write up the report.”
There’s nothing more tedious that writing an incident report and even in his confused state Big Al knew that.
“I think I’ll go in and talk to the chief. She’s a lady, you know.”
26
WITH THAT PROBLEM AVERTED, I went back to Ava Island. When I pulled into the crushed shell parking lot, I went straight next door rather than go into the office.
“Yes?” Max said when she opened the door.
“I’m back.”
“I’m so happy for you.”
Why am I always attracted to women who have attitude?
“If I did need an entourage, I would have wanted you in it.”
Max huffed.
“Give me a break here, I’m trying for contrite,” I said.
Max rolled her eyes and opened the door wider for me to come in. “Did you find the elusive Mr. Hicks?”
“I found him. He claimed he was in Key West when Keller was murdered.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I guess I have to. Someone killed him right after we talked. That kind of lends credence to his story.”
“Murdered? How?”
“He told me I should be looking for someone with a bullet hole tat on his leg. Then he saw something outside and he clammed up. That’s when I realized that Big Al was missing, so I went to look for him. When I got back I found someone had shot Hicks.”
“You could have been killed! And your father, too. Is he all right?”
“Fine. He wasn’t even there. I found him across the street after it was all over.”
I noticed wrinkles of worry on Max’s forehead. “What?”
“I think you’re taking this a little too casually. And I don’t only mean the fact that you weren’t keeping an eye on your father. One murder was bad enough, but now this.”
“I hope you’re not saying that I should drop the case.”
“No, just the opposite. I’m saying you’d better be a little more creative in finding the killer. Starting with the guy with the tattoo.”
She’s such a great detective. What would she have done?
“Hicks seemed to think the man with the tattoo was bad news and implied that he was the one who killed Keller. Maybe the tattoo guy killed Hicks to shut him up,” I said.
“Or Hicks was lying and he did kill Keller, and someone, maybe the guy with the tat, killed him in retribution,” Max said.
I was surprised to be sharing my thoughts with Max. It was kind of nice.
“I forgot to tell you, Percy Lynch was over here looking for you,” she said.
“If he has another offer, I’m not interested.”
“I think he always has an offer. But this seemed to be important.”
I was thinking about the little brainstorming session I just had with Max as I walked along the sea wall to the Lynch’s property.
“Lynch! It’s Al DeSantis.”
The former ringmaster and his Jane were sitting at a table drinking cocktails. Thank goodness it was too late for sunbathing that day. Monty the Python was nowhere to be seen, which didn’t make me happy. I want to know where the danger is.
“Yes. Of course, Mr. Santorini, come on up.”
“DeSantis.” I corrected him.
“Quite. Jane has something she wishes to tell you.”
“So, this isn’t about buying my property?”
“He’s always interested in buying your property, but I’m the one who wanted to see you this time.” She got up and took my arm. “Here you sit next to me. Vodka martini?”
“Sure. Leave out everything except the vodka.”
She poured me half of a glass of vodka, which I downed. It had been a tough day.
“What’s this about?”
“You wanted to know if I saw anything the morning that you found that poor man in the water. Well, I remember now. I was chanting the Sun Salutation out here near the dock.” She put her hands together in front of her. “Om Bhaanve Namaha. Om Mitraaya Namaha. Om Bhaa...”
Not again. I was exhausted and I didn’t need that nonsense. I took the vodka bottle and refilled my glass.
“Mrs. Lynch, I thought there was something you wanted to tell me.”
She shook her head as if to clear it. “Well, there was one bit of an oddity.”
I looked around for the snake.
“Mrs. Lynch...What did you see?”
“As I was chanting, I saw the detective returning in his boat.”
“You couldn’t have seen me.” I hadn’t been out in the boat.
“No, it was not you. It was the elder Mr. DeSantis. I could tell by that silly hat he always wears. And the man who died was on the boat, too. He had dreadlocks just like in his picture in the paper.”
*****
WTF? How could my father have been using his boat the morning Andy Keller was killed? Yes, he knew the code to get out of The Palms but even still, how would he get to Ava Island? The Palms was on the mainland over five miles away.
The disagreeable Mr. Lynch walked me to the sea wall and watched as I jumped down and headed along the shore back to my place.
It ran through my mind that he and his wife could have been setting up Big Al to take the blame for Andy Keller’s murder as part of some scheme to get the property that the Blue Palmetto Detective Agency sat on.
It still bothered me that Lynch didn’t run over to help me get Keller’s body out of the water that day. I wondered if he had been watching out of idle curiosity, or if maybe his presence on the dock was a case of the criminal returning to the scene of the crime. In my heart, I knew that was quite a leap unless I could find something that linked Lynch and Keller. Between my questions about Lynch’s involvement and his wife’s accusations about my father, my head was reeling. At that point, what I needed was to go to sleep. All of the events of the crazy day had taken its toll. Maybe I would see things clearly in the morning.
27
BUT SLEEP WASN’T GOING TO HAPPEN just yet because when I got home I found Johnson on my patio. He was dressed in civilian clothes, khaki cargo shorts, and a shirt the same green as his work uniform. I guess he was one of those guys who found it hard to separate his home life from his work life.
“What’s up?” I asked him. I was
n’t up to shooting the shit right then, so I tried not to sound too friendly.
“It’s a courtesy call. I had to drop my buddy off at his place down past Turtle Beach. We were at a pre-season charity game at Grayson.”
He plopped in a zero-gravity chair without being invited.
I knew Grayson Stadium in Savannah had been the home of the Sand Gnats, an affiliate of the New York Mets. When the team recently moved to South Carolina, a new amateur team called the Savannah Bananas made the ballpark its home. I didn’t get into it. I had a feeling he wasn’t there to talk baseball.
“Beer?”
“Why not?” He glanced down at the way he was dressed as if to say he was off duty.
I went inside and got us a couple of Coronas with lime wedges stuffed in the necks. When I put the bottles on the table, Johnson looked at them and scoffed.
“Problem?”
“No, just that I’m more of a Bud man.” That didn’t stop him from grabbing one and taking a long swig. When he did, I whipped out my cell phone and looked at the time. I was going to allow him ten minutes before I sent him packing.
“I was surprised you didn’t let me know that you got an ID on the guy in the water,” I said.
“Hell, you’re right, I should have done that—professional courtesy at least. Gotta say, I’ve been pretty busy.”
“It’s okay. I probably found out his name was Andy Keller about the same time you did.”
Johnson’s eyebrows lifted the tiniest bit. I wondered if he thought I should have extended him the professional courtesy that he had denied me. Or maybe it was that he was surprised that I got the information on my own. “What else did you find out?” he asked.
“That he was a blogger, but according to the paper, you know that,” I said.
“Yeah, even though I’m not exactly sure what a blogger does.” He genuinely looked perplexed.
I don’t think he’d understood that a blogger is usually a person who puts hours of time and energy into writing an online column that nobody reads. But apparently someone was reading Andy Keller’s blog, and they didn’t like what they were seeing. I took a look at the time on the phone. Time for you to go, my friend.
“Hey. Thanks for stopping by. I have to get to sleep. It’s been a long day. Call me the next time you take in a game,” I said.
Johnson seemed to have a hard time extricating himself from the low chair without falling on his face. He looked down toward the Grady. “Right. You go do what you have to. But, mind if I look around a little down there where you found that ring, as I knock off this beer? I can let myself out when I’m finished.”
It was dark. I don’t know what he expected to find, even with a flashlight. “I thought you didn’t think the ring was significant.”
“You never can tell. I’d like to see if there is anything else that was overlooked. Even if it’s only for training purposes.”
What a crock of bull.
“Go ahead. Knock yourself out,” I said.
Johnson walked down to the dock with me on his heels.
“What are you looking for?”
“I told you. I’m making sure we didn’t miss anything.” He jumped from the dock onto the boat.
“Your team did a pretty thorough job.”
“Nobody’s perfect. They can always improve.”
I wished I knew what Johnson was thinking. He professed that Keller’s death was an accident, yet he was putting an awful lot of effort into the case. If he didn’t think the brass ring I found had some significance. he wouldn’t want to search the yard a second time.
“There’s something you aren’t telling me. What’s the official cause of death?”
“I thought you had to go to sleep,” he said.
“I do, but it can wait. How did they say Keller died?”
He hesitated. “I suppose you’re going to find out sooner or later. There was no water in his lungs.”
That only meant one thing. He was dead before he went into the drink.
“Then what was the cause of death?”
“It was head trauma. Forensics show he was hit on the back of the head.”
I guess I was too busy trying to revive the guy to notice any bruise on the back of his head. I was glad that Johnson and I were on the same page. I suspected all along that it was murder. At least now Johnson was sharing this information with me.
“Now all we have to do is find out who killed Keller,” I said.
“You mean, all I have to do. But you’re right. We’re looking at this as a murder investigation now. Was it you who said that in the first place?” He chuckled.
I was too tired to play along.
“Anyway, we know Roscoe Hicks didn’t do it,” I said.
“You know that for a fact?”
Good, I knew something he didn’t know.
“Someone killed him today up in Hilton Head.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You’re right. I should have done that. Guess I messed up on the professional courtesy front, too. As you say, busy.”
“Well?”
“I found him. We talked. He claimed he was out of town when Keller was killed. I left. Someone shot him.” I felt it important to tell him that I wasn’t a witness and the cops had actually asked me to leave so they could conduct their investigation. “Find who killed Hicks and you’ll find who killed Keller.”
Johnson began to fidget. “Actually, there is a strong suspect.”
Now I was worried. Did he suspect me?
“Care to tell me who it is?”
Johnson took a deep breath. “Look, this isn’t easy, but things are pointing to Big Al.”
Big Al, my Alzheimer’s-ridden father?
“You’re still breaking balls. Right?”
I waited for Johnson to laugh. He wasn’t smiling. The laugh never came.
“We were told that he knows how to get out of the facility where he’s staying. Did you know that?”
Of course, I knew that. But I certainly wasn’t going to tell him. “Where did you hear that?”
“The care coordinator there asked for assistance in finding him this afternoon.”
“That’s impossible. He was with me.”
“In Hilton Head? Until what time?”
“Six o’clock.”
“We got the call at 6:15. They found him walking down the road and returned him by 6:30. I found out when I called in.”
Maryann should have called me to let me know that he was missing. I looked at my phone. Sure enough, I had a missed call from The Palms. I swear I never heard it ring.
“So, you are telling me that because my father apparently knows how to get out of his care facility, that makes him a suspect in a murder investigation?”
Johnson didn’t look like he was enjoying this conversation any more than I was.
“And there is the matter of your neighbors next door. They have seen him going out on the boat. That stupid hat of his is pretty memorable. And they claim Keller was on the boat the day he was killed.”
So that asshole Lynch had already reported his trumped-up story to the police before I went over there.
“Look, I don’t have any reason to defend my father. But that’s pretty circumstantial evidence. Even if he does get out of the place, as you say, there’s no real evidence that he has ever been back here. And anyone could have been under that hat.”
“I thought the same thing.”
“But you don’t now,” I said.
“I’m not sure what I think now that you tell me he was with you in Hilton Head where you say one of my prime suspects has been murdered.”
I knew one thing he wasn’t going to hear from me, that Big Al had disappeared a little before Hicks was killed.
“And I might add that I h
ad my father with me only because Maryann Fena wanted me to take him out.”
“I’m just checking out the facts,” Johnson said.
“Wait a minute, let me see something.” I pulled up the charity game schedule on my phone. “The game was at 1:05. It must have been over at what, 4:00? You’re not just coming from the stadium. And you knew from The Palms that Hicks was killed. Big Al must have gone back and told them all about Hicks, and when they didn’t believe him, he walked out.”
“So, you got me, but it is a courtesy call. I wanted you to know what was in the wind.”
“It seems to me that what’s up is that the nurse who hates Big Al and the neighbor who wants his land seem to be setting him up.”
Johnson cast his eyes downward and frowned. “There’s also the brass ring you gave me. It’s from the tip assembly on his cane. It hides the gap between the wood and the brass ferrule.”
“But this is his yard. He could have lost that before he went into the home.”
Johnson shook his head no. “Mrs. Fena tells me that your father got that cane from Mrs. Greenleaf after he entered the home.”
“Are you thinking that he hit Keller with the cane?”
“And the ring broke off... It’s a possibility,” Johnson said.
“This doesn’t make any sense. Why would my father want to kill Keller or Hicks?”
“You know Big Al is my friend. I wish I didn’t have to do this. I don’t know what the motive is yet. Maybe there wasn’t a motive. Maybe it has something to do with his disease. He could have acted out of confusion or misplaced anger. I don’t know.”
“Alzheimer’s doesn’t work like that.”
“Then we’ve got to work together on this, or Big Al is going to spend his last days in prison or in an institution. I’m here to promise you that I’ll do all I can.”
Johnson had some funny ways about him, but I believed him.
28
JOHNSON TOLD ME THAT THEy didn’t have a motive, or means of how Big Al could get from The Palms to Ava Island. But once that was figured out, there wasn’t much he could do to help him.
No matter how tired I was, there was no way I was going to be able to sleep now. After Johnson left I went inside and poked around my father’s office. It was time that I got a better understanding of him.