by Jason Deas
“She?” Benny said, gritting his teeth and taking a deep breath.
“Yeah. It was Hazel Walton, Dr. Walton’s mother.”
“I knew there was something fishy about her.”
“The old lady?” Chief Neighbors asked.
“Yeah. I went over there a couple days ago to ask Dr. Walton about Karl Oglethorpe—I had his daughter’s permission. While I was there his mother made us dinner and on the way out I saw a painting in her room made with numbers. She was real defensive about it. I would just about guarantee that it isn’t there anymore.”
“Dr. Walton made a positive ID on the body earlier this morning and I told him to expect a visit later today. Why don’t you get on that Benny—see what he knows and while you’re there you can see if the painting is still on the wall. If not, figure out how somebody would have gotten in there to get it and who that might be.”
Rachael spied something interesting on Vernon’s desk and her eyes began darting around the room.
“Why are all the phones off the hook?” she asked.
“They’ve been ringing non-stop all morning. Media.”
“Word around town,” Chief Neighbors said to Rachael, “is that you don’t have a job right now.”
“That’s right.”
“How would you like to be in charge of public relations for this case?”
Rachael smirked. “I do remember how terrified you are of the cameras.”
“I am not!”
“Admit it and I’ll do it for free.”
“OK. Maybe I am.”
“I’ll do it,” Rachael said as she began walking around the room hanging up the phones. Immediately they began ringing again and she yanked one off its receiver and put it to her ear.
“We’ll be having a news conference at seven p.m.” Benny heard her say as he waved to her and headed for the door.
Chapter 19
Dr. Walton had a hand-written sign on the door informing patients that the office was temporarily closed to observe a death in the family. A few people had left flowers.
Benny knocked softly and waited. Knowing the residence was upstairs he wondered if Dr. Walton could hear the door and tried the handle. It was unlocked. Benny stepped into the foyer and called, “Dr. Walton?”
“Upstairs,” he heard him reply. “Please lock the door behind you. I’m not expecting any other visitors today.”
Benny locked the door and climbed the wooden stairwell. Each step made a different sound, and the creaks reminded him of a horror film. That, combined with the stillness of the house, created a strange atmosphere that settled uncomfortably in Benny’s chest. He was no stranger to death, but the familiarity didn’t make it any easier.
Dr. Walton was sitting in the dark at the kitchen table with a cup of tea. His back was to Benny as he entered the room. Walking past him toward an empty chair he paused by the doctor’s side and placed his hand on his shoulder.
“I’m so sorry for your loss.” For all the times he had to deal with death and speak to family members, Benny had never thought of anything better to say. He knew there were no magic words and time was the only thing that would be able to ease a little of the pain.
“Thank you,” Dr. Walton replied. “I’m still in quite a bit of shock.”
“Of course you are. Be careful with the power you have of writing prescriptions to cover up the pain.”
“I thought about it, but I know better.”
“Good. You have to feel the pain at some point.”
“I appreciate your honesty, Mr. James. I can tell you have sat at many tables like this one before, with people hurting in situations like my own.”
“I have, but it doesn’t make it any easier, and it doesn’t make your situation any less important to me. I have found through my experience that a lot of people want to skirt reality in times like this and pretend that ugly things don’t happen in this world. I’ve also found that people like yourself need honesty. You need reality. It’s the best way for your mind to get through it.”
“As strange as it sounds, it makes sense. I have had a patient for years I’ve been telling to get his torn rotator cuff operated on. He seems to think it’s going to magically heal itself and he masks the pain with medications. If he would just face the facts that it’s never going to heal itself, bite the bullet and get the surgery, he would be fine and pain free in no time.”
“Exactly.”
“I guess you need to ask me a slew of questions and take a look at Mother’s room.”
“I do.”
“I’m ready,” Dr. Walton said taking a sip of his tea.
“Did your mother have any known enemies?”
“No. The only person I have even seen her angry with in years was you.”
“She was pretty perturbed about the painting. Why do you think she got so bent out of shape about that?”
“Oh, she and Karl Oglethorpe go way back. She knew him when he was, shall I say, a little more lucid than he is these days. Nothing romantic though. Just old friends.”
“And do you still feel that he has absolutely nothing to do with the murders?”
“Positive.”
“Do you have any theories about who would want to harm your mother?”
“No.”
“Did Officer Kearns tell you about the painting connected to your mother’s death?”
“No,” Dr. Walton said, putting his tea cup on the saucer with a slight rattle.
Benny gave him the shortened version.
“Do you still think this has nothing to do with the painting in her room?”
“I seriously doubt it,” Dr. Walton said, picking at his chin. “I think she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Is the painting still hanging above her bed?”
“I haven’t been able to go in there today.”
“Would you be willing to change your mind if it’s gone?”
“Nobody has been in this house. I can attest to that. You saw, you can’t get up those stairs without the whole house knowing about it.”
“Let’s have a look.”
Benny stood. Dr. Walton pushed his hands against the table in getting up. He exhaled deeply as if every movement hurt.
The men stood before the door. Benny turned the knob and pushed the door open. As he suspected, the painting was gone.
Big E hid a key under a flower pot next to the front door. The same contractor who had renovated the house was sending over a trusted contact to repair the damaged door jamb and sheetrock caused by the dust-up with his brother.
He drove his golf cart down to the dock and boathouse below. The oversized boathouse held two high-end boats. He also had a smaller vessel tied to the dock. In all, he possessed twenty boats or more including speed boats, pontoon, fishing, and sailboats. Most of the boats were leased to patrons who kept them at his marina as it was a condition of the agreement. Big E did not want the boats to get too far out of his sight, and he rarely if ever sold a boat as he could not produce legitimate paperwork to accompany a sale. The computer age had made the business of stolen boats tricky.
Boats in Georgia contained two identifying numbers that were hard to fake. The HIN, or hull identification number was a number given to a boat upon manufacturing, which was registered with the United States Coast Guard. Usually, this number was stamped into the actual hull or a metal piece was riveted to the hull. Once a HIN is created, it is a rare occurrence for the number to be changed. The registration number, in the state of Georgia, is maintained by the Department of Natural Resources. With a little inside help, Big E could easily fake these, the most visible of the numbers.
Big E didn’t necessarily need the income from the stolen boats, but once greed seeps into a man’s heart, it sends constant messages to the brain, which cause it to crave more and more money. The whole operation started small as most do. Before his brother’s last stint in prison, Little E needed money to settle a debt and sold his older brother his sailboat.
Big E gave him the money and Little E promised paperwork he never produced. As the boat sat in a slip at the marina, a guy inquired about leasing the boat and the idea of leasing stolen boats was born.
When the operation started, Big E set his limit at five boats. He felt he could easily get away with five. The marina held four hundred boats, so five was nothing. Five turned into ten and ten turned into twenty. His contact at the Department of Natural Resources had just quit and his brother showing up had him feeling as if his life was unraveling. Big E was searching for a way to get rid of all the boats—fast.
The X-Sailence Marina was tucked into a series of coves. One of the coves held the covered slips. An adjacent cove held a marine repair shop and a boathouse that had the capacity of holding a fleet of boats wet or dry as they waited for repairs.
Big E had an enormous outside door to the boathouse rigged to act like your typical residential garage door. As he approached he picked up a remote, pointed it in the direction of the door, and mashed the button. With a groan of metal, the door shuddered and began to rise. The main mechanic, Paul, a friend and participant in the boat scheme was in the middle of an engine overhaul when Big E piloted his boat under the still rising door. Once under, he clicked the button again and the door reversed direction.
“We need to talk, Paul,” he said, with fear in his voice. The boat was still in motion.
“Can it wait?” Paul looked at Big E. “I know, dumb question. I’ll be there in just a second.”
Paul put the tool he had been working with down and made a mental inventory of where he was in the engine tear down process. He pulled out a shop towel, which had been hanging from his pocket, and rubbed his fingers and the palms of each hand.
“What’s on your mind, Ernest?” Paul had never called his boss by his moniker as it felt disrespectful to him.
“We have to get rid of all the stolen boats.” Big E wiped his arm across his forehead.
“How? They all have leases.”
“I don’t know. That’s what we have to figure out, but with Little E’s death, I’m sure there will be some people sniffing around pretty soon.”
“We don’t have a paper trail for them to follow.”
“I know that,” Big E said, trying to catch his breath. “If the cops were here snooping around and they talked to anyone on one of our leases or happened to start running boat numbers, we would be royally screwed. To top it all off, our contact at the Department of Natural Resources quit.”
“What?”
“Yeah. We’re screwed. You need to figure out a way to systematically get those boats back without causing suspicion.”
“We could vandalize some,” Paul offered.
“Cops,” Big E countered.
“Right,” Paul said nodding his head. “You could put them all in legitimate boats.”
“That would cost me a fortune and look a little suspicious if I suddenly bought twenty new boats. Let’s do a recall.”
“A recall?”
“I want all the leased boats in here by tomorrow afternoon. Make something up. We’re doing a routine inspection of some sort.”
“OK. I can do that no problem.”
“Then we can lock this place up until we get the situation figured out.”
“You need a hacker,” Paul suggested.
“A what?”
“A hacker. Somebody who is a computer mastermind who could break into the Federal database and create twenty new HINs. If we had somebody who could do that—we would be free from all our worries.”
“A hacker can do that?” Big E asked.
“If you know the right person.”
Big E began to laugh. It was an evil laugh.
“I know the right person,” he said. “I know the right person.”
Chapter 20
After leaving Dr. Walton, Benny touched base by phone with Rachael and headed toward the Oglethorpe place yet again. Rachael had quickly relayed to him that the phone had been ringing non-stop all morning. She sounded excited and full of energy. Benny wondered when and if the jet lag would kick in and pull her down.
Benny was surprised to find two vans and a truck parked outside the Oglethorpe place. Men were scurrying around and Benny wondered what might be happening.
Upon exiting his car, a man crossed his path with a ladder over his head. Another man followed speaking in a tongue he was not familiar with. Behind him trailed another man that Benny stopped.
“What’s going on here?”
“Hi,” the man said, bobbing his head up and down.
The man tried to walk past Benny, but he put his hand on the man’s shoulder and stopped him. “I asked you to tell me what is going on here,” he tried again.
“Hi,” the man said, again with a worried smile.
“Do you speak English?”
“Hi.”
Benny threw his thumb over his shoulder telling the man to get out of his face. As the man scurried off he said “hi” again. Benny couldn’t help but laugh. He yelled “hi” back.
As he approached the front door, Angel stepped outside.
“Hi, Mr. James.”
“Hi,” Benny said, laughing again.
Angel was confused with his laughter.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing and everything,” Benny answered.
“OK.”
What’s going on here?” Benny asked.
“Mom finally found enough money to get the roof fixed.”
“That’s great. What are you going to do with all those extra buckets that you won’t need inside anymore?”
“Would you like to buy one or ten?” she joked.
“It will be a good problem to have,” Benny assured.
“Maybe we can finally get this place back to a respectable level. It used to be so beautiful. I can barely remember it. I was so young, but I do remember how it used to be. I’ve seen all the pictures and heard so many people talking about it for years. Did you ever see the house in its day?”
“I’m afraid not. I haven’t been in town too long. I guess you could say I’m still a newbie. I’ve heard people talk about it though. It must have been magnificent.”
“It was,” Angel said, as her eyes glazed over. “And it will be like that again if Mom’s paintings keep selling. It’s going to be special again. Do you have a special place?”
“Actually, I do. The way your eyes were just sparkling a minute ago is how I feel about my houseboat. I’ve made it my little slice of heaven and I don’t know what I would do without it.”
“I’m glad you have a place like that,” Angel said, slipping back into her dreamy thoughts.
“I need to speak with your mother. Is she available?”
“She’s in her studio.”
“Is it all right if I go back there?”
“Are you here to tell her your old girlfriend is back in town?”
Benny’s eyebrows shot up.
Angel noticed his surprise and laughed. “It’s a small town. People at the café were talking about it last night. A cab driver told the guy at the McDonalds drive-through who told one of the customers who told somebody who came in to Rene’s. You know how small towns work.”
“But…”
Angel cut Benny off before he could get his thought out. “I know you two never actually had a relationship, but the possibility of one was there.”
“OK,” Benny said, still lost.
“I know it’s hard to explain to someone without an artistic mind, but possibilities sometimes feel like realities to artistic types.”
“OK,” Benny said. “I can go with that. ‘Possibilities are sort of like realities.’”
“Thanks,” Angel said. “Let her down easy.”
Benny knocked softly on the studio door.
“It’s open,” he heard.
Benny pulled the door open. The bright lights from the studio hit his face and the warmth from the massive lights penetrated his cheeks. For a
moment he felt a wave of uneasiness pass through his head. He took a deep breath and walked forward. The center of the studio was a safer place from the harsh lights. He found a spot he was comfortable with and stood still, examining the rest of the room. He still had not seen Nina.
“Nina?”
“Over here,” she answered, barely audible.
She stood behind an Oriental partition. Benny walked across the room and around the partial wall. Nina stared blankly out the window. She bit her lip.
“I guess you found out the truth,” she said.
Not sure which truth she was talking about, Benny answered “Yes,” and hoped for more. Luckily, she had held in her secret too long and she spilled.
“It all started innocently. Before the house began to fall apart we used to have a spectacular art collection. Little by little we have had to sell it to stay afloat, but like I said, at one time it was grand.” Nina smiled remembering. “From time to time, we would allow magazines and such to come and see our collection. Our collection has been in at least a half dozen magazines or more. On one of those occasions an art critic I had admired for years and years came to the house. Karl, without me knowing, hung one of his paintings in a hallway toward the back of the house. I was giving the critic the tour and when we walked past it he happened to be walking in front of me. He stopped dead when he got to it. And he loved it. He went on and on about how wonderful it was.”
“And you told him it was yours.”
“I told him it was mine. Of course he wanted to see more. I showed him a few paintings that really were mine and could tell he wasn’t impressed. So I hurried out to Karl’s studio and grabbed a few of his canvases. Again, he loved them.”
“Did Uncle Karl ever know?”
“He never said he knew, but it kind of became a kind of unspoken thing. He and Angel just played along with poor Nina.”
“I like your work.”
Nina’s face didn’t change.
“Big E likes your work,” he tried again.
Nina huffed. “He just bought that because he was trying to get into my pants.”
“He has it hanging in his house in a pretty prevalent spot.”