No Right Turn

by A. J. Stewart

  One thing that had never stopped working was the beer taps. Mick had stayed bunkered down in the bar during the storm and had flushed the lines and replaced the CO2 before anything else. Once we had done all we could do without more materials and some professional help, Muriel poured some beers and a tonic and lime for Danielle. We took our usual stools which were solid wood items and would survive the apocalypse.

  “Here’s to Longboard’s,” I said.

  Ron smiled. “Here’s to another sunny day in Florida.”

  His love of the so-called Sunshine State was unrivaled. Even the governor didn’t pimp Florida like Ron. He loved everything about it, up to and including the hurricanes. They kept the riffraff out, he said. Or in, he wasn’t sure. His wrinkled face and the marks from the removed skin cancers spoke of a Floridian life.

  We clinked glasses and drank. Without the shade from the palapa, the outdoor bar was hot and I was already sweating. I could feel the moisture rising from beneath the pavers. Danielle guzzled her tonic and slammed the glass down on the bar.

  “I’m off,” she said.

  “Where?” asked Ron.

  “They’ve opened up a shelter at the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches. The National Guard is setting up a tent city for people who can’t get back into their homes. Lots to do.”

  Danielle slipped off her stool and kissed me. “I’ll see you later.”

  She wasn’t halfway across the courtyard before Ron turned to me.

  “She’s one of the good ones,” he said.

  “I know, and I know where you’re going with it.”

  “Not going anywhere,” he said. “I just think you want to hold on to one like that.”

  “I already asked her, she already said yes. The rest is just details.”

  “The ceremony is a pretty big detail.”

  I waved my hand around at the half-restored bar. “We’ve got a few other things to get through first.”

  Ron shrugged and offered a mischievous grin. “Just saying.” He glanced back at Danielle as she walked out into the parking lot.

  The fence between the lot and the courtyard had been blown away, so we saw the woman coming the other way as soon as she stepped from her car. She nodded to Danielle as they passed and then continued into the courtyard. She didn’t look like a tourist. I wasn’t sure there were any tourists left in Florida. I knew any that were here would be most unlikely to find themselves at Longboard Kelly’s. It was no kind of place for tourists, which made it distinctly un-Floridian. It wasn’t on the water and there was no view. You were more likely to hear I-95 than the waves lapping against the seawall on the Intracoastal. But here she was anyway.

  She wore a pink polo shirt with a logo on the breast, the letters DBR over a checkered flag. Her capri pants were blue and she wore white running shoes on her feet. She was wide in the hips but nowhere else, and her auburn hair was tied back in a ponytail. She wasn’t young but she wasn’t old. If she had attended college, it had been a couple decades ago.

  The woman looked over each of us as she approached the bar. He eyes landed on Muriel, as often happened at Longboard’s. Muriel favored tank tops that highlighted both her toned arms and her considerable bosom. As the woman reached us, however, her eyes dropped to me.

  “Miami Jones,” she said as if we knew each other from a party long ago.

  “Have we met?” I asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “But you know me?”

  “I was told I might find you here. And your t-shirt is kind of a giveaway.”

  I glanced down at myself. My gray t-shirt had Miami emblazoned in orange and green across it.

  “You wear that in case you get lost at the mall?” she asked.

  Ron smiled.

  “No. I went to school there. University of Miami.”

  “Did you have that name before or after you went there?”

  “After. How can I help you, Miss . . .”

  “Beadman. Angie Beadman.”

  She waited for that to sink in, as if I should know it somehow. I didn’t.

  “I want to hire you, Mr. Jones.”

  “My dad was Mr. Jones. Call me Miami.”

  “I’ll try.”

  I put my beer down and offered her a stool and a drink. She took the stool but not the drink.

  “What is it you want me to do, Miss Beadman?”

  “Angie. Our property was broken into. We had some items stolen that my father would like returned.”

  “You call the police?”

  “Of course.”

  “The police are usually in the best position to find stolen things. And they’ll do it for free.”

  “Money is not the issue.”

  Even though I wasn’t looking at him I felt Ron’s ears prick up.

  “What was stolen?” I asked.

  “A car.”

  “You had a car stolen? Well, then I’d suggest the police are definitely the ones to help you. They have a whole department that can look out for your car. We’re just two guys. Besides, we have a lot to clean up.”

  “To be completely accurate, it wasn’t a car. It was a number of cars.”

  “What number?”

  “Ten.”

  “Ten? You had ten cars stolen?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Your family own a used car dealership or something?”

  “No. My father collects cars.”

  “Who is your father?”

  Angie frowned at me. “Dale Beadman.”

  I gave her my pouty mystified face.

  Ron took up the baton. “Dale Beadman?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Angie.

  “You live on the island,” said Ron.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ron looked at me. “We should check it out,” he said.

  I wasn’t exactly champing at the bit to take on a case. It was true, I did have a lot to clean up. And I was enjoying my beer. To cap off my antipathy, I found Palm Beach types difficult to work for. I recognized the conundrum in that, given that I worked on the Palm Beaches, and the island was where most of the money was. Perhaps that was the problem. Perhaps I was the problem. It could go either way. Regardless, I didn’t have the faintest idea who this Dale Beadman guy was, but I trusted Ron’s opinion on these things, so I picked up my glass and swallowed down my beer.

  “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Three

  Calling the homes at the north end of Palm Beach island houses was like calling the QE2 a boat. The roads were tight and surrounded on all sides by trees and hedges. Behind the foliage were homes that ranged from palatial to entire compounds. The lots weren’t large like in Fairfield County, Connecticut, or neighboring Westchester, New York, where even with binoculars you couldn’t see the houses from the road, but then the island wasn’t that wide at the top end. One could only guess at the size of the houses behind the trees and the wrought-iron gates, or one could look at a satellite map.

  Or one could visit. We followed Angie in my Cadillac SUV that had survived the hurricane with barely a scratch, which was new for me. Angie was driving a Camaro, low-slung and throaty, which made my vehicle look like it belonged to my grandmother. We passed through a high wooden gate that opened on approach and closed behind us, and I stopped on the sandy driveway behind the Camaro.

  The house was large by most standards but moderate for the locale. It was a blue faux Colonial, about five thousand square feet, with a wraparound porch. Across the lawn from the house was another structure, long and low, more like a warehouse than an outbuilding. There were a couple of other outbuildings, small garage-sized units, for the ride-on lawn mower and such equipment.

  Angie didn’t take us into the house. We marched across the lush Bermuda grass toward the warehouse. Between the two buildings, the lawn stretched out toward the beach and the Atlantic Ocean. The view was sensational and the water sparkled and beckoned like a siren. I took a good look at the layout. Ron and I had spent the hurricane in a plush Palm Beach hot
el—by good luck rather than good design—and I noted that the thing that had saved the hotel was that it was elevated in a way that the eye didn’t really pick up. The lawns acted somewhat like a moat, so the storm surge that the hurricane had pushed across the island had broken around the hotel rather than pulsing through it. The Beadman estate was built in a similar fashion. The lawn undulated in a way that you barely saw, and certainly wouldn’t notice if you hadn’t just been through a hurricane, so that water flow from the ocean would funnel between the two buildings and down the driveway and go on to become your neighbor’s problem. There was a small army of men positioned across the lawn, clearing debris and making it so the storm had never happened.

  The driveway split into two—one arm reaching around in front of the house and the other making for the shorter side of the warehouse. Angie directed us to the other end of the warehouse, on the beach side. We walked around the bland white building and were surprised to find what looked like a beachfront bar. There was a large deck with tables and umbrellas and an outdoor kitchen that could have prepared a banquet. There was a framework similar to the one at Longboard’s, where a pair of men were rethatching the palm fronds into a palapa awning. The notion of shiplap jumped into my head, and it gave me a sense of melancholy.

  Angie led us in through French doors that acted like portals in the space-time continuum. We stepped from a deck that was all Florida into a pub that was all England. The room was dark wood and dim lighting. On the right side was a bar along the outside wall with stools upholstered in green leather. There were booths along the opposite wall. The wall to my left had a big screen television mounted on it. Every other wall space was adorned with photographs and posters. Many featured one man either shaking hands with someone noteworthy or inside a car. There were just as many pictures of the car by itself. Like the leather, the car was green—my mother would have called it British racing green—and it wore the number 29 on the door.

  There were large-screen televisions above the bar and below them a collection of scotches and bourbons and American whiskeys that would rival the fanciest Manhattan hotel. As my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, I noticed that the wall opposite the bar, where the booths sat, featured large picture windows that looked out into darkness. I saw my reflection in the windows and felt a tad underdressed.

  A man was standing behind the bar, polishing a glass in the time-honored tradition of barkeeps the world over. He was thin and wiry in a way that suggested he smoked a lot. He had a full head of hair and a thick mustache, both of which had turned salt and pepper. His face said he was beyond seventy years old, but his eyes belonged to a younger man.

  The man looked us over without a smile, but he dropped the dish towel and came out from behind the bar. Despite the growing heat, he was wearing jeans and a blue work shirt with logos for a soda company, an insurance company and some kind of internet company over his heart.

  “Dad, this is Miami Jones and Ron Bennett,” said Angie.

  The man extended his hand to me and Ron and we each shook it.

  “Dale Beadman,” he said twice in a gravelly voice.

  I recognized him, but only just. Ron had filled me in on the basics as we drove over to the island. I’m not a huge NASCAR fan. I grew up in New England, where stock car racing was not really on the radar. Although it had developed a nationwide schedule, it was, to me, like mint juleps, the most Southern of sports. I only lived a couple hours from one of the most famous racetracks in the country at Daytona, and I enjoyed a fast car as much as the next guy, but I suspected the issue was that I didn’t own a television, so I just never saw a race.

  Dale Beadman was a legend in the sport. I knew that much. He was a winning driver and had gone on to be a winning team owner. He’d won at Daytona and Talladega and that was about where my knowledge ended.

  “Mr. Beadman,” I said.

  “Dale, please. Thank you for coming.”

  I noted a slight Southern twang, as if he hadn’t grown up in the South but visited a lot. I was about to ask why I was there when the phone behind the bar rang. Angie stepped around and answered it, and then she listened and then told whoever was on the line to send them over. Then she hung up and looked at her father.

  “The police are here.”

  Angie walked out the French doors, and Dale Beadman turned to me.

  “Mr. Jones, if I could ask you to do something for me?”

  “It’s Miami, and you can certainly ask.”

  “I wonder if you would remain behind after the police leave?”

  “I wonder if you could do me a favor?” I asked in return.

  “Name it.”

  “I’d love those guys fixing your palapa outside to drop by my buddy’s bar and fix his.”

  I think Beadman was about to speak, but the words didn’t get to come out. Instead, Angie Beadman walked back in through the French doors. The suit that followed her was a wrinkled wrinkle-free JC Penney special. Detective Ronzoni stepped from the heat without a bead of sweat on him. He just plain didn’t sweat. It was a gland thing, or some such. But I got the sense that he came as close to sweating as he ever did when he caught sight of me. I smiled and watched the uniformed officer follow him in and then wait near the door.

  Angie Beadman introduced her father to the detective and then made to do the same to me and Ron. I put my hand up.

  “We’re old friends,” I said with a smile. Ronzoni did not return the smile. The last time I had seen him, he was motoring away in a Coast Guard tender from the hotel where he, too, had spent the recent hurricane. It seemed he had reached his limit for enjoying my company, so I let him take control.

  “Mr. Beadman, I understand your car collection has been stolen.”

  “Yes, Detective,” said Beadman. “Let me show you.”

  Beadman hit a button on a console behind the bar, and the space beyond the bank of windows exploded into light. Not just lighting, but light. Canned lights beamed bright in the cavernous space, bouncing off the white walls. The floor was black concrete polished to a shine. I could have shaved in the reflection. It looked like a hospital operating room. It was so stark the Palm Beach PD officer who had stopped by the door was drawn to the window, mouth agape, like a moth to a flame. The notable thing about the room, however, wasn’t the spotlessness of it but the fact that there was nothing in it. The room pulsed its emptiness through the glass at us in the faux pub. The spaces didn’t go together. The outside deck was a Florida watering hole, the pub was clubby English and the warehouse was clinical.

  “So what’s this?” asked Ronzoni, as ever right on top of things.

  Beadman didn’t take his eyes off the window. “This, Detective, is my garage. This is where my car collection was.”

  Ronzoni nodded deeply, as if discussing a deceased relative. Perhaps he knew more about NASCAR than I did.

  “I see,” he said. “How many cars did you have, Mr. Beadman?”

  “There were—how many, Angie?”

  “Ten,” she said.

  Beadman nodded to Ronzoni.

  “And when did the burglary occur?”

  “The night of the hurricane,” said Beadman.

  “And you know this how?” asked Ronzoni.

  “Angie, my daughter, was here until that morning. She locked the garage. Right, darlin’?”

  “That’s right,” said Angie.

  “Were you the last to leave?” asked Ronzoni.

  “Yes. I left with my mother. Everything was battened down and the staff had left.”

  “And Mr. Beadman, where were you?”

  “I was in Charlotte, North Carolina. I had planned to be back but got delayed, doing some filming.”

  “Okay. And when did you return?” Ronzoni asked Angie.

  “The day after the hurricane. In the evening.”

  “So the robbery could have happened after the hurricane had passed.” Ronzoni looked at Beadman. “Not necessarily the night of the hurricane.” He tried to cock his eyebro
w, I assumed to show how his Holmesian detective brain was so far ahead of the rest of us, but he had to tilt his head to make the expression work and he ended up looking like he was having a seizure.

  Beadman frowned and looked back to his daughter.

  “The day after the hurricane the entire island was flooded,” she said.

  “I know,” said Ronzoni. “I was here.” He didn’t look at me.

  “So there would be no way to get the cars out, would there?”

  Ronzoni nodded sagely, as if he had already thought of that but was glad to reconsider it. “We should make no assumptions, Miss Beadman. Until we know more, we have a time period of almost three days. The day of the hurricane—when you left—the day after the hurricane, and the day after that—yesterday, when you arrived back. Do you have any security video?”

  “Sort of,” said Angie. “The power went out during the hurricane. Before it went out, the cars were in the garage. It didn’t reboot until I reset it when I got back.”

  “I’ll need to see that video,” said Ronzoni. “So tell me about these cars.”

  “They were my pride and joy, Detective,” said Beadman. He looked wistfully through the glass at the empty garage. I glanced at his daughter, wondering where she fit in on the pride and joy scale.

  “There was a range of vehicles. From an original Model T to a Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa. But mostly they were rare domestic vehicles.”

  “I’ll need a full list of those,” said Ronzoni.

  “I can get that for you from my office,” said Angie.

  “Fine. Let’s see the scene, then.”

  Ronzoni asked Angie to lead us to the garage. He whispered something to the uniformed officer, who then stopped Ron and me at the door from the pub.