Deadly Ruse

by E. Michael Helms

  “Mac, please don’t think I’m going crazy, but I believe Wes might be searching for me.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Following the directions Kate had given me the night before, I drove through the newer, more touristy part of Destin to the western end, where Highway 98 becomes Harbor Boulevard. I turned right onto Benning Drive. At the end of Benning I made a left on Calhoun that brought me to the Bells’ home, an older but well-kept two-story wooden structure overlooking Choctawhatchee Bay near the mouth of Marler Bayou. The large front lawn was shaded by several tall pines and two sprawling live oaks, one on either side of a concrete driveway. I pulled into the drive and stopped behind Kate’s CR-V, which was parked outside a detached two-car garage.

  As I climbed out of my Silverado the screen door of the house flew open. Kate, dressed in faded jeans and a green sweatshirt, bounded across the big porch and down the brick stairs and was in my arms before I’d made it halfway along the sidewalk leading from the garage to the house. The bear hug and warm kiss made the trip well worth the trouble already.

  “I missed you, Mac,” she said, pressing her cheek against my chest. “Sorry I took off the way I did.”

  I hugged her tight and kissed the top of her head. “Glad you’re safe.”

  I followed Kate into the house, accepting her offer of fresh-brewed coffee. We stepped from the foyer into the great room with its high ceiling and wood-burning fireplace. The spacious room was comfortably fitted with overstuffed sofas and chairs and matching tables. Beach scenes in rustic driftwood frames hung on the walls, and family photos through the years crowded the mantel above the fireplace. It was easy to see the Bells were a tight-knit bunch. If rooms could talk, this one would’ve shouted, “Family!”

  The kitchen was located at the back right corner of the house. While Kate poured the coffee I took a seat at the dining table in an alcove along the outside wall. Tall windows provided a view across the greening lawn with the bay in the distance. In the middle of the oak table sat a cardboard box roughly twice the size of a shoebox. Next to the box was a small stack of what appeared to be photos of various sizes. I kept my curiosity in check, figuring they were turned face-down for good reason.

  Kate handed me a mug of steaming coffee and sat in the chair to my right. She took a sip from her cup, reached across the table, and scooped up the photos. “These are all the pictures I could find of Wes,” she said, placing them in front of me. The top photo showed two smiling young men holding fishing rods and standing side by side on a dock with open water in the background. They were about the same height with lean athletic builds. One had dark, wind-tousled hair with bangs that fell across his forehead. The other was a sandy blond and wore his longish hair swept back; I guess the term “ruggedly handsome” might fit, but “surfer dude” came to mind instead.

  “This is a picture of Eric and Wes,” Kate said. She tapped a fingernail on the blond. “That’s Wes.”

  A red flag waved inside my head. Was Kate hallucinating? I didn’t get a real good look at the man I’d sidestepped at O’Malley’s, but he’d had dark hair, neatly styled and parted on one side, if my memory served me. Okay, so maybe he’d cut and dyed his hair. I could buy that. But the nose was all wrong. The Wes in this photo had a definite honker with a noticeable hump midway up; the theater Wes’s nose was straight and not nearly as prominent. The chin didn’t look right either, for that matter. It was too square.

  I hesitated and took another sip of coffee. Here I’d gone and blabbed to Kate that I believed she’d seen Wes Harrison at O’Malley’s, and now I was about to make a liar out of myself. What the hell; it was time to bite the bullet. “Kate, the guy I saw had dark hair,” I said, trying to be as diplomatic as possible. “I realize he could’ve dyed his hair easy enough, but the nose and the chin don’t fit at all.”

  To my surprise and relief Kate placed a hand on my forearm and gave a little squeeze. “I know. But did you see his eyes?”

  His eyes? The truth is, after a quick glance at the man I’d been too distracted by the redhead I’d bumped into to notice his eyes. I took a closer look at the photo. Nothing I saw jogged my memory. “No, what about his eyes?”

  Kate grabbed the photos and flipped through a few. She pulled one from the stack and placed it before me. “Here. This is a close-up of Wes.”

  I picked it up. It was a mug shot. Same grin, swept-back blond hair, hooked beak, and square chin. But the eyes jumped out at me like a pair of throbbing thumbs. The left eye was blue, the right brown. I glanced up at Kate.

  “It’s called heterochromia,” she said. “Don’t be too impressed. I had to look it up. It’s fairly rare in humans. You see it a lot more in animals.”

  I took a breath and let it out slowly. “Why didn’t you mention the eyes before?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it was the shock of seeing Wes again after believing he was dead all these years. I was starting to think you were right, that it couldn’t have been him. That’s why I had to come here and look at the photos again. I had to prove to myself that I wasn’t imagining what I saw.”

  “Okay, but what about the nose? I got a good enough look at the guy to tell the nose is all wrong. The chin, too.”

  “Plastic surgery,” Kate said. “That’s the only thing it could be. When I passed him in the lobby that night we made eye contact. There’s no mistaking those eyes. And I know he recognized me. His mouth dropped open before he turned away.”

  “You are talking about the guy who was with the redhead, right?”

  Kate’s brow arched. “Dang, Mac, nothing sneaks by you, does it? Yes, the guy with the redhead.”

  I still wasn’t convinced the man I’d seen at O’Malley’s was the man in the photo I was holding. I wracked my brain trying to remember more details of the theater Wes’s face, but I came up blank. I hadn’t noticed his eyes, but Kate had. What were the chances of running into two men with eyes like that in a lifetime? Miniscule at best.

  “Okay. You saw Wes Harrison at O’Malley’s the other night,” I said, playing along. “But what makes you think he’s searching for you?”

  Kate finished a sip of coffee and held the mug at chin level in both hands. “Maybe during the accident he was badly hurt and lost his memory besides having to have his face reconstructed. What if he’s slowly regaining his memory and somehow is starting to remember our relationship together?”

  “That’s it?” I’d been expecting Kate to come up with more than a flimsy house of cards to support her belief that Harrison was still among the living.

  “Well, yeah.”

  “You’re really reaching. No Hollywood B-movie would buy into that scenario.”

  She looked close to tears. “Maybe not.”

  “You believe Eric Kohler and Robert Ramey might still be alive, too?”

  Kate’s eyes widened. “How do you know their names? I never mentioned them.”

  “Mark told me. So, you think they’re still kicking around somewhere too?”

  Kate set the mug on the table and stared into it a few seconds before looking up. “I guess. I mean, if Wes—”

  “Why, Kate?”

  Kate frowned, her forehead wrinkled. “Why what?”

  I let out a deep breath. “If the three of them are still alive, what were they up to? Did they stage their own deaths? And why the hell would Wes Harrison do that to you, the woman he loved?”

  Kate’s chin quivered, and she wiped away a tear tracing down her cheek. “I don’t know, Mac. It doesn’t make any sense. I just know in my heart that I saw Wes the other night.”

  I got up and wrapped my arms around her. She pressed her face into my shoulder. After a moment she turned away and blew her nose into a paper napkin she’d grabbed from a holder on the table.

  “I’m sorry. I know all this sounds crazy,” she said, dabbing her eyes with the folded napkin. “But I know it was Wes I saw at O’Malley’s. And I don’t know why they would’ve staged anything, if they did. That’s not like Wes at
all.”

  I knelt beside Kate’s chair and took a minute to get the words straight in my mind. “Have you considered the possibility that Wes is the one who pulled this thing off, whatever it was? What if he had some reason to get rid of Kohler and Ramey and disappear, making it look like the three of them had died in the storm?”

  Kate pushed her mug away. “I can’t believe that. I won’t believe that! Wes and Eric were too close, Mac. They were more like brothers than friends.”

  I sighed and squeezed Kate’s hand. “Okay then, looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us.”

  Hightower Investigations was located on Harbor Boulevard in a two-story brick building atop a New Age tea and aromatherapy shop. Frank Hightower and Jim Bell, Kate’s father, had been best friends since high school. The two had joined the Navy together after graduation and were shipmates aboard a carrier during the middle years of the Vietnam War. They had remained close friends after their hitch ended. Mr. Bell had owned and operated a successful tackle and marine supply business for many years, while Frank Hightower pursued a career with the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Department. Upon retiring, Hightower opened his own private eye operation.

  I trailed Kate up the outside stairway to a landing overlooking a side street that dead-ended near the waterfront. Gulls wheeled high in the cloudless blue sky above Destin Harbor. Masts of sailboats and charter boats’ flying bridges were visible along the docks.

  Not bothering to knock, Kate turned the brass doorknob and stepped inside. I followed close on her heels. A wiry man with a shock of gray hair stood up from behind a black metal desk with a pair of matching file cabinets centered along the back wall. He wore gray slacks and a blue dress shirt but no tie. A two-inch scar above his right eye paralleled his furrowed brow. He looked to be in good shape for someone in his sixties. He took off the wire-rimmed glasses he’d been wearing, and as he recognized Kate his ruddy face broke into a big grin.

  “Katie, how’s my best girl?” he said, hurrying around the desk to give her a warm hug.

  Kate returned the hug and patted him on the back. “Uncle Frank, it’s good to see you.”

  “And you must be Mac,” Frank said, glancing over Kate’s shoulder at me. “I’ve heard good things about you, young man.”

  We shook hands, and I pointed a thumb at Kate. “My PR department must’ve preceded me,” I said, hoping he’d take it for the joke I intended. His hearty laugh told me he did.

  “Now, Katie girl,” Frank said as he motioned for us to sit in twin chairs fronting the desk, “what’s this about you wanting me to look into a missing person case?” He sat on a corner of the desktop and crossed his arms. “Just who is it that’s gone missing?”

  For the next few minutes Kate laid out the whole spiel about running into Wes Harrison at O’Malley’s, including mentioning Harrison’s unusual eyes. The more emphatically Kate stated her case, the deeper the frown on Frank’s face grew. Finally, he held up a hand like a cop stopping traffic.

  “You know I worked on that case, Katie. We searched the coast and the inland waterways for days, just in case the tide—”

  “But it was him, Uncle Frank. There’s no mistaking his eyes. And I know he recognized me.”

  Hightower tilted his head and glanced at me. “Mac?”

  My jaw tightened. I sure as hell had hoped to avoid being put on the spot like this. “Like Kate said, I didn’t get a good look at the guy, but if she says it was Wes Harrison, I believe her.”

  Frank stared at me a couple of seconds and then grinned. “Good answer.” He turned to Kate. “Let’s have a look at the photos.”

  Kate handed Hightower the manila envelope she’d brought containing a few of the better shots of both Harrison and Eric Kohler. There was also a photo of Rachel Todd, Eric’s sister, posing on the beach with Kate, Wes, and Eric. Frank moved to his chair, sat down, and spread the photos out on the desk. After eyeballing them a moment he said, “You two bring your chairs back here.”

  Kate and I stood and moved our chairs to Frank’s right as he double-clicked an icon on the monitor that sat just left of center on the desk. “This is a face-identification program,” he said, as Kate and I settled in. He winked at Kate. “Fringe benefit, courtesy of the Okaloosa Sheriff’s Department.”

  We spent the next half hour poring over dozens of face shapes, chins, noses, eyes, hair, skin tone, and every other feature you could think of until Kate was sure the face on the monitor was a near spitting image of the Wes Harrison she’d seen at O’Malley’s last Friday. From what little I could remember, I had to agree. This could be the man with the redhead I’d bumped into. Neatly styled dark hair, chiseled jaw line, straight nose.

  For the next five minutes Frank followed Kate’s suggestions until the eye colors on the monitor matched those of the younger Wes’s odd eyes. “That’s him!” Kate said, coming out of her chair and hugging Frank from behind. “That’s the man I saw in the theater!”

  After Kate settled down, Frank scanned a close-up of Eric Kohler onto his hard drive. He worked his magic, and in a few minutes Wes’s best friend had aged over a decade and put on a few pounds. He then cropped Rachel from the beach photo and progressed her age. Frank printed several color copies of the newly resurrected Destin gang and saved the files to a flash drive. He handed the printouts and drive to Kate. “It’s a start.”

  It was late afternoon when we finished our business at Hightower Investigations, so Kate and I invited Frank for happy hour and dinner at AJ’s Seafood and Oyster Bar. The invitation was Kate’s idea. Frank had been widowed a couple of years back, and Kate thought he could use the company. Besides, being an old friend of the family, he had a lot of catching up to do with Kate.

  Frank followed us in his silver Jeep Cherokee as I drove the few blocks west to AJ’s, located on the harbor a short distance from Destin Bridge. The afternoon was mild, so we followed our hostess to a table on the downstairs deck with a nice view of the harbor. There was a decent crowd even though spring was still struggling to gain a firm foothold in the Panhandle. Several seafaring patrons had tied their boats to AJ’s visitors’ dock for happy hour or an early dinner.

  After the waitress brought our drinks and took our dinner orders, I decided it was time to get down to the matter of money. I had no idea what PIs in this area charged. Old family friend or not, I thought Hightower’s fee might be a little steep for Kate’s budget, so I bit the bullet and spilled the question.

  Frank and Kate glanced at each other and exchanged slight smiles. “I’ve got a proposition for you, Mac,” Frank said. He took a sip from his bourbon and water. “How would you like to go to work for me?”

  I eyeballed Kate, who quickly averted her eyes and sipped her wine while staring out at the harbor. I shook the ice in my tumbler of Dewar’s and tried to decipher just what the hell Frank Hightower was getting at. He took another drink, set his glass on the table, and turned in his chair to face me.

  “I know about your little adventure last summer, Mac. You handled yourself like a pro according to what I heard.”

  I took a hefty swallow of Scotch and stared Frank in the eye. “Yeah? Heard from who?” I frowned and shot Kate a glance. I’ve never cared much for people talking about me behind my back, good or bad. Evidently Kate and “Uncle Frank” had done more catching up than I was aware of.

  Frank must’ve caught my expression. “Listen, Mac, Katie did clue me in about what the two of you were up to, but I’ve got other sources in your neighborhood.”

  “Bo Pickron, for example?”

  Frank’s eyes narrowed. “I knew his old man pretty well when he was sheriff of Palmetto County. We even worked together on a few cases when county lines got crossed. Fine man. And yeah, I know his son a little. He’s got the makings of a good lawman if he ever learns to keep his personality out of the job. But there’s a couple of old hands still with Palmetto County who I keep in touch with now and then. You’ve got the cojones for the job, Mac.”

  I won
dered just who, besides Kate, Frank had been in touch with. Other than Sheriff Bocephus Pickron, I’d had little contact with members of the sheriff’s department. I swirled a sip of Dewar’s around my mouth and let it trickle down my throat. What the hell. The old man was obviously fond of Kate and was probably trying to help her by helping me. “So, what’s your proposition?”

  Frank picked up his glass and stared at the contents for a moment. “I’ve been thinking about branching out to the east. Panama City’s not far from your neck of the woods. I’ve done some work around PC, but there’s more than I can handle here. I know you’re retired military and probably don’t need the money, but you’re still a young man, Mac. So, here’s the deal. You agree to work for me. I’ll be your sponsor and show you the ropes while you take the proper courses and all the other BS required to earn your legal PI license. Meanwhile, you’ll be helping me find out what’s going on with Katie’s old friends. I pay for the courses, you work the case, and we call it even. Katie won’t owe a dime.”

  I knocked back a healthy swig of Scotch and stared at the horizon where the top edge of the sun was about to dip into the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe I’d see the elusive “green flash” and take it as a sign I should accept Frank’s offer. A few seconds later the gulf swallowed the sun; no green flash, no omen. I’d spent almost a year since my discharge trying to decide what to do with the rest of my life. Hell, maybe Frank’s proposition was my omen.

  I signaled to our waitress, pointed to my empty glass, and held up three fingers indicating drinks all around. “What if I try it for a while and decide being a PI’s not for me? I’m no quitter, but I don’t want to waste time spinning my wheels doing something I don’t like.”

  Frank drained his glass and set it back on the folded paper napkin he’d been using as a coaster. “All I’m asking is that you give it an honest shot. If it doesn’t work out, you walk away. No questions, no obligations. Fair enough?”