Mangrove Bayou

by Stephen Morrill

  “Why isn’t the hose leaking now?” Tom asked.

  Lohen pointed. “Shutoff valve. On proper boats, all through-hulls have stopcocks right up against the hulls to close off any broken hoses. He must have climbed down here and closed the stopcock.”

  “So why would he need an electric drill?” Troy asked.

  “Yeah,” Tom said. “Damn careless of him too. The drill and leaving a rag where it could get sucked into the bilge pump.”

  “Don’t know about that,” Lohen said. “Careless, but it happens sometimes.”

  “Seems odd to use a 120-volt drill anyway,” Tom said. “That’d be useless away from the dock. I’ll bet there’s a battery-operated drill somewhere on this boat.”

  Con Lohen nodded. “Most owners got cordless tools.”

  “Notice something else about the drill?” Troy said to Tom.

  Tom looked at the drill. “No. What about it?”

  “That’s a masonry-drilling bit, not a wood or general-purpose bit.”

  Tom looked at it. “Well, I didn’t know there was a difference.”

  “There is. And that bit is useless on a boat.”

  “Had another bit in his pocket?” Tom asked.

  “Nope. Nothing in his pockets but what I gave you to bag.”

  “Might be some other bit down here still,” Lohen said. “In the water. We can look when it’s all pumped out.”

  “We’ll do that. He probably wouldn’t use any sort of drill bit, actually. More likely to have needed a screwdriver bit. Maybe to screw on a new hose clamp. Let’s look around the boat a little,” Troy said. He helped Lohen climb up out of the engine space and Lohen put his shoes back on. They started searching the boat.

  “So, did John Barrymore have a fight with his wife?” Troy asked Lohen.

  “All the time. She’s young, pretty, white trash out of Goodland. I think she worked in a laundry. He was Yankee money, old, rich and horny, out of Boston I think. Had that accent anyway.”

  “Not a marriage made in heaven, I take it.”

  “She twisted him around her little finger. It was sickening to watch. I seen a lot of old guys marrying young girls and it never works out in the long run. But he was full of her, newlyweds I think. Something about turning fifty makes sane men park their brains and pull out their dicks.”

  “I don’t think you have to be fifty to do that,” Tom said.

  Troy glanced sideways at Tom and smiled. “Cynical, and yet so young.”

  “This is true,” Lohen said. “And she didn’t know squat about boats and wouldn’t even try to help. He had to do everything onboard: steer, navigate, even anchor it by himself. When they went out to cruise around, he told me once, she mostly sat in the salon watching TV.” Troy guessed that, to Con Lohen, a wife who wouldn’t lower an anchor was a worthless woman.

  Searching the boat, they found several battery-operated hand tools, including a drill with an assortment of bits and drivers. There were no other masonry drill bits and no way to know if anything was missing. They found no other corded hand tools that needed 120-volt AC current.

  On the back deck it was Troy who found something odd. The swim ladder on the stern was down.

  “So what?” Tom asked. “Maybe they were scrubbing the boat bottom or something.”

  Con Lohen shook his head. “He had a diver to do that monthly. Leave the ladder down like that and you get barnacles started on it.”

  Troy pulled the ladder up by the line attached to it and fastened it in place. “But if you leave the boat this way then once you’re in the water you cannot put the ladder back up.”

  Lohen looked. “I guess that’s right. On this one anyway. You can’t push a rope.”

  Troy walked back into the salon. He was looking for water, dampness. If someone left by the ladder that person might have come aboard the same way. But the boat, like most boats of this size, had dehumidifiers and air conditioning to both cool the boat and prevent mildew. Both were running and even had there been any drips on the tough outdoor carpet that covered the salon deck, they were long gone by now. Meantime Con Lohen looked in the now-pumped-out engine space for any drill or screwdriver bit. He came up empty too.

  “All right,” Troy said. “Tom, bag the drill and the wallet. Use the evidence bags in the Suburban. Dust this boat and that drill for fingerprints. Get Con’s here, too, so we can eliminate him.”

  “What?” Tom said. “You don’t think this was an accident?”

  “Probably was. No harm in getting some practice, though.”

  “That drill’s been in the water.”

  “I know. Do your best. And the plug and cord were mostly dry. Be sure to do the swim ladder rails—that’s a nice smooth surface—and the railing either side. People grab things when they’re climbing ladders like that. When you’re done, lock this boat up. Tape the doors, both sides of the cabin. Tape’s in the Suburban too. Get all that out before I take the truck.”

  “Will do, Chief.”

  “When we’re done here, one of these keys on his keychain probably fits the padlock on the side door of the cabin here,” he said. “Use the beeper here to find his car and search it too, inside, trunk, outside. If you don’t see anything illegal or suspicious, drive it back to his house.”

  “Where does he live? Where did he live?”

  “Good question. Let me see his driver license.” Troy looked at the address and handed the license back to Tom. “Right up the road. Easy for you to find so you can break the news to the widow.”

  Tom stared at Troy a long moment. “Isn’t that sort of the chief’s job?” he asked.

  “It’s no one’s job. Telling people their loved ones are dead is just one of those perks that we get in lieu of better pay. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”

  “Well,” Tom said. “They do pay you more.”

  “Not enough for this.”

  Chapter 10

  Monday, July 22

  Finding the Barrymore house was not hard. Troy simply got back onto Airfield Road and drove east while counting down the numbers on the mailboxes on the south side of the road.

  Most of the houses here had names posted on discrete signs at the entrances to their driveways. Many had gated entrances with cameras and electronic gate openers. Troy found the right mailbox and a sign announcing “Côte d’Or” and followed a narrow drive up to the back of a house that faced the Collier River across a long lawn. He wondered how big a house had to be to have a name. He supposed one could ask the same question about boats. There was a small parking area in front of a garage, and an entrance door to the house. There were several men working on an extension to the side of the garage. Troy went to look. They were building a concrete-block enclosure and running some electrical and plumbing.

  “Building a workshop for the owner, plus a toilet and shower,” the foreman explained. “He’s some big cheese in the banking world. But he wants more room to do some woodworking.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to be doing woodworking any more,” Troy said.

  The man looked at Troy. He looked at the Suburban with “Mangrove Bayou Police” painted on the side and the lights on the roof. He looked back at Troy.

  “Oh,” he said.

  Kathleen Barrymore let Troy into her five-thousand-square-foot home and listened as he told her what they had found.

  She was late twenties, Troy guessed, and five-three with long blonde hair. She was pretty, with a good figure, and had learned to emphasize her high cheekbones and cornflower-blue eyes. She had not yet learned to go easy on the black eyeliner and she drew it out at the corners so that Troy thought she resembled a woman in an Egyptian hieroglyph. She had on tight blue jeans and a white tee-shirt cut short enough to show a pierced belly button in front and a “tramp-stamp” tattoo in back. She was half-drunk and holding a glass of bourbon and smoking a cigarette. She didn’t offer Troy either bourbon or a cigarette and he didn’t ask.

  When Troy finished telling her about how h
er husband died she took a manly swig of bourbon and a deep drag off the cigarette and said, “So where’s the car? He was drivin’ one of our two Mercedes. And where’s his wallet an’ credit cards?”

  “Car is probably in the parking lot by the yacht club docks. One of my officers will bring it by here shortly. We have the wallet. I need to inventory it. You’ll get it back after that.”

  “After you takes all the cash, you mean.”

  “No. After I inventory it.”

  “So, when do I get the body back and give him a proper funeral?” she asked. She took in a lungful of smoke and blew it at the ceiling.

  They were sitting in a living room with a good view through the smoke of part of the town of Mangrove Bayou across the Collier River. Troy wondered how long it took after moving in for a person to stop noticing the view. Not long, was his guess.

  “Practical of you,” Troy said.

  “Oh, bullshit. Am I supposed to wail and weep?”

  Troy shrugged. “I don’t know. Up to you, I suppose. Most people do. Your husband is at the clinic at the moment, Kathleen. He’ll be sent on up to Naples for an autopsy.”

  “Katie. My friends all call me Katie.”

  “That’s fine. So, Katie, tell me about yourself and John. Where you came from, how you met.”

  “That any your damn business?”

  “Not if you don’t want to tell me, at this time. But, speaking of business, what did John do for a living?”

  “Everybody knows that.” She stubbed the cigarette out in a full ashtray. She picked up the cigarette pack—Winston Gold 100s—and the box was empty. She put that down next to the ashtray and looked back at Troy. “He made a ton of money in the investment banking business, whatever that is. He’s retired but still tells people what to do and sits on some board.”

  “Sort of a consultant?” Troy said.

  “That’s it. Consul-ant.” She hiccupped and swigged more bourbon. “He flies up to Atlanta once a month for them board meetings. Or did, I suppose. Flew right out of our strip here. There’s a woman runs a service. John said it was worth it to not deal with airports and lines.”

  “I see. And how long were you and John married?”

  “A little better’n a year now. Our anniversary was last month. But he was fifty and I’m twenty-five. I always knew I’d have to bury him some day. I din’t expect it to be this soon.”

  “Did you and your husband get along?”

  “Of course we did. Like two lovebirds. He waren’t so good in the…you know…bed thing, but I could help him and I loved him more than anything. And he loved me.”

  “He owned a trawler yacht. You and he go anywhere on it?” Troy had no idea where he was going; he just wanted to keep her talking a little and drinking a lot.

  “Oh, sure. He liked that boat. We’d go out in the Gulf and fish. We went down to Key West sometimes, thass just a day’s run. Dry Tortugas. Up to Naples, Venice, St. Petersburg. Once we wen’ across to Pensacola. That was a bad trip.”

  “Why so?”

  “Ran into a storm. The boat rolled around a lot. He liked it. I got seasick. Ever been seasick?”

  “A few times,” Troy said. “Been sailing for decades but anyone can get seasick, you get accustomed to the sea after a while and then it takes more to make you sick.”

  “Yeah. Well, I hated it. Tole him I’d never again go on a trip like that.”

  “Pretty hard to predict that sort of thing.”

  “Well, what kinda boat owner can’t predict when a storm is coming?”

  “Boats don’t move very fast. Storms do. You go out in a boat, you have to expect that sort of thing.”

  “Well, seemed stupid to me. Run straight through a storm. An’ it rains on you.”

  “Rain? In Florida? Who would have guessed.”

  “Don’ get smart with me.”

  “Sorry,” Troy said. “There’s Dramamine, you know.”

  “Tried that. Made me loopy. Dramamine and bourbon don’ mix.”

  “You could not drink the bourbon and take the Dramamine.”

  “Don’ tell me what I can do and not do.”

  “Good point. Did John keep any power tools, perhaps out in the garage or in a workshop anyplace?”

  “I suppose. He had a few things like that in the garage. He liked woodworkin’. We’re buildin’ a shop for him to do that in. Or we were, I guess. Why don’ you go look there and leave me alone in my grief?”

  “I’ll do that. Thanks for your time.”

  She took another sip. “Shit.”

  Katie stayed in the living room nursing her bourbon and grief. The garage was big enough for two cars and a small workbench at the rear. One Mercedes was parked there. On the workbench there were some hand power tools but they were all cordless. There was a lot of fine wood stacked in corners and a lathe and jigsaw and several other large woodworking tools Troy could not identify were shoved together just beyond the car’s front bumper.

  Clearly, John Barrymore had needed more space for his hobby. In Troy’s experience, ninety percent of all garages were actually used for storage, not to park cars. Two bicycles hung by their front tires from hooks in the ceiling. A separate shed held to an assortment of gas-powered lawn-care tools, including a small riding lawnmower. Apparently, John Barrymore had actually mowed his own lawn. Most people on Airfield Key, Troy suspected, hired it done.

  In the distance, even muted a little by the shrubbery, he heard an airplane engine wind up to maximum power, then the sound moved from one side to the other of the front of the lot as the pilot accelerated down the unseen runway and lifted off. The sound faded to a distant drone.

  Troy remembered reading a comment by the Romanian poet Andrei Codrescu that, “I’ve noticed…how much quieter the environs of the super-rich get. You don’t see the extra silence mentioned in the house price, but it is, sure as grammar, part and parcel of talking rich.” Apparently that was not so on Airfield Key. He wondered if the residents either owned airplanes themselves and liked the noise, or just got so accustomed to it that they didn’t hear it, sort of like poor people who lived next to railroad tracks.

  Outside, the foreman was measuring something on the wall of the garage. He was shoulder-height to Troy but wider, with the start of a beer belly and unkempt gray hair. He wore white painter’s overalls with assorted stains on the front and sawdust sprinkled over him. Troy stepped forward to hold one end of a tape. The foreman drew a line on the wall with a carpenter’s pencil, rolled up the tape, and nodded thanks to Troy.

  “You missing a DeWalt corded electric drill?” Troy asked the foreman.

  The foreman looked at him as if Troy had suddenly pulled a rabbit out of his shirt pocket. “I sure as hell been looking for it. What do you know about it?”

  “I’m afraid I have it. It’s evidence, but I’ll see if I can get it back to you someday.” He briefly explained about John Barrymore.

  “Crap. Evidence. It’ll be years before I see it again. Keep it. I’ll get another, least now I know to stop looking for it. It was only a spare anyway, ’case the cordless ones ran out of juice. Usually lose things on job sites. Tools, materials. Unless you fence it off and post a guard, or a dog, things walk off.”

  “Might need to get your fingerprints,” Troy said. “Or those of anyone else on your crew who might have handled it. If we get any prints off the drill we need to eliminate those.”

  “No problem. But mine would be on file anyway. Got me a CWP. Name’s Thomas Dolfe.” He spelled it.

  “You carrying right now? I didn’t see it. I usually do.”

  “Nah. Where would you conceal a weapon in some overalls? Gun’s in my truck. Wear it and it makes my pants fall down.”

  Troy smiled. “Know what you mean.”

  “I’m real sorry to hear about Barrymore,” Dolfe said. “He seemed a nice gent. He liked to come out and help us, which only set us back a little bit, so we let him. He liked to get his hands dirty.”

  “Any
point to finishing this job now?” Troy asked. “Not like he needs his woodworking shop any longer.”

  The foreman shrugged. “That would be up to her, I suppose. But there’s not much point to leaving it half-done and walking away, either.”

  While Troy was standing outside, Tom drove up in the second Mercedes.

  “Anything in there?” Troy asked as Tom got out.

  “Nada. The man actually kept gloves in the glovebox.”

  “That’s almost un-American,” Troy said.

  They both went inside the house where Troy handed the keys to Kathleen Barrymore. He had kept the boat key.

  She noticed at once. “Where’s the key to Wayward?” Apparently she had found another box of Winstons and she had to take the cigarette out of her mouth to talk to them. Then, since she still had a highball glass in her right hand, she had to put the cigarette back between her lips to take the car keys.

  “I’ll keep the boat key for a few days while we investigate,” Troy said. “Are there any other copies of that key around here?”

  “No. But get it back to me. That boat’s valuable. I can sell it.”

  “I’m afraid it’s sealed off at the moment. Don’t worry. We’ll be looking after it. Very, very closely.”

  Troy drove Tom VanDyke back to the yacht club so Tom could get his own car.

  “Tom, go to the hardware store. Buy some padlocks and replace the ones on the two outside doors on that boat. Bring me the invoice and the keys when you’re done.”

  “But she said there were no other keys.”

  “I know she did. You ever buy a padlock that didn’t come with two keys?”

  “You always this suspicious?”

  “I’m always this careful.”

  “She sure seemed cold about all that,” Tom said. “Her husband’s just been found dead and she’s more concerned about selling the boat.”