Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3)

by Kling, Christine

  Then of course, there had been that bad gut feeling I’d gotten out at the reservation. Earl Tigertail was a man who carried a truckload of resentment and hatred. The way he talked to Zale about getting rid of the casino gambling ships made me think he had lost touch with reality. Zale was a Pontus heir, but he was still an eighth-grader who had just lost his dad. Was Earl so deep in his cloud of hate and blame that he would have killed Nick to try to seize the gambling boats? I found that idea less believable, but worthy of consideration nonetheless.

  There were plenty of other possible suspects, but I had no evidence and no idea what more I could do to help Molly. Yet it made me sick to my stomach to think of her sitting in jail, suspected of murder while a woman she hated was taking over the company that rightfully belonged to her son. I was so far out of my league on this thing—I mean, what the hell did I know about the Russian mafia or contract hit men or how to investigate a murder? There was so much more that I needed to know, like what was the evidence the cops had against her, what were the details of the arguments between Nick and Kagan, and who was Kagan, anyway? Where did he come from? What was his background? I didn’t know how to go about finding any of this information— and certainly couldn’t do it tonight.

  I swung open the Jeep’s door when my stomach rumbled for the third time. Maybe I could rustle up a can of soup or something out of the kitchen in the cottage. The last dinner I’d eaten at home had consisted of bread and those plastic-wrapped orange slices of processed cheese. When I took out the cheddar cheese I’d meant to eat with the bread, it was all green and fuzzy. I’d lost track of when I’d bought it. I pitched it and reached for the processed cheese. That’s the nice thing about those square slices. No matter how many years they’re in the fridge, they never go moldy. B. J. would probably say that was because there wasn’t enough organic material to grow mold on.

  When I passed through the side gate, my dog wasn’t standing on the other side waiting to greet me, so I suspected my brother was around somewhere. When I came out of the shadows of the path that led along the side of the house, I saw that not only was he there, he wasn’t alone.

  “Hey, guys,” I called out across the lawn to the two figures sitting in deck chairs out on the dock, watching the last of the afternoon sunlight leak out of the winter sky.

  “Hey Sis, c’mon over for a beer and some sausage.”

  Mike Beesting turned halfway around in his chair and waved. I hadn’t recognized him at first because he was wearing his artificial leg, and with his jeans and Topsiders you’d never guess the leg was not his own. Mike was a good friend who had taken early retirement from the Lauderdale Police Department when some crazy city worker decided to get back at the boss who fired him by showing up with a shotgun and two pockets full of shells. Mike had just happened to be passing the scene, and he managed to save several lives—albeit at a mighty stiff personal cost. Mike never complained about it, though. He enjoyed his life aboard the Irwin 54 sailboat that was paid for by the compensation package he’d grabbed on his way out the door. The only thing he ever did complain about was the discomfort of wearing the prosthesis. Nine times out of ten, Mike was hopping around on his boat, with a rum drink in one hand and a grin on his face.

  As I walked out to the dock, I saw that they had a Styrofoam beer cooler between them filled with cube ice and green bottles, and balanced on Gorda's bucket was a piece of scrap plywood they must have scrounged from the Larsens’ continuous remodeling lumber pile. On the plywood was a large brown sausage cut into fat slices with what looked to be the rigging knife I kept on board my tug. Abaco was sitting, trembling with anticipation, staring at the sausage and occasionally turning her eyes on one or the other of the two men. She was showing extraordinary restraint; somehow, the guys seemed not to notice.

  I patted her on the head and told her what a good dog she was, then said, “Well, boys, looks like you’ve made yourselves mighty comfortable.”

  Mike pulled a beer out of the ice and offered it to me. “Have one,” he said. “I’d offer you my chair, but I wouldn’t want to offend an independent woman like you.” He and Pit grinned like a couple of ten-year-olds. Judging from the number of empties lined up on the dock, the two of them had been at this for a while.

  “No thanks, and I suggest you watch it with those wisecracks.” With my thumb and forefinger, I gave Mike a thump on the side of his head. “You can’t afford to lose any other appendages.” I turned to my brother. “I thought you were going to be bunking aboard the Firestorm from now on.”

  “Yeah, I am, but I needed to come back here to get my stuff. I didn’t want to show up for the interview with my gear, like I knew I’d get the job. When I saw Mike go by in his dinghy, I hailed him, and he offered to bring me up here to get my stuff. And we were starved, so we stopped off at this little deli that just opened up by the Southport Raw Bar.”

  “And all you got was beer and a sausage.”

  Pit looked at Mike with a confused look. “Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”

  I shook my head, turned around, and crossed the yard to my cottage. And B. J. thought I was the one who had terrible taste in food. Inside, I threw my shoulder bag on the couch, washed up a little, then saw the red light blinking on my answering machine. I pushed the button for the message and got a two-word command in Jeannie’s stern voice. “Call me.”

  “Hey, what’s going on?” I said when she answered the phone.

  “Seychelle, you have got to get a cell phone.”

  “Oh, come on. You know I hate those things. Most of the time the people who need me can reach me on the VHF.”

  “You’re losing business, you know. People expect you to have a cell today.”

  “I know this is not why you wanted me to call you.”

  “No.”

  “What happened in court today? Is she coming home?”

  “I’m afraid not. It’s not totally unexpected, but I’m disappointed all the same. Listen, tell me about your day first, then I’ll explain it to you.”

  My day, I thought, started out under the fresh clear sky of the Glades. I was free and Molly was sitting in a box, accused of murder. And I felt incredibly inadequate for the job of getting her out.

  I told Jeannie the story about dropping Zale off at his great-grandmother’s place, about the uncles, about Earl’s attitude, and about Jimmie’s comment about the Russian mafia as opposed to the Italians.

  “He’s right. The Russians are some nasty characters.”

  “After that, I went by Pontus Enterprises to check on my salvage claim and to nose around a little. Janet came by while I was there.”

  “So I assume you’ve heard the news.”

  “Yup. What a mess, huh? Jeannie, I thought you told me Nick had a prenup.”

  “Yeah, he did. That wouldn’t stop him from changing his mind later, though.”

  “Hmm. There’s something going on between Leon Quinn, Nick’s attorney, and the grieving widow.”

  “Really?” Jeannie said. “How do you know?"

  “You can see it in how he looks at her. How he touches her.”

  “Very interesting.”

  “Is it possible this second will is a fake?”

  “Anything’s possible, but I think there will be too much scrutiny on this one. They’d have to be crazy to think they could get away with that.”

  “Jeannie, I swear I don’t know what to make of Janet. This afternoon, she seemed so sweet and sincere. I guess she’s had a pretty rough life. But just about the time I was leaving, when she started to talk about inheriting the company, I saw a hint of what Molly claims to see.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. It sounds weird, but I could swear she has another, deeper voice. Her laugh is a part of it, too. It sounds different than the way she usually talks.”

  “And I suppose she handles serpents and speaks in tongues?”

  “Come on, Jeannie. I know it sounds weird, but—”

  �
�Like I said, you and Molly are more alike than either of you knows. Janet Pontus is just an ordinary woman who happened to win the lottery when Mother Nature was handing out looks and sex appeal. She’s used it to her advantage, and that pisses some other women off. End of story. So what’s happening with the salvage claim on the Mykonos?”

  “Quinn says he hasn’t done anything, and now Janet claims that she will handle it as Quinn’s new boss. Maybe it would be best if we dealt directly with the insurance company on this one. Remember that insurance investigator we met when we were working on that trawler that caught fire right on the three-mile mark? What was his name?”

  “Bill Casey?”

  “Yeah, him. Why don’t you call him? He knows or can find out just about everything in the insurance business. Ask him who the insurers are and contact them directly. I’m sure they aren’t going to want to pay the cost of us arguing this one in court. They’ll see my claim is fair even if Janet and Quinn don’t.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Okay, so tell me exactly what happened to Molly today.”

  “No surprises. They formally charged her and there’s no bail. Until we can figure out what the hell is going on here, she has to stay in jail.”

  “I don’t know if she’s up to it, Jeannie. She was so thin when we saw her on Monday, and now, after all this, I’m afraid that spending too much time in there could make her really sick.”

  “I know. I’m worried, too, but it’s not like we’ve got lots of choices here.”

  “Damn,” I said, pacing the living room of my cottage, the portable phone held to my ear. “I feel so helpless, and I get really pissed when I feel helpless. I wish I knew what more I could do about it. I’ll call Zale out at Big Cypress tomorrow. He gave me the number, and I promised I’d let him know what’s happening with his mom. Poor kid. It’s like he’s lost both his parents in a couple of days.”

  Jeannie didn’t say anything for several seconds, and I began to wonder if the line had gone dead. Then she said, “Sey, in spite of what they look like, those two detectives are not stupid. We just need to find something concrete, some kind of evidence that will point them in another direction. You know boats. Think about those boats—TropiCruz Casino gambling boats. Use what you know.”

  After I hung up the phone, I collected a half loaf of day-old French bread, some mustard, more orange cheese, and a very ripe tomato. I stuck a half can of peanuts under my chin and trotted back out to join the guys.

  Sitting cross-legged on the wood dock beside the bucket table, I made myself a sandwich and accepted the cold beer Mike opened for me.

  “Hey, Sis, I thought you might be interested to know that just about everybody I met down at the Marriott today eventually turned the subject around to Nick Pontus.”

  “Oh yeah? What were they saying?”

  “I guess he was planning on building some big marina over on the other side of the Seventeenth Street Bridge from them.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, most of the guys I was talking to either already work on big megayachts or are trying to find jobs on one. They’re not exactly environmentalists, and they like the idea of having another marina for these gas-guzzling monsters. They see more jobs.”

  “I’m pretty sure I know most of the guys you were talking to, and, most of them, it doesn’t matter how many megayachts come to town—they’re still not going to find jobs.”

  Mike held his index finger in the air. “She’s got a point.”

  “But that’s not the point I’m trying to make. This morning, when I first got there, they were all worried because they’d heard that the kid was going to inherit Pontus, and they were afraid the development was going to be put on hold. Some of these guys knew Molly in high school, and they know her reputation. They figured the kid’s like his mom—a real manatee-loving environmentalist. But then around one o’clock, after the midday news, word spread up and down the dock that there was a second will, leaving half of what he had to the new bimbo wife and putting her in charge of all of it. Is that true?”

  I chewed my mouthful of sandwich, the spicy mustard mingling with the hot flavor of the sausage. It was so good I didn’t want to hurry. I finally swallowed. “I guess so. That’s what Nick’s attorney Quinn said when I saw him today. And, by the way, the grieving widow was there, too.”

  “Word on the dock was that she’s all about money and flash, and she’ll certainly go through with the marina project.”

  “They’re probably right—if she can get it approved by the city commission. I met a pretty together lady today who’s doing everything she can to see that that doesn’t happen.”

  “I wish your ‘together lady’ luck,” Pit said.

  “Me, too.”

  For the next several minutes I chewed my dinner too fast and finished my beer. About that time, the cross-legged position wasn’t quite so comfortable anymore. My waistband was cutting off my air supply. I stretched out on my back on the sun-warmed planks, and though I was tempted to unbutton the top button of my jeans, my ladylike reserve prevented me.

  After a particularly loud powerboat passed with blaring Latin hip-hop music, I opened one eye and looked up at my cop friend. “So, Mike, what’s your theory? Who do you think shot Nick Pontus?”

  “Well,” he said, and then he belched loudly. “Excuse me. Well, it’s hard to say, Seychelle. Nick had more enemies than Port Everglades has rats. From Key West to Jacksonville and even over in Tarpon Springs, that man was involved in more deals that went south—for one reason or another. Some folks made a ton of money off him—and others lost a ton. I’m talking folks who lost everything and were suing Nick to get it back. People have killed over lots less.”

  “Yeah, that’s true,” I said, and I thought for the first time in a long time about my old boyfriend, Neal Garrett. Greed was a powerful motive, and it had gotten Neal killed in the end. In this case, it looked as though both greed and revenge were part of the picture. I told the guys, “Leon Quinn is convinced that it was a professional hit by Ari Kagan’s friends in the Russian mafia.” Mike set his empty bottle next to the three others on the dock by his chair and reached for another beer. “It does look like a pro job. I didn’t know till just now, when your brother told me that you and Molly Pontus used to be friends.”

  “Yeah, what can I say? Life’s complicated.”

  “Well, like I said, I didn’t know you had anything to do with this, but a buddy of mine from the department called me today about chartering my boat for his anniversary. I’d been hearing all about the funeral and the arrest, and I asked him what he knew about the case. He told me they found the murder weapon in Molly Pontus’s garage. It’s an SKS rifle with a scope. Not your run-of-the-mill weapon.”

  I felt like I couldn’t be hearing this right. What Mike was saying was so far out of the realm of possibility, I thought I must have slipped into some kind of dream. “What? Say that again.”

  “I said, they found the rifle that was used to shoot Nick in Molly’s garage. That’s a pretty damning piece of evidence.”

  “That’s insane. If they really found it there, someone else put it there. Not Molly. She would have freaked if she even knew there was a gun somewhere on her property. What the hell’s an SKS anyway?”

  “It’s a Russian-made semiautomatic rifle. What they used in the military over there before the AK-47. They’re not that common, but not that rare.”

  “Oh. It’s Russian, huh? Well, duh. Haven’t the police looked at what that might tell them?”

  “They think that the shooter chose that weapon to throw suspicion on the Russians, that the shooter meant to take the gun somewhere and dump it so it would be found, but simply hadn’t had the time. They think the shooter was either Molly herself or, more likely, someone she hired.”

  His face didn’t have the usual merry cast, the twinkling eyes and the mouth that turned up in the corners. His skin looked as though it had grown heavy and was sagging on his face. It was so unusu
al to see sadness in Mike. “This is bad, isn’t it? Really bad.”

  “Yeah, I’m afraid it is.”

  I didn’t know what else to say. The world had gone haywire. The one person I knew who was least likely to ever hurt anybody was now sitting in a jail accused of murder.

  “And what makes it worse,” Mike said, “is how quickly Molly filed the will.”

  “But, Mike, today there’s another will.”

  “Which Molly knew nothing about. She believed her son was going to inherit it all.”

  The three of us sat there in silence for the next ten minutes watching the last afternoon boats putt-putting their way up the river to their docks. Captain Courtney passed by on his tug Cape Ann, pulling a big Feadship, with Perry White on Little Bitt working the stern. I waved to them and didn’t even have it in me to wonder why they got the job and I didn’t. I had other things to worry about. More important things.

  When we were kids, Molly was always littler than me. In a way, I protected her like she was my younger sister while in truth she was a few months older. There was a time once, back when we were both about fourteen, when we took the bus down to Fort Lauderdale Beach over spring break. This was just before the city fathers decided to do a makeover of the beach, and the place was still jammed with college kids. We started talking to a couple of cute college boys from Georgia, and a while later we went out to sit on the empty lifeguard tower after the guards had packed up and left.

  At first we were just talking, but then the guy sitting on the other side of Molly started trying to unbutton her shirt. She told him to cut it out, and he just laughed. When she told him again, and he still didn’t stop, I reacted like a girl who had grown up with two older brothers. I reached back and punched him in the face with everything I had. The fierceness of that punch surprised even me. He wore glasses and they went flying as he toppled over, flat on his back on the wood floor of the lifeguard tower. His friend stared at me in horror, and I swear it was like a movie where everything just seemed to stop and hang frozen in time for several seconds. When time started back up again, I grabbed Molly’s hand, yanked her to her feet, and we jumped off the side of the tower into the sand. We ran all the way to the bus stop, and it wasn’t until we were on the bus, headed for home, that we looked at each other and started to laugh.