Low Tide

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  “Yeah,” Maggie answered distractedly.

  “It’s a Friday, which one of his businesses should we visit first?”

  “He usually works out of the Sea-Fair office,” Maggie answered, referring to the plant where Bennett Boudreaux bought, processed, and shipped oysters and Gulf shrimp. “But I hear he doesn’t go in all that much anymore.”

  “Well, then let’s try the house,” Wyatt told her.

  Larry and the EMT came back, carrying a gurney over the deep, powdery sand. They released the legs once they reached the body, and the medical examiner unfolded a black body bag and laid it next to the body.

  When the EMTs lifted the body by the shoulders and feet, a small chunk of bloody skull dropped to the sand, joining several other bits of hairy bone in the bloodstained patch of sand that had been beneath Gregory Boudreaux.

  It wasn’t until the men had the body on the gurney and began zipping the bag that Maggie looked at the face. There were burn marks on one side of the open mouth, and the top teeth that remained looked almost out of place in the bloody mess that surrounded them. Gregory’s eyes were closed, a fact for which Maggie was grateful.

  Maggie felt a small wave of revulsion creep through her stomach. As the bag zipped shut over his face, she tried to summon some measure of human or at least professional sympathy, but the only thought that came to mind was, Better late than never.

  For a town with one traffic light and a population of fewer than three-thousand people, Apalachicola had a preponderance of historic buildings. Between the old warehouses and quaint shops and cafes downtown along the bay and the residential historic district, there were around nine hundred buildings on the National Historic Register.

  The architecture of Apalach was a mixture of Greek Revival and Florida Cracker, brick mansions and squat shotgun houses. Apalachicola often put visitors in mind of a Floridian version of Nantucket. There were quite a few people who had come from up north to spend a weekend and ended up retiring there. There was also a substantial artist community in town.

  The result was a town that looked like it was stuck in the past, but which was actually surprisingly progressive in many ways. Fifth-generation oystermen with GEDs had lively discussions with former professors from Yale, and gay activists checked their event schedules with those of the DAR so that Battery Park didn’t get overbooked.

  Many of the most impressive old houses in town were located just a few blocks from downtown, on the Alphabet Avenues. Bennett Boudreaux’s house was among them, on Avenue D.

  Among other things, Bennett owned the largest seafood distribution company in Franklin County, shipping Apalach oysters as far west as Colorado and as far north as New York. He also owned trucking companies in both Apalach and Louisiana, several vacation rental houses on St. George, and a few local politicians.

  Boudreaux’s father had moved here from south Louisiana in the 1960s, gradually turning one oyster boat into a fleet and opening his own seafood business. Bennett had left Apalach to get a degree in finance at Ole Miss, then spent some years in Louisiana, building his businesses from the ground up. He’d come back to Apalach to take over his father’s shipping business almost thirty years ago, when his daddy died of a massive coronary. Some people, when they weren’t anywhere near Boudreaux, whispered that he’d probably scared the old man to death.

  Boudreaux had never been convicted of anything in court, or even arrested for anything. However, he’d been convicted of many things in the minds of most of the law enforcement officers and many of the citizens of Franklin County. He was suspected of running drugs, interfering with unions, bribing judges, funding politicians, and even contracting the odd murder or missing person.

  Boudreaux sat on numerous boards, sponsored many events, and even helped judge the oyster-eating contest at the annual Florida Seafood Festival, but more than a few people were more than a little scared of Bennett Boudreaux.

  Maggie pulled her Cherokee into the oyster shell driveway in front of Boudreaux’s two-story, white house, a wide, wooden home in the Low-Country Plantation style, which sat on a deep lot of almost an acre.

  Maggie saw Wyatt pull his cruiser in behind her and she turned off her Jeep and climbed out. As Wyatt made his way over to her, Maggie looked at the front porch that extended all the way around the large but surprisingly unpretentious house. Pots of begonias in every color hung from the porch rafters and larger pots of hibiscus sat on either side of the steps. An array of white wrought iron chairs and tables filled the porch from one end to the other.

  Wyatt met Maggie at her car.

  “Nice place, huh?” He took off his sunglasses to look up at the house.

  Maggie shrugged without commitment and they headed over to the flagstone path, oyster shells crunching beneath their feet. Once they got to the front door, they exchanged a look and Wyatt stepped forward. The white wrought iron screen door squeaked as he opened it to knock on the solid cypress front door. He eased it shut and waited.

  A moment later, a light-skinned black woman opened the door and peered at them without much interest. She was in her mid-fifties or so, angular and tall in a flowered housedress and straw slippers. She wore a white half-apron over her dress and was drying her hands on a towel made of French ticking.

  Maggie knew Amelia only by sight and only by first name. Boudreaux had brought her and her mother back from Louisiana with him, but no one ever saw the mother anymore and Amelia kept to herself.

  “Yes?” Amelia asked them, her voice deep and sandy.

  “Is Mr. Boudreaux available, please?” Wyatt asked. “We need to speak with him.”

  Amelia looked from Wyatt to Maggie, then cut her eyes toward the back of the house.

  “Mr. Bennett out back with his mangoes,” she told them. “You can walk around.”

  Wyatt nodded something like thanks, and he and Maggie walked back down the steps, the door closing quietly behind them.

  They walked to the side of the house, where they picked up an oyster-shell path through excessively healthy bougainvillea and hibiscus bushes and ended up in a back yard that took up most of the deep, narrow lot.

  Beyond a paved patio area just in back of the house, the rest of the lot was devoted to a dense planting of trees. There were coconut palms, bananas, Key Limes, oranges, avocados, and grapefruit, but the entire back of the lot was set aside for at least a dozen large mango trees. Mangoes weren’t the easiest thing to grow this far north unless you had the money for heaters and tarps and other means of intervention. Boudreaux did.

  In a sunny spot in front of the mango orchard were several rows of mangoes in various sizes and in various pots. This was where they found Bennett Boudreaux

  Wearing tan cotton trousers and an untucked white shirt, he was picking yellowed leaves from a young potted tree. He wore dark sunglasses and a straw Panama hat with a yellow band. Wyatt and Maggie crossed the grass and stopped a few feet away.

  “Mr. Boudreaux?” Wyatt asked.

  Boudreaux looked over his shoulder. He was small in stature, maybe five foot seven, but a youthful and handsome man, even in his early sixties. He removed his sunglasses as he turned to face them, revealing brilliant blue eyes underneath his curious frown.

  “Good morning, Sheriff,” he said, his voice much deeper than his size led people to expect. Everything about him, from his demeanor to his bearing, made him seem like a much bigger man to those around him, especially those who were not in his good graces. He was unfailingly polite and not given to bluster, but there was a blue collar hardness to him, despite his wealth and education, that intimidated many.

  Boudreaux’s eyes fixed on Maggie’s for just a moment.

  “Maggie,” he said with a quick nod. Maggie nodded back. “I doubt you’ve stopped in to say ‘hello,’” he said. “Please tell me those boys haven’t been messing around in the marina again.”

  A few weeks earlier, some teenaged boys with a surplus of courage and a deficit of sense had climbed the chain-link at B
oudreaux’s boat yard and had a little party on one of his shrimp boats. The parents had been more than happy to make restitution, probably relieved that Boudreaux hadn’t stopped by personally to collect it.

  “No, Mr. Boudreaux, I’m afraid we have some bad news,” Wyatt said quietly.

  Boudreaux looked Wyatt straight in the eye.

  “What is it?”

  “Your nephew Gregory’s body was found on the beach over on St. George,” Wyatt said. “Right now, it appears he shot himself. He’s dead.”

  Maggie watched as Boudreaux’s left eye narrowed a bit and he lifted his cleft chin, but there was no other physical evidence of emotion. None was expected; it wasn’t his way.

  “When did this happen?” Boudreaux asked after a moment.

  “Early this morning,” Wyatt answered. “About six, six-thirty.”

  Boudreaux tossed the leaves he was holding into a bucket, then took off his hat, crossed himself, and wiped a forearm across his brow. He looked at his hat for a minute. Wyatt and Maggie waited for him. When he looked up, Boudreaux’s eyes were dry and sharp.

  “And you think he killed himself,” he stated.

  “It looks that way, yes.” Wyatt took off his sunglasses and wiped at the bridge of his nose. “Did he live here? Did you see him this morning?”

  “No, he has a cottage over on Eleventh Street. 746 Eleventh Street,” Boudreaux answered. “I think the last time I saw him…yes, it was Tuesday. He came by the warehouse.”

  “You know if he owned a .38 revolver?” Wyatt asked.

  “I couldn’t say for certain, but we all have firearms,” Boudreaux answered. “I know he had a rifle; we hunt at least once or twice every fall.”

  “Do you know why your nephew might have wanted to kill himself, Mr. Boudreaux?” Wyatt asked.

  Boudreaux took a minute as he squinted up into the mango trees. A drop of sweat coursed from his perfectly barbered hair onto his brow. He touched it away with one finger before looking back at Wyatt.

  “I’ll be direct with you, Sheriff Hamilton. Gregory didn’t make much of an attempt at living.”

  “How do you mean?” Wyatt asked.

  “I mean he was a failure at the few things he was motivated enough to try,” Boudreaux answered. “Dropped out of Florida State, got dumped by the two women he proposed to, and probably would have been fired from his job if I didn’t own the company.”

  “So you’re not surprised to hear he might have killed himself?” Maggie asked.

  Boudreaux turned his gaze to Maggie.

  “I am surprised, but I’m not shocked,” Boudreaux answered. “I don’t care to speak ill of the dead, especially my own family, but Gregory’s never been a happy person and most of his unhappiness was his own doing. He was forty years old, and had nothing that wasn’t paid for by someone else.”

  Boudreaux looked from Maggie to Wyatt, then looked down at the ground.

  “Even so,” he said, “I probably could have done better with him.”

  “Did you get along alright?” Wyatt asked.

  “I’m not that easy to get along with,” Boudreaux answered simply.

  He ran a hand through his still-thick, brown hair and put his hat back on, cleared his throat.

  “Do you know when my nephew’s body will be released to the family?”

  “I can call and let you know,” Maggie answered. “It shouldn’t be more than a couple of days if everything’s as straightforward as it seems.”

  Boudreaux looked at Maggie with a touch of gratitude in his eyes.

  “Thank you, I’d appreciate that,” he said. “Do you need me for anything else at the moment? I’d like to call Father Manero and see about a Mass.”

  “Do you mind if we take a look at his home, see if he left a note?” Wyatt asked.

  “No. I have a spare key in my desk,” Boudreaux answered.

  “That’s alright, we’ve got his,” Wyatt said. “We’ll put them back with his effects when we’re through.”

  Boudreaux nodded his thanks, then looked at the ground again. Wyatt was about to say something when Boudreaux looked up and spoke.

  “It does surprise me that he shot himself,” he said. “Not that he ended his own life, but that he didn’t use pills or something.”

  “Why do you say that?” Wyatt asked.

  “Suicide is a cowardly act, but putting a gun in your mouth takes some courage,” Boudreaux said.

  He looked over at Maggie.

  “Gregory didn’t have a lot of that.”

  Maggie followed Wyatt to Gregory Boudreaux’s shotgun cottage, just a few blocks from Bennett Boudreaux’s home.

  Maggie sat in the Jeep for a moment after she’d turned into the gravel driveway. She took deep breaths of the Jeep’s air conditioning and told herself it was the midday heat she was avoiding. Though it was still early June, summer had shown up in a particularly humid mood, and promised to live up to the weather station’s prediction of an active hurricane season.

  Wyatt stood next to his cruiser, peering at her windshield, so she finally shut off the Jeep and climbed out.

  The cottage was respectable without looking particularly important to the owner. The grass was cut and the light blue paint was fairly fresh. The coral hibiscus by the porch steps did what it could to look decorative, but the place still had an air of vacancy to it.

  “Think Uncle Bennett owns this place?” Wyatt asked, playing with Gregory Boudreaux’s keys.

  Maggie shrugged a little and shook her head as she stopped beside him.

  “You’re unusually quiet today,” Wyatt said.

  “I’ve been up since Wednesday morning, remember?” she said.

  “Is that all?”

  “Well, I forgot to pay the electric bill, I miss my kids and I’m spending my day off with dead people. And you,” she answered, as they walked toward the front door.

  “So there are some positives,” he said, and she heard the grin in his voice.

  “Sure,” she said.

  Ordinarily, that would be true. She genuinely liked Wyatt and lately there had seemed to be some undercurrent of mostly playful flirtation between them that she’d found herself enjoying. Today, flirtation and innuendo were the last things on her mind.

  Wyatt unlocked the door and they walked into a combination living and dining room, with hardwood floors underfoot and a fireplace on one wall. To the left was a small, outdated kitchen that would have been charming in some other home, and a short hallway led to the back of the house. Brown leather furniture looked expensive but out of place in the living room, and a laptop and piles of papers on the dining room table made it less than welcoming.

  “He appears to be single,” Wyatt cracked.

  Maggie chose not to answer. Instead, she quickly made her way over to the dining room table, mainly in the hope that this would make the bedrooms Wyatt’s problem by default.

  She pulled a blue pair of Latex gloves from her jeans pocket and slid them on, then poked at a pile of both opened and unopened mail. There were quite a few credit card statements, most of them still sealed. A few pieces of junk mail. Next to the open laptop sat a legal pad with the top few pages folded under.

  Maggie heard Wyatt move from the kitchen to the back of the house as she looked at the open page of the legal pad. There were notes about several flight numbers and departure times, but no destinations. The dates were all for tomorrow.

  Maggie flipped the pad to the first few pages, but they were filled with doodles, mainly arrows and stars. Apparently, Gregory had been doing some thinking. She wondered if it had hurt. There was no suicide note, although several pages had been ripped off of the pad.

  She pressed the power button on the laptop and looked around the room while she waited for it to boot. There was a stuffed marlin over the fireplace, but other than a few rows of liquor bottles on a sideboard, the only other attempt at décor was a picture of Gregory on a fishing boat, flanked by Bennett Boudreaux’s two sons.

  Patr
ick Boudreaux was the Assistant State’s Attorney and his younger brother Craig made his living in criminal defense. The joke was that Boudreaux had covered all his bases when he sent his boys off to law school.

  The Windows screen appeared on the laptop with a jingle, showed the user as Gregory, and politely requested the password. Maggie hit “Enter” just in case, but Windows insisted. She turned the power back off as Wyatt came back from the back of the house.

  “Find a note?” he asked her.

  “No, but I can’t get into the laptop,” she answered.

  “We’ll take it back to the department and see what Jake can do with it,” Wyatt said, referring to the department’s computer guy.

  Maggie pulled the power cord out of the wall and wound it into a loop.

  “Well, the only dirty dishes in the sink are coffee cups, there’s nothing in the fridge but condiments and there are two empty bottles of Wild Turkey in the trash can,” Wyatt said.

  He moved over to the dining table and poked at one of the piles of mail.

  “Despite the optimism demonstrated in the three-thousand condoms I found in the nightstand, it would appear that our boy didn’t entertain anyone other than himself. At least, not here.”

  Maggie swallowed a bolus of nausea as she closed the laptop and set the cord on top, then walked past Wyatt and down the short hallway to the back. She ignored the bedroom on the right and stepped into the bathroom at the end of the hall.

  The bathroom was small and done in light blue tile, probably from the 1950s. A matching pedestal sink sat by the door. Maggie gingerly toed aside a discarded towel and stepped over to open the medicine cabinet.

  Aside from a razor, over-the-counter allergy meds, and a tube of toothpaste, there was a half-full bottle of paroxetine hydrochloride prescribed a year ago by a doctor in Tallahassee. Maggie thought it interesting that he’d gone an hour and a half away to get his antidepressant.

  She also wondered if the fact that this particular med often made it hard to orgasm was the reason why it was still half-full. Then she felt another push of nausea and wondered what Wyatt would think if she threw up in the sink.