Chasing Justice

by H. Terrell Griffin

  “She probably did, and she probably welcomed it. She was just tired of living.”

  “I wonder what happened in her early life to set her on that path.”

  “We’ll never know,” I said. “Sometimes the gods just drop a bag of crap on some children and they never get out from under it. They just can’t figure it out. Life is difficult and they give up at an early age and just go with the flow. And the flow is like sewage running downhill. For some of those people, hate becomes a shield that tempers the stark reality of their lives. And it’s a vicious cycle. Each generation breeds another generation of broken people, as mired in hopelessness as those who went before.”

  “How did you get out of it, Matt? You were born into a family of alcoholics. They were poor, lived a hardscrabble life, didn’t have much education, and yet, you became a successful lawyer.”

  “I don’t understand it, J.D. Some make it out, and others don’t. Maybe it’s pride. Or raw ambition and a willingness to work hard and sacrifice everything that makes life sweet, just to feed the ambition monster. I don’t know the answer, but I know what despair feels like. It can be a killer. And I felt it in that little house yesterday.”

  J.D. kissed me on the cheek and called Detective Corbin to tell him we were coming back to town. He suggested we meet him at Connie’s house. I called the hotel and booked us another room.

  The taxi took us to the hotel, and we again dropped our bags with the concierge. He’d put them in our newly assigned room. Then we went back to that little bit of hell where Connie Pelletier had lived and died.

  Two police cruisers were parked in front of the house next to an unmarked Crown Victoria that was so obviously a cop car I wondered why they even bothered to keep it unmarked. A crime scene van was parked behind the cruisers.

  A uniformed cop was standing on the little front porch. J.D. told him Detective Corbin was expecting us. We walked into the living room to see that nothing had changed, except for the twisted body of Connie Pelletier lying on the shag carpet. Technicians were working the scene, so we hung back at the edge of the room, waiting for Corbin to finish talking to another cop.

  “Do you have a time of death?” J.D. asked, when Corbin joined us.

  “The medical examiner’s man thinks she was probably killed last evening. Between six and midnight.”

  “Who found her?” I asked.

  “One of the neighborhood kids heard the dog barking and came up on the porch and looked in the window and saw the body. His mom called us. The kid said the dog hardly ever barked, so it got his attention.”

  “Where’s the dog?” I asked.

  “Animal Control just left with him. They aren’t sure they’ll be able to save him. He’s pretty bad off, and really old.”

  “Any idea who shot Connie?” J.D. asked.

  “No. So far the techs haven’t turned up anything. The scene’s clean as a whistle.”

  “Professional?”

  “Probably. If it turns out that the same gun killed Tatum, I’ll put money on both murders being professional hits.”

  “I wonder if it has anything to do with my investigation,” J.D. said.

  “Maybe. I’d like to get a complete statement from you guys about your visit with Connie. I should be finished here in a few minutes. Maybe we could go somewhere for a drink.”

  “Do you mind if we look around a bit?” J.D. asked.

  “No, but would you mind if I have one of the crime scene people go with you? If you see anything you think might be pertinent, I’ll want a record of it.”

  J.D. nodded and Corbin waved over one of the techs and introduced us.

  * * *

  The rest of the house was as untidy as the living room. A hall led toward the back of the house, with a kitchen and bath on one side and two small bedrooms on the other. Connie had slept in one of the bedrooms and used the other as an office of sorts. It contained an ancient roll-top desk, a chest of drawers, a dresser, and a bookcase. The few books stacked on the shelves seemed to be self-published racist screeds, of little interest to anyone other than idiots.

  “Have you checked the drawers?” J.D. asked.

  “We haven’t gotten to them, yet,” the tech said.

  “Do you mind if I take a look?”

  “Go ahead, but put these on.” He handed her a pair of latex gloves.

  J.D. found it in the third drawer she searched. An old snapshot of a woman holding a baby. She showed it to me. We couldn’t be sure, but the woman could have been Connie, when she was young. J.D. laid the photo on the dresser and took a picture of it with her cell phone. She put it back in the drawer where she’d found it and finished searching the others.

  “Nothing but old handouts and bills for printing, that sort of thing,” J.D. said when she’d finished the search. She thanked the tech and we left him to his investigation. Corbin asked us to meet him at a bar in the French Quarter in one hour. He said it would be quiet and he’d bring his tape recorder.

  * * *

  The bar was empty at five o’clock. It was a small place, cozy, even elegant. There was a bandstand set up for a three-piece combo, about a dozen tables scattered around the floor, and a bar in the back that stretched across the width of the room. Other than the three of us, the bartender was the only person in the place.

  “It’ll get a little rowdy later,” Corbin said. “They play some wonderful jazz here, and there are quite a few regulars.”

  “Are you one of them?” I asked.

  “Yep. I love good jazz.” He put his digital recorder on the table and switched it on. “Tell me about Connie.”

  We told him about our visit, what was said, our impressions of Connie, our suspicions that she was lying to us about Darlene and maybe some other things. J.D. told him about the picture she’d found in the desk drawer in Connie’s house. The interview took about thirty minutes, during which I sipped a Miller Lite, J.D. had a white wine, and Corbin drank sour mash whiskey, straight.

  “Are you headed back to Florida tomorrow?” Corbin asked.

  “Unless you need us for something else,” J.D. said.

  “Nah. If something comes up, I’ll give you a call.”

  “Will you make sure to get a DNA sample from Connie?” J.D. asked.

  “We will. I’ll send you the results as soon as I get them.”

  We had one more drink while J.D. and Corbin told old cop stories and laughed about their jobs and the peccadillos in which they sometimes found themselves.

  I called the airline and made a reservation for a six a.m. flight to Tampa. Via Atlanta, of course. That meant we had to leave the hotel by four to get to the airport by four-thirty. It would be a long day. J.D. and I had a quick meal in the hotel restaurant and went to bed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  It was nearing one o’clock on Saturday afternoon when we crossed the Manatee Avenue Bridge onto Anna Maria Island. We stopped at Duffy’s for a burger and drove onto Longboat Key. I had called Maggie Bannister, the widow of the man Abby Lester was accused of killing. She agreed to see me mid-afternoon. I took J.D. with me.

  I’d never met Maggie Bannister, but that wasn’t all that unusual, even on a small island. While our off-season population was probably no larger than three or four thousand residents, the winter crowded the island with twenty-five thousand people. We had an ever-shifting population, so I regularly met someone I probably should have known, but didn’t.

  The Bannister home sprawled along a choice piece of bayfront property just south of Longbeach Village, where I lived. The lot was large and stretched from Gulf of Mexico Drive to the bay. We drove down a winding lane lined with Royal Palm trees until we came to a house that appeared to be one of the few remaining homes built in the 1960s. Most of the others had met the wrecking ball, and their lots were now filled with mansions. I knocked on the door and was greeted by a woman in her mid-thirties. She was attractive, blond, and smiling.

  “Mr. Royal,” she said. “Do come in.”

&nbs
p; I introduced J.D., and we followed her into the living room where we had a view of the bay and the Sister Keys. She offered us something to drink. We both declined. We sat, J.D. and I on a sofa and Maggie Bannister in a chair across from us. She was sipping from a tall glass of something clear. Water, I hoped. “I appreciate your seeing us, Mrs. Bannister,” I said. “I know this is a difficult time.”

  “Please call me Maggie,” she said. “I’m surprised our paths haven’t crossed before, Matt. It’s a small island, after all. I heard you’re representing Abby Lester.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Maggie laughed. “Matt, let’s get off on the right foot here. That bastard’s death is not a loss to me. In fact, it’s a great relief. He was mean clear through, just plain evil. He thought nothing of beating the hell out of me when he felt like it, and he was always dipping his wick in some little slut he found in bars or whorehouses, or God knows where. I’m just glad he’s gone.”

  I realized then that she had been drinking. She hid it well, but the cadence of her speech was just a little off, and there were squint lines at the edges of her eyes, like she was trying to focus. “Did you kill him, Maggie?” I asked.

  She sat, her face still, no expression whatsoever. Then, “A reasonable question, Matt, under the circumstances. But no, I didn’t kill him. I might have, given the chance, but I have a perfect alibi for the time he was murdered.”

  “May I ask what that alibi is?”

  “I was with a person of impeccable credentials who’ll testify to my whereabouts.”

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  Maggie smiled. “I can’t divulge that, Matt. I’m sorry, but it might put a good man in an impossible situation.”

  “I can find out, you know. Depositions and all that.”

  “I’m sorry, but I won’t talk even if the court orders me to. If I’m charged with the crime, and I don’t think I will be, my friend will testify on my behalf, but that’s the only way it’ll happen.”

  “Why didn’t you leave your husband?” J.D. asked.

  “Good question. I wish I had an answer. The shrinks have lots of answers, but I could never figure out which ones applied to me. I just stayed. A couple of months ago, a friend convinced me to take action. I did. I kicked the bastard out and got a restraining order. My friend gave me a gun, and I learned how to use it. I told Nate that if he ever came near me again, I’d shoot his sorry ass.”

  “He believed you?” J.D. asked.

  “Not at first. But the day after I served him with the restraining order, he showed up here and threatened to kill me. I stuck the pistol in his gut and told him I was going to pull the trigger if he didn’t leave.” She laughed. “I think he wet himself. I never heard from him again.”

  “When was that?”

  “Three weeks ago? I could check the restraining order, if you like.”

  “That’s not necessary. Did you ever visit him in his new condo?” I asked.

  “No. I had no reason to see the bastard.”

  “Was Nate having an affair with Abby Lester?” I asked.

  “I have no idea. I’ve never met Abby, but from what I hear, she’s not the kind of lowlife Nate was usually drawn to.”

  “How long were you two married?” J.D. asked.

  “Ten years.”

  “How did you meet, if you don’t mind my asking?” J.D. said.

  “Oh, I don’t mind. I was working as a bartender over at the Hyatt Regency on the mainland. He was a semi-regular and seemed a little shy. One night he asked me out. I was young and dumb and pretty impressed that this rich guy wanted to take me out. He brought me out here. He was a perfect gentleman. He was ten years older than me and divorced, but I had stars in my eyes, I guess, and they blinded me to the reality of that bastard. We dated for three months, and then had one of his judge friends marry us down at the courthouse.”

  “When did the trouble start?” J.D. asked.

  “About three months after the wedding. He came home drunk one night and stunk of cheap perfume. I accused him of screwing around and he hit me. Only once, but it gave me a black eye. He apologized and begged me to forgive him. What a crock. I didn’t realize that was the start of a ten-year ordeal.”

  “Did it ever get better?” J.D. asked.

  “There were some good times. Nate was very generous and we lived pretty well. He took me on some real nice vacations, and we got along most of the time. I learned to overlook his affairs and tried not to cross him on anything. I didn’t want to make him mad. I guess I was afraid of him, but I never really thought of it in those terms. Over the past couple of years, it got to the point where he’d beat me for no reason. At least, none that I could see. Just the meanness percolating out of his gut, I guess. Something went wrong at work, I’d get hit. Somebody dinged his car door in a parking lot, he’d take it out on me. He was careful not to hurt me enough that I had to seek medical attention, but it was pretty bad. I’m glad somebody killed the bastard.”

  “Do you know a woman named Victoria?” I asked.

  “Yes. She goes by Tori. She worked for him at a project he was doing over in Lakeland. She was his assistant on some other things he was doing, but she was pretty much running the Lakeland site.”

  “You seem a bit skeptical about her job,” I said.

  “She was his latest squeeze. She’s young and pretty and, I think, very smart. She has a degree in business. But there were problems. I’m not sure what they were, but I think Nate had given Tori too much responsibility and she was screwing up. He told me before I kicked him out that he was planning to fire her, but I think he was also trying to figure a way out of the affair he was having with her.”

  “What can you tell me about Tori?” I asked.

  “Not much. I only met her once, and that was at a cocktail party in Lakeland when Nate was setting up the sales office for the project. I think she’d just shown up and applied for a job Nate had advertised. My guess would be that it was her body more than her credentials that got her the job.”

  “Where did she get her degree?”

  “I have no idea. She might not actually have one. That could just have been part of Nate’s smoke screen. Give him a reason for hiring a hottie. Who knows?”

  “Do you have any idea about who might have wanted him dead?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Maggie said with a smile. “Anybody who ever bought one of his condos, or worked for him, or with him, or screwed him, or even met him. He was one mean and ruthless son of a bitch.”

  There was nothing else. She was running out of bile, her anger dissipating as she talked, as if just telling the story unburdened her. J.D. and I left and drove the short distance to my cottage.

  “She’s pretty bitter,” I said.

  “I wonder why,” J.D. said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “Yeah. She has a lot of reasons. Most of those are also reasons to kill him.”

  “Do you think she did it?” J.D. asked.

  “I don’t know. She had every reason to do so.”

  “She lied when she denied ever being in his condo.”

  “Yeah, I caught that. Her fingerprints were on the list Gus sent me.”

  “Why would she lie about that?” J.D. asked.

  “Maybe she either killed him or was there when someone else did.”

  “There’s that. I wonder why FDLE didn’t charge her. She had a lot more reason to kill her husband than Abby did. Even if Abby was having an affair with him.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that since Gus sent me the prints,” I said. “Charging Abby might have made sense if Maggie’s prints weren’t in the condo. But since they were, you’d think she would be the prime suspect.”

  “Maybe FDLE didn’t know about the violence in their marriage.”

  “I’ll have to look at the court file, but I’m pretty sure a judge wouldn’t have issued a restraining order without some evidence that Nate was at least threatening Maggie. That should have b
een enough, even without evidence of the beatings, to point FDLE or Sarasota PD to Maggie instead of Abby.”

  “Maybe Gus can come up with a reason Sarasota PD didn’t follow up on that.”

  “Yeah. I’ll give him a call.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Sunday brought one of those bright mornings we Floridians live for. The island lay still in the gentle sun, and the aroma of frangipani blossoms filled the soft air as J.D. and I jogged toward the beach. We crossed the dunes on the wooden bridge at the end of North Shore Drive and turned south. The Gulf was an infinity of turquoise, flat and inviting. The hard-packed sand squished under our sneakers, gulls cackled, joggers and walkers smiled and waved, the contrails of a high-flying jet slashed across the otherwise flawless blue of a crystalline sky. “Paradise,” J.D. said. “It just doesn’t get any better than this.”

  “And you’re the angel that makes it complete.”

  She punched me on my arm. “You’re a sickie, Royal.”

  “You didn’t think that poetic?”

  “I didn’t even think it was cute.”

  “I guess we have a day with nothing to do,” I said. “You got any ideas?” I wiggled my eyebrows. Or at least I tried to wiggle them. It’s harder to do than you might think. It didn’t seem to make the impression I was trying for.

  “We could go to the Longbeach Café for breakfast.”

  “Okay. Then what?”

  “Moore’s for lunch?”

  “Okay.”

  “Finish up with dinner at Mar Vista?”

  “Is eating all you ever think about?” I asked.

  “It’s all I’m thinking about right now.”

  “So we’ll make a day of it in the village. Doing nothing.”

  “Maybe Gus will call,” she said. “Or Detective Corbin.”

  “Gus said it’d probably be Monday before he could talk to one of his buddies at Sarasota PD. And I doubt that the New Orleans medical examiner is going to spend his weekend doing an autopsy on as undistinguished a victim as Connie Pelletier.”