The Last Breath

by Danny Lopez

  “Guys,” she said, “guys …” The drumming died down. “Friends. We all know why we’re here, yeah? We need to work together to stop the closing of this little stretch of road. Everyone who’s here needs to be at the county commissioner’s meeting on Tuesday, yeah?”

  The crowd cheered.

  “I will take our petition with all the signatures. If we all crowd in there and each one of us speaks their piece, say whatever, talk about keeping this road open, and the access to the beach public, we will beat them.”

  Someone yelled: “Preach it, Willow!”

  “That’s right,” Willow said. “We all count. We vote. And we’ll be there at the meeting and make our collective voices heard, yeah?”

  The crowd clapped and cheered, and the drummers tapped on their tribal instruments. Willow, the hippie girl, raised her hands. “Namaste, my friends!”

  She jumped off the rock and was hugged by another hippie girl and a young man who looked like a surfer. Standing outside the perimeter of the crowd, a few older people paused to watch, looking a little bewildered, beach chairs and umbrellas in hand.

  A man in a yellow swimsuit and long black hair climbed up on the rock. He extended his arms out over the crowd like Jesus and said, “People. Just a reminder. Next Sunday at sunset we’re having a celebration of life for Jaybird. The event will take place at the drum circle. We’ll be spreading his ashes and remembering him as someone who truly lived a full and generous life. Jaybird was a friend to all of us. And he was the best friend Siesta Beach ever had. We’ll never forget him.”

  Someone yelled, “All right, Jaybird!”

  People cheered.

  “Everyone’s invited!” he cried and hopped off the rock.

  I turned to cross the street to ask Cap’n Cody if he’d seen Tessa, but he was already walking away toward the Village with his head bowed. I didn’t catch up to him before he turned and went into the Siesta Key Oyster Bar.

  I crossed Ocean Boulevard and followed Calle Menorca to the place where I’d parked my car. A part of me wanted to call Detective Kendel, bring him into the loop: two business partners murdered. But I still had no proof that Liam had been murdered—and no motive. I had to find out who was poised to benefit from Beach City Holdings now that the two partners had been killed. I put my Keith and Brandy Fleming theory—that Keith was trying to keep Liam quiet about the affair—on the back burner, and shifted my focus to Jaybird and Liam: killed because of a business deal gone sour. Either someone got greedy, or they pissed off the wrong person, owed money—something.

  When I got to the alley next to the blue apartments, my car was gone. In its place was a blue Hyundai Accent. I looked around, made sure I was in the right place. Then I saw the sign half hidden by the big round leaves of a sea grape tree: Tow Away Zone. Residents Only.

  Welcome to Siesta-Fucking-Key.

  I went around the side, ran up the stairs to apartment number 8, and knocked. No answer.

  A chill ran up my spine. What if Tessa …

  No. I shook my head and erased the image of her being pulled out of the Intracoastal by Detective Kendel and his crew.

  The Old Salty Dog.

  I ran down the stairs and raced across the street.

  “Dexter!”

  It was Tessa. She was crossing the parking lot of Morton’s Siesta Market, bags with groceries in both hands.

  My heart stopped. Then started again at a comfortable beat.

  “I’m sorry,” I said and took some bags.

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  “About the other night.”

  “It’s cool,” she said. We came up to her building, walked up the steps. “I was feeling pretty bad. I wasn’t myself.”

  “I know,” I said, “but I acted like a total asshole.”

  “No. You were right. You were a gentleman.”

  “It would’ve been awkward,” I said and watched her struggle to get her keys from her purse and open the door. “The last thing I want to do is hurt you.”

  She laughed. “Don’t flatter yourself, Dexter. I wasn’t trying to go to bed with you. I just didn’t want to be alone. And it was late. I thought you could just crash. I was offering you half my bed.”

  I followed her inside. I could see in her eyes that she was serious. I bit my lip.

  “I’m not as weak as that,” she said, and we set the bags on the kitchen counter. “Trust me. I’ve been in worse places with worse people.”

  “I misunderstood. I apologize.”

  She opened the fridge and started putting away the groceries. “No apology needed. So long as we understand each other.”

  She closed the fridge. I sniffed the air. The apartment smelled of smoke. “Leftover pizza,” she said and went to the sliding glass doors. “I was reheating it in the broiler and burnt it.”

  I followed her. From the balcony, I could see the next building and the alley below. A car was having trouble parallel parking. Past the building across the alley, all that was visible was another building and the blue of the sky. No beach. That was the argument for Beach Road. People wanted to keep it public because it was the only place where someone could drive and see the beach from their car. It was all that was left from the old days.

  “Did you hear?” I said.

  “What?”

  “Jaybird was Terrence Oliver.”

  “Liam’s partner?”

  “The one and only,” I said.

  “But Jaybird was a bum. He cooked at the kitchen of the Old Salty Dog and smoked pot and didn’t have a care in the goddamn world.”

  “I don’t understand it either. But those are the facts.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t believe it.”

  “This means whoever killed Liam probably killed Terrence—Jaybird. And I think it’s pretty obvious it has to do with Beach City Holdings.”

  “Do the cops know this?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Was Liam right-handed?” I said.

  “What?”

  “Was he right-handed or left-handed?”

  “Left-handed.”

  I ran my hand through my hair and glanced out the window trying to think of a surfer’s stance. “Which foot came forward?”

  “What are you talking about?” Tessa came to my side and curled a strand of hair behind her ear.

  “When he surfed. Did he stand with his right foot forward?” I imitated a surfer’s stance to demonstrate.

  Tessa shook her head and glanced out the window as if all our answers were floating between the buildings. “I don’t know,” she said. “Liam didn’t really surf.”

  “What? There’s a surfboard on the roof of his car.”

  “Jaybird surfed. Keith surfed. Almost everyone did. Liam was just learning. But it wasn’t his thing. He was a nature lover. He would rather be out on his kayak, or paddleboard.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It means he was murdered the same way as Terrence Oliver.”

  “How do you know that?”

  I took a couple of steps back and eased myself onto the couch. I was so tired. My head was buzzing from exhaustion, stress, jail.

  Tessa came around the other side of the coffee table and sat next to me, leaned forward. She smelled of citrus and sugar, brought back memories of my ex, of when we first met. Of the good old days.

  I massaged my temples where a tension headache was slowly building. Tessa stared at me. Outside, two people were arguing, something about a parking space. Siesta Beach, the Village. I imagined the noise here at night, especially during spring break when all the kids came down and the population exploded around the Village. One big eternal party. The island was theirs now. Most of the houses and apartments on the key were owned by corporations. They were making a killing on seasonal rentals: a one-bedroom apartment like Tessa’s could go for more than twenty-five hundred a week during peak season.

  “I broke up with Liam because I found out
about his company,” Tessa said in a monotone.

  I turned, looked at her dark, sad eyes.

  “We all used to hang out, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Liam was mister outdoors, right?”

  “Yeah, so I hear.”

  “I loved him for that. I mean, here was this guy who cared deeply about nature, enjoyed it. He loved Siesta and the people we hung out with. He loved the vibe. And he gave Jaybird a place to live.”

  “Terrence Oliver.”

  She sniffled but if there were tears, she did a great job of holding them back. “That’s the thing. I hated his secrets. Most of us knew his father was wealthy. He was cool about it. He never flaunted it or acted superior to anyone.”

  “Earlier you said he was very laid-back.”

  “And he was. He lived a simple life, like he wanted to be one with nature. Did you know he used to go out on his paddleboard early in the morning and meditate?”

  I shook my head. I knew nothing—nothing about Liam or Jaybird or Terrence.

  “One day I walked in on him. He was on his computer studying the County Appraisers website. He wouldn’t tell me what he was doing. So I pressed him on it. I wouldn’t let it go.

  “That’s when he told you about Beach City Holdings?”

  “Well …” Tessa hesitated. She drew in a deep breath, her chest rising and falling when she exhaled. “I didn’t know about the company. He didn’t say anything about that. Certainly not the name.”

  “What did he say?”

  She shrugged and then the first tear found its exit. She wiped it with the back of her hand and went on. “He told me he was handling these multimillion-dollar properties for a company.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  She wrung her hands and tossed her head to the side. “You don’t see it?”

  “He was a businessman—”

  “Exactly. He was the enemy. He preached one thing but did the total opposite.”

  “So you didn’t like that he was working for a developer.”

  “It was more than that. He was using us to find properties before they went up for sale.”

  “But that’s smart business,” I said. “A little sneaky, but—”

  “He was a cheat, Dexter. He had no integrity.”

  “Please,” I said. “It’s not as if any of the drum circle hippies owned any land.”

  “No, we didn’t,” she said defensively. “But the people we came in contact with did. He used us as his eyes and ears. Me at the bar of the Old Salty Dog, Lonnie at the Daiquiri Deck, Jaybird at the beach and the volleyball courts. Keith in Turtle Beach. We all hear things. Just a few weeks ago, Troy Varnel, that county commissioner who’s trying to close Beach Road, was at the Siesta Key Oyster Bar talking with a couple of developers about some empty lot on the Intracoastal.”

  “He wants to develop it?”

  “The developers probably do. They must’ve been asking for his help. That lot is like a secret kayak launch for some of us. Instead of going all the way down to Turtle Beach, we can go there. It’s just south of the Stickney Point bridge.”

  “And that’s the kind of thing you’d tell Liam.”

  She nodded. “But he was one of them.”

  “So you broke up with him.”

  “Well,” she said and curled a loose strand of hair around the back of her ear. “It was really because of Lisa Schmidt.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A teenager who hung out with us in the winter. Her grandparents owned the house where she stayed at the very end of Midnight Pass. Anyway, we were all hanging out on the patio at Liam’s place, beer in a cooler, a joint going around. Cap’n Cody was strumming his guitar. It was real nice, right? So Lisa says in passing how her neighbors were in the middle of a messy divorce. Suddenly Liam’s ears perked up. Man, was he interested.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So he was a fake.”

  “Don’t defend him,” Tessa cried. “You should’ve seen him fawning over Lisa. Nudging his way to meet her grandparents and the neighbors. He was such a weasel.”

  “Did he get the property?”

  “What do you think?”

  I knew the answer was in the affirmative. But none of it helped build a case. There was no motive. Unless Lisa Schmidt’s neighbors …

  “He was a hypocrite,” Tessa cried. “All this love for Siesta and nature, the kayaking and the paddleboarding. His love for the beach. It was a front to scope out properties on the cheap.”

  “If he didn’t snatch them up, someone else would.”

  “I couldn’t trust him anymore,” she said sadly, her eyes looking down at the terrazzo.

  “But you stayed friends.”

  “We did,” she said with a shrug. “He was a nice guy. I just couldn’t date him anymore.”

  “He also has a lot of acreage near Myakka and in East County.”

  “And what are developers doing out there?”

  We both knew the answer to that. That part of the county was being developed at an incredible pace. A few years back, when Rachel and I worked for the newspaper, we did a story on the ranchers who were selling—or losing—their properties to developers because they were being priced out by rising property values and taxes. That small pocket of rural Florida was now a small city.

  I didn’t like it any more than Tessa. And yes, it made me angry—at Liam and Terrence for being part of it. But I also had to admit it had been pretty genius of him to live like a beach bum to find the bargains in the key.

  “Look,” I said and took Tessa’s hand. “I appreciate you telling me all this about Liam. But people don’t kill people over a plot of land—”

  “Are you kidding me?” Tessa cried and leaned back on the chair. “People wage wars for a bit of land.”

  She was absolutely right. My problem was that I didn’t see a connection. I sighed and looked out the sliding glass doors. “I suppose he must have crossed the wrong person.”

  “Yeah, but who?”

  CHAPTER 28

  TESSA’S QUESTION ECHOED in my head: Who?

  Except I was thinking of a different who. Now that both Liam and Terrence Oliver were dead, what was to happen to Beach City Holdings? Who was to benefit? Was there a will?

  I stood, took out my phone, and dialed Joaquin del Pino.

  “He’s gone home for the day,” his secretary said impatiently.

  I looked at my watch. It was just after four p.m. I said, “Kind of a short day for him, isn’t it?”

  “His court case adjourned early,” she said, sounding a little testy. “Would you like to leave a message?”

  I told her to have del Pino call me as soon as he arrived in the morning. It was urgent.

  When I ended the call, I took out my wallet and looked for the business card for Thomas Pearlman, Esquire.

  Couldn’t find it.

  I glanced at Tessa. “Can I borrow your car?”

  “Why? What happened to yours?”

  “It got towed,” I said. “I need to rush downtown and see Bob Fleming’s lawyer.”

  She jumped up. “I’m coming with!”

  “No,” I said quickly. “I need you to do something else.”

  “Spy on someone?”

  I frowned. “Look up Beach City Holdings’ properties on the computer.”

  “You already did that,” she said.

  “I know. But I wasn’t sure what I was looking for.”

  “And now you do?”

  “Not exactly.” I went to the kitchen counter. “I need you to look at each property and write down the date of purchase, the purchase price, and the name of the previous owner.”

  “Why do I get the boring part?”

  “I’m serious, Tessa. It’s important. It’s possible there was a recent transaction that turned bad, didn’t sit right with a family member.”

  She huffed, but still handed over the keys to her Fiat. “Please be careful.”

  “I swear, if Bob Fleming hadn�
��t hired me to look into the murder, I would be putting him at the top of my suspect list.”

  “You have a suspect list?”

  I hesitated, looked away quickly because she was still on it. “It’s my job, right?”

  “Care to share?”

  “Not yet,” I lied. “It keeps changing.”

  “Dexter …”

  “I’ll be back in a couple hours,” I said with a grin and ran out the door before she could drill me for more info.

  * * *

  Just as I pulled Tessa’s teal Fiat 500 out to Ocean Boulevard, I stopped at the crosswalk. A couple of tourists carrying big folding lawn chairs and two kids on skateboards passed in front of me, followed by a man in a casual khaki suit whom I recognized right away as Alex J. Trainor, real estate agent. I watched him make his way up the steps of the deck of the Siesta Key Oyster Bar and take a seat at a table with a group of older men in Hawaiian shirts. The son of a bitch wasn’t just selling condos downtown—he was moving real estate on the key. The car behind me honked and startled me out of my dream.

  I didn’t want to cause alarm or disrupt the Fleming household. I was banking on Pearlman knowing if Bob Fleming had an arrangement with Beach City Holdings in case of dissolution, bankruptcy, purchase, public offering—or death of the officers, for that matter.

  And I didn’t really suspect Fleming, but he was a businessman—and from the looks of it, a shrewd one. I didn’t believe he would give Liam millions of dollars for a company without having any guarantees in case Liam decided to break with his partner—or die. I mean, helping your estranged son is one thing, but feeding money into a company where you have no stake, financial or otherwise personal, made zero sense.

  I parked on Palm Avenue and went up to the sixth floor of the Orange Blossom building. Vivian McCutcheon, the friendly secretary, was there, again dressed in a blue skirt suit, looking very well groomed, sitting erect as if she was expecting me. There was no one else in the dark, paneled room.

  “Is Mr. Pearlman in?”

  She frowned and made a slight tilt of her head. “And you are?”

  “I’m Dexter Vega, the investigator Bob Fleming hired to look into his son’s death.”