by Don Bruns
“Maybe I’ll talk to him. Ask him if he or his partner were the ones who threw paint at the truck and took a shot at us in our room. I’ll ask him if he’s the one who bashed in his partner’s head.”
She smirked.
The speed was about sixty and with no lanes for passing, everyone evened out. Our myopic view was caused by mangrove trees growing high in the water on both sides of the road, so we just stared ahead. At more road. Crossing a bridge, I finally got a view of the open water, a brief look at where the blue sky met the blue of the gulf on the horizon. Florida was full of visual delights.
From a side road a box truck pulled out, blocking our view of the cars and the bike up ahead. A crudely painted sign was scrawled on the side.
HAULERS
“Damn.”
“Skip, it’s not like he’s got the option to lose us. I mean, we’ll see him if he gets off the road.”
And we did. But too late.
We passed a sign that said: LOWER MATACOMBE STATE PARK AND CAMPGROUNDS. A moment later, we drove by the paved road that exited right, into that very park, and we saw the motorcycle as it rounded a curve on that road and was lost in the trees. He’d gotten away.
“Damn.” This time it was Em. “I’ll find an exit and turn around.”
Thirty seconds later she braked and pulled the Porsche off onto a bare patch of earth. Spinning around, she pulled up to the highway and waited another two minutes while a stream of vehicles paraded by. Finally, we crossed the road and reversed direction. This time she made the exit, slowed down, and drove back into the trees that had swallowed the biker and his ride.
She stopped the car and while the engine idled, we took stock of the park. In front of us was a scattering of tents and booths-signs of an art festival or craft show. The closest paintings were hanging from the sides of a tent and they appeared to be crude oils of African masks.
To our right was a small concrete block restaurant with a sign that said: HOMEY KEYS COOKING. There was a scattering of pastel yellow, blue, and pink tables down by the water. A family of four sat at a blue table, eating sandwiches and watching pelicans scoop fish from the water into their deep bills.
“So, where did he go?” My eyes swept the location.
To our left was a gravel parking area where maybe twenty cars and trucks rested, two of them with trailers and boats rigged for fishing. There was no sign of the black bike. A young man with a long-billed cap and a deep tan stepped out of a pickup at the end of the row and walked toward us. As he passed I shouted out the window.
“There’s a campground here?”
“There is.”
“Where?”
He pointed to a narrow road back between some more trees.
I nodded and Em eased the car in that direction.
“Your Porsche is going to stick out like a sore thumb.”
She raised her eyebrows and turned to me. “Please, don’t refer to my automobile as a sore thumb. Got it?”
“Yeah, but you know I’m right.”
“Then I’ll park it and we can walk.”
And that’s what we did.
The campground was maybe half a mile back from the main park area, and on our short nature excursion we got to see more trees. A lot of trees.
Finally, we came to a clearing and there were rows and rows of campers and tents. The campers were the expensive ones that you can pull out the sides to make more room, and the Air Stream shiny aluminum trailers.
Fancy names like North Ridge, Holiday Rambler, and Coachman were printed on the sides of some. There were also campers that looked to be on their last leg, campers with dents and cracks, and tents that were stretched taut over poles. There were several lots with what looked like blow-up rooms and in the distance, I saw outhouses.
We walked together, eyeing the paths that ran between the temporary homes. A little girl with pigtails came racing out between two campers on a Big Wheel and almost took my left foot off, and not ten seconds later a dirty-brown mongrel mutt leaped at us, baring his yellow teeth. I jumped back, almost falling on top of Em, but the dog was restrained by a chain attached to a post driven into the ground.
“Do you anticipate any more attacks?” Em asked.
“I didn’t anticipate the last two.”
We kept walking, staring down each path, hoping to see some sign of the bike or the biker, but there was no sign of the black Harley with the gold fender.
“He may have grabbed a sandwich back at the restaurant and taken it with him on the road. There’s no proof that he’s here.”
She might have been right, but I took her hand and tugged her along. I hadn’t given up hope. But as we ended the walk, coming up on the last row of campers, I had to agree. We’d lost whoever it was we were following.
“Well, damn it. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”
She squeezed my hand.
We reversed our course and headed back the other way, still pausing to see down the rows where cars and trucks parked on small crushed-seashell lots. I felt it in my bones, this guy was back here.
“Don’t see it, Skip.”
“Could be pulled up beside a trailer or tent. We’d have to walk every path.”
“We can do it, but I think someone might get a little suspicious of this couple that’s scoping out the campground.”
“Good point.”
We walked back through the trees and headed for the Porsche.
I looked down and kicked at a beer bottle that lay on the ground. Watching it land in a clump of brown grass, I raised my eyes to see a man walking toward us. In his hand was a helmet, and he was swinging it back and forth.
Turning my head, I nudged Em. She turned as well and we stepped to the side of the narrow road to give him wide berth.
“Is that him?” She said it in a coarse whisper.
“I don’t think so.”
I risked a glance as the man walked past us. His eyes were focused ahead and he paid no attention to us.
I felt my heart literally jump in my chest and my stomach took a dip, as if I was on a roller coaster.
“Skip, for God’s sake, what’s wrong?”
I couldn’t talk. Couldn’t utter a single word. I froze in place, trying to catch my breath. Sweat broke out on my forehead and for a second I closed my eyes, trying to gather my thoughts.
“Tell me.” She grabbed my arm, shaking me, but it did no good.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I just kept nodding my head up and down.
I had seen a ghost. The person walking down that road was the dead guy. I would have sworn on it. The same guy that I saw in our room at the Cove, the blood from his head seeping into the carpet.
CHAPTER THIYRTY-SEVEN
“Peter Stiffle was the name of the dead guy.”
“James finds that amusing,” I said.
“The name?”
“Yeah. Not the death.”
“James would.”
“Could have been his twin, Em. This guy today looked just like him. Minus the cracked cranium.” I shuddered, thinking about that gruesome scene.
“Let’s walk through the case.”
She was driving back, the road almost empty and she had opened it up to eighty. My car, James’s truck-they had no idea what eighty was. Forty, fifty, that was a stretch for them, but eighty?
She goosed it up to ninety for a short stretch, but brought it back after a couple of seconds.
“Mary Trueblood hires Markim and Weezle. They agree to help find the gold.” Em was reciting from the story I’d told her.
“Right. And she waits for six months to hear from them. When she checks in, they’ve disappeared. Their phone is disconnected, their website is gone, and a personal check turns up nothing.”
“And she waits six months?” She had the speedometer up to ninety again. “Six months before hiring you?”
“That’s what she said.”
“Okay, maybe.” She stared out th
e windshield, seeing the same trees and pavement that I saw. A monotonous blur of green and gray.
“But she must have given them some clues. They didn’t just drive down here and await further instructions. I mean, she told you guys about the Coral Belle and you found,” she paused, slowing down as we approached traffic ahead, “well, we’re not sure what you found.”
“There’s always that.” I was worried about what we’d found. “But, we’ll find out tomorrow. I can’t believe it’s not good news.”
“So these two investigators disappear and you and your partner look them up on the Internet. If memory serves, you went to the Yellow Pages online and found their firm. Right?”
“We did. Right there, as a matter of fact.” I pointed out the window at The Green Turtle as we cruised by.
“You’ve got an idea of what they look like.”
“We do. We saw their pictures on the web.”
“And when James discovers the body in your room, he’s convinced it’s one of the investigators.”
“I was convinced, too. It wasn’t just James.”
“Okay, so you’re both positive that the victim bleeding all over your carpet was Weezle.”
“Yes.”
“And today, not more than thirty minutes ago, you are certain you saw the same man who was killed in your room at the Cove.”
I nodded. “I’m glad you timelined it, Em, but the fact remains, I saw a ghost or someone who looks exactly like the dead guy, Peter Stiffle.”
Em took her eyes off the road for a second, looking at me. “We call the sheriff’s office.”
“The less of those guys, the better.”
“No, no. Not to tell them that there’s a ghost. What we need is verification. Of the dead man’s identity.”
I thought about that for a minute.
As Em pulled into the parking lot at Pelican Cove I said, “He could have called himself Weezle or Markim. In reality I suppose he could be Peter Stiffle.”
The corners of her mouth turned up. She seemed to be somewhat amused herself.
“Yeah, there have got to be a lot of guys out there who are dying to change their names to Stiff from Weezle or Markim.”
“Stiffle.”
“Whatever. Skip, we need to know, once they’ve taken the fingerprints or whatever else they do for identity check, who the dead guy was. Then, we’ll figure out who the live guy is.”
“The ghost guy.”
“He’s not a ghost.” She opened her door and stepped out.
“No?”
“Guaranteed.”
“Great. I was beginning to wonder.”
“Trust me on this one.” We walked to the stairs. The elevator took too long.
“You’re sure it wasn’t a ghost?” Playing with her.
“Positive.”
“And just how can you be positive? That’s a pretty bold statement.” I paused, then remembered one of my favorite movies.
“You’re talking ghosts here, for God’s sake.”
“Skip, I know we’re talking-” She took a deep breath. “Your humor isn’t exactly on target today. We’re talking about dead people, and for some reason this ghost thing is not funny.”
She drew a deep breath, rolling her eyes at me. “But the line you just handed to me is a quote from the Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore movie, Ghost. Right? I got that, didn’t I?”
She’d nailed me.
“Well, there’s got to be an explanation other than your ghost theory. I’m wondering if you weren’t wrong about the dead guy’s identity.”
“I’m starting to doubt it too. Different name, and then I see who I think is the real Weezle at a state park.”
Em went up to our room. James wasn’t in his, so I walked over to Holiday Isle, hoping I’d run into my partner. I was pretty certain he’d be entertaining the married Amy since she was leaving for her other life tomorrow. Back to the husband and kid.
I wondered how it was to want the things that you can’t have. And then it hit me that maybe Amy was able to pull that off. She wanted a fling when she wanted it. A serious relationship when that suited her.
And maybe that wasn’t so bad. Maybe it kept things in balance.
And, I couldn’t wait to tell James the ghost story. He’d have some take on it. I’d also remembered a quote that I wanted to run by him. It was from the first Ghostbusters movie. I was sure he’d remember it. It was only eight words long, but it described what I hoped was going to happen with this entire case.
We came, we saw, we kicked its ass.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The lovebirds were at the bar, the bad guitar and singer drowning out any chance that James would hear me yell his name. The second-floor, open-air bar was fairly crowded with a bunch of middle-aged people down from Miami for some race. They sported race hats and T-shirts with race car numbers on them, and names that I didn’t know. Bottles of Budweiser lined the bar top and brightly colored race banners and checkered flags hung from the rafters.
Walking to the back of the bar, I put my hands on James’s shoulders.
“James, we need to talk.”
“We can talk here.”
“No.” I motioned to the stairs that led to the mini-tiki huts one flight up.
He leaned into Amy, saying something in her ear. She shrugged her bare shoulders, and we walked up the steps.
I told him about the body double, and he gave me a skeptical look.
“Skip, I’m about as positive as I can be that the dead guy in our room was Jim Weezle.”
“And I saw him today. I swear I saw Weezle.”
“Impossible. He was dead. That wasn’t some sleight of hand trick. Some magic. I mean, I got hauled down to that jail because they thought I had something to do with it and-”
“I know. I know. But James, somehow there are two different people. One dead, one alive.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Em’s calling the sheriff’s office right now. We’re going to confirm the dead guy’s real name.”
James didn’t even smile this time. He sipped his Bud and stared out at the water over the railing.
“Got a thought, amigo.”
“About the ghost?”
“No. About the boat.” He turned and looked at me. “We got nothin’ till tomorrow morning when we hopefully get to read that letter.”
“Agreed.”
“Well, I say we make another trip to the vacant property this morning. Three thirty in the a.m.”
“Are you crazy?”
“We position ourselves on that residential side and watch through the openings in the trees. I want to see if another boat comes in.”
“James-”
“We don’t have anything else to do, Skip.”
“Sleep might be a good thing.”
“You can sleep anytime.”
“And what’s it going to prove? If we see the boat?”
“Then we’ll know it’s a regular occurrence. We’ll find out if it’s the fishermen who are in that tournament. We’ll pay more attention. And, before all the stores close, why don’t you go to that camera store up by O’Neill’s and Malhotra’s office and get a couple pairs of binoculars?”
Running up and down the highway, we’d seen the store three or four times.
“James, those cost some serious money.”
“Dude, we need the equipment. It’s for the job. If the lady is willing to up our pay to two mill, she’ll spring for the glasses.”
“And why aren’t you going to get the binoculars?”
“Skip, this is Amy’s last night in town. We want to make the most of it.”
There are times when I want to punch him right in the face, but he wouldn’t understand.
We drove to the camera store, then to the drugstore for the nail file.
“The guy who was killed came up as Peter Stiffle.”
I kept both hands on the wheel. I didn’t want to piss Emily off by driving with one han
d, and besides, the car felt more alive when I was totally engaged in the driving process. I know, it was about a two-mile round-trip drive, but hey, it was a Porsche Carerra. And this time I was in control.
“Damn. So it must be Weezle that we saw.” She stared out the windshield.
“Who is Stiffle?” I asked more rhetorically.
“No idea.”
“By the way, Mrs. T. went online and put five hundred more dollars on the debit card. She thinks we’re onto something. That’s how we got the binoculars.”
“Skip, I hope we are on to something, but you do realize that investing fifteen hundred dollars in a venture that is expected to gross forty-four million isn’t exactly a commitment of faith.” She watched me, either to gauge my reaction to her comment or to make sure that I was treating her precious auto with the proper care.
“I get that. But she hasn’t said no to anything so far.”
“When daddy has a multimillion-dollar project, when anyone in our business has even a million-dollar project, there’s a lot of up front money. The lady should be happy to come up with whatever you want. The return on investment is going to be huge. Unbelievable.”
Return on investment. I remembered enough of my college business courses to know she was right. One hundred percent right.
And I remembered the story of Mel Fisher, who searched the bottom of the Florida waters for sunken treasure. His oldest son and his daughter-in-law were both killed in a dive while looking for gold. Now Mel was someone who seriously had an investment in his project.
She picked out a six-dollar file when cheap emery boards would have done the trick, but I guess she can afford it, even without the debit card from Mrs. T.
“So we’re going tonight?”
“James thinks we need to get to the bottom of the boat thing. Find out why O’Neill threatened us.”
Em took a deep breath as I pulled into the Cove. “I think he’s right.”
“Really?”
“I do.”
James was agreeing with Em. Em was agreeing with James. That almost never happened. I looked up above to see if the stars were aligned, but it was still daylight. I made a mental note to check on that later in the evening.