Apparent Wind (The Forgotten Coast Florida Suspense Series Book 7)

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  “She was strangled?”

  “I believe so, yes,” Larry answered. “At the moment, I don’t see anything that points to another cause of death.”

  “The gator didn’t get her?”

  “No, that definitely wasn’t the case. Look here,” he said, lifting one side of the tarp. Maggie squatted down next to him.

  The woman’s body was clothed in gray athletic shorts and a light blue tank top. No bra, no shoes. The tank top had been pulled up above the woman’s waist, and there were several puncture wounds on her abdomen, but very little blood accompanied them. The punctures didn’t look like they were very deep, either.

  “Judging by the very small amount of blood, it’s a safe bet that she was dead when the gator found her. Obviously, I’ll know more later. But the fact that she’s not missing any flesh tells me the gator discovered her very shortly before the witnesses did.”

  Maggie nodded, then took a look at the woman’s face. Recognition wasn’t instantaneous. She noted first that the woman’s open eyes were an odd, but pretty, shade of gray. Her curly, almost black hair was cut just beneath her chin. She looked like she might be in her thirties. Maggie’s first overall impression was that the woman was beautiful. Her second impression was that she knew her. She took a deep breath and then huffed out a sigh.

  “I know her,” Maggie said.

  “I don’t recognize her as a local,” Larry said.

  “She wasn’t local for very long,” Maggie said. “And it was back in the nineties.”

  “Who is she?” Dwight asked.

  “I’m trying to remember her name,” Maggie said. “It was unusual. Pretty. Started with an ‘M’. I just thought of her as Numbers 1 and 3.”

  “How do you mean?” Dwight asked.

  Maggie pulled her iPhone out of her back pocket. “She was Axel Blackwell’s ex-wife. Twice.”

  “Aw, crap,” Dwight said.

  “Yeah.” Maggie had grown up with Axel. He’d been her late husband’s best friend since elementary school and was a shrimper, as David had been.

  She pulled up her camera, took a quick shot of the woman’s face. “Marisol,” she remembered suddenly. “I don’t remember her last name, but she was Cuban.”

  She stood back up and sighed, looked over at the two stories of hotel rooms, about a dozen on each floor. “I’m going to go see if she was staying here,” she said. “Dwight, you stay with Larry and get down everything we know so far.”

  “Okee-doke,” Dwight said, opening up his tablet.

  Maggie walked back up the wooden steps, ignoring William and Robert’s pointed looks as she passed them. She walked back out front, and approached Brenda and the other maid.

  “Brenda, can you look at a picture for me?”

  “Is she chewed up?”

  “No. And it’s just her face.”

  Brenda took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Yeah, I guess.”

  Maggie gently pulled her a few feet away from the others, then brought up the picture of the dead woman’s face. She held it so Brenda could see it.

  “Do you know her?”

  Brenda’s eyes widened, then she looked quickly away. “I’ve seen her,” she said, her voice hushed. “She’s a guest, but I’m not sure which room she’s in.”

  “Okay,” Maggie said, closing the photo app. “Thank you. I’m sorry about that.”

  Brenda shrugged, then lit a cigarette with shaky hands.

  “Is anybody in the office?” Maggie asked.

  “Angel. But look out by the back door,” Brenda said. “She’s probably smoking.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Brenda,” Maggie said.

  She looked over Brenda’s shoulder as a white SUV with a Channel 5 logo pulled into the parking lot, followed immediately by Wyatt’s dark blue Ford F-350. She sighed. The news sometimes came in handy, but never at a crime scene.

  Wyatt was out of his truck and at the SUV’s side by the time its doors were opened. Maggie watched him as he talked to the two people who got out, a stocky man in a baseball cap and a blond woman that Maggie recognized as a reporter.

  When he’d been the Sheriff, Wyatt had usually worn jeans and a polo, but today he was dressed in khaki trousers, a blue button-down shirt, and a tie. It was disquieting. Maggie went down the wooden steps and started crossing the gravel lot. Wyatt saw her, said something else to the news people, and headed over to her.

  At six-four, Wyatt was an imposing person. Though he was two years shy of fifty, he had the build of a much younger man. The women loved him for his dimples, his thick, brown moustache, and his laughing brown eyes. The men loved him for his wit, his humility, and his general good-guy demeanor. Maggie loved him for all kinds of reasons.

  “Hey,” he said, as they met in the middle of the lot.

  “Hey,” Maggie said back.

  “Come over here,” he said, and took her elbow. They walked over to the lattice-covered smoking area in front of the hotel. “So, what’s the story?” he asked quietly.

  “We don’t have a lot you can actually say yet,” she answered. “I’m 99% sure I know the victim, but I want to verify that. I’m on my way to the front office to see if she’s registered. One of the maids says she’s a guest.”

  “Who do you think it is?”

  Maggie sighed. “One of Axel Blackwell’s ex-wives,” she said.

  “What’s her name—Angela?”

  “No, this one is from a long time ago,” Maggie answered.

  “Local?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, so what do we have, besides that?”

  “Some diners at Caroline’s discovered her in the water underneath the dock. She was dead already, but a gator was carrying her around.”

  “Well, crap.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where’s the gator?”

  “Up the creek a ways,” Maggie answered. “Fish & Wildlife are keeping tabs on him. I’m not sure if they’re planning on euthanizing him or what.”

  “Once it gets out, they’ll have to,” Wyatt said. “They always do.”

  “Probably,” Maggie said. “Anyway, you might want to stress that she wasn’t killed and eaten by the thing.”

  “So, is this a drowning, or what?” Wyatt asked. “She have too much to drink upstairs at the bar?”

  “I don’t know if she did or not,” Maggie said. “But, Larry says she was most likely strangled. Sometime late last night or very early this morning.”

  “This is excellent,” Wyatt said drily.

  “Yes.”

  “All right, well these people are basically going to get a line of crap,” Wyatt said. “We have no solid ID, her next of kin needs to be notified first anyway, and we don’t have cause of death except that it wasn’t gator. That’s what they get.”

  “I don’t think you’re as enthusiastic about public information as the Public Information Officer is supposed to be,” Maggie said.

  “I never said I wanted to inform the public,” Wyatt said. “I just want to hang in there until I’m good for my pension.” He looked over his shoulder at the lavender walls. “Does this tie clash with the hotel?”

  “Everything clashes with the hotel,” Maggie answered. “But you look handsome.”

  “Oh, good,” Wyatt said, as Maggie walked away. “Maybe I can score with the TV lady.”

  “It’ll be a real shame about her,” Maggie said over her shoulder.

  “I get a little excited when you pretend to be jealous,” he said to her back.

  Maggie crossed the parking lot and went down the short, tree-shaded path that led to the back door of the hotel office. Just beyond it was the back deck of Boss Oyster, a popular restaurant which was under the same ownership. It wasn’t open yet. Maggie figured that was probably a good thing.

  She found Angel Brandt smoking by the back door, right next to the No Smoking sign. Angel was in her late forties, a pretty, dark-haired woman with the deeply tanned skin of an oysterman’s wife.

  “Hey,
Angel,” Maggie said.

  “Hey, Maggie. This is some kinda crap, huh?” She let out a mouthful of smoke. “I moved up from Clearwater to get away from this kind of thing.”

  “I know. I’m sorry,” Maggie said.

  “Is it a guest?”

  “It could be,” Maggie answered. “Brenda thinks she is. Woman in her thirties, chin-length dark, curly hair? Ring a bell?” Maggie really didn’t want to show her the picture if she didn’t have to.

  “Cuban?”

  “Possibly,” Maggie said.

  “Crap.” Angel ground her cigarette into the sidewalk with the toe of her shoe, then stuck the butt into her pocket. “Come on in, I’ll pull the driver’s license for you.”

  Maggie followed Angel into the office that also served as a lobby of sorts for the inn. Along one wall, bottles of liquor were available for sale to guests, as well as an assortment of Boss Oyster shirts and hats.

  Maggie waited at the counter as Angel flipped through a small file box next to the computer.

  “I checked her in a couple days ago,” Angel said. “Tuesday, I think.”

  “Was it just her?” Maggie asked.

  “Yeah. I remember because I thought that was kind of weird, you know? I mean, she’s—she was really pretty.”

  Maggie nodded distractedly. Yes, Marisol Somebody had been beautiful.

  “Here it is,” Angel said, and handed Maggie a white card stapled to a folded piece of copy paper.

  Maggie glanced over the card. Marisol Corzo. Maggie didn’t know if she’d ever known the last name. She’d given her address as one in Tampa, and given a cell phone number. On her vehicle information, she’d listed the license plate number of a red Kia Rio. Maggie had no idea what that was. She flipped the card over and looked at the attached paper. It was a photocopy of Marisol’s driver’s license. The address was different, but still in Tampa. The license was three years old.

  Marisol Inez Corzo was thirty-four years old, five foot seven, and not an organ donor. Maggie stared at her picture. Even the DMV couldn’t take a bad picture of her. Maggie looked up at Angel.

  “Do you remember anything about her?”

  Angel shook her head. “Not really. I talked to her when she checked in, but she had a hard time looking up from her phone, you know? I saw her going out to her car yesterday, but that was it.”

  “Okay.” Maggie handed the registration back to Angel. “Can you run me copies of these?”

  “Sure.”

  “I also need her room key,” Maggie said. Angel nodded, and Maggie thought she saw her shiver just a bit. “I’ll be right back.”

  Maggie walked out the front door, walked the few steps to the edge of the parking lot. There were two red vehicles in the small lot. One was an older Volkswagen Beetle. The other was a little compact car that looked new or close to it. It was parked in one of the spots on the far end of the hotel. She’d need to wait until the news people were gone before she took a look. The last thing they needed was for the press to track the plate and release Marisol’s name before they should.

  Maggie walked back inside. Angel was placing a room key on top of the photocopies she’d made, It was the old-fashioned kind, with an actual key and a turquoise, diamond-shaped plastic tag.

  “Did you take any phone calls for her?’ Maggie asked as she picked up the key and papers.

  “No, uh-uh,” Angel said. “Nobody calls hotel rooms anymore, though, you know? Everybody’s got a cell phone.”

  Maggie nodded. “Okay. I’m going to check out her room.” She looked at the room key. “Tell the ladies Room 14 is off limits, huh?”

  “Will do,” Angel said. “It’s in the back, about halfway down.”

  “Thanks, Angel.”

  Maggie walked back outside. Wyatt was talking to the reporter in the middle of the lot. Maggie walked behind the little news crew, glancing over at Marisol’s red car as she made her way back to the walkway by the stairs.

  The maids had dispersed, but she got the eagle-eye from William and Robert again as she made her way past the officers and the small crowd from Caroline’s.

  She stopped at room 14. Two Adirondack chairs, one pink and one lime green, sat outside the window facing the water. The curtains were drawn. Maggie turned the key and opened the door. The bed was unmade. Very unmade. The sheets were half off the bed, and the bedspread was in knots. It didn’t look like Marisol had slept alone. It didn’t sound like it, either. The shower was running.

  Maggie pulled her Glock from her back holster and walked slowly toward the half-open bathroom door. Once she made the door, she could see a tall form through the white shower curtain. She was about to announce herself when the water was shut off. She raised her weapon as the shower curtain was slung aside, and Axel Blackwell stood there, a lit cigarette in his mouth and a can of Dr. Pepper in his hand.

  He startled, but recovered quickly. “Crap, Maggie,” he said around his cigarette. “I had a dream something like this when we were in high school.”

  Maggie lowered her weapon, let it drop against her thigh.

  “Get dressed so I can kill you,” she said.

  “That’s not how it went.”

  MAGGIE HAD TOLD AXEL that he couldn’t smoke in the room, as it was a possible crime scene. She’d told him he couldn’t go outside to smoke, either, as neither one of them wanted the cluster of onlookers and witnesses to see him. They’d all seen her go into room 14, and they knew whose room it was, even if they didn’t the victim’s name.

  So Axel sat in the small upholstered chair near the window, an unlit cigarette dangling forgotten from his lips. He stared at the crack of light between the drawn curtains. Maggie leaned against the wall near the bed and stared at him.

  Axel was ruggedly handsome, in that slightly scruffy, unintentional way that some men are. He was thirty-seven, the same age as Maggie, and had been shrimping since before he’d graduated high school. His skin was perpetually and deeply tanned, his eyes frozen in a permanent squint. He was six feet tall, with a slim build made muscular by daily hard labor. He wore a hat at all times, unless sleeping or showering, and Maggie thought he looked odd sitting there, his head naked and his damp brown hair poking out in all directions.

  He also looked profoundly sad. With the exception of her ex-husband’s burial at sea several months ago, she’d seldom seen that emotion in him.

  “What are you doing here, Axel?” she asked him quietly.

  He reached for the pack of Marlboros in the pocket of his denim work shirt, then seemed to remember he already had a cigarette he couldn’t smoke. He swallowed.

  “Marisol called me yesterday, asked me to come have a drink with her,” he said quietly.

  “Where?”

  Axel turned to look at her. “Here. We went upstairs for a little while, then we ran over to the BP and grabbed a six-pack and some of those wine cooler things she likes,” he said. He looked back at the slice of sunshine in the window and Maggie saw him swallow hard.

  “What was she doing here?” she asked.

  Axel shrugged slightly. “She said she was here on business.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “I don’t know, really,” he said. “We were never much for conversation.”

  “You had to talk about something, Axel,” Maggie said, irritation creeping into her voice.

  “Yeah. The fact that I was single again,” he said. “She asked me how business was going. How my kids were, that kind of thing.”

  “Did she talk to you about what was going on with her, what was happening in her life?”

  “She said she was doing good,” he answered quietly. “Making good money doing marketing for her boyfriend or something like that.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “No, I didn’t ask,” he said.

  “So, she has a boyfriend but she asks you to her hotel for a few drinks,” Maggie said flatly.

  Axel looked at her, his green eyes frank. “That happened sometimes.�
��

  “What do you mean?”

  He sighed, moved the cigarette to the other side of his mouth. “She had a way of popping up out of the blue,” he answered. “I wouldn’t hear from her for three or four years sometimes, then she’d call and ask me to come down to Tampa, or meet her halfway, in Cedar Key or somewhere.” He took the cigarette from his mouth, laid it down on the little round table. “I’ll be honest with you, Maggie; almost every time I cheated on one of my wives, I cheated with Mari.”

  “That’s awesome, Axel,” Maggie said. “What is it with you and this woman?”

  “Hell if I know,” he said.

  “You get married after knowing each other, what, three weeks? Then file for divorce five weeks later, and then you celebrate your divorce from Marci by marrying Marisol again for another two months.”

  “She was a lot of fun to be with, as long as you weren’t in love with her,” Axel said.

  “Were you in love with her?” Maggie asked.

  “At some point.”

  “If you don’t like being married, why don’t you just stop doing it?”

  “I do like being married,” Axel said. “I just always end up being a jerk.”

  “Then quit being a jerk!”

  “Now?” he asked her, like she’d asked him to go bungee jumping with her.

  Maggie sighed. “All right, run me through last night,” she said. “What time did you meet her here?”

  “Around seven,” he said. “I wasn’t taking the boat out last night, so I was working on my nets. She called me around six, and I finished up and came over.”

  “And you went up to The Spoonbill?”

  “Yeah. We met upstairs,” he answered. He picked the cigarette back up and stuck it in his mouth.

  “How long were you up there?”

  Axel rubbed at his face. “I don’t know, till around nine or so.”

  “And then you went and got some beer.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Were you drunk?”

  “When we went to BP? No.”

  “How drunk were you once you started drinking up here?”