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

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  “My parents were boat people,” Alfredo went on, staring at his water. “They came over to Miami in 1975. My mother was pregnant, but she lost the baby. She had me a few years later, and then Mari after we moved to Tampa.”

  Maggie nodded and waited.

  He looked up at her. “Her ex-husband, Alex, you think he did this to her?”

  “Axel,” Maggie corrected him quietly. “No, actually, I don’t. But we have to look at every possibility.”

  “But the paper said you arrested him,” Corzo said.

  “Yes. That wasn’t my decision,” she said. “I’ll be honest with you. I know Axel quite well. If he did this, he’ll be prosecuted for it. But I don’t believe he did.”

  “If you know him, did you know my sister?”

  “Just barely,” she answered. “They were—they didn’t stay together very long.”

  “No. Neither time,” he said.

  “Were you and your sister very close?”

  “Not by Cuban standards, no,” he said with a shrug. “Mari liked to do her own thing. She didn’t want to be a traditional Cubana, you know?”

  “In what way?” Maggie asked.

  “She didn’t want to do manual labor like our mother, but she didn’t want to go to college like me, either,” he said. “By the time she graduated high school, our father was gone, may he rest. He fell from some scaffolding. He was a painter.”

  “I see,” Maggie said.

  “Marisol wasn’t lazy,” he went on. “She was always running and going. But she liked things to be easy. She didn’t want to work, but she liked nice things. So she used her looks and her personality to get people to take care of her, to give her things.”

  He looked up at Maggie, and she nodded. “Okay,” she said.

  “That sounds like she was a prostitute or something, but she wasn’t,” he said hurriedly. “She just didn’t mind being dependent on her boyfriends. She liked living in their nice houses, letting them buy her expensive clothes. She was like a professional girlfriend, though she always thought the next guy was going to be Prince Charming.”

  “I understand,” Maggie said, though she really didn’t. “Did she have a lot of boyfriends?”

  “One at a time, but a lot, yes,” he answered. “She always had the next one lined up.” He sat forward, his hands tightening on the water bottle. “My sister wasn’t a bad person. She loved our mother. She was always bringing her expensive presents, taking her to nice places. She was very sweet to my children, respectful to my wife. I loved my sister, but she had a certain lifestyle, and it didn’t make her happy. She was always smiling and laughing, but she was never happy.”

  “Mr. Corzo, do you know who her boyfriend is now? Was she with someone?” Maggie fished out her notebook and clicked her pen open.

  “Yes, but I don’t know that much about him. A man named Toby Mann. They’ve only been together for a few months.”

  “Have you ever met him?” Maggie asked.

  “Just once. I didn’t like him.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s a wannabe drug lord,” Corzo answered. “He has a restaurant or something, too, and he seemed to think that made him classier and more socially acceptable, but really he’s just a slick young punk.”

  Maggie finished scribbling and frowned up at him. “How do you know he’s a dealer?”

  “She told me,” he answered. “She hid things from my mother, but she didn’t bother too much with me. A lot of her boyfriends were criminals. Dealers, mostly. She knew I’d find out, so she was usually pretty honest about it. But our mother didn’t need to know.”

  “Why would she assume you’d find out?” Maggie asked.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I just assumed you knew. I’m the staff psychologist for the Tampa PD.”

  That gave Maggie pause. “No. No, I didn’t know that,” she said quietly. “Who was she involved with before Toby Mann?”

  “A man named Gavin Betancourt. She introduced us to him last Easter.” Alfredo answered. “She told our mother that he owned a lot of real estate. Maybe he did, but he also sells coke and heroin to other rich people. She left him for Toby.”

  “How did Betancourt take that?” Maggie asked.

  “I have no idea,” Corzo answered, shaking his head. “She never mentioned it.”

  Maggie saw his mother and Dwight coming down the hall, and she stood up. Corzo stood as well.

  “Again, I’m very sorry,” Maggie said. “I didn’t know her well, but she was a beautiful girl.”

  “Yes,” he said, nodding at the floor. “She would have been a lot happier if she wasn’t.”

  MAGGIE HAD NO TROUBLE getting a phone number for Toby Mann from the Tampa PD. She used her desk phone to dial it, and took a long swallow of her café con leche as she listened to it ring. On the fourth ring, she got his voice mail.

  “This is Toby,” a smooth, well-modulated voice said. “Do it.”

  “This is Lt. Maggie Redmond from the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office,” Maggie said. “It’s very important that I speak with you. Please give me a call back at 850-529-6552, extension 21. Thank you.”

  It was her third message to him that day. She hung up the phone, picked up her purse and her to-go cup, and headed down the hall.

  She wasn’t used to Wyatt’s new location yet. He’d been at the end of the hall for ten years. Now she had to remember to turn left from her office. His new office was just a few doors down.

  He was pecking at his computer, looking more normal in his SO cap and navy polo, though he’d opted for khakis rather than jeans. He looked up as Maggie walked in.

  “Hey,” he said pleasantly.

  “Hey.” She plopped down into one of the vinyl chairs in front of his desk. “How’s it going?”

  He swung his chair around to face her and unscrewed the cap from the obscenely large Mountain Dew on his desk. “Lovely,” he said. “I’m preparing my little speech for the career fair at the middle school.”

  “Are we recruiting adolescents now?”

  “We are if it makes us look accessible and involved,” he said, then took a swallow of his drink.

  “We are accessible and involved,” Maggie said.

  “Well, apparently we don’t look it,” Wyatt said. “What are you doing?”

  Maggie opened her mouth to answer, but Lance Moore, a deputy with almost twenty years under his belt, wandered into the office. “Hey, Boss?”

  “You can’t call me ‘Boss’ anymore, Lance,” Wyatt said.

  “Okay, Boss,” Lance answered. “You remember that lady that said somebody poisoned all her dogs over there in Tate’s Hell last year?”

  “Yeah?”

  Though Tate’s Hell was a state park, there were a handful of people still grandfathered in back there.

  “Well, she says somebody’s been sneaking around her property. She’s worried about her new dogs,” he said.

  “Okay,” Wyatt said.

  “So, I’m thinking, you know, we see if maybe the rangers can take a look-see, right?”

  “Well, first, what the hell are you asking me for?” Wyatt asked pleasantly. “Secondly, why are you so scared of one little old lady?”

  “Well, first of all, I’m asking you because I don’t have to explain the whole thing to you,” Lance answered.

  “But I can’t give you an answer,” Wyatt said. “You people have to stop trying to get me to be the sheriff.”

  “You’re getting kinda worked up,” Lance said, deadpan. “Second of all, I’m not scared of her for no reason, Wyatt. She shot sandbags at my ass.”

  “They hurt,” Wyatt said.

  “They do.”

  “But if she called you, I can’t tell you to pass it off to the rangers,” Wyatt said. “You need to saunter down the hall and ask the sheriff.”

  Dwight walked in as Wyatt finished speaking, and raised a hand to Wyatt.

  “Hey, Boss,” Dwight said.

  “Quit it, Dwight,” Wyatt
replied.

  “Can I take Dwight with me?” Lance asked.

  “No! And that’s not my call, either,” Wyatt said.

  “So I can, then,” Lance said.

  “Uh, I’d go with you to wherever, Lance, but I gotta go with Maggie,” Dwight said apologetically.

  Lance shook his head, then waved disgustedly at Wyatt. “This is crap, Boss,” he said, then stalked out of the office.

  Dwight looked at Wyatt, who rolled his eyes at him as he took another swig of his Mountain Dew.

  “What’s wrong with Lance?” Dwight asked him.

  Wyatt was swallowing battery acid, so Maggie answered for him. “He doesn’t like our new leader.”

  “Who does?” Dwight asked.

  “You get along with everybody. Why don’t you like him? Wyatt asked.

  “Mostly on account of he’s unlikeable,” Dwight said.

  Wyatt raised his eyebrows at Maggie. “You guys need to fix this,” he said.

  “Why are you telling me?” Maggie asked.

  “Because the guys look up to you,” he said.

  Maggie snorted. “There were frozen, dead frogs in my locker last week,” she said.

  “Aw, that was just in fun, Maggie, you know that,” Dwight said. “’sides, me and Jake went out on our night off to gig them frogs.”

  “Am I supposed to thank you?” Maggie asked him, but she couldn’t help smiling.

  “I could use a Slurpee on the way over to Boudreaux’s,” he said.

  “You headed over to talk to Boudreaux?” Wyatt asked Maggie.

  “Yeah,” she said, her eyes darting away from his.

  Wyatt looked at her a moment, long enough to force her to look back at him.

  “What?” she asked him.

  “You okay?”

  Dwight looked from Wyatt to Maggie, then back again.

  “Yeah,” Maggie said.

  Wyatt glanced over at Dwight, as though he’d forgotten he was there. “Okay. Well, I’d like to be a fly on that wall,” he said as he curled his Mountain Dew.

  “Dwight’s my fly,” she said.

  She got up and started out. Dwight pushed away from the wall.

  “Dwight?” Wyatt said.

  “Yeah, Boss.”

  “Do yourself a favor. Don’t walk into Boudreaux’s office with a cherry Slurpee in your hand, okay?”

  Dwight didn’t own enough fat cells to keep his body warm, so Maggie compromised by turning off the air and rolling down the windows of the Jeep. They rode together in silence until they got to the causeway that connected Eastpoint to Apalach.

  Once they were over the water, Dwight cut his eyes over to Maggie. She felt him do it.

  “So, uh, what do you think about this lady having Boudreaux’s number?”

  Maggie glanced over at him, then looked back at the road. “No idea,” she said. “She told Axel she was working with her boyfriend, some kind of marketing for his company. Maybe he’s in the seafood business.”

  “Okay,” Dwight said.

  Maggie sighed. “Dwight, we’ve known each other a long time. We’re friends,” she said. “It’s okay to just spit it out.”

  “Uh, well, you know,” Dwight said. “I don’t truck with gossip much.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “But you know, stuff goes around a lot these days,” he said. “About you and Boudreaux.”

  Maggie swallowed and nodded. “I know that, too.”

  He looked out his window for a moment. Out of the corner of her eye, Maggie saw his Adam’s apple bob a few times as he worked up a thought.

  “I do know that there’s no way you’re on his payroll,” he said finally when he looked back at her.

  “Thanks, Dwight. No, I’m not.” She sighed. “We got to know each other pretty well over the summer, when I was working the foot case.”

  She paused as she looked off to her right, looked at Apalach’s waterfront across the bridge. She could see the Riverview Inn, Boss Oyster, Boudreaux’s seafood plant, the old shrimp boats docked at Riverfront Park. Her home.

  “Then there was the thing with the hurricane, with Alessi’s father,” she said. “Boudreaux saved my life. He saved the kids’ lives.”

  Dwight nodded. “Yeah. I get that.” He looked over at her. “I mean I don’t really know that whole story, but I get why you’d, you know, be friendly.”

  “It’s kind of complicated,” she said.

  “Gotcha,” he said, though it sounded more like he wanted to than that he actually did.

  They coasted down the causeway and into Apalach’s small downtown district.

  “I will say this, Dwight,” Maggie said. “Not all of the rumors about him are true, either.”

  “Good enough,” Dwight said.

  The soccer mom who manned the reception desk at Sea-Fair was less than jubilant to see two Sheriff’s officers standing in her lobby. She’d seen Maggie come through more than once, and knew that Boudreaux would want to see her, but having Dwight along made the visit seem too professional for the woman’s taste. Sea-Fair was a legitimate business, and a thriving one, but everybody knew that Boudreaux had a lot of sidelines. Presumably, the woman in the khaki skirt and fall-themed cardigan knew that, too.

  She hung up her phone and smiled tightly up at Maggie. “Mr. Boudreaux would like me to take you back to his office,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Maggie said.

  She and Dwight followed the woman down a short hallway to what Maggie thought of as Boudreaux’s “public” office, the one he used to impress visitors. She knew he more frequently worked out of a far plainer one at the other end of the building. Boudreaux was quite conscious of his public image, but he wasn’t pretentious.

  The woman knocked gently on the door, then opened it. Maggie saw Boudreaux stand up behind his mahogany desk. It was the first time she’d seen him since that night, and her breathing became quicker, less helpful.

  “Maggie,” he said quietly. “Come in. Please.”

  The receptionist opened the door wider, and Dwight followed Maggie in.

  “Thank you, Nancy,” Boudreaux said, and the woman shut the door behind her as she left.

  Boudreaux looked quietly elegant, as usual, in a pair of gray trousers and a pale green button-down shirt that was so thin and finely tailored that Maggie would have worn it. His thick brown hair, with the touches of silver above the ears, was impeccably cut. Maggie wasn’t close enough to smell it, but she knew his cologne would be faint and refined. But she also knew that his hands were calloused from years of working shrimp boats and oyster beds, and that he had more in common with his employees than with the politicians and society folks who liked to call him their friend.

  Maggie realized that she and Boudreaux had been having a staring contest while she wasn’t paying attention. His aqua eyes were fixed on her, though his face was expressionless.

  Her first instinct was to yell at him. She’d rehearsed several diatribes in her head over the last couple of weeks. She swallowed the impulse to express herself.

  “Mr. Boudreaux,” she said politely, but tightly. “I don’t know if you know Deputy Shultz.”

  “We’ve met once or twice,” Boudreaux said, and held out a hand. “Deputy.”

  “Sir,” Dwight said as they shook.

  “Please have a seat,” Boudreaux said, and swept a hand toward the two leather armchairs in front of his desk.

  Dwight sat first. Maggie had hung back a bit, so she had to take a few steps before she could take the other chair. Ever the consummate gentleman, Boudreaux remained standing.

  “May I offer either of you something cold, or some coffee?” he asked.

  “No, thank you,” Maggie said. She focused on her purse, which she set down by her feet.

  “No, sir,” Dwight said.

  Boudreaux sat down in his plush leather chair and folded his hands on his desk before he levelled those eyes at Maggie. “What can I do for you today, Maggie?”

  “A wom
an’s body was found in Scipio Creek yesterday,” she said.

  “Yes, I heard.”

  “That woman had your phone number written down,” Maggie said. “When I called here yesterday, your secretary said she’d been to see you.”

  “You’re telling me, then, that Ms. Corzo is the woman who was found,” Boudreaux said.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Boudreaux said politely. “Yes, she was here, very briefly, the day before yesterday.”

  “Can I ask how you know her?”

  “I don’t, really,” Boudreaux answered.

  His tone was polite, but Maggie felt like their eyes were having a separate conversation. She wasn’t interested in participating. “Why was she here, then?” Maggie couldn’t help the tightness creeping into her voice. She didn’t have the patience at the moment for Boudreaux’s policy of waiting to be asked.

  “She said she was here on behalf of her boss,” Boudreaux said. “That he wanted to know if I was open to a business arrangement. I wasn’t.”

  “What kind of arrangement?”

  “Using my trucking business to transport his products north.”

  “What kinds of products?”

  “I don’t know, exactly,” Boudreaux answered. “She was somewhat coy about that. I seldom appreciate coyness. I assume they were drugs.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she said her employer, who I gathered was also her significant other, was interested in safely expanding his territory beyond Tampa.”

  “You didn’t ask?” Maggie asked him. She didn’t bother disguising her doubt.

  “I didn’t need to,” he answered. “It was drugs. As you know very well, I don’t have anything to do with drugs.”

  “Not up to your moral standards, Mr. Boudreaux?” Maggie asked quietly, before knowing she would.

  Boudreaux’s eyes narrowed just slightly, and he folded his hands on his desk. “Not the applicable ones, no.”

  “Did she say who the employer-slash-boyfriend was?”

  “No. This was an exploratory meeting, I take it,” Boudreaux answered. “She seemed pretty proud of the fact that I was her idea.”