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

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  Maggie silently thanked God for that, and refrained from asking Bledsoe if he’d slept with Governor Spaulding to get his job.

  “I’m not going to allow my people free rein to overlook evidence, or the lack thereof, so they can further their own biases. Request denied. If you come up with anything tenable regarding Mann, then come back and talk to me about warrants.”

  “I’ll do that,” Maggie answered, then turned and walked out of his office. She stalked down the hall and around the corner, walked through Wyatt’s doorway and shut the door. He was at his computer, typing with both of his typing fingers.

  “Hey,” he said cheerfully, then frowned. “What’s up?”

  Maggie leaned on his desk. “I need you to get your old job back.”

  “I don’t think I can,” he said. “Besides, it’s only been a couple of weeks.”

  “He’s a creep,” Maggie said. “He needs to go.”

  Wyatt took a pull on his Mountain Dew. “Try to stay positive. Maybe he’ll have a tragic accident on the monkey bars.”

  Maggie sighed. “He’s not just a creep. Boudreaux said we need to watch out for him.”

  “Why, exactly?”

  “Because of his connection to Spaulding.”

  “Boudreaux’s connected to all of the politicos,” he countered.

  “No, not that one, apparently.”

  “What’s the problem, specifically?” Wyatt asked, his brows embracing each other.

  “He wasn’t feeling specific,” Maggie answered.

  “Of course not.”

  Maggie heaved out a sigh and felt herself deflate. “He’s determined to take the easy out and go for Axel,” she said. “He’s getting in the way of looking at Toby Mann. He won’t let me try for a warrant to get his credit card records.”

  “You trying to put him here?”

  “Either that or prove he could have known Mari was. She was an authorized user on one of his accounts.”

  Wyatt nodded, thinking. “Why don’t you ask him for the records?”

  “I’m not ready for him to know I’m looking at him,” she answered. “He’ll be more helpful if he thinks he’s here to help.”

  “What about the other guy, the big dealer down in Tampa?”

  “Still trying to find him. Which makes him look good for it, too, I know.”

  “Well, drug dealing aside, it’s almost always the current or the ex,” Wyatt said. “Problem is, you’ve got the boyfriend, the ex-boyfriend and the ex-husband. Messy.”

  “It wasn’t Axel,” Maggie said quietly. “He’s married or dated every toxic or obnoxious woman in Franklin County. If he was the choking kind, he would have done it already.”

  Maggie sat at her desk, staring at the Palmettos outside her window. There was a good wind going, and the trees waved their arms like teenaged boys egging on a fight. It was past time to leave, almost dark, and she should be on her way home, but she was frozen in frustration.

  Dwight had reported back that he’d scoured every inch of Marisol’s car and found neither iPhone nor credit card. If it was only the phone that was missing, Maggie would assume that she’d had it with her when she was killed, and that it had ended up in Scipio Creek, too. Or that her killer had taken it.

  But the credit card bothered her. Both were means that Toby Mann could have used to track Mari if he’d needed to. But if she’d been in Apalach to arrange some kind of deal for Toby, why would she bother to stash the phone and card? If she wasn’t here on his behalf, then whose?

  Maggie had just slumped back in her chair and blown a breath up at the ceiling when her desk phone rang. She sat up and answered.

  “Redmond.”

  “Hey, Maggie, it’s Mike.”

  “Hey, Mike. What’s up?”

  “I processed those Newport butts we found on the dock,” he answered. “Four of them had her saliva on them. The rest didn’t.”

  Maggie took a slow breath. “Do they match any butts from the room?” She didn’t want to come right out and ask if they matched Axel’s.

  “No,” he answered, and Maggie’s sigh of relief was carefully silent. “You know I can compare to samples I’ve got, but I can’t run ’em through the database. You want me to send them to Tallahassee?”

  “Yes, please,” she answered. “Do me a favor; call Steve Pruitt. Tell him it’s for me and beg him to rush it.”

  “I’ll try,” he said. “Talk to you when I know something.”

  Maggie hung up and chewed at her lower lip. Even with special attention, it could take three or four days to hear back, maybe more. But if she could conceivably place someone else on the dock with Marisol, smoking her cigarettes, then it helped Axel, even if the person in question was an unknown.

  She dumped her empty coffee cup into the trash can beside her desk, grabbed her purse from a drawer, and headed out.

  WHEN HER CELL PHONE rang, Maggie was coming out of Piggly Wiggly with ingredients for a dinner that made her feel like a bad mother. She transferred one of the two bags to her other hand and dug her phone out of her purse.

  “Hey, Dwight,” she said as she walked to her Jeep.

  “Hey, Maggie,” he replied, sounding excited. “Guess who just returned my crap-ton of calls?”

  “Who?”

  “Gavin Betancourt. Says he just got back from the Exumas, and he can meet with us tomorrow,” Dwight said. “I told him we’d come down to Tampa in the morning. Right?”

  “Yeah,” she answered. She pinned her phone to her shoulder with her chin, and opened the back door. “How’d he sound?”

  “Like he was too good for me,” Dwight said.

  “Awesome.” Maggie put the bags on the back seat and leaned on the door. She got the feeling for a second that someone was looking at her, and turned around expecting to see a friend or neighbor walking up behind her, but there was no one there. She realized Dwight was still talking.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I said they got 7-11s down there,” Dwight answered. “Reckon we can stop and get me one of those white mocha coffee things?”

  “Oh, Dwight,” Maggie said, sighing. “You’re making me sick. Let me bring you something from Apalachicola Coffee.”

  “Uh, thanks, but no,” he said. “That time I drank your spare I was up for two days and I couldn’t feel my brain.”

  “Okay, suit yourself,” Maggie said. “I’ve got to get home to the kids. I’ll see you first thing.”

  “Okee-doke.”

  She disconnected the call and shut the back door, then stood there and looked around the small parking lot. A young blonde woman was at the end of Maggie’s row, putting a huge bag of dog food into the back of her minivan. In the middle of the only other row, an elderly man Maggie knew only by sight was closing his door and heading inside. Neither of them paid her any attention, but she still felt attention was being paid.

  She looked out at the street, but saw no one. The parking lot of the tiny police station across the street was empty. Maggie took a slower pass over the cars parked at Piggly Wiggly, but saw no one sitting in their cars. She waited a moment, then climbed into the driver’s seat and started the Cherokee.

  One block away, at the CVS across the street, a lit cigarette was flicked out of an open window. Its embers bounced, looking like tiny fireworks in the dusk, then died before another engine started.

  The drive from Apalach to Tampa was not one of Maggie’s favorites. Every cell in her body was Floridian, but she was from a Florida that didn’t exist outside the Panhandle, and she had no use for most of the rest of the state.

  The drive was 98 almost all the way, until it turned into Suncoast Pkwy down around Crystal River. Maggie didn’t mind 98; it was largely woods, with a few quick passes through a few Podunk towns, but Maggie was partial to Podunk. Once they got onto the Parkway, though, they were dumped into a touristy Florida from the 1950s. Even that was better than what greeted them once they hit Tampa about an hour later; nothing but high-rises, strip mal
ls, real malls, and slums. As far as Maggie was concerned, Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, Orlando, they were all the same, except that Orlando put on a nice front.

  Gavin Betancourt didn’t exactly live in Tampa proper; his home was located in Davis Islands, a small island in the Tampa Bay that was connected to mainland Tampa by a short bridge. It was an area of seriously overpriced Spanish style and ultra-modern homes. Maggie loathed it on sight. She didn’t mind wealth, she just preferred it to have a little restraint.

  Betancourt’s home was of the modern variety, a coral-colored two story house on Adalia, which would mean that his back yard was the bay itself. Maggie pulled into the circular gravel drive and felt like she ought to apologize to her car for letting it show up looking like that.

  Dwight blew out a breath. “I get surprised every now and then by how well dealing drugs pays,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Maggie said. “There’s a real future in it, if you ever get tired of sleeping at night.”

  “Ah, that’s okay,” Dwight said. “If I was rich, I’d have to hang out with rich people, and I don’t like ’em much.”

  He and Maggie got out of the Cherokee, and were halfway to the carved, double front door when one side of it opened.

  “Lt. Redmond?” the man standing there asked.

  He was in his late forties, Maggie guessed, with blond hair that brushed against the collar of his green silk shirt. He wasn’t a handsome man, but he was striking. Her overall impression was that he looked expensive.

  He waited with a half-smile, as Maggie and Dwight made their way to the terracotta steps.

  “Mr. Betancourt?” Maggie asked.

  “That would be me, yes.” He didn’t extend a hand. Maggie was okay with that.

  “I’m Lt. Redmond and this is Deputy Shultz,” Maggie said politely. “Thank you for seeing us.”

  “I had options?” he asked with a smirk.

  “You have good lawyers, I’m sure,” Maggie responded.

  “I do,” he answered, as he held the door open wider and stepped back to let them in. “But I also have nothing to cause me to avoid you.”

  Maggie and Dwight stepped into a two-story entryway that was flooded with sunlight from two skylights and a wall of windows in the room beyond the circular staircase. Betancourt preceded them down the hall toward the back, waving them to follow, like good little strays.

  “Let’s talk back here,” he said, as he led them into a room that looked like it ran across the entire rear of the house. The windows that made up the back wall looked out onto the bay, and to the two boats that were tied up at his private dock. One was a speedboat Maggie didn’t recognize. The other was a circa 1990’s Tollycraft Pilothouse that had to be fifty feet long. Maggie could retire on the proceeds of selling it.

  “Is that the boat you took to the Exumas?” she asked Betancourt as they crossed to an arrangement of Danish modern chairs and couches.

  “Yes, it is,” Betancourt answered. “Do you know Tollycrafts?”

  “Not personally,” she answered as she sat in a turquoise chair that wasn’t half as comfortable as one wanted it to be.

  Dwight perched on the edge of a matching chair, and Betancourt slid down onto a loveseat that faced them. Between them was an angular glass coffee table that reflected enough sunlight to make Maggie squint.

  “Can I get either of you some coffee, something cold?” Betancourt asked.

  “No, thank you,” Maggie answered politely. Dwight shook his head. “We’ll try not to take too much of your time.”

  Betancourt sighed and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I was sorry to hear about Marisol,” he said quietly, but without emotion. “but I’m not sure how I can help you.”

  “We’re speaking with anyone who knew her well,” Maggie replied. “You were together for a while, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, for about a year,” Betancourt answered.

  “When did you split?”

  He looked up at the ceiling as though trying to remember, but given the reason for their visit, Maggie knew he didn’t need to. “The first part of April, I think.

  “Why?”

  “Nothing in particular,” he answered. “My interest cooled. Marisol was a lovely woman, but we didn’t have very much in common.”

  “Did you love her?”

  He smiled in a way that was meant to look apologetic, but wasn’t. “No. I enjoyed her company. She was very vibrant, she could be a lot of fun. But nothing like love, no.”

  “Did she leave you for Toby Mann?”

  “She didn’t leave me at all,” he answered. “She ran straight from me to him, but I was the one who ended our relationship.”

  “Do you know Toby?” Maggie asked.

  “Sure. He used to work for me.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Marketing,” Betancourt answered with a quick smile. Maggie had seen barracudas smile with more warmth.

  “When did he stop working for you?”

  “A year or so ago,” he replied. “It was amicable. I was relieved to see him go, actually.”

  “Why is that?”

  Betancourt sighed just a little. “He wasn’t as bright as his arrogance suggested.”

  Maggie chewed the corner of her lip for a moment. “Mr. Betancourt, I’m not especially interested in your business dealings. My concern is Franklin County, not Tampa. So I hope you’ll speak frankly with me.”

  “I have nothing to hide, Lieutenant.” Again, that insincere smile.

  “Toby Mann says he didn’t know Marisol was in Apalachicola,” Maggie said. “But she told someone that she was there on her boyfriend’s behalf. On behalf of his business.”

  Betancourt fashioned his expression into something approaching regretful, then leaned back against the cushions of the loveseat. “Well, that’s a little sad.”

  “That she was trying to help him build his, uh, business?”

  He waited a moment before answering. “No, that she referred to me as her boyfriend.”

  That took Maggie a second. “She was there for you?”

  “No, not exactly,” he said, leaning forward again. “Bear in mind, please, that I’m no longer in the business that gained me some notoriety with local law enforcement.”

  “Wow,” Dwight popped up quietly. “All the drug dealers we talk to are retired.”

  Betancourt threw him an irritated smile, then looked back at Maggie. “In any case, back when I might have dabbled a bit, my clientele, and my products, were of a more sophisticated quality.”

  “More sophisticated than what?”

  “Than what Toby Mann was targeting,” he answered. “You’re familiar with gravel, I’m sure.”

  Maggie nodded. Gravel, or flakka, was a problem that was growing exponentially. It was dirt cheap; a person could get high for hours on five dollars, but it was also extremely dangerous and very addicting. The benefit to Florida dealers was that it cost so little, was available from China or Pakistan in huge quantities, and was relatively easy to transport. Gravel dealers targeted the poor and working class, because they could afford to get hooked.

  “Toby had his sights set on becoming some big-time gravel distributor,” Betancourt went on. “It was cheap enough to buy quite large quantities. Within his limited budget.”

  “What does that have to do with you?”

  “Not much at all,” Betancourt said. “Except that Marisol told me that Toby was trying to set up transportation systems, get in with legitimate businesses that had such systems, trucking and so on, and use them to distribute to associates in north Florida, where he thought the market was good for a cheap high.”

  Maggie had spent some time in narcotics. She had to admit that Toby was right. North Florida was full of the poor, the working class, and students on tight budgets. “She told you that why?”

  “She was trying to sell me the idea.”

  “Why would she do that, Mr. Betancourt? It seems like she’d be shooting herself in the foo
t.”

  “She wanted away from Toby,” he answered. “And she was hoping we could get back together. I think she thought she could accomplish that by helping me implement Toby’s idea.”

  Maggie stared out at the perfectly manicured grass between the house and the dock. Boudreaux had a fleet of boats, as well as a trucking company that transported produce and seafood throughout the south. Marisol would have known about Boudreaux from her time in Apalach with Axel. She probably wouldn’t have known about his disdain for drugs, though. She looked back at Betancourt.

  “Why did she want to end her relationship with Toby?”

  “Marisol outclassed Toby by a wide margin. I’m sure she realized that pretty quickly,” he answered. “But he was also very volatile.”

  “Abusive volatile?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s odd,” she replied. “He told us that you used to beat Marisol.”

  “Did he now?” His voice had grown chilly, but he still appeared relaxed enough. “I don’t raise my hand to women.”

  “How do you know he did?”

  “Marisol told me,” Betancourt answered. “I think she was hoping I’d avenge her, get her out, take care of her problem.”

  Maggie looked at him a moment. “Why didn’t you?”

  He held her gaze for a moment, then held up his hands. “It wasn’t my business.”

  “She was your girlfriend at one time.”

  “At one time,” he replied. “I wished her well, but I’m no one’s knight in shining armor.”

  Maggie didn’t doubt the truth of that. “When was the last time you talked to her?”

  He didn’t bother pretending to think it over. “Tuesday morning. She said she was on her way to talk to someone that she thought might be interested in her proposal, whatever that was.”

  “So she was in Apalach when you last spoke?”

  “Yes. She liked it up there, you know. Had ties there. I think she was thinking about relocating.”

  Maggie sighed. She had the sense of Marisol flailing for some kind of peace, and even though she’d never really liked Mari, she was sad for her. She sat forward as something occurred to her. “Do you remember the number she called you from?”