He stuck his hands in his pockets and said, "Don't be so sure about that. Remember, Key West was founded by wreckers and smugglers. Some of them were pretty unsavory sorts. Given the area's history, there have probably been a lot of murders committed up and down these keys."
"Maybe so. I hate that it had to happen, anyway."
"Do you know what made Charles change his mind about Mr. Harvick's death being suicide?"
I shook my head. "All I know is that the medical examiner called him and told him something. The two of you are friends. Maybe he'd tell you."
"I don't think so," Tom said. "Charles has always been pretty close-mouthed about his work. He's not the sort to gossip."
Given Zimmer's stern demeanor, I could imagine that.
"You mind if I pick your brain about something else?" I asked.
"Sure," Tom agreed readily. "But why don't we go in the dining room and get some coffee first? I don't know about you, but I could sure use some. Then we can sit down and talk."
That sounded good to me, too. I nodded and let him lead the way.
A few people were enjoying the continental breakfast, but none of my clients so far. Tom asked me if I wanted anything to eat, but I shook my head and went straight to the big coffee urn instead. When both of us had filled our cups, we went to the table farthest from anyone else and sat down. It was next to a big window that looked out at a beautiful flower garden. I couldn't help but think about how pleasant it would be just to sit here and enjoy the morning with Tom Bradenton, if it hadn't been for the subject that we had to discuss.
He wrapped his hands around his coffee cup and said, "Before we talk about whatever you wanted to ask me, Delilah, I want to say that I hope you haven't had any regrets about last night. If I was a little too forward – "
"Are you talkin' about that kiss on the beach?" I asked him. "If you are, that was as much my idea as it was yours, Tom, and I haven't regretted it one bit. In fact, I'm pretty danged sure that it's been the highlight of the trip so far."
His mouth quirked. "But under the circumstances, that wouldn't take a whole lot, would it?"
"I think it would have been the highlight of a lot of my trips," I said as I looked across the table at him.
After a moment he cleared his throat and asked, "What was it you wanted to talk to me about?"
"Since you seem to know just about everybody on the island, I figured you could recommend a good lawyer."
"Sure, I – Wait a minute. Are you talking about a lawyer for you? Surely Charles Zimmer doesn't think that you could've had anything to do with Mr. Harvick's death. That's preposterous!"
"Well, I don't have an alibi," I pointed out, "but I don't really have a motive, either. I was thinkin' more about Ronnie Scanlon. From the looks of it, she was the last one to see Walter alive . . . except for the person who killed him."
"And the two of them were romantically involved, you said. Not exactly the same as the spouse always being the primary suspect, but at least in the same neighborhood."
"Yeah. She doesn't have an alibi, either. I just think Detective Zimmer is gonna put a lot of pressure on her, and she ought to be ready for it."
Tom nodded and said, "I agree. I know several good attorneys. I'll think about it and decide which one would be the best for this. Should I let you know who I decide or just go ahead and contact whoever I pick?"
"If you want to go ahead and call 'em, that would be great," I said.
"Okay. Was there anything else you wanted to ask me?"
I shook my head. "No, that's it. I appreciate your help, and I'm sure Ronnie will, too."
"I haven't done anything yet. But I will." He took a sip of his coffee. "Could I ask you something, real quick?"
"Of course."
"Don't take this the wrong way, but you don't seem to be quite as shaken up by all this as I might have expected. You're very . . . efficient."
I laughed. "Thanks . . . I think. This isn't the first time I've had to deal with something like this during a tour."
"A client dying, you mean?"
"No, I was talking about murder."
He gave me that surprised look again. I didn't figure it would do any harm to tell him. All he had to do was look up my name on the Internet to find some pretty sensationalized newspaper stories.
"I've run into murder before," I went on. "Once at a plantation during a Gone With the Wind tour, on a Mississippi riverboat going through Mark Twain country, and then a while back in New Orleans while I had a group attending the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival."
"That's incredible," he murmured. "And people still sign up for your tours?" He leaned forward hurriedly. "Wait a minute. I didn't mean that the way it sounded – "
"It's all right," I told him. "You didn't say anything I haven't thought a hundred times. Luckily, most of my tours have been just fine, and it's not like I play up the murders on the agency website. Most of the time, folks don't even know about them."
"Does Charles know about them?"
"Detective Zimmer? Yeah, I told him a little about those other cases."
"Did he warn you not to get involved in trying to solve this one?"
"Not in so many words," I said, "but I don't think he'd like me stickin' my nose in where he thinks it doesn't belong."
"I'm sure he wouldn't," Tom said with a smile. "Charles is a pretty strait-laced sort of guy."
"He doesn't really dress like one," I said, thinking about Zimmer's brightly flowered shirt.
"Trust me, for Key West that's practically a Brooks Brothers suit." Tom drank some more of his coffee and then said, "So, are you?"
"Am I what?"
"Going to try to find out who killed Walter Harvick."
"Key West is nice, but I don't think I want to spend any extra time here in jail. I'm gonna look after my clients, and that's it."
He nodded and said, "That's probably a wise decision. And speaking of looking after your clients, I promised to come up with a good lawyer for Ms. Scanlon. I'll go make some calls."
He got to his feet, and I stood up, too. "Thank you, Tom," I told him. "It helps knowin' I've got one of the locals to lean on."
"Any time," he said. He left the dining room, taking his coffee with him.
I hadn't drunk much of mine yet, so I sat down at the table again and sipped it while I looked out at the flowers, thinking again how pretty it was here. Walter Harvick's death was a reminder, though, that ugliness could always intrude, no matter how beautiful the surroundings.
Footsteps coming toward me made me look around a few minutes later. At first I thought Tom might be back already, but I saw it was Luke crossing the dining room instead.
And from the look on his face, he wasn't bringing me good news.
I stood up to meet him, asking, "What is it, Luke?"
"I started going around to alert folks to what's happened, like you told me to," he said. "I told them the police want them to stay here at the resort. But when I got to the Thompsons' room . . . they're not there, Miz D. I've looked all over for 'em, and they're gone."
Chapter 15
So much for a few minutes of peace and quiet. I stood up and kept my voice low so the other people in the dining room wouldn't overhear as I said, "Maybe they're outside on the grounds somewhere."
Luke shook his head. "I've looked all over. They're not around, and nobody has seen them."
"You're sure they're not in their room?"
"Well . . . nobody came to the door. It was locked, so I couldn't go in. But I called both their cell phones, and nobody answered." He hesitated. "You don't think anything happened to them, do you?"
"We saw Phil a little while ago, and he looked fine then," I reminded him.
"Yeah, I thought about that. You think maybe he took off to go on that fishing trip anyway?"
I considered the question for a second and said, "I wouldn't put it past him. But that doesn't explain where Sheila is."
"Maybe he took her with him."
/> That was possible, although Sheila had made it plain by her comments about Phil's activities that she didn't care for deep-sea fishing. It didn't explain why neither of them had answered their cell phone, either.
"Come on," I told Luke. "Let's go take another look around."
"Don't you trust me, Miz D?"
"Of course I do, honey, but it never hurts to double-check."
We left the dining room and went upstairs, where I knocked on the door of the Thompsons' room and called through the door, "Phil? Sheila?"
There was no answer, and as Luke had said, the door was locked.
Getting Tom to unlock the door was a last resort – no pun intended – as far as I was concerned, so we went out to check the grounds. We left the beach for last and headed there only when we didn't find any sign of the Thompsons anywhere else.
I didn't think the beach would be open, and sure enough, yellow crime scene tape was strung from tree to tree all along the edge of it, putting the sand off-limits except for several people who were puttering around the area where Walter's body had been found. They wore khaki shorts and blue t-shirts that had the word POLICE on the back, plus there were several briefcases and various bags sitting around, so I assumed they were crime scene investigators.
The overall emptiness of the beach made it easy to see that the Thompsons weren't there. Luke stood beside me and asked glumly, "Now what?"
"We can either go tell Detective Zimmer that they're gone, or we can get Tom Bradenton to let us into their room."
"What if they're in there . . . well, you know?"
"Foolin' around?" I said, even though I knew that's not what he meant at all.
"Murdered," Luke said.
"Then it would be better for Zimmer to find 'em, not us. Come on."
"You're going to talk to the detective?"
"I'll protect my clients all I can without gettin' you or me into trouble with the law," I said. "But Phil knew good and well that everybody was supposed to stay here at the resort until they were told otherwise. If he took Sheila and snuck off, that trouble's on his head . . . especially if it was just to go fishin'."
Luke didn't argue with that sentiment. We walked back through the trees and along the crushed coral path to the main house.
I thought we'd probably find Detective Zimmer in Tom's office, and sure enough, that's where he was, talking on his cell phone. The door was open halfway, so I stuck my head in. When he saw me, he held up a blunt finger in the universal signal to wait a minute.
He finished his conversation – from the sound of it he was talking to one of his superiors – and closed the phone. "What can I do for you, Ms. Dickinson?"
"I had my associate Mr. Edwards inform all of my clients that they're confined to the grounds for the time bein'," I told him. "I figure you've got officers posted to keep folks here . . ."
"I do," he said with a nod.
"But I thought it would be helpful if we gave them a heads-up about what's goin' on."
"Spread the word about the murder, you mean?" he rumbled at me.
Luke spoke up, saying, "I didn't tell them anything about that, sir. I just said there was a police situation and that they couldn't leave right now."
Zimmer nodded slowly. "Well, fine," he said. "I suppose that didn't hurt anything."
"The thing of it is," I said, "a couple of my clients don't seem to be here anymore."
He sat up sharply. "Not here? Where are they?"
"I don't know. But Luke and I have double-checked the whole place, and they're gone."
"Who?" Zimmer snapped. "Is Ms. Scanlon one of them?"
He was probably just aching to put out an APB on her. With her being the last known person to see Walter, if she fled on top of that he'd be convinced that she was guilty. So I was glad to say, "No, it's not Ronnie. Phil and Sheila Thompson are the ones who are missing."
He frowned and glanced at a sheet of paper in front of him on the desk. I wondered if it was a list of my clients. "Thompson," he muttered. "That's the guy who went deep-sea fishing yesterday, instead of to the Hemingway House and Old Town, right?"
"Right," I said. "He was supposed to go out on a charter today, too, but I told him he couldn't."
"So you have seen Phil Thompson today?"
I glanced at the clock on the wall of Tom's office. "Yeah, about an hour and a half ago. That was before you knew that Walter was murdered, while you were still treatin' the case as a likely suicide."
"And while we weren't being quite as vigilant about keeping track of where everybody was," Zimmer said with a scowl.
"So Phil could've gotten his wife and slipped away?"
"They're not here, according to you, so that must be what happened."
Zimmer's attitude was starting to annoy me a little. It wasn't my fault that Phil and Sheila had taken off somewhere.
"How did Harvick get along with the Thompsons?" he continued.
"I'm not sure they said a dozen words to each other during the whole trip. I'm not even sure they knew each other's names."
"Were the Thompsons around when Harvick had his trouble with other people?"
"They were at Sloppy Joe's the first night," I said. "The entire group went. I don't know if they saw what happened between Walter and Rollie Cranston, though. Phil didn't go to the Hemingway House yesterday, and I'm pretty sure Sheila was in the gift shop when Walter had his run-ins there." I ventured an opinion. "I can't see any reason to think they might be connected with Walter's murder. They didn't really have anything to do with him."
"And yet they're gone," Zimmer said.
"And yet they're gone," I agreed.
He sighed. "All right, thanks for letting me know. Can you give me descriptions of them?"
"So you can put out APBs on them?"
"I'm not sure we have to go quite that far just yet. But I would like to circulate their descriptions to the officers on the island."
"Sure. They're both in their forties, I'd say. Phil's got light brown hair, and he wears it in a crew-cut."
Zimmer looked surprised. "Really? A crew-cut?" He pointed. "The Bermuda Triangle and the wormhole leading back to 1957 are that way."
That was more of a joke than I expected from him, certainly under the circumstances. At least I hoped it was a joke.
He poised his pen over his notebook and said, "Go on."
"I guess he's about six feet, weighs one-eighty." I looked at Luke. "You agree with that?"
"On the height, yeah," he said. "I've never been good at all at guessing how much somebody weighs."
"Phil's retired from the military, but I don't know which branch," I told Zimmer. "Maybe that explains the crew-cut. He teaches algebra in high school. Sheila teaches English in their local junior high. She has blond hair, sort of curly. I'd say she's five-five or five-six. Weighs maybe a hundred and forty."
"She's not going to stand out in a crowd," Zimmer said, "but it sounds like her husband might. You told me he chartered Jimmy Malone's boat to go fishing yesterday?"
"You're the one who mentioned Mr. Malone's name," I reminded him. "All I knew was the name of the boat."
Zimmer nodded. "I'll check the marina where Jimmy anchors. If he's not there, maybe Thompson went out with him again and dragged his wife along this time. Is the guy single-minded enough to do that even though he was told to stay put?"
I thought about that for a moment and then said, "He probably is. He seemed really disappointed when Luke and I told him he couldn’t go out today."
"Then that's the most likely explanation. Still, I'm going to send out their descriptions and ask our patrol officers to keep an eye out for them."
Luke asked, "Are they going to be in trouble when you catch them?"
"That depends on why they snuck out of here," Zimmer said. "If they're running away from a murder charge . . . yeah, they'll be in trouble."
That still seemed pretty far-fetched to me, but I knew better than to think that it just wasn't possible.
; "We'll let you go on about your business," I told Zimmer.
"Thanks again for the heads-up."
We left the office, and as we walked across the lobby, Luke asked, "What do we do now?"
"There's not much we can do except wait," I said.
Behind us, someone said, "Ms. Dickinson?"
Not recognizing the voice and not knowing what to expect, I felt a little tingle of apprehension as Luke and I stopped and turned around. I had been in enough of these situations to know that no matter how bad they were, there was usually a way for them to get even worse.
Chapter 16
The man who had spoken to me didn't look particularly threatening, though. He was in his twenties and wore a lightweight, rather rumpled cream-colored suit. His tie was a sunburst red. He was carrying around an extra fifty pounds, so in this heat and humidity the flushed look on his face was probably the next thing to permanent. His brown beard was a little ragged, his already thinning hair slightly askew. He had a briefcase in his left hand. He thrust out his right and said again, "Ms. Dickinson?"
"I'm Delilah Dickinson," I confirmed.
"I thought you must be." He gave me a smile that was part leer. "Mr. Bradenton told me to look for a gorgeous redhead. I'm Pete Nickleby." He added, "Attorney at law."
I took his hand. His palm was a little sweaty, just like I expected it to be. As I let go of it, I inclined my head toward Luke and said, "This is my associate, Luke Edwards."
Nickleby gave Luke a quicker handshake than I'd gotten and a perfunctory "Pleased to meetcha." Then he set his briefcase on the floor at his feet and pointed both index fingers at me. "Mr. Bradenton says you're a tour guide and one of your tourists killed somebody or somethin', right?"
While I was trying not to gape at him and trying even harder to come up with an answer to that, a more familiar voice said, "Pete, is that you? What are you doing here?"
Nickleby turned his head and said, "Oh, hiya, Mr. Bradenton. I'm here about that murder case."
Tom looked a little pained as he came up to us. "Keep your voice down, Pete. I'm sure there's already plenty of gossip going around about what happened, but we don't need to add to it."
"Oh, yeah, right. Discretion. I'm the soul of it." He looked at me again. "So where's the killer?"
For Whom The Funeral Bell Tolls Page 10