"Then maybe you'd better go to the hospital, too, counselor, and look after her best interests."
"Yeah, that's a good idea." Pete looked at me. "I'm still hired, right?"
"Go," I told him. He hustled out of the lobby, circling wide around Zimmer, who stood rooted like a tree.
When Pete was gone, Zimmer said, "The rest of you will have to stay here. This doesn't change anything. The investigation is still going on."
Quite a few people were in the lobby. The sirens had drawn them out of their rooms. Some were members of my group, but not all of them. A man who was a stranger to me said, "How long are we going to be stuck here, Officer?"
The woman who was with him said, "Yes, we shouldn't even have to stay here. We're not part of the murder group."
Murder group. Hearing it phrased like that made my heart sink a little. If the things that had happened before hadn't ruined my business, this trip was bound to.
"I'm sorry," Zimmer told the couple. "We're proceeding as fast as we can. Everyone here at the resort, guests and staff alike, will have to be interviewed before anyone can be allowed to leave."
"Then don't you think you should get some more cops busy at that?" another man asked.
"Our department has limited resources," Zimmer said. "We've had cutbacks like everybody else."
I didn't doubt that. And since there were quite a few people here at the resort, it would take a while to talk to all of them, as Zimmer had said.
There were other complaints from the crowd, but Zimmer ignored them. He looked at Luke and me and said, "Come on. I need to talk to you. All right to keep using your office, Tom?"
"Sure," Tom replied. "Anything to help out and get things back to normal around here."
I didn't know what Zimmer wanted now, but there was only one way to find out. Luke and I followed him into Tom's office. He motioned for Luke to close the door.
Zimmer didn't sit down behind the desk and didn't invite us to sit, either. He jammed his hands into the pockets of his shorts and said, "You told me Phil Thompson chartered the Mary Lou to go deep-sea fishing yesterday."
I frowned. "That's what he told me. Have you found the Thompsons?"
"You're sure it couldn't have been some other boat?"
"I don't think so," I answered honestly. "I'm pretty sure it was the Mary Lou."
"Why would he tell you which boat he was taking out?" Zimmer wanted to know.
"Shoot, I don't know." I was surprised and a little confused by these questions. "He just mentioned it in passing while we were talking on the way down here in the van, day before yesterday. He was saying how much he enjoyed fishing, and his wife Sheila said that was all he really enjoyed doing, and he said . . . No, wait. Sheila mentioned the boat first. She said she'd rather Phil be out on a boat with a girl's name instead of running around with a real girl. And that's when Phil said the boat was called the Mary Lou. I got the name right, Detective."
Zimmer nodded slowly. "I had a feeling that you did. I went to see Jimmy Malone a little while ago. He's the one who owns that boat."
"He wasn't out with the Thompsons today?"
"He wasn't out with Phil Thompson yesterday," Zimmer said. "According to Jimmy, he never even heard of Phil or Sheila Thompson, and neither had any of the other charter boat skippers in the marina. I went around and asked all of them, just to be sure." Zimmer fixed me with a hard stare. "Whatever Phil Thompson came to Key West for, it wasn't the fishing."
Chapter 18
Well, I was flabbergasted by that. The Thompsons had seemed like such nice, normal people. It was obvious they'd been lying to me, though, and whatever they were up to, they were both in on it. Sheila had set me up for Phil to tell me the name of the boat he had supposedly chartered. She wouldn't have done that if she hadn't been helping him plant his lie.
"You don't know anything about this?" Zimmer pressed.
"Not a blasted thing. I've told you everything I know, Detective."
Zimmer didn't say anything for several seconds, as if he was trying to decide whether to believe me. Then he said, "All right. I'm going let the chief know to step up the search for them. If you hear anything from either of them, I expect you to get in touch with me right away."
"I will," I promised.
Zimmer looked at Luke. "The same goes for you, Mr. Edwards."
He nodded and said, "Of course, Detective."
Looking even grumpier than usual, Zimmer strode out of the office, leaving the door open behind him. Luke looked over at me and said, "What do you think is going on, Miz D?"
All I could do was shake my head and say, "I don't have any earthly idea. It looks like Detective Zimmer considers Phil and Sheila suspects in Walter's murder, though."
"That doesn't make any sense! Why would they kill him? They barely knew him."
That was true, but my brain was turning over pretty quickly and putting a few things together. To help me think it through, I said, "Whatever Phil and Sheila came to Key West to do, they wanted to keep it a secret. That's why they came up with that story about deep-sea fishing. It wouldn't take but a few minutes on the Internet to find the name of a boat Phil could pretend to charter. He didn't figure anybody would ever check up on him. There wouldn't have been any reason to . . . if Walter hadn't been killed."
"So it would have made more sense for them not to kill Walter," Luke pointed out. "That just drew attention to them."
"Maybe they didn't have any choice. Maybe Phil was out roaming around in the middle of the night, and Walter came along and found out what he was doing. Phil could have killed him to cover up whatever it is and then tried to make his death look like a suicide."
Luke frowned as he thought it over. After a moment he said, "Yeah, that makes sense, I guess."
My thoughts were racing ahead. "They tried to act normal this morning, but instead of leaving early, Phil waited around with that story about his charter leaving later, but what he was really doing was waiting to see if the suicide story was going to hold up. When it didn't, he grabbed Sheila and took off."
Luke nodded again. "What could they be doing that's so bad Mr. Thompson had to kill Walter to keep it from being exposed?"
I spread my hands and shook my head. "That's a good question. I don't have an answer."
"I've been wondering where that shotgun came from, too."
"Maybe Phil had it with him. He could have wiped all his prints off of it after he shot Walter."
Luke's eyes widened. "Maybe he had the shotgun because he was planning to kill somebody else! Mr. Harvick could have interrupted him. So he postponed the other killing in hopes that the suicide story would fool everybody. He could use some other weapon later, instead of the shotgun."
Theories were flitting around in my head like butterflies in the resort's gardens. I said, "I didn't really think about it much until now, but Walter had to have been shot right there on the beach where he was found. You saw the . . . well, the mess it made on the sand."
Luke looked a little queasy again at the memory, but he nodded and said, "Yeah, that's right. Why would he have just stood there and let somebody put those shotgun barrels in his mouth?"
"Nobody would do that," I said. "He was either already dead or unconscious when it happened, which means he was attacked somewhere else and brought to the beach, where the killer tried to make it look like a Hemingway-inspired suicide."
Luke's eyes narrowed as he looked at me. "You know what you're doing, Miz D? You're bein' a detective again, and so am I!"
"No, we're not. We're just tryin' to figure out this mess . . ."
Well, maybe I was being a detective again, I realized. I couldn't help it. I'd been lied to and one of my clients had been killed. I like to think I'm pretty even-tempered, despite my red hair, but I was mad about the whole situation. The fact that similar things had happened before, on other tours, just made me angrier. And Luke was being dragged along for the ride.
Unfortunately, there was really nothing we coul
d do to help find the killer, and I realized that, too. Detective Zimmer had already alerted the police to be on the lookout for Phil and Sheila Thompson, and I was sure he was checking into the ownership of the murder weapon and forensics techs were sifting through the rest of the evidence. If Phil – or Sheila, I supposed – hadn't killed Walter, then all the other most likely suspects were stuck here at the resort and sooner or later Zimmer would figure out who the guilty party was.
"We'll just let it go, Luke," I said. "That's all we can do. Detective Zimmer won't like it if we start tryin' to solve the case before he does. He might even arrest us for interferin' with his investigation."
"Maybe, but I'll still bet you could figure out who the killer is before he does."
"I appreciate that vote of confidence. I think we'd better butt out, though."
Despite what I said, it was hard to stop my brain from thinking along the lines of finding the killer. I wouldn't say that I was in the habit of solving crimes, but I'd done enough of it that my instincts went naturally in that direction.
To take my mind off of it, I stepped over to a big map of the Keys that hung on the wall of Tom's office and forced myself to concentrate on it. My eyes followed Highway One all the way down from Miami to Key West and then moved on over to the Dry Tortugas.
That was where Phil Thompson had said he was going fishing today. A lie, of course, or at least it sure appeared to be.
But maybe he was doing something else in the Dry Tortugas. There wasn't much over there except the Fort Jefferson National Monument. Some of the area was an ecological preserve, so fishing wasn't allowed there, but the fishing in the rest of the area was supposed to be very good. It was also a prime spot for sailing, swimming, and snorkeling. Charter boats and catamarans made the trip over there regularly. Back in the Thirties, Ernest Hemingway and his friends had gone over there pretty often on fishing expeditions.
Except for the three biggest islands in the chain, the smaller ones were always subject to tides and wind and storms. I had read that sometimes the smallest islands were actually swallowed up by the waters of the Gulf and the Atlantic and other islands formed in their place.
I couldn't see a thing about the Dry Tortugas that would prompt somebody to lie about what they were doing, let alone commit murder to keep it a secret.
While I was absent-mindedly peering at the map, Tom appeared in the office's open doorway and propped a shoulder against the jamb. "Is Charles through with the two of you?" he asked.
"Yeah," I told him.
"What was that all about, if you don't mind my asking?"
"I don't mind. I don't know if Detective Zimmer would. I'll risk it, though. He was telling us that Phil and Sheila Thompson lied about Phil going deep-sea fishing."
Tom frowned. "Why would anybody lie about something like that?"
"That's what Luke and I were just tryin' to figure out. We didn't come up with any answers, though."
"Well, I thought you might like to know that I called Pete Nickleby to check on Ms. Scanlon. I called the hospital first, but they wouldn't tell me anything because I'm not a relative. Pete's her lawyer, so they had to talk to him." Tom sighed. "Of course, I had to stay on the phone with him and sort of talk him through it . . . The important thing is, after they pumped her stomach, Ms. Scanlon is conscious and stable. Still too groggy to talk very much, Pete said, but she should be all right."
Luke asked, "Did she say whether or not she intended to kill herself?
Tom shook his head. "I don't know. I didn't get into that with Pete. I was just making sure she was still alive and the prognosis looked fairly good."
"And I appreciate that," I told him. "It was very thoughtful of you, Tom."
He smiled and shrugged. "Just trying to help."
Luke asked, "So what do we do now?"
"Well, we can't leave," I said, "so what should you do when you're stuck at a luxurious beach resort?"
"Enjoy it?" Tom suggested.
"Exactly. We can't go down to the actual beach, but I was thinkin' about tryin' out that pool of yours."
"I think that sounds like an excellent idea," he said. "Meet you down there in fifteen minutes?"
I nodded. "I'll be there."
"I think I'll see if I can find somebody who'd like to play some tennis," Luke mused. "Might as well take advantage of it like you said, Mr. Bradenton."
With that settled, we went back to our rooms, Luke to put on something appropriate for playing tennis, me to change into the sleek, one-piece bathing suit I'd brought along. I knew I looked pretty good in it, if I do say so myself.
I had brought along a big sun hat, too. I pulled my hair back, settled the hat on my head, and tied a short, white terrycloth cover-up around my hips. A check in the mirror made me smile. Not bad for a middle-aged lady, I thought. I put on a pair of sunglasses, slipped my phone, wallet, room key, a bottle of sunscreen, and a towel into a colorful canvas beach bag, and headed for the pool.
It was late morning by now, and quite a few of the resort's guests were at the pool. They might be stuck here for the moment and angry about it, but they weren't going to let that stop them from having some fun. That was an admirable attitude.
Tom was stretched out on a lounge chair in the partial shade of some palms. Patches of light and shadow dappled his bronzed skin in a very appealing fashion. There was an empty chair next to him with a folded beach towel lying on it to keep anybody else from claiming it.
He was wearing sunglasses, but I could tell his eyes were following me anyway. "Very nice," he said as he reached over to pick up the beach towel and clear the lounge chair for me.
"Thanks," I said, meaning it for both the gesture and the compliment. I set my bag beside the chair, kicked off my sandals, and sat down. I wished my legs were a little more tan, but at least they weren't fish-belly white.
"I didn't know if you wanted to swim or just take it easy, but I grabbed a couple of these chairs anyway while they were empty."
"You did just the right thing," I told him. "It's been a long day, and it's not even noon yet!"
"I'm sorry things have worked out the way they have. Maybe you can still make the best out of some of the trip."
"I'm gonna try," I said as I closed my eyes and willed my muscles to loosen up and let go of some of the tension I was carrying around. "At least I'm not in the hospital and under suspicion of murder like Ronnie."
"Hush, now," Tom said softly. "Don't even think about that. Just relax."
I tried to follow his advice. I really did. With the heat to bask in, and the sounds of people enjoying themselves in the pool, and Tom's comforting presence close beside me, I should have been able to.
But I suddenly found myself unable to stop thinking about Walter Harvick's murder, mentally replaying that ugly scene on the beach, and as several facts abruptly snapped together in a way I hadn't seen them before, I found myself sitting up straight on the lounge chair.
"What is it?" Tom asked. He had propped himself up on an elbow and was frowning worriedly at me.
"Ronnie Scanlon didn't murder Walter," I said.
"I know you don't think she would have done that – "
"No, it's more than that," I broke in on him. "I know she didn't kill him. She couldn't have. And if Detective Zimmer will stop and think about it, he'll know she couldn't have, too."
Chapter 19
Tom took off his sunglasses and stared at me for a long moment. Finally he said, "I'm not following you."
"Luke and I were talking about this earlier," I said. "That shotgun blast happened on the beach. It had to, because of the way the blood and, uh, other things were scattered right there behind the body."
Tom nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense. It's kind of gross, but you're right."
"That would be what you expected if Walter committed suicide. But he didn't."
"We still just have Charles Zimmer's word for that," Tom pointed out. "We don't actually know why he's so convinced Mr. Harvick was murd
ered."
"No, we don't, but we sort of have to assume that he was, or else Detective Zimmer wouldn't have said so. He'd have just called it a suicide and closed the case."
"I suppose that's right. Go on."
"Luke pointed out that nobody would stand still for having a shotgun shoved in his mouth. At that point, you'd fight back, no matter what. Anybody would. But Walter couldn't, because he was either unconscious or already dead."
"So the killer attacked him somewhere else, then dragged him out there on the beach to set up the suicide scene," Tom said.
I shook my head. "No. That wouldn't work because it would leave drag marks in the sand."
"The killer could have brushed them out somehow."
"Maybe, but in the dark like that, he'd be running the risk of missing some of them and ruining his plan. It would be simpler and safer to pick Walter up, carry him out there, and then set him down and use the shotgun on him. That way there's no chance of drag marks and only one set of footprints leading out to where the body was found."
Tom thought about that some more. "What you're saying still makes sense," he admitted. "But if you're right, what about the footprints leading away from the body when the killer left?"
"He walked backwards," I said.
A smile spread slowly across Tom's face. "You're right," he said. "It had to have happened that way. But why couldn't Ronnie Scanlon have . . . Oh, I get it. You don't think she could have picked up Mr. Harvick and carried him out there like that."
"I don't guess it's absolutely impossible, but it's pretty darned unlikely," I said. "Walter wasn't the biggest guy in the world, but he wasn't a real lightweight, either. She would have had to put him over her shoulder and carry the shotgun, too. It didn't really register on me at the time, but I saw the tracks leading out to the body. They went pretty straight. I think Ronnie would have been weaving all over the place if she'd been carrying Walter."
"More than likely." He paused, then said, "It's not exactly what you'd call proof, Delilah. I'm sure Charles Zimmer wouldn't."
"Maybe not, but I'm convinced. I think Walter's killer had to be a man."
For Whom The Funeral Bell Tolls Page 12