Dead in Boca

by Miriam Auerbach

  Just as I got an overwhelming feeling of not being able to breathe, the doors opened to the third floor. After walking through a rat’s maze of corridors that led me to one dead end after another—just like this case itself—I finally stumbled upon Hart’s office.

  I knocked. A woman opened the door. She appeared to be in her early thirties, with long, silky black hair. Black-rimmed rectangular glasses framed her amber eyes and offset her high cheekbones and full lips. Her tall, slim body was clad in a perfectly tailored tan pantsuit with a gold scarf artfully draped across one shoulder.

  My mind sputtered as it tried to classify her. She wasn’t a Boca Babe; her boobs weren’t big enough. She wasn’t a Boca Babe wannabe; there was nothing cheap about her. She wasn’t a Botox Babe; she was too young. She didn’t fit into the known Boca universe. So what was she?

  Well, who cared? I wasn’t here to see her.

  “I’m here to see Dr. Mason Hart,” I said. “Is he in?”

  She blinked. “No, I’m afraid he’s not.”

  “Do you know when he might be?”

  “Dr. Hart’s office hours are Mondays and Wednesdays from two to five.”

  Today was Monday. I looked at my watch.

  “That’s now,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “So why isn’t he here?” I demanded.

  Maybe I was being a jerk. But like I said, my time to catch a killer was running out.

  “Because Dr. Hart is not a he. I am Dr. Mason Hart.”

  Okay, I was a jerk. Hadn’t I just mentally castigated the lunch server for making sexist assumptions? And now I’d done the same thing. Note to self: not every engineer is a man. Or a geek.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She smiled. “I’m used to it. And I love to blow people’s minds.”

  Hmm. A woman after my own heart.

  “You wouldn’t happen to ride a Hog, would you?” I asked out of nowhere. Just a gut feeling I had.

  She grinned. “Bet your ass. An ’05 Wide Glide. You?”

  “’03 Hugger.”

  Yesss! I still had some investigative instincts, despite my asinine assumptions. We high-fived. Female bonding at its best.

  “You’re not from Boca, are you?” I asked. I mean, she just didn’t fit into any of my mental categories.

  “No. I’ve only been here from the beginning of this academic year, since I finished my postdoc in hydrostatics at Caltech.”

  Okay, now I knew where she fit. In a brand new category: Brainiac Babe.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked.

  I handed her one of my cards.

  “I’m investigating the death of Frank Castellano, Jr.,” I explained. “I understand you were hired by BACK OFF to assess the feasibility of the seawall he was hoping to build. Would you have a moment to discuss it?”

  She glanced down the hallway.

  “I don’t see a line of students eagerly waiting to see me. So come on in.” She stepped aside from the door and gestured for me to enter.

  I took a chair in front of her desk as she walked around to the other side. I glanced around the office. The walls were covered with topographical maps and the surfaces with mockups of dikes and levees. A tall bookcase bulged with precisely arranged tomes bearing titles like Advanced Fluid Mechanics. Several of the books had her name on them. Not as the owner. As the author.

  “So what would you like to know?” she asked as she sat down.

  “How did you get involved in this matter?”

  “I got a call from a gentleman who said he was with a group called BACK OFF. He briefly explained Mr. Castellano’s seawall proposal and asked if I’d be willing to conduct an independent feasibility study. I was intrigued. I thought it would pose a nice intellectual exercise, so I agreed to do it.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “I ran computer simulation models varying all the natural conditions as well as the construction conditions. In terms of natural factors, we’re talking about things like the fluctuation of the sea level between low and high tide, the type of wave action, the degree of slope to the land behind the shoreline . . .”

  She glanced at me. I guess I didn’t look enthralled, because she hurried on.

  “As for the construction variables—well, here, let me show you.” She picked up a plastic model of a dike cross-section, apparently thinking a visual aid would engage my interest more. Very optimistic of her.

  “One consideration is the angle of the wall,” she said, running a finger down the edge of the model. “Whether it’s vertical, sloped, or curved makes a difference. Another factor is the construction materials, such as reinforced concrete, boulders, or steel.” She gestured to the interior of the model. “Also, the depth of the pilings plays a major role.”

  She set the model down and looked at me. “The bottom line is, after running all the possible combinations of scenarios, I found that in the long term, none of them could withstand the hydrostatic pressure that would be created by the expected rising ocean levels. Seawalls have a high failure rate in general anyway. They work in the short term, but over time the waves create erosion and seepage at the base, ultimately leading to breaches, such as we saw with the levees in New Orleans.”

  I’d kind of guessed that in the first place without all the technical mumbo jumbo. I mean, how do you hold back a whole friggin’ ocean?

  “Okay,” I said, “so you wrote your report for BACK OFF. Did anything happen after that?”

  “It sure did. As I said, I’m new in Boca. I didn’t know how things worked here. But I found out very quickly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “About a week after I submitted my report to BACK OFF, I had a visit from none other than Castellano himself. Apparently he had a mole in BACK OFF who leaked the report to him. He suggested that I must have made some miscalculations and that I might want to issue a correction. So I suggested he go jump in a lake.”

  I guess that was fitting, coming from an aquatic authority.

  She continued, “Then he asked if I was aware that he was on the board of the university foundation, which is responsible for fundraising, and that he was a major donor. I hadn’t known that. So then he suggested I might want to reconsider my position because the president of the university might be taking a sudden interest in my academic future. Then he left.”

  “I see.” This was no shock to me, being a Boca native. Back-scratching deals involving sacrificial victims were a time-honored tradition in this town.

  “I don’t know if he ever got the chance to talk to the president, because a few days later he was dead.”

  I guess the Brainiac Babe had just had a temporary cranial crash, because she’d just supplied me with her own motive for murder.

  Chapter 16

  “AND JUST IN CASE you’re wondering,” Dr. Mason Hart continued, “I am not the one who killed him.”

  For just a moment there I thought I’d outbrained the Brainiac. Not.

  “I was at a fluid dynamics conference in San Diego all week. I just got back last night. I have my plane tickets, hotel reservation, eyewitnesses—all of which I will supply to the police should they ask.”

  In other words, she wasn’t going to supply me squat. And why should she?

  No doubt her evidence would provide an airtight alibi. Brainiacs don’t blunder. And while hiring a hit person was a totally plausible act for some of the seedy suspects I’d considered thus far, it seemed pretty farfetched for her. I mean, there is something to be said for character. A heart-breaking womanizer like Worthington is one thing, a Hog-riding woman another. Not that I’m biased or anything.

  “Are you worried about any repercussions this could have for your career if Junior did put the screws to the president?” I asked.

&n
bsp; “Of course. But you know what? Science is under siege in this country. Results are warped all the time by funding agencies, corporations, political ideologues, religious groups, the media . . . well, don’t get me started. I for one am not folding under pressure. Somebody has to speak truth to power.”

  Hey, that was my job. What was up with this upstart, moving to Boca with her Hog, horning in on my territory? Just who did she think she was?

  I took a deep breath. Get a grip. Boca was big enough for both of us. But that was it. Two was my limit.

  Oh, who was I kidding? Let’s face it, I’d just run into another dead end. At this point I could use all the help I could get.

  “Okay,” I said, “do you have any idea who might have killed Junior?”

  “My only connection to Castellano was through BACK OFF. Now, obviously, somebody in that organization was on his payroll. I don’t know whether that had anything to do with his murder, but it might be worth checking out.”

  “Right,” I said. Of course, BACK OFF was already on my list. “Thanks for your help.”

  “My pleasure. Castellano was a piece of work, but he didn’t deserve to die.”

  That was debatable. Junior had made more payoffs than a rigged slot machine. Quite possibly, one of those deals had led somebody to do him in. Quite possibly, that act was justifiable. Or at least understandable.

  WHEN I STEPPED out of the building, a strong gust of wind nearly knocked me off balance. I looked at the sky. Scattered dark clouds moved rapidly across the horizon, the harbingers of the hurricane. The wind and rain would now come in bursts like this, intensifying until the full force was upon us.

  Apparently the cats had gotten the memo, because they were gone. Standing in the shelter of the doorway, I took out my phone to call Bernard Kravitz, the leader of BACK OFF, whose number Trey’s clerk had given me. When I turned the phone on, I saw that Lior had left a message. I deleted it without listening.

  Kravitz answered on the third ring. I told him I was a prospective buyer of a beachfront home and that I’d like to get BACK OFF’s perspective on the seawall controversy so that I could make an informed decision.

  “We’d be happy to speak with you, but it will have to wait until after the hurricane,” he said. “Right now, we’ve got to prepare for that.”

  Well, that just wouldn’t do. Dirty Harriet waits for no one.

  “Oh, Mr. Kravitz, I’d be ever so grateful if you could just take a few moments of your time. I promise I won’t take long. You see, if I’m to buy this property, I must do so posthaste. The thing is, well, to be honest, my husband has had a little misunderstanding with the IRS, and we need to launder—I’m sorry, I mean, transfer some liquid funds into a homestead property that won’t be subject to seizure in the event a bankruptcy filing becomes necessary. I’m sure you understand.”

  Apparently this was not an unfamiliar scenario to him. “Oh, I see,” he said. “Yes, that does make it an urgent matter. I’ll tell you what, the homeowners association, of which I am president and which is the parent group of BACK OFF, is holding an emergency meeting this evening to prepare for the hurricane. You can attend, and if any time is left, we can briefly speak with you about the wall.”

  “Oh, Mr. Kravitz, you are a doll,” I said.

  He gave me the address of his home, where the meeting was to be held. In the meantime, I decided to check out the eco-freaks.

  The address for Floridians United for Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction was on Dixie Highway, otherwise known as the sex and drugs corridor of South Florida. The road parallels the Florida East Coast Railway tracks and forms the backside of Federal Highway. Whereas the stretch of Federal that passes through Boca consists of showy shopping plazas, ritzy restaurants, and opulent office buildings, Dixie is lined with dirt lots, warehouses, auto body shops, and independent entrepreneurs of the aforementioned underground trades.

  FUGGER was located in a small ramshackle wooden house that must have dated from the time of the original railway construction over a century ago. Out front, a tall, blond kid who looked to be in his twenties was watering a scraggly patch of lawn that was struggling for life. Guess that gave new meaning to grassroots activism.

  I pulled up just as raindrops started to fall. The kid looked up at the sound of my Hog then set down his watering can and walked up to the porch. I followed, removing my helmet and shaking off the rain droplets as I walked.

  As I reached the shelter of the covered porch, the rain began to come down in sheets. The kid and I stood there a while watching the water flow over the roof overhang. It was like standing behind a waterfall. Sounded like it, too.

  I looked over at the kid. He sported a T-shirt proclaiming “Hemp for Humanity” and a ponytail proclaiming him a throwback to the sixties.

  “Cool bike,” he said. “Good way to save on gas.”

  “Uh, yeah.” If that had been my intent, I would have gotten a Japanese rice-burner bike. A Hog is about thrills, not thrift.

  “You here to sign up for our volunteer drive?” he asked.

  Gee, I hadn’t yet thought of a pretext for my visit. He’d just handed it to me, saving me a few brain cells.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” I said.

  “Come on in. I’m Josh, by the way.”

  “I’m Harr . . . uh, Hailey.”

  I set down my helmet on the porch and followed him into the house’s former parlor, which now served as an office. A metal desk was overflowing with loose papers and binders. Stacks of books were piled on the floor. Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals topped one of them. I couldn’t make out any other titles, because the room was dark. And hot. Either the early storm activity had already knocked out the power, or FUGGER hadn’t paid its utility bill.

  “Have a seat,” Josh said.

  I stumbled over to a dimly visible chair, stubbing my toe on the side of the desk.

  “Think you could turn on some lights in here?” I asked. “Is the power out or what?”

  “The power’s on, but we’re conserving energy,” Josh said, shoving papers aside to sit on the desk. “That is, of course, central to our mission.” He frowned at me. “Do you know much about our organization?”

  I knew that their office space wasn’t very organized, for one thing. And that watering the lawn just before a rainfall was an odd way to conserve. But he’d just given me another great opening.

  “Actually, I don’t know too much. I, uh, I’ve been court-ordered to do community service due to a little misunderstanding. I swear I wasn’t shoplifting that skull-and-crossbones gold-plated ring from the Harley shop. I was just trying it on and forgot it was on my finger when I walked out the door. Man, you should have heard those security alarms go off. Scared the bejeezus out of me. Anyway, the cops and the judge just didn’t believe me, so I got this sentence. My probation officer gave me a list of organizations to pick from, and I just liked your name, FUGGER.” I giggled. “So here I am.”

  “I can dig it,” Josh said.

  Dig it? Yeah, he was a throwback all right.

  He went on. “My dad—the founder of the organization—and I have been arrested more times than you can count. Civil disobedience, you know. Heck, I grew up going with Mom to the county jail to bail Dad out. It’s a family tradition. Dad just founded FUGGER a couple years ago, but he’s been a community organizer for economic and environmental justice since before I was born. I like to say I was born with a green spoon in my mouth.”

  “Uh huh. So tell me what FUGGER’s all about.”

  “Absolutely. Our mission is to stop global warming. To do that, people have to become environmentally enlightened. For example, do you know the size of your carbon footprint?”

  I looked at my boots. “Sure. Eight.”

  “No, your carbon footprint—the amount of carbon dioxide you emit from your daily ac
tivities, from mowing your lawn to vacuuming your home.”

  I didn’t do either, so I must have been pretty enlightened. Unlike this room.

  “We can calculate it later,” Josh continued, swinging his legs from his perch on the desk. “Anyway, it’s the first step. Once people know their impact on the environment, they can learn ways to reduce it. Like supporting eco-friendly businesses, buying organic from local farmers, recycling wastewater—which is what I was just doing on the lawn out there—and using alternative energy sources. It’s all about sustainable living.”

  “I see.” The kid was a dreamer. He should come out to my cabin—I’d show him sustainable living.

  “Now, of course, we believe in thinking globally and acting locally. So we’ve got a couple major local initiatives right now. First of all, you know that Palm Beach County is the biggest sugar cane producer in the country, right?” He leaned forward to peer at me in the dark, his ponytail falling forward over his shoulder.

  “Uh huh,” I said, and this time I wasn’t lying. I really did know that, due to the fact that chemical runoff from the cane fields polluted Lana’s and my home turf.

  “We’re lobbying local government to support building production facilities to convert cane into ethanol,” Josh said. “They’re doing it in Brazil, why not here? It’s a no-lose proposition. Not only would it save the environment from all the problems of fossil fuels, it would be an economic bonanza.”

  I guess the runoff problem didn’t figure into the equation.

  “Yeah, I can, uh, dig that,” I said. “And what’s your other initiative?”

  “The Boca City Council is about to fork over billions of bucks to build a seawall around Boca to protect it from floodwaters due to global warming. We think the money should be spent instead on tax incentives for households and businesses to go green.”