Death Among the Mangroves

by Stephen Morrill

“I did. After the town council meeting last night. I had to wait around a little while, but sure enough, she came rolling in around midnight. Her name is Georgette Green. She’s about sixty, I would guess. Seems in decent shape, but for not having the best use of her legs. She can stand and walk a little. Funny thing is, she’s not really homeless. She has relatives on Barron Key and she sleeps at their house about every other night. But she says she doesn’t like to impose upon them and likes to stay out on nights when it’s not raining. So she sits at the park half the night enjoying the stars and the mosquitoes.”

  “The county sprays for the mosquitoes.”

  “Poorly,” Troy said. “And we’re surrounded by various parks where spraying is not permitted. Anyway, Georgette’s doing nothing wrong other than using some of our electricity.”

  “She shouldn’t be living like that.”

  Troy raised an eyebrow. “Who are we to say that? But I do take your point. I’m going to check on things. See if I can at least give her more options. If she has more options and still chooses to live that way, so be it.”

  The waiter laid the check on the table and Lee put her credit card inside the leather folder. “I’ll pay,” she said.

  “So this meal, counting air and ground transportation, is costing you somewhere just this side of eight hundred dollars. And I suppose you expect me to put out just because you sprang for a dinner?”

  Lee grinned. “You would put out if I bought you a cheeseburger.”

  Chapter 33

  Monday, December 30

  A used-car dealer in Miami finally got around to filing his paperwork about the time Troy was being extended by the town council, and Cord MacIntosh tracked down the VIN on the Stiders’ Porsche.

  Most of the press had moved on to stories where something was actually happening, preferably, in the case of television reporters, something they could photograph. A half-dozen die-hards, including the Reuters man Cilla Dowling had pointed out to Troy, remained, carbo-loading doughnuts at the folding table in front of the police station door. They seemed more polite and stayed out of the bushes, and Troy had opened his office window blinds to let in some sunshine.

  Troy, who had been leaning back in his chair and reading his notes on the Barbara Gillispie case for the hundredth time, took his foot off the open desk drawer as a sound outside made him turn around to look through the window that faced Connecticut Avenue. Troy watched as a man with a flatbed truck and crane put down a fresh porta potty and lifted a full one up and onto the truck. Talk about the inside man at the skunk works, Troy thought. Just don’t spill anything.

  He swiveled around to face front and look alert as Cord MacIntosh walked into Troy’s office and sat himself in a visitor chair.

  “I’ve been busy,” MacIntosh said.

  Troy nodded a welcome. They stared at each other. Apparently MacIntosh wanted Troy to say something to that. “Earning that big commission, I take it,” Troy said. “And which is about a hundred times my salary.”

  “I was. I was indeed. You want the good news first or the bad news first?”

  “Let’s have the good news first.”

  “There isn’t any.”

  “Then why did you say that?”

  “Damned if I know, now that I think about it.”

  “You owe a dollar. I told you the rule.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” MacIntosh got out his wallet.

  “If it weren’t for bad news, we’d have no news at all, I suppose,” Troy said. “Let’s hear it.”

  MacIntosh nodded. “Indeed. Here it is. Spent the weekend in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale looking for used sports cars. Got no place until this morning when a friend in Tallahassee saw the VIN number go by his computer.”

  “You had told this friend, in DMV, presumably, to keep an eye out?”

  “That I did.”

  “Are you, a private citizen, permitted to reassign work duties of state employees?”

  “Of course not. That would be unlawful.”

  “We would have gotten the report anyway, sooner or later,” Troy said.

  “Sure. Maybe by next summer.”

  “So what did this friend tell you?”

  MacIntosh smiled. “Mark Stider’s Porsche was sold in Miami to a dealer who specializes in exporting cars to Latin America,” he said. “I talked to the dealer. He got a bargain. I talked to a Miami customhouse broker. The car was shipped to Venezuela last Saturday.”

  “Venezuela, you say. This is really going to cost us some overtime and per diem.”

  “It gets better,” MacIntosh said.

  “What could be better than Venezuela?”

  “The customhouse broker told me he suspects—he only suspects because if he actually knew he might have to do something about it—that the Venezuelan connection is only a front. The end user is in Cuba.”

  “Cuba. Yes, Cuba would be better, all right.”

  “The whole setup is a way to get around U.S. export rules for Cuba.”

  “The hits just keep on coming,” Troy said. “Cuba. Judge Stider sure knows how to bury evidence. There’s got to be blood in that car or he wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble.”

  “You know it,” MacIntosh said.

  “I had suspected,” Troy said, “that the judge would just sell the car for scrap.”

  MacIntosh thought about that and then shook his head. “Two problems with that. First off, scrapping the car is not getting rid of the evidence. It’s only squishing it into a cube. You would still be able to get at it. Second, the scrap dealer probably wouldn’t actually scrap a new Porsche. The minute the judge and his kid left, the scrap dealer would retitle it and sell it used.”

  Troy nodded. “Know at least one used-car dealer up on Florida Avenue in Tampa who has a stack of blank titles in his left-hand lower desk drawer.”

  “Why, that sounds…unlawful.”

  “I believe it is,” Troy said. “But, that was a great job of tracking down a lead. You ever give any thought to being a Mangrove Bayou cop, part-time anyway, let me know.”

  “Keep it in mind for my retirement job. Now I think I’ll go stake out the judge’s kid. Keeping busy.”

  Troy’s intercom buzzed. It was Norris Compton, filling in on Mondays for June Dundee at the front desk. “Woman here to see you,” Norris said.

  “Let you know if I turn up anything else interesting,” MacIntosh said. Troy nodded and they both walked up to the lobby. The woman standing at the counter was a town clerk. She watched MacIntosh leave and then turned to Troy and handed Troy some paperwork. It was a faxed search warrant for the Stiders’ house, cars, boat and property. A second warrant covered the motel room Mark Stider had rented. They were both dated Thursday, December 26.

  “These are four days old. When did they come in?” Troy asked.

  “I don’t know. I found them under some other things. I thought they might be important and they had your name on them.”

  Don’t yell at her, Troy thought. That won’t help. “Thank you,” he said. The woman left. “What is it?” Norris asked.

  “A couple of long-overdue search warrants.”

  “They faxed important paperwork? Who even has a fax machine any more?”

  “Someone in the court system, I guess. I’ll try to remember not to let them do that again. I’ll have Angel fix it so faxes come direct to our computer system. At least for as long as anyone continues to use faxes.”

  “Thought those warrants were voided by the judge himself,” Norris said.

  “Well, by his friends up there. So I bypassed Rita Shaner’s office in Naples and had the state attorney’s office re-file them from their main office in Fort Myers.”

  Norris grinned. “More than one way to skin a cat.”

  “That was actually Rita Shaner’s suggestion,” Troy said. “You met her.”

  “Yeah. She’s the reason I had to work off all that community service. Thanks to you.”

  “Right. Anyway, these are on, among other things, a ca
r that’s on its way to Cuba and a boat that’s sunk out in the Gulf of Mexico.”

  “The Stider clan appears to be a little quicker off the starting blocks than we are,” Norris said.

  Troy sighed. “This is true. But we may as well go through the motions now that we have the paperwork.”

  Chapter 34

  Monday, December 30

  Troy called Juan Valdez, his temporary detective rank. They drove to the Stider home and handed the search warrant to Martha Stider. Today Martha wore a light green ankle-length skirt and a matching long-sleeve, high-neck top. Her black eye had faded some and now there was a dark bruise under one ear.

  She waved her hands so much Troy couldn’t get her to hold the warrant. He laid it on a coffee table in the living room. Mark Stider was nowhere to be seen and his mother said he had gone into Naples for the day. Martha Stider went to the kitchen, with Troy keeping her company, and made tea for herself, Troy and Juan. She added a plate of biscuits that she insisted were scones. They looked like biscuits to Troy. He helped her set the coffee table, got her seated, and explained that Juan was too busy just now for the tea and scones.

  “Excuse me a moment,” Juan said as Martha passed around the tray of scones. Juan took the tray and laid it on the coffee table. He gently took Martha’s left hand and slid the sleeve up to Martha’s elbow. Troy was startled to see red marks on Martha’s forearm. Martha did not resist as Juan slid up the right sleeve to expose older marks, purple bruises.

  Troy decided this was a good time to keep his mouth shut. “Martha,” Juan said. “Are you being abused? How did you get all these bruises?”

  Martha shut her eyes tight. She absently wiped away a tear. “I’m just clumsy. Clumsy is all. Fell in the bathroom.”

  “Martha, no one is that clumsy,” Juan said.

  Martha took several deep breaths. She pulled her sleeves back down. “I am,” she said in a firmer tone. “Now, what is it you are looking for? She smiled again and her hands fluttered a little in her lap. “I don’t understand what you want. I can get it for you if I only knew.”

  “It’s on the warrant.” Troy pointed at the paper on the table. “But to summarize, we’re looking for any evidence that your son Mark had something to do with the disappearance of one Barbara Gillispie, a college student down here on vacation a few days ago.”

  “Oh. Her. You were here before about that. I’m sure my Mark would never cause any trouble. He’s in law school, you know.”

  “I’m sure he will be an addition to the profession,” Troy said. If Martha didn’t know her son had been kicked out of law school, Troy wasn’t going to go into all that now.

  “You don’t happen to know where the boat and the Porsche are, do you? They’re on the warrant too but I don’t see them here.” Troy was curious to see how Martha would react.

  “Oh my. No, my husband told me he had sold the boat because he didn’t use it much.” She was looking down at her shoes. “The Porsche was Mark’s and Mark sold that too, he told me. He said he planned to buy a more sensible car.”

  Troy looked at Martha for a long time. Juan started to say something but Troy held up a hand to stop him.

  “Martha, are you absolutely positive that’s what happened? What they said?”

  She didn’t look up, only nodded her head vigorously. “Yessir.”

  Juan looked at Troy. Troy shook his head at him. He knew Martha was lying but saw no point in pressing it right now.

  “All right. We’ll leave that for the moment. Just on that same subject,” Troy said, “Where’s the boat trailer?”

  “Trailer?”

  “I have…information…that when your husband ‘sold’ the boat it was not on the trailer. He brought the trailer back here. My officers saw it here, empty, on their routine patrols. It’s not here now. Where is it?”

  “Oh. That trailer. The Judge said the boat buyer had his own. I suppose he would have had to. I mean, if he didn’t take ours. I don’t know much about boats but you can’t just drag them down the street behind your car.”

  Troy smiled. “Actually, I once saw that done at a boat ramp. But where is the trailer now?”

  “That’s why Mark is up in Naples. He and The Judge went together this morning, in the Mercedes. It has a trailer hitch. Mark was going to drop off The Judge at work and then go sell the trailer. They’ll both be back by suppertime. Please, if you want to talk to them. I’m sure my husband can explain it all.”

  “I’ll just bet he could. Now, you and I are going to sit here and enjoy your tea and scones. Officer Valdez here is going to have a look around. And, Martha, if you ever, ever, at any time, day or night, want to talk to me, just call. Say, should you accidentally fall down in the bathroom again, which you seem prone to do.”

  The search was slow and the house large. At one point Juan came back into the living room with a box of ammunition. “I found some .357 ammo in the judge’s bedroom,” Juan said.

  “Aha. Probably in his sock drawer.”

  Juan stared at Troy. “It was. The box of ammunition was, in fact, in his sock drawer. Why am I wasting my time searching when you already know where everything is?”

  “Men often put ammo in sock drawers. And I’m the chief of police and I know everything. The good judge probably has that gun with him now.”

  Martha nodded. “The Judge carries a gun to work. He has one of those permits.”

  “Concealed weapons license,” Troy said. “Lots of judges carry. There’s a special provision in the law for that, so they can take them into the courthouses. We’ll keep this box of the good judge’s ammo.”

  Juan also hauled off every computer in the house and all the external hard drives and thumb drives he could find.

  “I bet that Angel is perfectly capable of looking at these drives,” Juan said as he loaded computers into the back of one of the Suburbans.

  “I know,” Troy said. He had helped lug the equipment out to the truck. “But let’s have FDLE handle it. “Wasn’t but a few years back the sheriff’s office in Polk County forgot to check all the web browsers on a computer and a murderer may have gotten off because of it.”

  “I know the case,” Juan said. “And we’re smarter than that.”

  “They probably thought that too. We’ll send this stuff up to FDLE anyway. Now let’s get back to the searching.”

  “Right. I’m searching. High and low. You’re eating scones and drinking tea.”

  “I think they’re just biscuits.”

  At four p.m., Milo Binder relieved Juan and sat with Martha while Troy searched. Troy thought any search should, ideally, be done by two people independently. Different eyes and brains saw different things.

  At six, Judge Hans Stider and Mark Stider stormed in the front door. The judge demanded to know what Troy thought he was doing. Troy explained what he thought he was doing. The judge tore up the warrant. Martha tried to become invisible. Mark’s face had turned red. He left the living room and Troy let him go. They were done with the house search anyway.

  “That’s childish, Judge,” Troy said, looking at the pieces of paper on the living room floor. “It’s just a faxed copy. You, of all people, would know that.”

  “They’re only looking for something to do with Mark and that missing girl,” Martha said. “I’m sure they’ll be on their way soon.”

  “Shut up, Martha. Stop babbling,” Hans Stider shouted. “I’ll deal with you later.”

  “What are you going to do, Judge? Beat her black-and blue again? Maybe break a rib?” Troy said.

  Judge Stider looked at Troy. “You are going to regret this to the day you die,” he said. He didn’t raise his voice but he hissed his words through his teeth. “I’m going to see if I can have you arrested. And I have friends in the legal community. I’m going to bury you in lawsuits.”

  Troy didn’t answer. He stared at the judge. Mark Stider came back into the room. “They took our computers.”

  “Is that true?” Judge Stider said
to Troy.

  “Routine. We’ll check the two computers for anything to do with the disappearance of Barbara Gillispie. You’ll get them back. And now that you’re here, Judge, I’ll take a look at your .357 too. The one on your right hip under your coat.”

  “You’ll take my gun out of my cold, dead fingers,” Judge Stider said.

  “Works for me.” Troy took a step forward. Stider reached back for his gun. When he lifted his suit coat Milo, standing behind him, nimbly pulled out the gun before Stider could grab it. Mark Stider stepped in and threw a punch at Troy. Troy turned his left shoulder into it and then backhanded Mark across the face with his left forearm. Mark staggered back and Troy spun his entire body into a short right to the kid’s solar plexus. Mark went down gasping and lay on his side on the carpet. The judge was standing still with his hands in the air. Martha Stider sat in her chair, holding her hands together and shaking.

  “Why do you have your hands up like that, Judge?” Troy said. “We’re not having a stage coach robbery here.”

  “Want me to cuff them both?” Milo asked.

  Troy shook his head. “There will be a time for that.” He thought he saw just a flicker of fear in the judge’s eyes. “Give me the gun.”

  Milo handed Troy the judge’s pistol. Troy flipped open the cylinder and shook out the cartridges. He put the cartridges into his pocket and laid the gun on the living room table. Martha looked down at it and slid even farther back in her seat.

  “We have what we came for,” Troy said to Milo. “Let’s go.”

  “You…you beat up my son.” The judge bent over Mark and tried to help him up.

  “Well, it’s not my fault that I’m not some little girl. Or your wife. He’ll be fine in a few minutes.” There were noises from the floor as Mark Stider threw up. “Oops. Sorry about that, Judge. I wouldn’t wear those shoes again.”

  Outside, and beneath the house in the parking space, they searched the Mercedes SUV. Milo had simply picked the judge’s keys up off the small table by the front door. No one came out of the house to stop them.

  “Why take the judge’s gun if you were just going to hand it back?” Milo said as he felt under a seat. “Could have kept it. Maybe run a test. Fired off a sample bullet and saved that. Just in case.”