SHADOW OVER CEDAR KEY

by Ann Cook

  Brandy waited for half an hour, her bravado leaching away with each minute. Where was Strong? She didn’t see his sedan, but she knew how skillful these law enforcement officers were. They were all probably concealed in the trailer or vacant buildings, Strong’s car hidden behind the scraggly row of scrub oaks. He might even be in the houseboat itself, where he would be closest if Brandy needed him.

  For a few minutes longer she listened to a deep throated chorus of frogs. The hull’s rubber fenders crunched against a piling, and from the bank came the rank odor of rotting water weeds. At last, when she had almost decided something had gone wrong, she heard the resonant five hoots of the great horned owl—hoo-hoo-oo, hoo, hoo-oo—fainter than she had expected, but distinct. She couldn’t tell if the mournful sounds came from the houseboat or the riverbank, but they were the signal. Obviously their suspect had not yet arrived. With a deep breath, she slipped the key ring from her pocket. She recognized the swamp buggy key and the one to the boat’s ignition. That left the key to the houseboat door. She padded down the dock to the houseboat’s metal gate. Under her tennis shoes an aged board groaned. Slipping up the latch, she stepped aboard.

  Again she waited. No sound now but the croaking of the frogs. She tried the key in the cabin door. At first it balked, then the lock clicked. Probably nothing will happen, she thought. Her suspect might not have swallowed the bait. Too smart. Either way, she won. If she found the murderer’s picture, it wouldn’t matter whether she lured her suspect aboard or not.

  She sidled into the wheel house and into almost pitch blackness. Pulling her small flashlight from her pocket, she swung it around the room. The deputies had not straightened up the cabin since they last searched, or someone had come after them. Debris had been tossed everywhere—pots and pans on the galley floor, the compass wrenched loose from its housing, the sofa bed pulled out, cushions strewn across the floor. She hoped the wide strips of duct tape still covering part of the windows would blot out the glow from her flashlight. In a corner lay her Nikon, proof the ransacker wasn’t hunting for valuables. Better not touch anything yet, she thought. The hard part will be waiting to spring the trap.

  It was then that she heard a soft movement behind the closed pocket door. Someone breathing? A foot shuffled on the step. Her heart gave a giant leap. But it must be Detective Strong or a deputy, signaling again from the bedroom. Still, she held her breath. Don’t look for the picture, she thought. Give the suspect plenty of time to come aboard. She crept to the window, peered out at the darkened pier. Silence. And then she heard the noise again behind her, a scratching. The door shifted and slowly rolled back. Instinctively, she backed into the hard, cold surface behind her, pressing her spine against the bow window. Surely Strong would identify himself now. Instead, a low, muffled voice came from the doorway, the words clear. “Get the picture. Now.”

  With trembling fingers Brandy flicked off the flashlight. From the pocket doorway another thin shaft of light probed the wheel house, inched toward her. Behind it a head emerged, encased in black knit. Nauseated with fear, knees weak, she clutched the back of a chair. A ski mask, of course. The figure’s whole lithe body was sheathed in black, commando fashion. Now she saw the gun. The tone was sharp, urgent, as she had expected, but she’d thought the detective would hear it.

  “You’ve got one minute to get the picture or you’re wasted.” She strained to hear Strong or the deputies and heard a shuffling noise on the pier.

  “Strong!” she yelled. “Now!”

  A squirrel leapt from the dock onto the boat railing, then bounded away. Silence again. A short ugly laugh from the doorway. The figure stooped, glided closer, leveling the gun, its barrel like a cannon. “Get the picture!”

  If she found and gave over the picture, she would surely die. She could identify a murderer, one who had already killed at least twice. Her frantic gaze flitted from item to item, sorting, rejecting, at last seizing the one chance. She forced herself to speak. “I was mistaken.” Her voice quivered. She tried to control it. “I looked when I got here. The picture isn’t here.”

  The gun moved closer. “Maybe I won’t shoot you.” Again the hard laugh, razor-like. “Some deaths are worse than shooting. Old Moose kept lots of knives in the galley.”

  She could see the row of knives in a wall mount. The blades glinted in the narrow beam. “You win,” she quavered. “You searched every place but the right one.” She edged toward the galley. Her fingers touched the fire extinguisher. “Look at the brackets.” Was that low, shaking voice hers? She wanted to dash for the deck, dive into the black water. But the tall figure blocked the only exit, still pinned her with its flashlight and its gun.

  Her voice steadied. “I watched Moose through the door panel. Look carefully. He was clever. Right behind here, taped to the bracket. It’s hard to see, but it’s here.” The ski mask head tilted. Eyes gleamed through the slits, following her fingers. “I’ve got to move the unit to the side.” Her voice dropped to a whine. “Then you’ll let me go?”

  Another snort of laughter. “Sure.” The gun didn’t waver.

  With a silent prayer, Brandy grasped the bottom of the red metal cylinder in one hand, lifted it up, grabbed the pin out with the other, and in one quick motion, aimed and mashed the lever. Liquid foam spurted in an arc. She heard a startled cry, heard the gun fall. “Shit!” a black gloved hand shot up to the eye holes.

  But as Brandy spun to sprint across the room, the other gloved hand jerked the fire extinguisher from her fingers. She felt a crashing blow to the side of her head, felt herself crumple, then slam down on the hard floor. As the lights in her head went out, she was conscious, nearby, of an owl’s plaintive call.

  * * * *

  Brandy’s eyes opened to a blinding glare. She had felt darkness and pain. Now she heard too much noise. For several seconds she could not think what had happened. If she had climbed down Satan’s flank out of hell into the light, there shouldn’t be so much noise. She was confused. Finding salvation from Dante’s Inferno was Cara’s task. As she closed her eyes again, she remembered someone had struck her. No one was hitting her now. Perhaps this was paradise, and the figure bending over her, an angel.

  “Holy Jesus! What’s her old man gonna say?”

  Another voice, light years away. “You oughta called sooner, detective. Hell, we ain’t got that many guys for back up.”

  Brandy opened her eyes again and looked into the dark, anguished face of Jeremiah Strong. “Your timing was off, M’am. You didn’t give me time to round up the Dixie County deputies. You were supposed to wait for the owl tape.”

  “I guess the owl around here,” she whispered,” didn’t know the plan.”

  While Strong was speaking, he peeled off his sport coat and tucked it under her head. “You okay? Stay flat and turn your head to one side. You got some blood up side your head, but we bandaged the cut, and your mouth is clear.”

  “The best laid plans o’mice and men,” Brandy murmured. Another voice called out from the open door. “An ambulance’s on the way, detective.”

  Brandy’s head felt like it was pressed between steel plates, but she managed a faint cry, “Did the guy get away?”

  The outside deputy again, “We’re holding some dude in black. Caught him hiding under the pier.” Angels, all right, Brandy thought, in uniform. All she could see were black shoes and olive green cuffs. She tried to focus. What was it she must remember? Something terribly important had brought her here.

  “Duct tape,” she said suddenly and tried to sit up. Her head exploded.

  Strong spoke softly. “Just lay quiet, M’am. I figure you got a concussion. You’re not making a heap of sense.”

  Brandy eased her head back onto his coat, but her mind had cleared. “Listen, Strong. It’s important. The window is taped in strips on both sides. Pull the duct tape off on the inside.” With exaggerated pati
ence she formed the words. “The photograph, remember?”

  Strong rose and spoke to someone near the front window. “Do like the lady says. She’s got a good track record.”

  A sticky sound ripped across the glass. A more distant voice said, “Gal’s right. An envelope’s stuck under the tape.”

  All she could see was the bottom on the wheel console and a barometer that had fallen beside it. “Moose put something there before the hurricane. I saw him do it before I climbed aboard.” She remembering kneeling among the wax myrtle while he plastered strips on an outside window before the storm, then lumbered into the wheel house, laid something against the glass inside, and covered it with more tape. She’d thought it odd at the time.

  Everything was coming back to her now, except the last few minutes before she banged down on the floor. “The tape will be stuck to the envelope, but you can slit it open. The outside strips concealed it. Very bright for a guy with the brains of a bagel.” She waited while Strong produced a pocket knife. There was a momentary silence. The deputies must know the importance of the photograph.

  “Be damned,” said the other voice.

  Strong knelt again and put the slit envelope in Brandy’s right hand. “You said you knew who shot Rossi and buried him. Now tell me, who’s gonna be in this picture? I don’t even know yet who the deputies got in the cruiser.”

  A challenge. In spite of her position on the cabin floor, Brandy prepared to enjoy herself. “Remember Rossi’s list? The one you found in his pocket? Rossi wrote ‘Hunt missing woman in cemetery.’We didn’t get the real meaning. An English teacher could explain.”

  In her mind’s eye she could see her mother at the dining room table, correcting a stack of student themes. “We’ve been confusing a proper noun with a verb. Hunt is used here as a proper noun, a name.”

  She paused for breath. Strong frowned. Grammar had probably never been his forte. “Hunt’s the name Rossi knew Blade Bullen by, we all did. The notation meant Rossi was going with Nathan Hunt to meet the missing woman in the cemetery, not to search for her body there.

  “He left out punctuation and little words, like you do when you take notes. On the original there’s likely a space or comma or dash between the words Hunt and missing woman. The item is the last one on his list. The last thing the poor guy did was go to the cemetery with the man he knew as Hunt.

  Brandy tried to raise her head again and quickly decided against it. “I figure Blade persuaded Rossi he could produce the woman Rossi was looking for. He said as much to us all in the lounge that night. Probably told Rossi the woman wanted to meet in a quiet, deserted place, that she suggested the cemetery. It wouldn’t surprise Rossi. He knew she might have a new identity, might not want anyone in Cedar Key to know her past. That’s why he wanted as little publicity as possible.”

  Strong lowered himself into the captain’s chair and shook a finger at her. “Take it easy, M’am. You’re talking too much.”

  Brandy took a deep breath again. Her head throbbed, but she was far too excited to be quiet. “I’m sure Blade said he’d go with Rossi and take a gun for Rossi’s own protection. The investigator didn’t carry a weapon. Blade could’ve picked MacGill’s gun up from the hotel desk. He was often behind the counter with the desk clerk. Remember, you found Rossi’s broken glasses in the cemetery. Later he would’ve had no problem burying the gun in the basement, where it would surely be found, and planting the hotel spade at Truck’s fish house. Both seemed to implicate MacGill.”

  Brandy pulled out the photograph and held it up for the detective. In the glow of a hurricane lamp they both recognized the pale, startled face of Blade Bullen, the spade handle in his hand. “Blade Bullen,” she said, “sole heir to the Bullen fortune—unless Rossi produced a long-forgotten sister.”

  Strong stood and placed his big hands on his hips. “Blade Bullen, also drug runner and marijuana broker. The guy tried hard to stop you. Left a fake message at the hotel, telling you to come back to Gainesville. Later faxed your picture to his thugs in New York. Probably said you were a reporter or an under cover cop, fixing to expose their whole operation. Then he planned to zap you and Cara both this morning. Instead he got the blackmailer you call Moose. Moose and the guy at the marina were cogs in his marijuana wheel.” He shook his head. “Tonight he must’ve left the dinner early and drove like thunder to get here first. Thought he’d finally get rid of you and the photograph.”

  Brandy tried to nod and immediately stopped. “Yeah, three routes to the main highway and he took the one that beat me.”

  Footsteps pounded up the pier. Someone entered the cabin and called out, “Medics are here with the stretcher.”

  Strong stood and held open the door. “Carry her to the emergency room in Gainesville.”

  Her blue eyes clouded. “You’ve cinched the case against Blade. But you still have to unravel the first murder.” The detective rolled his eyes toward heaven.

  Before the medics could reach her, Brandy grasped the leg of a chair and wobbled to her feet. “Don’t need help,” she said, and sank in a heap on the floor.

  CHAPTER 24

  When Brandy awoke at last in broad daylight, she first saw a curtain on rings, hanging from a rolling metal stand. Still groggy, she realized she must be in the emergency room. Where was Strong? Never around when she needed him. She glanced about for her clothes, and then heard a heavy tread and a low voice speaking to a nurse. The woman pulled back the curtain. “Visitor.”

  Brandy looked up. “Have you called John?”

  “Look, M’am,” Strong said, formal again. “Lady here says you been held for observation, but you seem okay. They’ll turn you loose on the world this morning.”

  Brandy grinned. “I see. No need for John to know the whole scenario, right? You’d rather I met him at the airport late this morning, just like we planned yesterday.” She put a tentative hand on her bandaged head. “Could’ve had a nasty fall on the hotel stairs, being tired and all. My own fault, of course.”

  He shifted from one foot to the other. “Something like that.”

  She eased herself up on her pillow. “It could work. All anyone has to know is that you guys caught Rossi’s killer at the houseboat. All my things are still in the car.” She glanced up in appeal. “I’ll make you a trade. I won’t explain how all this happened if you do two more things for me. The first is easy. Have the rental car driven back to the airport. But there’s another.”

  When Strong’s eyes widened in alarm, she smiled.

  “Like MacGill would say, don’t get your knickers in a twist. I need to see some pictures, that’s all. I’ve been lying here going over everything that happened. Blade was only about eleven and in New York when his stepmother was killed. That means he didn’t kill Allison Bullen.”

  She chose her words with care. “I don’t have my notebook, so I’ve been remembering things I heard yesterday and haven’t had a chance to write down. Do you realize this whole case turns on images? The artist in Marcia and Cara would be pleased.”

  She ticked off the list on her fingers. “First I saw Allison Bullen’s wedding portrait at the police station, and then Marcia’s powerful hurricane scenes. They showed her both losing and finding a child. There were also her portraits of the little girls. I saw the photographs of the Island Hotel refugees after Hurricane Agnes. My photograph in the newspaper column turned up in New York. Last, Cara’s picture of the murderer at Shell Mound was worth killing for.”

  She sat up straighter and tapped the sheet for emphasis. “Can the Sheriff s Office make enlargements?”

  He nodded, his eyebrows up.

  “Where’s my purse?”

  In silence he handed it to her from the drawer of a bedside stand. She pulled out her small notepad and pencil, scrawled a few lines, ripped out the page, and handed it to him. “I need to see these photos enlarged. T
here are only two. And I’d like to have my notebook. It’s in the rental car. I want to look at the notes I took when I interviewed the Otter Creek cashier.” She leaned forward, coppery hair falling in tangles over the top of the bandage. “If the pictures show what I think they will, and my notes say what I think they do, we’ll also know who murdered Allison Bullen.”

  * * * *

  For Brandy the following weeks passed in slow motion. In the bureau news room she worked with one ear cocked for Strong’s occasional call. She hadn’t forgotten her ambition to be transferred downtown, but she had flubbed the Shell Mound ghost story, and now the Cedar Key crime features didn’t seem as important as Cara’s well-being. The detective did keep her posted. A few days after Blade’s attack on Brandy, she was able to report his indictment for the murders of Moose and Anthony Rossi.

  In the meantime, the two photographs Brandy had requested were enlarged, enhanced, and studied. Jeremiah Strong saw what Brandy predicted he would. Then a battered flashlight, preserved by the Sheriff s Office for nineteen years—ever since it was found in the hotel cistern—was dispatched to the FBI’s fingerprint lab in Gainesville. Finally, when Brandy thought she could not endure another minute’s wait, the results came back. A latent partial print on the metal handle had yielded to the laser.

  Detective Jeremiah Strong made another arrest, his captain held a press briefing, and at last Brandy wrote the story of Allison Bullen’s murder. She had kept her word to Strong.

  On the mild January day that her feature blazed across every edition of the Gainesville Tribune, she folded the newspaper, shoved aside a stack of envelopes, catalogs, and books that were about to topple across the breakfast room table, and smiled at John over their grapefruit and English muffins.

  “It’s time to keep another promise.” She stretched out her arm and patted his hand. “One I made in October, before I ever heard of Anthony Rossi and a missing woman. It’s also time I gave an explanation to some friends in Cedar Key.”