Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  Mom and I exchanged a look. “You mean you haven’t heard the news?”

  “What news is that?”

  “Guru Sanjay is dead.” I watched him closely, eager to see his reaction.

  “Dead? Dead!” He paused to flip the fish, shaking his head, a satisfied expression on his sweaty face. “That’s the first good news I’ve heard all week. I’ve been up in Panama City, doing some fishing. Haven’t read the paper, or listened to the radio.” He paused. “Doesn’t change my situation any, but I’m glad he got what’s coming to him. So what happened to the dude? He have a heart attack or something like that? He was carrying a lot of weight under those bed sheets he always wore.”

  “Someone killed him,” Mom blurted out. I raised my eyebrows and gave her a warning nudge.

  “For real?” Either Ray Hicks had taken some acting lessons, or he was genuinely surprised to hear the news. Since I couldn’t imagine him studying the Stanislavski Method through a home study course, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  “He died under mysterious circumstances,” I said. “The police are investigating, but at the moment, they’re really not sure what happened to him. He was holding a retreat up in Cypress Grove and he was found dead in his hotel room.” I carefully omitted the fact that my own roommate was considered a person of interest by the local police.

  “Well, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” he said with grim satisfaction. “I hope his death was long and slow.”

  Mom gave a delicate shudder. “How well did you know him?”

  “Too well,” Ray said with a snicker. “That sumabitch ruined my life.” He deftly transferred the cooked fish to a plate. “You ladies want to come inside? I can offer you a cold one.”

  “Yes, we’d love to, “Mom said graciously.

  “Not sure there’s enough of this catfish to go around, though,” he said, peering at the plate.

  “Oh, we’ve already eaten,” Mom reassured him. “We stopped at a delightful little seaside place up in Ft. Lauderdale. But thank you, kind sir,” she added. “Your hospitality to two visitors is certainly appreciated.”

  Now Mom was channeling Blanche Dubois in Streetcar Named Desire. I waited for her to say her favorite line, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” but she managed to restrain herself.

  So far.

  “Well, come in and take a load off,” Ray Hick said, holding the battered screen door open for us. The orange tabby whizzed past us and jumped on the kitchen counter. “Don’t mind Oscar,” he said. “He came with the trailer.” The cat immediately jumped into the sink and began drinking water from a leaky tap.

  “Delightful,” Mom said, looked at the cluttered mess. There wasn’t a touch of irony in her voice. All those years of acting training at the American Academy had finally paid off.

  It was stifling in the trailer, like being entombed in a tin box. The ceiling was low, contributing to the claustrophobic feel and layers of clothes and newspapers covered every available surface. The kitchen, living area and bedroom all melded into one unsightly mess and an open lavatory door gave us a view of a yellowing porcelain toilet. Mom’s hand involuntarily went to her throat as if she couldn’t get enough oxygen.

  “How sweet. I see you have little dishes of food scattered around for Oscar,” Mom said. She pointed to some chipped bowls filled with brown pellets that were lined up on the greasy linoleum floor. “ I never trust a man who doesn’t like cats. They always seem to be lacking in sensitivity, somehow.”

  Ray chortled. “That ain’t cat food. That there’s rat poison. We got rats the size of possums in this danged place. I think they come up from the swamp.”

  “Oh my.” Mom blanched and for once in her life couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Ray peered inside an ice-encrusted dorm size refrigerator. “I have Coors and Rolling Rock,” he said, ever the gentleman.

  “Just water, please.” Then I spotted a row of cloudy glasses lined up on the counter. A bluish substance that looked like mold was growing in several of them. It would be like drinking out of a petri dish. Ewwww. “Actually, I forgot, I have my own water bottle right here with me,” I said, digging into my purse.

  I triumphantly held up two water bottles and passed one to Mom. She practically grabbed it out of my hands. Pretending to be a Tennessee Williams character is one thing, coming down with a bad case of Ebola is another.

  “So how come you pretty ladies are interested in Sanjay?” Ray asked, a sly look crossing his face. “Don’t tell me he did you out of some money, too?”

  “Oh no, not at all,” I said swiftly. “Nothing like that. I happened to interview him on my radio show up in Cypress Grove. He was in town promoting his latest book. Maybe you’ve heard of my show? On the Couch with Maggie Walsh?”

  A sudden light came into his eyes and he leaned forward eagerly treating us to a blast of particularly rancid breath. “I knew it! You’re that gal on WYME! Dr. Maggie. I should have recognized your voice. I listen to your show all the time.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re a fan.” I said warmly.

  “Never had the nerve to call in, though. Man, you’ve got some sick puppies on the show. I don’t know how you stand it listening to them whinin’ and bitchin’ all the time. I bet sometimes you feel like taking a rusty razor to the lot of them.”

  I decided to let that last comment slide. “Did you happen to hear the show I did with Sanjay?”

  Ray suddenly busied himself with his charred plate of catfish. “No, I can’t say that I did. Must have been busy that day.” He knew enough to look me directly in the eye when he said it, but he hesitated just a fraction of a second too long. I figured he might be lying. Had he tuned in that day? But how could I ever prove it? And did it even matter?

  “Sanjay’s conference was held at the Seabreeze Inn right in the heart of Cypress Grove. We ran ads for it for all week. We even ran a contest offering a free registration for one lucky listener.”

  “Really? Must have missed the show that day. Never heard of the Seabreeze. I don’t think I’ve even driven through Cypress Grove. Is it a nice place?”

  “Oh yes,” Mom said, hoping to block Ray’s clumsy attempt to change the subject.

  “So you didn’t attempt to see Sanjay when he was in town?” I figured I might as well go for the direct approach.

  Ray’s face hardened. “I just told you, girlie, I never even been to your neck of the woods. And why would I be going to one of those silly-ass conferences or whatever he called them? I had a bellyful of Sanjay, and I sure wouldn’t pay good money to listen to him.”

  A bellyful of Sanjay. Interesting.

  “What happened between you and Sanjay? Was it some sort of a business deal that went awry?” Mom’s voice was warm with empathy. Ray stared at her for several seconds and his belligerence seemed to melt before my eyes like frost on a windowpane. It’s true. Mom really can charm anyone once she sets her mind to it.

  He swallowed hard before answering. “I guess it was old-fashioned greed that got me involved with Sanjay,” he finally admitted. “I had some cash laying around and I never did have much faith in stocks and all that financial stuff. Never liked banks either. As far as I’m concerned, a fool and his money are soon parted, you know what I mean?”

  “I do, exactly,” Mom said, touching him lightly on the arm. “So you had some extra cash and you met Sanjay. What happened next?”

  “Well, I was looking to buy a nice little piece of property, and I especially wanted something on the ocean, you know, maybe on the Intracoastal. Of course, there’s hardly any waterfront property left in Florida these days. So I figured I’d settle for the bay. I didn’t feel like buying anything inland.”

  Mom nodded. “I know, it’s a shame.” Her eyes never left his face. “And I always say, what’s the point of living in Florida if you’re not going to live on the water?”

  “Exactly!” His weathered face creased in a grin. “I finally f
ound a woman who understands me.” He glanced over at me for affirmation and I nodded. Mom was clearly on a roll and I wasn’t going to interrupt the flow of conversation.

  “And that’s when Sanjay entered the picture?” Mom lowered her voice as if signaling the arrival of Satan himself. “That’s when the problems started?”

  “You said it,” Ray said and smacked his lips unhappily. “You know how they say if somethin’ sounds too good to be true, it probably is? Well, I fell for his line. And I admit, I was a mite foolish. You know I’m the kind of guy who never can pass up a bargain. And Sanjay offered me somethin’ beyond my wildest dreams.” He paused for effect. “He offered me a nice little two bedroom bungalow on Sunset Bay for five hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Wow!” I said in spite of myself. “That’s an excellent price. Right on the water?”

  Ray nodded. “You bet. It was the bay, not the ocean, but it had a boat dock and everything. Some of the neighbors had sailboats but I just had me a little outboard. It was enough to cruise up and down the bay. I planned on living out my golden years on that little boat,” he said morosely. “It was gonna be my own little piece of paradise.”

  I suddenly remembered reading a piece about Sunset Bay. A towering condo with underground parking had recently been constructed there. Uh-oh.

  “And you bought the house,” Mom said, trying to hurry him along.

  “That I did, that I did.” He took a long swallow of Coors and burped delicately. “And lived to regret it, let me tell you. Look at me now,” he said, waving his hand at the dreadful trailer. “Stuck here for the rest of my days. Unless a miracle happens, and I believe they’re in short supply. All I have to look forward to is going out to the tavern Friday nights. That’s the highlight of my week, sad to say.”

  “But what happened to the house?” Mom asked. We exchanged a look. It seems that Ray Hicks had his own way of telling a story and couldn’t be rushed.

  He gave a harsh cackle. “Taken by the revenuers.”

  “Revenuers?” It was like Beverly Hillbilly-speak.

  “I think he means revenuers,” Mom said gently. “Are you saying the state came in and took over your house?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. Imminent domain they call it. Well, it was imminent all right.

  One day I had me a nice little house and the next day I didn’t. If that ain’t imminent, I don’t know what is.”

  “Eminent domain,” Mom corrected him, but he was too caught up in his story to notice.

  “The state sold it to some developer to put up a high-rise. All he really wanted was the land, he figured my nice little house should be a tear-down. A teardown, can you believe it? Take a lookee and you tell me, does this look like a teardown to you?”

  He opened a kitchen drawer and pulled out a picture of a modest ranch house on a barren stretch of beach leading down to the water. It looked like something out of the seventies, white brick and white wrought iron trim and a scruffy lawn dotted with a couple of date palms. “This was it,” he said sadly. “My dream home.”

  “Very nice,” I said politely. “And you think that Sanjay knew all this was going to happen?”

  “I’m more than sure. I know he did,” he said savagely. “That bloodsucker knew exactly what was going on. Somehow he had some inside information. He sold the house to me and then the state came right it and ripped it out from under me. They paid me some money, but nothing like what I paid for it. And there wasn’t a thing I could do about it, not a gosh darn thing.”

  Except murder, I thought.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “I think Ray Hicks got a raw deal from Sanjay, but I don’t think he has what it takes to be a killer.”

  “Is that so?” Mom slung her long legs gracefully into the Honda Civic and took a deep breath. I immediately cranked up the AC. I’d deliberately left the car windows up and it now it was steaming like a sauna inside. A curtain fluttered at the trailer window and I suspected that Ray Hicks was watching us as we left.

  “Did I miss something back there? What do you think?” I could tell from her offhand tone that she didn’t agree with me. Mom has an uncanny way of ferreting out half-truths, evasions and outright lies. I always tell her she missed her true calling and should have been a prosecutor.

  “Let’s get out of this dreadful place and I’ll tell you,” she promised. She fanned herself with a south Florida map. “How about a trip to Miami? That always raises my spirits.”

  “Mine too. You’re on. And I have a couple more people we need to see.”

  We drove south along AIA, admiring the ocean glittering ocean on our left and the string of the luxury hotels on the right. All the famous places I’d read about, the Eden Roc, the Fontainebleau, the fabled hangouts of Sinatra and the Rat Pack. Maybe the legends were gone, but Miami is still one of the most fabulous places on the planet.

  And South Beach, playground of the hip and famous, is as exciting as ever. I pulled into a public parking garage on 7th Street and we walked past the Delano Hotel towards the News Café.

  After ordering cappuccinos, we sat at a green umbrella table and checked out the scene for a few minutes. Across the street, girls on roller blades whizzed down Ocean Walk, and a vintage cream-colored Bentley with tinted windows purred along the street.

  It was four-thirty, but the sidewalks were already crowded. It was time for pre-dinner cocktails or cafes con leche. Everyone looked tanned and beautiful and a young couple at the next table was having an animated conversation in Spanish. The late afternoon sun splashed the Art Deco hotels with a golden glow, lighting up their Easter-egg pastel exteriors.

  It was fun, hip, cosmopolitan.

  Mom must have read the expression on my face. “Why don’t you move down to Miami?” she asked softly. “You know you love it here.”

  I waited until our server placed steaming cups of coffee in front of us before answering. “Mom, you know my job is in Cypress Grove. I was lucky to get any job at all in radio. It’s a tough field. How many talk radio shows does one city really need?”

  “But you’re exceptional. You’re not just a talk show host. You’re a licensed psychologist and you do a terrific job.”

  “And I think you might be a tiny bit biased.” I grinned and blew on my coffee to cool it. “I’m not exactly a household name, you know. That’s what it would take to get hired in a major media market like Miami. Big time visibility. Name recognition. I’m under the radar screen, believe me. There are a zillion people who’d like a job as a radio host. I wish you could see how many audition tapes the station received, just from one tiny ad.”

  It’s true. The station had placed a small ad in Media Bistro and had been deluged with applicants. I didn’t even have an audition tape so I cobbled together a few local radio interviews I’d done. The topics had all been psychological, women’s health, stress management, relationships.

  I’d been interviewed once on NPR which must have caught someone’s attention, because WYME listened to my tape and immediately invited me down to discuss the job. I did a sample audition (with Cyrus Still playing the part of a call-in guest) and they decided I’d be a good match. Big Jim Wilcox came up with On the Couch with Maggie Walsh as the name of the show. I resisted the idea at first, and finally realized it was catchy and gave in.

  “Well, you should be a household name,” she sniffed. “I think you moved too fast when you accepted that job at WYME. You should have held out a little longer and aimed for the top when you moved down here,” she said. “You’re loaded with talent. I think it’s a confidence issue, really.”

  “Now you sound like the shrink.” I grinned and held back a sigh. This was old territory, ground we’d covered many times before. I’d grabbed the WYME position because I didn’t think I could take one more New York winter and who knows when another opportunity would come along? Mom, however, was convinced that I had “settled.”

  “Let’s get back to Ray Hicks,” I said, pulling out a tiny notebook. “
I know you’re suspicious of him and I’d like to know why.” I was really asking, what did you pick up on that I didn’t?

  “Oh, the hand to the nose. That was the tell,” she said softly. “An easy one, actually.”

  “It was?” I stopped with my ballpoint hovering over my notes.

  “Didn’t you notice the way he swiped his nose with one hand when he pretended he’d never been to Cypress Grove?”

  “No, I hadn’t actually.” I shivered a little in the warm sunlight. Ever since we’d been to Ray Hicks’ trailer, I had the irrational fear that bugs–or maybe fleas–were crawling on me. I wondered if boll weevils could have set up house underneath my skin.

  “And then he went on and said he’d never heard of the place. So he reinforced it, digging himself into a deeper hole. That’s what people do when they’re lying, you know, they add a wealth of unimportant details. They make the story even bigger than it has to be, and of course that’s a sure give-away.”

  “You could tell all that from his scratching his nose? What if he has allergies? Or a cold?”

  “I don’t think so.” Mom shook her head. “It was classic.”

  “He looked me right in the eye when he said he’d never been to Cypress Grove.”

  “Easy. Psychopaths are good at making eye contact when they tell a bold-faced lie.”

  She was right. As always.

  “What else?” I knew she was holding back and there were probably more things she’d picked up on. Sometimes I forgot that I was supposed to be the expert on human behavior and Mom was just a very observant actress. She picked up on dozens of things that I missed.

  “Well, did you notice the way he covered his face when he talked about Sanjay? He pretended to be rubbing his eye with the back of his hand, but it was like he was covering his eyes, almost as if he was shielding them. That he was concealing something. It reminded me of someone being blindfolded.” She paused, toying with her spoon. “Or someone who deliberately was pulling down shutters. He didn’t want us to see what his eyes might reveal. All on the unconscious level, of course.”