by Ron Base
“Ha. Ha,” Tree said.
Across the bar, Ray Dayton let out a victorious whoop. A helmeted gladiator on the big screen TV had won his approval. Mr. Ray didn’t attend Fun Friday every week but when he did, he dragged Freddie along. She insisted Tree be present for moral support—and also to provide the escape route when the combination of beer and sports took their toll on her boss.
The song ended. They moved off the dance floor. Freddie said, “I hate to say something cliché like, ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’”
“But?”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
Tree had been wondering the same thing but he didn’t like to admit it to Freddie. You could say you were a detective all you wanted, but actually being a detective with a client, well, that was something else.
“To me this sounds like another situation where the person ought to go to the police,” Freddie continued.
“Elizabeth Traven should go to the police?”
“Don’t you think so?”
“She shouldn’t have come to me?”
“Let me put this as gently as possible: why would she come to you?”
“She saw my ad. She said she was driving past and decided to stop. On a whim.”
“For which she paid fifteen hundred dollars in advance.”
“Small change as far as she’s concerned,” Tree said.
Freddie didn’t respond.
“I can do this,” Tree said, as much to convince himself as Freddie.
“Can you?”
“Supposing she goes to the police. What does she tell them? ‘This woman has done nothing to me, but I’m nervous and suspicious.’ The police aren’t going to do anything. They can’t.”
“Okay, the police can’t do anything. What can you do?”
“Something,” said Tree.
“Something doesn’t sound like much of anything, Tree.”
At the bar, Mr. Ray let out another whoop. Freddie squeezed Tree’s hand and grimaced. “Lord, give me strength.”
“Freddie, Freddie!” Ray’s flushed face made the snowy white of his hair absolutely glow. Beside him, Rex Baxter, holding a Bud Lite, had stopped talking to Todd and focused on the TV. Ray slapped Todd on the shoulder as Freddie settled against the bar. “I want you to hear this guy. He talks just like you. Todd, tell her what you just told me. What are those initials?”
Todd grinned. “OPIM. Other Potentially Infectious Materials. Part of the service we offer. That way customers know we’re not limited to crime scene stuff.”
“Listen to him,” Mr. Ray shouted. “Listen to this son of a bitch. That’s what it is now. All these—what the hell do you call them?”
“Acronyms,” Freddie said.
“Yeah, right. Give him your HMR, Freddie. Give him the damned gospel according to HMR.”
Freddie rolled her eyes. “Home Meal Replacement. I’m trying to encourage Ray to expand our offering.”
“I’ll trade you one OPIM for two HMRs.” He cackled with laughter.
The noise from the drinkers and diners all but drowned out the keyboard player’s version of “Crackling Rosie.” Ray threw his arm around Tree. “We haven’t talked.”
“Haven’t we?”
“We should talk, Tree. You and me. The two of us, buddy.”
Buddy? Tree thought.
Ray led Tree outside as the sun dropped into the gulf. Tree always marveled at the speed, as though it couldn’t wait to get away. They went down a ramp to the dock. An emerging moon threw shadows across pleasure craft that never seemed to move. That was his problem, Tree reflected as the Ray Man guided him to a stop. He couldn’t imagine owning a boat. How could he live in Florida thinking like that? He wasn’t even interested in helmeted young men throwing footballs at one another. Something must be terribly wrong with him.
An electronically enhanced “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” disturbed the twilight. He glanced up at the windows along the porch, angry black eyes frowning down on him. He thought of Freddie peering out through one of those eyes, worried. Ray blew martini-scented breath at him. “Freddie’s doing just fine.”
“That’s good to know,” Tree said.
“I screw around, pretend I don’t like all this new stuff she’s bringing into the business—best practices, all that shit. But you know what, Tree? I love it, love what she’s doing. Hauling me along. I’m kicking and screaming all the way, but she’s getting me there, you know why?”
“Why Ray?”
“Because I’m no fool. The business is better for what’s she doing and thanks to her, I’m gonna be richer than ever.”
Tree grinned innanely and said, “That’s great news, Ray.”
The Ray Man tightened the pressure on Tree’s shoulder. A sign of affection? Or an attempt to break his arm?
“But I’ve got to be honest with you, buddy. Do you mind if I’m honest?”
“I wouldn’t want it any other way, Ray.”
“Okay, good. I’m gonna lay it right out there. The one thing that worries me about all this is you.”
“Me?” Tree couldn’t help sounding surprised. Not that he didn’t have a pretty good idea how the Ray Man felt about him.
“I mean, what is it with this private detective crap, anyway? What is that all about?”
Tree wasn’t sure Ray wanted an answer, so he didn’t try to give him one.
“Freddie tells me you used to be a pretty good newspaperman up north.”
“I was in the newspaper business for a long time,” Tree agreed.
“I mean those bastards really buggered up Vietnam, didn’t they? Turned the country against our boys with their anti-war bullshit.”
“That was so long ago, Ray. But I seem to recall Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon might have had something to do with it.”
“So long ago, Tree? Guess it depends on your perspective, doesn’t it? Not that I hold it against you, personally.”
“That’s a relief,” Tree said.
“The important thing is, you had a career. You amounted to something. There was achievement.”
“I don’t know how much achievement was involved,” Tree said.
“No, no. Don’t put it down. A job. Career. That’s good, a good thing. But this private eye stuff. I mean what is that all about, Tree? What is it all about?”
“It’s what I do, Ray,” Tree said.
“Gawd almighty, man. You’re sixty years of age. You’ve got a beautiful, talented wife. And you’re a freaking detective?”
“That’s what I am, Ray.”
“No, let me tell you what you are, Tree, and I’m gonna be brutally honest here because I’ve had a couple of drinks, okay?”
“Okay.”
“You’re a laughing stock, my friend. Okay? You’re not a detective as far as most people around here are concerned. You’re a laughing stock.”
“Honey, it’s time to go home.”
Tree turned to find Freddie backlit by the light from the porch, standing at the bottom of the ramp. Ray gave up his claim on Tree’s shoulder leaning forward, peering at Freddie, as though not certain who she was.
Freddie said, “Vera’s inside, Ray.” Vera was the Ray Man’s long-suffering wife. Mrs. Ray, they called her. When things got bad enough on a Friday night, a phone call was made to Mrs. Ray.
“Tree and I were just having a little heart-to-heart,” Ray said. “Man-to-man stuff. We’re buddies, Tree and me. Right, Tree?”
Tree didn’t say anything.
“It’s time to go,” Freddie said.
“Buddies. Okay? Tell her, Tree.”
She took Tree’s hand. “Good night, Ray.”
“You’re pissed off, and you shouldn’t be.”
“I’m not pissed,” Freddie said.
“You are.” Mr. Ray sounded hurt. “It’s guy stuff, that’s all.”
They left him swaying on the dock in the descending gloom.
“I’m sorry about that.” She squeeze
d his hand.
“It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not.”
“You know he could be right. Maybe I am a laughing stock.”
“Not as far as I’m concerned.”
He hugged her. “That’s all that counts.”
10
The swish of lawn sprinklers broke the morning silence in McGregor Woods. Handsome houses with terra cotta tile roofs set along gracefully curving roadways shimmered under an already-bright sun.
Tree parked around the corner from the Barrington Court address Elizabeth Traven had given him. A U.S. mail truck moved slowly from mail box to mail box, the driver leaning out the open door to deliver mail. An elderly woman in baggy jeans pulled at an excited Jack Russell.
Tree didn’t play the radio fearing he would draw unwanted attention. He needn’t have worried. The world was deserted. He occupied himself trying to imagine some sort of life behind the cool exteriors of the lovely McGregor Woods houses.
Imagination failed.
The night before he had googled Elizabeth Traven and her husband.
Brand Traven was as arrogant, intellectual, and gleefully controversial as Tree recalled. Elizabeth was the “tawny beauty,” as one of the London tabloids described her, a best-selling author of revisionist biographies of Marx and Stalin. She had interviewed Brand for her Stalin book, although the Mayfair wags had a field day wondering what Traven would know about Stalin. It made no difference. Shortly after the interview, he left his wife of twenty-three years and moved in with Elizabeth.
With Elizabeth at his side, he was no longer merely the owner of newspapers and TV stations in the United States and Great Britain. Now he was part of a dynamic, attractive power couple, welcome in the world’s best drawing rooms, friends with presidents, prime ministers, movie stars, Wall Street titans.
Members of the British Royal Family dropped by their Kensington digs. Mick Jagger strolled on the beach near their Captiva summer house. Wasn’t that Bono with the couple in Paris? The rich and influential, dressed in bright costume, flocked to their Manhattan townhouse each winter for their annual Blue January fete. Elizabeth and Brand one year showed up as eighteenth century Medicis, Cosimo and his wife Marguerite. The humor! The charm! Endless.
Their extravagances were gleefully reported. The private jet sent to retrieve Elizabeth’s fur coat because the she was cold in Florida (Cold in Florida? chorused the locals. Impossible). The renowned French chef flown to Tahiti to prepare dinner for two hundred nearest and dearest. The world’s grandest yacht rented for a family vacation at a cost that would have funded an African country for a year.
In a simpler time none of this would have been questioned. Brand would have been all-powerful in the media world he created with hard work and personal sacrifice, the respect for his achievements undiminished, his authority unquestioned.
But the gods who decide these things decreed Brand Traven create his empire as the Internet exploded, putting into jeopardy the future of print and traditional broadcasting, canceling the licenses to print money that newspapers and television had traditionally represented. The global economic downturn, as Traven’s own media called it, did not help matters.
Traven’s inability to turn his empire around in the face of changing technology, his refusal to accommodate the new realities of doing business in a publicly held company, not to mention his increasingly opulent lifestyle, drew the ire of investors. Elizabeth and Brand partied on apparently oblivious as the empire wobbled, share price tumbled, and investors increasingly grumbled.
The end came when Brand was stripped of his corporate powers and charged with defrauding the very empire he created—stealing shareholders’ money, they said. Brand loudly disagreed. It was his money. He had started the company, built it from virtually nothing before taking it public. How dare anyone question how he spent what he earned.
Ill-considered public statements about victimization at the hands of aggressive, politically motivated district attorneys followed, statements that set the public’s teeth on edge and surely helped bring about the obstruction of justice conviction.
Brand was sentenced to seven years in prison. Not a bad outcome, given the time other CEOs were serving. Nonetheless, he launched appeals and wrote eloquently of the injustice of it all. To no avail. Once the rich were in jail, it became apparent, no one was particularly anxious to let them out again.
There was a great deal of speculation about the millions spent on high-powered lawyers. Not high-powered enough, apparently. The cost of defending himself, it was rumored, had drained off what little of Brand’s fortune the feds could not confiscate.
Everyone wondered what Mrs. Traven was living on, holed up in her Captiva estate. Maybe the cash stuffed in her Gucci bag, Tree speculated.
____
The Jack Russell reappeared dragging the elderly woman. She brought the dog to a stop near Tree’s car. He attempted to ignore her. She stood there inspecting him.
Tree smiled and nodded at her.
“Three hundred thousand,” the woman said.
Tree said, “I beg your pardon?”
The woman led the dog over to the car. Pale, freckled skin was easily offended by Florida sun.
“Three hundred thousand. How much they’re looking for on the short sale. That’s what you’re doing out here isn’t it? Looking at the house, trying to figure out how much it’s worth.”
“Guess I gave it away, huh?” He tried to look sheepish—not hard under the circumstances.
“I don’t know what happened to the sign,” the woman continued. “Maybe kids took it. But that’s what they want. A deal you ask me.”
“If this is Michelle Crowley’s place it certainly is,” Tree said.
The woman frowned. “Michelle Crowley? No one named Michelle Crowley owns this place.”
“No?”
“Far as I know it belongs to some lawyer in Orlando. He rents it out.”
“Is it rented now?”
“I believe it is, although I haven’t seen anyone around.”
“Maybe I’ll take a closer look,” Tree said, getting out of the car. The Jack Russell tugged anxiously on his leash. “That three hundred thousand sounds like a pretty good price.”
“You won’t do better, not in this neighborhood. I keep a close eye on real estate prices around here. Sort of a hobby of mine. You can go over to Cape Coral and do better, but then you’re sitting in a No Man’s Land of unoccupied houses. Who knows when it’s going to come back.”
“Thanks,” Tree said. “I appreciate your help.”
“Come on, Mackenzie.” The woman yanked at the dog. In response Mackenzie yapped loudly, and pulled even harder on his leash. “Dogs,” the woman said. As though that explained everything.
Tree stood at the curb cursing himself. The great detective had spent hours watching an empty house.
He found an opening in a hedge and went through into a rectangular backyard with a swimming pool wrapped in a green sun dome screen to keep out insects.
A glass-topped table and four wrought iron chairs were on the terrace adjacent to the pool. The remnants of a candle dripped over a glass holder. A wrinkled People magazine on a chaise lounge lay open at “Lindsay Lohan’s Beauty Secrets.” Tree peered through sliding glass doors into a kitchen’s shadowy dimness. He tried the latch. To his surprise, the door slid open.
Immediately, he was assailed by a sickly sweet scent. He stepped inside. The air was stifling. A granite countertop divided the kitchen from a family room. A fifty-two-inch Sony flat screen occupied a corner of the family room. There was no other furniture.
He made his way around the counter and saw something in the sink. He fished his glasses out of his breast pocket in order to get a clearer view of what he was looking at in the uncertain light. Sure enough, it was a human head. Tendrils of blond hair drifted against the backsplash.
Retreating along a short corridor, he entered a combination dining room and living room. A setting f
or six, with attractive pewter charger plates, was laid out on a mahogany table. A naked woman occupied a chair at the head of the table. It was difficult to see how she was going to eat since her head lay in the kitchen sink.
11
You look pretty shaken up,” Cee Jay Boone said. “Not me,” Tree said. “I come across headless corpses two or three times a week.”
“What? You’ve never seen a dead body before?” Detective Mel Scott’s gravel voice dripped with disdain.
“My Uncle Morris when I was eight,” Tree said. “He still had his head.”
“A detective who can’t look at dead people,” Mel said. “Jeez. What will they think of next.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Cee Jay Boone. “You just happened to be driving past a house on Barrington Court and decided to have a look.”
“Like I told you, detective,” Tree said. “I heard there was a bank short sale. My wife and I have been thinking of moving. I drove over here to take a look at the house, but there was no sign out front, so I thought I was mistaken. This woman came along with her dog and confirmed that the house was in fact up for sale.”
“Okay.”
“I walked around to get a closer look, found the back door open and decided to take a peek inside.”
“And you just happened to find a head in the sink.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say ‘just happened,’ but there was a head in the sink.”
They sat on the terrace while a police forensic team in white jump suits filed in and out of the house. A couple of firemen beside the pool sucked on cigarettes. A knot of paramedics lingered beside an ambulance in the drive. He could hear the squawk of police radios from the squad cars lined along the street. Uniformed officers were everywhere. Tree was amazed how quietly everyone worked. The cops didn’t make jokes like their television counterparts.
“We’re working with the Fort Myers police, Tree, that’s why we are here today,” Cee Jay said. “The last time we met, you were snooping around looking for Dara Rait.”
“That’s right.”
“Then maybe you came here looking for her.”
That caught Tree by surprise. “The woman in there is Dara Rait?”