Ron Base - Sanibel Sunset Detective 01 - The Sanibel Sunset Detective

by Ron Base

  She watched him eat more chicken. “This is very good,” he said between mouthfuls.

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “Are you kidding? I’m the help.”

  “So was Lady Chatterley’s lover.”

  He told her most of what had happened that evening, deciding not to say anything about the possible appearance of Dwight Crowley or about Mickey in a silver mini-dress brandishing a gun. No use worrying her unnecessarily. He told her instead about Mickey and Reno O’Hara meeting up with Jorge, the Brands’ houseman.

  “So what happened after Jorge arrived?”

  “Not much,” Tree said. “They had dinner. Reno talked a lot. Jorge listened and nodded. Then Jorge talked a little bit. Reno listened and nodded.”

  “And Mickey?”

  “She laughed a lot and put her hand on Jorge’s knee.”

  “How did Jorge react to that?”

  “He seemed to like it.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I decided to get out of there.”

  “That’s it?”

  “What else would there be?”

  “Me, I would have gone back while they were eating, taken another look at that apartment.”

  Tree swallowed before he said, “I didn’t do that.”

  “You came home.”

  “To your loving arms.”

  Freddie rolled her eyes. “Maybe not so loving, my friend. Not when you’re visiting seductive women in expensive sandals and then don’t call and the chicken gets cold.”

  “That’s the thing about being a detective,” he said. “It’s beautiful women in expensive shoes, late nights, cold chicken and grumpy wives.”

  “I’m not grumpy. Just continuing to wonder what you’re doing.”

  Tree got up and took his plate to the sink and rinsed it under the tap. “I’m not certain what I’m seeing—or whether I’m seeing anything. And what does it mean if, in fact, I am seeing something?”

  Freddie sipped the last of her wine. “Let’s think about this a moment. You’ve got a boy who wants you to find his mother. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “And you’ve got a woman, Elizabeth Traven, with a husband in prison worried about another woman named Michelle Crowley whom she has befriended but is now suspicious of.”

  “A woman dining with a bad guy named Reno O’Hara.”

  “The two of them meeting up with a fellow who supposedly works for Elizabeth Traven.”

  “Jorge. The loyal manservant. Maybe not so loyal.”

  “Throw in the headless body of an unidentified woman.”

  “Who I find when I’m looking for Mickey.”

  “So,” Freddie went on, “You’ve got two separate cases and all of a sudden the inhabitants of one case are crossing over into the other, linked by a murder.”

  “What does it all mean?”

  Freddie said, “You’re the detective. You figure it out.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  They went out of the kitchen into the bedroom where one thing led to another and they made love, unusual for a weeknight but entirely welcome. Once again he marveled at this incredible woman, reminded himself as he reminded himself each day, how fortunate he was to have her in his life, and how exceedingly happy she made him. He hung suspended in the dark, holding his wife, loving his wife. He drifted off.

  Then he was awake again. What was that?

  He sat up in bed. A sliver of light from the hall was the only illumination. Freddie stirred beside him. He fumbled on the side table for his reading glasses. Couldn’t find them in the darkness. Shit.

  “What is it?” she said.

  He put his hand out to silence her. She sat up on an elbow, head cocked. Listening. “Tree, you do this all the time. It’s nothing.”

  He pushed back the covers and rose out of bed. He paused and listened again. The electronic rush of the air conditioning came back to him.

  He stepped into the hall, standing naked, manufactured air raising goose bumps on his skin.

  Or was it the air?

  Something moved in the other room. No doubt this time. Tree stiffened. A man wearing a balaclava stepped into the light. He stopped when he saw Tree.

  “What the hell,” he said.

  Tree dived back into the bedroom, yelling at Freddie to call 911. He caught a glimpse of her coming off the bed as he closed the door, fumbling with the lock. He shouted again as someone hurled against the door. He tried to turn the lock, but the force from the other side knocked him back.

  The door blew open. Freddie called out something he couldn’t understand. Dark forms descended, outlined against the uncertain light, shrouded in balaclavas. Strong hands roughly pulled him down, pushing his face into the carpet.

  “Where’s the kid?” A voice in his ear, low and insistent, cutting through his objecting cries.

  When he did not immediately answer, someone smashed his head against the floor. Withering pain seared his brain. Stars exploded through the interior blackness.

  “The kid,” the voice repeated. “Where is he?”

  He was lifted off the floor, wrenched around so that he faced Freddie.

  A balaclava-covered form held a knife against her throat. The voice said, “See that? Do you see that, asshole? See what’s gonna happen to your wife? Now tell me. Where is the kid?”

  “He ran away from us, escaped out a window. Haven’t seen him since.”

  The voice again, edged with frustration. “Bastard. Last time. Tell me.”

  “He’s telling you the truth.” A tense affirmation from Freddie. “We don’t know where he is.”

  Tree sensed uncertainty among the intruders, a wordless debate over how far to push this.

  “I swear to you, we don’t know.” His voice desperately breaking the silence. “You’re holding a knife to my wife’s throat. You think I wouldn’t tell you?”

  His assailant jerked Tree as though he was on the end of a string, as though throwing him around was the easiest thing in the world. Tree understood in that moment how incredibly powerless he was, how lacking in any ability to put a stop to these violently unfolding events.

  “Listen to me. Listen, both of you.” The intruder’s voice in practical register. It’s Dwayne, he thought. Has to be Dwayne. He would listen carefully to every single word Dwayne had to say. He would cooperate. Anything Dwayne wanted.

  Whatever form the threat was about to take, it was cut off by the high whine of a siren. Growing louder and more intrusive.

  “Shit!” The exclamation came from Freddie’s captor. A woman’s voice?

  Tree became aware that he was no longer being held. The knife wielder of indeterminate sex backed away from Freddie.

  The siren ceased. There was silence. He tried to sit up. Stars danced on his eyes. Tree blinked a couple of times, the stars reforming into a single light, cutting through the darkness. Someone bent over him. He made out an acne-rimmed face.

  “Mr. Callister,” a voice said. “It’s me, Tommy. Tommy Dobbs.”

  “Tommy?” was all Tree could manage.

  “I was outside. I saw them come in.”

  “You were outside? What the hell were you doing outside?”

  “I saw them come in, Mr. Callister. I saw them invade your home. When I saw that, I ran back to my car. I’ve got this police siren, see. I set it off, Mr. Callister. I set off the siren and it saved your life.”

  Tree turned to Freddie. She lay curled into a tight ball, her body shaking.

  Behind him, Tommy Dobbs babbled unintelligibly, drowned out by another siren, this one further away but coming closer.

  Freddie reached out to him. Their hands touched. He pulled himself against her, held her gently until she stopped trembling.

  19

  The uniformed officers who responded to the 911 call waited while Freddie and Tree got some clothes on. More police arrived along with a team of paramedics who urged them to go to the hospital for a proper check-up. Bo
th Tree and Freddie declined to do that.

  When Detective Mel Scott got there, Freddie had entered into what Tree called her Cool Professional mode. Icy calm, nothing penetrating the steely shield she threw up around her emotions. Tree, on the other hand, was pretty much a wreck. He noticed his hands shaking, as though he had drank too much the night before. Or was scared shitless.

  Mel sat with Freddy and Tree at the kitchen table, making notes from time to time.

  “So nothing is missing?” Tree noticed a couple of the uniformed officers remained in the living room. They, too, made notes. Everyone seemed to be writing. Quit writing, he thought. Get out there and find the bad guys.

  “Not as far as we can see,” said Freddie. She was dressed, in jeans and a T-shirt. There was a cut at the base of her neck where the knife blade had nicked her skin. One of the paramedics had swabbed it with an antibacterial wipe.

  “Computers, televisions, jewelry?”

  “No, nothing.” Her voice sounded so strong, much stronger than his probably would right now. He was happy to stay silent and let Freddie do the talking.

  “If they didn’t take anything, why do you think they broke in?” Mel was looking at Tree when he said this.

  “Tell him.” Freddie at full strength. Not to be ignored.

  “Marcello. They were looking for Marcello.”

  “This is the kid who hired you for six bucks?”

  “Seven. He says men are after him. That’s why he’s hiding. Now I know what he’s talking about.”

  “But you say you don’t know where Marcello is.”

  “No.”

  Mel scratched at his chin and made more notes. Tree wondered how often the detective had to get a buzz cut in order to keep his hair so short. To maintain that look, you must be at the barber all the time.

  “They were trying to scare us,” Freddie said.

  Mel stopped scratching. “Scare you?”

  “They wanted to scare the shit out of us. Which they succeeded in doing.”

  “And you didn’t get a look at them?”

  “As we told the uniformed officers, we got a look at three dudes wearing balaclavas and what appeared to be plastic surgical gloves.”

  Tree hadn’t noticed the surgical gloves. Good for Freddie. But dudes? Is that what you called intruders these days? Dudes?

  “Other than the balaclavas, any idea what they were wearing?”

  Freddie looked at Tree. “What did you think? To me they appeared to be dressed in track outfits, dark blue or black, with hoodies.”

  This detail, too, had escaped Tree. He saw only the balaclavas. And the knife at his wife’s throat.

  “What about this kid, Tommy Dobbs? Any idea what he was doing outside?”

  Tree shook his head. “Did he see anything?”

  “Nothing that was very helpful,” Mel said. “He’s a little over-excited at the moment. Keeps repeating that he saved your life.”

  “There’s something else,” Freddie said.

  “What’s that?” Mel said.

  “One of them was a woman.”

  “Yeah? What makes you think that?”

  “Her voice. At one point, someone said ‘shit.’ It sounded like a woman’s voice.”

  Mel’s cell phone made a buzzing sound inside his coat pocket. He fished it out as he stood up. “Yeah. Hi.” He paused and glanced back at Freddie and Tree. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

  He closed the cell phone and came back to the table. “The two of you up for a little ride?”

  ____

  Mel drove a Ford Escort, Tree seated beside him, Freddie in back. No one spoke. The police radio mounted on the dashboard, blinked and buzzed. Tree wanted to say something like “What’s this all about, detective?” But it sounded cliché, and Mel’s demeanor was foreboding enough to encourage silence.

  He turned off Sanibel-Captiva Road onto Bowman’s Beach Road and pitch blackness. Flares of distant red and white interrupted the black and soon became a parking lot jammed with official-looking vans and vehicles.

  K2 crime scene lights mounted on tripods lit the path winding to the beach. They followed a couple of uniformed officers. More crime scene lights on the beach illuminated a surreal knot of spacemen in white jumpsuits.

  Cee Jay Boone popped into view, grim-faced. Once again, Tree was struck by the seriousness of purpose here. No laughing at crime scenes.

  “Thanks for coming,” Cee Jay said.

  “What’s going on?” Tree asked.

  “This way,” she said.

  The new arrivals drew everyone’s attention. The sand beneath the lights was an arctic landscape marked off by yellow police tape and occupied by a body.

  The body lay on a crimson bed against the white, spread-eagled on its back, staring into the starry night. The crimson was blood that had flowed from a ragged gash in the corpse’s neck. The corpse wore no shoes. A loose shirt seemed too large, rising up to show a pale swell of belly.

  A pair of crime scene specialists shone flashlights along the body, trailing ultraviolet blue light across its torso. They wore orange goggles. When the specialists saw Cee Jay they turned off their flashlights and stepped back so that Tree could get a closer look at the corpse. He felt Freddie’s hand in his, squeezing tight.

  “Do you recognize this person, Tree?” Cee Jay Boone’s voice came from somewhere behind him.

  Tree nodded. Freddie looked at him, surprise in her voice: “You do?”

  “Who would you say it is, Tree?” Cee Jay’s voice again, cool and calm.

  “I would say it’s Reno O’Hara.”

  “Then you would be right,” Cee Jay said.

  20

  He bounced around the kitchen in time to Paul Anka singing “Diana.” Freddie appeared in beige and grey, announcing she was off to work. Tree turned down the radio. “You haven’t seen my reading glasses, have you?”

  She held them up. “I found them on the floor in the bedroom.”

  “Don’t go to work,” he said.

  “What? You’re afraid you’ll lose your glasses again? Besides, what am I going to do? Sit around watching you dance to Paul Anka?”

  He put on his glasses and had a better view of her. “There was a time when you would have been thrilled to see me dancing to Paul Anka.”

  She raised a dubious eyebrow. “Better I go to work.”

  They did not get to bed until past two. Tree had drifted off immediately, but then he awoke an hour later. He could sense her beside him in the dark, suspected she too was awake. Neither of them said anything. Tree eventually fell into a restless sleep, only to be awakened with a start in the morning when the alarm went off as usual at six o’clock.

  “We’re both upset,” he said. “We’ve been attacked and threatened. You’re probably pissed at me.”

  “What would make you think that?”

  “I brought this on. It’s my fault.”

  “It’s just that I’m not sure I understand what exactly you’ve brought on. I don’t think you do, either.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” he said.

  “Am I?”

  “Mickey Crowley saw me in Naples. She told Reno. They picked up Mickey’s husband, Dwayne, and came here intending to scare us off. Maybe Dwayne didn’t like the idea of his wife being with Reno, so after they finished with us, Dwayne drove Reno over to the beach where he killed him.”

  “You didn’t say any of this to the police.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, it’s probably time to stop keeping these things to yourself. Then the police can handle it. That’s the way it should be. The best thing either of us can do is get on with it—and hope we don’t have too many nightmares.”

  “Do you think they will? The police, I mean. Handle it?”

  “Yes, because that’s what they do. Look at the small army that showed up at Bowman’s Beach last night.”

  “Impressive,” Tree admitted.

  “That’s what the cops bring to the party.
So tell them what you know, and let them do their job, which would be to find Dwayne and Mickey and put them away.” She looked at her watch. “Meanwhile, I’m late for a meeting.”

  She was all business, pecking his cheek before flying out the door, looking unnervingly bright and focused despite her lack of sleep.

  He told himself he would go to work. Ben E. King sang “Stand By Me.” Where had he been when he first heard that song? Couldn’t remember. He could remember the first 45 rpm record he ever bought—Mitch Miller and the gang singing “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” That must have been, what? 1955? What had possessed him to buy that old chestnut? Elvis was out there stirring things up, and he was listening to Mitch Miller? What was wrong with him?

  He sat on the terrace in the sunlight, sipping coffee. From inside, Elvis started on “King Creole.” Speak of the devil, he thought. When you listened to oldies radio, Elvis was never far from the microphone. The telephone rang. Tree padded across the pool deck as the phone rang a second time. Pushing open the sliding door, he stepped into the kitchen. A startled Marcello stood by the refrigerator. Tree turned down the radio. The phone rang again.

  Marcello looked even more miserable than the last time Tree saw him. He nodded at the radio. “What is that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “On the radio.”

  “Elvis Presley?”

  Marcello gave him a blank look.

  “You don’t know Elvis?”

  “You listen to that?” Marcello made the notion sound beyond comprehension.

  “People used to think he was black,” said Tree, as though that might earn him brownie points.

  “Only whites would think that. Nobody I know give that bird the time of day never mind mistake him for black.”

  The phone had stopped ringing.

  “I’m hungry.” Marcello returned to staring inside the refrigerator.

  “What would you like?”

  “Don’t know,” he said.

  Tree led him away from the fridge over to the kitchen table. “How about a sandwich? A ham and cheese sandwich?”

  Marcello said, “I’m just really hungry.”

  “Okay, sit down. I’ll get you a glass of milk and a piece of bread. That should hold you until I can make a sandwich. Sound good?”