Tangled Threat ; Suspicious

by Heather Graham

  “I do.”

  “So it’s fine.”

  “Sure. But we don’t have permits, and while people film with their phones all the time now, what you’re doing is for commercial purposes and—”

  “We’ll film out in front of places where I might need a permit to film inside. And if you don’t mind, when we get to the square, I’ll have you tell that tale about the condemned Spaniard who kept having the garrote break on him so that they finally let him go. Now, that’s a great real story.”

  “The square is called the Plaza de la Constitución.”

  “Right. Yeah, but it’s still a square,” Angie said, grinning. “It is a square, right?”

  “The shape is actually oblong.”

  “Okay, technicalities are important. But the story is great. About the man.”

  “His name was Andrew Ranson and he wasn’t a Spaniard. He was a Brit and he had been working on an English ship and was accused of piracy. He absolutely declared that he was innocent but met his executioner with a rosary clutched in his hands. While he was being garroted, the rope broke, and the Catholic Church declared that his survival was a miracle. He recuperated, but when the governor asked that he be returned to be executed, the Church refused to give him back. He was eventually pardoned.”

  “And it’s real—proving my desire to show all these stories. We’re back to truth being far stranger than any fiction. And there’s so much more. It is okay to go today, right?”

  “Yes, it is, sure—let’s sign this tab and get going right away.”

  Maura asked for the bill, but as she did so, her old boss came striding over to their table, a massive smile on his face.

  Fred Bentley was powerfully built, stocky, not fat, but to Maura, it had always seemed that a barge was coming toward her when he strode in her direction.

  He still had a head full of dark hair—dyed? She didn’t know, but he had to be over fifty now, and it was certainly possible. He kept a good tan going on his skin, adding to his appearance of being fit, an outdoor man who loved the sun and activity.

  He hadn’t been a bad man to work for—he had certainly been better than Francine, who had changed her mind on a dime and blamed anyone else for any mistake.

  Maura lowered her eyes for a moment, feeling guilty. Francine had not been nice. That didn’t make what had happened to her any less horrible. Maura had to shake the image of Francine’s lifeless body hanging from the tree. It haunted her almost daily.

  “Maura, Angie,” Fred said cheerfully. “Please, not a bill to be signed,” he assured them. “What you’re doing—in the midst of all this—is just wonderful. We’re so grateful, honestly. Anything, anything at all that we can do, please just say so.”

  Maura smiled, uncomfortable. Angie answered him enthusiastically, telling him how she loved the grounds, the beauty of the pool and the elegance of the rooms, and, of course, most of all, the extra and unusual aspect of the campfire tales and the history walk. She was delighted to tout such a wonderful place.

  To her surprise, Maura stood and listened and smiled, and yet, inside, she found that she was suddenly wondering about Fred.

  Where was he when Francine Renault had been hanged from the great branches of the History Tree?

  * * *

  ST. AUGUSTINE WAS, in Brock’s opinion, one of the state’s true gems. Founded in 1565 by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, the city offered wonders such as the fort, the old square, dozens of charming bed-and-breakfast inns, historic hotels, museums, the original Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum, ghost tours, pub tours and all manner of musical entertainment.

  The city also offered beautiful beaches.

  But that day, he hadn’t come to enjoy any of the many wonderful venues offered here.

  As asked, Detective Rachel Lawrence had set up a meeting with Katie Simmons, the coworker who had reported the disappearance of one of the missing women, Lydia Merkel. She was possibly the last one to see Lydia alive.

  They were meeting at La Pointe, a new restaurant near the Castillo—Katie hadn’t wanted to talk where she worked, though Brock intended to go by after their meeting, just to see if anyone else remembered anything that they might have missed when speaking with officers before.

  The restaurant was casual, as were many that faced the old fort and the water beyond, with wooden tables, a spiral of paper towels right on the table and a menu geared to good but reasonable food for tourists.

  Katie Simmons was there when he arrived; if he hadn’t seen a picture of her in his files, he would have recognized her anyway. She was so nervous. She saw him as he entered through the rustic doorway, and her straw slipped from her mouth. She quickly brought her fingers to her lips as iced tea dribbled from them. She was a pretty young woman with soft brown hair and an athletic build, evident when she leaped to her feet, sat and stood once again.

  She must have realized who he was by the way he had scanned the restaurant when he had entered. Maybe it was his suit—not all that common in Florida, even for many a business meeting.

  She waited for him to come to the table.

  He smiled, offering her his hand, hoping to put her at ease quickly.

  “Katie, right?” he said.

  “Special Agent McGovern?”

  “Call me Brock, please,” he said as he joined her at the table. “And please sit, and I hope you can relax. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you’ve agreed to speak with me. I know you’ve already told the police about Lydia, but as you know, we’re hoping that we can find her.”

  Katie sat and plucked at the straw in her tea, still nervous. It looked as if tears were starting to form in her eyes.

  “Time keeps going by... It’s been weeks now. I don’t know how she could still be alive.”

  A waiter in a flowered shirt was quickly at their table. Brock ordered coffee and he and Katie both requested the daily special, a seafood dish.

  “I don’t want to lie to you, but I also don’t think you should give up,” Brock told her when the waiter had gone. “People do just disappear—”

  Katie broke in immediately. “Not Lydia! Oh, you had to know her. She was so excited to have moved here. She loved the city, loved working here—and there was more, of course. Lydia is a wonderful musician. She’s magic with her guitar. She has the coolest voice—not like an angel, more like... I don’t know, unique. She can be soft, she can belt it out... I love listening to her! She was going around getting gigs—and our boss is a great guy. He does schedules every week and talks to us before he sets them up. That allowed Lydia to set up her first few gigs.”

  “She was performing before she left here?” he asked.

  “Oh, she only had two performances. One was for a private party out on a boat—but good money. They just wanted a solo acoustic player. And then another was at a place called Saint, which is a historic house that just became a restaurant—or kind of a nightclub. Can you be both? Or maybe you could say the same of a lot of places here—restaurant by day, club, kind of, by night with some kind of musical entertainment.”

  “Thanks. Do you know who hired her for the boat?”

  “Sure. An association of local tourist businesses—it’s called SAMM,” she said and paused to grin. “St. Augustine Makes Money. That’s really the name. Only you don’t have to be in the city to belong—people belong from all kinds of nearby locations. In fact, half of the members, from what I understand, are really up in Jacksonville. We’re the cute historic place, you know—Jacksonville is the big city. And where most people come in, as far as an airport goes.” She grew somber again. “But she wasn’t working the night before she disappeared. We were out together that night. She was leaving in the morning. She was so excited. Her career—her musical career—wasn’t skyrocketing, but it was taking off.”

  “And according to what I’ve learned, she did leave in her own car.”
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br />   “Yes, and she loved her car. It was old, but she kept it up—she kept great care of it. Oh, and that’s why she chose her apartment. She could park there for free. Right in this area—well, out a bit—but still in what we consider the old section. I mean, you could walk to her place if you had to.”

  “Her car was never found,” Brock noted. He’d read everything he could about Lydia before coming here today. And, of course, one of the reasons it was easy for law enforcement to consider the fact that she might have disappeared on purpose had to do with the fact that her car had never been found.

  Katie was instantly indignant. “I know that—and I’m so sorry, but it made me wonder if the cops are stupid. The state is surrounded by water—oh, yeah, not to mention swamps and bogs and sinkholes and the damned frigging Everglades! Someone got rid of her car. I’m telling you—there is no way in hell that Lydia left here willingly—that she just drove away. Okay, I mean, she did drive away that morning, but... I didn’t worry until I didn’t hear from her. I know she would have called and texted me pics of the History Tree. When she didn’t... I swear, I didn’t panic right away, but when I didn’t hear from her by that night, I knew something was wrong. I called the ranch, and they told me that she’d never checked in. That’s when I called the police. And they all told me she might have just taken a detour. I told them that her phone was going straight to voice mail, and they still tried to placate me. I had to wait the appropriate time to even report her as a missing person with people really working on the case. Then I found out that two other young women had disappeared, and then...”

  She broke off.

  Brock continued for her, “And then they found the remains of Maureen Rodriguez. Katie, as I said, I don’t want to give you false hope. But don’t give up completely. People are working very hard on this now, I promise you.” He hesitated—an agent should never make a promise he couldn’t guarantee he could keep, but...

  “Katie, I promise you, I won’t stop until we know what happened to her.”

  She smiled with tears welling in her eyes.

  “I believe you,” she said.

  Their lunches arrived. As they ate, Brock allowed her to go on about her friend. They hadn’t known each other that long; they had just hit it off. She loved old music and Lydia loved old music. They had loved going to plays together, too, and were willing to travel a few hours for a show, and they both loved improv and ghost tours and so on...

  He thanked her sincerely when the meal was over; she had taken his business card, but also put his direct line into her phone. He promised to call her when he knew something—good or bad—and they parted ways.

  He decided to stop by the offices of SAMM next, wanting a list of those involved in the boat event during which Lydia Merkel had played, and then he’d be on to the restaurant where she’d entertained at her one gig on the mainland.

  Someone, somewhere, had to know something.

  Her car hadn’t been found.

  She’d only had one credit card; it hadn’t been used outside the city. No one disappeared without a trace. There was always a trace.

  He just had to find it.

  Chapter Four

  “I am standing here on Avenida Menendez in historic St. Augustine in front of a home that was originally built in 1763. While it was in 1512 that Juan Ponce de Léon first came ashore just north of here, and 1564 when French vessels were well received by the Native population, it was in 1565 that Pedro Menéndez came and settlement began.

  “It was while the Spanish ruled in 1760—nearly two centuries later—that Yolanda Ferrer’s father first built the house that stands behind me. In 1762, Spain ceded Florida to the British in exchange for Cuba, and Yolanda and her young husband, Antonio, left for Havana. But in 1783, Florida was ceded back to the Spanish in exchange for the Bahama Islands. Yolanda came back to claim the home her father had built, and the governor granted the home and property to her. At that time, she was a young and beautiful bride, and she thought that she and her husband would live happily ever after—but it wasn’t to be.

  “Yolanda, deceived by her husband, argued and pleaded with him not to leave her—and then either fell to her death or was, perhaps, pushed to her death, in the courtyard behind the house, where, today, diners arrive from all over the world to enjoy the fusion cooking of one of St. Augustine’s premier chefs, Armand Morena.

  “Through the years, the house has changed. It stood for a while as an icehouse and as a mortuary. For the last fifty years, however, it has changed hands only once, being a restaurant for those fifty years. But it wasn’t just as a restaurant that the building was haunted by images of the beautiful, young Yolanda, sometimes weeping as she hurries along the halls, sometimes appearing in the courtyard and sometimes in what was once her bedroom and is now the manager’s office. Yolanda is known to neither hurt nor frighten those who see her. Rather, witnesses to her apparition claim that they long to reach out and touch her and let her know that her story is known and that, even today, we are touched by her tragedy.”

  Maura finished her speech and waited for Angie to cut the take on the camera. Angie did so but awkwardly, and Maura thought briefly about the editing she was going to have to do. She much preferred it when Angie did the talking, but Angie had already spoken in front of the Castillo and Ripley’s, and at the Huguenot Cemetery, the Old Jail, the Spanish Military Hospital Museum and several other places. She had begged Maura to let her do the filming on this one and Maura had acquiesced.

  The sun was just about gone. And Maura was tired. As much as she loved St. Augustine, she was wearying of seeing it as if she was reliving that old vacation movie with Chevy Chase.

  “Ready for dinner?” she asked Angie.

  “Oh, you bet. We’re going to have to come back. I loved what I called the square—the Plaza de la Constitución. I mean, that’s the whole thing, isn’t it? Executions took place there once, and now it’s all beautiful, and there is a farmer’s market, and people come for musical events and more. I love the streets surrounding it, the beautiful churches and all. I’m so glad we came.”

  “I’ve always loved this city,” Maura agreed. “But I’m tired and starving. Have you picked out a place you’d like to go?”

  There were plenty of choices.

  Angie hesitated. She winced. “If I picked a particular restaurant, would you think that I was being ghoulish?”

  Maura arched a brow warily. “Ghoulish? I don’t know of any new horrific restaurant murders in St. Augustine.”

  “The restaurant is quite safe—no blood and guts in the kitchen or elsewhere, as far as I know,” Angie assured her. “But...” she said and hesitated again. “It is the last place one of the missing girls had a music gig—I think I saw some video—because Lydia Merkel was playing her guitar and singing there not long before she disappeared. It’s called Saint.”

  “Oh,” Maura murmured. “Really, I’m not—”

  “You wouldn’t have even known, I don’t think, if I hadn’t told you.”

  Maura had read news reports; she had seen videos of the young women, including Lydia Merkel, who had worked here in St. Augustine, before her mysterious disappearance.

  She hadn’t remembered the name of the restaurant where the girl had played, nor even the name of the restaurant where she had worked.

  “Please? I can’t help but want to see it,” Angie said.

  Of course, Angie wanted to see it. If the poor woman’s body was found and her murder was never solved, she would become another Florida legend.

  She didn’t have the energy to fight Angie, and besides, she doubted that the restaurant itself had been any cause of what had happened.

  “Okay. Is it close? I’m sure you know. Are we walking? I don’t think it existed the last time I was up here. I’ll google it,” she told Angie.

  “Two blocks to the east and then one to the south,�
� Angie said.

  “We’ll leave the car and walk.”

  Saint was like many restaurants in the historic district—once upon a time, it had been someone’s grand home. Maura thought that it might have been built in the 1800s during the Victorian era; a plaque on the front assured her she was right: 1855. Originally the home of Delores and Captain Evan Siegfried.

  Abandoned after the Civil War, it had become an institution for the mentally ill in the 1880s, a girls’ school in 1910, a flower shop in the 1920s, a home again briefly in the 1950s before it was eventually abandoned—then recently restored by the owners of Saint.

  The restaurant’s original incarnation as a home was evident as they entered; there was a stairway to the second floor on the right, and on the left was what had once been a parlor—it now held a long bar and a few tables.

  They were led around to what had probably been a family room; there, to the far rear, was a small stage, cordoned off now, but offering a sign that told them that Timmy Margulies, Mr. One-Man Band, would be arriving at 8:00 p.m.

  As the hostess led them to their table, Maura stopped dead—causing a server behind her to crash into her with his tray and send a plate of gourmet french fries and something brown and wet and covered with gravy to go flying to the floor.

  Maura was instantly apologetic, beyond humiliated, and—what was worse—she had stopped in surprise.

  Brock McGovern was seated at a table near the door, deep in conversation with a woman who was wearing a polo shirt with the restaurant’s logo but not the tunic worn by the waitstaff.

  Of course, now he—like the rest of those in the place—was staring at her.

  She truly wanted to crawl beneath the floor.

  Apparently he admitted to the woman that he knew Maura; he was standing, about to head her way.

  She winced and ignored him, trying to help the waiter whose tray she had upturned, stooping down to help.

  “It’s fine, it’s fine—really!” the young waiter told her, smiling as he met her eyes, collecting fallen plates.