Board Stiff: A Dead-End Job Mystery (6 page)

H
elen breathed in the heavenly scent of the hotel’s lemon polish. It was a relief to escape Sybil’s smoky cave. Helen’s hair reeked of cigarettes.

She was eager to hurry back to Riggs Beach in her cool white Igloo. The PT Cruiser had earned its nickname for its rounded shape and blasting cold air-conditioning. Even this early in May, Helen could feel the heat building. By June, South Florida would feel like warm soup.

Ceci Odell’s autopsy report was due any moment, according to Sybil. Once the medical examiner declared her death an accidental drowning and Daniel took his wife home, Helen hoped Coronado Investigations could investigate Ceci’s nasty husband. She’d love to destroy the hearts-and-flowers image of that photo flashed on TV. She didn’t want Daniel getting rich from Ceci’s death.

Maybe Sunny Jim will want us to go to St. Louis, Helen thought. It would be nice to have a free trip home to see my sister, Kathy, and her family.

No, it wouldn’t be nice. Not anymore. Not since Kathy and I buried Rob.

Helen skidded away from the subject of her ex like a car sliding across a slippery road, and flipped on a classic rock station. Debbie Harry was singing “Eat to the Beat.” She upped the volume, but even a blast of Blondie couldn’t clear her conscience.

Rob was buried under tons of concrete. But he might as well be sitting in her car. He never left her.

She glanced in her rearview mirror and thought, I can almost see him. When I first met Rob, he had a kind of sexy teddy-bear cuteness. Women saw it and men didn’t. I saw it, all right. I was blinded by love. So blind I didn’t see that Rob cheated on me, starting with my own maid of honor.

Helen steered the Igloo onto I-95 toward Riggs Beach. She didn’t notice the green Toyota behind her in her blind spot and got a well-deserved horn blast.

Now she was safely on the highway and quickly traveling back into the past.

I had a six-figure job in human resources and all the fast-track prizes, she thought. A closet full of pricy, sexless suits, a Lexus and a suburban McMansion I rarely saw. I worked from sunup to sundown.

I had it all. As long as I didn’t look too closely.

The Igloo was barreling down the fast lane, but not fast enough for the pickup behind it. The truck impatiently roared around Helen.

I kept my eyes shut when Rob lost his job, she thought. I wanted to believe he couldn’t find work worthy of his talents. For seven years I listened to his excuses while he lived off me.

A black Mercedes flashed its headlights at her. Helen realized she was going the speed limit—too slow for a South Florida fast lane. She switched to the middle lane.

The wife is the last to know, she thought. That sure was true for me. I was the only one who didn’t know Rob was sneaking around. I didn’t realize it until I caught him with his pants off.

I got my rude awakening when I was a restless forty. I bought a silly women’s magazine for its ten tips to add romance to my married life. One was: surprise your man in the middle of the day. You’ll find him ready to make love.

Rob was ready, she thought. Just not for me.

For the first time ever in my career, I left work early, hoping for hot honeymoon sex at three in the afternoon. Rob said he’d be working on our back deck. That’s where I found him—nailing our neighbor, Sandy. I picked up a crowbar and started swinging.

Buck-naked Rob abandoned Sandy. He ran to his Land Cruiser, jumped in and locked the doors, while Sandy screeched behind the deck furniture.

And I slammed that crowbar into his true love—the Land Cruiser.

I couldn’t stop myself. While I wrecked the Land Cruiser, Sandy called the police. I didn’t see the cops enter our yard. One had to shout, “Drop the weapon, ma’am.” I did. Rob, naked and pale as a boiled egg, crawled out of the ruined SUV, while the cops tried to hide their smiles.

Rob and Sandy refused to press charges for assault. She didn’t want her husband to find out. He did, anyway, and she lost her meal ticket.

I filed for divorce. The judge, dumber than the crowbar but not as useful, awarded Rob half of our house. I expected that. But the judge also said Rob was entitled to one-half of my future income.

My lawyer, that blockhead, sat there like a stuffed vulture.

Good thing there wasn’t a crowbar in the courtroom, or I’d have attacked all three men and gone to prison for triple homicide.

Instead, I swore on the Bible that Rob would never see another nickel of mine. Actually, I swore my oath on the Missouri Revised Statutes. But it was still binding.

I tossed my wedding ring in the Mississippi and left everything behind, driving in crazy crisscrosses around the country. Only Kathy knew how to reach me. My own mother thought I should forgive Rob and go back to him. Somewhere in Kansas, I traded in my Lexus for a clunker. It died in Fort Lauderdale. That’s how the Coronado became my home and Margery the mother I should have had.

Rob searched for me relentlessly. He wanted his money. If he’d worked as hard to find a job, he would have been a millionaire. My ex finally trapped me when I went back to St. Louis for Mom’s funeral.

Funny, wasn’t it? Mom brought us together again. They were buried the same day.

Helen looked up and realized the Igloo was behind a flatbed truck loaded with concrete burial vaults.

My mother’s casket is in a vault like those, she thought. Rob is sealed under the concrete of the church hall basement. Both of them were buried in the church.

A horn blast brought Helen back to the present. She saw the Riggs Beach exit, swung across two lanes and soon found herself at the pier parking lot.

Once again, Helen couldn’t bury her terrible memories. The air in the Igloo felt dirty and bitter, but she knew Sybil’s cigarette smoke wasn’t to blame. She would never rid herself of her ugly role in Rob’s burial.

Helen stepped out and breathed in the soft ocean air. She saw Phil at Sunny Jim’s, pulling a yellow paddleboard off the rack for a dreadlocked beach bunny. As she got closer, Helen saw the young woman had roses tattooed on her pale back and a green lizard on her foot. The lizard’s tail wrapped around her ankle.

Helen found the reptile oddly appealing. The woman’s pale skin was a good canvas for the needle artist’s work. The roses-and-lizard woman insisted on carrying her own board to the water, so Phil loped alongside with her paddle and made sure she had the life jacket on her board.

Sunny Jim was leaning against his trailer, pulling frantically at his frizzy hair and talking on his cell phone. As she got closer, Helen heard him say, “Are you sure?”

Then he punched his fist in the air and said, “Yes! I knew it. Thanks for telling me.”

Phil rejoined Jim and Helen. Jim clicked off and smiled for the first time since Ceci died. “That was Becky, the nurse at Riggs Beach hospital,” he said. “She told me Ceci Odell was murdered.”

“What? She couldn’t have been,” Helen said. She felt like she’d been walloped with a wet towel.

“She was. The ME said so,” Jim said. “Becky read me the autopsy report. It said she was stabbed twice in the back by a knife with a serrated edge, like a dive knife.”

“Stabbed in the back?” Helen said. “Are you sure? I saw a cut on her forehead.”

“That was there, too,” Jim said. “The stab wounds went through two right ribs, lacerated the right lung and slashed some large vessels. They bled into her chest cavity and gave her a hema-something.”

“Hemathorax?” Phil guessed.

“That’s it,” Jim said.

“Did Ceci drown, or did the stab wounds kill her?” Phil asked.

“She had salt water in her lungs,” Jim said. “She might have been breathing for a little bit, but the stab wounds were enough to kill her. I don’t know if she was conscious.”

Now Helen felt sick. The sun seemed unbearably hot. “That poor woman,” she said. Those three useless words were all she could manage.

“You gotta find out who murdered Ceci,” Jim said.

“How? You saw her die,” Phil said. “We were all there when it happened. There was nobody in the water near her. Her husband is the main suspect, and he was sitting on the beach in front of us.”

“Somebody killed her,” Sunny Jim said. “Maybe Daniel Odell hired the killer. Or one of my competitors did.”

He must have seen the doubt on their faces. “I know what people say about me. They think I’m paranoid and my enemies are all in my head.”

Helen felt a guilty stab. That was exactly what Margery had told them.

“But this killer is real,” Jim said. “I want to pay you to find him. We couldn’t save Ceci Odell, but it’s not too late to save me.”

“Tell me something,” Phil said casually. “How did you get that information? That Ceci’s death is murder. The police don’t release autopsies in an open murder investigation.”

“I told you: Becky is a friend,” Jim said. “She’s an ER nurse at Riggs Beach General Hospital. She has a friend who works at the Riggs County Medical Examiner’s Office. That’s how we do things here in Riggs Beach. There are no secrets in this city.”

Except who killed Ceci Odell, Helen thought.

“Wait! I forgot something else,” Sunny Jim said. “Becky told me there’s going to be a story about the medical examiner’s findings on the noon news. Channel Fifty-four again.”

“We don’t have a TV,” Phil said.

“But I have an app for Channel Fifty-four on my iPad,” Jim said. “They have streaming video. We can watch it here.”

They ran for the trailer. “Maybe now I’ll catch a break,” he said. “Last time, Commissioner ‘Want More’ Wyman said my business wasn’t safe. It’s time for Fifty-four to tell the other side.”

Good luck with that, Helen thought. You could trust Fifty-four to put the most sensational spin on any news.

Jim called up the station on his iPad, and they crowded around his plywood desk to watch it.

“The story is on now,” Jim said, turning up the sound.

The same blond bubblehead was now reporting. She held a microphone up to a lean, lantern-jawed man identified on-screen as Riggs Beach crimes against persons detective Emmet Ebmeier.

“We have investigated the victim’s husband,” he said. “Mr. Odell was on the beach in front of witnesses when the murder occurred. His recent cell phone records show no calls to anyone but friends and family members. We do not believe he harmed his wife. The medical examiner has released Mrs. Odell’s body to her husband.”

“What about life insurance?” Helen asked the TV.

The blond reporter never asked that key question. “We also interviewed Commissioner Charles Wyman at his office,” she said, “about this new development in the death of Mrs. Odell.”

If the commissioner was lining his pockets with bribes, he sure wasn’t spending the money on his office decor, Helen thought. The walls were covered with cheap plywood paneling and plastered with framed certificates, plaques and photos. Wyman was sitting behind a dented black metal desk. His comb-over emphasized his balding scalp.

“It is my duty to continue calling for more regulation for the water sports industry,” the commissioner said, his voice as thin and high as if he’d sucked helium. “The Riggs Beach tourism industry needs to meet the highest standards of safety.”

“Will you be voting to renew the city lease for Sunny Jim’s Stand-Up Paddleboard Rental on Riggs Beach in June?” the blonde asked.

“At this point in time,” he said, “I don’t believe renewing Jim’s lease is in the best interests of Riggs Beach. A tragedy occurred on his watch. Maybe it’s not his fault, but his beach business will be a constant reminder of that death. We can’t afford that on our beach.”

“Then you’ll vote to give the space to a competitor?” the news anchor said.

“That’s one option,” Commissioner Wyman said. “Another would be to use the area for more parking. I am carefully considering which would be best for the future prosperity of Riggs Beach.”

“Hah!” Sunny Jim said. “He means the future prosperity of ‘Want More’ Wyman.”

“N
ow what?” Helen asked Phil.

The two partners of Coronado Investigations held a hasty meeting on a bench near Riggs Pier. Three feet away, a young mother washed salt and sand off her little girl. In front of them, two boys horsed around on boogie boards in the surf. Behind them was a beery game of beach volleyball.

No one paid them any attention.

“Jim wants us to solve a murder and we don’t have a clue,” Helen said.

“Clue?” Phil said. “We saw the woman die and had no idea she was being murdered.”

“We can’t even call this a locked-room mystery,” she said. “It took place on the ocean in broad daylight.” Helen threw out her arms to take in the roasting sun, the rowdy tourists and the wrinkled sea. “Ceci was killed in front of hundreds of witnesses. And they all disappeared.”

“I guess that’s where we start,” Phil said. “We have to find someone who saw something. You go to Cy’s restaurant and see if you can learn anything. I’ll review those security videos of the break-in at Jim’s again and see if anything was overlooked.”

“From spring break?” Helen said. “You still have them?”

“I want to study them again,” Phil said. “I’ll also wander around the beach bars for gossip on the murder.”

“You would choose a bar,” Helen said and laughed.

“Hey, it’s where people talk if I ply them with drink,” Phil said.

“And have a few beers yourself,” Helen said. She grinned at him.

“I’d look suspicious if I didn’t drink, too,” Phil said.

“I love how you say that with a straight face,” Helen said, and kissed his ear.

“Hey,” he said, “we’re supposed to be undercover.”

“We’ll go undercover tonight,” she said, and headed for Cy’s on the Pier.

Cy’s was decorated like every beach restaurant, with fishing nets, seashells, life preservers, and a candle on each table. At two thirty, the lunch rush was over, and only three tables had customers. Helen saw Joan, the blond server, filling a water glass at a corner table, and asked to sit in that section.

She ordered a grilled fish sandwich, fries, and a Coke. Joan brought her food quickly. The fish was fresh, but the fries were pale and greasy. Helen finished her fish and left most of the fries. The warm sun and heavy food made her sleepy. Time to get moving.

“Check, please,” she said when Joan passed her, and handed her a credit card.

The server was back quickly. Helen started to leave a tip.

“Excuse me,” Joan said. “I really appreciate the tip, but could you leave it in cash, please? If you put the tip on the credit card, the owner takes ten percent of it.”

“You’re kidding,” Helen said, and pulled out a ten-dollar bill. She hoped the generous tip would pay off in information when she needed it.

“Thanks,” Joan said, stuffing it into her pocket. Once again, Helen was struck by the woman’s weary beauty. Her green uniform shirt brought out her sea green eyes, but there were dark circles under them.

“You left a nice tip when you had breakfast here, too,” Joan said. “Lots of our customers are tourists. They figure they’re never coming back here, so they don’t bother tipping. I’m having a hard time making ends meet.”

“You must have had a bunch of people in here when that woman drowned,” Helen said.

“Most were out on the deck watching,” Joan said. “They didn’t eat. I saw the lifeguards taking her out of the water. I thought they would save her.”

“Me, too,” Helen said.

“I guess this sounds terrible, but I took a cell phone video of the accident and rescue. I was hoping to get it on Channel Fifty-four. They give viewers fifty-four dollars for photos or videos used on the air.”

Now Helen was alert. “You have a video? Did you see anything?”

“A scuba diver,” Joan said. “He was near the pier before the accident. I got him on video.”

Joan opened her cell phone and called up the video. “Look,” she said.

But before Helen could see it, she heard a man say, “Hey, Joanie, I’m not paying you to stand around and yak. Refill the saltshakers before the dinner rush starts.”

“I’m just finishing up with this customer,” Joan said, collecting Helen’s plate and silverware.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. “That’s Cy, the owner.”

Cy was a tubby fifty who looked like he’d been eating his own food for way too long. Joan’s boss was pale as biscuit dough and just as flabby. Cy’s thick hair was dyed a startling black, making his face seem vampire white. Helen wanted to check for fangs, then remembered the undead wouldn’t survive daylight.

“I’d still like to see that video,” Helen whispered.

“Not here,” Joan whispered back. “He’s in a pissy mood.”

“I could look at it in the pier parking lot after you get off work,” Helen said.

“He’ll see us. Cy’s paranoid,” Joan said. “Thinks we’re all talking about him. We are, too. I need lunch after I get off work here in thirty minutes. You could have a drink.”

“How about the Downtowner in Fort Lauderdale?” Helen asked.

“Anyplace but Riggs Beach,” Joan said. “See you there in an hour.”

“JOANIE!” Cy yelled. “I said get your ass back to work.”

Joan shrugged and hurried away. When Helen left, Joan was filling saltshakers. Cy was sprawled at a back table, texting on his cell phone. Helen thought he moved his thumbs fast for an older guy.

The Downtowner Saloon was in downtown Fort Lauderdale, almost under the Andrews Avenue bridge on the Las Olas Riverfront. Diners could see the yachts motoring on the New River, the skyscrapers and the jail—the city’s successes and failures. The Downtowner’s historic building was a series of dark connecting rooms with big-screen TVs, electronic games and an antique gas pump. Helen snagged a table outside, just as Joan arrived. She’d changed out of her uniform shirt into a peach blouse.

“Thanks for meeting me here,” Joan said. “I want someone else to see that video. You seem sensible.”

Helen guessed that was a compliment. “Is your last name really Right?” she asked.

“It is,” Joan said. “Mom must have really loved Dad to marry him. She put up with lame ‘You’ve finally found Mr. Right’ jokes for forty years. I haven’t had her luck picking men.”

“You can eat lunch and rest,” Helen said, “and we can pretend we’re tourists.”

“Do I look that bad?” Joan asked.

Helen laughed. “We depend on tourists,” she said, “but we sure don’t want to be mistaken for them. Why do tourists check out when they check into a hotel? They drift across A1A in front of speeding cars. They wear clothes I wouldn’t put on to empty the trash. I’m sure at home they’re perfectly fine, but on vacation they forget their good sense.”

“And their manners,” Joan said. “Maybe they know nobody from home will see them misbehaving. You’ve been at the beach two days in a row. Are you a sun worshipper?”

“Just a salesclerk on a staycation,” Helen said. “The fun went out of my day at the beach when I saw that poor woman drown.”

Joan shuddered. “I hope I never see anything like that again.” A server took their orders. Joan ordered the fish tacos and a beer. “I’ll have the Stranahan salad,” Helen said. The prospect of grilled portobello mushrooms, mozzarella and roasted peppers on a pile of mixed greens made her feel so virtuous, she asked for a white wine.

After the server left, Joan said, “On the way here, I heard on the radio that tourist lady was murdered. I can’t believe I caught it on my camera phone.”

“You were going to show me the video when Cy decided to play boss,” Helen said. “Don’t keep me in suspense any longer.”

Helen tried to contain her excitement while Joan powered up her cell phone. “Is it bloody?” she asked.

“No at all,” Joan said. “Here it is. See the yellow paddleboard? It’s bumping against a piling. Still wish Channel Fifty-four had bought it.”

Helen could see why the station had turned down the video. She saw a yellow oblong moving against a dark blur surrounded by gray. There was no sound.

“What’s the dead lady’s name?” Joan asked.

“Ceci Odell,” Helen said. Their drinks appeared and Helen reached gratefully for her wine.

“Right,” Joan said. “You can’t see her, but there’s the scuba diver.” She pointed at the screen.

Helen saw a roundish dark blob that could have been a dolphin, a diver’s head or a shadow.

“Why would a scuba diver swim under the pier?” Helen asked.

“He wouldn’t, unless he was up to no good,” Joan said. “The current near the pier is dangerous. Look! Right there. See? He’s swimming away from Ceci’s body and the paddleboard.”

Helen saw more shadows and something moving far faster than a human could swim. “Weird,” she said. She sipped more wine to hide her disappointment.

“Do you think I should show it to the police?” Joan said.

“A Detective Ebmeier is in charge of the investigation,” Helen said. “Maybe he could enhance the video for a clearer view.”

The server brought their food. The two women watched a sleek white yacht glide past on the New River while they ate.

“I can’t believe your boss takes ten percent of your tips,” Helen said, “if diners put them on a credit card. That’s rotten.”

“That’s Cy,” Joan said. “He’s greedy. Servers don’t even make minimum wage. We only get four seventy-seven an hour, and tourists aren’t big tippers. Cy helps himself to the little we do get in tips.”

“Is your boss hard up for money?” Helen asked.

“He’s rolling in dough,” Joan said, and finished her beer. “And you’re not a local taking a staycation. Your questions are too sharp. Why are you talking to me?” Joan’s eyes were sharp with suspicion.

Helen decided to tell the truth. Well, some of it. “Busted. I’m a private detective,” she said. “A partner in Coronado Investigations. I’m looking into the goings-on at Riggs Beach, and Cy seems to be the key.”

“You want to bring down Cy for corruption?” Joan asked. “You’ve come to the right woman.”

Helen signaled the server for another round of drinks.

“What all does Cy own?” Helen asked.

“The restaurant. It’s a gold mine,” Joan said. “The bait shop does well, too. He also owns the Riggs Beach T-shirt Shop and Cerise, the upscale boutique. Plus, he’s got that parking lot by the pier. He charges ten dollars an hour for those spots.”

“I know,” Helen said. “There’s no street parking.”

“All the public parking was removed after Cy made generous donations to several commissioners’ reelection campaigns. He has a monopoly on the beach. It’s a fifty-space lot, so on a busy day he’s raking in five hundred dollars an hour. But that’s still not enough for the old greed head. He wants Sunny Jim’s space. He figures he can cram six cars in there and make another sixty dollars an hour.”

“But that will reduce the size of Riggs Beach,” Helen said.

“He doesn’t care,” Joan said. “But Cy may not get Jim’s location. My boss is in hot competition with Bill’s Boards. Bill wants it for his paddleboard rentals.

“The Riggs Beach City Commission is split. Three commissioners think Cy’s expanded parking lot is good for city business. Three others say it should stay beach property, but they want it for Bill’s Boards. Two commissioners are on the fence: Charles Harrison Wyman and Frank Lincoln Gordon, better known as Frank the Fixer. It all comes down to who gives them the biggest payoff.”

“How do you know?” Helen asked.

“They’re both in and out of Cy’s restaurant all the time. Commissioner Wyman—Charlie Want More—has a daughter who’s getting married again. Cy volunteered to close his restaurant on a Saturday in January so Wyman could have the reception there. The commissioner is being cagey. Sometimes he says his daughter is going to elope. Wyman is too slick to take cash. Cy can’t be sure of his vote and he’s nervous. He wants that parking lot.

“Frank is easier to buy. He has a free lunch at Cy’s every day and doesn’t tip. I wait on him. Frank and Cy talk a lot. I hear things. The commissioner’s kid needs new braces. We’re talking about ten thousand dollars for the kid’s dental work.”

“That’s a lot of money,” Helen said.

“He needs more money and he needs it fast,” Joan said. “He has this spectacular house on the water. The last hurricane damaged his seawall. Unless he comes up with cash quick, his waterfront property, his pool, even part of his house could be washed away in the next storm.”

“And hurricane season starts in a month,” Helen said.

“Tell me about it,” Joan said. “He moans about it constantly. The pier parking lot is open twenty-four hours. The bribe is maybe one day’s take.”

Helen whistled. “That’s twelve thousand dollars.”

“That’s what Frank the Fixer and the owner were talking about—how many days he should get for his support. The commissioner is holding out for a week. The owner wants one day, but I think he’ll settle for a long weekend. What time is it?”

Helen checked her watch. “Seven o’clock,” she said.

“I can’t believe we’ve talked this long. I’d better get going,” Joan said. “It’s been fun talking to you.”

“You too,” Helen said and signaled the server for the check. “Dinner’s on me. You’ve been a big help.”

Joan took out her slim black wallet and said, “At least let me pay the tip.”

“No way,” Helen said. “That’s a gorgeous wallet.”

“Gucci,” Joan said. “But it doesn’t have those big dumb G’s all over it, shouting ‘I paid too much for this.’ Boyfriend got it for me. Kept the wallet, got rid of him.

“Look what else I got.” Joan pulled a pink ticket from the depths of the wallet. “I bought a raffle ticket for a Mercedes.” Helen saw Joan’s name, address and phone number scrawled on the ticket.

“My luck is turning,” she said. “I can feel it.” She tucked the ticket carefully back inside.

“Here’s my card with my e-mail and phone number,” Helen said. “Please e-mail me that video. Maybe I can have it digitally enhanced.”

“I will. And I’ll call you if I hear anything,” Joan said. “I want Cy caught.”

“Won’t you be out of work if he is?” Helen asked.

“Someone else will take over that restaurant,” she said, “and I’ll get a better boss. I sure can’t get a worse one.”