Murder Hooks a Mermaid (13 page)

“There isn’t even a word for how bad this is,” she said, her voice fading away.

Stunned silence filled the room for several long seconds.

Jake broke the silence. “If we knew what they were looking for,” he said, “we might be able to tell which agency. Or vice versa.” He looked from me to Karen and back again. “Did Riley tell you anything that might help?”

Karen shook her head. “We did talk about it, though. Bobby wouldn’t have been involved with drugs, but he wouldn’t have been involved with anything else illegal, either.”

“Like we told Ernie and Felipe”—I pointed at the two men—“Bobby was what you could call
risk averse
. Smuggling of any kind was too big a chance for him to take.”

“He was really hard-nosed about most drugs,” Karen said. “And especially about anyone selling them. Last year one of Riley’s hands got in trouble with some local dealers. Got himself beat up. Riley helped him make bail, and kept him on
Ocean Breeze
when the judge agreed to work-release.”

“I don’t remember hearing anything about this,” I said.

“He managed to keep it pretty low-key,” Karen replied. “The
News and Times
runs the police log on the back page in tiny type, so the arrest didn’t get a lot of attention, and most plea bargains never even get reported.”

“But what’s that got to do with Bobby?” Jake asked.

“Bobby was against giving the guy another chance, especially if it meant letting him back on the boat. He was afraid the guy might get them all in trouble.”

“Which really wasn’t his business,” Felipe grumbled. “It’s his brother’s boat, not his.”

It was the second time Felipe had made reference to Bobby’s pseudo-ownership of Riley’s boat. I wondered why that particular fact was stuck in Felipe’s craw.

“But Bobby was family,” Karen continued, “and Riley listened to him, even if he didn’t agree. He compromised by keeping the guy on, but only until he could find another job.”

“Was Bobby’s attitude common knowledge?” Jake asked. “Seems to me that if it was, he wouldn’t have been a likely target for a drug sting.”

“I think it was,” Karen answered. “But does it even matter? We all know Bobby wasn’t involved with smugglers, and we know he didn’t kill the guy, whatever agency he was with. The question is: What can we do about it?”

“Is there any chance the police or Feds are still investigating?” I asked. “That they are still looking for suspects and might find the right guy?”

“I doubt it,” Ernie said. “Once they decide they have the right person, the investigation shifts from finding out who did it to finding evidence to support their charges. If Bobby’s been charged, they think they have the right guy, and they aren’t looking for anyone else.”

“Just like when they think it’s an accident, even when it isn’t,” Felipe said, referring to Kevin Stanley.

“Unless they believe he had accomplices,” Jake added. “How about the other two guys who were arrested with him? Are they Feds too?”

“Nobody knows who they are,” Karen answered. She set her empty beer bottle on the table. “They all made bail, but nobody seems to think they’re involved with the death of the agent.”

I shook my head. “That makes no sense. The three of them recruited Bobby to take them diving. Unless all three were agents, wouldn’t it be just as likely that one of the other two did it?”

“It does seem that way,” Jake agreed. “But who knows what’s in the heads of the investigators?”

The conversation continued in the same circles for a while, with none of us able to come up with an answer we liked.

Felipe and Ernie left, saying they had to be at the shop early in the morning. One of their best customers was in town, and she was coming by to pick up several pricey antiques before heading back home.

That left me with Karen and Jake. Karen kept looking
back and forth between me and Jake, as though she could conjure up answers to her questions just by staring.

Jake levered himself out of the couch and stretched. “I better be getting home, too. Thanks for letting me help. It was nice to be part of something good.”

He turned to Karen. “I really hope things turn out all right for your brother-in-law. If there’s anything I can do, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

I started to get up, but he waved me back down. It was clear he’d had another vision for the end of the evening, but it could wait. “Stay here. I’ll let myself out and lock the door behind me. Just don’t forget to set the alarm.”

I nodded. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” I said as he headed down the stairs.

I heard the bell sound over the front door as Jake let himself out. Bluebeard’s squawk of annoyance—his standard response whenever his sleep was disturbed—followed.

Karen looked beat. Fatigue and stress had taken the color out of her face, and she seemed smaller and more fragile than just a few days before. She looked defeated.

I picked up a blanket and draped it around her shoulders. “You need to sleep,” I told her.

“I need to get home,” she replied.

I shook my head. “First, I know you won’t
go
home. Second, you look too beat to drive anywhere, even just from here to your house. And third, I still want to know what’s up with you and Riley and, in your weakened condition, I might even get an answer.”

Karen took a deep breath that turned into a jaw-cracking yawn. “That couch is starting to look pretty enticing,” she
admitted. “But they’re expecting me…” Her voice trailed off as another yawn seized her.

“By
they
I assume you mean Riley.” Her wordless glare told me I was right. “I’ll call him and tell him you’re staying here.” I picked up the empty beer bottles and carried them into the kitchen.

I opened the refrigerator and fished out the last bottle, twisting the cap off as I walked back into the living room, and handed it to Karen. “I’ll go get you some clean pajamas,” I said. “Then we’ll talk.”

I came back in a couple minutes with a clean T-shirt and pajama pants. Setting them on the couch, I went downstairs to check the locks and the alarm.

For once, Bluebeard didn’t squawk at me for interrupting his sleep.

Chapter 16

AFTER I CALLED RILEY, KAREN FINALLY RELENTED
and changed her clothes. In spite of her protests, there was a faint hint of relief in her acceptance of the situation. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop her from grilling me about Jake once she was settled on the other end of the sofa.

I finally had to admit there was something between us. “I really don’t know what it is yet,” I explained. “But we are maybe a little more than friends. Maybe. A little.” I shrugged. “But what about you and Riley? It seems like this is more than just you helping him out with Bobby’s problem.”

Karen sighed. “I don’t know. Honestly, I really haven’t a clue. Don’t look at me like that! Some days I think maybe we should be together, then I think not. And sometimes I change my mind three or four times in a day. It’s like being in junior high all over again.”

“Well, if you decide not,” I kidded her, “Megan Moretti’s back in town. Maybe she’ll make another play for him, just like we really were back in junior high.”

Karen picked up the pillow from the sofa and feigned throwing it at me. “You don’t really think so, do you? From what you and Jake said, it sounds like she was actually pretty upset over Bobby.”

“She was. She wanted to go yell at Boomer, and she kept insisting that Bobby didn’t know the guys, that he hadn’t done anything wrong.”

Karen circled back to our previous discussion. “I sure wish I knew who the other two guys were.” She sat up, her reporter’s instincts boosting her energy. “They’ve been arraigned, so their names should be on the record.” She tapped her forehead as she realized what she had said. “Where did you put my bag? I need to look this up.”

I signaled her to stay where she was and went into the bedroom to retrieve her shoulder bag. She never went anywhere without that bag, which always seemed to contain whatever she needed. It was like a magic purse from a fantasy story, except many times larger, since, unlike a magic purse, this one had to follow the laws of physics.

It also weighed about a million pounds. Or at least that’s what it felt like when I lifted it.

“Are you lugging around anvils?” I asked her when I carried the bag in and set it on the floor next to her.

“No. Just stuff I might need. My phone, my tablet, a change of shoes, my digital recorder. You know, just the necessities.”

Karen’s definition of
necessity
was far different from mine. On the other hand, she carried her job around with her all the time. I left mine in the shop.

Karen pulled her tablet computer out of her bag and connected to my wireless. The password was already saved to the machine, and within a few seconds she was busily tapping in commands and sifting through data, looking for the information we needed.

As I watched, Karen seemed to get a burst of energy from doing the work she loved. To most people, Karen’s talent was her ability on the air, but most people didn’t know how hard she worked to research and develop her stories. She was very good, and it helped that she’d spent several years developing contacts all over the state.

Within minutes she was copying information into a file and cross-referencing the names.

“Charles ‘Chuck’ Irving and Frederick ‘Freddy’ Davis,” she said a couple minutes later. “Same local address for both. Bail was set at forty K, just like Bobby’s bail after it was reduced, and all three divers were released just before Bobby was.” She shrugged. “Maybe the Feds wanted them out, hoping they’d lead them to the rest of the gang.”

“What about the third guy?” I asked. “Did you find the name of the agent? Or anything about him?”

“I’m working on it.”

She frowned at the screen and tapped on the display, swiping her fingers across the screen and muttering to herself. It was a process I was used to when Karen started getting into a story. She turned a hundred percent of her considerable smarts and tenacity to the problem and shut out the rest of the world.

I got up and put on the kettle for tea. It could be
another
long night.

“I don’t know why I didn’t think to do this sooner,”
Karen said as she continued going from one resource to another. “I know how to find this stuff.”

“You had other things on your mind. You were so wrapped up in the family drama, you didn’t have any brainpower left for anything else.” I thought about it for a minute. “You put all your effort into finding a lawyer and helping raise the bail money. Is it any wonder you didn’t do this sooner?”

“But you’d think I’d do the one thing I’m really good at,” she said. “Instead I was doing a bunch of stuff that anybody could have done.”

“But they really couldn’t,” I pointed out. “Nobody was thinking straight. I mean, I saw Riley let you push him around and tell him what to do. Not just once, either. He wouldn’t even let you do that when you were married.”

The kettle whistled, and I escaped before Karen could argue the point. I fiddled with the teapot, heating it with the boiling water while I measured the loose tea.

I drained the pot and set it next to the bubbling kettle, bringing the pot to the water. I added the loose tea and then slowly poured boiling water over the leaves.

Memaw had insisted a good southern lady had to know how to brew a proper pot of tea. She wouldn’t approve of my using tea bags when I made sweet tea, but at least I knew the right way to do things when I wanted to.

I was bracing myself for Karen’s argument when something she had said finally sank in. I turned and looked at her.

“Those two guys had the same
local
address?”

“Yeah,” she said without looking up, clearly immersed in whatever she was doing. “So what?”

“
Local
address?” I repeated. “Megan said they wanted
to dive because it was the last day of their vacation. So why would they have a local address if they were on vacation?”

“A seasonal rental,” Karen suggested. “Or the address of their hotel.” But she stopped what she was doing and looked at her notes. With a few keystrokes she brought up another web page. And immediately started to sound like Bluebeard.

I went to look over her shoulder at what was on her tablet, and immediately saw what had made her swear. The local address was a massive apartment complex just outside of Pensacola.

“So,” I said, “not a seasonal rental.”

“Not by a long shot. Dammit! I should have looked sooner.”

I patted Karen’s shoulder and went to get her a cup of tea. She was on the trail now, and there was no way I was going to get her to rest anytime soon.

She kept up the search for another half hour as I sat and sipped my tea and wondered about Irving and Davis. They had an apartment near Pensacola, which meant they had been around the area for a while. If they were smugglers, it didn’t seem likely that Bobby was the first person they’d approached.

In fact, the longer I thought about it, the less sense that made. And why make the approach in Mermaid’s Grotto? They should have known the local crews hung out at The Tank.

“I wonder who else they tried to recruit.”

Karen jerked her head up. “What?”

I didn’t realize I’d even said it out loud until she reacted. “I wonder who else they tried to recruit,” I repeated. “If they were here long enough to have a local address, they
must have tried to get some of the other local captains or crews, don’t you think?”

“Probably,” Karen said. “And I know how to find out. What time do you open the store in the morning?”

“This time of year? Ten o’clock on a Sunday. But what does that have to do with this?”

“Because you and I are going to do some digging before you open tomorrow. If these guys did try to get another captain or crew in on their scheme, somebody will know about it. And we went to school with half the Keyhole Bay fleet.”

She set aside her tablet, and pulled the blanket up to her chin. “You better get to bed, Glory. We need to get down to the docks early in the morning.”