Murder Hooks a Mermaid (15 page)

“They came in here.” His voice was wary, as though he suspected she were trying to trap him. “They wanted to hire me for a charter, but they didn’t have a boat, and I couldn’t find one for them.”

He gave her a sharp look, his eyes hard and glittering in the leathery folds of his sun-darkened skin. “Something familiar about you, girl.” His brow furrowed. “Are you that news gal, the one on the radio?”

“I’m surprised,” Karen said. “Most people don’t recognize me.”

He grinned and preened a little. “Got me a pretty good ear for voices. So you talked to Grover? What did he tell you?” He took another bite of fritter and waited for Karen to continue.

“Not much,” Karen admitted with an oh-so-innocent shrug. “Like I said, he told me they were looking for a dive trip and he gave them your name.”

She continued for another couple minutes, giving the old man time to finish my pastry and lick his fingers.

“I’m sorry,” she said, interrupting her story. “I should have brought you some coffee with that fritter! Where are my manners?”

I nearly hurt myself trying not to roll my eyes.

“No, no. I should have offered you a cup,” he said, heading toward the back of the shop. “Just let me get the pot started.”

Karen followed him, protesting that she’d already had quite enough coffee. I trailed along behind, trying not to feel like a third wheel.

The shop itself was spacious, with large front windows
letting in the growing morning light. The aisles were wide, with racks of fins and suits hanging in neat rows. Along one wall, an army of tanks waited for adventurous souls to strap them on and explore the bays, rivers, and ocean. I tried to ignore the price tags as I passed the displays.

I had never tried scuba diving. Although I loved the water, the cost of lessons and gear, and the trips that followed, was out of my budget even in the best of times. Instead I snorkeled when the rare opportunity presented itself and swam in the bay or the Gulf when I got the chance.

At the back of the shop, Tim Carpenter was starting an aged and stained coffeemaker. He dumped coffee from a grocery-chain can into the basket, eyeballed it, and added a bit more before shoving the basket into the machine.

“Just a couple minutes,” he assured Karen, as though he hadn’t heard a word of her protests.

Karen let it drop and went back to her original questions. “Barton—Captain Grover—thought you might have worked something out with the two guys, but he said he heard it fell through.”

“Those two were more trouble than they were worth. They came in acting like they owned the place, and wanted the whole world with a fence around it. I told ’em I could get a boat and I’d captain—but they’d have to follow my directions—and we’d need another hand to watch them all the time they were in the water.

“I don’t let anybody dive without somebody watching ’em all the damned time. Can’t trust some fool tourist not to do something stupid and get in trouble, and I can’t rescue him—it’s usually a man—and run the boat at the same time.

“I just won’t take any chances when somebody’s paying me to keep them safe as houses.”

And the tourist foots the bill for a deckhand, with Tim skimming a percentage off the top.
Safety concerns
was a much nicer explanation than padding the bill. I had a hunch this was the kind of thing Barton had been talking about when he said Carpenter “cut corners.”

“So did you find them a hand?” I asked.

Tim’s face twisted into a disgusted expression. “No. Told them I had a guy lined up, but they kept insisting they wanted to find someone on their own. And they did. Came in a day or so later with a guy they claimed was a local, said he knew all the best spots around. Like he knows this place better’n anyone
I
know!” Indignation rang loudly in his voice.

“I’ve been diving in these waters my entire life. Spent twenty years in the Gulf on a rig and another five in Pensacola. Dived places most people don’t know exist, and I know all the best divers in a hundred-mile radius.

“Sure as hell—beggin’ your pardon, ma’am—didn’t know this guy. I gotta admit, he talked a good game, and he acted like he’d be okay taking orders, but I wasn’t sure. Know what I mean? Seemed like he was more used to giving orders than taking them.”

Karen nodded. She took the coffee mug Tim thrust at her and gave me a look that told me I better do the same. She didn’t want anything distracting him from his story.

“So, where was I?” he said, putting the stained carafe back on the warming tray.

“He looked like he was used to giving orders?” Karen prompted.

“Yeah, yeah. Anyways, like I said, I wasn’t so sure he’d take orders, and I won’t even untie a boat if I don’t think
everybody on board knows who’s in charge. So I told them I couldn’t get a boat, they were all spoken for, and I couldn’t help ’em. Pure broke my heart to turn down their money.” He pulled a long face. “But I knew good and well that they were going to be more trouble than they were worth.”

“Do you know where they went after you turned them down?”

He shook his head. “They hung around The Tank for a day or so, but word got around and nobody wanted to work for them. Don’t know how they got hooked up with Bobby Freed.” His eyes narrowed, and he stared at Karen. “You’re a Freed, aren’t you? You related?”

Karen shrugged. “I was married to his brother once. But everybody makes a mistake now and then.” Her casual tone was at odds with what I knew, but she was taking Barton’s warning seriously.

“I always liked Bobby”—at least that much was the truth—“and I think he’s getting a raw deal. The cops decided he was their guy, and they aren’t looking very hard, so somebody has to.”

Tim’s head bobbed in agreement. “Cops can’t see past the end of their noses. They decide a guy’s guilty, and that’s it.

“Good on you for trying to help Bobby.”

“Thanks.”

Karen gave him a sly smile, hinting they were on the same side when it came to the police. “Is there anything else you remember about those two, or the hand they picked up here in town? I’m guessing you didn’t know the guy?”

“Can’t say as I did. He looked a little familiar, like I might have seen him in The Tank or around the docks, so he
might’ve been local. I just never met him.” A grin split his weathered face. “And if I never met him, he couldn’t have been that good a diver.”

Karen forced out a chuckle.

I managed a weak smile, but I didn’t think we were going to get much more out of Tim, except possibly another cup of really wretched coffee.

I made a show of checking my watch, and feigning a shocked face. “I have got to get to work!”

“She’s my ride,” Karen said. She grabbed my coffee cup and dumped it in the tiny sink next to the coffeemaker, along with hers. She swished water around in the two cups, disguising how little we’d actually managed to choke down, and upended them in the drying rack on the other side.

As she did, she looked over her shoulder at Tim. “Is there anything else you remember? Anything else you can tell us before we go?”

“Just tell Bobby to stop around, soon as he’s out. I owe him a beer for all the trouble I caused.”

“
You
caused?” I blurted out. “Seems to me the two guys and their deckhand caused the trouble.”

“I shoulda run ’em off. Instead I just told them to go away, and they went and found Bobby, and now look at the mess he’s in. I should’ve made sure they left town and took their trouble somewhere else.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” Karen said. “You couldn’t know.”

“I could have guessed. Once I knew they weren’t the usual run of tourists, that should have been a clue.”

Karen stood completely still. I matched her reaction.

Tim looked from me to Karen and back again. “What?”

“You just said they weren’t the usual tourists,” Karen said. “What did you mean?”

Tim thought about it for a minute. “Not exactly sure why I said that,” he answered finally. “Just little things. Driving a rental car, but they had all their own gear. Now how did they get it here? Most tourists, they either drive their own car, or they rent gear—it’s too expensive to ship tanks and weight belts and so on.

“And they didn’t need a map, or directions. Didn’t have a GPS in the car, either. It was like they’d been here enough to know how to get around.

“I don’t know if they said so, but I got the idea they were from east of here, maybe all the way out to the coast. But I don’t know for sure what made me think that.”

“Well.” I laughed nervously. “It doesn’t take much to figure out how to get around Keyhole Bay. You take the highway east or west, and you follow the bay down to I-10 and Pensacola.”

Tim nodded. “You got me there,” he said.

I walked toward the front door, eager to get outside. Karen followed a minute later, after thanking Tim once again for his help. As she joined me on the sidewalk, she leaned in close and whispered, “Thanks for the use of the fritter. I should have thought to bring something with me. I owe you one.”

We reached the car and I unlocked the door for Karen. “No.” I said it before she could open her mouth. I knew she was going to have some insane idea of what we should do next, but I had a shop to run, and I couldn’t waste any more of my Sunday morning.

To be fair, I knew we hadn’t wasted our time. And I wanted to clear Bobby, too. I just didn’t have anyone to
cover for me, and I didn’t get paid vacation days. Every minute I was away, I could be losing sales. And sales paid the bills.

“After work,” she said, as though that were what she intended to say all along. Which I didn’t believe for a minute.

“What after work?”

She wrestled with the balky seat belt, finally settling for holding the latch together for the short drive back to my place. “After work we have to go check out that apartment.”

“Apartment?” I was already running down the list of things to be done at the store, and I couldn’t remember any apartment being mentioned this morning.

“The local address for Chuck and Freddy. We need to see if we can find out anything from their neighbors or the landlord.”

“Are you crazy?!?”

I pulled the Civic into the parking space behind the shop and shut off the engine. “Are you out of your mind? They made bail, Freed. That means they’ll be around. Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

“We’ll be careful,” she said.

Like that made it all okay!

She jumped out the passenger door and dug her cell phone out of her purse. She jabbed her finger at the screen, and put the phone to her ear, tuning me out.

I unlocked the back door and went inside. She could say whatever she wanted; I wasn’t going to “check out” the apartment of two criminals.

Chapter 18

SO WHY WAS I STANDING OUTSIDE A MASSIVE APART
ment complex at seven o’clock on a Sunday night? I had an excuse. I was trying to help keep Karen out of trouble.

But what was her excuse?

Apparently she didn’t need one.

We’d turned into the main entrance of the complex and parked in the area reserved for visitors. Nonresidents were restricted to the front lot, while each apartment cluster had its own lot with assigned spaces.

Stern warning signs informed us we could be towed without notice if our vehicle was in an assigned spot. The Civic was no prize, but it was better than nothing. I made sure I was parked in a space clearly marked “Visitor.”

Karen had confirmed the building and unit number on the court records before we left the house. I didn’t ask her if it was a public record. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know.

It took us a few minutes to figure out the arrangement of the blocks of apartments. Each building had a street number, but the numbers were discreetly hidden behind lush plantings. The streets themselves meandered through the complex, with plenty of cul-de-sacs and dead ends.

After a few minutes of walking around pretending we knew where we were, we realized the street names were alphabetical. We easily located Keel, one block over from Jetty, and spied a building number.

The unit we wanted was another block down, but once we understood the layout it was easy to find.

The building itself was a stacked block of eight apartments, four up and four down. The apartment we wanted was on the ground floor, its entry door tucked into a semi-private alcove away from the street.

“Now what?” I asked Karen. “There isn’t anything to see here. Do we go talk to the neighbors? Find the manager and try to wheedle some information out of him? Knock on the door and ask why they’re trying to frame your brother-in-law?”

“I’m a reporter,” Karen said. “I’m here to ask them some questions, let them get their side of the story out.” She smiled. It reminded me of a shark. “You’d be amazed what people will tell me, if they think I’ll put their version on the air.”

“And what am I doing here?”

“You’re my assistant,” she said, as though that explained everything.

“And you expect them to
believe
that?”

“They will. Trust me.”

I wasn’t so sure, but I let her confidence carry me along as we walked up the concrete path to the door.

Karen rang the bell. We listened to the chime echo through the apartment, but there were no footsteps, and no one answered the door.

She rang again with the same result, and knocked on the door, calling out, “Mr. Irving? Mr. Davis?”

A young Hispanic woman came down the stairs from one of the second floor units. As she passed us, she nodded. “I don’t think they’re home,” she said. “I haven’t heard anything all day.” She made a disgusted face. “Usually they’re playing their music really loud, while my baby is trying to sleep. I asked them to turn it down, but they’re not so nice about it. But today it’s quiet all day, and Roberto got a really good nap.”

“Thanks,” Karen said. “I’ll just leave them a note.” She made a show of pulling a pad and pen out of her bag as the woman walked away with a wave.

Once we were alone again, Karen tried the bell one more time. When she was sure there was no answer, she jotted her name and number on a sheet of paper.