Murder Hooks a Mermaid (17 page)

I put shortening in the frying pan to heat and poured boiling water over self-rising cornmeal to make the cornbread. I stirred the cornmeal mixture and set it aside to cool enough to handle while I checked the soup.

The pot was getting warm, but the soup would need a
few more minutes. While I waited for various temperature-related adjustments, I put plates, bowls, and spoons on the table.

As I did, I glanced over Karen’s shoulder to see how she was progressing. She had several folders open and was sorting through the pictures she’d taken, putting them into logical groups. At least I assumed they were logical. This was Karen, and she was approaching this the way she would a work project, so I thought it was a safe assumption.

The phone rang, and I picked it up, carrying the handset back into the kitchen with me to keep an eye on the food.

“Hi,” Jake’s voice was warm and friendly. “I saw the light on a few minutes ago and thought I’d check in and see how you’re doing.”

“Uh, fine,” I answered. After the day I’d had with Karen, I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t seem like the time to go into it. “Are you still at the store?”

He laughed. “Guilty as charged. Just finished doing the orders for next week and getting ready to head out. Have you had dinner yet?”

The question slipped into the conversation so casually, I didn’t think before I responded. “I was just heating up some leftovers, actually. There’s a ton of soup left from last night. You want some?”

“Sure.”

At the same time I heard Jake’s quick response, Karen yelped at me from the table. I shrugged and waved my hand at her in a gesture that said “What was I supposed to do?”

“Karen’s here,” I said into the phone. “I should have warned you before you said yes.” I made a face at her.

“Are you sure it’s okay?” Jake asked. “I mean, I don’t want to intrude if you two are busy with something.”

He had no clue how right he was, but I wasn’t about to admit it. “No, nothing important,” I lied. “Just come on over when you’re through. One of us will come down and let you in.”

As soon as I disconnected, Karen pounced. “He’s coming for dinner?”

“Yes.” I started forming the cornbread dough into flattened balls for frying. “I’m sorry if that bothers you. Really, I am. I just said it without thinking about what we were doing—”

My apology was interrupted by Karen’s ringing laughter. “You are so busted! This is, what? Three nights in a row? Let me see.” She started counting on her fingers. “There was dinner on Friday, before you met with me and Riley, then he was here with the remodeling crew last night and was the last person to leave, and now again tonight?”

She shook her finger at me. “I’d say that definitely qualifies Jake as being in the boyfriend category.”

I turned back to the stove and checked the temperature of the oil in the frying pan. It was hot. I put the first batch of cornbread in the pan, listening to the sizzle as hot oil met wet cornmeal. I watched the edges begin to crisp and turn light gold before I turned the discs over in the oil.

“I don’t know what it is,” I said. I knew I sounded defensive, but I was still so unsure of where I stood with Jake. It certainly felt like boyfriend territory to me, but what did I have to judge by? Maybe we were just friends with potential.

I had emptied the frying pan and put in another batch of cornbread when the bell rang downstairs. I looked over at Karen, who waved me back to my cooking. “I’ll go let your boyfriend in,” she said.

“Not my boyfriend,” I muttered, turning the second batch of cornbread. But even I wasn’t convinced by my argument.

Karen returned in a couple minutes with Jake.

“Bluebeard had to cuss us out.” Jake laughed as he came in the kitchen. He slipped his arm around my shoulders and gave me a quick squeeze.

“Anything I can do to help?” He filched a hot piece of cornbread from the plate next to the stove and blew on it before taking a careful bite.

“You could stop stealing the food before I can get it on the table,” I answered. I avoided the temptation to rap his knuckles my spatula.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Karen, in the meantime, had put another place setting on the table. She slid her work to one end and set three places for us at the other end.

A few minutes later we all sat down with steaming bowls of Ernie’s soup and a plate heaped with small golden rounds of fried cornbread.

My stomach growled loudly, and I realized I’d been running all day on the maple bar I’d had at the crack of dawn, a couple pots of black coffee, and an apple I’d shared with Bluebeard early in the afternoon.

“I did interrupt something, didn’t I?” Jake said, looking at the stack of Karen’s gear. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Karen said. She turned to me. “You might as well tell him, Martine. You will eventually.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but she silenced me with a look. “You know you will.”

Jake looked at me and back to Karen, a question in his eyes. He knew he’d stepped into the middle of something.

“Are you sure?” I asked Karen.

She shrugged. “He’s heard all the rest, hasn’t he? And after the message from Bluebeard tonight…”

Jake’s eyes narrowed. “Message from Bluebeard? What did he say this time?”

“Besides ‘Trying to #^*^&$% sleep,’ you mean?”

He helped himself to another piece of cornbread and nodded at me to continue.

“Actually, I think it’s your fault,” I said. “He said something about ‘sunken treasure’ and ‘nasty pirates.’ He seemed to be upset about something to do with pirates and treasure. You haven’t been talking to him about the front window display, have you?”

“No. I don’t make a habit of talking to Bluebeard.” He broke the cornbread into small pieces on his plate, avoiding my gaze. “But you don’t really believe it’s about the window, do you? There’s more to this story.”

I took a spoonful of soup, stalling my confession. But Jake could outwait me, as I was discovering. I swallowed my soup and started talking.

I told Jake about visiting the docks before daylight, about talking to Barton Grover and Tim Carpenter at the Dive Center. He listened carefully, a quick grin appearing when I confirmed our suspicions that the divers had tried to recruit other boats.

“So they caught up with Bobby at Mermaid’s Grotto and roped him in by talking to him in front of a girl he was trying to impress,” Jake said when I told him what Carpenter had mentioned about everybody at The Tank turning them down.

“That,” Karen said, “and the chance to pocket a wad of cash. And, I have to admit, Bobby likes to feel like he’s
helping someone out. If he thought he could get all three at once, he was a perfect target.”

We ate in silence for a couple minutes as Jake digested what we’d told him. He cleaned his bowl and nibbled at the crumbs of his cornbread. Finally, he looked up at me and caught me watching him.

“So,” he said, watching me closely, “what’s the rest of the story?”

Chapter 20

I SIGHED AND LOOKED AT KAREN. “CAN I PLEAD THE
Fifth on this one?”

“You could,” she said. “But I don’t think it will do you much good.”

“You do know I’m sitting right here?” Jake said. There was a hint of amusement in his voice. “I just want to point out that I can hear every word you say, which has two results: first, it tells me that there
is
something more to this story, and second, it makes me even more curious.”

His voice sobered, and he went on. “But if there is seriously something you don’t want to tell me, I can respect that. You’ll tell me when you’re ready.”

Karen used one of Bluebeard’s favorite words and reached for her tablet. “Just remember we gave you the chance not to know this part,” she said. She was only half joking.

She powered up the tablet and started opening folders of photographs.

It was the first time I had seen the pictures. Jake and I both moved around the table and sat on either side of Karen as she slowly displayed each of the shots she had taken.

There were several from our early morning foray to the waterfront, including something I guessed was purely accidental—a view of the docks with
Ocean Breeze
’s empty slip on the right edge of the photo. It was a reminder of why we were doing this.

Karen closed the folder and moved to another one. There were pictures she’d taken in the Dive Center, and I was impressed. She got pictures of the shop without me being aware of what she was doing, and I’d bet Tim Carpenter hadn’t noticed either, since he likely would have objected if he had.

There wasn’t anything of significance in those photos, and she quickly closed the folder. But they might be useful later.

She had a group of folders for the pictures inside Chuck and Freddy’s apartment, but before we started through the photos, we had to explain to Jake how we got them. As Karen and I took turns telling him about our adventures, he went from amused to horrified to disbelieving. “You took a board off the fence?” he asked.

“We didn’t take it all the way off,” Karen said. “We just pried it up a little more so we could squeeze through the opening.”

“We put it back,” I added.

Resigned, Jake looked back at the pictures on the screen. “Looks like a lovely place,” he said drily. “I can see why you wanted to get in there.”

I was tempted to describe the smell, but it wouldn’t have helped the situation, so I kept quiet.

“Did you find out anything useful?” he asked. I wasn’t sure we were forgiven, but I welcomed the change of topic.

Karen began with the pictures of the scuba gear. The tags on the tanks identified them as rentals belonging to a shop in Jacksonville and listed an address and phone number for their return if found.

She moved on to shots of several pieces of mail forwarded from a Callahan address with a PMB number. “PMB?” I asked. It was a designation I hadn’t seen before.

“Private mailbox,” Jake answered. “Not a Post Office Box, but like one of those services where you have your mail sent.”

“Why would you do that?” I said. “Why not just get a PO Box?”

“Lots of reasons. There might not be boxes available if the post office is small, or if you travel a lot, the service will forward your mail, or they have better hours, or if you get a lot of packages.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

“So their gear was rented,” Karen said. “Their mail was being forwarded by a mailbox service. They were living out of suitcases, and they didn’t have much furniture. Looks like they weren’t intending to stay very long.”

“Makes me wonder how long they’d been here,” I said. “If they weren’t planning to stay, why rent an apartment instead of staying at one of those long-term motels?”

“Might be cheaper over a couple months,” Jake suggested. “Or maybe this was a temporary place while they worked out what they were doing. Or, given whatever they were up to, it was so nobody paid much attention to them.”

“Good idea,” Karen said. “Even at those long-term places, there are housekeepers and clerks and the like who keep track of people coming and going. If they didn’t want anyone noticing them, an apartment in a gigantic complex is a lot more anonymous.” She beamed at Jake like he was a prize pupil. “I bet you’re right about that.”

Something was bothering me, niggling at the back of my brain. “There’s something else,” I said. “I’m not exactly sure what, but there’s
something
.”

“That’s very helpful.” Sarcasm tinged Karen’s voice.

“No, I know it isn’t helpful,” I said. “But I feel like there’s some connection here that we’re missing. Something I heard somewhere in the past few days that relates to what we found in that apartment.

“Besides the trash and the neighbors,” I added.

“Neighbors?” Jake said.

I told him about Karen trying to terrify the poor woman who lived upstairs. “I think she was trying to memorize my license plate,” I joked. “In case we showed up on one of those ‘most wanted’ television shows.”

“I really think she’s afraid of those guys.” Karen repeated what she’d said earlier. “I haven’t seen them, except when they were marched through the police station the night Bobby was arrested, and I really wasn’t paying attention. But I don’t seem to remember them as looking very friendly.”

“They had just been arrested,” I reminded her. “Most people wouldn’t look very friendly under those circumstances.”

“I suppose,” she said.

We looked through the rest of the pictures, but there wasn’t anything remarkable.

I kept going back to the nagging thought I was missing something while I cleaned up after dinner. Jake helped with the dishes while Karen fiddled with her techie toys. She made copies of the pictures and dumped them on my laptop while I put away the clean dishes and wiped down the frying spatter on the stove.

I stifled a yawn and realized exhaustion was dragging me down. When I looked over at Karen, I could see she felt the same way.

“Are you going back to work tomorrow, Freed?”

She shook her head. “I had about a month of vacation time built up, and I convinced the station manager this would be a good time for me to take it. And really, it’s been less than a week.”

I stopped and thought back. It was only Sunday, and Bobby had been arrested on Wednesday. Five days.

“I guess you’re right,” I said. “Sure seems like a lot longer to me. Probably to you, too.”

She nodded.

The evening had reached that awkward moment where someone has to be the first to leave, and no one quite knows what to do next. At least I was sure it wouldn’t be me, since it was my house.

Karen broke the impasse by reaching for her bag and starting to stow her gadgets.

“Do you want me to drive you home?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Riley said he’d pick me up. Least he can do, since I let him borrow my car.” She opened her cell phone and punched speed dial before Jake or I could offer any alternative. Though, to be honest, I was relieved not to go back out; I was really too tired to be driving anywhere.

When she hung up after telling Riley she was ready to go home, I again asked the question that had never been answered. “Just why did Riley need to borrow your car? The Freeds have several cars of their own.”