Octopus Alibi (13 page)

“You said the gift shop owner came by at a regular time.”

“That’s right, I did.”

“How about the mayor? Any particular time of day?”

She leaned on her rake, worked a finger into her ear. “I seen him come midday. He’d be just before lunch, or just after it.”

“He never came by any other time? Or at night?”

She checked her fingertip. “Not that I recall. But what do I know?”

*   *   *

By the time I arrived home, I thought I understood Bobbi Lewis’s quick departure. She had sensed what I had deduced. Steve Gomez had not been in love with his wife. He had been in love with Naomi Douglas. Lewis had left the Grinnell house consumed by grief, falsehood, and the reminders of a ruined love affair.

My mind clicked on a zinger, and its clarity surprised me. I had started my day making love with Teresa, but wary of her feelings for Whit Randolph, fearful of her desire to create a secret lovers’ triangle. I was ending the day juggling three other names. Bobbi Lewis felt jealous of Naomi Douglas. I felt affection toward Naomi and, with that, jealousy toward Steve Gomez. Was I guilty of building a secret quadrangle?

No wonder I felt tired.

*   *   *

I checked my phone, found one saved message. I was treated to a lovely English accent. “Hello, Alex Rutledge. This is Jennifer Royce-Cooper at the Island of Calm Resort and Bath Club. We were so disappointed that you weren’t on your scheduled flight. We sent our van to Owen Roberts Airport for the day’s last arrival, to no success. So sorry you can’t join crew for our reception supper and midnight greeter. We will look for you on tomorrow’s high-noon flight. Bye, now.”

Oh, Jennifer.

*   *   *

I was uncapping a beer when the phone rang. Monty Aghajanian, my old Key West cop friend, now with the FBI in New Jersey.

“Good of you to call,” I said. “You once saved my life. By Native American tradition, you’re always responsible for me.”

“Again it needs saving? What are you begging for now?”

“I’m in what you Feebs call ‘high gear.’”

“Tell me about it,” he said. “I’ll tell you about my last ten months.”

“I’ve got twenty-four hours before I catch a plane. My bank account needs this job to happen. I need some fast info.”

“No can do.”

“I know, I know. Rules, more rules, eyes in the ceiling, ears in the wall. Are you allowed to look up
anything?
”

“You got a work file, a federal case number, and an access code?”

“You got a minute to hear me out?”

“Blow on, Mr. Breeze. The meter’s running.”

I told him about the two deaths. Monty had heard about Mayor Gomez from a former fellow police officer. He remembered Naomi and expressed his dismay. I explained the Akron link and asked him to help locate Naomi’s brother, Ernest Bramblett.

He said, “Lemme look into it. I can’t promise you a grain of sand.”

“Even if you don’t give out the information?”

“Right.”

I said, “Why did you call?”

“You said an airplane. Where’s this so-called job?”

“When did you master the New Jersey accent?”

“I got a surprise vacation,” he said. “I got to use it or lose it. Is your house going to be empty this weekend?”

“I now have a roommate. Your successor at city liaison. But I can find you a free condo. I smell a favor in return.”

“I wrote down the name. How’s your lady friend doing?”

“When you did the media job,” I said, “was it sixty hours a week?”

“You need to remind me of my previous life?”

“Well?”

“Maybe once or twice in two years I worked that long. It was yachting nine-to-five, Alex. Months of boredom, moments of panic.”

“You didn’t have to work late or weekends?”

“Unless I had a situation. Why? Your lady friend doing the grindstone?”

I shortened my story, cried the blues to play a sympathy note. I jokingly asked him to grab background on Whitney Randolph, occupations, legal hassles, addresses. I also told him about Sam Wheeler’s trip to Lauderdale and his sister’s ID turning up on a mystery woman’s body.

He said, “I swear you can’t do the fox-trot without stepping in it. Leave a key to the condo and directions with Carmen.”

*   *   *

I heard a skid in gravel out front. I knew the squeaks, the rattle when the door thudded shut on Dexter Hayes’s toady, city-issue Caprice. He looked grim, and his expression got worse when he saw me on the porch.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” I said. “You can take me to the airport.”

“I heard you were sticking around.”

“I left my cameras and a duffel out there.”

We stared at each other. I read lines of torment in his forehead. Hammers echoed down Fleming. Scents of fresh pine lumber drifted in the breeze.

I said, “You’re at the epicenter for rebuild teams.”

Hayes shook his head. “Every nail pounder I’ve seen in the last hour has been yakking into a cell phone. The grunts are all junior execs.”

“Fits their pay scale, if you ask the contractors.”

“Thank goodness you and I aren’t sawing wood in the hot sun, laying tar strips.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I might be out of a job. Chief Salesberry’s been strange with me. Almost from the day I started working for him, I’ve felt like a contract employee. Like they’d use me as long as I was useful, then cut me loose.”

“Why now, out of a job?”

“When Liska called the chief regarding your Akron, Iowa, discovery, he also told him I might have blown scene details. I’m wondering what brought the sheriff to his opinion.”

“You didn’t give a shit,” I said. “Was I supposed to keep that a secret?”

“Salesberry, in a pure CYA move, asked for my scene notes. To help him, quote, write his report, unquote. One of my men botched his pictures, too. The buck stopped at me.”

“Look at it this way,” I said. “Your dedication to duty took the afternoon off. Your code of ethics slipped a notch. It happens a lot in Key West. Most of the time it’s worse than even you can pull off.”

“What is it, you’re my ally when I’m my own worst enemy?”

“What else did you do Monday night, Dexter?” I said. “Oh, that’s right. You drank beer.”

“I never got off the clock. We had a bar fight on Duval. Two boys from Eastern Europe wanted to marry a Chi Omega from Ohio. She was a cutie. She wouldn’t pick one over the other. She said she didn’t want to be a free pass to a green card.”

“Did you defend your Gomez report?” I said.

“I didn’t say shit. He had me cold.”

“Tell the chief you’re going to expand it. Tell him your investigation was correct, you didn’t miss a thing. Tell him you’ve thought about it, you did your job, but the report sucked. Blame fatigue.”

“I got nothing more to write.”

“Did you note the scrape marks on the concrete seawall?”

Hayes’s eyebrows lifted. “You get a picture of that?”

I said that I had. “That’s assuming I didn’t screw up
my
film.”

The gloom lifted from his face. “Give me one more thing.”

“Did you mention scrapes on the gun butt? Or a lack of scrapes? How did you explain finding the gun next to the victim? I would have expected to find it halfway to the house.”

He stared at me.

“Anything strange about the wife’s statement, her manner, her attire?”

Dex exhaled. His forehead unwrinkled. “Okay, say some dork blew off the back of Steve’s head. We got no eyewitness, we got zilch. We go to the State’s Attorney, we say ‘Same hometown’? Where’s that take us?”

“Eventually, maybe, to a murderer?”

“Double qualifier, Rutledge. Your tenth-grade English teacher would chop your grade.”

“Down the road to a better attitude?” I said.

“Shit. That’s not in my job description. Those sweaty carpenters, man, you should think about what they’ve got.”

I didn’t know what he meant.

“Quitting time,” he said. “You really want a ride?”

I told him no thanks. “I’ll leave the bags where they are. I’m out of here tomorrow. I’ve got a real job waiting.”

Before Hayes drove out of the lane, I knocked on his rear fender, got his attention.

“What now?” he said.

“Can you find out the name of a black woman who earned cash to clean Naomi Douglas’s house?”

“What am I supposed to do, go house to house?”

“I just thought…”

“Wrong.”

*   *   *

I opened another beer and called a friend with a guest condo at La Brisa. We had swapped favors for years. He would get pictures of his old boat, his new boat, his new pickup towing his even newer boat. Pictures of his kids for the Christmas card. Once, a shot of an ugly rental duplex he owned on Big Coppitt so he could list it with a broker. I would get all-day fishing trips and dinners on boats.

He remembered Monty, said the condo was open. “Tell him no pets, no smoking, no leftovers in the fridge. Leave a fifty for the maintenance man.”

Mission accomplished.

I carried my beer down the lane to warn Carmen Sosa that Monty and his wife would arrive in two days. I wanted to give her a rent check, too. I stored my ’66 Shelby Mustang in a garage behind her house. I’d be married to the woman if we had gotten our love life to work out. We’re better off as friends.

I found her repotting a rubber tree plant. I said, “I need Grand Cayman for more reasons than work.”

“You want to relax?”

“I
need
a hammock, a palm tree, a tall drink with fruit juices, rum and umbrellas. I
want
a topless vacationing sorority girl waving a frond fan, and a club sandwich arriving in four minutes. I want a Chi Omega from Ohio.”

“Your idea of paradise?”

“Have I missed anything?”

“You’re full of shit,” said Carmen.

“How can you, of all people, say such a thing?”

“I know you, Alex. I know you’re a closet multitasker who likes to use machines. Paradise for you is downloading your e-mail, making coffee and toast, duplicating a cassette, taking a shower, and talking on the phone, all at the same time. Your secret joy is having that solar trickle-charger, whatever it is, hooked to your car battery.”

I said, “Imagine how I get around clocks.”

“See?”

“Like you watching TV under a ceiling fan and using your vibrator?”

“You don’t know for sure that I do that. You look awful. What did you eat for lunch?”

“Hot air.”

“My daddy grilled a mutton snapper last night. I’ll make you a sandwich. You want potato salad?”

I said, “You’re always trying to save me from myself.”

“No different than raising a child. You want another beer? You want me to heat the fish before I put it on the bun?”

“No, thanks, yes, please. I can’t believe you haven’t found a husband yet. You are more woman than any one man deserves.”

Carmen looked at her reflection in the kitchen window. “You want to rephrase that, or do I make this sandwich the knuckle kind?”

*   *   *

I walked back to my house. A dark blue Mercedes sedan was parked out front. Cootie Ortega had made himself at home on my porch. He was stroked out on my lounge chair, jamming his hand into a Burger King bag. I checked out the Benz. I guessed it was a mid-Seventies model. I looked back at Cootie, hoping he had gone away while my eyes were diverted.

He said, “I fell in love by the fast-food window. She got a lucky daddy.”

“How does that compute?”

“A man got an ugly daughter, he better get rich so he can marry her off.”

Cootie logic.

“You never had kids?” I said.

“One daughter. She lives with her mother in Vero. Come to think, she’s no beauty.” He caught himself. “I guess I’m an exception to that rule.”

I tried to imagine him with a fat bankroll. I gathered that he had as much trouble picturing it as I had.

“What brings you by?” I said.

“Did you tell me you had NASCAR stuff for sale?”

“You brought up NASCAR collectibles, Ortega. I never said the word.”

“What’d you say? You said something. Old stock certificates?”

“Okay, okay, I’ve got a closetful of Barbie Doll outfits.”

“No shit?”

I said, “Just kidding.”

“You didn’t collect when you were a kid?”

“Pine beetles, Action comics, Pez dispensers, lead pennies, baseball cards, and 45 RPM records. I think a few AMT model cars, too.”

He munched a wad of fries. “I’ll take everything but the bugs.”

“My younger brother sold all my stuff when I was in the Navy. He used the loot to buy a Camaro that he totaled in eight days.”

“So you don’t have anything you want to sell me? Old
Newsweek
or
Time
magazines, from like 1997? Make us both a few bucks.”

“Cootie, am I your new best friend because I bought the camera gear? I’ve got a lot of stuff going on right now.”

“Okay, okay, Rutledge. I’m sorry, man. I’ve been out of my tree since my cousin’s husband, you know…”

“Shot himself, Cootie?”

My words threw Ortega into an instant funk. His face drooped, his eyes clouded, and he actually pushed the chow bag away from himself. Even for Cootie, I felt sorry. I wanted to dig through my boxes of attic crap, come up with a treasure for the sad man to hawk. I knew I had one or two worthless stocks, reminders of bad moves. One company called Reliance Insurance. It tanked badly. I had a book of autographs that my aunt had given me after my older cousin was killed in a wreck. Maybe even my lunch box from junior high. It had been baggage when I saved it. I had no use for it now.

On the other hand, helping Cootie would be like feeding a starved dog. He’d be my friend forever, have me up a tree for years, barking at me for scraps.

“I’m sorry I gave you the impression that I had swap-shop booty,” I said. “In this house, if I don’t touch it inside of a year, it goes into my trash.”

Cootie launched himself to his feet, the most energetic move I’d seen him make in ages. He barged through the screen door. The spring on the door whined, the door slapped back into place. He turned to face me. “I don’t mess with swap shit, Rutledge. You should keep it in your head that some people take nostalgia serious as hell.”