TURTLE DOVE (Alton Rhode Mysteries Book 7) (2 page)

Vole looked at the bundled corpse on his deck. He’d originally planned on wrapping it in heavy chains and additionally weighing it down by barbells, but decided not to take any chances. On board he had the tools needed to clean the largest marlins and sharks, and now he took them out of a locker. Then he unwrapped the sheet around the woman. An hour later, using his biggest hooks, he weighted down the individual pieces with the heaviest sinkers in his tackle box. As the boat made steady progress on autopilot, Vole calmly dropped his horrible cargo at approximately quarter-mile intervals. A former Navy Seal who was separated from the service for mental instability, he did not find the whole grisly process all that disturbing. He’d seen worse.

Each chunk sank out of sight, but not before attracting the attention of some sharks, lured by the blood in the water. From the look of them they appeared to be spinners or blacktips. Even such an experienced fisherman as Vole sometimes had trouble telling the close shark cousins apart at a distance. Vole knew this stretch of the Atlantic as well as anyone in North Carolina, and had specifically chosen the location, where the water was not only deep but also far from any of the underwater wrecks favored by his fellow fishermen. In the distance he could see the running lights of freighters plying the coast of North Carolina, but there were no other boats, large or small, within miles. The chance that the body parts would ever be discovered before decomposition and seas scavengers obliterated all traces of them was nil. And even if any bits remained, they would be swept far away by the Gulf Stream. Certainly, nothing would wash up on shore anywhere near where the killing took place.

The Bald Head Island marina was in an inlet on the western shore of the island. Vole headed back, shredding and scattering the woman’s clothes, pillow and bedsheets in the water as he went. Then he started washing down the deck and stern, which looked like an abattoir. He noticed that it had gotten darker. The moon, which had been shining brightly, was now covered by clouds. Vole went into his cabin and turned on his weather radar. There was a squall just to his north. He headed for it and soon
She Got the House
was engulfed in a driving rain. It was a rough ride, with water sloshing over the gunwales fore and aft, but Vole loved it. He was too good a seaman to be worried about a passing squall, and the rain and seawater was cleaning the boat even better than he could!

It took him almost an hour to reach his berth. After tying up his boat and checking for anything incriminating, Vole climbed into one of the golf carts owned by the woman he had recently dismembered and headed back to her house.

Just under 15 minutes later, he stripped off his sodden clothes in the room he was using, threw them in the washer and took a shower. Then, wearing only a towel, he padded into his lover’s room. She was already lying in bed, naked. The woman knew his blood was up, and he wanted his reward. He dropped the towel. She laughed and reached out and grabbed him by his already erect member.

“Any problems?” she asked, drawing him onto the bed.

“No.” Leonard Vole’s voice was husky with lust. “She’s sleeping with Bin Laden.”

It was a good line, and the woman laughed. A moment later they were thrashing in bed, not knowing, or caring, that they had just committed only the second murder in Bald Head Island’s history.

The first had occurred almost 500 years earlier, in 1526, when a Spanish sailor washed ashore after the ship captained by the Spanish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón ran into the treacherous shoals surrounding the island and sank. The sailor, whose name was lost to history, was found, sprawled barely conscious in the sand, by some of the Native Americans who frequented Bald Head’s shores and estuaries to collect the abundance of shellfish available.

Unfortunately for the sailor, the savages who revived him were sick of eating clams and shrimp, and decided to augment their diet.

They killed him, and ate the evidence. 

CHAPTER 1 - DESTINATION WEDDING

Five Months Later

Somewhere In North Carolina

I wondered if there was a law against shooting your GPS system and putting it out of its misery.

I didn’t think that was likely, but I was in North Carolina, so who knew? There are lots of strange laws south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

It was Thursday afternoon, and over the past half hour “Gladys”, which is what I call my portable GPS unit, had bombarded me with an endless stream  of “when possible, make a legal U-turn” and “re-calculating route” invectives as I meandered through the maze that is coastal North Carolina near its border with South Carolina. Gladys was confused by the new highways that had apparently replaced older rural roads.  The trouble started on I-95 when she told me to get off at Exit 14.

There was no Exit 14.

There was an Exit 13 A and an Exit 13 B, but by the time I realized I should have taken one of them, I passed both and was on my way to Savannah.

Savannah is one of my favorite cities, and there was no traffic, but I was trying to get to Southport, NC, where I hoped to catch a ferry to Bald Head Island. I was scheduled to give away the bride at a “destination wedding” on Bald Head.

Hard to do when you can’t find the blasted destination.

Bald Head Island was one of those places where the choice between flying and driving was not so simple. The nearest major airport that serves the area apparently has not been built yet. Raleigh, Charlotte and Fayetteville were still hours away by auto on roads that, as I discovered, could confuse satellites. To endure the inevitable airport delays, first in New York, and then at one of those airports, only to face a four-hour drive, was not appealing. I estimated that I could drive the whole way in approximately the same time. I also suspected that had a modern-day Sherman been forced to plunder the South by air, the Confederacy would have a chance. Someone probably would lose his luggage.

I broke up my trip by stopping in Washington, D.C., for a long-overdue visit with Dave Stewart, a pal from high school with whom I’ve kept in touch. Dave is a white-shoe D.C. lawyer who writes historical non-fiction books on the side. It’s a pretty good side. An acknowledged expert on early American presidents, Dave has hit
The New York Times
bestseller list twice. I spent an enjoyable and enlightening day and night with Dave and his equally talented wife Nancy, a city commissioner in nearby Alexandria, before resuming my journey to Bald Head. But I was happy to leave Washington. Late August can be brutal in D.C., and it was. In the nation’s early history, European diplomats considered a posting to the American capital, with its sub-tropical and malarial summers, a hardship post. Air-conditioning made inside better, but outside was another matter altogether.

My troubles with Gladys aside, long-distance driving did not bother me. I liked to drive and finally had the car for it, after a succession of vehicles that were at best adequate and, at worst, unlucky. When I got back years ago from my hopefully last tour of duty in Sandland — I say hopefully because I don’t think Uncle Sam needs a shot-up veteran when there are so many un-shot studs around, many of them running for elective office and trying to start more wars — I was financially challenged. My private investigation business, never all that healthy to begin with, had withered even further. A friend, Al Lambert, who was both a used-car dealer and one of Staten Island’s premier entertainers, somehow managed to find some cars I could afford.

The first was a rental-fleet Chevy Malibu whose car carrier had been caught in a vicious Indiana hail storm. The other cars on the carrier looked like golf balls, but the only-slightly-damaged vehicle Al sold me at a steep discount performed yeoman’s service for years. After that, I upgraded to a Fusion hybrid until my penchant for taking on cases that cost me more money than I made forced me back to Al, who put me in a four-year-old Hyundai Santa Fe SUV that I adored — until somebody blasted it with a shotgun during my last big case and killed an innocent kid who had borrowed it. The SUV was totaled in the subsequent crash, but even if it hadn’t been I would have gotten rid of it after that.          

I made a lot of money on that last case, thanks to the woman whose wedding I was about to be a part of, so now I was tooling around in a three-year-old Acura that, because of Al, cost me a lot less than it should have. It is a fast, comfortable and handsome vehicle with a lot of bells and whistles that I have not tried out yet, and should keep me happy for years, unless someone shoots it up or I take on more pro bono cases.

There was nothing going on in my office, not an unusual occurrence, unfortunately, so I’d decided to take some time off. I’m not a big fan of weddings, destination or otherwise, but Bald Head Island supposedly had good fishing and a world-class golf course. I’m not a fanatic about golf and hate lugging clubs through an airport, but throwing them in the trunk of my car was no problem. I told my office manager, Abby, to hold down the fort.

Then, I had to figure out what to do with Scar and Gunner.

Scar is not much of a problem. He is the almost feral feline that roams St. Austin’s Place, the block where I live in West Brighton. I gave Scar his name when he first arrived in my backyard, which is his base of operations and private kill zone. I don’t have a rodent problem, but there is a trade-off. My property is not a place a bird watcher would find rewarding. One look at Scar’s face and skull are enough to explain his name. He is bigger than most tom cats I’ve seen, and if he could talk he’d probably say, “You should see the other cat”. Or dog, or raccoon, or mountain lion, for all I know. His meow sounds like a sink garbage disposal and his purr, when he deigns to purr, mimics a lawn mower.

For all that, I cherish Scar, although the fact that he seems to prefer me over my neighbors is probably something my psychiatrist would have a field day with, if I had a psychiatrist. My pal, Wayne Miller, used to stop by and feed and water Scar when I was away for any length of time. For short jaunts, there was no problem, in any season. Scar would grub off the neighbors or make do with local puddles and unwary birds and squirrels. Wayne, an actor and director now working off-Broadway, has begged off of late. I now use Freddie Schultz, one of my neighbor’s kids and the first person everyone on the block would blame in case of vandalism or teen-age mayhem. Needless to say, he gets along great with Scar. Birds of a feather, and all that.        

Gunner, my dog, is more of a problem. I took him along on my last sojourn south, and got him shot. It didn’t seem to bother him all that much, but my last-minute rental house on Bald Head specified “no pets”. I could have opted for a pet-friendly mansion at three times the cost, but since my trip was meant to combine my wedding duties with a romantic getaway, I decided to leave Gunner home. Freddie was an option. Both he, and Scar, get along famously with Gunner. But fate intervened when I mentioned my quandary to Maks Kalugin.

“I’ll take him,” Maks said. “Zhukov will enjoy the company.”

Zhukov is Gunner’s brother. He is named after the famous Red Army Marshall who was Stalin’s favorite general, the conqueror of Berlin. Gunner is named after John “Gunner” Panetta, a Medal of Honor winner from Vietnam, whose murder I solved a while back. Both dogs are Byelorussian Ovcharkas, a breed that is a mix of East Siberian Laikas and German Shepherds. “Charkas” are known for their toughness, loyalty and superior intelligence, which came in handy when serving with the Red Army on the Eastern Front during World War II.

Gunner was a gift to me from Marat Rahm, the patriarch of the Russian family that is the most powerful of the Staten Island mobs, and one of the most powerful in New York City. My relationship with the Rahms is complicated. I’ve known Arman Rahm, Marat’s son, since we played basketball together as teen-agers. He now runs the family with a cold shrewdness that belies his movie-star looks. Maks Kalugin is the family enforcer. He doesn’t look like a movie star. He looks like a fire plug, but tougher. At one time, all three considered having me sleep with the sturgeons and only kept me alive because Marat’s daughter, Eleni, intervened. Since then, we have traded favors when necessary and they’ve always kept their word. Maks has even saved my life occasionally, at first reluctantly, but lately because he is very fond of Alice Watts, the woman I love. She thinks he is adorable, which puts her in a majority of one. I doubt if Kalugin’s mother thought he was adorable.  

When I dropped Gunner off at the gabled-and-turreted Rahm mansion on Todt Hill, Marat Rahm insisted I join him for a drink out by his pool, where he was taking the sun. Arman was at a table working on a laptop. He smiled at me and pointed to the computer screen.

“Facebook,” he said. “You can’t believe what people put on here. I’ve actually found some idiots I was looking for because they really think someone is interested in what they are cooking or how cute their grandchildren are.”

“I don’t want to hear what happened to them,” I said.

Arman gave me a frosty smile.

“No, you don’t.”

Gunner and Zhukov began to frolic on the huge lawn. Frolic was a relative term; both were now large enough to pull a sled in a Russian proverb. Maks poured our vodkas and Marat asked what I was up to. I told them. When I finished, even Kalugin laughed.

“You are giving away in marriage the woman we used to entrap you in the Capriati matter,” Marat said. “Are you sure you don’t have a Russian in your woodpile, Alton? Tolstoi or Pasternak couldn’t make any of this up. The woman almost got you killed.”

“On your orders,” I pointed out.

“Only fools hold grudges,” Marat said. “I’m glad to see you don’t. So, now she is rich. Maks told me what happened in Virginia. About her father. I must say, you are doing your part in ridding the world of scum.”

“Maks helped out quite a bit. I think he got mad when they shot Gunner.”

“It is never wise to make Maks angry.” 

I smiled at the memory, as I now finally located the right road, the Andrew Jackson Highway. I bet that most people think Old Hickory was a native Tennessean. Thanks to Dave Stewart, who knows more about Jackson than Jackson, I happen to know Andy was probably born in North Carolina. Whoever claims him, I hope he stays on the $20 bill.   

Gladys somehow managed to get me off at the right exit toward Southport, but then had a real nervous breakdown, at one point directing me towards Bolivia, which thankfully turned out to be a small town, not the country. Then, she sent me down one road that dead-ended at an abandoned building that looked like it once hosted a Ku Klux Klan meeting.

It wasn’t Gladys’s fault, of course. I could have followed directions and maps on my iPhone, or used the Acura’s built-in GPS system, but I was used to her. However, after one of her legal U-turns on “Green Swamp Road” put me in the path of a minivan driven by a woman texting on her cell phone with dog on her lap, I pulled her plug and stopped at a gas station to find out where the hell I was. The kid behind the counter at the attached convenience store had a bad case of acne but a good sense of direction. In celebration, I bought a cup of coffee and an apple fritter, and was in Southport 15 minutes later. The town was full of signs to the ferry landing and I made it just in time to miss the 3 PM boat to Bald Head.