What Washes Up (2 page)

The prevailing theory, which she and Wyatt had refined over the last few weeks, was that Fain had suspected David of stealing about fifty-thousand dollars’ worth of pot, and using the proceeds to buy himself a new boat. If so, he’d been mistaken. Wyatt had found bank statements proving that David had taken two years to painstakingly earn every penny he’d paid for the old wooden Jefferson trawler. What had happened to Fain’s pot had yet to be discovered, but it didn’t look like David had done anything other than deliver it.

The middleman between Fain and David had been found fried to a crisp in an old car in Gainesville a few weeks back, and David was dead two weeks later, blown up on his new boat in front of the ex-wife who still considered him her best friend.

Then someone had sent an ex-con named Charlie Harper to kill Maggie, too, a mission he’d failed in only because Wyatt had been on time for dinner.

Maggie knew it was a solid assumption on Wyatt’s part, that Fain had sent Harper to kill her, and even that Harper had been the one to kill David. But Maggie had never told Wyatt what Harper had said before Wyatt showed up. Maggie had lain on the ground after being shot in the shoulder, and watched Harper walk toward her.

When he’d stopped a few feet away, he’d said, “I’m tired of cleaning up Boudreaux’s messes.” And that was a whole different kettle of fish. She wasn’t too sure that Fain had sent Harper to kill her, but she was sure that Fain was responsible for the death of her ex-husband, the man she had loved since fifth grade.

Maggie bent over to get a closer look at Fain, looked into his dead brown eyes that even now looked small and shifty. She could feel everyone, particularly Wyatt, watching her.

“I hope you’re grateful,” Maggie said quietly. “I wouldn’t have shot you first.”

After telling Terry he’d read his report in the morning, Wyatt practically shoved Maggie toward the Scipio Creek docks. They walked for a few minutes without saying anything.

“This both complicates and simplifies my search for Fain somewhat,” Wyatt finally said.

“Any ideas?” Maggie asked.

“Well, no,” he said, sounding irritated about it. “You would be my first suspect, but you’ve screwed that up by being with me.”

Maggie looked at him. “Oh come on, you wouldn’t actually suspect me, would you?”

“Not really, no. You’re not the vigilante type, but if you were, you wouldn’t have let him off that easy.”

They walked in silence the rest of the way to their cars. Wyatt leaned against his cruiser and Maggie leaned up against the passenger side door of her black Cherokee.

Wyatt glanced over at a couple of shrimpers who were heading out late. He and Maggie were in clear view of a few other people on the docks, as well as anyone on the deck at Up the Creek, the raw bar across the parking lot.

“There are probably a hundred people that wouldn’t mind seeing Fain dead,” Wyatt said. “He was a violent scumbag. But as far as I can tell, those hundred people are all in Gainesville. I can’t think of one good reason for him to be dead here, instead of being dead there.”

I’m tired of cleaning up Boudreaux’s messes
. It was Bennett Boudreaux who had pointed at Fain as a likely suspect for David’s murder, or at least the contractor thereof. A few days later, the man who tried to kill her invoked Boudreaux’s name.

“You don’t have anything at all that might be a solid connection between Harper and Fain?” Maggie asked.

“No.”

“Maybe I could look through the file. Maybe a fresh pair of eyes—”

“Your eyes, fresh or otherwise, will stay out of my case file,” Wyatt said. “If there’s anybody left to arrest for David’s death, I’d like the charge to stick, not get thrown out of court because you were dragging your eyeballs across the documentation.”

Maggie sighed. “I’m not implying that you’re not doing a good job.”

“I’m not inferring it, either,” Wyatt said. “Nevertheless, you will stick to the foot and stay away from this one.”

Wyatt was referring to the severed leg of Sport Wilmette, which was pulled up out of the ocean in a shrimper’s net a few days before David’s death. Wilmette
was
Maggie’s case, though he probably shouldn’t be. She didn’t remember ever meeting the man, but she had learned during the investigation that they shared one terrible moment in their histories, one that made her investigation of his death unethical. One that she hadn’t shared with Wyatt.

She shrugged that line of thought off, needing to spend more time thinking about it before she decided what kind of person she was to withhold the information, especially from this man who was her close friend and quite possibly the second man she would love in her lifetime.

“Okay, I’ll stick with the foot,” she said. “Hey, I get the stitches out and the sling off tomorrow.’

“Already? Geez. Used to be, you got shot you were in the hospital for weeks,” Wyatt said. “Now, they boot you out of the hospital the next day and yank your stitches out a week later.”

“Two weeks,” Maggie said.

“Whatever.” Wyatt looked back over toward the docks. One of the shrimpers raised a hand in greeting, and Wyatt raised one back, then sighed, arms folded across his chest. “I bet clandestine romance is simpler in Orlando.”

“I’m not moving to Orlando just so we can go unnoticed,” she said, smiling.

“You still haven’t cooked me that dinner,” he said. “Maybe we should do that for our third attempt at a second date.”

“Let’s do that,” she said.

They looked at each other for a minute and Maggie wished that Wyatt wasn’t her boss and her children’s father wasn’t dead. That she hadn’t started keeping so many secrets.

“Well, okee-doke,” Wyatt said, opening his car door. “Pretend I kissed you goodnight.”

Maggie smiled as he started the car. “Pretend I liked it.”

Wyatt laughed sarcastically. “You’re just adorable. We both know your knees were knocking.”

Maggie watched him drive off, her smile fading. Too many secrets.

T
he next morning, Maggie went to the doctor to get her stitches out, which she endured with an embarrassing amount of wincing, mewing and gasping, at least for someone who carried a Glock.

Afterward, she was desperate for coffee, and longed to get a
café con leche
from the restaurant of the same name, but she hadn’t been there in weeks. It was right across from Riverfront Park, where David had been killed, and she hadn’t been able to bring herself to go back yet.

Instead, she drove over to Delores’s Sweet Shoppe, a local institution and Maggie’s second-favorite coffee spot. She needed a little extra down time after her harrowing experience, so she ordered her coffee to drink there, sat down at one of the little round tables, and practiced using her right hand again.

She was on her second cup of coffee, and contemplating ordering another to go, when a slightly raised voice from near the counter got her attention.

“Oh, it’s the little sheriff!”

She looked up to see William and Robert, who owned the local flower shop, descending on her in a quiet flurry, to-go cups of coffee in hand.

“We need to talk to you about this newest nonsense,” William said, sliding into the chair across from her. He was in his early fifties or so, short and slight, with golden hair that couldn’t possibly be natural but looked good anyway.

Before Maggie could answer, Robert, much larger, a few years younger and with slick black hair, slid into the chair beside William and nodded.

“Complete nonsense,” he said in a hushed voice.

“I’m sorry, what do you mean?” Maggie asked.

“The burning boat guy,” William said in a stage whisper.

“Completely uncalled for,” Robert said.

“How do you know about this?” Maggie asked, and immediately felt stupid for the knee-jerk response. There were fewer than three thousand people living in Apalach. Everybody knew everything.

“It’s in this morning’s paper,” Robert said.

“Front page,” William added. “Do you not read the paper?”

Robert put a hand on William’s wrist. “Rude. She doesn’t need the paper, she has a police radio.”

William flicked his hand off and looked back at Maggie. “What on God’s green earth is going on?”

Maggie put her coffee cup down. “Well, it’s not my case, so I really couldn’t say.”

“This is not a useful occurrence in the middle of summer,” William said. “First your foot, and now a burning boat man.”

“It’s very bad for business,” Robert said. “Yours is good, ours is bad.”

“I’m sorry,” Maggie said.

“Who wants to come down on vacation if they have to worry about being chopped into pieces or burned at the stake?” William said, almost whispering.

“Well, he wasn’t exactly—”

“Not to be impolite, but whatever,” William said. “Some guy was out on the Bay doing his Joan of Arc impression and the tourists are going to be taken aback for sure.”

“They’re gonna rethink,” Robert said.

“Those talentless hacks in Destin—” He looked at Robert. “Who are those people?”

Robert gave him a dismissive wave. “Bountiful Buds.”

William looked back at Maggie with a pinched mouth. “Sounds like they’re selling beer. Anyway, the tourists will be in Destin, getting all their bouquets from those hussies, and we’ll be on the longest smoke break in florist history.”

“I’m sure Sheriff Hamilton and the rest of the department will be bringing the case to a quick close,” Maggie said. “And I doubt too many people outside of Apalach are reading our paper this morning.”

“Oh, you don’t know,” Robert said. “Those vacation rental people, they read it online, check the weather and whatnot.”

“They look for shark reports and early bird coupons,” William explained.

Maggie took another swallow of her coffee and picked up her keys, hoping to look like she really needed to be off. “Listen, you guys, I’m really sorry, but it’ll be okay,” she started.

“And what about the foot, anyway?” Robert asked. “We’re still waiting for the other shoe to drop on that one.”

William slapped at Robert’s wrist.

“No, really,” Robert said. “We keep expecting more pieces to wash up on the beach or something.”

“Or for some pelican to yak up an elbow in front of The Soda Fountain,” said William.

“Guys, the rest of that body is long gone,” Maggie said, and jingled her keys to signify her being needed somewhere that wasn’t there. “We’re not going to find anything else.”

She stood up and pulled her purse onto her shoulder.

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll go straight to the office right now and see what we’ve learned about the man in the boat, okay?”

William and Robert stood up. “Oh, good,” William said. “And let me tell you something, we will give you free weekly arrangements for life if you people would just keep any subsequent serial killer activity quiet.”

“Nice arrangements,” Robert said.

“These cases have nothing to do with each other,” Maggie said. “There’s no serial killer.”

“Three whacked out murders in like three weeks—” William started, then gasped as Robert slapped him on the shoulder.

Maggie swallowed and tried to smile.

“I’m so sorry,” William said in a pained whisper.

Maggie started away from the table. “It’s okay,” she said. “But I really need to go.”

As she opened the front door, she heard Robert back by the table.

“Why are you retarded?” he asked William rhetorically.

A few blocks across town, in the Historic District, Bennett Boudreaux sat in the sunny kitchen of his Low Country Plantation-style home. He stirred some milk and sugar into his second cup of chicory coffee, as Amelia, the lanky, middle-aged Creole woman he’d brought with him from Louisiana, stood at the island, watching over the one slice of bacon in her skillet.

Boudreaux was a strikingly handsome man, even in his early sixties, with a thick head of brown hair just lightly touched with silver above his ears. Though he was just a little over five-seven, his trim physique and commanding presence made him seem like a larger, younger man. For most people, though, it was Boudreaux’s eyes that caught attention. They were piercing and magnetic, and an incredible shade of blue.