Found: A Matt Royal Mystery (13 page)

He smiled, showing two rows of very white and even teeth. She noticed a small scar on his left cheek that crinkled when he smiled. “It’s a fair question,” he said. “I’ve been traveling and had gotten as far as Tampa. I’m about out of money and was looking for a job. No luck in Tampa. I was hitchhiking toward Sarasota, and a man who gave me a ride said he’d heard that Captain Longstreet might be hiring.”

“Do you know the man’s name? The one who picked you up?”

“Mack Sweeney, I think he said. He lives on Anna Maria Island.”

“I know Mr. Sweeney. He and my dad are friends. Why don’t you stay for dinner, Mr. Jamison? Daddy’s three crew members will be here with their wives, and we’ve always got room for one more.”

“That’d be nice,” he said, “if you’re sure I wouldn’t be intruding.”

“Not at all. Here comes the
Miss Dolly
now.”

Jamison turned to see a boat about fifty feet in length chugging up the narrow channel that led from the bay past the fish houses and the docks where the boats were moored when they weren’t at sea. Its nets were folded on the deck, the booms standing straight up, as if at attention. A wheelhouse sat near the high prow just forward of a small deckhouse, leaving a large work area aft. A long blast of the ship’s horn told the village that another boat had made it safely home.

Jamison watched as the captain eased the vessel into its berth, gently nudging the pilings as it came to rest. Crewmen jumped off the boat and slipped the dock lines over the cleats and bollards attached to the wooden pier. The engine shut down, and the crew brought out hoses to wash off the salt that had accumulated on the topsides during two weeks at sea.

Their work done, Captain Dan Longstreet and his crew trudged toward the house where the large meal awaited. Bess and Jamison stood as the four men approached. They were no longer young, and if there hadn’t been a war on, they would probably be working a landside job, going home each night to their wives and family. They looked tired and worn, their clothes threadbare and caked with salt. Their skin was dark from the sun
and wind, their hands gnarled by years of handling lines and nets, their bodies thin from the grueling work demanded of those who earned their living from the sea. They wore untrimmed beards and smelled of fish and body odor.

One of the men said, “We’ll get cleaned up, Cap, and come on back with the womenfolk. I can smell Dolly’s cooking from here. Tell her we’ll hurry.”

Three of the men continued down the shell street, leaving a tall gaunt man who turned toward his daughter, smiling. “Ah, Bess. Don’t you look lovely?”

She went to him, hugged him, and kissed him on the cheek. “You need a bath, Daddy.”

He laughed. “That I do.”

“Daddy,” Bess said, “I’d like you to meet Mr. Bud Jamison from Washington, D.C. He’s looking for a job.”

Longstreet shook hands with Jamison. “We can use all the men we can get,” he said. “I’ve got two boats sitting idle because I can’t find hands. What kind of experience do you have?”

“None fishing, sir, but I’ve had lots of time on sailboats. I know my way around a chart and can handle all the navigation equipment.”

“Know anything about marine engines?”

“A bit. I used to help a friend of mine who worked on yacht engines at the marina where we kept our boat.”

Longstreet laughed. “These ain’t no yachts, young fellow.”

“Yes, sir, but the principles would be similar. I can probably fix the little problems that come up from time to time.”

The screen door of the house opened and a small woman wearing a dress and apron came through it. She ran to Longstreet and hugged him, holding him for a couple of extra beats. “I’m glad you’re home, Dan. I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too, Dolly. What’s for supper?”

She chuckled. “Just about anything you want, except fish. I figured you boys must have eaten about all the fish you can stand for a while.”

“That’s for sure. Will you join us, Mr. Jamison?”

“Mama,” said Bess, interrupting, “this is Bud Jamison. He stopped by looking for a job, and I’ve already invited him to dinner.”

Dolly said, “Glad to have you, Mr. Jamison. You might want to go wash up before this filthy person I’m married to ruins the bathroom.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Jamison. “Thank you for having me.”

Jamison answered the door wearing gray flannel trousers, a starched dress shirt, and a baggy cardigan sweater. The sky was overcast and a stiff wind blew down the village street and the air smelled of rain and salt. The old man invited J.D. into the chilly house.

“Sorry about the chill, Detective,” said Jamison, as he pointed her toward a chair. “I keep the thermostat low during the winter. Helps with my power bills. Have you found out any more about Ken’s death?”

“Do you know any Arabs, Mr. Jamison?”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“It appears that the man who killed Mr. Goodlow was an Arab.”

“From where?”

J.D. shook her head. The forensic reports she’d reviewed didn’t tell her much that she didn’t already know. “Could be New Jersey for all we know. His DNA tells us he was of Arabic descent. He could have been from anywhere. I’d like to show you a picture of him. He’s dead in the photo. Will that be upsetting?”

Jamison smiled, sadly. “I’ve seen dead people, Detective.” He studied the picture for a couple of moments. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before.”

“Do you know if Mr. Goodlow had any Arabic friends?”

“Not that he ever mentioned.”

J.D. pulled the prints she’d made of the old Goodlow pictures from her purse and passed them to Jamison. “Can you tell me which one of these is Mr. Goodlow?”

Jamison looked at one of the pictures and pointed to a young man standing next to a woman of about the same age. “That’s him.”

“Who’s the woman?”

“My wife.”

“What was her name?”

“Bess.”

“Was she from Cortez?”

“Yes. She was the daughter of Captain Longstreet, the man I worked for.”

“Do you mind my asking how she died?”

A cloud passed over the old man’s face, a hint of sorrow, of what might have been. “In childbirth,” he said. “May fifth, 1951.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Me, too. We tried for a long time to have a child. It never occurred to me that it would kill her.”

“You mentioned earlier that you had a daughter.”

“Yes. Melanie. She’s gone, too. Cancer. Died in August of ‘75.”

“Do you have any other family?”

“No. I was an only child, and my parents died in an automobile accident before the war. The people in this village have always been my family. Now most of them are dead. Getting old, Detective, is hard.”

“I keep hearing that age is just a number.”

Jamison laughed. “Don’t believe it. Age kind of creeps up on you and one day you wake up and realize that you’re old, that what was once your future is now all in the past. Suddenly, you’re staring into the abyss with nothing to look forward to but endless days of just surviving. I think some of us live too long.”

“How do we know when that is?”

“When you’re the last one left.”

J.D. nodded. Maybe he was right. She pointed to two men who were seated at a table in one of Goodlow’s pictures. “Do you know either of these men?”

“Sure. The one on the right is Mack Hollister and the other is Bob Sanders.”

“Do you know what happened to them?”

“Yeah. They both died.”

“When?”

“Why are you interested in that, Detective?”

“Just following up.”

“On what?”

“If I’m going to solve this murder, I need to know everything I can about Mr. Goodlow and his friends, his life here in the village. I need to know if there are any people left who might bear a grudge against him for something that happened in the past. Something that might have gotten him killed.”

“Are you going to ask me about every one of the people in these pictures?”

“I am. When did Hollister and Sanders die?”

“Mack passed about a year ago, Bob a month or two later. They were among the last of the old crowd to go.”

“How did they die?”

“Are you asking me the cause of their deaths?”

“Yes.”

“Old age. They just wore out.”

J.D. paused for a beat, looking closely for a sign that Jamison was lying. Then she pointed to another figure in one of the pictures. “Who’s this?”

Jamison identified the image, and J.D. asked about several more. Jamison told her the names and approximately when they died. Several of the people had moved away years ago, and Jamison had no idea what might have happened to them, whether they were alive or dead. But when J.D. pointed to one man standing near the fire pit, she noticed the same quirk she’d caught when she’d first interviewed him, that indescribable feeling that the old man had just lied to her.

“Who is this man? The one by the fire pit,” J.D. said.

“That’s Rodney Vernon. He moved to New Jersey back in the early ‘50s.”

“Is he still alive?”

“I don’t have any idea. I haven’t heard from him since he left Cortez.”

J.D. sat quietly for a moment, looking at her notes. “Mr. Jamison,” she said, “I get the distinct feeling that you know more about Mr. Goodlow’s murder than you’re telling me. Why is that?”

“I don’t know where your feelings come from, Detective, but I can assure you that you know everything I know.”

J.D. stood. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Jamison,” she said. “I can find my way out.”

She drove to Matt’s house and let herself in. The place was quiet, no one home. The spot on the carpet where Tony had left his body fluids had dried, leaving no sign of the fight. The overcast sky had not cleared, and the bay outside the windows was an expanse of gray water, slightly ominous in appearance. Drops of rain started to fall, splattering the sliding glass doors that led to the patio. A boat was coming down the bay, running at speed. It looked like
Recess
, Matt’s boat. She watched as it came off plane, slowed, and began to make its way up the channel that led to the dock behind the house. She decided to let the men secure the boat. No need in her getting soaked.

She sat down at Matt’s computer and pulled up the picture of Katie in front of the building in Tampa. She examined it closely, but could not see anything she’d missed before. She stared at the computer screen, mentally begging the photograph to reveal its secrets. Maybe there weren’t any. She fiddled with the mouse and zoomed in on the picture. The resolution was much better after the department’s geek had worked on it.

There was something on the back of Katie’s right hand, a tattoo maybe. J.D. focused on the hand, zoomed in some more. The picture began to pixelate, just as it had the night before, but this time the upgraded resolution provided the image with much better definition. J.D. zoomed out in small increments until the picture cleared and she could read what was written on Katie’s hand. It wasn’t a tattoo, but something written in black ink. She studied the image, but could make no sense of it. Katie was trying to tell her something, but what? Why the subterfuge? Why not simply call her and ask for help?

J.D. studied the image, but couldn’t make out the words written on Katie’s hand. She downloaded the picture to a flash drive and inserted it in the USB port in Matt’s TV. In the larger picture, she was able to read the inscription, but it made no sense. A letter and a number. “U166.”

We ate lunch as Jock told me about his mission in Europe. It was pretty run-of-the-mill compared to what he often had to do. I told him that my relationship with J.D. was ripening and that every day brought a new surprise, a new insight into this wondrous woman who loved me. “Life doesn’t get any better than this,” I said.

Weather was moving in as we left Rotten Ralph’s. It had slipped up on us as we ate and drank a couple of beers. The sun had disappeared behind the dark clouds that were rapidly moving in from the north. The wind increased, bringing cold bursts of air that rattled the halyards of the sailboats docked at Galati’s Marina next door to the restaurant.

“We’d better head for the barn,” I said. “We’ve got a cold front coming in. It’s going to get rough out there.”

Jock agreed. We paid our check and climbed aboard
Recess
. I started the engines as Jock handled the lines. We motored out of Bimini Bay and into the teeth of the wind blowing south across Tampa Bay. We had a wet run with quartering seas until I found the intracoastal channel that led from the bay into Anna Maria Sound and down to Sarasota Bay. It was slow going all the way home. The wind had whipped up the surface so that even as we moved out of Tampa Bay and into the lee of Anna Maria Island, we had to contend with whitecaps. Visibility was dropping and the rain was pounding us as we approached the Manatee Avenue Bridge. The span began to rise in response to a signal from a northbound sailboat. I moved to the right of the channel, leaving plenty of room for the sailor. We sat while he slowly navigated under the bridge, fighting the wind blowing in his face. He’d have a rough time of it on Tampa Bay.

The rain came down harder, riding the wind blowing from the stern
and robbing us of much of our visibility. I set the throttles to a slow speed, barely keeping the boat on plane as we ran south, skirting Palma Sola Bay and slowing for the Cortez Bridge. I picked up speed as we made the run for home. The rain had slackened a bit as we outran the worst of it.

As we made our way down the channel that led to my dock, I saw that the lights were on in my cottage. J.D., probably, but it might have been Logan or anyone of several other people who knew where I hid the spare key and were close enough friends to make themselves at home even when I wasn’t there.

We secured the boat to the dock pilings and trooped up the walkway to the patio. We’d have to clean the boat and the fishing gear after the storm blew itself out. I could see J.D. inside, sitting at my computer, engrossed in whatever she was looking at. I knocked on the patio doors to get her attention. She came and unlocked the door to let us in.