Cold Winter Rain (19 page)

Climbing through three thousand feet, I turned the intercom back on.  “Still along for the ride back there?” I said.

“Did you hear me scream?” I could hear the broad smile if I couldn’t see it.  “I couldn’t stop myself.”

The clouds had lifted and parted just enough to create a fish-scale sunset, pinks and oranges filling the sky to our right as we flew almost due south at ten thousand feet. 

The sunset faded and darkness fell as we approached Mobile Bay and the Alabama Gulf coast.  The lights of Mobile and the eastern shore guided us down the mouth of the bay and inland for a visual approach to runway nine at Jack Edwards airport.  The tires chirped on the asphalt, and soon we were loaded into the airport courtesy car for the fifteen-minute drive down Highway 59 South, then east on Route 98 to Orange Beach and the marina.

We would not have needed a reservation at Hemingway’s on this Monday at the end of January.  No bleaker month shared the calendar in Alabama.

At the bar sat Hans Moeller, nursing a Scotch with two ice cubes and chatting up the bartender, a woman in her mid-twenties with thick waist-length brown hair.  She wore a low-cut plaid jumper with a band of creamy lace at the collar, if a band dipping between her breasts could be considered a collar. 

Moeller saw me in the mirror behind the bar -- not all of his attention was on the bartender -- and swiveled to greet me.  “Slate!” he said.  “Just in time.  I’m afraid I have been overselling the merits of a Caribbean cruise on a small motorsailer named for a Swiss hero.”

The bartender smiled.  “Overselling the merits of spending a month on a boat with Hans Moeller, more like.”

Moeller shrugged.  “At least she remembers my name.  Think about it, my dear,” he said.

“
But, Slate, you -- you’re not alone.  Well.”  He looked Sally up and down, then smiled brightly at me.  “It’s a long road that knows no turning.”

I gestured toward Sally.  “Sally Kronenberg, meet my friend Hans Moeller.  Hans, Sally Kronenberg.”

Sally reached out to shake Moeller’s hand, but he took her hand in his and brought it to his lips.  “
Guten Abend, Fraulein
.  Surely a woman named Kronenberg speaks German,
nein
?”

“
Eine kleine
,” Sally said.  “My grandparents immigrated from Heidelberg, but no one in the family thought to speak German to me when I was young.”

“
Hah. You are still young,
mein liebe
, believe me.” He turned to me.  “Holding out on me, Slate?”

“
Just busy.  Let’s get a table.  Anyone hungry?”

Sally said, “I’m starving. I think flying fighter planes does that to me.”

On the dock side of the restaurant, behind the bar, the dining room, captain’s chairs and bare wood tables in dark oak, overlooked the harbor.  Over each table hung a light in the shape of a ship’s wheel.  A lobster tank sat bubbling in one corner.

There were only three couples in the dining room.  We chose a window table away from the others.  Sally and I dropped our bags near our table along the wall under the window.

Seated, Moeller appraised Sally and me, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth.  “If this were a better establishment, I’d order a round of Kronenbourg 1664, but I’m afraid the only European beer on tap is Irish, not German.”

“
Most popular lager in France,” Sally said.  “Founded in Strasbourg.”

“
Should be a German city, but the Frogs claim it now,” Moeller said.

The waitress interrupted them to take drink orders.  Moeller ordered another Scotch,  Sally a Grey Goose martini. 

I had thought we might return to Birmingham after dinner, but Sally and Moeller had forced me into defensive drinking.  I would never fly after drinking, and the FAA rule is eight hours between your last drink and piloting an aircraft.  Eight hours bottle to throttle.  Not long enough in my judgment, but nobody asked me.

“
Manhattan on the rocks, Evan Williams Black.”  I touched Sally’s hand.  “Glad we made contingent overnight plans.”

“
Me too,” she said.

“
Slate’s boat is not exactly the Ritz,” Moeller offered, eyebrows raised a judicious millimeter.  I could see where things were going with Moeller and realized that if I didn’t slam on the brakes, he’d be at me with innuendo all evening.  Besides, I needed his forebrain engaged, not the limbic system.

“
You didn’t tell me you lived on a boat,” Sally said.

“
I would've gotten around to it,” I told her.

To Moeller I said, “Sally is a soccer coach.  Kris Kramer’s soccer coach.  We met a few days ago.  I asked her to dinner.”

“And the rest, as they say. . . .”

“
Is none of your business,” I said.

“
Sounds serious,” Moeller said.

“‘
And the rest’ is that Slate is now officially my sweet patootie,” Sally said.

Our waitress brought our drinks; the conversation paused as we took in the calm dark water of the harbor.

When she had finished, Moeller said, “Oh.  Now that explains everything.  Why didn’t you just say so, Slate?”  He raised his glass.  “To new love,” he said.

“
I’ll drink to that,” I said.

Sally touched our glasses.  “
Prost!
” she said.

We started with cups of seafood gumbo, chunks of crab, whole shrimp and sausage in a thick brown broth, served in plain white ceramic bowls over rice.  I ordered a Guinness; Moeller and Sally stayed with their first choices.

Gumbo is properly eaten with a brisk splash of Tabasco, with spoon in one hand and a saltine cracker, the square ones that come in cellophane two to a package, in the other.

After the gumbo, I ordered each of us a small West Indies salad, simple as diced onion and chunks of crabmeat marinated overnight in oil, vinegar, and ice water.  A restaurant owner in Mobile named Bill Bayley invented the West Indies salad in 1947.  Bayley and his restaurant are long gone, but the man should get more credit for the plain but elegant seafood that he served up at Bayley’s Restaurant on Dauphin Island Parkway.

Offshore fishing in Alabama waters remains quite good through the winter.  The fresh entrees were redfish, vermillion snapper and grouper.  I ordered grouper Oscar, Sally, as promised, the blackened redfish.  Moeller wanted grilled snapper.  Shared bowls of steamed broccoli and asparagus served accompanied by tiny carafes of clarified butter and a loaf of French bread came to the table with the entrees.

After the gumbo and the salad -- especially after the gumbo -- I needed another Guinness.  Moeller seemed to have some arrangement with management under which tumblers of Scotch with two ice cubes appeared as if on an assembly line.  Sally drank Chardonnay with her redfish.

We ate quietly, the dark harbor and the dim lights on the docks providing a focal point for our eyes and, perhaps, our silence.

When we had finished our food, I ordered three Irish coffees and pulled the MacBook out of my backpack.  “I made some notes today,” I said.  “I created a timeline of events related to Kris Kramer’s disappearance.  You two help me think through this to see whether I’ve missed something obvious.”

Moeller sipped his most recent Scotch.  “I wasn’t much help earlier, but I’ll give it a shot.”

“
Whatever I can do,” Sally murmured.

“
Right,” I said.  “So.  My first knowledge of this matter came a week ago Saturday, in the morning, when Don Kramer came down here and hired me to find Kris.  I flew to Birmingham the next morning, checked into the Tutwiler, met with Kramer, and read some files on a case Kramer thought might be connected to his daughter’s disappearance.  The next morning I drove out to Kramer’s house to meet his wife, Susan, and their son, Paul.”

“
But your timeline should begin earlier,” Moeller said.

“
I’m getting to that.  Kris Kramer disappeared two days earlier, on Thursday, the nineteenth of January.  Her roommate told me that her mother came to visit in the afternoon and left the campus with her for the start of a weekend at home.  Paul Kramer told the FBI that he accompanied his mother to the campus.  I don't know whether those plans changed for some reason.  Maybe a family argument occurred; maybe not. I’m trying to remain objective here.

“
At any rate, Kris did not show up for classes or practice the next day, and the campus security office contacted Don Kramer at his law office.  Kris's suitemate mentioned that she also called Kramer's office when Kris didn't answer her cell phone.  Don called home, and Mrs. Kramer told him she thought Kris had returned to school the evening before.  Kramer called the Birmingham police department.  The Birmingham police called the FBI when they decided they might have a kidnapping case. 

“
All that occurred on Friday, January twenty.  The morning of the next day, Kramer borrowed a friend’s plane and flew down here to speak with me.”

“
These versions of the disappearance aren't perfectly matched,” Moeller observed.

“
Yes.  But neither are they perfect contradictions.  They're just a bit muddled, as first-person narratives often are.

“
Kramer’s body was discovered in the rail yards in Birmingham late on the night of January twenty-third or early the next morning.  We know now that he had been murdered that afternoon as he was leaving his office.”

I heard a sharp intake of breath from Sally.  “I didn’t know that. When did you learn that?”

“Captain Grubbs shared some information about his investigation with me.  I didn’t mention it until now.”

Sally heaved another quick breath and sipped her coffee.  “Okay,” she said.

“How was he killed?” Moeller asked.

“
One shot to the back of the head with a nine-millimeter handgun,” I told him.

“
To continue with the chronology, when I interviewed Kris’s roommate Akilah at school, she gave me a memory stick.  She didn’t know anything about its contents, and you and I, Hans, discovered that the contents were password-protected.”

“
And that, unfortunately, has so far been my only contribution,” said Moeller.  “If I had just had more time. . . .”

“
It wouldn’t have helped much.  The contents are also encrypted, according to Michael Godchaux, the creator of the contents.”

“
And Godchaux is involved how?” asked Moeller.

I remembered my promise to Agent Alston and what I could and could not say about the informant.  “Godchaux was also what’s called a ‘relator’ -- a whistleblower -- in a
qui tam
case -- sort of like a class action -- Kramer was building against corrupt officials and others in Alabama.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.”

I sipped my Irish coffee and looked at the notes on the computer screen.  “When I flew down here after Kramer’s funeral, I discovered my boat had been searched and that someone had left a message on the old laptop I keep in the cabin.”

“You didn't tell me about the message,” Moeller said.

“
No.  I didn't think I should involve you to quite that level at the time.”

“
But now – so what was the message?”

“
Something to the effect that I needed to stay out of the oil and gas business.”

Sally looked from Moeller to me.  “Surely that indicates that Kris’s disappearance is somehow related to the lawsuit Kramer was working on.”

“And that Godchaux and the information on that drive may hold keys to her disappearance,” said Moeller.  “Unless. . . .”

“
Unless what?” I asked.

He shrugged.  “There are at least two other possibilities.  One is that the real kidnapper is conflating the kidnapping with the -- what did you call it? --
qui tam
litigation in order to throw you and the FBI off the scent.”

I smiled, looked down at my coffee, and took a little sip.  At the moment neither Moeller nor Sally needed to know I hadn’t exactly told the FBI about the message on the laptop.  “And the other?” I asked.

“The other is that the message did come from the bad actors in the oil and gas case, but they had nothing to do with the kidnapping.”

“
How does Kramer’s murder fit in?” I asked Moeller.

“
Same analysis.  Could be related to the kidnapping.  Could be related to the
qui tam
case.  Could be related to both.”

“
Or, just keeping it logical, maybe neither,” I said.

He nodded.  “Yes.”

“Let me go on through the timeline,” I said.  “So after I returned to Birmingham, I spoke with Sally again to see if she could help me find Akilah.  Sally took me to the suite she and Kris Kramer shared. . . .”