Deceived (A Hannah Smith Novel) (13 page)

I sat looking at the pistol while my mind drifted back to Uncle Jake. Prior to his death, he had entrusted the weapon to a fishing client (who I had inherited), but the man knew nothing about Devel—didn’t even know what the book contained. The strange ensemble wasn’t something I could discuss with friends, either, even Ford—and why would I? They weren’t experts on weapons. Like Uncle Jake, who was a sweet man but also shielded in his ways, the book and its contents remained private and a mystery.

Finally, I took the pistol from the case and checked the chamber. It was empty. Two magazines, one loaded, lay secure in their places—and that’s where they would remain for the night.

Still restless, I closed the book, then returned to the deck in hopes of more comfort from the stars. Nearby, a school of mullet spooked; a family of dolphins sliced the moonlight, their blowholes
ploof
ing like snorkels. Then, from the mound behind my childhood home, came the baritone
boom-boom-boom
of a great horned owl, who watched from the high shadows of an oak.

I stood, a silly attempt to feel the owl’s resonance on my face. When I did, for an instant—a single blink of my eyelids—I imagined the silhouette of a man standing near the tree. A large man with wide, familiar shoulders. One blink of the eyes later, though, the man was gone . . . or the illusion I had just experienced.

You’re upset and you’re lovesick,
I reminded myself.

After watching the trees for another ten minutes, I went to bed.

With so many prime fishing spots between Sanibel Island and Punta Gorda, I’d had no need to make the tricky turns and cuts required to find the Helmses’ property by water until Joel Ransler arrived the next morning. He was ten minutes late and dressed for fishing but also carrying a briefcase in one hand, a small cooler in the other.

The first thing I asked was if there was any news from the medical examiner about Rosanna Helms.

“Heart attack,” he said, giving me a close look after he had stepped aboard my skiff. We talked about the woman awhile before he added, “You look tired. Up late?” Then offered a look of concern to assure me it wasn’t an insult.

“You’re the one who’s been investigating a murder,” I replied. Rather than mentioning I had read about the victim, the elderly man named Clayton Edwards, I asked, “Anything unusual?”

“I’m in an ugly line of work,” Joel said, “nothing I haven’t seen before. But on a morning like this”—his eyes were taking in a lucent April sky; the bay, which was glassy—“I’d rather talk about you. Tired or not, Hannah, you look incredible. And a perfect day to be on the water, huh?”

The special prosecutor sounded so cheerful and caring, I felt a twinge of guilt. I hadn’t slept much, it was true, and part of my wakeful night had been spent wondering why Joel hadn’t come right out and told me the truth about Dwight Helms. It had provided me with a solid reason not to trust the man.

I wasn’t going to admit I’d seen the crime scene photos either. Ransler was my client. If he wanted to discuss the subject, that was up to him. Did he have that kind of honesty in him? Even if he did, why should I care?

“It’s supposed to be calm all morning,” I replied. “Do you want to fish first? I found a school of reds off Hemp Key—that’s on the way.”

No, the special prosecutor wanted to go straight to Deer Stop Bay, which was linked by tidal creeks to the cove where the late Dwight Helms had built his dock during the peak of the pot-hauling trade. It was also where Helms had been chased down by a person or persons unknown who, after wounding him badly, had finally finished the job. All night long, awake and in my dreams, those photos had hounded me and forced me to imagine the terrible sequence of events. To murder a human being was bad enough, but the way Mr. Helms had died was hideous.

Pretending to enjoy the twenty-minute boat ride to the old dock wasn’t easy. Even when my full attention was required by shoal water and oyster bars, I remained subdued. Maybe Ransler sensed it, because he complimented me when I dropped the skiff off plane, saying, “Even with a chart, most people couldn’t have found this place. A couple of deputies tried over the weekend but radioed in it was too shallow.”

“It is too shallow,” I replied, nudging the throttle back, “unless you know where the deep water is.” Which might have sounded smug, so I added, “The channel isn’t marked. Local fishermen always tear down the markers if someone tries.”

“The deputies said their boat was too big.”

“Oh?”

“A twenty-four-foot Grady White, I think. Bigger than this boat.”

I didn’t want to sound critical, but I also wasn’t going to lie. “Back when they were hauling pot, I heard they ran small shrimp boats in here. A thirty-footer wouldn’t have a problem if the tide’s right and if the mangroves were trimmed—but maybe this place is harder to find from Sematee County.”

Joel had a nice easy way of laughing that made it hard not to like him. “The marine division should follow my lead and hire you,” he said. “They ran aground, that’s exactly what happened—who knows where—and it took the guys something like three hours to get back.” Then he did a slow circle with his eyes, seeing walls of green all around—mangroves fifty feet tall on the shoreward side. To the west, mangrove ledges trimmed by hurricanes, where pelicans and white wading birds were perched, warming themselves in sunlight. Shards of limestone rock, too, that pierced the shallows like teeth; sometimes a limestone outcropping that angled from tree roots into the water.

“This is Deer Stop Bay?” he asked.

“No, that was the first bay we came through. I don’t think this place has a name.”

“Prehistoric,” the man responded, his voice softer.

“How long have you lived in Florida?” I asked, because he behaved like a person who was experiencing something for the first time.

“I was born right here in Sematee County,” he answered and grinned at my surprise before explaining, “but I grew up in the Midwest. I spent spring breaks here when I was going to Valparaiso, then moved down after law school. That was four years ago, almost five.” His eyes returned to a shoal area of limestone and water. “Are those oysters or rocks?”

I told him what he was seeing, then explained, “A geologist told me a limestone ridge angles northwest from the mainland but doesn’t break the surface often. Not wide, either, where it branches off. A section runs across Pine Island. There’s another off Sulfur Wells. I know spots in only six or eight feet of water where you can catch grouper because of the rock ledges. Spiny lobster, too—I used to dive for them when I was a girl.”

It was the sort of thing fishing guides are expected to say, and my client liked it, but his eyes were busy. “I don’t see the dock—am I missing something?”

“Around that point,” I said, “unless I got us lost, too.”

Joel took it as a joke and made one of his own by hinting he wouldn’t mind being stranded alone in a boat with me. Or maybe he wasn’t joking, because he nudged the little cooler he’d brought and said, “I made a thermos of margaritas—you’ve earned a drink. Or we can be proper about it and wait until noon.”

I smiled but was thinking,
Don’t let him get too familiar.
Which is why I answered, “I don’t drink when I’m working, but clients can make themselves at home.” Then nodded as we rounded the point and asked, “Is it the way you pictured it?”

The loading platform Dwight Helms had built was supported by a double span of sixteen-foot stringers on telephone pole pilings that had been jettied deep. The planking was thick enough to hold a pickup truck or two plus a metal derrick. The derrick was still there but leaning badly because the wood had rotted. The diesel engine next to it appeared to be frozen in brown rust.

“Quite an operation,” Joel said, and moved forward. Because he was wearing shorts and a blue polo, he looked like a tennis player from where I stood, with his long tan legs and golden body hair. He placed his hands on the casting platform while he studied the dock, then said, “It looked smaller from the satellite photos.”

“From space, it probably would,” I replied.

The man glanced back. “I can usually read sarcasm. Not with you, though.”

Now I actually did smile. “Sorry. I don’t think making fun of people is funny, so don’t worry. What I meant is, the dock
was
bigger—the way I remember it anyway. So of course it would be smaller from high up.”

Ransler was interested.
“
Oh.
You saw it back in the days when it was . . .”

“Operational?” I said, helping him out. “Yeah, I did. My Uncle Jake brought me in here once or twice when I was a little girl. Not because of the dock, we came here to fish, but I saw it.” Then I told the prosecutor what I remembered, which, possibly, had been colored by what I’d heard in later years. Dwight Helms, and others in the pot-smuggling trade, had rigged a shrimp net in the trees like an awning to camouflage the dock from DEA planes passing overhead.

“It was like a gigantic tent,” I said, “covered with tree branches and leaves. I remember thinking it was even bigger than a tent. You know, impressive to a girl only seven or eight years old. My mother didn’t believe me when I described it—she was so sure I was exaggerating, I remember getting mad. My uncle said it was a good lesson for me.”

Ransler looked over his shoulder again. “The lesson being?”

I had to think for a moment. “Something about
It’s easier for a stranger to trick us because they’ve
yet to be caught in a lie
. Or maybe he said
to con us
, I forget. Loretta—my mother—she would have believed a stranger, that’s what he was telling me.”

“You’ve mentioned him a couple of times. You must have been close.”

“Jake?” I said. “He was a lot more fun than Barbie dolls and dress-up parties. Probably because he treated me like a friend, not his precious little niece.”

Joel hadn’t asked about my father, which was a relief but made me suspicious. He had telephoned Loretta with questions about Rosanna Helms, that much she had already admitted. But had she strayed—or been led—on to other topics? Before her stroke, my mother had avoided embarrassing topics. Now there wasn’t any word or subject too tasteless for her to share with the postman or even with passing strangers while out shopping. Worse, she had begun to confuse me with my late aunts, Hannah Two and Hannah Three, whose bad judgment and love of men had brought both of their lives to a violent end. Trying to avoid my late aunts’ errors was complicated enough without the fear of Loretta telling a stranger that
To get Hannah’s panties down, just
tap her on the head
. I had heard her say those exact words to Christian, our good-looking UPS man, and so now began to wonder if Joel Ransler’s flattery was based on misinformation provided by my addled mother.

No way of knowing because Ransler stuck to the subject of my late uncle.

“Did he help support you two? She told me how hard up for money she was—a single woman raising a little girl. It had to be tough . . . on
both
of you.”

The man sounded sympathetic, but I didn’t like the direction the conversation was going. There was no guessing what else Loretta had said about me. One thing I felt sure she
hadn’t
mentioned while discussing money was her long affair with a married man—something she has never admitted and I’ve never brought up. No reason to embarrass her needlessly, plus it was a secret comfort to have the ammunition ready if Loretta ever pushed me too far. Her lover had been a wealthy man—although the source of his income was a mystery—who she had never brought to the house, but I had heard them talking on the phone often enough to know his name was Arnie-something. Thanks to Arnie, Loretta had had a nice car and money enough for shopping, which she loved. There had been a few hard times financially, but that was after Arnie or Loretta—both, possibly—had found religion, which had ended their affair. Joel’s gentle way of asking questions, however, made me feel obligated to be conversational because there was still water between us and the dock.

“Jake helped out when he could, I suppose, but most of his income went to alimony. Loretta always managed to get by, and I give her full credit for that. I didn’t have to go to work until I was a sophomore in high school, which was late in the game compared to a lot of kids on the islands.”

“You worked in your uncle’s detective agency,” Ransler said. “At least you’re listed as an employee in state records. Hope you don’t mind that I checked.”

“It was better than waiting tables,” I responded. “I wasn’t crazy about being in an office, but I learned how to keep books, and I did the computer searches, too. So, no, checking on me, I understand that it’s part of your job.”

“Office work beats what some of your neighbors did to make a living,” the special prosecutor said, his eyes on the derrick that had hoisted unknown tons of drugs.

His meaning was obvious and his tone had a hint of superiority, which was irritating.

I turned, opened a hatch, and got out the stern line, before saying, “One thing you might not understand is why people here starting running marijuana. Used their mullet boats to meet bigger boats offshore, then off-loaded the bales in places like this because the Marine Patrol and Coast Guard didn’t know the local waters.”

“Money,” he replied. “Isn’t it always about money? Then they’d truck the drugs to Miami, sometimes Atlanta, right? Poor men became millionaires in a few months. Hannah, I
have
done a fair amount of research on the subject. For a while, the DEA kept active files on more than half the adult population of Sematee County
and
Sulfur Wells—did you know that?” The man looked at me in an odd way, which put me on the defensive.

“You’re skipping over something important,” I countered. “The state put a lot of commercial fishermen out of business in those days. More and more regulations, then a net ban. Families that had been fishing for five or six generations were suddenly out of work and they didn’t know any other kind of work.” I nodded to indicate the dock we were approaching. “If you had a mortgage to pay and children to feed, do you think you might have chosen pot hauling to losing your home?”

“Maybe,” he said. “But not cocaine and crack hauling, which made some of those same guys even richer. Or, at least, I’d like to believe I wouldn’t.”

Joel had a point, but he’d oversimplified the dilemma fishing families had faced during two decades that had all but eliminated their working heritage. I knew from local gossip that pot hauling had turned ugly when smuggling cocaine became a more lucrative option. It brought professional criminals and crime syndicates into the area. It also got some of the locals and their children hooked on the product. Cocaine was the division line between ethical and unethical behavior in the minds of many fishermen and those who refused to do it were soon forced out of business.