Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels (8 page)

Ten

I left Sal in the house, got back in my car, and headed away from Osprey Cove. I drove for 20 minutes, past the long driveways and hidden mansions toward the less affluent section of the peninsula. As the highway continued, the estates eventually came to an end, and then the road became bumpier and more poorly maintained—and the houses smaller and more clustered together. The highway finally petered out in Kawshek, a village of Maryland “watermen,” folks who made their living from the bay.

Though we shared the same road, I usually didn’t have many dealings with the people of Kawshek. Occasionally I would see some of the watermen out on the river, but we didn’t have much more than a “waving” acquaintance. I was always reading about how many of them were falling on hard times because development and pollution were causing the quantities of oysters and blue crabs in Chesapeake Bay to diminish drastically. As a result, we’d had several Kawshek women come through Advancing Attire fresh from job training, desperate to make a living in some other way. I was happy to work with all of the women who came there seeking our help, of course, but I always felt a special bond with the watermen women, for most of them loved the peninsula and the dark, gentle waves of the Chesapeake as much as I did. To button them into a fancy suit and send them out into the business world of the mainland was actually kind of sad; it seemed to signal the end of a way of life that had been part of this area for hundreds of years.

Shayna, however, had been a different case. She wasn’t native to this area; she had only moved to Maryland a few years before—from New Mexico, if I recalled correctly. She had told me the first day we met that she didn’t really like life in Kawshek and was eager to head off to more metropolitan surroundings. Now with her new job in Annapolis, she was about to get her wish, unless Eddie Ray’s murder derailed those plans permanently.

Once I reached Kawshek, it wasn’t hard to figure out which house was Shayna’s, because there were two police cars parked in front, lights flashing, with yellow tape stretched around the perimeter. I pulled to a stop in a small parking lot about a half block away. I was not especially eager to see the police again. There was nothing wrong with my being here, but at best they would think I was nosy, and at worst they might think my connection with the murder was something more than peripheral.

I sat in the car for a minute looking around, trying to get a feel for the street. It was dark and there weren’t many lights, but I could tell it definitely wasn’t the high-rent district—not that
Kawshek would have such a thing anyway. The houses were small and clumped close together, and many of the yards were littered with toys and tools. The parking lot where I sat bordered a small cluster of dirty buildings that comprised the entire downtown: Next to a marina filled with trawlers and fishing boats was a one-pump gas station, a little grocery/bait and tackle shop, and a bar. Earlier today, when Shayna told me that Eddie Ray usually got mad and stormed off to the local bar, I hadn’t realized that bar was a mere half block away!

At the end of the street, the building that had been roped off by the police was an ugly green two-story box, and from the three front doors I guessed it was an older home that had long ago been divided into apartments. No wonder Shayna was eager to leave here; except for the proximity to the water, I couldn’t imagine a more depressing place to live.

I quietly got out of the car and walked over to join a cluster of onlookers who had gathered at the edge of the parking lot. A few of them wore pajamas under their coats, and I was reminded that a waterman’s day often began well before sunrise. Though it wasn’t yet 9:00
P.M.,
half of these people had probably already been in bed asleep when the police arrived. The rest had probably been in the bar.

“…tol’ her to kick him out, but I didn’t think she’d kill him.”

“I heard ’em fighting ’fore he came over to the bar last night. It was the loudest one yet.”

“I heard she went around looking for him this morning, saying he had disappeared.”

The people were talking freely about the incident, and I listened carefully to everything that was said.

“Well, I’m not surprised he got hisself killed. That man was no good. He never was any good.”

“I still can’t believe he’s dead, though! We played a game of pool right here, last night. I bought him a beer.”

“Thank the Lord Irene’s not still around to see this,” one woman said, and the others nodded in agreement. “It’s enough to break a mother’s heart.”

“Dangit, Hank,” said another. “I tol’ you ya shoulda run Eddie Ray outta town the minute he showed up again.”

A big man standing next to me held out his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

“Shayna’s free to date who she wants,” he said. “If she didn’t want me anymore, that was her choice.”

“You’re too soft, Hank,” a man said. “I’d a kicked him from here to Baltimore.”

I glanced at the man they called Hank and thought he looked anything but soft. He was huge and burly, with ruddy cheeks and a deep scar across his chin.

“Is that the murder scene?” I asked, pointing toward the police activity.

A few of the people glanced at me, suddenly realizing there was a stranger in their midst.

“Might be,” one woman said finally. “You a reporter or something?”

“I’m a friend of Shayna’s,” I replied.

“Ain’t never seen you here before.”

They all turned then and stared at me accusingly.

“I-I was with her when we found the body,” I said. “We’d been picking out some clothes and getting her hair done.”

They were all quiet for a moment.

“Callie? Callie Webber? Is that you?”

A short woman stepped through the crowd and looked up at me.

“Wendy Lentil,” she said, grinning a toothless grin. She wore a hat pulled down close to her eyes, and a scarf covered her neck and chin all the way to her bottom lip. “You gave my Lisa some clothes for a job over in Easton.”

I recognized the woman now. She had come along with her daughter to Advancing Attire about a year before. It had taken
several visits to get Lisa all set, and I had come to know mother and daughter fairly well.

Apparently, the fact that Wendy Lentil knew me was good enough for the crowd. They returned to watching the police activity while Mrs. Lentil and I stepped away and talked a bit about Lisa and how her job was going. Soon I was able to steer the discussion back to Shayna and Eddie Ray, and I tried to get as much information from Mrs. Lentil as possible. According to her, everyone liked Shayna, especially since she stopped drinking and taking drugs.

“She ain’t been drunk or high in months, far as I know,” Mrs. Lentil said. “Came to the Lord in a tent revival. Got herself cleaned up, and some good work training like my Lisa. I heard she was starting a new job real soon.”

“Yes, ma’am, she was.”

“Can’t blame her for doing in ol’ Eddie Ray, though. He was a slimy one, that boy.”

“Did you know his family?”

“Don’t know who his daddy was. His mother was a friend of mine, and let me tell you, she was the only soul out here who couldn’t see Eddie Ray for what he was. He freeloaded offa his poor ol’ mama while she waited tables till all hours of the night in the bar. She eventually had to stop, of course, ’cause of her high blood pressure. She died a few years ago. That’s when Eddie Ray brought Shayna to live here, right in Irene’s house without the benefit of marriage or nothing.”

“Really.”

She lowered her voice and gripped my arm, pulling me closer.

“I don’t even think Eddie Ray loved Shayna,” she whispered. “He just
used
her.”

“Used her?”

“Yeah, to cook and clean for him once his mama was gone.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Then he finally sold his mama’s house and took off. That’s when Shayna moved in over there.”

I nodded, glancing again at the dismal apartment house up the street.

“Did I hear someone say she was dating again?” I asked softly.

“Here and there. ’Til Eddie Ray showed back up, she was mostly going out with Hank,” she whispered, gesturing toward the big man with the scar on his chin. “Kinda new here, but he seems like a good fella.”

“How did he feel about Eddie Ray moving in with Shayna?”

“You’d have to ask him,” she replied. “From what I heard, he backed right off and left ’em alone.”

We were interrupted by another police car coming down the street, lights flashing but without the siren. I turned my face away and stepped back over to the crowd, just in case it was Barbara Hightower or one of the other cops I had dealt with earlier.

“I heard his head was nearly chopped clean off,” said a woman. “Must’ve did it with an axe or something.”

“I heard there was blood all over the inside of the trunk,” Mrs. Lentil said, tugging at my arm. “Is that true?”

“There was a substantial amount of blood,” I admitted.

“Must’ve been quite a bit,” an old man said. “There’s a big pool of blood on the ground in front of the house. Looks like an oil drip, but it’s Eddie Ray’s blood from where it was oozing out of the trunk.”

That earned some groans from the crowd.

“Drips all the way down here,” the man continued, pointing at the road. I looked to where he indicated and could see a black dot in the dirt. I stepped closer to study it, and then I looked forward to see another dot about ten feet away.

“How far does this go?” I asked, looking off toward the dark end of the road, away from the police activity.

“Don’t know,” the man said. “At least as far as my house at the end of the block there. I noticed it this morning when I was walkin’ over here to get a paper. I thought, ‘Uh-oh, somebody’s got themselves a bad oil leak.’ Then from a distance, I could see
the puddle under Shayna’s car. I didn’t realize it was at the back, not the front. Thought it was oil.”

“About what time was this?” I asked the old man. He was stooped and weathered but had a thick, snow white head of hair and a twinkle in his eye.

“Oh, ’bout six-thirty this morning. I considered knocking on Shayna’s door to tell her about the leak, but I didn’t think she’d appreciate being woke up that early. Not everybody keeps waterman hours.”

I nodded, thinking. When the detectives had interviewed Shayna earlier, she told them that her car had sat here from about 8:00 last night until she came into Osprey Cove for her appointment with me at 3:30 this afternoon. But if Eddie Ray had been in the bar last night, drinking beer and playing pool, and these drops had been here at 6:30 this morning, then Shayna was wrong. Her car
had
been driven during the night, with Eddie Ray in the trunk, his blood leaving a telltale trail behind.

“Did anybody see anything suspicious here last night?” I asked. “Or hear anything?”

They mumbled “no’s” and shook their heads.

“How about the car?” I persisted. “Anybody notice the car coming or going after eight o’clock last night?”

Again, the answer was negative.

I knew that soon the police would come over here and begin asking these very same questions. Suddenly, I realized what I needed to do.

“I’ve got to run,” I told Mrs. Lentil. We said our goodbyes, and then I slipped quietly away and got back in my car. I drove away from the flashing lights, went about two blocks, and then turned and parked on a side street. I got out and went to the rear of the vehicle.

I opened the hatchback softly, using a flashlight to look through my investigating tools for the item I needed now, a small handheld unit about the size of a soda can. It wasn’t anything too high tech, but it would serve my purposes. I grabbed it and shut the hatchback with a click, turned off my flashlight, and headed off on foot to the main street. Once there, I turned away from the flashing police lights in the distance and starting walking up the highway.

The night was freezing cold by now, and I felt chilled to the bone despite my gloves and scarf. I walked fast, hoping to warm up as I went. The streetlights ended at the next block, and soon I was enveloped in silent darkness.

I kept walking, my eyes adjusting as I went. Once I was around the bend and completely out of sight of the police, I pulled out the little handheld unit and clicked it on. It was a simple device, a sort of portable black light I had purchased from a hotel supply company. The light was marketed as an inspection device for maintenance supervisors; in a darkened bathroom, for example, with the unit as the only light, one could see if the maids had cleaned adequately, for the black light illuminated substances a careless worker might leave behind, such as urine and bacteria.

The light also, however, illuminated blood, which was why it was an important tool for a private investigator. Though it had been quite a few years since my investigations routinely dealt with things like murder, I still found myself involved in the occasional odd case where things like this came in very handy. In fact, I had solved a murder case for my boss just two months before, up in Philadelphia. This time, though, the murder had happened much closer to home.