Fatal Decree (5 page)

“How would he have gotten the body into the boat?” asked J.D.

“Maybe he left the body somewhere near the water where he could bring the boat after he stole it,” said Jock. “Load her up and head for Sister Key.”

J.D. nodded. “That makes some sense, but where could he have left the body so that nobody would find it while he was stealing the boat? Matt, you know this area better than we do. Any ideas?”

“There’re lots of places to put a body for a few hours at night. Most anywhere along the beach, a lot of places on the bay. It’d be impossible to search all of them.”

J.D. frowned. “Well, that’s a dead end, I guess.”

Jeanine brought our breakfast and we ate quietly. I finished my eggs and toast and sat back with a fresh cup of coffee in my hand. “Assuming the boat the delivery captain saw was our bad guy,” I said, “we have a pretty
definite time for the body being tied to the tree on Sister Key. If we can find out where she had dinner and when she left the restaurant, we’ll be able to get a window of time for the murder.”

“Yes,” said J.D. “We’ll have officers canvassing the restaurants on the key and the Circle as soon as they open. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Jock looked toward the door and grinned. “Look who’s here. Our man Sammy.”

Sam Lastinger was coming through the door, talking to a couple walking with him. I watched as he came inside, wave to a family sitting in one of the booths, and say something to the couple with him. They both laughed and Sam came our way, splitting off from the couple who moved to a table near the front door.

“Jock, you old bastard. When did you get here?”

Jock stood, hugged Sam, and said, “Couple of days ago. How’ve you been?”

Sam laughed. “Look at me. It doesn’t get any better than this.”

Sam was the bartender at Pattigeorge’s, an upscale restaurant that sat on the bay at mid-key. The bar was always packed with locals and, during the season, snowbirds. Sammy knew them all and introduced the newcomers. His personality made for a friendly bar. He was about forty years old, stood six feet tall, had dark hair, a permanent grin, and an engaging laugh. He was perennially happy.

“Sit down,” I said.

He pulled up a chair and motioned for the waitress. She came and took his order. Coffee and a muffin. “I thought you guys might have been in last night. We had a full bar.”

“J.D. got busy,” I said. “Did you hear about the murder?”

“Terrible thing. Nell was in my bar Friday night. Must have gotten killed right after she left.”

J.D.’s coffee cup stopped midway between the table and her mouth. “What time was she there?”

Sam thought for a minute. “I’d say she came in about nine. Had dinner at the bar. Stayed for a couple of drinks. She probably left around eleven.”

“Who else was there?” asked J.D.

“The bar was packed. Usual crowd, and Miles Leavitt, of course. He’s there every night. Miles closed me up and went with me to the Haye Loft for a drink with Eric.”

“Any strangers? Somebody you didn’t know?” asked J.D.

“Just a couple of tourists Billy Brugger sent down from the Hilton.”

“Did either of them talk to Nell?”

“No. They were at the opposite end of the bar.”

“Who was Nell talking to?”

Sam was quiet for a beat. “Miles mostly. He had a load on and you know how that goes. He was explaining world economics to her, I think. Or maybe it was the South American llama trade. After a lot of Scotch, he becomes an expert on all kinds of things.”

J.D. laughed. Miles was a favorite character on the island and a good friend.

“Wait a minute,” Sam said. “There
was
a guy who sat next to her after Miles moved down the bar to talk to Mike and Cyndi Seamon.”

“Did you know him?”

“No. But I introduced myself to him when he came in. He told me his name was Craig. No last name.”

“Did he tell you what he was doing on Longboat?”

“No. He wasn’t too friendly. He talked to Nell for a few minutes and left. Didn’t finish his beer. I figured she blew him off.”

“Can you describe him?”

“Pretty standard-issue tourist,” Sam said. “Light-colored shorts, tropical patterned shirt, loafers, no socks.”

“Tall, short, white, black, hair color?”

“He was white and about my height, sandy hair, a little long, kind of hanging over his ears. And he had some ink on his arms. Looked like an amateur had done it. It was faded, like it’d been there a while.”

“Prison tattoos?”

“I don’t know what prison tats look like.”

“Can you describe them?”

“Not really. They were mostly letters, but they didn’t make sense. They weren’t words, but I only saw his arms below the elbow. Could have been better work on his upper arms.”

“What time did he leave?” J.D. asked.

Sam thought for a moment. “It must have been a little before eleven, because Nell left a few minutes later.”

“How did he pay?”

“Cash.”

“How about Nell?”

“Credit card. VISA, I think.”

“Would that have a time stamp on it?”

Sam smiled. “It sure would. The time would be in the register at the bar.”

“Did Nell pay just before she left?”

“She did,” said Sam. “As soon as she signed the receipt, she told me goodbye and walked out the door.”

“Can we get to the register this morning?”

“Sure.”

As it turned out, Sam was off by seventeen minutes. Nell had left the bar at 11:17. We now had a rough timeline. Nell was killed sometime between 11:17 on Friday night and approximately 3:00 on Saturday morning when the delivery captain spotted the flats boat in the mangroves. If that was the boat that carried Nell’s body to Sister Key.

“Can I get you guys something to drink?” asked Sam, as he leaned over the polished mahogany bar. We had caravanned to Pattigeorge’s, Jock riding with me, J.D. in her personal Camry, and Sammy on his Vespa. The place was quiet, deserted except for us. Sammy had pulled up the information on the computer and given J.D. the printout showing the date and time of Nell’s last credit card charge.

“Got some coffee?” I asked.

“I’ll make some,” said Sam. “Anybody else?”

“Coffee all around,” I said.

Sam went to the kitchen. “Any ideas?” I asked.

“That description fits about half the people on the island,” said J.D.

“Except for the prison tats, if that was what they were,” said Jock.

“There’s that,” said J.D., just as her cell phone rang. She opened it. “Duncan.” She was quiet for a few moments. “Okay. Thanks, Martin.”

She closed the phone. “A Manatee County deputy found a car this morning in the Bimini Bay neighborhood about a block from where the boat was stolen on Friday night. One of the neighbors called it in. Said it had been sitting there since yesterday morning when they got out of bed. Turns out, the car was stolen in Tampa on Friday.”

“Any prints or anything?” Jock asked.

“They’ve taken the car to the sheriff’s forensics lab. If there’s anything there, we’ll have it by the end of the day.”

“That was Sharkey?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“What’s the deputy chief doing working on Sunday?”

“Bill Lester’s in Spain on vacation and Martin’s worried about me.” Bill Lester was the island chief of police.

“When’s Bill due back?” I asked.

“He’s flying in this afternoon. He’ll be in the office in the morning.”

Sam returned with a tray with three steaming cups of coffee. He set them on the bar and took a bottle of red wine from the shelf, opened it, and poured himself a glass. I looked at Sam. “Do you have any kind of video surveillance in here or out in the parking lot?”

“No. We’ve never had any need for that sort of thing on the key.”

“Sam,” said J.D., “I want you to take a minute and think about the guy talking to Nell. Are you sure you’ve never seen him before?”

“I think I’d have noticed the tattoos if I had.”

“Suppose he was wearing a long-sleeve shirt?”

Sam was quiet for a moment, then shook his head. “No. I don’t remember ever seeing him before last night.”

“How long was he talking to Nell?” she asked.

“Not long. He sat down, ordered a beer, took a swallow, said something to her. She talked to him for a few minutes, just being polite, I guess. He got up, threw a ten on the bar, and went out the door. She sat by herself for a few minutes, asked for her check, paid, and left.”

“Did she seem to be in a hurry to leave?”

“No. She signed her credit card receipt, said ‘bye,’ and left.”

“You said she came in about nine o’clock. Did she say where she’d been before she came here?”

“No, but I didn’t ask her,” said Sam.

“Wouldn’t nine seem a little late for her to come in for dinner?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think anything about it. I knew Gene had gone to Alaska with Les, so I assumed she’d been home watching TV or something, got hungry or lonely, and came down here.”

“Did she make a point of saying goodbye to anybody at the bar?” asked J.D.

Sam was quiet for a few moments, replaying the evening in his head. “I think she did stop to talk briefly to Susan Phillips. But it was a very short conversation.”

“Do you have Susan’s phone number?” asked J.D.

“Sure.” Sam pulled his cell phone from his pocket, opened it, and scrolled down his phone book, gave it to J.D. “Here it is. Use this if you want to call her.”

J.D. took the phone and walked out the front door. She was back in a few minutes. “Susan said that she stopped Nell as she was leaving to make sure she was all right. She looked a little frazzled, and Susan wondered if the stranger she was talking to had upset her. Nell said that he hadn’t, but he was asking her if she lived alone and some other personal things. Nell told him to leave and he did. Nell said she was going home. She didn’t seem worried at all, so Susan wasn’t alarmed.”

“I think I need to go see Gene,” said Jock.

“Want some company?” I asked.

“No, podna. I think it’d be best if I go by myself. Can I borrow your car?”

“Sure. J.D. can take me home.” I looked at her. She nodded. I handed Jock my keys and he left.

I looked at J.D. “What now?”

“I’m going home and calling the chief of detectives in Miami-Dade. I need to light a fire under somebody down there. There has to be a connection to some perp I put away. Otherwise, why would the killer involve me in his madness?”

“Maybe the call was somebody’s idea of a joke,” I said.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I’ll call Miami and see if we can come up with any names.”

“You realize it’s Sunday,” I said.

“Yeah, calling the chief at home will add a little urgency to the situation. He and I go way back.”

“Matt,” Sam said, “you want to go boating this afternoon?”

He had recently bought a forty-six-foot Hatteras motor yacht that had been built forty years before. The boat was in great shape with almost new Detroit diesel engines and a new paint job. The interior had been a shambles, but Sam had put it back together and was living aboard.
Sammy’s Hat,
as he’d named her, was moored behind the restaurant.

A couple of months earlier, Sam, Mike Seamon, Logan Hamilton, and I had brought her around from Melbourne on Florida’s east coast. It had been a slow cruise down through the Florida Keys with a two-day layover in Key West. By the time we pulled the boat into her new slip behind Pattigeorge’s, we were tired, hung over, sunburned, and happy to be home. It was the kind of trip that would add to the store of island legends, and we were not above embellishing our tale with gross exaggerations.

I looked at J.D. “Why don’t you come along? You can call from the boat and there’s nothing else you’re going to accomplish today.”

“I don’t know, Matt. I feel like there’s got to be something I can be working on.”

“Look,” I said, “we know all we can at this point. When you get the records from Miami, you’ll have something that may begin to shed a little light on this. But until that happens, you’re just going to be stumbling around in the dark.”

“I guess you’re right,” she said. “The soonest I’m going to get the stuff from Miami is tomorrow morning. Let me call Sharkey. See if he has any thoughts.”

She walked out the front door, digging her phone out of her pocket. She was back in a few minutes. “He said for me to take the day off. We can start fresh in the morning.”

“Come on, J.D.,” said Sam. “Let’s run down the bay and have lunch at Marina Jack.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll run home and get changed. Matt, do you need anything?”

“Nope. If we decide to go swimming, I’ll just skinny dip.”

“Oh, please,” she said, grinning. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

The bay was flat, not a ripple on it. The cold front that had moved through the area on Friday night had wiped the sky clean of clouds. Our universe was defined by the turquoise sea and a sky of crystalline blue. Sam was at the helm, keeping our speed at a stately seven knots. The soft breeze generated by our passage was suffused with the briny smell of the bay. J.D. and I sat on a bench seat placed at right angles to the helm. She was dressed in navy-blue shorts, a white T-shirt bearing the logo of The Old Salty Dog restaurant, and flip-flops. Her dark hair was tied in a ponytail, her smile radiant, and her emerald-green eyes a shade or two darker than the water that surrounded us.

A Cigarette-style go-fast boat roared by us on our port side, its un-muffled engines pushing it along at fifty or sixty miles per hour. The captain waved at us and poured on more juice. Two women in bikinis sat next to him, laughing, their hair blowing in the stiff wind over the bow. As if on cue, they both pulled up their bikini tops, flashing the old fogies aboard the ancient Hatteras. Fun in the sun. A Florida tradition. Life never gets much better than this, I thought.

“What did the chief of detectives say?” I asked.

“He’s going to get his people moving. He’ll send me a list of names of violent men I arrested, along with their pictures and information or whether they’re still in prison, on parole, or dead. Maybe one of them was at Pattigeorge’s Friday night.”