Mangrove Bayou (16 page)

“What's up?” one asked the girl.

“This gentleman is leaving,” the girl said, refolding her hands on the desk.

Troy pulled out his badge. “Chief Adam, director of public safety.” All three stared at the badge. “And honorary member of the Osprey Yacht Club. You have a Hail and Farewell event in a few minutes. I'm invited. I suggest you call someone who has actual paperwork on his or her desk.”

A few minutes later Troy was meeting the members and getting himself a glass of ice tea at the bar. George Trapper, the club manager, had brought him in.

“So sorry, once more, for the scene out front,” Trapper said. “Especially considering how helpful you've been with…” he looked around and lowered his voice, “…the John Barrymore problem.”

“Efficient.” Troy said. “Been thrown out of a lot of places. Never so quick, though. Or by children.”

“Um. Well, sorry again. Why don't you wear your badge, just so people know who you are?”

“Never thought of that. What an excellent idea.” Troy looked around the room. “Odd, though. I don't see anyone else wearing a badge so I can tell who
they
are.”

“Well, you know what I mean.”

“I know exactly what you mean. There's not a black professional in the country who hasn't been mistaken for a car-park valet or a waiter in a snooty club. I'll wear the badge. Otherwise, people will be asking me to bring them drinks and step and fetch the
hors d'oeuvre
. If I take off the police tape and release
Wayward
from my custody, can someone here look after it? I don't think Kathleen Barrymore knows from boats and hurricanes.”

“Of course. We have the dock personnel take care of any members' boats if the members are out of town. Con Lohen will handle that.”

Trapper wandered off to tend to club business. Troy pinned his badge to his jacket pocket and then leaned back with his elbows on the bar behind him, looking at the room, occasionally sipping his ice tea. He was not exactly swarmed by welcoming club members. In fact a half-circle of silence extended from his elbows on the bar out for several yards. Once he faintly heard someone say,
“Goddamn Indian!”
He smiled. Maybe he should tell people he was Tonto. But, no, that wouldn't help here; Tonto was probably a Democrat.

There were about a hundred people inside the large meeting room, which had some tables pushed out of the way so people could mingle. Troy thought it looked like a gathering of the Republican National Committee. The mayor was there. He saw Councilman Principal Dr. Howard Parkland Duell, sporty as always in his black suit and funereal expression. He spotted Cilla Dowling working the room, wielding butt and décolletage like precise tools.

He wondered if Wanda Frister was working tonight. She would be out in the dining room, not here. Maybe she was at home staring, terrified, at her ringing phone. Milo Binder had reported back on his visit to Wanda's trailer but he had not had much to add. Troy hadn't expected much. Troy had called the state attorney's office in Naples to see if he could arrange a restraining order on William “Billy” Poteet, but with no better evidence, there wasn't a hope of it.

It was obvious why Katie Barrymore hadn't come out to confront him when he had been walking around her house. She had been here. She was drinking, more bourbon, Troy guessed from the glass and color, and wearing a black evening dress that started at her breasts and ended at the south end of her buttocks. She was wearing fine black pantyhose. She was talking to three older men who were looking at her the way honeybees look at a magnolia. Troy saw her laugh once and she kept a hand on one man or another's forearm. He had known a Venezuelan woman once who did that, unconsciously touching, rubbing, invading his personal space. It had been very seductive behavior. Troy took a sip of iced tea and watched, and smiled at old memories.

The commodore of the Osprey Yacht Club got up on a podium and talked into a handheld microphone. He wasn't any good with it—in Troy's experience hardly anyone was—so his speech alternated between an electronic screech, to a word or two Troy could understand, to the commodore talking but the mike too far from his lips to pick up the sound. The new members were introduced by their sponsors. Each then took the mike to say a few words about where they were from and what sort of boats they owned if they, in fact, owned boats. Polite handclapping followed each member's introduction. Honorary members came last, it seemed, but soon it was Troy's turn and Lester Groud made the introduction as Troy's sponsor.

“Troy Adam. Adam with no
s,
” Troy said. Some of the faces looking at him bore startled expressions at his skin tone. “I'm your new director of public safety. I have the easiest phone number to remember of anyone here. Nine-one-one.” There was a small laugh from the crowd. “Call that if you need protection or service. I'm a sailor too, big boats and small. I once owned a stinkpot but then I got culture.” There was a groan from some of the crowd, cheers from others, and one shouted comment about rag-men.

“Right now I have a day-sailor, a twenty-one-foot Sea Pearl, that funny open whaleboat with two masts and leeboards. Perfect for gunkholing these shallow back bays. Any of you want to go out in it, give me a call at the station. Use the regular number, not the nine-one-one. June Dundee, our dispatcher, has heart failure every time that emergency line rings.” More laughter. “I expect I'll see a lot of you out on the water.” His voice sharpened. “Or in the club dining room, where I
will
be eating at least once a month. Thanks, one and all, for the generous welcome. You don't know what it means to me.” There was scattered applause as he walked back to the bar. He didn't think he had won, but maybe he had broken even.

Chapter 26

Friday, July 26

The crowd was toasting the members who had departed, most by moving away. Troy dutifully hoisted his glass at each name even though he didn't know any of them. John Barrymore came last, with a short explanation for those who hadn't heard the news.

A woman's voice at his elbow said, “Isn't this dreary?” Troy turned to see the pale-skinned, striking redhead from the airfield. She was nearly as tall as he was but thinner. She had a thin nose and thin lips with no lipstick, and if she wore any makeup, Troy couldn't see it. Her hair was cut square around her face and was shoulder-length and straight, as if she didn't want to bother too much with it. She wore a green man's dress shirt with high collars with long points, the shirt tucked into white jeans. Large green eyes looked him up and down speculatively. “How did
you
get in here?” she asked.

“Honorary member. I did have to talk my way past the Young Aryan Nation, the dock boys and a girl at the front door. I'm Troy Adam.” He put out a hand. “You would be Lee Bell.”

Her handshake was hard and firm. “How on earth did you know that?”

“I'm the police chief of Mangrove Bayou. I know everything. Also, yesterday you blew past me on Airfield Road in that red Corvette. Only reason I didn't give you a ticket was that I didn't have a ticket book.”

“I do tend to drive fast. But, then, what's a Corvette for?”

“Beats me.”

She looked at him a moment. “You ran my license plate.”

“I did. Seeing this attractive woman get out of her car and go inside that hangar, I hot-footed it back to my office and looked you up.”

“Isn't looking at police records for personal use against some law?”

“I believe so.”

“So you find me attractive?”

“I find you breathtaking.”

“Pretty cute yourself.” She looked at the room. “There would be more people in here,” she said, “but the members who actually own boats are outside getting them tied down for the hurricane. Most of these here,” she waved a highball glass, “are the people who join yacht clubs for the prestige but don't actually own boats.”

“
She
seems to be bearing up under the weight of fathomless grief,” Troy said, waving his glass in Katie Barrymore's direction.

“Humm. If she is wearing anything under that tiny dress,” Lee Bell said, “that thing must be a very thin thing. Why, are you interested?”

“Only part of me. I don't think I fit the demographic profile for her.”

“Ah. Rich, old and foolish. Life is good sometimes, isn't it?”

“Not for John Barrymore.”

“Well, that's true. But it was just an accident. Right?”

“Do you own a boat?”

She shook her head. “I own an airplane. As you may have guessed. A Cessna Grand Caravan. Multipurpose. I fly tourists out over the Everglades National Park and the Ten Thousand Islands, well-to-do locals wanting to go shopping somewhere, urgent packages all around Florida, light cargo, that sort of thing. Do runs every week to Key West, Tampa, Orlando, Miami or elsewhere on the east coast.”

“Aha. Only this afternoon I was explaining good police work to my dispatcher. I was looking for the woman who regularly flew John Barrymore from our airport up to Atlanta. Are you that person?”

“I am. I confess. You got me.”

“Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. You've lost a customer. So tell me about him.”

“Not that much to tell. I flew him up to Charlie Brown Field, that's just west of downtown Atlanta. He would take a cab and go downtown. He was regular, the third Thursday of each month. He always stayed overnight someplace there.”

“There's an airport named for a
Peanuts
cartoon character?”

She laughed. “I think it's a nickname for some local politician. It's technically the Fulton County Airport.”

“Did John Barrymore have some nookie on the side up there? Why stay overnight?”

“I don't think so. I think he did his board meeting and then took in a show or even went shopping. He'd sometimes come back in the morning with packages, clothes, books. I think he wanted a night away from Mangrove Bayou and away from
her
.”

“Did you stay there all that time?”

“Unless there was something urgent back here. I have an air mattress and sleeping bag in the rear storage bin of the plane. Some canned food and water too. Lots of pilots sleep in their aircraft. The terminal has bathrooms and a shower. In fact, I have a porta-pottie right on the aircraft.”

“When was the last time you flew him up there?”

Lee pulled an iPad out of her purse. She paged through some sort of appointments app. Troy looked around the room and Cilla Dowling was staring in his direction. He canted his head toward Lee Bell and raised an eyebrow. Dowling smiled, nodded, and gave him two thumbs up.

“Got it,” Lee said. She held the iPad for him to see.

“I got to get me one of those,” Troy said. He bent to look. The most recent date corresponded to the last time Katie and Tats had shared a motel room on Marco Island. “Can I get a list of all the dates for the past eighteen months?”

“I suppose. But it was always third Thursdays. I have the flight logs back on the aircraft. I'll make a list and email it to you.”

“Thanks. That would be great. Glad I ran into you.”

“You didn't run into me. I picked you out. You looked lonely standing here being ignored.” She looked at Troy's glass on the bar. “So what are you drinking, Chief?”

“Ice tea.”

She took a sip. “For heaven's sake! It's ice tea! There's no booze in it. Not even sugar.”

“I'm on duty.”

“You're at a party.”

“Still on duty. Actually, I don't drink anyway.”

“You a ‘Friend of Bill'?”

“No. I used to drink. Never cared for what it did to my brain. One day I decided I'd done enough of that. Nothing dramatic. Just a change of habit.”

“I like scotch,” she said, looking at her glass. “But no seconds, I'm afraid. And, anyway, there are rules about waiting to fly after drinking.”

“Careful.”

“Can't be too careful with airplanes. Make a mistake up there and you can't call Triple-A.”

“You do your own maintenance too.”

She stared at him. “I take it to a place in Naples mostly, but I do some. How do you know that?”

“I'm the police chief of Mangrove Bayou. I know everything.”

“No you don't. Tell me.”

He picked up her right hand. “Short nails and a trace of grease under the fingernails.” He turned her hand over and pulled her wrist toward him. “Small mark, probably a burn. Got too close to a hot manifold.”

“Exhaust, actually. You see things. Most men don't.”

“I'm not most men.”

Bell laughed. “You can say that again. Especially in this room.” She looked around a moment. She hadn't pulled her hand back. Troy let go of it.