The Black Palmetto (21 page)

****

Harpo didn’t know where else to look. That day he’d seen the guy at the marina, he’d described him to Alton, and Alton said he thought he’d seen the same man outside the beach house Harpo had just left. But Harpo’s memory had been fuzzy since the explosion, and he wasn’t absolutely sure he had the right house. Alton had gone on to the great paradise in the sky, so he couldn’t ask him. He tried to concentrate. Dr. Worth had finished his afternoon sermon, so he tuned out the rest of the program. They were just advertising cars and fancy restaurants and sporting events, things he couldn’t afford anyway.

He had a vague recollection of seeing somebody that looked like the guy park behind Chopin’s late one night and go in the back door. Maybe he would head over there and hang around, see if the man came back.

****

An hour passed before J.T. called again. “Harpo parked a block away from Chopin’s bar. He walked through the trees toward the place, and now he’s just sitting there near the back door like he’s waiting for something to happen. One thing’s for sure, Chopin isn’t the guy we saw on that motorcycle.”

“No, but there could be a connection.”

J.T. sighed. “Okay, I’ll keep an eye on him, but we’re probably wasting our time.”

“Did you find the owner of the beach house yet?”

“Yeah, it belongs to a man named Dale Edison. Do you know that name?”

“Hmm. Not offhand. I’ll check with Lora, she probably knows who he is.”

Something nagged at Sam, something he’d thought about earlier, but in the confusion had never gotten around to asking J.T. about it. Then it came to him.

“I don’t suppose you wrote down the address on the place where we shot at Knox, did you?”

“Nah. It’s probably just a house he found empty and decided to use the boathouse.”

“Yeah, maybe, but it could be somebody who knows him, too. You think you can figure out the address without going back up there?”

J.T. snorted a laugh. “You’re kidding, right? Course I can. I’ll check it out while I’m waiting.”

“Okay, I’ll check on Dale Edison.”

Sam called Lora and thanked her for arranging the sketch.

“Sure, no problem.” She sounded cool. “I guess you had more important things to do in Miami than hang around with me.”

“Sorry about that. I got a call from somebody who thought he had a bead on the killer. It turned out to be a bust. Looks like you didn’t have any trouble following us, though. Where did you pick us up?”

She paused for a couple of beats, maybe making up her story. “I think I might have blown my engine trying to keep up,” she said, ignoring his question. “Who called you with the tip, the homeless man?”

“Uh, yeah,” he lied. “I had circulated the photos of the two guys. Like I said, it didn’t pan out. I have a question for you. You know a guy named Dale Edison?”

“Sure,” Lora said, “he’s the local prosecutor. Why?”

He told her about Harpo breaking into the house.

“You think Edison is the killer?”

“Don’t know yet. I just wonder why Harpo went there.”

Sam decided to tell her about finding Spanner/Benetti in the shed, and about his description of Knox. “Does Edison have long hair?”

“No, more on the short side, kind of a careless, trendy look, like he’s trying to look as if he doesn’t comb it.”

The hair really didn’t matter. As they’d decided before, he could have worn a wig when he talked with Benetti.

“Does he look like the sketch your guy made from Harpo’s description?” Sam asked.

“Huh, I don’t know, maybe a little.”

Sam’s pulse rate picked up a few beats. “Has he been in Iguana Key long?”

“Only a few months, I’d guess. The editor of the paper said he didn’t expect him to be here long, like he might be on his way up. Where are you, anyway?”

Could be him
, Sam thought. “I gotta go.” He hung up and told Simone about Edison.

Her eyes widened. “Let’s get the address and check it out.” She cut her eyes toward Benetti, who’d been quiet, maybe wondering how he could get away, or just content that he’d gotten a decent meal and a hot shower after days in the shed. “What do we do about him?”

Sam thought for a second. “Let’s tie him up until we get back.”

Benetti had been listening, because he jumped up from his chair. “Hey, man, no way. What if all of you get killed? Nobody’ll know I’m here.”

“You better hope that doesn’t happen,” Sam said. He pointed his gun at him. “Hands behind your back.”

The former assassin did as instructed, and Simone bound his wrists with nylon ties.

“Feet, too,” Sam said.

The bound man continued to protest as she tied his ankles together.

When they got in the car, Sam called J.T. on speakerphone and got Edison’s address. “He could be our man. See what you can find out about him.”

“I already did. He attended a private law school up north a few years ago.”

“You get a birth certificate?” Simone asked.

“Yep. His parents are Roy and Cynthia Edison. No brothers or sisters, at least when he was born.”

“Could it be a fake?”

“Well, sure. It looks legit, but anything can be faked.”

Sam tried to put that information together with what they knew about Marlon Knox.

“What’s his age?” Sam asked.

“About thirty.”

“That would fit with the law school and his position, but it would be a little old for our man Knox. That is, if it’s authentic.”

“Yeah, big if, though,” J.T. said.

“Well, see what else you can find, just in case.”

“Will do, but if you‘re headed over there, maybe I should drop the tail on Harpo here and help you out. Might be some big trouble.”

J.T. probably wanted to be there when they went inside, in case they found the money.

“Better stay with Harpo. Why don’t you ask him why he’s staking out Chopin’s?”

J.T. sighed. “Guess that’s your call. You want me to get him coffee and doughnuts, too?”

****

Sam and Simone rode by the house. No vehicles sat in the driveway. He kept going, past several vacant lots, and turned into the yard of the next home down the road. It had a For Sale sign close to the curb. The place looked as if no one had been there for a while; weeds a foot tall, the sale sign leaning to one side, old junk mail on the front stoop.

“Here, put these on,” Sam said, handing her a pair of latex gloves.

They strode around the house to the edge of the sand dunes and turned back toward Edison’s property.

The rain had stopped, and the sun shone full on the side of Sam’s face. Perspiration beaded under his shirt. The breeze from the Gulf felt tepid, no help at all.

When they reached the house, they found the backyard bordered by a wood fence. They opened the gate and went through to the back door. It stood ajar, the jamb splintered. A large dog portal with a clear plastic flap had been installed at the bottom. He pointed to it and Simone nodded. Sam entered first and she followed.

They eased through a little entrance hall to the kitchen. Though neat, it appeared to be unused, with dust on the stove and counter tops. Light poured through a window over the sink to the tile floor. A shallow pet dish filled with water sat there, alongside an identical but empty dish.

A dining and living room lay to the right. No sounds, except the hum of the refrigerator and the central air. They moved through the spaces. A large-screen TV sat next to the wall opposite a sofa and an easy chair. Sam wondered if the dog might be in the yard, or sleeping somewhere in the house. From the size of the food dish, it would be big, something that might put you in the hospital, or worse.

The hallway off the living room led to a bath and bedrooms. They went down it and checked each room. One had been converted into an office, and had a desk with a computer. They found nobody.

Simone drew a deep breath and let it out, dropping her gun by her side. “Okay, let’s search the place.”

Back in the living room, Sam said, “I want to check the office first. Can you take the front of the house, in case he comes home?”

“Yeah, that’s fine.”

Something made a clicking noise beyond the kitchen.

They both stopped and listened, and then peered out the double windows to the front yard. No cars had arrived, and Sam didn’t hear any footsteps, then he realized the source of the noise.

“The dog door,” he whispered.

“Oh, man.” Simone worked the action on her 9mm. “I hate shooting a dog.”

“Yeah, but be ready, in case it’s a Pit Bull or a Doberman.”

They waited a moment, and when the animal didn’t come for them, they eased through the dining area toward the kitchen. Sam peeked around the corner.

The animal rushed toward him, but stopped short, as if realizing he wasn’t who it thought he was.

“Huh,” Sam said, easing into the kitchen. The creature would stretch out about three feet long and had two-inch spikes down its back, like something from
Jurassic Park
.

Simone came in and peered down at it. “What is that?” She backed up and thrust the gun out in front of her.

Sam held up his hand. “Hold on. I think it’s a pet.”

“You sure? It looks like a dragon.”

“It’s an iguana. You saw a picture of one on the brochure in the motel, remember?”

She seemed to relax, but not much. “Yeah, but I thought they were little and cute.”

The animal sat there on the tile, its head moving from Sam to Simone and back, looking confused.

“Some people probably think so.”

“Well, what do we do now? I’m not staying in here with that thing staring at me.”

“Maybe it’s hungry.”

“Don’t tell me they eat meat?”

“No, I think they’re vegetarians.”

Sam eased by the creature to the refrigerator and opened the door. It turned its head as he passed, but didn’t offer to run. Edison had probably raised it from a baby, and it trusted humans to not harm it. He found several bundles of some kind of lettuce and took one out. When he dropped them into the food dish, the iguana edged over to it and chomped on the greens.

“It’s harmless,” Sam said.

“If you say so.”

Leaving her there staring, he headed to the office and checked under the desk and behind two hanging prints. No safe. In the bedrooms he searched the closets for any signs of the money. Edison had some nice business wear; eight suits that looked like new, more than a dozen long-sleeve oxford shirts, several Italian ties, and three pairs of dress shoes with trees inside. He didn’t have much in the way of casual clothes.

Sam didn’t find any money, but he did uncover a stash of cocaine in a box on the shelf of one of the closets. It amounted to several ounces, and probably had cost the guy a lot of money. Unless he was Knox and had it left over from drug dealing a long time ago. The nightstands yielded nothing but some months-old magazines. The spark Sam had experienced earlier about Edison had diminished to a flicker. Even with the drugs, this man didn’t sound like assassin material.

Back in Edison’s office, Sam sat down at the desk. The computer seemed to be running, so he punched a key and the screen lit up. A click on the e-mail icon brought up the in-box and a list of junk mail. Sifting through them, he found nothing that caught his interest and closed it. There were no word processing documents, other than samples that came with the computer. On the browser, he checked the favorites and found one for webmail. Opening it brought up a different mail system altogether, and the inbox list gave his pulse a spike. All the messages appeared to be sent to the chief of police. Edison’s name didn’t appear anywhere as a copy recipient.

Most of the messages were about mundane administrative issues, or newsletters from police organizations from which he had subscribed. A couple of them caught his eye, from the parole officer Lora had mentioned, but they didn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know. Sam wondered how Edison could have copies of all this. He would ask J.T. about it.

In the drawers he found a file folder containing house receipts for utilities, all but one dating back to about a year before, maybe when he had moved into the house. The one exception was a rent receipt for an apartment in Miami, dated about six months before the others began. Sam knew that particular apartment complex. Most of its renters were low wage, so Edison might have been down on his luck at the time, maybe jobless.

A second folder held documents that pertained to his position in Iguana Key, one of which indicated that he’d been hired into the job a little more than a year before. Another document was his latest performance appraisal, signed by the mayor. The man gave him an average rating, citing weaknesses in initiative and reporting timeliness. Seemed odd for a professional person, like somebody not really paying attention to the job. The cocaine might explain that, but the guy might have other things on his mind, too.

When he got to the back of the folder, Sam found a small piece of paper, a corner that had been torn off an official document of some kind. Part of a government seal was still visible, but he couldn’t identify it. He put it into his pocket, closed the drawers, and went back to the living room.

“I didn’t find anything,” Simone said.

He told her about the cocaine and the computer.

“You mean like a mirror image of the chief’s e-mail?”

“That’s what it looked like. I’m wondering what it means that he has access to them on his computer.”

“Maybe he was just investigating the guy. He’s the prosecutor, and he might’ve gotten a court order. Boozler did disappear under a cloud.”

“Yeah, maybe. But if Edison is Marlon Knox, he could have been waiting for something to show up that pertained to the two million, too.”

He pulled out the paper fragment and showed it to her.

“Huh. Looks like the DEA seal to me.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

A car door slammed outside and Sam peeked through the curtains.

“It’s a man in a suit, probably Edison.”

“Okay, quick assessment time,” Simone said. “Do we take this guy down?”

Sam shook his head. “I don’t have a good feeling about it. If we’re wrong, we could go to jail.”

“Yeah, I agree. Let’s go.”