The Pickle Boat House (16 page)

“Are you going to hold me?”

“That depends on what you tell us, Mr. Thomas. If you have nothing to hide, well, then there’s nothing to worry about, is there? Let’s just keep it informal and friendly right now.” Officer McCall turned to Van. “Sorry for the inconvenience. We’ll let you know about the dog.”

Van nodded and focused all her attention on Ryan, trying to will her feelings into him so that he could see how scared she was and how much she cared about him.

“I’ll see you, Van,” he said. “Keep busy while I’m gone, okay? You are so close to having it all tied together.” He reached out and pulled her to him, enveloping her in a tight embrace. “It’ll all be okay,” he whispered. Then he kissed her cheek and stepped out the door with the police officer.

She watched as they got into the police car and disappeared down the road. Closing the door, she sat down on the couch, drew herself up into a little ball, and pulled her grandmother’s afghan up around her—and wept. If it hurt this bad when she was angry at him, she had to seriously rethink their relationship. One by one, the two little dogs jumped up to comfort her, and late evening found all three still snuggled close.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
AN AFTERTHOUGHT

Ryan walked out and got into the backseat of the police car. As long as he could keep his cool he was okay. After all, Hector wasn’t dead, so the altercation would become inconsequential. He only had to answer for misidentifying Earl’s body. Shock, the body’s appearance, darkness—any would serve as an adequate defense. Whatever worked to get him back on the road to New York as soon as possible.

“Mr. Thomas? Mr. Thomas, please exit the vehicle.”

“What?” Ryan snapped out of his reverie to see the officer holding the car door open, talking at him.

He automatically climbed out, although he wasn’t sure exactly what the officer had said. He accompanied McCall into the town hall and upstairs into the tiny police office, eyeing the place as he went. Every head was obscured by a computer screen, and the tapping cadence of typing fingers punctuated the otherwise quiet bullpen. He had expected an interrogation room with metal furniture, bare walls, and a one-way mirror. Instead, the room had a homier feel: attractive table, padded chairs, and some cheap artwork on the walls. Still, his anxiety was running rampant. All his experience as a hotshot New York lawyer had never prepared him for a possible murder rap in some coastal backwater.

“Mr. Thomas, as I said earlier, I need to document your interaction with Mr. Young and your whereabouts on the night of the twenty-seventh. Unless you have objections, this conversation will be recorded to ensure that the information you are providing is documented accurately.”

Ryan knew that speaking without a lawyer was a bad move, but insisting on one made him look guilty as hell. He would just have to represent himself and hope he didn’t have a fool for a client. “No objections. Get on with it.”

For the next half an hour or so, Ryan gave a blow-by-blow of his relationship with Hector, and their altercation on the boardwalk before “Hector’s” sudden death. Officer McCall did little interrupting, occasionally repeating a time, name, or place for clarity’s sake. Ryan hoped he could stay consistent in his stories and provide just enough information about his personal and professional background to keep suspicion off himself and HYA.

“Hector Young and I have worked as attorneys for Hector Young and Associates for about eight years. We often work as a team on company business. That’s why we were in Nevis. For proprietary reasons, I would prefer not to discuss the specifics of our business. During the course of my time here, I have become acquainted with Vanessa Hardy. On the day in question, I attended a gathering at Ms. Hardy’s house. Hector Young came as a guest of mine, and we mixed and mingled during the afternoon. Mr. Young left before I did. I met up with him later in the afternoon, down on the boardwalk. I figured he would be down there since it’s such a beautiful area and we had spent a lot of free time down there. I was right and did find him there, sitting on a bench.

“He made several insulting remarks about Ms. Hardy, and in defense of her honor, I grabbed him by the shirt collar and exchanged some heated words with him. I ended up shoving him back down on a bench, which tipped over with him still on it. At that point, I walked away. I didn’t see him again until the emergency team pulled him from the water, and I did a tentative identification.”

Ryan paused and looked McCall in the eyes. “It’s true, I did threaten to kill him, but only if he continued to impugn Ms. Hardy’s character. She’s a nice lady, and I didn’t think she deserved that. I did lose my temper. I regret what I said, but I didn’t mean it. Had we gotten into it again, I might well have hit him a couple of times with a fist, but murder, hardly. I knew there were other people on the boardwalk when I said what I did. Why would I say something so incriminating in front of witnesses if I really meant it?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Thomas. Why would you? Considering that Mr. Young is dead, it’s a pretty damning admission you’ve made here.”

“Listen, Hector Young is—
was
—a self-serving ass, but I didn’t kill him. We’ve had a working relationship for eight years. He’s been an ass ever since I met him. Why would I suddenly kill him now?”

“I don’t know a lot, Mr. Thomas, but one thing I do know is that a man will do strange things for a woman—things he may not normally think he’s capable of.” Officer McCall paused and looked at Ryan, but Ryan didn’t bite.

“I’ll miss him. He was good competition—kept me on edge. I can’t believe he’s gone.” Ryan sighed and ran his hand through his hair.

“Would you like to take a brief break, Mr. Thomas?”

“No, I’m fine. It’s just, I was so upset that night, and it was so dark … What if it wasn’t Hector? That isn’t possible, is it? There are counterchecks to make sure there was no mistake. Someone in the family has identified the body?” He looked at Officer McCall with the most distraught face he could muster.

“Currently, no one from the family has come forward to identify the body. As a coworker, your identification of the body was considered sufficient and spares the family the trauma of viewing the body. You aren’t recanting that identification, are you?”

“It was such a shock. What if I made a mistake? You’d put the wrong man in the grave,” he said, his voice rising. He put his head in his hands.

“Mr. Thomas. That just wouldn’t happen. Do you need a break to pull yourself together? If it would make you feel better, more sure, I can arrange for you to view the body again.”

Ryan pulled his head up from his hands. “Yes, yes. Could you do that? I’m going to have nightmares over this. Poor Hector.” He put his head back in his hands.

Officer McCall sighed and pulled out his cell phone. “Arrange a viewing of the Young body by a Mr. Ryan Thomas, as soon as possible … I’ll hold …” He checked his watch. “Yes, twenty minutes … Right. Thanks.” He flipped his phone shut. “Let’s go, Mr. Thomas.”

Ryan took a couple of deep breaths and got up. “I need to use the bathroom first—do you mind?” He shuffled down the hall to the men’s room. Once inside, he leaned against the sink and checked his e-mails for a while before leaning over and flushing the toilet. After washing his hands, he walked out to find Officer McCall leaning against the wall, waiting.

A short car ride took them to the morgue. Even with death the one absolute certainty in life, the morgue looked like an afterthought. Located to the rear of a commercial building in the downtown area, it was marked by a small green striped awning and a row of parking spaces designated “Morgue Customers Only.”

The small, sterile parlor, adorned with pictures of pleasant streams and mountains, did little to make either man feel comfortable, and a pall immediately fell over their mood. Elmer Dyson, a young man with freckles and a shock of red hair, was waiting for them and had already pulled the drawer open. A sheet covered the body of the deceased.

Ryan scanned the rest of the rows and columns of drawers, and a shiver ran down his spine. Hopefully, they were all empty. There was a disturbing smell. Whether it was death, mortuary chemicals, or both, he didn’t know, but it immediately brought to mind funeral parlors. This would be a quick business.

Ryan and Officer McCall approached the body, and the attendant pulled back the sheet from the face with a theatrical flourish. “Ta da,” he said.

Ryan did a double take. Officer McCall gave the attendant a look that could kill, and moved him out of the way with the sheer mass of his body.

“Sorry,” the attendant mumbled, his face red. “I’m the only one here—well, sort of,” he added, looking back over his shoulder.

Ryan took one look and quickly walked out of the room.

McCall signaled the attendant to cover the body again and followed Ryan out into the hall. “Good. See, Mr. Thomas, you can rest easy now. Mr. Young is in good ha—”

“That’s not Hector,” Ryan blurted. “It’s Earl Jackson, my other coworker. That’s the same body I looked at last night?” He turned to McCall. “Where’s Hector’s body?
Both
my coworkers are dead?”

“This is the
only
body. You’re telling me this isn’t Hector Young? You identified him. He had ID on him, and you confirmed his identity. You aren’t playing games with me, are you, Mr. Thomas? It’s a punishable offense to make false statements to the police.”

“No, no games. It was such a shock,” Ryan stammered. “You had his wallet … It was dark, and I didn’t look but for an instant—dead bodies give me the creeps … I obviously wasn’t thinking clearly. I didn’t mean to deceive or hinder your investigation. It’s Earl. I’m sure, one hundred percent sure. He was in town. Hector said so.”

McCall approached Ryan, who instinctively stiffened. The officer grabbed him by the shirtsleeve and pulled him closer. “I’m gonna say this one time, so listen close. Nevis is a nice little town—good people. We don’t go out of our way to tell other folks how to live their lives, and we take care of our own. It doesn’t take a lot to see that you and yours are bad news for our town. I don’t know much about you or your New York friend, Mr. Thomas, but I aim to find out. In the meantime, I’m gonna suggest you leave Nevis and don’t come back unless we send for you. I see you around here again screwing with my town, things could get uncomfortable.”

His hot breath stirred the contents of Ryan’s stomach.

“It wouldn’t be too smart to put your hands on a New York lawyer,” said Ryan, wondering if the morgue attendant was still within earshot. “Now, am I free to go?”

McCall released his grip and straightened Ryan’s shirt. “I think we’re good.”

McCall drove him as far as the boardwalk and made him get out—not fast enough, as far as Ryan was concerned. Ryan power walked to the motel, packed his bags, and was driving north to New York within the half hour.

CHAPTER NINETEEN
A WILL, A WAY, AND SOME MONEY

The new identification of the boardwalk drowning victim forced the Nevis police into a whole new theory. An initial investigation that seemed to be an open-and-shut case incriminating Ryan Thomas fell apart with a resounding thud. Not to be burned a second time, the police summoned Earl Jackson’s parents to Nevis to identify their son’s remains. Once again Elmer Dyson found himself standing at the head of the sheet-covered corpse, waiting to unveil the victim’s face.

“Okay, Dyson, please pull the sheet back so Mr. and Mrs. Jackson can see. Easy does it,” McCall said, with a withering look.

Elmer pulled the sheet back with no flourish or commentary of any kind and stepped back from the body with his head down.

“Yes, that’s him. That’s my baby,” Mrs. Jackson said, and she pressed her face into the chest of her silent, stone-faced husband. Her sobs filled the little building as Mr. Jackson escorted her from the room.

The bigger question of why the deceased was carrying the identification of a coworker, Hector Young, and the current whereabouts of that coworker began to consume and overwhelm the finite resources of Nevis’s little police force. But what the Nevis police lacked in size and finesse, it more than made up for with the determination of Officer McCall.

McCall sat at his desk, drumming with his pencil eraser on his mouse pad. He was a big man, but he was not a
happy
big man. With a pit bull’s tenacity, he was not one to let a case go until he was satisfied with the answers to every question.

“McCall, how ’bout another cup?” Officer Little asked, holding up a mug.

“Bug off, Mike. I can’t think with you waving that around.”

“Why don’t you just call this an accident and let it go.”

“Nah, that sounds like something you would do. Me … something isn’t right here. What am I missing?” He absentmindedly picked up the phone ringing at his elbow.

“McCall … Yes! How long ago did he regain consciousness? … On my way. Mike,” he said, turning to his partner, who was still at the coffeemaker, “I’m off to the hospital. Ernest Pickett just regained consciousness, but he’s still in critical condition. I’m going to try and get a statement from him.”

The Nevis police had placed around-the-clock protection at the hospital as soon as they realized Pickett might be a potential witness in the drowning case. His awakening was the first opportunity to determine what he might have seen or heard. Officer McCall wasted no time in getting to the hospital to see him.

“I’ll take it from here,” he said to the officer standing guard at the door to Pickett’s hospital room. “Come back in about fifteen minutes.”

“Officer, before you go in may I have a word with you, please?” asked a petite nurse at the nurses’ station. “Just a word of caution. We need Mr. Pickett to remain calm. You might want to avoid mentioning Susie. He keeps asking for her. We keep trying to tell him his wife is deceased, but he just gets terribly angry. It’s not what he needs.”

“Ma’am,” McCall said, taking his hat off as he leaned down toward her. “Ms. Stewart,” he said, reading her name tag but trying not to offend her by staring at her chest too long, “I don’t believe Mr. Pickett’s wife’s name was Susie. It was Alice. His
dog
is Susie, and she’s safe and sound. A neighbor found her running loose on the boardwalk.” He gave her a shy, boyish smile and put his hat back on.