Too Much Stuff (6 page)

“And why were you looking them up online?” The line delivered like a B-movie actor. Intimidating. Threatening. “If you didn’t know the victim, why were you searching for him online?”

“They were—”

“They? Was someone else killed too?”

I sensed it was not going well. This thing with James and a dead Weezle was a little more complicated than I’d imagined. And maybe Mary Trueblood was right. Now everyone was going to know about the gold. I was just worried about James.

“Mr. Moore, again I’m asking you, why were you and Mr. Lessor looking up the victim online? You claim neither you nor Mr. Lessor knew him.”

And so it went. Everything pointed to James searching for the guy online and then finding the body. And the insinuation
was that if James had five minutes before he called us up, he had time to kill the guy who broke in.

I know James. I’ve known him since we were in grade school. He’s my best friend, and while he may be a good talker, he’s not a fighter. He’s terrible at confrontation. James couldn’t kill anyone. And why would he? These guys, Weezle and Markim? We’d never heard about them until this morning.

I figured Maria was getting the same questions, and James was probably being grilled about what he did for those five minutes, bristling every second of the interview.

And Mary Trueblood, she was probably telling these officers that we were there to find forty-some million dollars worth of gold. At this moment I wished I’d listened to my inner voice back in Carol City. I should have put my foot down and said no. Anytime James thinks something is a good idea, it isn’t.

“You can’t account for those five minutes that Mr. Lessor was gone, correct?”

I must have told the cop at least five times that I could account for those five minutes. “The elevators here are very slow. Very slow.”

They took him away. Cuffed. I couldn’t believe it. Honestly my mouth was hanging open. They handcuffed him, walked him to one of the squad cars, pushed his head down, and had him climb in the back of the car. He glared out the window, staring at me with a scowl on his face.

“Is he being arrested?” This was quickly turning into a nightmare.

“He refused to go voluntarily to the station. He was uncooperative.”

James hated cops. He knew that sometimes when you leave with an officer, you don’t come back. For years.

“He found a dead body. That’s it. That is not a crime.” I was screaming at the uniformed officer. They held me back as I tried to rush the car. What the hell? James was not a murderer.

“My God. We just stumbled on a corpse with his head bashed in. Give the guy a break.”

The officer gave me a grim smile. This was Florida and things are a little different down here. I mean, we got our private investigator license from the Department of Agriculture. That’s
who licenses PIs. Seriously. I hesitated as I realized we might lose our brand-new license if I attempted anything that was illegal. Immoral. Or just not right.

“For God’s sake, at least take the cuffs off of him.” Neither of us had ever been handcuffed. Neither of us had ever been in a squad car. This was a first.

“Where are you taking him?”

“To the station.”

“And where is the station?”

The officer rolled his eyes. “Behind Boardwalk Pizza.”

“And that’s where?” My tone was intense. I didn’t know the area, and I needed geographical references.

“About two miles north of here on the highway.”

“James, I’ll pick you up as soon as this is over. Call me.” I shouted as loud as I could.

Another uniform walked down the stairs, our laptop case in his hand.

“We’ll need to take your computer. If it’s clean, we’ll get it back to you.”

“I’m a private investigator. I have information on cases we’re working on. You can’t just take that and—”

“Yes. We can.” He kept on walking.

We’d only owned it for three days. Other than the AAAce Yellow Page ad and James’s new subscription to
Match.com
, there wasn’t much stored on the machine. And I watched as my best friend was transported through the parking lot and down the side road that led to the Overseas Highway. Everything was a blur. We’d come down here to make a little side money and now he was being held on suspicion of murder.

I felt Maria Sanko’s hand on my arm. I didn’t brush it off.

“Skip, I’m sorry.”

“He’ll be out in an hour. He didn’t kill that guy. They’re just fishing.”

She nodded. “I know two of the cops who were here. Dated one of them a while back. I’ll make a call once they get back to the station and see what they plan on doing, okay?”

I nodded. I forgot we had a local on our side.

“Look, I’m still here to help you with your search.”

And it suddenly occurred to me that whoever interviewed Maria didn’t bring up the gold. And the officer who talked to me didn’t mention gold. So everyone didn’t know about the gold.

But there was one thing she did know. We weren’t plumbers. That had become pretty evident.

I grabbed her elbow and steered her toward the bar. I didn’t care what Bobbie thought of me, I needed a drink.

“So what did they ask you?”

She gave me a little-girl smirk. “They asked if I was intimate with James.”

“Really?” Probably trying to establish relationships. Still, it was a rather leading question.

She cocked her pretty head. “I thought it was a strange question, but, well, he is kind of cute.”

“What else?” Cute. They all thought he was cute. Every girl he met thought James was cute. It somehow pissed me off. I never had a girl tell me I was cute. But, then again, I’m interested in someone. James is interested in everyone. “They didn’t ask if you and I—”

“That didn’t come up, Skip.”

“Anything else?”

“He wanted to know how long James was alone in the room upstairs.”

Mary Trueblood walked up. “Damned police. Why can’t they just accept that a couple of guys probably broke into your room and one of them killed the other one? Why couldn’t they just accept that?”

“Mrs. Trueblood. What did they ask you?”

“Why I was here.”

I studied her carefully. “And you told them what?”

“The truth. Of course.” She gave a sideways glance to Maria. “I told them I’d hired you two to help me with the history of my great-grandfather who had been apparently killed in the nineteen thirty-five hurricane.”

I saw Maria’s eyes get even wider, and she looked at me with a sly grin.

“Glad I didn’t hire you guys to fix my leaking pipe.”

Mary Trueblood looked at both of us, shook her head as if confused, and walked away.

So no one knew about the gold. No one except James, Mary, me, and Ted Markim, now that Jim Weezle was dead.

They carried the body down on a stretcher, a blood-stained sheet covering him. Two guys from the rescue unit brought him down the stairs. They’d already figured that out. Not the elevator. The stairs.

Some new guy in a short-sleeved shirt and tie told me it would be at least a half hour before they would have our personal items packed. No one could go back into the room.

“This really sucks, doesn’t it?” Maria frowned.

“You think so?” I didn’t even have a room. Maria probably had a home somewhere. A fancy condo with a swimming pool. And James was in a cell somewhere behind a pizza joint.

“Actually,” she pursed her lips and looked up at me, “this is the most excitement I’ve had since my divorce over a year ago. I may even make the news tonight.”

“Well, I’m glad we could brighten your day.” I’m not sure James would be so happy about it.

We strolled down to the beach where couples lounged on chairs and watched the ocean lap at the shore.

“You guys have been friends a while.” She glanced at me, a look more as a friend than an inquisitor.

“We have. Since we were kids. And what I said before about getting into trouble—just hang around long enough and we do manage to attract our share of problems.”

She laughed. “There’s more to this expedition than just a search for history, isn’t there?”

I didn’t say anything.

“You know, Skip, people come down here to get away. They just want to get lost. I’ve watched it happen. For a week, a month, some people for their whole life. It’s like in the middle Keys you can just disappear. But you’re not down here to disappear, are you?”

“No.”

“People come down to dive, to go deep-sea fishing,” she pointed toward the ocean. “The deep-sea fishing here is the best in the country.”

I nodded.

“They show up to tie one on for a couple of days. People come down here to have an affair, but no one comes down here to research dead relatives.”

“And your point is?”

“I think you two are treasure hunters.”

“What?” She couldn’t possibly know. I’d just decided she knew nothing and she hit me with that.

“You want locations. You’re trying to find the remnants of an old building, the Coral Belle Hotel. I don’t think this has anything to do with somebody’s great-grandfather. I think you’re looking for gold.”

I just kept walking.

“But, I could be wrong.”

“You are.”

“Listen, people come down here looking for wrecker camps. Is that it? You’re trying to find a wrecker camp?”

“I don’t even know what that is.” I lied.

“Really? When ships would crash out on the reef or the rocks, wrecking crews would go out and salvage the boats. They’d take whatever was valuable and usually bury it at their campsite. There weren’t any safes or banks around so they would bury it using landmarks as locators.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. She really didn’t have the right answer.

“Today, when a construction crew breaks ground, they’ll sometimes stumble on an old wrecker camp. Lots of times they’ll find silver and gold. I thought maybe you had a lead on one of the old camps.”

She was just a little too close to the truth for comfort.

“Maria, do you know anyone down here who has a Harley-Davidson motorcycle with a gold fender?”

“Boy, you sure know how to change the subject.”

“Do you?”

“No. Not off the top of my head.”

And all of a sudden it hit me. I’d heard the distinct sound of a Harley in the parking lot just before James called us up to the room. Somebody had pulled out, leaving a cloud of dust.

“My ex-husband Drew had a Harley.”

“He did?”

“Yeah.” She smiled. “Had one.”

“What happened to it?”

“I got it in the divorce.”

It was my turn to smile. “Really? Did you sell it?”

“Sell it?” Her eyes got big. They were dark brown and very expressive. “How do you think I got here today?”

A biker babe. James and I had landed a biker babe with pretty brown eyes. I was impressed.

“Hey, do you think you could call your former boyfriend down at the sheriff’s office? I’d really like to know what’s happening with James.”

She pulled an iPhone from her purse and punched in a couple of numbers. Here was a biker babe with the police department on speed dial. Cool. I need to know more about this girl.

“Officer Danny Mayfair, please.”

A couple of seconds later her face lit up.

“Danny, it’s Maria.” She paused as the officer talked.

“No, no. I’m not still trying to sell you the condo. Although you passed on a very good deal. The prices are going up, Danny.”

She sat down on one of the plastic chairs and looked up, giving me a very charming smile. The girl liked to flirt. Two guys at once. Officer Danny and me. If James was here she’d probably try to work him in too. He was cute.

“No. Danny, I’m with Skip—” She looked at me inquisitively.

“Moore,” I said.

“Skip Moore. He’s—yeah, you guys interviewed him. Along with me and the older lady.”

Mary Trueblood would not be happy to know she was being referred to as “the older lady.”

“Can you tell me the status of James?”

She nodded, rolled her eyes, and I couldn’t tell if it was good news or bad news. I wanted to grab the phone out of her hand and just get to the heart of the matter.

Maria glanced up at me. “Danny says James has been hostile to all of them. Belligerent and what else, Danny? Noncommunicative.” She frowned at me, shrugging her shoulders.

That was James. Described him to a
T
. He hated cops.

“The good thing is, they don’t believe he had anything to do with the murder.”

“And?”

“When are they going to release him, Danny?” She waited, waited, and waited. My fists clenched. I needed to know.

“They’re going to release him in about an hour.”

I breathed a deep sigh of relief. I couldn’t wait to tell Mary Trueblood. And then I reconsidered. The lady hadn’t shown any compassion at all about her former employee being knifed to death. She probably wouldn’t care about James’s incarceration.

“Can you ask him who the dead guy is?”

She nodded. “Danny, can you release the identity of the dead man?”

She giggled. “Of course I’m not going to call the press. It’s between you and me.”

Standing up, she kept a distant look in her eyes, like she was focusing on someone who wasn’t here. Maybe this Danny character.

“Okay. I’ll keep it very quiet.” She nodded emphatically as if the person on the other end of the phone could see her.

“I still love you, big D.”

She stuffed the black phone back in her pocket.

“Big D?”

She blushed. “Well, he’s kind of big.”

Then I blushed. “Did he tell you who the dead guy is?”

“He did.”

Big D. An ex-boyfriend.

“And?”

“Well, you heard me, I promised not to tell.”

“Maria.”

“But I’ll tell you, okay.”

“Please. Who was the victim?”

“A guy named Peter Stiffle.”

“Stiffle?”

“Stiffle. Peter.”

“You’re sure? Peter Stiffle?”

“I’m not sure. Danny is sure.”

Big D was sure the cadaver had previously been a living, breathing Peter Stiffle.

Things just got weirder and weirder.