Dead Wake (The Forgotten Coast Florida #5) (2 page)

Maggie Redmond disconnected the call and stared through her windshield at the front of Sheriff Wyatt Hamilton’s sage-green cottage. The porch light reflected on the pavers leading to the front steps, the concrete still damp from a five-minute evening shower.

Through the open windows of her Jeep Cherokee, Maggie could hear the rustling of the palmettos on either side of the short gravel driveway. She sighed and tapped at Wyatt’s number on her recent calls list.

“Hey, where are you?’ Wyatt asked when the call connected.

“In your driveway,” Maggie answered.

“Excellent. Next you get to come inside.”

Maggie sighed. “I can’t. I have to go.”

“Usually you have to arrive before you can leave.”

“I realize that,” Maggie answered. “But William and Robert have a problem.”

“The flower guys?”

“Yes. Something about finding Lon Chaney in their wall.”

Maggie both watched and heard the front door open. Wyatt stood bathed in the light from his living room, wearing cargo shorts and a blue Hawaiian shirt, his cell phone at his ear.

“Junior or senior?” Wyatt asked her.

“They didn’t specify.”

“I’m pretty sure Lon Chaney’s out in California,” Wyatt said.

“Well, somebody dead, scary, and bad for business is in the wall at the flower shop.”

“James is on duty. Why’d Dispatch give it to you?”

“They didn’t. Robert called me himself.”

She could see Wyatt roll his eyes. “Did he forget the number for 911?” he asked.

Maggie gave Wyatt an exasperated face through her windshield. “Are you coming or not?”

She heard the sigh as she watched the shoulders slump.

“Yeah, yeah. Let me put real shoes on.”

Maggie hung up and watched him slip out of his flip flops and slide his feet into Docksiders, then close the door and head down the walkway toward her Jeep.

At six-four, Wyatt was imposing, but his loose-limbed gait, somewhat goofy sense of humor, and laughing eyes made him a favorite among the locals, both men and women. He’d been shot just a few months previously, and had undergone surgery and physical therapy for his hip, but he’d recently been able to give up his cane, and had only the slightest of limps.

Wyatt was Maggie’s boss at the Sheriff’s Office. Over the years he had become her closest friend and, over the last few months, something else they had yet to define.

He opened the passenger door and slid in, then slammed the door shut. “May I explain to you all of the ways that this event will not enhance our date?”

Now it was Maggie’s turn to roll her eyes. “Sure, why not?”

“Well, first of all, I wasted two hours this afternoon putting together the perfect slow dancing playlist on Spotify.”

“That’s sweet.”

“Yes, it was,” Wyatt said. “Additionally, there will no doubt be much less kissing at the flower shop than there would have been on my back patio.”

“No doubt.” Maggie stared back at Wyatt, who had raised his rather impressive eyebrows at her. “What? Are you expecting me to take some kind of responsibility for the fact that the flower guys have a dead body in their shop?”

“No, but I would like you to feel badly about the playlist.”

“I feel exceptionally bad about the playlist. What’s on it?”

“Well, some Civil Wars for one thing.”

“I love The Civil Wars.”

“I know you do. I also threw a little Ella Fitzgerald in there.”

“The big guns.”

“Precisely. And now it’s all for naught, since I generally do very little slow dancing at crime scenes.”

“Please accept my apology,” Maggie said.

“I would prefer not to,” Wyatt answered. “Why don’t I just call James and have him check it out? It’s his shift.”

“No.” Maggie sighed and her shoulders slumped a little. “I’m sorry, but I told them I would come.”

Wyatt stared at Maggie, and the frankness in his eyes made her suddenly aware of the smallness of the car, the faint scent of his cologne, and the slight tingling sensation in her chest.

“Well,” he said quietly, suddenly far more serious. “Then we should go ahead and have a nice kiss now.”

“We should,” Maggie answered. That tingling in her chest intensified as she watched Wyatt lean toward her. Once his mouth pressed onto hers, gently but firmly, the tingling was replaced by an odd pairing of peace and excitement. Maggie closed her eyes and fell into it, and experienced a feeling not unlike that of the first day in a new home.

After a moment, Wyatt pulled away and sighed, then broke the tension with a wink. “I bet right about now you’re wishing you’d let that call go to voice mail. As you should, on your way to a date.”

“I would love to have done that, but I didn’t,” Maggie answered. “Now I feel obligated to handle it. They’re pretty put out.”

“I’m a little put out, too,” he said.

“I know. The playlist.”

“And the salad.”

“You made a salad?” Wyatt’s favorite vegetable was Doritos. The fact that he’d handled produce was notable.

“Well, no. But I had a heck of a time opening the bag.”

Maggie shook her head and smiled as she shifted into reverse. “You’re such a toddler.”

“Am not.”

W
hen Maggie and Wyatt parked at the curb in front of the flower shop, the blinds were uncharacteristically shut and there was a “Closed” sign on the front door. Wyatt rapped on the door and, a moment later, fingers separated the blinds on the door and a pair of anxious eyes peered out at Wyatt and Maggie. A few seconds later, Robert opened the door.

“Hurry, come in,” he said in a near-whisper. He rushed them through the door, then closed and locked it. He and Wyatt raised their eyebrows at each other as Robert took in the Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts.

“What’s going on, guys?” Wyatt asked.

“Let me tell you what’s going on,” William snapped from over near the counter. “Somebody left their dead person in our wall.”

Wyatt and Maggie walked toward the back of the shop, with Robert trailing nervously behind them.

Maggie got her first look at the scene, and noted that they’d cleared the counter where the cash register sat and removed the work counter that had been against the wall behind it. The wall was now missing a good portion of its sheetrock, and there was a narrow, ragged hole in the brick beneath. Through the hole, Maggie and Wyatt could see the source of William’s agitation.

“Huh,” Maggie said after a moment. She set her red crime scene case down on the counter.

Wyatt’s upper lip tried to crawl up his nose, to block the smell of mold and age and something underlying them, something that had once smelled much worse.

“Have you touched it or moved it or anything?’ Maggie asked, staring at the remains.

“Well, I touched up his hair a little,” William said.

“Don’t be rude,” Robert said.

“I’m not being rude, I’m being upset.” William snapped. “When this gets out, the only business we’ll have is from the freaks and the corpse whisperers, and we’ll be eating ramen in the dark because we can’t afford groceries and electric.”

Wyatt took a digital camera out of Maggie’s tool kit as she pulled on a pair of gloves.

“It’s not that bad, guys,” Wyatt said. “Remember last year, when they found that dead clown in the walk-in cooler at The Driftwood? No big deal. A few weeks later everything was back to normal.”

“That was different. Everybody hates clowns,” William said. “This is a regular person.”

Maggie yanked her long, dark brown hair into a bun, then slipped a pair of light blue plastic booties over her shoes. As Wyatt grabbed some booties of his own, she walked around the counter to get a better look at the regular person in question.

Clearly it was a man and, equally clearly, he’d been dead for some time. Only a few thin tufts of hair remained, longish strands that started out some kind of strawberry-blond color, then went gray for several inches at the roots. The eyes were gone, for all intents and purposes, and the skin was dry and papery, like that of perfectly roasted chicken.

Maggie studied the body as she heard Wyatt shuffle around the counter. She stepped a little to the side as he started clicking away.

“What do you think, Lt. Redmond?” she heard Robert ask quietly behind her.

After a moment, Maggie answered over her shoulder. “Well, you’re right. He’s definitely dead.”

“This we parsed out on our own,” William said snippily. “We’ve watched every single episode of
Bones
.” He looked to Robert for confirmation. “Have we not?”

“Well, until Season Six. Then there was the thing.”

“Oh, yes. The Mr. Nigel Murray thing. We cut our ties.”

Robert snapped his fingers. “Like that.”

Maggie looked over at Wyatt to see if he had a straight face. Admirably, he did. He was focused on taking pictures of the body. She took a step closer to the wall and peered at the face. Up close, the smell was enough to elicit a gentle cough, but at this point in the body’s tenure, the odor could easily be mistaken for black mold. This was aided by the fact that there
was
black mold in the wall from the recent flooding.

She turned to look at William and Robert. “The wall was here when you bought the place?”

“Yes,” Robert answered.

“When was that?”

“1993,” William said.

“Ninety-two,” Robert countered. “Remember? Hurricane Andrew hit like three weeks after we moved up here.”

“1992,” William said to Maggie.

Maggie looked over at Wyatt. “So, this man has been here for at least twenty-three years.”

“We’ve had wine and cheese parties in here for crying out loud,” William said.

Maggie looked back at the body as Wyatt snapped some more pictures. This type of body was way beyond her expertise. As one of two full-time investigators for the Sheriff’s Office, she’d been extensively trained in crime scene investigation and gotten a good deal of training and experience in examining remains, but she’d never had to examine a body that had been dead for more than a year.

She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Larry Davenport, the county medical examiner.

“Who are you calling?” she heard William ask.

She looked over her shoulder at him. “The medical examiner.”

“We’re doomed,” he said.

“Done for,” Robert added.

“You’re not doomed,” Maggie said. “And I don’t have any choice. This is the procedure.”

“Can’t you guys take him wherever he needs to go?”

“What, in the back of my Jeep?” Maggie turned back around as Larry answered the phone. “Larry, it’s Maggie Redmond.”

“Good evening, Maggie,” Larry replied. “How may I help you?”

“We have a dead body at The Blooming Idiot,” Maggie answered.

“Goodness. It’s neither William nor Robert, I hope.”

“No, this has been here for a while. They found it in one of the walls.”

Larry was quiet for a moment. “Well, that’s curious. Let me call a crew and I’ll be there in a few moments.”

“Do me a favor and come through the alley, okay?”

“We can do that.”

Maggie said goodbye and disconnected the call. When she looked over her shoulder, William and Robert were looking at her like she’d just kicked their new kitten.

“Guys. This is the way we have to do things. I can’t just sneak him out of here for you. I can’t touch him at all until Larry signs off.” Maggie sighed. “It’s not like everybody won’t know about it by morning anyway. The newspaper’s a block away.”

“That ferret-faced Woody Dumont,” William said, meaning the newspaper’s perpetually agitated editor. “He’s going to think it’s his birthday. He loathes us.”

Wyatt spoke into his own phone. “Hey, Carol. I need a cruiser over here at The Blooming Idiot to secure a crime scene. Just one cruiser, and tell them to skip the lights and sirens. Time is not of the essence.”

He hung up and looked over at the flustered florists. “Why don’t you guys go home? It’ll be easier if you’re not in the way. I can come over there and ask you some questions when we’re done here.”

William and Robert looked at each other, then back at Wyatt.

“How long will you be here?” Robert asked.

“I don’t know. An hour, two?”

William leaned over and whispered something to Robert, who whispered something back. Then he held out his hand and Robert dug a set of keys from his pocket and handed them to him. William held them out to Wyatt.

“You’ll lock up?”

“Yeah, sure,” Wyatt answered as he took the keys.

“Make sure they zip him up tight in one of those bags,” William said.

“They will,” Wyatt answered, frowning.

“If they get any of his flotsam or jetsam on our new bamboo floor, I’ll throw myself in the street,” William explained firmly.

“No flotsam or jetsam,” Robert repeated for clarity.

A few minutes after Wyatt scooted the men out the door, Larry Davenport arrived, tattered black medical bag in hand, and picked gingerly through the bricks to stand in front of the wall.

Larry was somewhere in his seventies and well over six feet tall, but built like a Sandhill crane. With his carefully combed tuft of white hair and his black plastic glasses, he always put Maggie in mind of a science teacher from some 1950s movie.