I took her hand like a French count and kissed the back of it. Then I did my Maurice Chevalier impression. “
Mon cherie
, I am thinking we have the date for tonight,
non
?”
She pushed up from the sofa, fingering the buttons on her blouse, and gave me a coquettish grin. “Why don’t you join me in my boudoir,
monsieur
?”
22
The moment we met Harold Nixon, I saw why the pancake breakfast had appealed to him. He was built like an inflated version of Drew Carey. Dressed in a tan suit that might have provided enough material for a pup tent, Nixon had short brown hair, a round face, bright blue eyes and the friendly, open smile of a man who knew how to get along.
After we had introduced ourselves and were ushered to a table, Jill inquired about his teenage daughter.
“She’s a good kid,” Nixon said with obvious pride. “She’s doing pretty well in school, but she’s still got a lot to learn. Says she wants to be an engineer like her daddy. We’ll see.”
We all ordered pancakes. Jill and I chose the variety with pecans scattered over the top. Nixon chose the full breakfast, with three eggs, sausage, biscuits and grits in addition to pancakes. I looked at Jill and grinned, knowing what she was thinking—
There, but for the grace of me, goes you
. I hadn’t been quite that bad a year ago, but I was on my way.
“So what do you want to know about my old roomie?” Nixon asked. “What has Boz done?”
“To answer the second part,” I said, “we’re not sure, but it looks like there’s some question about whether he should have certified that balcony.”
With a twist of his mouth, Nixon said, “He’ll do his best to weasel out of it. You can count on that.”
“You think so? How?”
“Any way he can. If he can buy his way out, that would be the most likely route. He was always a bright guy, but he liked to do as little as necessary to get by. He used to pay other students to write essays and stuff like that.”
“Somebody described him as a spoiled brat,” I said.
“That’s probably as good a description as you could find. He had more clothes than he knew what to do with. Expensive TV and stereo. Tennis stuff, golf clubs, and, of course, a Corvette. He still drives one of those. Still plays tennis, too. I see his name occasionally on the sports pages. I think he’d like to be a pro. Old dad gave him whatever he wanted. Except for one thing.”
“What was that?”
“A private apartment.”
“Why didn’t he get that?”
“I think his parents hoped having another student rooming with him would have sort of a moderating effect on his ego.”
“Did it?”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I guess it’s hard to be humble when you have it all.”
“Humility is not a word in Boz Farnsworth’s vocabulary. He didn’t lord it over me so much—I always just laughed him off. When you’re a fat kid, you learn to take the guff or you go into seclusion. But Boz enjoyed putting people down at every opportunity.”
“How was he when he got out of school? Did you have any association with him afterward?”
The waitress had brought our coffee, and Nixon took a big gulp, then set the cup down quickly. “Wow, that’s hot.” Wiping the back of a large hand across his lips, he looked at me thoughtfully. “After school? I kept up with him the first couple of years, I guess. With his dad’s help, he got on with a good engineering firm. I figured my chances would be best with the state. Boz wasn’t in that job long, though, before he quit and went with an
Alabama
company looking for engineers to give them a
Florida
presence.”
“They must have offered him a better deal,” I said.
“You can lay odds on that. Boz was always for sale to the highest bidder.”
“A man who likes money?”
“The more he gets, the more he wants.”
“Was he the kind of guy who wasn’t too concerned about where it came from?”
“Yeah. That’s my problem, I guess. I’ve always had too many scruples. I want to be sure everything’s on the up-and-up before I buy into something. I don’t think Boz ever worried about things like that.”
Jill had been silent up to now. Of course, she never had a chance to get involved in any of my cases during the OSI days, but I had talked things over with her more often when I was with the DA’s office. And now that I was strictly on my own, I think she was enjoying the opportunity to take part in the action, as I had let her do at the dress shop.
“Do you know anything about his girl friends, Mr. Nixon?” Jill asked.
He grinned. “With that car and a full wallet, he always had plenty of them. I’ve heard he still likes to tour the bars looking for a pick-up, but as for any...no, I take that back. The last time I ran into him was about five or six months ago. When I mentioned my teenage daughter, he laughed and said kids weren’t for him, no woman was going to drag him to the altar. But then he told me there was one he might not mind trying it with. Didn’t say who, just that she was involved in real estate.”
I reached under the table and squeezed Jill’s hand. I had been trying to think of a subtle way to broach that subject. She had barged right in and made it pay off. Maybe Sherry Hoffman was not who Farnsworth had been referring to, but there was also an odds-on chance that she was.
“I guess you deal with a lot of contractors,” I said. “Ever hear of Tidewater Construction?”
“Did they build The Sand Castle?”
“Right.”
“Sorry. I deal mostly with road builders. I have a good friend in
Tallahassee
who could tell you something about them, though. He’s with the contractors licensing board.”
I accepted the offer and wrote down “Fred Rose” with a phone number at the state capital.
At that point, the waitress arrived to crowd our plates onto the table. For the next fifteen minutes or so, I watched in fascination as Harold Nixon devoured the array of food that sat in front of him. He polished off everything down to the last crumb of biscuit. By the time Jill and I finished our pancakes, we had witnessed a gastronomic tour de force.
I managed to get in a few more questions as we ate, but Nixon was too absorbed in his breakfast to provide anything else of significance. After thanking me heartily when we were leaving, he appeared to suffer a slight twinge of conscience.
“I hope I didn’t give the impression that I think Boz is a really bad guy, somebody with no redeeming qualities,” he said. “Actually, he can be quite charming and charitable, on occasion. Some years back, he invited my wife and me to dinner at his country club. We had a great time. Admittedly, the occasions don’t come too often.”
———
Inbound workers kept the traffic lively on the north side of
Pine Forest Road
and
Blue Angel Parkway
, but heading south we had to contend with nothing worse than a few school buses. As we drove along, Jill summed up what we had learned when she said, “Bosley Farnsworth is not someone you would want working against you.”
“True,” I said. “And Walt indicated he hadn’t treated Tim too kindly.”
She grinned. “But Boz is not without redeeming qualities.”
“Yeah. Taking his old roommate and spouse to the country club. Sounds like a guy showing off to somebody who refused to take him seriously in college. I’d say it’s about time to call on Mr. Farnsworth and see what he has to offer in his defense. But first, we’d better check and see if Walt has reported in.”
We turned onto
Sorrento Road
and soon passed the pair of strip centers that provided the last chance for groceries and other goodies before crossing over to Perdido Key. A few minutes later, we pulled into the parking area at Gulf Sands, where I noted my Grand Cherokee still numbered among less than a dozen vehicles outside our building. What a contrast to summertime, when the place would be teeming with all kinds of cars, vans, SUV’s and kids. Especially kids.
We got back a little before nine and found the message waiting from Walt in
Nashville
.
“Here’s the info on the two guys who departed,” he said. His voiced barked out from the answering machine tape. “The electrical engineer was Eric Jacobs. He’s originally from
Gulfport
,
Mississippi
. I called his home and talked to his wife. She says she was fed up with his drinking. When he told her he’d been fired, that did it. She told him to pack up and get out. Then she found he had emptied their bank account. Which wasn’t all that large to start with. She checked on their credit card and he’d screwed her again. Bought an airline ticket to
Honolulu
. That was on Tuesday.
“The draftsman was Oliver—goes by the name Ollie—O’Keefe. Came from
New Orleans
. Former address there was on
Carondelet Street
. Don’t have a number. His phone here has been disconnected. If you need anything else, call me.”
I jotted down the information on a small yellow pad I had used for notes on the Harold Nixon interview. Spotting the number in
Tallahassee
for Nixon’s buddy Fred Rose, I lifted the phone and punched it in.
When I got him on the line, I introduced myself and told him his good friend Harold Nixon had suggested I call. “He said you could give me a little information on Tidewater Construction, Incorporated.”
“No problem,” Rose said. “Give me a second to put the name in the computer.”
I could hear him punching on the keyboard. A few moments later, he said, “Tidewater Construction, Incorporated was chartered in
New Orleans
. It’s headed by Claude Detrich, also of
New Orleans
. The main office is currently in the Coastal Bank Annex in
Biloxi
.”
“Do you have any information on other officers of the corporation, or its owners?”
“Afraid not. But the Secretary of State’s office should have it. They’re required to register there. Want the number?”
I said I did, wrote down the number and thanked him for his help. When I called the office that handled registration of foreign (meaning out of state) corporations, a nice young woman advised that Claude Detrich was listed as president, Evan Baucus as secretary-treasurer. The major stockholders were given as Detrich, with a
New Orleans
address, Baucus and Perseid Partners, both of
Biloxi
.
Jill looked up from her book as I put down the phone. “You’ve been busy. Come up with anything interesting?”
“You be the judge. Tidewater Construction, it appears, is a subsidiary of the company that developed The Sand Castle, Perseid Partners. Detrich and Baucus are officers and also stockholders.”