Octopus Alibi (7 page)

“It’s not just this job,” I said. “I kiss off this one, I lose a client. It’s a lot of jobs and money in the next few years.”

Sam nodded and sat back. “I’m an asshole for asking.”

“I feel like an asshole for turning you down.”

“Can you check for messages?”

Truth time. “I don’t like the sound of it. What happened to questions with answers?”

He ignored me. “If I have to be found, I want someone to know my last location. That would be you.”

“They use ‘found’ when a body’s discovered.”

“Whatever,” he said. “How you fixed for cash?”

“A couple grand in checking.”

Sam pointed to the envelope. “It’s my personal bail-bond fund.”

“I can’t carry this to Grand Cayman.”

“Leave it here. You got a bank box?”

I nodded.

“Perfect. If I thought I needed you on six-hour notice, I wouldn’t do it. It’s good enough that we keep a regular link, same time of day, every day.”

“Where you going first?”

“I called my sisters. They remember old photos of Lorie with friends in bars where she hung out. I think I still have the last couple of letters she sent. Maybe I can dig through some boxes, pull ’em out, find a lead or two. I’ll go up there, check into a motel, rent a post office box so my sisters can send me pictures and addresses and names of roommates.”

“Can I ask, as a sympathetic friend, why you’re doing this?”

“Detective Marlow wasn’t there to talk about fishing or boat motors or newspaper pictures. He was sounding me out, sizing me up. He wouldn’t do that unless he had some kind of follow-up. I don’t know why he asked me not to snoop, and that troubles me. Also, I think my sisters and I are guilty of neglect. We didn’t owe Lorie much more than keeping in touch and, most of the time, with her moving place to place, she made that a task. Most of the time she made friendship a task. Even so, we weren’t much good for it when we knew how to find her. Since she vanished, none of us has put much effort into tracking her down. We let it slide. Lorie was her own kid and had some goofy ideas about sibling rivalry and parental neglect, so there was always the chance she disappeared on purpose. Maybe we figured that chasing after her would amount to invading privacy, going places it wasn’t our business to go. Now it’s a different deal.”

“Seeing the dead stranger multiplied the guilt?”

“Getting that call this morning jacked the guilt. The dead stranger made me promise my sister better treatment. You want another beer?”

“Still working this one.”

We sat on the porch another fifteen minutes without speaking. It was a perfect night for open windows, a breeze, low humidity, but a neighbor’s air conditioner cycled on and off every few minutes. A gaggle of bicyclists on South gabbed loudly, one exclaiming, “Oh, my Gawd,” four times before they rode out of earshot.

Sam said, “I don’t want to be rude, but I hear my bed calling. You want to sit here and relax, I’ll give you another free beer.”

“My bed calls, too,” I said.

I snapped Sam’s gate and started back to Camille’s for my bike. I had a million things to do, with thirty hours before my flight south. I patted my pocket to make sure I still had Sam’s ten grand.

*   *   *

One message waited at the house. Duffy Lee Hall, on a problem with two of the film rolls. “It doesn’t look like your work, Alex. It looks like a mild wide-angle lens, with a light leak. I can salvage most of these, but they’re fogged and it won’t be pretty.”

The boat team member would be disappointed to learn that his waterproof camera wasn’t anything proof. I didn’t want to be attached to that problem. I decided to let Duffy Lee break the news to Dexter Hayes in the morning.

6

I
WAS AWAKE MOST
of the night, wide awake after five
A.M.
with my head in an old Elmore Leonard book. I worried for Teresa’s safety, and fought an urge to bike around town looking for the yellow BMW. My gut analysis was that I didn’t trust Whitney Randolph, so I didn’t trust Teresa in his company. But I feared if I found her and all was innocent, she would end our relationship out of embarrassment on short notice. My consoling thought was that there had been dozens of nights in past months when we hadn’t slept together. If she had seen other men, I never would’ve known. I had never felt betrayed, and after all that time, she had moved in with me. Common sense said that, if she had other interests, she’d have found a place of her own. Yet another voice warned that Randolph was a fresh interest who had shown up just as Teresa became my housemate.

The rising sun grayed the sky. I knew I’d be worthless for the day ahead. I closed my book and began a must-do list, including stashing Sam’s “king” grand and pulling my passport from the safe-deposit box. I wanted to buy a new backpack-style tote and a tripod carrying case. I needed two or three decent dinner shirts.

My brain stumbled when I attempted to prioritize the list.

She arrived in a cab a few minutes after six, in unwrinkled clothing. She walked in sober, bleary-eyed, biting her upper lip, looking defiant and guilty. She wanted to have the first word, but it wouldn’t come. All she could do was shrug, look sheepish, show me the hint of a teardrop, and disappear into the bathroom.

I waited in the rocker. My mind stayed blank out of fatigue. I sensed no inner guidance. I didn’t know whether to be patient or defiant myself. She came out wrapped in a beach towel, carrying her soap and brush.

Eye to eye, we shared a moment of silence.

I said, “This is a guy you used to work with?”

“Not exactly.”

I had phrased my question to nudge her toward the truth. I’d hoped for a different answer. It was my turn not to respond. I walked to the kitchen and began the coffee ritual that had kicked off many more pleasant mornings. I liked equal amounts of Folgers, Bustelo Cuban, and Starbucks. The blend offered flavor, kick, and geography. Just like Key West.

Teresa stood just outside the kitchen. Her defiance had returned. “Alex, if you can’t handle answers, don’t ask questions. What am I supposed to say, Whit and I have a ‘past,’ or some other word for it?”

“I could’ve stood the truth the first time through.”

“Think about your friend Buffett’s song. What is it, ‘Pre-You’ that talks about the people we used to date?”

“Date?” I said. “How about ‘boink,’ or some other useless euphemism, some other word for it?”

“I think the lyrics suggested that previous lovers were stepping-stones to where we are now.”

“How previous are we talking? I thought you majored in communications in college.”

“We are not talking, we’re arguing,” she said. “I didn’t major in fucking, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, I meant what I said. Timely info, without circular talk.”

“Your directness is not reading well. And I wasn’t fucking all night. I was talking and listening, and if we don’t drop it now, we’ll be very sorry.”

“If we drop it now, other arguments will take its place.”

“Okay, I’ll get a condo. I don’t need charity. I don’t need free rent. I make my own money.” She started for the backyard shower.

“You need some rest?”

“I’ll clean up and go to work. I’ll be fine.”

“We were going to have coffee on the porch this morning.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said. She looked at the porch, through the screens at the quiet lane. “I still want to do that. I’ve wanted to do that every morning.”

Ten minutes later, again wrapped in the beach towel, she combed out her wet hair.

I poured two cups. “Last night you thought it might be murder.”

She lifted her brush and nodded. “It’s too simple. Something’s not right.”

“But you didn’t say that to Dexter?”

“Or to anyone else, either. They’ve all got their heads set on suicide. But I swear, the vibes inside that house were way off tune.”

“When did you go in?”

“After the
Herald
left,” she said. “One of the commissioners wanted to console Yvonne. I went in, too, to express my sympathy.”

“Had you met Yvonne before?”

“No. And she sure wasn’t what I’d expected.”

“What was wrong?”

“She acted like she didn’t need consoling. She kept looking outside, at the officers in the mangroves, like she was afraid they were going to find something. I don’t know what, his scalp or something. I mean, how would you find anything? There’s so much crap in there, dead branches, leaves, who knows what. But that’s how she looked. Like they were bothering her, she didn’t want them to find a thing. She wanted them to go away. You were out there taking pictures, and she looked like she wanted you to leave, too. I finally decided she wanted me to go away, too.”

“So you left?”

Teresa shook her head. “I asked if she had a place to go, or someone to stay with her for a few days. I was thinking she didn’t want to hang around the scene of her husband’s bloody suicide, which I thought made sense.”

“And she said…”

“She said, ‘Hell no. This was always my house, and I’m moving back in.’”

“People grieve in different ways,” I said. “Maybe she hated the guy. Maybe she’s happy he’s gone. It doesn’t mean foul play.”

Teresa stared at me. I felt as if she were looking through my eyes, into my thoughts, to judge me the way she had judged Yvonne Gomez. “You’re a man,” she finally said. “You’re allowed to think like a man.” She took a long brush stroke through her hair. The towel fell away from her breasts, the cold air touched her nipples. She covered herself, then said, “Let me call this one, okay? It was worse than strange. She can’t move in, anyway. It’s still a crime scene, without a crime.”

“Are you going to say something to Dexter today? You want me to give you a little boost, advice on how to phrase it?”

She shook her head. “I was hoping you’d ask around, see if anybody had a problem with the man. I mean, you’ve done things in the past year or two, figured out those scams, those other murders. You’ve helped the police find some evil bastards.”

“It’s not my job to fight for truth, justice, and the American way.”

“It was when you were in the Navy,” she said.

Where had that come from? I couldn’t recall ever discussing my Navy years with Teresa. “That was my job description then,” I said. “I’m not in the service now. I’m not a cop, and I don’t have to carry the crimes of Monroe County on my back. I’m worn out from the past couple of years of getting sucked into one shit storm after another. What do cops call burnout?”

“Burnout. When nobody’s around they call it dirtbag overload.”

“I’m suffering their occupational depression, and it’s not my career. For a dead friend, like Naomi, if she had died that way, I might feel compelled to dig. I don’t know why Steve Gomez shot himself, and I don’t know if anyone else shot him. He had friends, and I wasn’t one of them. I didn’t dislike him, or anything like that. I simply didn’t know him well. If I ever drank a beer with him, it was only because he and I were in a bar at the same time. We never met to have a few. He wasn’t a tight part of my life. He was mayor of a place where I pay taxes.”

She stood and tightened the towel around her, as if now not wishing to have me see any part of her unclothed. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

So much for coffee every morning.

“Look,” I said, “just because I’m not into it doesn’t mean I won’t help. If you’ve got a hunch, turn yourself into a steel trap. Keep your eyes open and notice everything. Remember it all, but don’t write it down at work. If you want help, okay. But I’m going to be your admin assistant, not your deputy.”

Teresa didn’t loosen her grip on the towel, but her mouth twitched. “If I need help, you’re going to be in Grand Cayman. Thanks for the offer. And have a nice trip.”

She went to work, I finished the coffee, and I wondered why I had blown off her suspicions. A week earlier I would have taken them as gospel. I would have marched to Dex Hayes, embellished her argument with a theory or two of my own, and pitched evidence no matter how circumstantial. To advance my bullheaded cause, I would have challenged Dexter’s abilities as a detective and a human being. I hadn’t done any of that.

Instead, I had found fault with Teresa’s behavior of the past fifteen hours. I had ignored the stresses of her past few days. She had vacated her condo, stored her furniture, moved her belongings to my house, and dealt with a media crush because of Steve Gomez’s position in the community. She had capped it by doing a poor job of juggling her gentleman friends. A charitable person would anticipate and forgive her neurotic impulses and views.

An objective and selfish person would ignore her.

The half gallon of straight caffeine failed me. I reclined on my bed to think out my day ahead, fell asleep, and was wakened by pounding rain. Thousands of ball peen hammers pounded my tin roof while someone slapped the yard with flat rubber paddles. There was no lightning, no thunder. Only percussion. I leaned off the mattress to look out the bedroom door. Slivers of sun shone through the living room blinds. I threw off my sheet, went to the main room, watched pouring rain form puddles and reflect sunlight. When it stopped, the humidity would skyrocket, and the air would weigh more than wet towels. Unwaxed cars and corroded tin shingles would look fresher. It would be a three-T-shirt day.

In that short nap, dreams had bounced in my head. I had been in Naomi Douglas’s bedroom only once, to help hang a framed watercolor above her headboard. I had hoped several times that she had shown me the room as a subtle invitation. I’d never acted on those hopes. In my dream a woman’s body lay in repose, in that room. Her face had been Julia Balbuena’s, a former lover who’d been murdered up the Keys two years ago. In the dream her face had been blue, as it had been when I had arrived to take photos for the sheriff at Bahia Honda. Unsuspecting and unwarned, I had recognized her corpse, had identified her to the deputies.

Not a nightmare, but the beginning of one.

I fled to my backyard shower where I searched for tokens, figments of reality. I noted the beginnings of a wasp’s nest. One more thrill for my new roomie. I found her pastel-handled shaver hung on a teak peg. I would have to inform Teresa that a razor left outside in Key West would grow hair of its own, would rust in minutes to a glistening copper-hued wedge of iron oxide. It was time for WD-40 on the door hinges. Time to clean the showerhead so its spray would go to the pits and not the eyeballs. I made mental plans to scrub the floor slats and varnish the inside of the door, and find a new soap holder …