The Quick Adios (Times Six) (23 page)

“You’re sure it was a client?” I said.

“She made three trips back to her car to carry in cleaning gear.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “You were challenged by the deputies that watch her?”

Wiley shook his head. “Didn’t happen. I rode my bike down that block twice. Then I sat on the porch of a closed-up home across the street and down a couple houses. Except for a mother with two kids headed for the library and typical traffic, there was no sign of humans—walking or in parked vehicles.”

“Why do you think you screwed up?”

Tanner picked up the story. “Ocilla never came out,” he said. “Wiley called me to come and help. My first task was to look for the surveillance deputies. I didn’t see anyone, and we thought, if they were hidden somewhere on the block, why weren’t they worried, too? If she had come back out, we would try to follow her to her next job and start to fill out that client list you want so bad. We took turns riding our bikes and walking on William Street, but she never appeared. Her Honda never moved.”

“Maybe she saw one of you and outwaited you both,” I said. “Or fell asleep and is just now waking up?”

“I rang the damn doorbell,” said Dubbie. “I was going to pretend I was trying to buy a sewing machine advertised in the paper. No one came to the door. I walked around back and knocked on the door. No answer, but I checked and it was unlocked. Let’s just say I found all of her cleaning gear and confirmed her absence. Then I saw the gate in the back yard fence. It opens to the yard behind that one, leads to a house on Elizabeth Street.”

“The Honda Element?”

“It was still parked on the street when we gave up and came home,” said Tanner. “Our problem is we don’t know whether she spotted Wiley and he scared her off, or she planned to split before she even went to work. I mean, the house had an escape hatch, that gate in the rear fence.”

“You think she planned ahead, chose that William Street house on purpose?”

“Logical,” said Dubbie. “It was pure luck that Wiley saw her, so she probably wanted to ditch the deputies.”

“But they weren’t there,” I said.

“Not in the two hours we were around,” said Fecko.

Tired of standing, I sat in one of the living room chairs. “Go back to page one,” I said. “What inspired you to go to the library, to look into Ocilla’s background?”

“Another touch of good luck,” said Tanner. “A friend of mine knows a woman named Janice who takes care of rich people’s homes. It’s the same kind of service that Ocilla’s little company, ACXX, provides, except that Janice has been on the island for thirty years and has a great reputation. It went from there.”

“From there to where?”

“She agreed to talk with me, but refused to name names. She admitted that ‘a few’ customers had hired her after firing Greg and Ocilla. They all fired ACXX because of ‘trust’ issues. Some of the words that Ocilla’s former clients used to describe her were con artist, hooker and old-fashioned grifter. One said that Ocilla tried to steer her toward an investment counselor. Turned out the guy had a shady past.”

“Caldwell?”

Dubbie shook his head. “I asked. Janice wouldn’t say, but she didn’t act like she recognized his name.”

“Question?” said Wiley.

“Fire away.”

“You’ve wanted her ACXX client list from the first day of this mess. What are you thinking of doing with it, once we find it?”

“I know where you’re going with this,” I said. “You want to break the news to me that Liska has the entire list because his men have been following Ocilla.”

Once again I inspired silence in the room.

“I’ve lived in town for a long time,” I said. “I thought that if I knew someone on the list, that person might open up to me more readily than to a cop. What I want is insight to why Pulver was killed. Knowing motive might help lead us to a murderer. Identifying his murderer might lead us to the person who killed Teresa Barga. That’s the crime I want to solve. Greg and Ocilla are my route markers.”

“That answers my question,”said Wiley.

“Good,” I said. “Now what else?”

“More on Ocilla,” said Wiley. “Maybe this more than Janice inspired my trip to the library. I told you four days ago that Ocilla’s not a valid Hispanic first name.”

“It’s a town in Georgia.”

“And now we know that that’s her home state. Playing the source of her first name, I found the web site Georgia Felon Search and paid their fifteen buck fee.”

“Instantly traceable,” I said. “You put it on a credit card.”

“Except the cops get that info for free,” said Wiley, “so they’re unlikely to come across my transaction. Or even think to look for it. Anyway, you can search by known aliases. Her real name is Ameebah Dobbins, also known as BeBe.”

“Ameebah?” I said.

Wiley spelled the name for me. “There are people making babies in this nation who don’t know about dictionaries.”

“But, Ameebah?”

“Her mother probably heard the word in class the day before she dropped out of school.”

“BeBe had a real felony?”

“Ameebah boogied out of south Georgia in 1999 after serving almost five years for first degree cruelty to a child.”

“What form of abuse?” I said.

“Malicious and excessive mental and physical pain. Beating, biting, starving and isolation. Ameebah claimed she did it to make her daughter more tough.”

“Where is that poor child today?” I said.

“No surprise, on Facebook, with no hometown listed,” said Wiley. “I found a note posted by Angel Baby Dobbins that said, ‘If you ever see my unnatural mother, who now calls herself Ocilla, kick her in the pee hole for me. Tell her it’s a love tap from her little Angel.’”

“And that’s it?” I said.

“Yep, it is. No links to Ocilla, so she must not worship on the social network.”

“Links to and from Angel Baby’s friends, nothing?”

“Zip. End of story,” said Fecko. “Or all we know so far.”

Dubbie raised his hand so I could call on him.

“Two other things that Wiley discovered,” he said. “Your new customer Beeson? His late ex-wife owned the building you photographed.”

That explained Beeson’s skimpy knowledge about the real estate broker’s selling strategies.

“What else?”

“The late Amanda was his second wife.”

“Damn, that was never mentioned,” I said. “How long ago was his first?”

“Twenty-one years ago this month his first wife was murdered, but he was not a suspect. He was in Costa Rica when she was killed. One of the investigating cops, a veteran Bradenton detective, got his ass in a sling because of a wisecrack he made to a reporter. He said that she might have brought some side action to the house while her old man was out of the country. The reporter printed it, and the cop was forced into retirement.”

I was inside the home of two former street people, learning background facts late in the game. I felt an odd vertigo, a disorientation. I felt like I needed a blackboard or a huge dry-erase white board to diagram the week’s events. An old college friend used to say at crowded parties, “You can’t tell the players without a seating chart.” Out of all the confusing pairings and break-ups and hookups, I needed one that was three-dimensional. My brain was failing to sort and keep track.

“This is a lot to absorb,” I said.

Wiley patted himself once, solidly, on the shoulder. “All in a day’s work.”

“This twenty-one-year-old murder, did you find an old news item on the web?”

“I printed it out,” said Wiley. “It’s back in the office.”

Dubbie pointed. “Last door on the left.”

Their office was a geek’s dream. A large iMac, two new laptops, two external hard drives and a Canon scanner-printer occupied a sheet of plywood. Their “desk” was laid across a pair of short file cabinets. A cheap, assemble-yourself bookcase was filled with Keys-related reference books, old phone directories and software boxes. Their office chairs probably cost more than the rest of the furniture in the house. A large cork bulletin board held a scattering of Office Max receipts and three-by-five cards covered with cryptic notes. Most surprising was the five-foot tall safe.

I knocked on its door. “Weaponry?”

“Wardrobe, for now,” said Tanner. He turned the massive handle and eased open the safe. Inside was a collection of shirts and trousers that a Salvation Army collection center would quietly stuff under the table and send off to the Dumpster. The clothing was clean, however, and wrinkled but hung on hangers. “We’ll adjust our storage should we acquire some firepower.”

Above the computers was an Internet printout of four scruffy-looking gentlemen “Wanted” by the sheriff’s office.

“We get around in this town,” said Dubbie. “We see all kinds. We also see more clearly than citizens who don’t take the time to look at faces.”

“These people aren’t just deadbeats or stupid or down on their luck,” said Wiley. “Look at this guy, he’s still a kid. Aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. And this guy. Possession of a weapon by a convicted felon, firing a weapon in public and carrying concealed. Don’t get ahead of him in line at the grocery store. They’re all scummy louts and, if we see one of them, it can’t hurt to butter-up the big boys.”

I stepped over to the bookcase. “What’s this?”

“It’s exactly what it appears to be,” said Fecko. “A book.”

“The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Private Investigating?”

“You will note,” he said, “that it stands among a number of fine books in our growing professional library. It’s a valid source for knowledge and research. If we questioned its validity because of its title, we wouldn’t be true investigators.”

“Can I use your laptop for a minute?” I said. “I need to send an email.”

“Use mine,” said Tanner. “It’s already booted up.”

I sat, opened the browser and entered my access password. I had to think for a moment to recall Detective Steffey’s email address. He hadn’t mentioned Beeson’s first wife, and I thought it was an important fact to pass along. I wrote a quick note, short, to the point.

Just before I clicked the
SEND
button I said, “Wiley, have you got that old news article?”

He pulled it from a stack of loose papers next to the printer, handed it to me. I read the first paragraph then jumped to the ending. I was glad that I looked. The veteran cop who had blabbed to the reporter was Detective Frank Steffey. He could have been an uncle or a much older brother, but I would bet that Frank was Glenn Steffey’s father. Glenn didn’t need me to remind him of that earlier case.

Jumping to the present tense, I had to wonder how it would affect his handling of Amanda’s murder.

I quit the webmail program, closed Dubbie’s laptop then noticed a photograph on the desk. It was a picture of Ocilla’s Honda Element printed on copy paper.

“I forgot to mention that,” said Wiley. “There’s the house she disappeared into, and that’s her Honda where she left it.”

The picture was pixilated and the color too blue. But there was something in it I wanted to see more clearly. “Have you got this image in one of these computers?”

Wiley waved me out of his seat, sat and opened an iPhoto folder of pictures from William Street. Parked two cars in front of the Element was a bronze Hyundai four-door. I tapped my finger on it.

“If you see this,” I said to Wiley and Dubbie, “and I think it’s a rental car, try to get a tag number. It was parked on Seidenberg yesterday across from her house.”

“Do what we can,” said Tanner.

“If you could call me a taxi, I’ll go away and let you keep working,” I said. “I’ll come back for the motorcycle when the rain stops. How do we stand for the time clock and expenses?”

My question cost me a Franklin. I gave them the names Luke Tharpe and Edwin Torres, but asked Dubbie to keep digging on Darrin Marsh. “Before I forget,” I said, “is there any way to remove Sheriff Liska’s connection to Emerson Caldwell from the online search engines? That one feat could be worth endless brownie points.”

Their faces widened into broad conspirators’ grins.

“Anything yet on Anya or Tonya and Sonya, the Timber twins?” I said.

“We got three hits,” said Wiley. “Sonya works for Novak Hardwood Lumber in Leon County upstate. Anya Timber has a Longboat Key zip code. Tonya and Sonya graduated from a high school in Lake Forest, Illinois. I’ve just scratched the surface on that assignment. Should I make it a priority?”

“Get it when you can,” I said.

Dubbie’s phone began to buzz. He took the call.

Wiley offered to show me to the door. Out in the hallway, he pointed into a room on the right. “Walk fast here,” he said. “We call Tanner’s bedroom ‘Baghdad.’”

I ignored Dubbie’s minor slum but looked into the bedroom across the hall. It was clean, organized. Wiley looked ill at ease, perhaps embarrassed by his room’s meager decor, or still not used to be sleeping in a house rather than a tent.

“This is good for me,” he said. “I’m getting older and I was getting bitter. Nothing like a roof over your head to brighten your day.”

There were only two wall decorations, but they caught my eye. It was a shrine to the man’s former life. Fecko explained that a county official had taken the Polaroid photo of his old Stock Island campsite when the camp was active, during some bullshit campaign to rid the Keys of indigent hobos.

“That old tent of mine is the tarp we threw over your motorbike,” said Wiley.

Next to the picture was one of Wiley’s cardboard panhandling signs. The message in thick black ink said, “
HAVIN’ A NICE DAY? I’M NOT
.”

“Good sales pitch,” I said.

He shook his head. “It’s on the edge of self-pity, but I call it nostalgia.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over that,” I said. “Couple of hours ago, I swam in that muck myself. It’s therapeutic if you don’t overdo it.”

Wiley looked me in the eye. “It’s a damn good reminder of where I don’t want to go next.”

My phone buzzed. It showed
J BEESON
.

I took the call and waited on the porch for my cab.

“I have a favor to ask,” he said.

“First, Mr. Beeson, I have a question,” I said. “Why did you hire me for a job that any decent photographer in Sarasota could have done?”