Part 2 (1/2)

chapter four.

I drove into Apalachicola and found the sheriff's officea”a squatty yellow-brick building wedged between two Victorian homes that had been converted into offices for a few lawyers and accountants and a couple of real estate agents.

Inside at the front desk, a pleasant young woman wearing a telephone operator's headset and an overbite asked if she could help. I said I was hoping to see a deputy. She pushed a b.u.t.ton, waited, and spoke into her headset. A few seconds later, a friendly red-headed guy came through the door. He looked like he smiled a lot, and that's what he did as he introduced himself as Deputy Mickey Burns. He looked strong, and he had a scattering of faded-blue, Marine Corp tattoos competing for s.p.a.ce among a few hundred freckles and a carpet of reddish-blonde hair on his forearms. I told my rehea.r.s.ed story. He smiled some more and said, ”Let's go have a look.”

Twenty minutes later, we pulled onto the driveway of ”See Sh.o.r.e Cottage” in the deputy's patrol car and parked behind a white truck with a chrome toolbox installed behind the cab. Two five-gallon, plastic paint buckets lay on their sides in the sand and clover that made up the front yard. The deputy said, ”Looks like they're having some work done.” I agreed that it looked just like that. He thought for a few seconds, and asked, ”You think maybe your client saw some construction workers horsing around and got the wrong idea?”

”I guess you never know, but I don't think so. That really doesn't fit what my client told me.”

Deputy Mickey Burns exhaled through his nose, looked out at the water, and said, ”Well, let's go look around.” We both stepped out of the car into a bright spring day.

The cottage was a cla.s.sic Florida beach bunkera”concrete block, aqua-blue exterior, white asphalt roof, and, running along one side, a privacy wall constructed of decorative cement blocks turned on edge so that you could see through the inside pattern. A pair of mirror-image, oversized plaster casts of seahorses flanked the front door. The cottage sat at ground level and would violate every high wind and water damage construction spec on the books if it were built today.

Local law enforcement took the lead, and I followed. After banging on the aluminum doorjamb, the deputy pulled open the screen door and walked inside. ”Yo! Who's here?”

No one answered, but I could hear what sounded like an old Lynyrd Skynyrd song bouncing around some other part of the house. We walked down a short hall and into what seemed to be a bedroom. Drop cloths were draped over the furniture, the carpet had been pulled up, and two guys in shorts and sandals and not much else were working hard at brus.h.i.+ng white paint onto white walls. The deputy said, ”Can't y'all hear back here?”

At least that's what I think he said. All I heard was, ”Can't y'all he...,” before one of the painters yelled, ”s.h.i.+t,” and spun around, slinging a thick streak of white across his buddy's shoulder. The deputy held up both palms and said, ”Whoa. Nothing to get excited about here. We're just looking around.”

The jumpy painter smiled now and said, ”You scared the h.e.l.l out of us.”

The deputy said, ”Sorry about that. We knocked, and then I yelled for you in the front room there. I guess you couldn't hear over the music.”

The painter with a new white stripe on his shoulder didn't smile. He did walk over and flip off a paint-speckled boom box. The talkative one said, ”What can we do for you?”

The deputy introduced me to the two painters by name, which, even then, seemed like a bad idea. The one who was doing all the talking said ”Hey,” and gave their names: Tim and Sonny. My escort then explained that someone on the island had called me the night before and reported that they had seen some guys up to no good at See Sh.o.r.e Cottage. Tim, who was apparently the only one of the two with the gift of speech, laughed and said, ”Me and old Sonny here are generally up to no good alright.”

We all laughed a little, everybody except Sonny. Tim laughed because he thought he was funny, and the deputy and I laughed to be polite. The bare-chested, paint-spattered Sonny glanced furtively around the room while paint dribbled from the brush in his hand onto the bare concrete floor. Deputy Mickey said, ”I don't know if anything happened around here last night or not. And I don't think Mr. McInnes really knows either. He just had somebody...” The deputy turned to look at me. ”Was it a man or a woman? I don't even know whether to call 'em him or her, here.”

I stared at him for a couple of seconds while trying to decide why he would ask that in front of Tim and Sonny, whether it really made any difference that he had, and, finally, how much of a schmuck I would look like if I refused to answer. I said, ”A man. The client is a man.” And I said it after just enough pause and with just the right emphasis to look like I was completely full of s.h.i.+t The deputy looked a little confused, said, ”okay,” and went on talking to Tim and Sonny. ”Mr. McInnes' client says he saw three guys hauling a fourth guy around who looked like he was hurt. Said it was late last night sometime.”

Tim fixed his face into a look of concern, Sonny glanced around the room some more, and I was beginning to regret giving too many details to Deputy Mickey. Tim said, ”Me and Sonny worked here pretty late last night. We had to get the carpet up and out before we could start painting this morning. So we just kept at it until it was done.”

I asked why.

Tim said, ”Whatcha mean?”

”Why pull up the carpet? I mean, if the owner's going to keep it, you could just cover it with drop cloths like you did the furniture. And if you're planning to throw it out and put in new carpeting, why not just use the old carpet for a drop cloth and tear it up later?”

Tim looked theatrically puzzled. The deputy scrunched up his face in thought and said, ”Yeah. I don't know why we're that worried about the carpet. But what he says makes sense, if you wanted...”

Sonny, the mute painter, blurted out, ”It stunk.” We all looked at him. He had stopped glancing around the room and focused his eyes on mine. I liked it better when he couldn't focus. He looked a little nuts. ”We got it outta here 'cause it stunk. The roof musta leaked or something and got it wet. All I know is it smelled like ... it stunk when we come in to do the job. I told 'em I wasn't going to paint nothing until that rug was gone.”

Tim joined in, ”That's a fact, buddy. First thing we did was rip it up and get it out of here.”

Sonny continued to stare into my eyes. I asked, ”What happened to it?”

Tim said, ”Took it to the dump. Probably buried under a few tons of garbage by now. Don't know why you'd care, though.”

The deputy said, ”We're getting off the point here. All I want to know is if either of y'all saw anything last night or this morning that didn't look right, and if anybody else came with you or stopped by yesterday.”

Sonny resumed his wandering eyes act, and Tim said, ”Nope and nope. Just another job, Sheriff.”

”Deputy Sheriff.”

”Sorry. n.o.body got hurt around here that we know about, Deputy.”

Deputy Mickey thanked them and then, as if it were an afterthought, asked, ”Have you two got a contract or a work order or something like that from the owner for this work?”

Tim said, ”Yessir, we sure do. Out in the truck.”

The deputy asked if he could see it, and the rest of our little group left Sonny alone to continue his eye exercises. Outside, Tim lifted a metal clipboard off the truck seat, flipped open the cover, and handed it to Deputy Mickey. I read it over his shoulder. The only page in the clip was a work order from Dolphin Rentals, authorizing carpet replacement and new paint in the bedroom of one See Sh.o.r.e Cottage. The work order was dated two weeks earlier and signed by Billie Timmons, Agent.

Back at the sheriff's office, Deputy Mickey walked me to my car. I got in and rolled down the front two windows. He bent down, leaned two furry, tattooed forearms in the driver's window, and peered inside the Jeep. He smelled faintly of sweat and citrus aftershave. He said, ”Well, that looked like a wild-goose chase, but chasing wild geese is mostly what the job is about. You happy?”

I wasn't a d.a.m.ned bit happy, but I just shrugged and said, ”Sure. At least I can report back to my client. I'm sure he'll be relieved no one was hurt.”

Deputy Mickey said, ”Yeah, we can all be happy about that. Anyway, I was glad to help.” He fixed a rea.s.suring smile on his face and turned to walk away.

I asked, ”Does your department keep owners.h.i.+p records on the houses on St. George?”

Burns stopped and turned back. ”We probably got that information around somewhere. But, if you're a lawyer, you can find it as easy as I can by going by the courthouse.”

”I just thought you might be able to save me some time.”

Deputy Burns smiled again. Very nice. Very friendly. But we both knew he was done with me. Then he turned and walked inside the sheriff's building. I backed out and, once again, turned southeast toward St. George Island.

Back at the beach house, I discovered that Carli was gone. Susan had given her a ride to the restaurant so she would be there to help set up for the lunch crowd. In light of my unsettling encounter with Tim and Sonny, I wasn't happy about my new client running around the island unescorted. But Susan a.s.sured me that she had impressed on Carli the need to keep her mouth shut. Susan added, ”It's hard anyway to get Carli to say much of anything except just making small talk or, if she's really comfortable, maybe talking about being an artist one day. I think you learn early to keep secrets when you grow up in a family like hers.”

I asked, ”What kind of a family does she have? You've mentioned a couple of times that she's terrified about going home, but you've never said why.”

”I really don't know exactly. And I don't know why I tried to sound dramatic and sage about 'keeping secrets.' The whole thing sounds a little Barbara Walters, doesn't it?”

”It sounds like you're making it up as you go. If that's what you mean.”

Susan gave me a look. ”I just know that Carli's scared to death of having to go back. And I know it's not just some high school angst thing. And I know that she won't talk about it.” Susan paused and said, ”What did you find out at the sheriff's office?”

I told her. I recited my morning adventure and jotted down notes while the whole mess was fresh in my mind. Later, I would transfer the notes to my laptop, just as I did with every case, so they would be available for word searches and for preparing a chronology of the facts. While I was writing out a summary of my meetings with Deputy Mickey Burns and the painting duo of Tim and Sonny, Susan pulled out her yellow pages and looked up Dolphin Rentals, which turned out to be a small real estate company in Apalachicola. She punched in the number and asked for Billie Timmons. Ms. Timmons was not in the office and would not be back for another four days, but she did handle See Sh.o.r.e Cottage and had full authority to authorize normal repairs to the property.

Susan and I sat in her living room and looked at each other for a while. She was thinking. Finally, she said, ”Okay, what about the paint? They can't just slap some paint on the walls and cover up all traces of blood. I mean, I know real life isn't like cop shows on TV. But the police are more sophisticated than that, aren't they?”

”Sure they are. The cops could probably peel the walls and find some bloodstains between the paint layers. But they'd need sufficient probable cause to get a search warrant that would allow them not only to search the cottage but to also strip the walls looking for bloodstains. Which sounds like a good idea, except that a warrant that allows destruction of property is pretty hard to get. At a minimum, any judge would want an eyewitness before he allowed something like that to happen.” I stood and stretched out my back. ”I'm afraid something like that would take Carli coming forward and making a sworn statement.” Susan started to speak, and I said, ”And, even if Carli did that, we couldn't be certain the cops would find enough evidence to do anything. A little blood on the wall doesn't mean much without a body.”

Susan looked disappointed. ”We should be able to do something.”