Deadly Catch, page 20
“McClellan, we finally got a make on the man you nailed. The guy’s name was Dominic Paccelli, from Baltimore.”
“Irish, huh?”
There was silence on the other end for a few seconds. Bocephus Pickron was one seriously humor-challenged individual. “Ever hear of the Abernathy family, McClellan?”
No bells rang. “No, should I have?”
“Abernathy and Sons; big seafood business in the Chesapeake Bay area. Been around for damn near a hundred years. Word is that Frank Abernathy made the family fortune in bootleg whiskey during Prohibition. Back in the day he had ties all along the Atlantic Seaboard. He was even rumored to’ve rubbed noses with the Kennedy family now and then.”
I let out a whistle. “So, like father, like son, and so on.”
“Yeah. They’ve even got a couple of lobbyists still working the Hill in DC.”
“Promoting fresh, homegrown seafood over the imported stuff, I suppose?”
“That’s the official line, but who knows what they’re really buying with their pocket stuffing.”
“And this Paccelli guy was working for the Abernathy family? Funny, he didn’t strike me as being much of a lobbyist.”
Pickron snorted, the closest thing to a laugh I’d heard from him except for his slipup the night of the bust. “I think he intended to stuff you with something besides money.”
My turn to laugh. “Good one, Sheriff. But why the hell would the Abernathy family send a couple of goons after me?”
Pickron grunted. “My guess is, they thought you were working for somebody higher up the food chain.”
“Yeah? Well, my guess is a certain local somebody around here set the hounds on me. I won’t mention any names, but his initials are Benjamin Merritt.”
“Most likely, either him or Clayton Barfield. Neither one’s spilling the beans. They value their own hides too much to finger the higher-ups.”
“Thanks for dragging me into this manure pile.”
“You’re welcome. Is Kate there?”
I felt my hackles rise. “Yeah, why?”
“Relax. She wasn’t at work today when this went down. Let her know we arrested Lamar Randall this afternoon at Gillman’s. Three counts of murder, or accessory to.”
I glanced at the camper where Kate was inside preparing a salad to go with our steaks. “Three counts? Who?”
“I’m getting to it. My sister’s still drying out at the psych ward,” he said. “Once most of the shit was out of her system, she broke down and confessed that George didn’t commit suicide after all. She’s pretty much a basket case right now.”
“But what about the autopsy and forensics report?” I checked the steaks and flipped them over. “You said everything pointed to it being a suicide.”
Pickron let out a weary sigh. “It’s complicated.”
“I’m listening.”
“Because of her hatred for Brett, Marilyn really believed he was responsible for Maddie’s death. But later on, when Brett failed to show up, she started to have doubts. In her grief and drunken fog, she was convinced that George was after Maddie’s money; she thought he wanted Maddie out of the picture so he could get his hands on everything. So, she spiked George’s bourbon that evening with the Xanax. When he passed out at his desk, Randall was waiting. He put on rubber gloves, placed the pistol in George’s hand, put his finger over George’s, and pulled the trigger.”
“Damn. So she believed George was responsible for Maddie’s death?”
“Yeah. But after George’s funeral, I told Marilyn about Maddie being moved and dumped in the bay after she was already dead. That’s when she realized Randall had double-crossed her and lied about Maddie and Brett. Randall tried to convince her it had all been a terrible accident, but Marilyn went berserk. You saw her throw the twenty-five grand at him.”
“The blood money she promised him for killing George.”
“Right. You had the scenario pretty much figured out, McClellan. Marilyn persuaded Randall to put the heat on Barfield to break him and Maddie up. He arranged to meet Barfield at the sinkholes with fifty grand in cash to buy him off. Barfield took the money and told Randall to thank Marilyn for the wedding gift. That’s when Lamar pulled the pistol and told him to leave Maddie alone, or else.
“They fought over the pistol, Maddie came running out of hiding and jumped on Lamar’s back and nearly gouged his eye out. During the struggle Maddie somehow fell into the sinkhole and landed on the ledge with a broken neck. About the same time the gun went off.
“Randall lost it. He never intended for anyone to get hurt, and now he had two bodies on his hands. He got rope out of his truck, tied a heavy rock to Barfield’s body, and dumped him in the sinkhole. He couldn’t leave Maddie’s body on the ledge, because someone was bound to find it sooner or later. He thought about sinking her body too, but then he came up with the idea of staging a boating accident. If Maddie’s body was found in the bay, and Barfield’s body never turned up, people would most likely assume they both died in a tragic accident.
“So Randall tied a rope to his truck hitch, lowered himself to the ledge, and tied the rope around Maddie’s body. He climbed out and pulled Maddie up. Then he wrapped her in a tarp and hid her in the back of his truck. He hid Barfield’s truck, and then drove to the island after dark and dumped her body in the grass flats behind the Trade Winds.”
“Let me guess. Lamar pocketed the fifty thousand and then told your sister that Brett and Maddie hightailed with it.”
“Right. Later, a friend of Randall’s who worked at Barfield’s helped him steal Brett’s boat out of a repair shed. Then Randall bashed in the hull and sunk it in The Stumps to make it look like a boating accident. That same friend followed Randall to north Georgia a few days later. They torched Brett’s truck and pushed it into the ravine.”
“I’m guessing Lamar knew about the rumor that Brett and Maddie had eloped to Georgia.”
“Yeah, probably from his daughter. It was all over the school.”
“Who’s the friend that helped him?”
“Guy named Pete Marcengill. We’re still looking for him.”
I stirred the pan of mushrooms, onions, and peppers simmering on the grill. “So, with the notes Maddie and Brett left for their families saying they were eloping to Georgia, no one had any reason to believe otherwise, at least for a few weeks. Then I came along and found Maddie floating in the bay. And when she was ID’d by the dental records, Sara Gillman confessed to Kate that the whole thing about going to Georgia had been a ruse to throw the families off the trail while they honeymooned in the Keys.”
“That’s the best we’ve been able to come up with.”
I took a swig of beer. “What’s going to happen to your sister?”
“I’ve been in touch with George’s lawyer in Tallahassee. Before you ask, the answer is yes. It’s the same law firm the Barfields used to represent Brett. He’s pretty sure we can plead temporary insanity. Like I said, Marilyn’s a mess right now. She’ll be confined to a mental ward for several months, and then probably do some time and be put on probation. A lot depends on the judge and what the shrinks have to say. We’ll have to wait and see.”
“And Lamar?”
Pickron grunted. “Second-degree or possible voluntary manslaughter for Maddie and Brett, but George was a murder for hire. He’ll be lucky to stay off Death Row.”
I let out a deep breath. “It’s a damn shame any of this happened.”
“He’s the one who planted the marijuana on your boat, you know.”
“Lamar?”
“Yeah. Randall was one of Brett Barfield’s regular customers. When you found Maddie’s body, he decided to use some of the Panama Red he bought from Barfield to put you on the hot seat. He planted the weed and made the anonymous call to Merritt.”
“Damn, all this time I thought it was Merritt who tried to set me up.”
Pickron let loose a genuine chuckle. “You had Merritt sweating bullets. He thought the big boys up north sent you down here to check on the two missing bales.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, think about it. Brett Barfield disappears and then you show up out of the blue and find Maddie’s body close to where one of the missing bales floated ashore. Then you decide to hang around the area a while. I’m telling you, McClellan, you had Merritt and Clayton Barfield both checking their backsides. And that was probably why Merritt or Barfield called in Abernathy’s boys.”
No wonder Ben Merritt had done such a quick background check on me after I’d discovered Maddie’s body. “So, I was supposed to be the alpha dogs’ hit man, huh? That’s funny.”
“Yeah. Merritt’s still not convinced you’re clean.”
I grabbed the tongs and moved the steaks to the warming rack. “How did Dave Reilly fit into this mess?”
“Simple. He was on Merritt’s dole. What better way to ensure safe delivery of your haul than to make sure that your man was on patrol any time a shipment was coming?”
Kate stuck her head out the door and held up a beer. I checked mine and signaled thumbs up. “Anything else?”
“Some good news, maybe,” Pickron said. “I’m recommending to the city council that J.D. Owens be awarded a medal of valor and a meritorious promotion to sergeant.”
“I appreciate that, Sheriff, he damn sure deserves it.” I was almost starting to like this guy.
“Of course, we’re talking city here, and I’m county. But I think they’ll see things my way.”
More than likely. During my brief time here I’d learned that Sheriff Bocephus Pickron has a lot of pull in these parts, city and county.
“There’s one more thing. I’m going to do my best to see that Tom Mayo’s name and record are cleared. And George’s lawyer’s firm has agreed to see if Mayo’s widow might be eligible for death benefits, pro bono.”
“Now that is good news.”
“By the way, I contacted the Sheriff’s Department in Wakulla County. They sent a team with the Forest Service to check out the area around Little Gator Lake you told me about.”
“They find anything?”
“You were right again. Barfield or somebody had been growing pot there. They found over a hundred plants.”
“What about the trip wires?”
“Old road flares, not even wired to go off. Strictly for show to scare people away from the area.”
“That’s good. At least Barfield wasn’t trying to kill anybody.”
“Yeah. Hey, McClellan, you want your job back?”
“No thanks.”
Later that evening Kate and I drove to the beach to walk off our steak dinner. The moon was high over the gulf, casting its shimmering light onto the water. A westerly breeze kept the early August night comfortable.
“I still can’t believe it about Lamar,” Kate said, holding her flip flops in one hand as the foaming surf rolled over our feet and then sucked at the sand underneath as it retreated from the beach. “Why on earth would he let that woman talk him into doing those awful things?”
“Love, money . . . who knows?”
“And Brett; he always seemed so nice. He treated Maddie like a princess. How could he turn out like that?”
I tightened my grip on Kate’s hand and guided her around a dead horseshoe crab that had washed onto the beach. “Pickron thinks Brett got greedy. Merritt said Brett was running the boat when they made the one-time haul of Panama Red. Brett stashed a couple of bales somewhere for safe keeping and tossed ’em overboard into the grass flats behind the Trade Winds. The next day when he went to retrieve the bales, he only found one. You know about the other bale that was found later, washed up on the island.
“And when the Panama Red started showing up around the area schools, it didn’t take much figuring on Ben Merritt’s part to realize why the inventory was a couple of bales short. Merritt delivered the organization’s message of displeasure to Brett, and that’s when he decided to skip town with Maddie and the money he’d made from the Panama Red. Problem was, Clayton Barfield wasn’t the kingpin of the organization; somebody up north was. So, when Brett decided to heist a couple of bales for his own little operation, he was into the big boys for a bundle. There was no way he could come up with that kind of money.”
Kate sighed. “So it wasn’t just a romantic elopement they had planned, was it? Brett was running away from trouble and dragging Maddie into it.”
“Yeah, but I believe he really did love Maddie, and because she was pregnant I think they planned on getting married soon. But before they could leave town, Brett and Maddie had their confrontation with Lamar, and that ended that.” I wasn’t convinced the marriage part was true, but for Kate’s sake it seemed like the proper thing to say.
Kate stopped. She wedged a toe beneath a live starfish that had washed ashore and flipped it back into the surf. “That’s why Lamar put Maddie’s body behind the Trade Winds, isn’t it? He wanted to throw suspicion off of him and make it look like her death was related to the drug smuggling. And that’s why he sent you there to fish, hoping you’d find her body. And then he told you to try The Stumps and sent you that message about staying out of the water, didn’t he? He wanted you to find Brett’s boat. Dang it, Mac, he was trying to throw the blame off of him and onto you the whole time.”
I pulled Kate close and gave her a big hug. “Come on,” I said, taking her hand and leading her back up the beach toward the truck. “We’ve got a trip to plan.”
Many thanks to Karen, the best wife, friend, beta reader, critic, and editor a guy could be blessed with, for all the many hours invested and words of encouragement; to Fred Tribuzzo of the Rudy Agency, my friend and agent, who always goes above and beyond the call of duty; to Edward Stratemeyer, creator of The Hardy Boys, and Franklin W. Dixon, who in his many guises first piqued my interest in mysteries and provided untold hours of adventure and pleasure to a young dreamer.
A native of Georgia, E. Michael Helms grew up in Panama City, Florida, an area renowned for having the “world’s most beautiful beaches.” Helms turned down a chance to play college baseball and joined the Marine Corps after high school graduation. He served as a rifleman with the Second Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment during some of the fiercest fighting of the Vietnam War, and was awarded the Purple Heart medal for wounds received in action. Helms’s memoir of Vietnam, The Proud Bastards, has been called “as powerful and compelling a battlefield memoir as any ever written . . .” and has been in print for over twenty years. Helms is also the author of the two-part Civil War saga Of Blood and Brothers, and he is working on future volumes of the Mac McClellan Mystery series. He is the father of two daughters, and “Granddaddy Mike” to grandsons Liam and Levi. He and his wife live in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Upstate of South Carolina. For more information, visit him online at www.emichaelhelms.com and at www.facebook.com/EMichaelHelms.
E. Michael Helms, Deadly Catch
