Panic in the Panhandle, page 4
A gravel driveway led to a two-story clapboard farmhouse. A parking lot large enough to accommodate two dozen vehicles was situated in front of the building. The first floor served as the farm’s welcome center and business office. Rambo lived on the second floor.
My muscles started aching as my mind drifted back to the weekend Rambo, Wendell, and I had spread a new load of gravel to level out the parking area. That’s what friends were for, though.
There was no Mrs. Rambo or little Rambos. The man lived and breathed for his farm’s only commodity—alligators. One time, while I was helping Wendell load a new supply of hickory for his smoker, he told me that Rambo had been engaged to a beauty originally from Barbados. After a while, the woman realized, no matter what, she would always be second fiddle to Rambo’s gators. Rather than compete with a group of reptiles for the man’s love and attention, she returned to her island home.
The man had been single ever since, content with his status as the fourth generation in the Quigley family to run the enterprise.
I found him in his pole barn. He was mixing up a concoction of fishmeal and oil that he fed to his livestock. In the background, Alicia Keys sang about celebrating being on fire. My musical preferences leaned toward reggae. Rambo loved his pop.
With the music so loud, the only way I could get his attention was to hit Pause on the CD player sitting on a nearby shelf. It was either that or tap him on the shoulder and risk getting stabbed with the Crocodile Dundee–style knife he was using.
Prioritizing my personal safety, I went with the Pause-hitting route.
“Simpson.” Rambo wiped the enormous blade with a towel as he turned toward me. “Was beginning to worry you might not make it.”
“Never fear.” I held out the bag containing dinner. “Elmo is here, or at least food is.”
He laughed—a sound like a bunch of whiskey barrels rolling down a hill. Or what Santa Claus would sound like if he said ha, ha, ha instead of ho, ho, ho.
“A sense of humor in the face of impending doom. Proof you’re the man for the job. Give me a few minutes to give the kids their dinner.”
While Rambo attended to his congregation, I spread the meal out on a folding card table in the corner of the barn. As far away from the gator food prep area as possible. Thankfully for me, the aroma of the smoked ribs and chicken overpowered the not awful, but not exactly pleasant, odor of the gator food.
I went to my truck to fetch a growler of pale ale I got at the Riptide. When I returned, Rambo was washing his hands in the barn’s utility sink. Between the fridge, microwave, and sink, about the only amenity the barn lacked was a bathroom. When I’d mentioned that fact to Rambo once, he glared at me and suggested I go outside and find the nearest tree.
I never brought it up again.
We got seated across from each other and tore into dinner. The only words exchanged involved sharing barbeque sauce and refilling empty cups with beer. The meal was glorious, but it couldn’t mask the tension radiating off of Rambo like a gas grill turned on high.
He seemed to be waiting for me to address the elephant in the room. I wasn’t relishing the task. At five feet eleven and one hundred and ninety pounds, I wasn’t a small guy. Still, compared to my dinner companion, I was a pipsqueak.
Even though he needed me, I didn’t want to say the wrong thing and make him mad. I’d never seen the man truly angry. I’d heard stories, though. I didn’t need to experience it firsthand.
My plate was half cleared when the silence became too much.
“So, what do you think happened to Fran?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Obvious. Maybe he was eaten by an alligator?” He gave me a little snarl, then went back to gnawing on a rib until the last scrap of meat was gone.
Okay. Not my best opening line ever. And Rambo was under a ton of pressure. Still, he didn’t need to be a jerk about things.
“Duh. Butkus didn’t get magically transported from here into Cohen’s bedroom. How did he get there? Who hated Fran enough to want him dead? Did Fran fight back or try to escape?” I chewed on a cornbread biscuit. “Better?”
He slapped me on the shoulder hard enough I almost went tumbling out of my chair.
“Way better.” He tossed a stripped rib onto a growing pile in the middle of the table. “Why don’t you get your newest toy, and we can do some brainstorming.”
“It’s not a toy. It’s the latest two-in-one laptop. I can do all of my critter-removal work from it. Send estimates and invoices, receive and process payments. I’m like 90 percent paperless. Efficient and saving trees at the same time.”
I removed the computer from my backpack. Its glossy silver finish sparkled like diamonds in the light cast by the overhead florescent bulbs.
“What about Wi-Fi, Mister Genius Ex-IT Guru? I expect you want the farm’s password.” Rambo wasn’t averse to tech. Like almost everyone else in their forties, he’d come of age in a world connected by the internet. He had a laptop and a cell phone, but it was because he needed them to do business. Not because he enjoyed using them.
“Nope. Got it covered. I’ll use the hot spot on my phone.”
He shook his head. “I’ll never understand why you walked away from all that.”
“No need to. It’s in the past.” I rarely talked about my former career as IT director for a post-dot-com-bubble tech start-up with anyone in the Springs besides Nic. Given the way things ended, it was something I didn’t like to think about, much less discuss.
I pulled up a blank spreadsheet on the computer. “Let’s start with a list of suspects. Who had it in for Fran?”
“About half the town, depending on what day it was.” Rambo swallowed a biscuit in one bite.
“Not helpful, dude. Seven thousand people makes for an awfully long list. Can you be more specific, even a little?” My sarcastic tone wasn’t productive, but Rambo had asked for my help. That, and he’d helped himself to an extra serving of baked beans so I didn’t get as much. And baked beans were my favorite side dish at the Riptide.
He eyed me as he slurped down the last of the baked beans. The man could be heartless when he wanted to.
“I’d start with The Vampire.”
“What about him?” A female voice came from parking area outside the barn. It was Nic. “Come on, nerds. Fill me in.”
She grabbed a folding chair from against the wall and helped herself to the last biscuit. At this point, I was going to have to stop for some takeout on the way home.
“Haven’t been graced with your presence here in a while, Nicola.” Rambo offered her the last two ribs and the remaining green beans. “To what do we owe the honor?”
“I heard about yesterday. Since Elmo handled the big lizard, I went by his place after this afternoon’s cruise. When he wasn’t there, I figured you’d know something, Rambo.”
“Like what?” He gulped down the last of the beer in his cup. With hands that had the slightest tremble to them, he refilled it. And took another big drink.
She rolled her eyes and looked at me. “Are you going to play games? Or are you going to give me the scoop?”
While we were currently in an off-again phase of our relationship, thanks to my reluctance to make a long-term commitment to her, we both knew I couldn’t lie to Nic. She was the one person in the Springs who knew the whole story about my past. Well, her and Oscar.
They were equally impressive in their unwillingness to share that information with anyone else. And I appreciated it.
“The cops think Rambo used his gator Butkus to kill Cohen. I’m gonna try to prove he didn’t do it.”
“And did you?” She looked at Rambo. I didn’t consider antagonizing someone more than twice her size to be a wise move. But then, Nic had once told me wisdom was for old people.
Except for when she was on the water.
“Hell, no.” Rambo pounded his fist on the table with enough force to make the dinnerware bounce. His chest heaved like he was a bull ready to charge a matador.
“Good enough for me.” She wiped her hands on a paper napkin. Her bright-yellow nail polish matched the shade of her closely cropped hair perfectly. They complemented her brown, sun-kissed skin like peanut butter complemented jelly. “Who did it, then?”
“That’s what we were talking about when you got here,” I said. “Rambo thinks The Vampire should be a suspect.”
“Okay, I’ll bite, pun totally intended. Why do you think The Vampire killed the dearly departed Philly Fran?”
“Well.” Rambo cleared his throat. “I know Cohen’s been—er, was—pushing the city to adopt a curbside recycling program. The Vamp spends his nights collecting aluminum and steel. Then he sells it to Big Baby.”
“And you think that’s motive enough to kill someone? Come on, man. You’re smarter than that.” Nic was a tough customer. She wasn’t going to let Rambo make an accusation as serious as murder without good reason. Evidently, losing out on recycling income wasn’t a good enough reason for her. I agreed with her. For now, at least.
“What do we really know about the guy? He keeps all to himself in that monster of a house. He only goes out at night. He listens to that weird music from the seventies. And he only wears black. That might have worked for Johnny Cash, but for anyone else, it’s weird.”
“Maybe he just likes the goth look,” I said.
I wasn’t defending the guy everyone in Paradise Springs knew as The Vampire. I didn’t like the idea of listing someone as a suspect based on nothing more than their appearance, though. That was way too close to profiling to me.
“He’s been rocking that look long before it was called goth. For as long as I can remember, in fact.” Nic took a drink from my cup.
“Same here.” Rambo pointed his finger at me. “The guy’s lived here for years and nobody really knows anything about him. Besides, there was no evidence that my gate lock was tampered with. How did a normal person get in and out without leaving a trace? Fly over the fence? Put him on your list. If nothing else, we can always tail him one night. See if he might have crossed paths with Fran.”
Nic snorted at the implication that The Vampire was, well, a vampire. If, for no other reason than to keep the conversation moving, I added his name to the list. If I was going to get any investigating done, I needed people to investigate. Debating the eccentric lifestyles of whoever might have held a grudge against Fran Cohen would keep us here all night.
And for days afterward.
“Who else?” I kept my fingers on the keyboard, hoping that I could keep the duo focused.
“I wouldn’t put it past Minerva. From what I’ve heard, she couldn’t stand the guy.” Nic leaned forward, like she wanted to share a secret. “Fran tried to put the move on her a few months ago. It was when they were on my New Year’s Eve cruise. She didn’t respond kindly. By the time I got there from the ship’s helm, it was all over, but supposedly, it was quite the scene.”
Rambo drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Fran didn’t like not getting his way. If he pulled something like that in public, can you imagine what he might have tried living next door to her?”
A shudder coursed through me as I typed Minerva’s name into the spreadsheet. The thought of living next door to someone who had, at the very least, attempted to sexually assault you totally creeped me out. If Cohen had done that, I wouldn’t blame the woman for retaliating.
But murder? If she thought she was in fear for her own safety, why not go to the police? The crime scene was too bizarre. It was one that begged a pretty big question.
How did the murderer pull off getting a fully grown alligator into Fran’s bedroom so it could eat the guy? That took some planning, resources, and smarts.
Whoever the murderer was, they weren’t going to be easy to corral. I’d have to tread lightly to make sure I didn’t take a wrong step and end up the next victim.
Chapter Five
A lot of benefits came from having Oscar as my roomie. The only mice or chipmunks I ever saw in my house were deceased ones he brought to me as presents. I hadn’t needed an alarm clock in ages, either.
For years, every morning, between six thirty and seven, Oscar’s leapt onto my bed and walked on top of me. He always started at my ankles, then strolled up my legs, with a stop to knead my belly, then continued up my torso until he was perched on my shoulder.
Then he’d start talking to me.
It always started as a quiet mow, as if he didn’t want to startle me. If I failed to respond, it would progressively get louder into a full-throated meow with a few bats at my ear for good measure. At that point, I’d surrender to the inevitable and get up. At least he’s always allowed me the accommodation of going to the bathroom before I feed him.
That’s Oscar. He’s always been a giver.
Being forced into rising early isn’t without its benefits. I never tired of watching the sun rise. With a cup of coffee, I’d sit on the patio and revel in the start of a new day as the giant orb ninety-three million miles away warmed me and my surroundings. In a way, it was my favorite form of meditation.
The skies were overcast this particular Monday morning. As I served Oscar a beef and chicken combo, I lamented the lack of sun. Life in the Panhandle didn’t include all sun, all day, especially in February. Still, I could have used some rays as a sign that helping Rambo was the right thing to do. Such was life. I’d just make my own positivity instead of relying on the sun to create it for me.
With Oscar provided for, I whipped up some oatmeal. The temps were in the low fifties. For a native Hoosier like me, fifties in February was practically balmy, so I added a sweatshirt to my usual breakfast attire of gym shorts and a T-shirt and headed outdoors.
The brisk conditions invigorated me. With my brain kicking in, I planned my day. Sybil the Seer had texted me asking to bring some traps to her place. She also mentioned, in rather cryptic fashion, that she had information I needed.
I’d learned that when dealing with the local fortune-teller, it was best to go with the flow. Her predictions did have an uncanny habit of coming true, but I was a skeptic. She had a thriving business, though, so she must have been doing something right.
My Monday rounds needed to be taken care of first, so I replied that I’d come by in the early afternoon. The lack of a specific time for my arrival would annoy her as she loved to claim her appointment book was always full. I didn’t buy it. If she really had the gift, she’d know exactly when I’d be arriving.
All was calm in Paradise Springs as I made my way through the downtown area. I had service agreements with a half dozen businesses that required I check traps and for other evidence of nuisance critters weekly. Most were single-story buildings painted in a variety of pastel shades. With flat roofs and slabs for foundations, the structures didn’t provide a lot of places for a critter to hide. There was always a nook or cranny that allowed something small unauthorized entry, though.
If I came across an animal that had been caught, I removed it and checked the premises for evidence of possible infestation. If there was none, I moved on. If I uncovered a possible problem, like a gap in caulking, I had a word with the client. When my business was completed, I moved to the next stop on my route.
It had taken some trial and error, but over time I learned Monday was the best day to do my regular checks. Paradise Springs was like a lot of tourist towns in that during the offseason, many businesses were closed on Monday, especially restaurants. That made it easier for me do to my work without bothering customers.
Diners lost their appetites in no time when they saw Critter Guy poking around. Go figure.
After the downtown district, I headed to the tourist district. Palm trees lined the streets in case visitors needed reminding that they were literally only a stone’s throw from the Gulf of Mexico. Many of the buildings were older in this area. The two- and three-story wood-framed structures that had survived hurricanes contained a lot of character to go along with their respective histories. The resorts, restaurants, and bars attracted almost as many critters as they did people due to the presence of garbage. In this part of town, fifteen businesses relied on me to keep the customers coming through the doors by making sure nothing uninvited did.
I concluded my rounds at a fifties-style diner called Sue’s Place. It was furnished with red vinyl booths, a working jukebox, and more chrome than a classic car. I often ate lunch there, partly because it was one of the few restaurants open on Monday and partly because the owner let me eat there for free for life when I cured the place of a persistent vole problem.
“What’ll it be today, Elmo?” The manager on duty, a woman about my age with flame-red hair styled in a beehive reminiscent of Amy Winehouse, poured me a cup of coffee.
“How about a bowl of chili with extra onions and a side salad, Nadine. Trying to watch the old waistline.” I patted my belly.
“You got it. Can I interest you in an appetizer of alligator poppers?” She winked as she pulled a pen from a hiding place somewhere in her massive pile of hair. “Heard about your adventure the other day. Couldn’t resist.”
Once Nadine had turned away from me, I placed my palms on the counter. The smooth Formica surface was cool to the touch. Just the thing I needed to calm my rattled nerves. I didn’t want word getting out about me helping Rambo too soon. There was no doubt that eventually it would. I wanted to make progress between now and then, though.
On the other hand, since Nadine had broached the subject, I could get her take on the situation. The diner was only a quarter mile down Gulfview Lane from the Sea Breeze. She knew a lot of people and no doubt heard a lot of things.
“That was insane,” I said when she returned with my order. “Still trying to wrap my head around who’d want to kill him. Especially that way.”
“Rumor has it the cops have Rambo Quigley dead to rights. Something tells me you don’t think so. Am I right?”
“Busted. Something doesn’t make sense. If Rambo wanted to kill Cohen, why use one of his prize gators? You can’t tell me he was planning on fetching it after it finished gobbling up Fran. No. Whoever came across the scene first was supposed to find the gator there.”
