Panic in the Panhandle, page 7
I chose to fight.
“I appreciate the advice, Chief. And I understand at this point the evidence points to Rambo doing it.” I brushed sand from my palms. “Looks like I’m going to have to prove you wrong.”
After a tip of my hat, I made a hasty exit. I tried to be casual about it, but I wanted to put space between me and the chief before she hollered at me. Despite the bravado I hoped I had shown, reality was a different matter.
She could have stopped my investigation with a few well-chosen words like interfering with an official police investigation. At heart, I didn’t want to deal with conflict. The important thing was that I was well aware of that fact.
I’d bet she knew it, too. Yet, she didn’t stop me. The gambler in the old Kenny Rogers song of the same name would be proud of me. I’d picked the right time to walk away.
My showdown with the chief hadn’t gone like I’d hoped. We’d never gotten around to discussing my suspects. Without credible alternatives or evidence, there was little incentive for the cops to investigate anyone other than Rambo. The opportunity to bring up The Vampire, Minerva, or even the reverend had been right there. And I’d botched it.
Ugh.
Then again, I’d brought the whole thing down on myself by allowing her to sidetrack the conversation. On the other hand, I kind of liked the idea of being able to tell people about interrupting the police chief during one of her sword workouts and living to tell about it.
It was important to find the positives whenever possible, after all.
On the walk back to my truck, I decided I needed someone to help me talk my way through the recent case developments. It made sense to heed the chief’s warning and steer clear of Rambo. Or, at least, give the appearance that I was doing so. That meant there was only one person I could turn to and keep the whole investigation thing under wraps.
It was time to jump from the frying pan right into the fire.
Chapter Eight
Nicola Beecham was an enigma wrapped in a riddle with a bow tie of a mystery on top. She was a lifelong resident of the Gulf Coast. A true child of the water, Nic grew up helping her parents with their charter fishing boat business. It had been her dad’s hope that when they retired, she’d take the helm, literally and figuratively.
Nic had her own plans.
Once she got her business degree from the local community college, she said goodbye to Pascagoula, Mississippi, and made a run to Paradise Springs. When I arrived on the scene, she was the captain and sole proprietor of a charter boat that took customers on sightseeing cruises. A woman for whom the sea truly ran through her veins, she knew every cay, inlet, and lagoon from New Orleans all the way east to Cedar Key, Florida. For her, navigating by the stars was easier than getting out of bed in the morning was for me.
She had a spellbinding smile and was quick with a laugh. Her gift for storytelling was a thing of legend, too. Many clients booked their excursions with her a year in advance so they could listen to the yarns she spun during a cruise. If someone got out of line during one of her trips, though, she was quick with discipline. And slow to forgive foolish acts committed while on the water.
I’d fallen head over heels for her the first time I crossed paths with her.
Goob’s Fish Market, a tiny diner next to the fuel station and convenience store at the Paradise Springs Marina, was the room where it happened. I’d been eying the menu board when a soft voice came from behind me.
“Go with the blackened grouper. It’s a can’t-miss.”
I turned to the voice. A woman was standing there. A pair of Ray-Bans were propped on the top of her head to reveal the most captivating eyes I’d ever seen. They were a shade of ice blue that reminded me of a calm sea under cloudy skies.
Her hair was midnight black highlighted with purple and green streaks. She wore a necklace with a gold pendant that I recognized. Which finally unloosened my tongue.
“That’s a St. Christopher medal.”
“Point for the guy at the head of the line.”
“I’ve got one, too.” I dug the medal out of my pocket and showed it to her with pride. And the hope that I’d made a connection with her.
“Good for you, buddy. Around here, we all need all the help we can get. Now, are you going to order anytime this decade? I gotta get back to work.”
Chastened by her failure to see our connection in the same strong way as me, I ordered the blackened grouper and told the man behind the counter that I wanted to pay for the woman behind me. To say thank you for the suggestion. Nothing more, nothing less.
“Thanks.” She gave me a friendly elbow bump to my upper arm. “You’re new around here, aren’t you? I’m Nicola.”
“I’m Elmo. And yes, I am.”
She raised an eyebrow. It was a reaction I got a lot when I told someone my name. Then she smiled.
“Welcome to Paradise, Elmo. If you ever want to take a cruise around the bay, come see me. It’ll be an experience you’ll never forget.” She winked, grabbed the paper bag containing her lunch, and was gone before I could formulate a response.
With my head spinning from the encounter, I took a seat at a picnic table in front of the diner. Boats anchored at the pier rocked side to side like they were keeping time to the reggae song emanating from the diner’s outdoor speakers. Paradise, indeed. I took a bite of the blackened grouper Nicola had recommended.
And almost gagged.
Back in Indiana, where beef, pork, and chicken are plentiful and affordable, fish had never been a big part of my diet. I’d had my share of fried fish fillets during my school years, but never acquired a taste for seafood.
Evidently, that included blackened grouper. Since Nicola had recommended it, I took another bite. And had to force it down. Yep, I was going to have to try different kinds of the local cuisine to avoid a life of frozen pizzas and ham sandwiches.
Despite my best efforts, a decade had passed and I still hadn’t acquired a taste for seafood. Such were the trials and tribulations of life. Thank goodness for barbeque.
With the memory of my first exchange with Nic fresh in my mind, I entered Goob’s. You know the old saying that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach? I found the saying applied every bit as much to her.
The store hadn’t changed much since my arrival in the Springs. The exterior was still white vinyl siding with a red tin roof. The bin where you could get a bag of ice was still a few feet to the right of the entrance, though the price had gone up fifty cents over the years.
Inside, coolers where you could purchase your favorite beverages, both soft drinks and not-so-soft drinks, lined one wall. Two small rows of shelving fixtures were located in the center of the store. On one, you could find all sorts of snacks and other edible items. The other was where you went for sunscreen, bug spray, and other household and vacation items. On the opposite wall, the coolers were stocked with all kinds of fishing supplies and equipment.
The deli counter took up a large portion of the store. There was a section for hot foods like fish, sausage, and baked beans. Next to it, was a section for breads and cookies. A third one was home to refrigerated items like cheeses and cold cuts.
“Elmo, my boy. What can I do for you?” The elderly bald man behind the counter was Goob himself. He was going on ninety but was as fit and energetic as a man half his age. He was wearing a new pair of glasses with round fluorescent-orange frames. They matched the band on his smart watch.
I inhaled. The glorious aroma of Caribbean spices filled me up and reminded me to take time to slow down and enjoy a moment.
“How about some of your incredible jerk chicken with a side of slaw. Also, I’d like the blackened grouper sandwich with potato wedges.”
“Off to see your lady friend, I see.” He chuckled as he prepared my order. His swollen knuckles may have betrayed his arthritis, but he had the dexterity of a chef at an Asian steakhouse. “What are we in trouble for this time?”
I looked at the ceiling fan above me to avoid making eye contact. The man could read me like a paperback novel.
“I’m not in trouble…this time. We’re taking a break. That’s all.” I had to admit that I had a history ordering the same thing from Goob whenever I was on my way to Nic’s to attempt to bribe my way back into her good graces. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t.
This time, things were different.
As a true queen of the sea, she lived on the water. Her home was a small pleasure craft she’d bought at auction. In a story right out of an Elmore Leonard novel, its original owner was an oilman who’d been caught leaving the Bahamas in an attempt to smuggle a trio of Dominican beauties into the States. It turned out the women were actually undercover federal agents running a sting operation. He went to jail, they went back to Freeport for their next assignment, and Nic got a place to live literally right next door to where she worked. Or one berth over, to be more accurate. Sometimes I still struggled with the maritime lingo.
On my way, I strolled along the wood-plank dock, past berths that served as home bases for crafts ranging from decades old, wooden-hulled sailboats to sleek multilevel yachts that carried price tags in the millions of dollars. The kind of craft where if you had to ask how much it cost, you couldn’t afford it.
Nic’s home was a ten-minute walk from Goob’s. Nestled between a forty-foot fishing boat and her seventy-foot cruise ship, it was like a baby gosling hidden between two adult Canada geese.
I knocked on the side of the hull. This time of year, she didn’t run cruises on Tuesdays. If she was home, she’d be in her cabin, reading a giant tome of Russian historical literature or something similar. She loved the intellectual challenge.
Her face appeared in a round port hole. When I showed her the bags from Goob’s, she waved me aboard, then met me on deck, eying the bags with furrowed brows.
“What’s this for?” Despite her distrust, she accepted her bag without complaint.
“I want to pick your brain about this thing with Rambo.”
“And by this thing you mean the murder investigation.” At my nod, she turned to go inside. “I think this conversation requires alcohol. Come on.”
The living quarters were small, but every inch of space was put to use. We passed the head, which consisted of a sink, shower stall, and commode. All function, no frills, as Nic liked to say. Next was the galley, which had a dorm-room-sized fridge, a small cook stove, and a microwave. Despite the bare-bones appliances, Nic made the most of what she had and was a whale of a cook.
While she got a beer from the fridge, I made an Irish whiskey on the rocks. We’d been in an off-again state for three months, but she had an unopened bottle of my beloved Tullamore Dew.
She still cared.
Which was lucky for me. The reason for our current off-again status was a serious conversation we had not long ago. Nic wanted to know where our relationship was going. Did we have something long-term or was she just a glorified booty call? I objected to the characterization but told her I didn’t know what kind of future we had.
In turn, she accused me of being incapable of being in a long-term committed relationship. She was right. My mom had done an amazing job raising me, but without my dad around, I didn’t get to grow up around two adults in a healthy relationship. Then, the way my friends and colleagues abandoned me when I was at my lowest. Well, that was about the most bitter of pills to swallow.
In the end, we agreed that if I was unable or unwilling to make a commitment to her, we needed to be done.
“People care about you, Elmo,” she told me then. “I care about you. But until you’re ready to step outside the bubble you’ve built around yourself and make an effort to build something with someone else, you’re going to be alone.”
This was my first visit to her boat since that painful conversation at my house.
The cabin was a tiny room farthest forward. Like the rest of the living quarters, every space served a function. There was room for a full-size bed and a square dining table that could accommodate two, barely. A flat-screen TV was mounted on one wall.
I was proud to say that I’d helped Nic install it. And set up both of her boats with high-speed internet functionality.
“What’s on that little mind of yours?” She was teasing me. Another sign she cared.
“Suspects not named Rambo.”
While we ate, I recapped the events of the last twenty-four hours. I didn’t leave anything out, from the odd chat with Sybil to my late-night escapade to my contentious chat with the chief.
“A lot of people didn’t like Cohen. It’s more than that, though. I just don’t know what. You’re smart and you know a lot of people. I wanted to get your take.”
She licked ketchup from her fingers before she spoke. When she was finished, she gave me a long look.
“If it was me, I’d leave this alone. Let the cops do their job. Some of them are dunces, but Susan knows her stuff. And it wouldn’t look good if she sees you doing the meddling-kid thing after she told you to step off and Rambo turns out to be the killer.”
“I know.” I took a big gulp of my whiskey. It was a good thing I wasn’t driving. “But if you could have seen Rambo with Butkus, you’d be as convinced as me that he didn’t do it. It was like he was saying goodbye to an old friend on their deathbed. He wouldn’t put one of his prize gators as risk.”
She took a sip of her beer. “You know what one of the things about you is that drives me crazy?”
Before I could ask her how much time she had, because the list was long, she waved me into silence.
“You’ve got a big heart. Rambo’s not exactly Mister Congeniality, but you manage to see the good in him. I don’t know how you do it.”
We’d had too many versions of the same conversation to count over the years. She was worried that I took Rambo and Wendell at their word too readily. That in my desire to have a few friends I could really count on, I gave them the benefit of the doubt that I rarely gave anyone else. This time, her tone was different. Instead of aggravation, there was a smidge of respect.
“Does this mean you’ll help?”
“Only because I agree with you.” She tapped the tabletop with her index finger for emphasis. “Rambo might be a lot of things, but he’s not a killer.”
A charge went through me. Nic saw things I didn’t. While I was an expert with computer systems and code, she was an expert at dealing with people. Fifteen years running her own cruise ship had taught her a lot.
We rehashed everything we knew about the case. Nic asked a few questions, but mostly let me do the talking. I was in my IT problem-solving mode. It felt good to put the old skills to use. Kind of like how I felt the first time I turned the pedals of the secondhand cruiser I bought when I decided to make Paradise Springs home. I hadn’t been on a bike since high school, but it came back. After a wobbly start. And a crash into a stand of sea grass. I preferred to not think about that, though.
When we reached the end, she asked me pointed questions about Sybil and The Vampire. The best I could offer were theories.
“Sybil’s a fraud. Harmless, yes, but still a fraud. We all know it. She must have wanted to talk to me for a reason, though. The way she was going on about danger makes me think Fran had concrete evidence that she was up to something shady.”
“I could see that.” She twisted the emerald stud earring in her right ear. “But does that make her a murderer? After all, I’d wager most people know the majority of fortune-tellers are fakes.”
“True enough. If her secret’s big enough, she might. What if she’s got a pile of cash stashed somewhere and he found out about it? If so, that would help her finance a murder for hire.”
“If that’s true, for the sake of argument, why drag Rambo under with Fran?”
That was a good point. And the very reason I wanted to talk this through with Nic.
“You know Rambo. He says what’s on his mind. He doesn’t think much of Sybil and he won’t hesitate to say it. I’ll ask him to be sure. If it’s true, she could get rid of a critic along with a threat to her secret. What do you think of that?”
She nodded as she munched on the last bite of her sandwich. “It’s got possibilities. Sybil can be a real witch to people she doesn’t like. I’ve seen her ream people out at the grocery store over the smallest thing.”
“I’ll keep her on my list. What about the reverend?”
“He does a lot of good in town. Do you really think he’d resort to murder just because of a fight?”
I shrugged. “Dunno. I heard he was pretty worked up about all the property damage and blamed Cohen for the whole thing.”
Nic drummed her fingers on the table. “Broken chairs, busted-up walls. I totally see him being mad, but to kill a guy?”
Times exactly like this were why I loved talking with Nic. She made me think. Challenged me, but never made me feel like a dummy. “You’re probably right. I still don’t trust him. Do me a favor and let me know if you hear anything about him, okay?”
“Sure. What about Longfellow?”
“Who?” Other than the American poet, that name didn’t register.
“Abe Longfellow. You know, The Vampire, as you and your cronies like to call him.”
“Wait, what? Do you mean to tell me The Vampire’s name is Abraham Longfellow? As in the same as two famous Americans from the eighteen hundreds?”
“The guy’s eccentric. So what? Twice a year he books a dinner cruise for himself and a few friends. They’re friendly and tip well. What more can you ask?”
“Do they actually eat the meal?”
She rolled her eyes before answering. “Of course they do, you doofus. And before you even ask, they tend to drink hard liquor. No red wine and no Bloody Marys. Satisfied?”
I ignored the question. To me, the man’s habits were too bizarre to ignore.
“The Vamp…Longfellow does all this recycling, right? Maybe Fran wanted to put a stop to that, so Longfellow killed him.”
Nic frowned. “That doesn’t sound like much of a motive to me.”
