by Don Bruns
“Well, it was a long time ago. I mean, if you were, what, ten years old, and you were a survivor—”
“There weren’t many of them, James.”
“Yeah, but if you’d made it through the storm, well, you’d have vivid memories of that catastrophe.”
“What’s your point?”
“Kids remember the strangest things. Maybe someone saw people moving those crates with the gold in them. Maybe one of their parents was paid to help bury the wooden boxes. I mean—”
I caught her approach from the corner of my eye. My peripheral vision had kicked in, and she looked as good as she had at the restaurant.
“Hi, boys. You said you needed some advice? Some information?” Maria Sanko had even gone home to change. Tight jeans and an orange tank top. Wow!
James nodded at her. I could see the sparkle in his eyes.
He engaged me one more time, for just a few seconds.
“We need to find a survivor, Skip. That may be the answer.”
She was on her second margarita, and we were on our third beer.
“The Coral Belle. It turns out it wasn’t a hotel for the common person. There was another hotel that most people stayed at.” She nodded at James. I was simply the guy at the end of the bar.
“The Matecumbe Hotel was partially destroyed, but it was one of two buildings still standing when the storm passed through. Tourists stayed there. Traveling salesmen stayed there. Prostitutes worked out of the Matecumbe. It was not the hotel for the upper class.
“Who stayed at the Coral Belle?”
“Rich folks. People who had five hundred thousand dollars in their portfolio. A million dollars. Railroad officials who were making investments in the Keys. A couple of presidents stayed there. I believe Woodrow Wilson was reported to have visited and maybe Warren Harding. And the authors Zane Grey and Ernest Hemingway spent time at the Coral Belle.”
“Hemingway? Two presidents. Very fancy.”
She looked back at James and pushed her hair back from her face. “James, there was supposedly a ballroom with a very expensive cut-glass chandelier. And when the Vicks Chemical Corporation had a party, they’d have chefs down from Miami, and fly in Cuban dancers and musicians. Teenage hookers from Cuba were also flown in for parties at the hotel. The Coral Belle was quite a place.”
“How do you know all of this?”
Finally, she glanced at me. “My grandfather worked for the railroad in Miami the last five years it existed. He told my father some stories that were hard to believe. A lot of crazy things went on back then. By today’s standards they would be, well, by today’s standards they are still salacious.”
James pushed back his stool.
“Gonna go up to the room and get a pen and tablet. I want to write some of this down. I’ll be right back.” He wobbled a bit when he stepped off the stool, and we watched him as he walked to the outside elevator.
“So, Maria, where was the Coral Belle?”
She pointed in the direction of the business district. The business district of Islamorada being the thin strip of shops, restaurants, and bars that ran up and down the Overseas Highway.
“A mile and a half down the road. There’s a medical office on the property now. Some doctor who has a vein care center. I think he operates on varicose veins. An Indian name.” She paused. “Malhotra. I think that’s his name. He’s got half of it. The other half is an orthopedic surgeon’s office. Neal or O’Neill. Something like that. Their signs are out front.”
And there it was. That simple. Although nothing in my life is that simple. Couldn’t be. Never was. The property mentioned in the cryptic letter was one and a half miles down the road.
“This is a strange question, but was the foundation of the old hotel still intact when they built the medical office?”
She shook her pretty head. “I have no idea. I just know that that’s where the hotel was.”
She stared off into the blue ocean and I followed her gaze, watching colorful sailboats offshore with red, white, and blue canvas, two loud Jet Skis racing on the parallel, and two pelicans swooping down to capture unsuspecting fish in the clear blue water. For a couple of minutes there was a peaceful calm.
Then the thunder of a motorcycle split the afternoon and someone spit up a white cloud of dust in the parking lot as they headed toward the highway.
“Why are you so interested in the old hotel?”
“James is sort of a history buff.”
She gave me a sideways look. “James? That James? Didn’t seem to be the history type.”
When it came to making money, James could be the history type.
“Skip! Get up here. Stat.”
I looked up, and on the second-floor balcony stood James, pointing his finger directly at me.
“Should Maria come up too?”
“Get your butts up here. Now.”
I nodded my head at Maria and we both hopped off our stools.
Halfway to the elevator, I heard the voice. “Hold it. I need to be paid for those drinks.”
“Bill my room!”
And then I realized she had no idea who I was. As far as I was concerned, Bobbie could eat the bar tab.
I ignored her, and we both ran to the elevator.
CHAPTER NINE
Pelican Cove, for all of its wonderful features, has very, very slow elevators. We should have taken the steps. But, no, I decided we would take the elevator.
When we finally got to the second floor, we raced down the walkway to our room. James was standing outside the door.
“Nobody should see what I’m going to show you guys.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“James, what’s this all about?”
Maria looked at James, then at me, then back at James, obviously confused.
“Honest to God, pally, this is not suitable for children.”
“No kids here, James.”
He slid his key into the slot and slowly opened the door to our small room.
Immediately I could see the bed, covers torn off. Not even a sheet on the mattress, which led me to believe that the maids had done a half-assed job.
Clothes were strewn around the room. We weren’t the neatest guys in the world, but the room looked like a hurricane had hit it.
“James, somebody’s tossed our room.”
He was pale. With no comeback, my best friend was shaking his head.
“Over here, amigo.”
He motioned to the far side of the bed.
I walked toward him.
James was pointing, looking at me as if he couldn’t focus anywhere else, but still pointing.
Lying on the floor, faceup, was a man’s body, the side of his head bashed in. Eyes wide open, he stared at me, dark blood soaking into the carpet.
“Oh, my God.” Maria Sanko was frozen, her mouth hanging open, the color drained from her face.
“I checked.” James swallowed hard. “There’s no pulse. He’s not breathing.”
Grabbing the phone by the bed I dialed zero.
“We’ve got a dead body up here in three fifteen.”
“A what?”
“Dead body. Guy with his head bashed in.”
There was a long silence. Then, “What should I do?”
“Ma’am, somebody broke into our room, trashed it, and there’s a dead body on the floor. You work here. Has anything like this ever—” Well, of course, nothing like this had happened before.
“I’m sorry, my manager isn’t in and I—”
“Just call nine-one-one. They usually take care of everything.”
Maria had regained her composure and was standing by the sliding glass door, looking out at the pool and the ocean. James was sitting on the bed watching me.
“If you can stand it, look again, Skip.”
I walked back to the body. He was dressed in a green T-shirt and jeans. I forced myself to look up at the face, those glassy eyes staring through me. He had one of those three-day beards
that I’ve tried to grow but it never worked.
“It looks like he bashed his head on this nightstand when he fell.”
James nodded. “Fell or was pushed.”
“Pretty nasty gash.”
“Recognize him?”
And then I did. From the Yellow Pages. It was Jim Weezle from AAAce Investigations. We had found half of the vanished team.
CHAPTER TEN
Of course, all hell broke loose. We called Mrs. Trueblood, and wearing jeans and a Bon Jovi T-shirt, she came stomping down before the cops arrived, shaking her head, and muttering something about how “everybody in the damned world is now going to know about that damned gold.”
It didn’t seem to bother her that one of her former employees lay dead on our floor.
Some guy in a blue denim work shirt with thirty keys dangling from his belt came running in, assaying the damages. He quietly gazed at the body still oozing blood, went into the bathroom, loudly threw up, then walked out, nodding at us as if he’d taken care of things.
A young blonde lady with an official name tag pinned on her blouse stuck her head in, saw the commotion, and slowly backed out muttering, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”
The four of us walked out onto the concrete walkway, waiting for the Monroe County Sheriff Department to arrive. I looked right out into the parking lot and could actually see some of the highway from there.
“Are you all right?” I noticed Maria hadn’t said a thing and I figured I should check in with her.
“No.”
I put my hand on her shoulder and she pushed it off.
“How did I get mixed up in something like this?” She walked to the railing and stared down at the broken-shell parking lot.
“You agreed to help us. I’ve got to be honest with you, this happens to people who hang around with us.”
She actually smiled, then gave me a little laugh. The problem was, I was dead serious. Dead serious.
I saw the white car with green-and-black lettering pull in with its rooftop lights flashing as if they were going to pull someone over for speeding. The lettering on the side of the vehicle said it all.
SERVING THE FLORIDA KEYS
KEY LARGO TO KEY WEST
So these guys patrolled a one-hundred-mile stretch of highway, dealing with everything from speeders and drunks to, well, possible murder. Two officers stepped out of the car, looked up at us, and I waved. Lights on the car still flashing, they walked to the elevator. I should have told them it was slow. Really slow. Almost two minutes later they exited, a one-floor ride.
The red-and-white rescue unit pulled up thirty seconds later, preceded by its screaming siren. And then there was the second sheriff car, and a third, and the officers separated us while two men walked into our room and immediately put crime tape over the open doorway.
I don’t know what all went on in that room, but cars kept coming and men and women were going in and out, lifting the yellow crime tape, then putting it back, and we were all herded downstairs where the police cleared the pool area. A mother and father with three small children were not very happy.
At the bar I saw Bobbie frowning at me as she slammed drinks down as fast as possible. Every seat was taken and the buzz was intense. Young people in bathing suits, older people with shorts and colorful shirts. There were two European couples, the corpulent girls in string bikinis and the two guys in what appeared to be colored jock straps. The assembled crowd watched us, pointed to the balcony above, and seemed to devour the excitement that only a gruesome murder can deliver.
The sheriff’s deputies questioned us individually. We were spread out at the four corners of the fenced-in pool, and we each had our own officer. It was almost comical the way they handled it, but I suppose they couldn’t rule us out as suspects. It did happen in our room, but we hadn’t even been there.
“Mr. Moore, you were the one who found the body, right?”
“No. My roommate found the body.”
“Mr. Lessor?”
“Yes.”
“Were you with your roommate, Mr. Lessor, before he found the body?”
“I was with him maybe five minutes before.”
“So he went to the room and five minutes later, he calls you and,” he glanced at a paper in his hand, “a Miss Maria Sanko to come up and see the body?”
“I don’t have a stopwatch. My guess is that—”
“Five minutes.”
“I guess. I’m not a good judge of time, but—”
“So Mr. Lessor had at least five minutes by himself?”
It sounded for all the world like the first thing this guy wanted to do was accuse my partner. So I obviously thought the quickest solution to the problem was to start defending James.
“Mr. Lessor,”—I’d never called him mister in my life—“did not kill anyone. He was shocked. He didn’t even know this guy.”
And this deputy didn’t know James. James hated cops. As an accountant, his father had been arrested in their home for failing to pay withholding taxes from the company he worked for. Strict orders from the company’s owner. But it was James’s father who did the time.
Cops stormed into their home and cuffed his father in front of the family. His father was locked up and spent years in prison. James said they emasculated him. James hated cops.
The officer glanced back at where they were interviewing James. The look in his eyes told me there was going to be trouble.
“Just a moment.”
He walked back to the far corner of the pool, conferred with that officer for a moment, then came back.
“Mr. Lessor did not know the victim, is that correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“Isn’t it true that the victim was a private detective?”
How he’d already arrived at that conclusion I didn’t know. Unless James had already told them.
“I don’t know that for sure. I mean, we saw their pictures online and—” Online. Wrong word to use.
“And why were you looking them up online?” The line delivered like a B-movie actor. Intimidating. Threatening. “If you didn’t know the victim, why were you searching for him online?”
“They were—”
“They? Was someone else killed too?”
I sensed it was not going well. This thing with James and a dead Weezle was a little more complicated than I’d imagined. And maybe Mary Trueblood was right. Now everyone was going to know about the gold. I was just worried about James.
“Mr. Moore, again I’m asking you, why were you and Mr. Lessor looking up the victim online? You claim neither you nor Mr. Lessor knew him.”
And so it went. Everything pointed to James searching for the guy online and then finding the body. And the insinuation was that if James had five minutes before he called us up, he had time to kill the guy who broke in.
I know James. I’ve known him since we were in grade school. He’s my best friend, and while he may be a good talker, he’s not a fighter. He’s terrible at confrontation. James couldn’t kill anyone. And why would he? These guys, Weezle and Markim? We’d never heard about them until this morning.
I figured Maria was getting the same questions, and James was probably being grilled about what he did for those five minutes, bristling every second of the interview.
And Mary Trueblood, she was probably telling these officers that we were there to find forty-some million dollars worth of gold. At this moment I wished I’d listened to my inner voice back in Carol City. I should have put my foot down and said no. Anytime James thinks something is a good idea, it isn’t.
“You can’t account for those five minutes that Mr. Lessor was gone, correct?”
I must have told the cop at least five times that I could account for those five minutes. “The elevators here are very slow. Very slow.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They took him away. Cuffed. I couldn’t believe it. Honestly my mouth was hanging open. They handcuffed him, walked him to one of the s
quad cars, pushed his head down, and had him climb in the back of the car. He glared out the window, staring at me with a scowl on his face.
“Is he being arrested?” This was quickly turning into a nightmare.
“He refused to go voluntarily to the station. He was uncooperative.”
James hated cops. He knew that sometimes when you leave with an officer, you don’t come back. For years.
“He found a dead body. That’s it. That is not a crime.” I was screaming at the uniformed officer. They held me back as I tried to rush the car. What the hell? James was not a murderer.
“My God. We just stumbled on a corpse with his head bashed in. Give the guy a break.”
The officer gave me a grim smile. This was Florida and things are a little different down here. I mean, we got our private investigator license from the Department of Agriculture. That’s who licenses PIs. Seriously. I hesitated as I realized we might lose our brand-new license if I attempted anything that was illegal. Immoral. Or just not right.
“For God’s sake, at least take the cuffs off of him.” Neither of us had ever been handcuffed. Neither of us had ever been in a squad car. This was a first.
“Where are you taking him?”
“To the station.”
“And where is the station?”
The officer rolled his eyes. “Behind Boardwalk Pizza.”
“And that’s where?” My tone was intense. I didn’t know the area, and I needed geographical references.
“About two miles north of here on the highway.”
“James, I’ll pick you up as soon as this is over. Call me.” I shouted as loud as I could.
Another uniform walked down the stairs, our laptop case in his hand.
“We’ll need to take your computer. If it’s clean, we’ll get it back to you.”
“I’m a private investigator. I have information on cases we’re working on. You can’t just take that and—”
“Yes. We can.” He kept on walking.
We’d only owned it for three days. Other than the AAAce Yellow Page ad and James’s new subscription to Match.com, there wasn’t much stored on the machine. And I watched as my best friend was transported through the parking lot and down the side road that led to the Overseas Highway. Everything was a blur. We’d come down here to make a little side money and now he was being held on suspicion of murder.
