Too Much Stuff

by Don Bruns

  I felt Maria Sanko’s hand on my arm. I didn’t brush it off.

  “Skip, I’m sorry.”

  “He’ll be out in an hour. He didn’t kill that guy. They’re just fishing.”

  She nodded. “I know two of the cops who were here. Dated one of them a while back. I’ll make a call once they get back to the station and see what they plan on doing, okay?”

  I nodded. I forgot we had a local on our side.

  “Look, I’m still here to help you with your search.”

  And it suddenly occurred to me that whoever interviewed Maria didn’t bring up the gold. And the officer who talked to me didn’t mention gold. So everyone didn’t know about the gold.

  But there was one thing she did know. We weren’t plumbers. That had become pretty evident.

  I grabbed her elbow and steered her toward the bar. I didn’t care what Bobbie thought of me, I needed a drink.

  “So what did they ask you?”

  She gave me a little-girl smirk. “They asked if I was intimate with James.”

  “Really?” Probably trying to establish relationships. Still, it was a rather leading question.

  She cocked her pretty head. “I thought it was a strange question, but, well, he is kind of cute.”

  “What else?” Cute. They all thought he was cute. Every girl he met thought James was cute. It somehow pissed me off. I never had a girl tell me I was cute. But, then again, I’m interested in someone. James is interested in everyone. “They didn’t ask if you and I—”

  “That didn’t come up, Skip.”

  “Anything else?”

  “He wanted to know how long James was alone in the room upstairs.”

  Mary Trueblood walked up. “Damned police. Why can’t they just accept that a couple of guys probably broke into your room and one of them killed the other one? Why couldn’t they just accept that?”

  “Mrs. Trueblood. What did they ask you?”

  “Why I was here.”

  I studied her carefully. “And you told them what?”

  “The truth. Of course.” She gave a sideways glance to Maria. “I told them I’d hired you two to help me with the history of my great-grandfather who had been apparently killed in the nineteen thirty-five hurricane.”

  I saw Maria’s eyes get even wider, and she looked at me with a sly grin.

  “Glad I didn’t hire you guys to fix my leaking pipe.”

  Mary Trueblood looked at both of us, shook her head as if confused, and walked away.

  So no one knew about the gold. No one except James, Mary, me, and Ted Markim, now that Jim Weezle was dead.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  They carried the body down on a stretcher, a blood-stained sheet covering him. Two guys from the rescue unit brought him down the stairs. They’d already figured that out. Not the elevator. The stairs.

  Some new guy in a short-sleeved shirt and tie told me it would be at least a half hour before they would have our personal items packed. No one could go back into the room.

  “This really sucks, doesn’t it?” Maria frowned.

  “You think so?” I didn’t even have a room. Maria probably had a home somewhere. A fancy condo with a swimming pool. And James was in a cell somewhere behind a pizza joint.

  “Actually,” she pursed her lips and looked up at me, “this is the most excitement I’ve had since my divorce over a year ago. I may even make the news tonight.”

  “Well, I’m glad we could brighten your day.” I’m not sure James would be so happy about it.

  We strolled down to the beach where couples lounged on chairs and watched the ocean lap at the shore.

  “You guys have been friends a while.” She glanced at me, a look more as a friend than an inquisitor.

  “We have. Since we were kids. And what I said before about getting into trouble—just hang around long enough and we do manage to attract our share of problems.”

  She laughed. “There’s more to this expedition than just a search for history, isn’t there?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You know, Skip, people come down here to get away. They just want to get lost. I’ve watched it happen. For a week, a month, some people for their whole life. It’s like in the middle Keys you can just disappear. But you’re not down here to disappear, are you?”

  “No.”

  “People come down to dive, to go deep-sea fishing,” she pointed toward the ocean. “The deep-sea fishing here is the best in the country.”

  I nodded.

  “They show up to tie one on for a couple of days. People come down here to have an affair, but no one comes down here to research dead relatives.”

  “And your point is?”

  “I think you two are treasure hunters.”

  “What?” She couldn’t possibly know. I’d just decided she knew nothing and she hit me with that.

  “You want locations. You’re trying to find the remnants of an old building, the Coral Belle Hotel. I don’t think this has anything to do with somebody’s great-grandfather. I think you’re looking for gold.”

  I just kept walking.

  “But, I could be wrong.”

  “You are.”

  “Listen, people come down here looking for wrecker camps. Is that it? You’re trying to find a wrecker camp?”

  “I don’t even know what that is.” I lied.

  “Really? When ships would crash out on the reef or the rocks, wrecking crews would go out and salvage the boats. They’d take whatever was valuable and usually bury it at their campsite. There weren’t any safes or banks around so they would bury it using landmarks as locators.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. She really didn’t have the right answer.

  “Today, when a construction crew breaks ground, they’ll sometimes stumble on an old wrecker camp. Lots of times they’ll find silver and gold. I thought maybe you had a lead on one of the old camps.”

  She was just a little too close to the truth for comfort.

  “Maria, do you know anyone down here who has a Harley-Davidson motorcycle with a gold fender?”

  “Boy, you sure know how to change the subject.”

  “Do you?”

  “No. Not off the top of my head.”

  And all of a sudden it hit me. I’d heard the distinct sound of a Harley in the parking lot just before James called us up to the room. Somebody had pulled out, leaving a cloud of dust.

  “My ex-husband Drew had a Harley.”

  “He did?”

  “Yeah.” She smiled. “Had one.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “I got it in the divorce.”

  It was my turn to smile. “Really? Did you sell it?”

  “Sell it?” Her eyes got big. They were dark brown and very expressive. “How do you think I got here today?”

  A biker babe. James and I had landed a biker babe with pretty brown eyes. I was impressed.

  “Hey, do you think you could call your former boyfriend down at the sheriff’s office? I’d really like to know what’s happening with James.”

  She pulled an iPhone from her purse and punched in a couple of numbers. Here was a biker babe with the police department on speed dial. Cool. I need to know more about this girl.

  “Officer Danny Mayfair, please.”

  A couple of seconds later her face lit up.

  “Danny, it’s Maria.” She paused as the officer talked.

  “No, no. I’m not still trying to sell you the condo. Although you passed on a very good deal. The prices are going up, Danny.”

  She sat down on one of the plastic chairs and looked up, giving me a very charming smile. The girl liked to flirt. Two guys at once. Officer Danny and me. If James was here she’d probably try to work him in too. He was cute.

  “No. Danny, I’m with Skip—” She looked at me inquisitively.

  “Moore,” I said.

  “Skip Moore. He’s—yeah, you guys interviewed him. Along with me and the older lady.”

>   Mary Trueblood would not be happy to know she was being referred to as “the older lady.”

  “Can you tell me the status of James?”

  She nodded, rolled her eyes, and I couldn’t tell if it was good news or bad news. I wanted to grab the phone out of her hand and just get to the heart of the matter.

  Maria glanced up at me. “Danny says James has been hostile to all of them. Belligerent and what else, Danny? Noncommunicative.” She frowned at me, shrugging her shoulders.

  That was James. Described him to a T. He hated cops.

  “The good thing is, they don’t believe he had anything to do with the murder.”

  “And?”

  “When are they going to release him, Danny?” She waited, waited, and waited. My fists clenched. I needed to know.

  “They’re going to release him in about an hour.”

  I breathed a deep sigh of relief. I couldn’t wait to tell Mary Trueblood. And then I reconsidered. The lady hadn’t shown any compassion at all about her former employee being knifed to death. She probably wouldn’t care about James’s incarceration.

  “Can you ask him who the dead guy is?”

  She nodded. “Danny, can you release the identity of the dead man?”

  She giggled. “Of course I’m not going to call the press. It’s between you and me.”

  Standing up, she kept a distant look in her eyes, like she was focusing on someone who wasn’t here. Maybe this Danny character.

  “Okay. I’ll keep it very quiet.” She nodded emphatically as if the person on the other end of the phone could see her.

  “I still love you, big D.”

  She stuffed the black phone back in her pocket.

  “Big D?”

  She blushed. “Well, he’s kind of big.”

  Then I blushed. “Did he tell you who the dead guy is?”

  “He did.”

  Big D. An ex-boyfriend.

  “And?”

  “Well, you heard me, I promised not to tell.”

  “Maria.”

  “But I’ll tell you, okay.”

  “Please. Who was the victim?”

  “A guy named Peter Stiffle.”

  “Stiffle?”

  “Stiffle. Peter.”

  “You’re sure? Peter Stiffle?”

  “I’m not sure. Danny is sure.”

  Big D was sure the cadaver had previously been a living, breathing Peter Stiffle.

  Things just got weirder and weirder.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  One hour was still one hour. There was time to do a little investigating and I took advantage of it. Maria offered to drive, handed me an extra helmet, and with a throaty roar from the engine she shot out of the parking lot like a bullet, full speed ahead toward Dr. Malhotra’s Vein Care Center. It took all of about fifteen seconds for me to realize I should have stayed at Pelican Cove.

  The lady raced through traffic, moving at breakneck speeds as I hung on tight, dangerously close to touching off-limit areas of her body. She’d lean to the left, lean to the right, slipping between cars, and there were two or three times I thought we were going to lose it altogether.

  As we pulled into the parking lot, I’d felt the hot stinging Florida sun burning my wind-whipped face. When we stopped, the roaring from the Harley engine still rang in my ears.

  “You’re sure this is where the old hotel was located?” I shouted. I couldn’t hear anything.

  A white stucco building fronted the narrow highway, three dark windows and a door the only breaks in the plain vanilla surface. Two signs hung on a rusted metal post planted in the parking lot. The first was a weather-beaten wooden sign that simply said VEIN CARE CENTER. Below that hung a much larger plastic sign with raised letters.

  JAMES O’NEILL ORTHOPEDIC SURGERY

  SPECIALIZING IN TOTAL JOINT REPLACEMENT SURGERY

  “I’ve always been told that this was where the Coral Belle was located.”

  I checked my watch. James would be free in about fifty minutes. I could go inside, ask a few questions, and I’d still make it back to pick him up when they released him. I knew James didn’t want to spend any more time than he had to at a sheriff’s office.

  “I’m going to go in. See what they know.”

  She lifted her denim-clad leg, dismounted, and smiled at me, still flirting. If I was about five to ten years older—

  “You’re still not going to tell me what you’re looking for, are you?”

  “I will. Right now. I will tell you exactly what we’re looking for. But, I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

  “Really?” Excitement in her voice.

  We’d already lied to her about the plumbing business. And we hadn’t been entirely truthful about our search.

  A noisy truck rolled by about twenty feet from us, followed by an old Chevy with a really loud muffler. I could smell the exhaust.

  Give her the partial truth. It was the best I could offer. “Mary Trueblood asked us to find out what we could about her great-grandfather. One of the last places she can trace him to is right here, at the site of the Coral Belle Hotel.”

  “And you were pretending to be plumbers in disguise? Why? Because you were looking for family history? I don’t think so.” She put her hand on my arm, a plea for the truth. “Because you were looking for a great-grandfather? Was that the reason you lied to me?” She folded her arms over her ample chest and smiled at me. “Skip, don’t insult me, please. I’m already deeper into this thing than I want to be, and I don’t even know what this thing is.”

  She had me.

  “Seriously, Skip—”

  I shrugged my shoulders as I walked up to the door and entered, not bothering to hold it open for her. I didn’t tell lies well.

  The doorway opened into a spacious waiting area, with a sparkling white ceramic floor and a desk that would have been worthy in a brand-new Holiday Inn. At least a Holiday Inn.

  A curt voice asked, “Can I help you?”

  An Asian girl in a white smock and shoulder-length coal-black hair sat behind the reception desk, never looking up, working her keyboard at 120 words per minute.

  “Do you have any history on this building?”

  She looked up, disdain apparent on her face.

  “History? I’ve been here six months. Does that qualify as history?”

  It honestly didn’t. “Is there someone here who can take me back to nineteen thirty-five?”

  Maria Sanko appeared beside me, punching her elbows into my rib cage. She obviously wasn’t happy that I’d shut the door in her face. And that I wasn’t sharing the entire story with her.

  “Doctor Malhotra would probably know the history of the property.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “I’m sort of busy here.” Evidently not happy with my request, she looked back at her computer screen, and I gazed around the empty waiting area. She didn’t seem that busy to me.

  “Ma’am, I’ve driven quite a ways. I’m searching for the history of a relative. I would sure appreciate it if—”

  “Oh, all right. I’ll see if he has any time.” She waved her arm at us. “I suppose you can have a seat.”

  We did.

  Dr. Malhotra walked out about five minutes later, a distinguished Indian-American guy with brushed back salt-and-pepper hair, a neatly trimmed graying beard and mustache, a dark complexion, and a white doctor’s coat.

  “Hello.” A slight accent.

  He studied us with a stern look on his face. “How can I help you? Veronica said you wanted some history on this building?”

  “Yeah. I’m looking for the history of a relative back in the thirties and I think this property may play a part in that history.”

  “I started this practice in 1999. But the building has been in my wife’s family since maybe the late forties, early fifties.”

  I glanced around at the opulent interior with expensive-looking chairs and sofas, ornate wooden coffee tables, and elite magazines like Forbes
and Island Life lying around. The vein business and orthopedic surgery must be very lucrative.

  “Doctor,” Maria smiled at him, “I’m Maria Sanko. I’m a realtor here in Islamorada.”

  He nodded.

  “Is this the property where the Coral Belle Hotel used to sit?”

  He folded his hands in front of him.

  “You’re the third person to ask that in the last month.”

  “Really?” We both said it together.

  “Really.”

  “Is it?” I needed the answer.

  “No.”

  “Oh.” I knew I sounded disappointed. This would have been so easy. The hotel foundation would be here, we bring a shovel at night and—

  “Do you know where the Coral Belle was?” Maria kept digging.

  He nodded his head. “It was on the water. The property right behind this building, right across the old highway. Next to the Ocean Air Motel.”

  “What’s on that property now?”

  “Nothing.”

  Waterfront property with no development?

  “There’s a boat dock there. That’s it. You can see that from the water or the beach at the Ocean Air.”

  “So we can walk back there and—”

  “It’s fenced and locked.”

  “The empty property, right?”

  Again he nodded his head yes.

  “Well, do you know who owns it?”

  “I do.” He’d folded his arms across his chest, staring at me.

  “Great. If you could just give us a name—”

  “I own it, my friend. Now, unless you’d like to make a medical appointment with Veronica, I’m going to ask you to leave.”

  With that he spun around and walked back into the offices.

  Maria gave me a questioning look.

  “Well. That went well.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN