Deception in Savannah: A Humorous Novel of Murder, Mystery, Sex, and Drugs

by Charles Dougherty

  Rick’s bowels had voided in his death throes several hours ago, and in the hot, humid air of the garage, Donald thought he could feel the odor oozing over his skin, creeping into his pores. As he wondered about the smell, his eyes were drawn to Rick’s body, hanging next to the open door of the Porsche. Donald didn’t have any experience with dead people, but he knew for sure that this man was dead. He didn’t have to do more than glance at him to tell. His eyes were bugged out, and his tongue looked thick and blue. Donald backed out of the garage with his bait bucket, hoping it was all right not to check the trap. It was in a shady spot, so if it held a raccoon, he’d probably be comfortable enough for a while.

  Donald knew he should call the police, and quickly, but he didn’t want to go back inside that house to use the phone. As much as he didn’t want to bother anybody so early in the morning, he figured he had better go to the service entrance of the house across the street and get them to call the police. He summoned his courage and marched up the sidewalk. He was tremendously relieved when a young woman in a maid’s uniform answered the door. He asked her to call the police, and tell them there was somebody dead in the garage across the street. Then he returned to his truck to wait.

  As the sunshine of another perfect Miami day poured through the window of Connie's hospital room, she put aside the best-seller that her friend, the nurse, had brought to her. She was glad the girl was back, though she had enjoyed the peace and quiet yesterday. She wondered if the little nurse had decided to go out with her funny-looking private detective, but she had not asked.

  Connie was pondering the settlement offer she had received from the city of Miami Beach. She had assumed she would get something in the way of damages, besides her expenses, but she had expected to have to fight for it. She had not even gotten as far as finding a lawyer, let alone talking to one, so she was surprised when she received a hand-delivered letter from the City Attorney.

  They were offering her $1,000,000 in exchange for her agreement not to sue and not to publicize the accident beyond the slight notice already taken by the local media. The large, unsolicited offer made Connie think that maybe she could get significantly more if she pushed for it. On the other hand, she wasn’t in a very good position to put pressure on the city. She was too deeply engaged in her own intrigues. The irony of the situation was not lost on Connie. There was part of her that wanted to take the city’s offer, forget all about Rick Leatherby, and head for the Bahamas.

  If she just turned over all three copies of the DVD to Rick, maybe she could forget about him and this whole blackmail plot, and get on with her life. She wondered if the drug kingpins behind Rick would let her do that. She thought it most likely that she would have to continue to hold the threat of exposure over their heads just to keep them at bay. They knew she was onto their scheme, so they would probably kill her to ensure her silence if they thought they could get away with it. Given that, she might as well go ahead and take their money.

  She wished she knew what Rick and his backers were up to, but she didn’t know anybody in Savannah who could tell her. She thought about Belk, but he hadn’t seemed to be the type who would have any insight into the criminal environment in Savannah. She needed someone she could trust, but there really was no one, now that she was on the outs with Rick. She considered hiring an investigator, but she had trouble imagining what it would be like trying to brief someone. She pictured herself explaining that she was blackmailing her former lover and his mob-connected investors. She couldn’t make that seem reasonable, no matter how she twisted and turned the scenario.

  She focused on her present situation. She had Rick boxed in; his only option was to buy her silence. He could only do that by bringing her threat to the attention of the drug lords. She thought her demand would be modest enough by their standards, but she also knew that killing her rather than paying would be their first choice. She saw no way out of her present position except to follow her original plan.

  Certainly, they must know where she was by now. She hadn’t taken any particular trouble to cover her trail after the first day. Her only protection was the credibility of her threat. She reasoned that she was committed to her original course, no matter what she did with the city’s offer. She didn’t have the time for a protracted battle with the city, so she might as well take their initial offer and be done with it. She picked up the phone and called the woman from the City Attorney’s office, who agreed to bring the paperwork by on her way to lunch.

  Joe had returned to his room after breakfast to put on his jacket when he heard the phone ringing. Quickly, he unlocked the door and snatched the phone off the cradle. "Denardo," he said as the door closed behind him.

  "Joe? Charlie here. You seen Barrera yet?"

  "No, Boss," Joe replied, "I was going to check in with the locals before I went to the hospital."

  "Glad I caught you. Leatherby's dead. Looks like he hung himself in his garage, but we don't have an autopsy report yet, so nothing's for sure," Charlie told Joe.

  Charlie read Leatherby's supposed suicide note to Joe. They both thought the note to Connie was consistent with Rick having been the hit and run driver, so Joe’s plans for questioning Connie went out the window. He sat down on the bed, loosening his tie, and he and Charlie reviewed the case one more time. Charlie stressed that while it certainly looked like suicide, they didn’t know for sure. The coroner wouldn't be done with the postmortem examination until tomorrow.

  They decided Joe should approach Connie carefully and get her version of the night of the hit and run before telling her about Rick. They still wanted to know if she knew anything about Ski Cat and why he would have searched her condo, and why he might have searched Kathy’s for that matter. Then there was her appointment with Belk a few days ago. Given the Ski Cat connection, they wanted to see if she knew anything about Belk’s disappearance. They planned for Joe to tell her that an eyewitness had implicated the car in the accident and that Rick claimed to have loaned it to her that night. Based on her reaction, Joe would decide where to take the interrogation next.

  "If she admits to driving the car that night, Leatherby's death looks a lot less like suicide," Joe said. "It might also explain her appointment with Belk."

  "It still wouldn’t make any sense out of Ski Cat’s actions, though," Charlie mused. "Looks like he searched Connie’s condo, failed to find what he was looking for, and moved on to Kathy’s. There were no signs that he had been intending burglary, because he left all sorts of valuables in Connie’s place."

  "Yeah, but there's no connection between Connie and Kathy. That makes the search scenario seem pretty unlikely to me."

  "Well, I think you've got enough of a plan for your session with Barrera," Charlie said. "Let's see how that plays out before we spin our wheels anymore. Enjoy Miami Beach," Charlie teased.

  "Thanks, Boss," Joe said as he hung up the phone. He continued to worry at the possibilities like a dog working on a rawhide chew as he snugged up his tie and put on his jacket. He took the elevator to the lobby and walked out to the taxi stand in front of the hotel.

  As the cab worked its way through the traffic on Collins, Joe was distracted by the sights of South Beach. It didn’t resemble any beach town he had ever seen. Partly, he realized, the architecture set it apart, but mostly it was the people.

  True to his profession, Joe was a keen observer of humanity. He would have bet that most of the people on the streets weren’t from the States. He wondered if some of them were even from earth. He had a keen sense of being in a foreign country. He was thinking that the few pale, pink, overweight, obviously American tourists looked decidedly out of place here.

  Just then, an obscenely muscular, bronzed, hairless male, clad only in a thong and gleaming with suntan oil, darted in front of the cab on roller blades. The cab driver cursed in Spanish and instinctively moved his foot from the accelerator to the brake as his hand found the horn in one coordinated move, but the skater was already several cars ahead of th
em, continuing to weave in and out of traffic. Most of the folks around took no notice of the guy’s appearance or behavior.

  Joe imagined instantaneously transplanting the skater into the middle of a traffic jam on Bay Street in Savannah. He amused himself by imagining the range of reactions that would be provoked. The little old blue-haired ladies on their way to tea at the Colonial Dames meeting would faint dead away. The Yankee women from the Marshe Landes who were trying to pass for local blue hairs would vocalize their outrage in their most obstreperous New Jersey accents. The tourists from Ohio would capture it all on videotape before they started asking everyone around them what was happening, sure that this was some local entertainment that they were not quite getting. The Baptists would have the police switchboard tied up for hours, demanding that something be done about it. At least one redneck in a rusted-out pickup truck would be trying to run the apparition down. Joe was glad the skater was here and not in Savannah.

  He noticed that the cab had come to a stop in front of the police station. He paid his fare and made his way inside. "I'm here to see Sergeant Luis Gonzalez," he announced to the uniformed cop on the reception desk, trying not to be distracted by the guy's fluorescent hair. He considered himself broadminded and he wasn’t making any judgments about this cop because he had green hair, but it was still unusual. Joe felt more at home when Luis Gonzalez appeared from down the hall and introduced himself.

  "Thanks for seeing me so quickly," Joe said, noticing that Gonzalez looked like a standard issue detective. He was about Joe's age, slightly overweight, and rumpled, just like detective sergeants were supposed to be where Joe came from. "You got many street cops with green hair?" Joe asked as they walked back to a meeting room.

  Gonzales chuckled at Joe’s reaction to the hair. "Part of our community policing effort," he explained, offering nothing further. Although Luis Gonzalez looked Hispanic, he spoke English with a strong cracker accent.

  "Are you from Miami originally?" Joe asked.

  "Havana," Gonzalez replied, to Joe's visible surprise. "But I grew up in Valdosta, Georgia," he added with a chuckle. "That’s where I learned to talk like a cracker. Welcome to Miami Beach, where nothing’s what it appears to be."

  After Luis had gotten them both cups of lousy coffee, Joe shared what he knew about Connie. Luis, in turn, revealed that she was the third sunbather to be run over by a beach patrol vehicle in the last two months. Of the other two, one had died and the other was paralyzed, so Luis thought they were doing better. He went on to say that the city obviously wanted to hush up the situation and was trying to find more suitable vehicles for patrolling the beach.

  Day 14, Midday

  Connie had just picked up her book and started reading when there was a knock at the door.

  "Good morning. I'm Detective Sergeant Joe Denardo, from the Savannah Police Department," he said, offering his credentials for her inspection. "I need to ask you a few questions about an automobile accident."

  Her mind immediately started racing as she half-listened to his expression of concern about her recovery from her own accident.

  "An eyewitness placed Rick Leatherby's car at the scene of a hit and run accident that resulted in a death. Dr. Leatherby told me you had borrowed the car on the night in question," Joe said, offering a pregnant pause.

  She wondered what Rick had told the police. She knew Rick might be vain enough to think she would provide an alibi for him, but she was stunned at the allegation that she had been the driver. She felt a brief flicker of motivation to protect Rick for the sake of her blackmail scheme.

  She considered this, and realized that the hit and run was not her most important source of leverage in the blackmail plan. The guys with the money were no doubt far more worried about their money-laundering operation than they were about Rick’s problems. His role had diminished to that of catalyst between Connie and them at this point. She realized that Joe was still waiting patiently for her to respond to his statement.

  "How did you find me?" she asked, hoping to buy time and get him to elaborate on his implied question.

  Joe decided that he would start out by being gentle and solicitous with Connie, so he patiently explained that, when nobody at the clinic could tell them where she was, he had treated her as a missing person. Of course, the Miami Beach police had responded to his bulletin and here he was.

  "Hope you can help me. I need to know whatever you can tell me about Rick Leatherby and his car on that night." He paused again.

  "Okay. Sorry if I’m slow, but between the painkillers and the surprise of your being here…"

  Joe nodded in an accommodating manner and Connie began to talk. "Rick and I went out to dinner after a late evening working at the clinic and then we went down to River Street after dinner for drinks and dancing. A couple of guys asked me to dance, and Rick continued drinking steadily. I'd say it was about 1:30 or so when we left the bar. Rick was way too drunk to drive, but I couldn't convince him to give me the keys. We were still arguing about that in the car, and he was tearing through downtown like a maniac. My car was at the clinic, so Rick was headed back out to Thunderbolt."

  "He hit something as he was skidding through the turns at one of the squares. He said it was probably a dog – I couldn’t really see. His driving was scaring me, so I was trying not to watch. If I had known how smashed he was, I never would have gotten in the car with him. I wanted him to stop and see what it was, but he said he’d take care of it in the morning. That really didn’t make sense, but there was no way to reason with him. He dropped me at the clinic and I left the next day to start my vacation."

  "Dr. Leatherby said you had borrowed the car that night to entertain some visiting friends. He said you disappeared the next day, with no one at the clinic having any idea as to your whereabouts."

  Connie decided to keep her mouth shut. She held Joe’s gaze, but carefully relaxed her facial muscles so as to betray no emotion, refusing to be drawn by Joe's pause.

  Joe finally broke the silence. "Ms. Barrera, although you say you left on vacation early the next morning, we have reason to believe that you had an appointment with an attorney in Thunderbolt, Jonas Belk, three days after the accident."

  Connie maintained her stony silence.

  "Ms. Barrera, are you aware that the accident resulted in a fatality?"

  "Rick said he would report it in the morning," Connie said, evasively.

  "Ms. Barrera, I don’t think you realize how serious this all is. What you told me about your evening with Dr. Leatherby rings true, and we’ll check out your story anyway. The rest of what you’ve said doesn’t sound as solid. If you were in town the next day, it would be a surprise to me if you missed hearing about the hit and run death. It was all over the news. Whoever was driving that car is looking at involuntary manslaughter charges, at least. I need to know why you suddenly left Savannah and why you didn’t come forward with what you knew the way any normal person would have. There’s more strange stuff, too. Your condo was broken into and searched in the last week or so. We don’t know exactly when it was. So was the unit next door. Looks like the same guy. Nothing of value was stolen from either place, so it wasn’t any ordinary break-in. The same guy who did it is implicated in the disappearance of Jonas Belk, the attorney who had your name on his appointment calendar and your personal check on his desk, marked ‘payment for professional services.’ You have some explaining to do."

  Connie maintained her blank expression, although she had nearly fainted upon hearing of Belk’s disappearance. She was sure now that Rick's mob investors had taken him. She wondered how much information they had managed to get from him. She took comfort in the fact that he didn’t really know much, but she felt lucky that she had dropped the hints to Rick about having other people out there with copies of the video.

  "Look, Ms. Barrera," Joe said, "I don’t believe you were driving the car that night, but we need to be sure. Dr. Leatherby is dead. It looks like he killed himself, and he left a no
te in his own handwriting, addressed to you. The tone of the note made it sound like he was suffering from a guilty conscience about you or the accident or both."

  The shock of Rick’s death hit Connie with the force of an earthquake. She didn’t think for a heartbeat that it was suicide. She struggled to hang on to some semblance of composure. As she fought down the emotion rising in her chest, Connie suddenly saw an opportunity to reclaim her life and enjoy the settlement from the City of Miami Beach.

  "Sergeant," she said, in what she hoped was a confident tone, "I need to talk with a lawyer. I’m not going to say anything else right now, but I think I can help you. Give me a number where you can be reached this afternoon."

  After Joe learned that she still had to find a lawyer, he agreed to wait for her to call his hotel room later in the day. He left to find some lunch and check in with Charlie.

  The big bull gator was sprawled in the sun on the mud bank, digesting his meal from last night. The ringing of the cell phone in the weeds nearby didn’t bother him. He had heard it periodically ever since he had found the big carcass that somebody had dumped, just as his instincts had sent him in search of food. After he had torn and swallowed enough meat to fill his gut and stashed the remainder under a sunken log to ripen, he had come back to the mud to rest. The ringing had started then.

  Sam and Jimmy were wondering aloud what had happened to Fat Tony. He could have forgotten to turn on his cell phone when he got off the airplane, or lost it, or the battery could be dead. But there was no explaining why he hadn’t called in during the last eighteen hours. That was completely unlike Tony. Sam had expected he would call as soon as he had linked up with Ski Cat’s little brother and picked his brain. That couldn’t have taken him very long. If Tony hadn’t found Dopey, he surely would have called.

  Jimmy had no way to reach Dopey other than through the switchboard at the hotel, and he hadn’t been able to get an answer from the Wilson brothers’ suite. He and Sam didn’t know Dopey personally. Isolation between certain layers in the organization was one of the ways they protected themselves from exposure. Ski Cat had been Dopey’s sole contact. Tony knew how to reach Dopey, but Dopey only knew how to reach Ski Cat, so if there was trouble, Dopey had no one to call with Ski Cat out of the action. Sam was running out of soldiers to fight this war. He and Jimmy decided to regroup.