Sweet Paradise

by Gene Desrochers

  “Wilma! Come now, Wilma! Herbie needs you for something. Be a dear and bring a bottle when you come.”

  Wilma appeared moments later, a Chardonnay bottle in one hand and an empty wine glass in the other. She handed both to Hillary.

  “This isn’t cold enough.”

  “Then chill it yourself. You know where the chill machine be,” Wilma shot back. “Now, what you want, Mr. Bacon?”

  “Wilma, I tire of your tone. Please escort this policeman to the drive.”

  “I’m afraid I need you all to answer some questions.”

  Herbie swung around on Leber, like Dracula in a bad vampire film.

  “We do not have to speak to you. Is anyone under arrest?”

  Leber remained seated, his body and face stoic. Junior piped up again, with more determination. “Dad!”

  “I told you...”

  “Dad, I’m eighteen. You cannot stop me from discussing this matter with Detective Leber. He’s been a pro since he showed up at Boise’s office that first day.”

  Herbie sent a chair skittering across the rug that stood between him and Junior. “How dare you ... ”

  “Stop, right there, Mr. Bacon.” Herbie froze. Leber had silently risen to his feet, his hand across his torso, resting on his still-holstered gun. “There is no need to escalate this situation. I’m merely here to get some answers that only those closest to the deceased can provide. Can we all please sit down and discuss this in a calm fashion?”

  Hillary stared at Junior, her lips wet with wine. “What did you say, Junior? Why was Leber at Boise’s office?”

  “I was there when Adirondack Kendal was murdered.”

  “What?” Hillary screeched, bolting to her feet. She moved to the young man and put his head against her bosom. “Please stop this. Please don’t keep after this.” She lifted his face to hers with both hands. “Promise me you’ll stop pursuing this, this inquiry.”

  “I can’t, Aunt Hill.”

  She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye and turned to Herbie. “This is all your fault. If we’d done things differently back then.”

  “Shut up!” he yelled, his hand raised. He stopped mid-slap, realizing the cop was still there.

  Chapter 13

  When I got back down to my office, I heard snoring. Daryl was sprawled across my desk, his beige safari hat had slid down over his spongy features. He snorted awake when I tapped his shoulder.

  “My man, Boise. What’s up?” He held up his hand like he wanted a high five. His breath smelled like chewed lettuce and dried ketchup.

  “Sorry, took longer than expected with Walter.” I gave him a half-hearted pat on the hand.

  “No problem. Jet lag’s a sombitch.”

  “Is there even a time change right now?”

  “Don’t matter. Still messes me up. Seats are so damn small these days.”

  “Tell me about Junior,” I said, pulling my burger out of the white bag next to his elbow.

  “You owe me eight fifty-seven,” he said rummaging in his pocket and pulling out a crumpled receipt. My business card tumbled to the floor. He snatched it up.

  “You need a professional business card. Wha’d you do, print this at home?”

  I handed him a ten and told him to keep it.

  “So, tell me about Junior and Francine.”

  “I’m not in the habit of telling guys I just met about my clients.”

  “What if I buy you a beer?” I said.

  By the time I’d returned with a six-pack of Red Stripe, he’d dozed off again. I plonked a bottle next to him. He groaned, toasted to my health and chugged half the bottle in one pull. I followed suit. He tilted the bottle again and finished it, setting it hard on my desk with a glassy clang.

  He held a second cold bottle of beer against his neck before popping it and chugging. This time he nearly emptied it. Warming up.

  “Ahh! Damn, boy, what kind of beer’s this?”

  “Jamaician.”

  “Well, them Jams know how to make beer.”

  “Can we get back to Junior and Francine?”

  “Francine, that woman, she’s a piece.” He belched loud and long out the corner of his mouth, then winked at me. “A bit paranoid or something. Tightly wound broad.”

  “Oh, yeah? Why do you say that?”

  “She acts like a man, you know. Don’t know about you, but women like that, they aren’t really my thing. I like me nice southern girls. Make-up, nice, long hair.” He belched again.

  He reached for his third beer as I finished my first. Although I wasn’t ready to drink it yet, I snagged one of the two remaining bottles and parked it next to my elbow.

  “Did you meet with her in person?”

  “Nope. She contacted me through my website. Said she had a little basic job for me as long as I kept it to myself.”

  “So why are you telling me?”

  “Professional courtesy. I looked you up. You did some investigating out in L.A. and then headed here after your wife passed. Sorry, by the way. Is that her?”

  I stared at him a while, then said, “Yeah, that’s her.”

  “Nice lookin’ lady.”

  “How’d you know all that?”

  “I’m good at what I do, friend. I know I don’t look like much, but I been in this game a while. One piece of advice: that door might be a bit loud for a private deuce, you know?” When I didn’t respond, he continued. “Now, hows about you tell me what you got?”

  The words came out of his mouth slowly from a distance, then picked up weight and speed as they approached shore and crashed. It seemed strange how sharing this guy was after a couple beers. Was I plying him, or was he plying me?

  “Francine Bacon is dead.”

  He took another long swig then shook his head sadly. “I didn’t mean to speak ill of the dead. Guess my job’s done here. I delivered the letter and made sure Junior arrived safely. You know any good watering holes around town? Better yet, you know any with scantily clad women and a card game?”

  I knew about Lucy’s card game at The Manner on Wednesdays, but I didn’t want this man that deep in my world.

  “What triggered you delivering the letter if it wasn’t Francine?”

  “I didn’t say that. It was her. She emailed me last week and instructed me to hand deliver the letter to his mailbox and watch that he got it. I was all ready to come on down to make sure he got here safely when, as I told you ... ”

  “Right, you had that emergency.”

  “Don’t say it like that. You hurt my feelings. People have emergencies. Things happen to family from time to time.” He scratched his beard and finished another beer. “You mind?” He pointed at the last unopened bottle in the cardboard six pack holder.

  “You know anything else?”

  “What about? Francine died. Suppose she was sick or something and wanted him to come on down.”

  “You were a law man? You think she had you hand deliver a letter because she was sick?”

  “The lady was skittish as hell. I suspect she worried about the unreliability of the mail, but by the way you’re speaking, should I suspect foul play’s at play?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s a damn shame.” He swallowed another half a beer in a gulp, making me wonder where it all went so damn quickly.

  “Anything else you want to share to help me figure out what happened to her? She was your employer after all.”

  “How’d she perish?”

  “Drowned,” I said, looking out toward the harbor. You could see Hassel Island in the distance. Everything was slathered in green trees and brush. One ruin stuck out and one white house. All that life. All that death.

  “Out there? Double damn. I hear drowning ain’t no way to die. You know all those years in Decatur, I only investigated two killings and both were pretty poorly conceived. We caught the bitch and bastar
d in one day both times. They didn’t even run. Nothing like what you see in the movies. But shit, the guy, he got off on a tech. Too bad. Guy had to kill again before we got it right. That one’s always itched me, you know?”

  “She washed up on a beach right out there on that small island.” For some reason I too felt like sharing.

  “Not much drowning goes on where I’m from, but I remember hearing at a law-enforcement seminar that those water deaths are a lot harder to nail down, what with critters eating and evidence washing away and all.”

  “There’s not much to go on, you’re right. What do you think about reparations for slavery.”

  He bellowed and slammed his hand on my desk. “I’m not sure a Georgia boy and, well shit, whatever you are, should be having that conversation. You got some, can I say black, in ya?”

  He finished the beer and gave a satisfied belch. “Burping helps digestion. I try to do it as much as possible.” He held out his hand. “My work’s done here. If you ever come up Decatur way, look me up, Boise. I’m in the one-story brick house on Sycamore Street and Sycamore Place.”

  “That’s it, you’re leaving?”

  On his way out the door, he eyed the wrecked paint job and leaned into to study a glob of red. “She didn’t pay me enough to get involved with murder. I leave that to young bucks. One piece of advice: don’t be shy about using that pepper spray, and get some new tennis shoes. You never know when you gotta be light on your feet and those soles look slicker than deer guts on a doorknob.”

  With that, he got into his Toyota and headed out, swerving around a car before remembering to drive on the left.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon repainting the door and cleaning up what remained with a mop and bucket borrowed from the super. Back at The Manner, I paused at the bar. Four bottles of Guinness later, I staggered upstairs and passed out.

  Chapter 14

  One thing was good , when you had a bunch of suspects with skin in the game, time was on your side. Where would the killer go? He ... or she ... needed to stick around, or it was all for naught.

  Reparations for slavery. I was still having trouble wrapping my head around that idea, because virtually no one believed in it except former slaves and their descendants. There were a handful of examples where former slave owners freed their chattel and awarded them generous offerings as payment for years of unpaid labor.

  In the U.S. there had been numerous suits over the years by individuals and organizations, but none had been granted anything by the judiciary system or the legislature at the federal or state level.

  Even with a black president, no meaningful discussions on a major political stage had taken place. However, according to the notes from discussions Kendal had with Francine Bacon, she planned to give the vast majority of her estate to the descendants of the slaves her family had owned before slavery was abolished in the Virgin Islands.

  “Forty acres and a mule, my ass,” I whispered.

  How would that make Francine’s kids feel? Betrayed. Slighted. Worthless. In general people were not fond of being disinherited. I doubted Harold, Hillary, Herbie, and Junior were exceptions.

  I needed a list of the people involved on all fronts. In other words, I needed a list of those who would benefit from reparations to go along with my list of those aggrieved by Francine’s generosity.

  Walter was in his office. He seemed to be expecting me.

  “I got something you might like to peruse,” he said, handing me a sheet of paper.

  I glanced at the heading. “You must be a mind-reader.”

  The details of the trust fund appeared to leave the bulk of the estate worth approximately one-hundred-fifty million dollars to forty-four descendants of the original slaves who worked for the Bacon’s when they procured sugar plantations in St. Croix, Puerto Rico, and St. Kitts, as well as those who lived in St. Thomas and worked at the docks and in the warehouses that shipped out the goods produced by the plantations for sale around the world.

  The slaves in Puerto Rico were hardest to track since the Spaniards set them free long before the other colonies, provided they agreed to convert to Catholicism. Who the hell was going to quibble about being Catholic or keeping their name when the alternative was slavery? Morals always lose to freedom, unless you’re Nelson Mandela. With their names changed and everyone intermarrying, coupled with poor record-keeping, those people got left behind when reparations were being handed out. Francine was a stickler for details and her paranoia made getting in on this huge windfall nearly impossible. She would rather leave someone out than give money to someone who was not part of the group.

  Attached to the trust was what Kendal and Francine termed the final list of beneficiaries, including the Bacon kids who would receive small amounts for basic living and remain the owners of the family home. They were actually going for something akin to a modern version of forty acres and a mule. Each of the forty-four descendants would receive an acre of land on any of the current sugar plantations owned by the Bacons in St. Croix, St. Kitts, or Puerto Rico, or they could sell the land back to the trust for the tidy sum of five-hundred thousand dollars. In addition, they were entitled to a full, four-year scholarship to any university in the world, and everyone, no matter what they chose to do with the land, also would receive five-hundred thousand in cash in two payments of two-hundred-fifty thousand over a two-year period.

  An email from Francine’s estate attorney recommended that she keep the rest in trust to run some non-profit. That was a hell of an endowment: around one-hundred million dollars.

  Part of this trust fund was clearly meant to punish or at least force her children to take responsibility for their own destinies and stop living off the “sugar tit” as she termed it. My own thoughts ventured the same way. As a man who never got much help from his family, I had trouble feeling sorry for them.

  Harold needed to grow up. He spent his time smoking doobies, shooting targets with a stick, and surfing. All admirable pursuits after a full day’s work, not instead.

  Hillary was a diva. She liked being treated like a lady, but she lacked any real class or substance. Had she watched a bunch of films from the 1920s and decided she was Veronica Lake? A femme fatale she might indeed be, for her mother.

  Herbie was the most obvious choice for father-of-the-year. The guy liked to lord over his subjects, especially his son. Weak men made sport of berating their offspring if they were boys, and molesting them if they were girls. Sometimes, it was the other way around.

  Junior genuinely loved his grandmother. He brought me into this mess. Elias, the boy whose father had been the victim in my last case, was the same age as Junior, or close enough. A small island. Maybe Elias knew Junior and could fill me in on Junior’s high school proclivities.

  I texted him, offering lunch. He accepted.

  FANS BLEW HOT AIR AROUND The University of the Virgin Islands cafeteria. A fly buzzed in my ear. I swatted at it to no avail. The lunch lady slopped some mashed potatoes next to some slices of turkey and watery peas. Elias selected an apple, a bottle of orange juice, and a slice of pie. We dined outside at a white plastic table as coeds meandered around and lounged on the grass in shaded spots. A few sun-bathed. Cell phones and books were scattered around like toys on Christmas morning.

  Elias propped his backpack against his chair and waved to one smiling girl, who scurried by, likely late for class. Her tight top and tighter yoga pants stirred a longing I hadn’t had in some time.

  “You dating?” I asked.

  He made the you-cannot-be-serious face, dropping his chin into his slender chest. He’d filled out some since our last visit months ago, but still had the sinewy look of his drug-dealing father. He gave off the tone of a man very interested in walking the straight and narrow. Tightly cut hair and preppy clothes.

  He dropped the apple into his backpack and dug into the pie. I shuffled my food around the plate, taking the occasional
bite and watched the scene some more before trying again. I attempted to recall if I was as stoic with adults at that age, then realized I had been worse.

  “How’s school?”

  “Fine.”

  “What about Roberts?”

  Roberts was the lawyer Elias worked for, answering phones and scheduling clients between classes. The office wasn’t far from campus.

  “Yeah, it’s fine, you know, it’s a job. Pays better than most. He gave me a guilt raise.”

  “You pick a major?”

  “Criminal justice with a concentration in, you ready for this?” He drummed his fingers on the table.

  “What?”

  “Cyber security.”

  I nodded, a grin breaking across my face. “Nice. Why don’t you major in that? Talk about job cyber-security! Get it?”

  I playfully punched him in the shoulder.

  “Man, that is bad. Real bad. Besides, they don’t have a cyber-security major or minor. It’s called a concentration, which really amounts to, well, I’m not sure, but I can put it on a resume.”

  The silence dropped on us again like an anvil. Another girl waved and I could see him getting antsy as he scarfed the last bite of pie, then chugged his juice.

  He started to push up from his chair. “Well, it’s been real, amigo.”

  “Wait, I gotta talk about something with you.”

  He eased back into the chair.

  The girl had stopped. Elias turned and made the thumb and pinky, I’ll-call-you sign. She shrugged and continued on her way, head held high like she was trying too hard to come off as confident while her heart wilted.

  “Always something with you, huh Boise.”

  “No. Not true, Elias. Last time ... ”

  “Last time you were doing your duty to my dad. But, now that I’m okay, I don’t hear shit from you for weeks. It’s cool.”