As Lafayette Park came up on her right, Maggie glanced over and saw her father’s old Chevy pickup. Lafayette Pier was one of her father’s favorite places to fish; he and Maggie had fished here many times while she was growing up, and now he often brought her kids here as well.
She parked next to the truck and got out. She had a little bit before she was due at Mrs. Burwell’s, and maybe Daddy had something she could fix for dinner after.
She walked across the grass and onto the brick pathway that led to and around the gazebo, and then to the pier. She had just reached the near side of the gazebo when she looked out at the pier and saw her father.
Maggie stopped and stared.
She’d seen her father and Bennett Boudreaux together many times in her life. All of them had been at Sea-Fair, all of them had been as her father was getting paid for his day’s harvest. Seeing the two of them out there on the pier, standing close together and obviously deep in conversation, was completely foreign to Maggie, and it took a moment for her to be sure she was actually seeing it.
Daddy wasn’t wearing fishing clothes, nor was he holding a pole. Boudreaux didn’t appear to be engaged in fishing, either. They appeared to be very engaged with each other.
Just that summer, Maggie had met Boudreaux on this same pier, at his request. Had he asked her father to do the same? She couldn’t think of a single reason why he should. Her father didn’t even sell his oysters to Sea-Fair anymore; he only worked part-time, and he sold small quantities at the farmer’s market and sometimes directly to friends and neighbors.
Maggie’s first instinct was to walk on out there and ask them what the hell they were doing, but the incongruity of it held her back. She couldn’t think of one good reason for them to be there. She couldn’t think of any bad ones, either, but given her father’s feelings toward Boudreaux she couldn’t help sensing that there was one.
She hesitated for a moment longer, then turned around and quickly walked back the way she’d come. She told herself it was because she should ask her father in private, and brushed away the thought that she just couldn’t think of an answer she’d want to hear.
Lana Burwell lived in a small pink cottage in the center of the almost too quaint little town of Carrabelle, half an hour east of Apalach.
The small front yard was filled with flowering plants and cutesy yard accessories; garden plaques, gnomes, tiny windmills and deer frozen mid-step were everywhere. Maggie wasn’t sure how Mrs. Burwell managed to make it around her yard to maintain all of her plants, but they looked robust enough.
Mrs. Burwell was fairly robust herself. She looked younger than Maggie knew she was, in that way that heavy people often do, and her voice was surprisingly high and dainty.
She invited Maggie inside, offered her coffee, which Maggie politely declined, then led her to a back room that looked to be part sewing room and part storage closet. The small sewing table was surrounded by boxes and totes that rose to the ceiling in places.
“After we talked, I went through a bunch of stuff, looking for payroll records and whatnot,” the woman said as they picked their way through the room. “I’m afraid I didn’t find any.”
Maggie sidestepped a small pile of papers. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said.
“Well, it was so long ago, of course,” Mrs. Burwell said. “Everything was paper then, not on computers like it is now. You run out of room, you throw stuff out.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance you remember anyone who was working for you in 1977?” Maggie asked.
“Oh, goodness no. I don’t remember what I did day before yesterday,” Mrs. Burwell said. “And I wasn’t too involved in the business, anyway. I was home raising four kids.”
She stopped at one of several open boxes and tapped at the pile of yellowed manila folders and dark green hanging files on top. “I did find some tax returns, but they don’t have employee names on them or anything, so not much help to you there. However, I did come across a bunch of awards and things we used to have hanging in the office, you know, licenses and civic awards and things, and that was when I remembered the Neighborhood League.”
Mrs. Burwell was looking at Maggie happily, as though Maggie would understand the significance. She didn’t.
“The Neighborhood League?”
“Yes! It doesn’t exist anymore, of course, but we were very involved,” Mrs. Burwell answered.
“What was it?”
“It was kind of a historic preservation thing,” the woman said. “There were a few businesses involved. Like Goodwin’s Hardware. They donated a lot of lumber and paint and things. We usually talked most of our guys into donating some labor.”
Mrs. Burwell squeezed her way past a few more boxes to get to her sewing table. “Anyway, we always had a barbecue or picnic or something of that sort when that year’s project was finished, and we had pictures from every single year hanging up in the front office. Good public relations, you know.”
She put a hand on an open cardboard box on the sewing table. “Anyhoo, I was just starting to go through this when you knocked,” she said.
Maggie stepped a bit closer and rose up on her toes as the older woman opened the flaps of the box. It was filled with pictures in cheap black frames. There was a stack of frames already on the sewing table, all of them coated with a thin veil of dust.
Mrs. Burwell started flipping through the pictures still inside the box. “I wish we’d boxed these up in some kind of order, but who knew we’d actually need to find one?” she said. “This is eighty-two. Here’s eighty-seven. I don’t even remember what the project was in seventy-seven. That may have been the year we worked on The Soda Shoppe. Nope, here it is!”
She pulled a frame out of the stack and held it up proudly. “It was the Fennimore House. They made it a bed and breakfast for a while.”
Maggie was too far away to see much. She could make out the caption under the photo: “Fennimore House Restoration – 1977.” The picture itself was a faded black and white of a group of men sitting at a picnic table on the grass. Beyond them was the front of an imposing white Victorian home.
Maggie made her way closer as the woman wiped at the picture with one sleeve of her flowered blouse and peered at it.
“Of course, this won’t have everyone who worked with us that year,” she said. “We always had a lot of shrimpers and oystermen working with us on and off, too. But most of the guys will be here.”
Maggie looked over the woman’s shoulder as she tapped a bright pink nail on one or another face. “This is Frank Grasso. He passed away some years ago, poor guy. I don’t know who this is. Here’s the Swift boy…Chris or Craig, something like that. Very sweet.”
Maggie maneuvered herself so that she could get a better look at the picture. There were more than a dozen men at the table, some looking at the camera, some not.
“I don’t know him. Or him. This is my husband, of course.” Mrs. Burwell let out a surprisingly delicate sneeze. “Goodness. Oh, this is Sam Richards, we actually became very good friends with him and his wife over the years. They live in Costa Rica now.”
Maggie knew some of the surnames, but not all. She also recognized Harry Fox before Mrs. Burwell named him. Harry had been David’s baseball coach in junior high.
“Oh, this is Paul McNamara,” Mrs. Burwell said. “I forgot all about him.”
She moved her finger, and Maggie suddenly felt weightless. She stopped breathing, and the sound of Mrs. Burwell’s fingernail tapping on the lean, young face was the only sound in the room for a moment.
“Hm,” the woman said. “Sorry, I don’t know who that is.”
Maggie did. It was her father.
Maggie pulled in behind Wyatt’s truck, and walked to the front door. When Wyatt opened it, he was barefoot, wearing his reading glasses and a worn pair of jeans.
“Hey,” he said, sounding somewhat surprised.
“Hey,” Maggie said. “Can I come in?”
“No, dumba
ss, of course not,” he said as he opened the door wide.
Maggie went inside and, once Wyatt had closed the door, she distractedly let herself be hugged.
“Okay, what’s up?” he asked.
Maggie sighed. “Do you have any wine?”
Wyatt frowned at her for a moment. “Yeah, come on.”
Maggie followed him through the living room and to the kitchen, where she set her purse on the breakfast bar. The French doors from the dining area to the back patio were open, and the white sheers billowed a little in the breeze. The wind had died down quite a bit after the sun had set, but the air still had a touch of autumn to it.
Wyatt poured two glasses of red wine. “Tell me what’s going on,” he said.
Maggie took a healthy swallow, then put down the glass and pulled the picture from her purse. Mrs. Burwell had taken it out of the frame for her, and drawn little arrows between faces and names that she knew.
“What’s that?” Wyatt asked.
“It’s most of the guys who worked for Bayside Construction the summer of ’77.” Maggie placed the picture on the breakfast bar, upside down so that Wyatt could look at it.
“Okay,” he said, tilting his head up a bit to see through his glasses.
Maggie took a breath and hesitated for a moment, reluctant to point out her father, like it might make him more “there” than he already was. Finally, she put one finger next to her father’s face.
Wyatt bent a bit closer to the photograph, then finally stood back up.
“Maggie, this doesn’t mean anything,” he said quietly.
“But why didn’t he mention it to me?”
“Why should he?”
“We were talking about the case,” she answered. “Why wouldn’t he tell me that he’d worked on the building where Crawford’s body was found?”
“Okay, let’s step back a second,” Wyatt said, putting his hands on the counter. “This was almost forty years ago. He may have forgotten he even worked with Bayside.”
“You don’t think hearing about Crawford’s body would jog his memory? Besides, my father doesn’t forget much.”
“Maggie, what’s your point? Really?” Wyatt asked. “Because we both know your Dad.”
“I’m not sure what my point is,” she answered. “But I’m upset.”
“Why? Almost every oysterman I know works other jobs to make ends meet. This is a small town. It’s not that big of a coincidence that he happened to work for Bayside.”
“No, it isn’t,” Maggie. “And it wouldn’t bother me a bit if he had told me that.”
She took another swallow of wine and willed it to take the edge off her nerves.
“I can see being surprised by this,” Wyatt said as he tapped the picture. “But honestly, I don’t see the big deal. Think about it. Do you really have any reason to think this means anything bad?”
Maggie looked up at him for a moment, then sighed. “Maybe.”
“Like what?”
She chewed at the corner of her lip and stared at the counter. “I saw him talking with Boudreaux today, out on Lafayette Pier.”
Wyatt pursed his lips a moment, his formidable moustache brushing at the bottom of his nose. “Okay. That’s kind of surprising. But Maggie, they could have just run into each other. Gray goes fishing there all the time.”
“Daddy wasn’t fishing,” she said. “And Boudreaux doesn’t run into people.”
Wyatt took off his glasses and sighed. “They did business together for years.”
“At Boudreaux’s place of business,” Maggie said. “And not anymore.”
Wyatt put his glasses down and took a drink of wine, waited.
“The last time I saw Boudreaux on that pier was over the summer. He asked me to meet him there,” she said finally. “We talked about the rape, and Sport Wilmette.”
“So…what?” Wyatt asked. “You think Boudreaux summoned your dad? For what reason?”
Maggie shook her head and shrugged, frustrated and tired of thinking. “I don’t know. It just feels wrong, especially after seeing this picture.”
“Look at me,” Wyatt said, and put his hands on her shoulders. “Just ask him.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t question my dad,” she said. “I don’t interview my father.”
“I’m not saying you should grill him. There’s no reason to,” Wyatt said. “But for your own piece of mind, just ask him about it.”
Maggie sighed and took another drink of her wine. “Maybe. Eventually.”
“Are you investigating this case or not?” Wyatt asked, a little sharply.
“Yeah, I am,” she shot back.
“And we’re trying to ID these guys in the picture so we can maybe find out if one of them bricked up Crawford, are we not?”
“Yeah,” Maggie answered, less forcefully. “We are.”
“None of whom was your father, and my Scrabble nemesis,” Wyatt continued. “But we’re still working the damn picture.”
“Yeah.”
“Now, what are you doing for dinner?”
Maggie took a second to change gears. “Going home to the kids and ordering pizza, because I suck at mothering and copping simultaneously.”
“Why don’t I order the pizza, and you go get the kids and bring them here?” Wyatt asked.
“I guess I could do that,” she said.
“Kids and dogs only,” Wyatt said. “No poultry.”
Late the next morning, Wyatt walked into Maggie’s office, a legal pad in one hand and a Mountain Dew in the other.
“Hey,” he said as he came in.
Maggie looked up from her computer. “Hey.”
She spun around to face him as he threw himself into the metal folding chair and took a swallow of his soda.
“So, found one more,” he said, looking at his pad. “Craig Swift is an engineer in Atlanta now, God bless him. He worked for Bayside that summer, but he went back to college early—Georgia Tech—did a half term to make up some class. He was gone from here in early July.”
“Okay,” Maggie said. “Did he remember anyone from back then?”
“Just Burwell and Harry Fox,” Wyatt answered. “He only worked for them during school breaks, and he wasn’t from here. Sam Richards, the guy that lives in Costa Rica now? He was good friends with Craig’s dad and got him a job with Bayside during school breaks. That summer was his last one, though.”
“Why?”
“He graduated. Summa cum laude.”
“Okay, so probably nothing there.”
“Probably not,” Wyatt agreed. “How are you coming along?”
“Two more IDs. Carol recognized this guy here on the end,” she said, pointing at the picture on her desk. “That’s Danny Grady.”
“Rings a bell,” Wyatt said.
“He’s still local,” Maggie said. “A shrimper. I left a message with his wife.”
“Who else did you get?”
“This guy here,” Maggie said. “This is Dwight’s uncle, Howard Shultz. I remember him. He died about eight years ago.”
“What did Dwight have to say about him?” Dwight Shultz was a deputy, a high-strung but completely upstanding young man that they often referred to as Dudley Do-Right.
“Nothing important, except that Howard wouldn’t have been here mid-August,” Maggie answered. “He got drunk on the Fourth of July and signed up for the Army. He was gone within a couple of weeks.”
“Okay, so nada.”
“Right,” Maggie said.
“At least we’re eliminating some people,” Wyatt said.
He took a swig of his Dew and leaned over to peer at the picture.
“So, how many unknowns do we have left?” he asked.
“Four,” Maggie answered.
Wyatt stared across the desk at her. When she failed to respond, he raised his eyebrows pretty much to his hairline.
“Alright, get off my back,” Maggie said, standing up.
>
He took a drink and watched Maggie as she snatched up the picture, grabbed her purse from its hook, and started out.
“Tell him I’m gonna kick his elderly ass next Scrabble night.”
“No. He only has one lung,” Maggie said. “I don’t think he can take that big a funny.”
Wyatt frowned at her back as she left the office, then looked back at his legal pad. “Kick your ass, too,” he said, to no one specific.
Maggie called her parents’ house and learned that her father was cleaning the skiff, so she headed over to Scipio Creek Marina, just a few doors down from Boudreaux’s place and the building where Crawford had last been seen.
When Maggie hit the docks, she saw that Daddy was hosing down the decks. He looked up when she got to his slip.
“Hey, Sunshine,” he said.
“Hey, Daddy,” Maggie said, squinting at him in the brutal sunlight. She’d left her sunglasses in the Jeep.
“What brings you over here?” he asked.
“I thought maybe you could help me with something,” she said.
“Sure. What do you need?”
Maggie nervously pulled the photograph out of her purse. “I was wondering if you could take a look at this.”
Gray shut the hose off, dried his hands on his work pants, and walked over to the rail. “Hop aboard.”
He handed her onto the deck, then took the picture from her. Maggie watched his face, which went from mildly interested, to surprised, to blank within just a few seconds.
“Well,” was all he said.
“I didn’t know you worked for Bayside,” Maggie said, trying for a casual tone.
He looked up at her. “Yes, I did. Not on a regular basis, but whenever things were slow,” he said. “I was trying to save up some money for when your Mama and I got married.”
Maggie had several questions she wanted to ask but, standing right there in front of her father, she couldn’t bring herself to ask them. “Do you remember any of those guys with the question marks by their heads?” she asked instead.
“Let’s see,” Gray said, pulling the picture closer to his face. “This one here is Ray Dougherty,” he said. “Remember him? He used to come over now and then.”
Dead Wake (The Forgotten Coast Florida #5) Page 11
