Dead Wake (The Forgotten Coast Florida #5)

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  She sighed, her amethyst pendant sliding off of her lapel. “So, yes, it was a rough week, but we’d had rougher ones.”

  Wyatt looked over at Maggie and raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Mrs. Crawford, we also wanted to ask you about Terry Luedtke,” she said.

  She watched as the woman pursed her lips a few times, the way someone does when they’re starting to say something. But she didn’t.

  “Do you remember him?” Maggie asked.

  “Well, yes, of course I do,” the woman said, frustration in her voice. “Of course. What about him?”

  “He worked for you and your husband?”

  “Well, he worked for Holden, yes,” Mrs. Crawford said. “Then of course I asked him to run the business for me when we—well, when we didn’t know what else to do. Holden didn’t come back.”

  “What was he like?” Wyatt asked.

  “Oh. Well, he wasn’t very bright, but he was a very hard worker,” Mrs. Crawford said. “And he knew the oyster business.”

  “Why did he leave after Boudreaux bought you out?” Wyatt asked.

  Mrs. Crawford stared at him for a moment, then nervously twisted a strand of hair that hung against her neck. “Well, he…I think it was partly that he didn’t want a new boss. But he also…well, he had started having feelings for me, you know. He said he had feelings for me.”

  “And you didn’t return those feelings?” Maggie asked.

  “No.”

  “Was this something new, or had he been interested in you before your husband’s disappearance?” Wyatt asked gently.

  “Oh, I see what you’re—but, no, I don’t think he did.” She let go of her hair and fiddled with her necklace instead. “But you have to understand, he was a very sweet guy. He wouldn’t have hurt a fly, I don’t think.”

  “Did you stay in touch with him after he moved away?” Maggie asked.

  “No,” Mrs. Crawford answered. “It would have been uncomfortable.”

  Wyatt leaned forward, folded his hands on the table. “Mrs. Crawford, did you know that he committed suicide just a few months after he left Apalach?”

  Mrs. Crawford stared at him a moment, then put a finger to her lips. “No. I don’t think I knew that,” she said.

  She shook her head as though to clear her thoughts, then looked over at Maggie.

  “Oh, honey,” she said. “Georgia, I taught you better than that.”

  “I’m sorry?” Maggie said.

  Mrs. Crawford reached over and grabbed the clip from the back of Maggie’s head. “You have such beautiful hair, too beautiful to walk around like that.”

  Maggie’s dark hair fell down around her shoulders, and Mrs. Crawford fluffed at the ends a little. Her fingertips were cold and dry against Maggie’s neck, and Maggie barely suppressed a shiver.

  “That’s much better,” Mrs. Crawford said. “Although I still say if you get a few layers put in, you’ll look so much better. You know, something like Jaclyn Smith.”

  Mrs. Crawford stood up and pulled a few bobby pins out of her pants pocket. Maggie tried to cringe without cringing as the woman stood behind her and started gathering her hair up.

  “Just remember, no matter where you go, or what kind of day you’re having, it’s still important to look your very best,” the woman said.

  Maggie looked at Wyatt. He was trying to keep his face neutral, but she could see the sadness there, though she wasn’t sure which of them he felt worse for.

  Mrs. Crawford finished fashioning Maggie’s hair into a proper bun, and her fingertips brushed the sides of Maggie’s face as she pulled out a few select tendrils.

  “Oh, yes, so much better,” she said as she sat back down. “It always pays for a girl to make just a little extra effort.”

  She patted Maggie gently on the cheek, and Maggie felt an odd mix of sympathy and revulsion.

  “Just ask Gray,” the old woman said, and gave Maggie a wink.

  Maggie took a deep breath of dementia-free air the moment she and Wyatt stepped back out onto the brick pathway.

  “That was uncomfortable,” Wyatt said.

  “If you ever again just sit there and let somebody do my hair, I’ll kick you in the head,” Maggie said.

  “I don’t see how it could come up again,” Wyatt said. “It does look nice, though.”

  Maggie rolled her eyes, but Wyatt pretended not to notice as he looked over at the main building.

  “I want to see who’s on Mrs. Crawford’s visitors list,” he said.

  “What are you looking for?” Maggie asked.

  “Anybody,” Wyatt answered. “She says there’s no one to come to the funeral, but she was a popular woman. Everybody can’t be dead.”

  “I don’t know. She seems like she’s very hung up on appearances,” Maggie said. “Maybe she didn’t tell anyone she was coming here.”

  “It’s not that easy to just drop off the face of the earth,” Wyatt said.

  “It is if you’re not on Facebook.”

  Wyatt gave her a look that said she’d scored that point. “Let’s go check.”

  “You go,” Maggie said. “I want fresh air. That woman made me feel like a ghost.”

  “OK, I’ll meet you back at the car,” Wyatt said.

  Maggie watched him head down the path that led to the main building, then she started on the one that led through a pleasant, parklike area and ended up at the parking lot.

  She was halfway to the parking area when something caught her eye to the left, and she saw a man sitting on a bench, facing a small, manmade pond with a fountain in the center. It was Evan Caldwell.

  Maggie stopped for a moment, unsure if she should disturb him, then headed across the grass.

  “Mr. Caldwell,” she said when she arrived at the bench.

  He looked up, a cigarette in one hand and a Coke can in the other. The lip of the can was edged with ashes. There were dark shadows beneath Evan’s eyes, but he gave her something of a smile.

  “Maggie. How are you?” He scooted over a bit, though it wasn’t necessary, and waved his cigarette at the bench. She hesitated a moment, then sat beside him.

  “I’m fine, thank you,” she said. “How’s your wife?”

  “The same,” he said quietly, then took the last drag of his cigarette. “She’s always the same.”

  “Is she here for rehab?” Maggie asked.

  Evan looked at her, his black hair riffling a little in the breeze. It needed a trim. He pulled another cigarette out of his shirt pocket and held it up. When Maggie shook her head, he lit it. He blew out some smoke before he answered, looking out at the pond.

  “She’s in a coma,” he said.

  Maggie felt a weight of sympathy settle into her chest. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He looked at her and smiled half-heartedly. “I never know what to say when people say that,” he said. “Me, too?”

  He took another drag of his cigarette and shrugged one shoulder.

  “I usually end up just saying ‘thank you,’ but I feel like I should apologize for making people uncomfortable.”

  “I’m not uncomfortable,” Maggie said. “Just sorry.”

  “Thank you,” he said, then smiled. “Are you here about your case?”

  “Yes,” Maggie answered.

  “How’s that going?”

  “It’s hard, trying to unroll a ball of string someone rolled up thirty-eight years ago,” she said.

  “I’ll bet,” he said. “Especially if you have a murder that was investigated as a missing persons case.”

  “Is that all you do? Missing persons?”

  “No. But I seem to have a knack for finding people that everyone else has stopped looking for,” he answered.

  “What’s your secret?”

  “Hell if I know,” he said. He looked over at her, then turned his head a bit so he wouldn’t blow smoke in her face. “I’ll tell you this, though. We tend to look for complicated scenarios. I blame the cop shows on television. We by
pass the simple solutions, and look for something more clever, more interesting.” He tapped the end of his cigarette over the grass. “Then after all the tail-chasing, we usually end up finding out that the simple answer was the right one all along. They didn’t call Einstein Einstein for nothing.”

  Maggie nodded. “I think I’d have to agree with you,” she said. “Only I’m not sure what the simple answer is in this case.”

  “Take away everything you think, and everything everyone else thinks—or thought back then—and pare it all down to only the naked, known facts. The absolute solids. Throw out half the eyewitness testimony if you have any. Then look at what you have left and you’ll usually have the bare bones solution.”

  Maggie nodded again, and picked at a thread on the knee of her jeans.

  “Any of your primaries still around? Besides the widow?” Evan asked.

  “A few. The former Sheriff. The guy’s best friend. A local who’s a professional suspect.” Maggie stopped there, leaving her father off the list.

  “Well, watch your perception of those people,” Evan said. “They may look frail and sweet with their Bingo markers and their funny hats, but don’t make the mistake of discounting them because they’re elderly. They weren’t elderly then.”

  “Good point,” Maggie said, and pictured her father at eighteen, Boudreaux at twenty-two. Mrs. Crawford at Maggie’s own age.

  Evan dropped his cigarette butt into the Coke can and stood up.

  “I’ve got to get back inside,” he said, holding out his free hand. Maggie shook it.

  “Thank you for the advice,” she said.

  “Take it for what it’s worth,” he said, then gave her half a wave and started across the grass toward the main building.

  Maggie watched him go, saw weariness and maybe defeat in the set of his shoulders, reluctance in his pace. The overactive nurturing response in her made her want to stock his fridge with casseroles and launder his bedding.

  Wyatt was right: this place just plain sucked.

  “In the four years she’s been there, she’s never had a visitor, other than her family doctor and her lawyer,” Wyatt said as they headed out of Port St. Joe. “You don’t think that’s weird?”

  “Sure I think it’s weird,” Maggie said. “I just don’t know if it means anything.”

  “I’m still keeping it as a notable weirdness,” Wyatt said.

  They rode in silence for several minutes, and Maggie looked out the window at the pines and overgrown brush that lined that stretch of Hwy 98, a desolate length of road that Sky had once said would be a perfect location for The Walking Dead.

  “I ran into Evan Caldwell in the main lobby,” Wyatt said after a bit.

  “Yeah, I was talking to him outside,” Maggie said.

  Wyatt was quiet for a moment. “She slipped and fell and hit her head on a dock,” he said finally. “That’s it.”

  “That’s awful,” Maggie said. “Was he there?”

  “No, he was working,” Wyatt answered. “All she did was hit her head.” He sighed. “You just never know when life’s going to jump out and bite you.”

  Maggie looked over at Wyatt’s profile. The laugh lines around his mouth were deeper, tighter, and he looked straight ahead at the road. She knew he was thinking about his wife. He and Lily had been married fifteen years when she’d died, from a cancer she hadn’t even told him she had until it was absolutely necessary.

  Maggie couldn’t think of anything to say that was appropriate but not pithy, so she said nothing at all.

  “You’re hung up on Luedtke,” Wyatt said after a while.

  “Yeah,” Maggie said, grateful for the change of subject.

  “She said he was harmless.”

  “She said I was my mother,” Maggie said. “Besides, everybody always says that so-and-so was a nice guy, until they find out he buried his parents in the basement.”

  “I’ll give you that the suicide thing is a bell-ringer,” Wyatt said. “We need to see if we can find anyone that knew him pretty well.”

  “I’ve got Dwight looking into it,” Maggie said.

  “I still think Boudreaux,” Wyatt said.

  “I know.” Maggie looked back out the window. “I don’t.”

  “But your reasons are partly personal,” Wyatt countered.

  “So are yours,” Maggie said.

  “I won’t argue that.”

  A couple of hours later, Maggie and Wyatt sat on opposite sides of her desk, comparing notes on their day.

  “So, I ran down the nurse that helped take care of Mrs. Crawford’s sister,” Wyatt said. “Just to confirm what she told officers back in ’77. Please thank me for keeping an open mind.”

  “Thank you,” Maggie said dryly.

  “She says yeah, Mrs. Crawford was there that night, got there around eight-thirty,” Wyatt said. “According to her, and she’s a very sweet lady who also says she’s seen me in the paper and I’m a doll-baby—her words—according to her, Mrs. Crawford was there a lot at night. Sometimes she spent the night so someone was with her sister until the morning nurse came.”

  “She didn’t have round the clock care? She died like two months later, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah, but no. A nurse came in the morning to fix her something to eat, help her bathe, give her meds, that kind of thing,” Wyatt said. “Another nurse, usually Mrs. Porter, came in the evening to do it all over again, but she didn’t have someone overnight. She was ambulatory and lucid, though.”

  “That’s so sad,” Maggie said.

  “Yeah.” Wyatt looked down at his notes. “We were lucky. We had hospice. Good hospice.” He coughed into his hand. “Anyway, she says Mrs. Crawford was there when she left around nine.”

  “And where did the sister live again?”

  “Off Gibson Road,” Wyatt said.

  “Okay.”

  “See, I’m keeping an open mind,” Wyatt said.

  “I’ll get you a sticker,” Maggie said.

  Wyatt looked toward her open door. The hallway was empty.

  “How about you come over for dinner instead?” he asked. “You said the kids had sleepovers tonight, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you should come over,” he said.

  Maggie nodded. “Okay. Or you could come out to my house. I have actual food.”

  “You’re a delight,” Wyatt said. “But no. I’d like you to come over. Wear something nice.”

  “Why? And what are you saying?”

  “I’m not saying anything. I just think it would be nice if you wore something without legs. I have a surprise for you.”

  “That sounds kind of suggestive,” Maggie said.

  “Quit being a letch,” Wyatt said. “Are you coming?”

  “Yeah,” Maggie said, a bit snippily.

  Wyatt opened his mouth, no doubt to shred her with some witty remark, but he was interrupted by Dwight appearing in her doorway.

  “Oh, hey, y’all,” Dwight said. “I finally got hold of that guy Luedtke’s brother.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  “Well, he says Luedtke got dumped,” Dwight answered. “That’s why he moved over there where his brother lives.”

  Maggie sat up a little straighter. “Who dumped him?”

  “He didn’t know. Luedtke wouldn’t talk about it,” Dwight answered. “But, hey, when they went through his things afterward, they found a ring. Looked like an engagement ring, the brother said. He ended up pawning it, which is kinda sad.”

  “Yeah,” Maggie said. “Is he sure Luedtke never said who she was?”

  “Yeah, real sure,” Dwight answered. “Not a peep. Love, huh? It’s a real kick in the pants.”

  “Yeah, it can do that to you,” Wyatt said, almost under his breath.

  “Anyhow, that’s what I got,” Dwight said. “You need anything else?”

  “No, thanks, Dwight,” Wyatt said.

  Once Dwight had gone, Wyatt looked at Maggie.

&nb
sp; “I’m telling you,” he said. “Two men, two motivations, working together toward a common goal.”

  Maggie shook her head. “If Boudreaux wanted to kill Crawford, he’d just do it,” she said. “He wouldn’t have someone else there as a witness.”

  “Maybe he didn’t even know Luedtke was there,” Wyatt said. “Maybe Luedtke was working late and came out when he heard a ruckus.”

  “And?”

  “And saw a chance for Mrs. Crawford to not be a missus, and helped Boudreaux get rid of the body,” Wyatt said.

  Maggie shook her head again. “Boudreaux would have just killed him.”

  “I thought your version of Boudreaux was a great guy,” Wyatt said.

  “I don’t have my own version of Boudreaux,” Maggie said.

  “Sure you do,” Wyatt said. “Why wouldn’t you? But it’s colored by gratitude.”

  Maggie almost replied that she’d kind of liked Boudreaux before he’d saved her life, but caught herself.

  “Boudreaux has an alibi,” she said instead.

  “He says he doesn’t,” Wyatt countered.

  “He’s lying.”

  “Why?” Wyatt asked.

  “I think he was with somebody important,” she answered. She got a picture of her dad and Boudreaux on the pier, and pushed it out of her head. “Somebody it wouldn’t be good to be with.”

  “Maggie, this was umptity-ump years ago,” Wyatt said. “He wasn’t pals with all these senators and congressmen back then.”

  “Still,” Maggie said.

  “I’ve got some stuff I need to do,” Wyatt said as he stood up and stretched his back. “Six-thirty good?”

  “Yeah, sure. No legs.”

  She watched Wyatt head down the hall, and then sat there tapping her pen on the edge of her desk. She sat there like that for several minutes, then flipped through her notes before picking up her phone and dialing.

  Bradford Wilson answered on the second ring, but he didn’t sound too excited when Maggie said who it was.

  “What can I do for you, Lieutenant?” he asked.

  “Boudreaux’s alibi,” she said.