Crash Tack

by A. J. Stewart

  “What are you doing here?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “Didn’t know where else to go.” He looked at me sitting on the sofa, and then he looked at Lenny’s chair behind the desk. He sat in the visitor’s chair.

  “You sleep here?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “You disappeared yesterday.”

  I nodded again.

  Then we heard the door and smelled the coffee. Lizzy came in with three paper cups. She handed me one, then offered one to Ron. Lizzy stayed standing as we sipped our drinks. It was hot and black and tasted like liquid road tar. Just what the doctor ordered.

  “What happens now?” Lizzy asked.

  I looked at her blankly. “With what?”

  She motioned around the room. “Here. This business. It was Lenny’s shop. Lenny’s gone.” She choked a little on the end of the sentence, and then sipped her coffee to recover. “Are we done? Do we all look for work?”

  “No,” I said. “Business as usual.” I didn’t really know what that meant.

  “How is it business as usual? The business was Lenny’s, right? So what happens?”

  I frowned at her. I didn’t how to word what I was going to say. It didn’t feel right, despite what Lucas had told me.

  “Nothing happens,” I said. “Lenny left the business to me.”

  Lizzy’s eyes widened and she looked at Ron, and then back at me. “He left it to you? ”

  I nodded. I shifted my gaze to Ron. Part of me felt guilty that I had been given this gift of sorts, and Ron had not. I didn’t know why. Did Lenny think Ron incapable of running a business? He owned more suits than the rest of us combined, times a factor of five or ten. He had the business background. He brought in the corporate clients. But he did not own a piece of the business. Lizzy and I both looked at him.

  “I don’t know what to say, Ron. I don’t know why Lenny chose me. You are the one he should have given the business to.”

  Ron shook his head and smiled. “Did you ever know Lenny to make a wrong move?”

  Only one, I thought to myself, but I shook my head.

  “No,” said Ron. “He gave you his business because you have his soul, Miami. You carry him inside. He knew that you would do the right thing, even when that was the wrong thing. You’d do what Lenny would do.”

  I shook my head more, but said nothing.

  “Besides,” continued Ron, “This is not just a gift, it’s also a burden. A burden he knew you capable of carrying. One that I cannot.”

  “What do you mean, you cannot? You know more about business than I ever will.”

  “It’s not about that. It’s about knowing the way forward, and doing what needs to be done. That’s not me. I succumbed to that before, to stress. I lost a marriage over it. Lenny knew that about me. He knew that not holding me accountable for this place was itself a gift, in its own way.”

  I took a deep breath and looked at them both. I suddenly felt a great weight on my shoulders.

  “So the only question is, do you still need me?” asked Ron.

  “Of course I still need you.”

  “All right, then,” he said.

  “What about me?” asked Lizzy. She wore a frown, not of frustration, but of uncertainty. She and Lenny had a special connection. Lenny had a connection like that with a lot of people, but none more so than Lizzy. But Lizzy and I were like oil and water. We just didn’t blend. You could shake the bottle all you wanted, but eventually we would separate. I figured that was a personality thing, or something more ethereal, well beyond my control. But what I knew was, despite all that, Lenny made her part of his team for the same reason he took me on board. I was a kid in college when we met, a baseball player and a football player and a student of sorts, but Lenny took me under his wing when I needed that most. He could have left it there. But when destiny brought us back together, when my baseball career came to Florida to die, Lenny was there with a new opportunity for me. Not because I couldn’t do anything else, and not from pity. But because Lenny could see shapes and patterns that no one else could see. He saw a gothic woman with a snippy attitude and a devout love of God as the glue that held the shop together. He saw an ex-businessman with too much heart to be in insurance as the rainmaker. And he saw a former ball player as the person to sit in his seat.

  “What about you, Lizzy?” I said. “I need you more than ever.”

  She looked at me for a long moment, without a smile.

  “Good then,” she said. “I’ve got things to do.” She stepped out of the office and back to her own desk. Ron and I smiled at each other.

  “So,” said Ron. “What’s the plan, boss? What are we up to? ”

  I stood and brushed down my suit pants. I had discarded the jacket during the evening, and now I removed the loosened tie. I stepped behind Lenny’s desk and sat down in his chair.

  “You met with some guys the other day? Insurance guys?”

  “Actually, it turns out it was a personal matter. The guy thinks his wife is cheating on him.”

  “Sad.”

  “It is.”

  “So nothing in it?”

  Ron made a face like it could go either way. “That depends. He’s got money, plenty of it. Does our firm do that sort of case now?”

  “That sort of case was Lenny’s bread and butter, so of course we do. The only question is, do you want to do it?”

  Ron smiled. “I do. Right now, I wanna be busy.”

  I nodded. “All right then.”

  We chatted for a while about other leads, other cases. He said there was every likelihood that if we solved this issue for his insurance guy, he would send a lot more corporate work our way, which would swell the coffers considerably. I told Ron it was his to do with as he saw fit, and to just ask for help if he needed it. He seemed pleased with the plan. After being in jail and then losing Lenny, he looked happy to be focused on the future. There was a knock at the door and Lizzy stepped in. I saw beyond her a guy in overalls.

  “Miami,” she said. “The sign writer is here.”

  “Who?”

  “The guy with the new nameplate for downstairs. He’s going to paint the company name on the glass door.”

  “Okay.” I shrugged.

  Lizzy stood looking at me like there was more to say, but I couldn’t for the life of me think what that was .

  “So what should he write?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  Lizzy sighed like I was the dumbest hayseed she’d come across that morning. “It’s your company now. What is it called?”

  I saw her point. We were, had been, Lenny Cox Investigations. LCI for short. But now Lenny Cox was gone. In a few brushstrokes a man in overalls would change everything. Who we were, what we meant. Or not.

  “The company is called Lenny Cox Investigations. LCI for short. Tell him that.”

  Ron smiled, and I might have been seeing things, but I thought Lizzy did too. She turned and closed the door. Ron and I finished up our meeting, and he went off to do his thing. I thought about what my thing would be. I needed some answers, and none were coming. So I needed to find the end of the thread, however tenuous. Something to unravel.

  I stood and felt the keys to Lenny’s truck in my pocket. I needed to get home and get this suit off, and then I needed to do some boring detective work. I opened the drawer and took out the wooden box and carried it out with me. The front door lay open and the guy in overalls was finishing up. Lizzy nodded at the door. In bold letters it said, LCI . In our hearts, and in paint, Lenny would live on. The sign writer asked if it was good and I told him it was great work, and he whistled as he wandered away down the hall. I looked at Lizzy.

  She was looking at the newly inscribed door. “That’s a nice thing you did, right there.”

  I shrugged. “We just got all new stationery.”

  She gave me a half smile, like I was a bit of a lunatic, but she could learn to cope with that. Then the smile disappeared and her face grew
frosty .

  “Miami, you have to find the guy who did this.”

  I nodded. I did have to find the guy. And I walked out to do just that.

  Chapter Forty-One

  THE THREAD I had in mind lived in the Biltmore in Palm Beach. I went home and dumped the suit, grabbed a quick cold shower and threw on some shorts and a palm tree print shirt. I felt like me again. I took Lenny’s truck and drove to the island and parked down the street from the Biltmore. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping to see, but Celia Colfax was my best link to Alec Meechan, so I planned to see if she made any moves. She didn’t. I waited and waited and saw nothing and learned even less. But that’s the business. Private investigations sound like car chases and tuxedos and sexy ladies, but the reality is more long lonely hours sitting in cars, wading through files and reports and spreadsheets, and dealing with people who make their meager living on the seedy side of the tracks. I wasn’t in any hurry. I didn’t require constant stimulation. I just waited. I waited until there was a knock on the window of Lenny’s truck.

  I looked to the sidewalk and saw the mirthless visage of Detective Ronzoni. He signaled for me to wind down the window, but Lenny’s truck didn’t have power windows, so I had to slide across and wind it down by hand.

  “Rice-A-Roni, what brings you here?” I asked .

  “It’s Ronzoni, genius, and the real question is what brings you here.”

  “The nightlife?”

  “It's daytime.”

  “I just wanted to sit quietly and think. It’s been a hell of a week.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sorry about Lenny and all, but I’ve had complaints.”

  “You persist with that aftershave and that will happen.”

  He frowned at me, playing catch-up, processing what I said, analyzing it for sarcasm or whatever other filters he used. It was like watching a 1950s computer try to play chess. Eventually he frowned.

  “Hilarious, Jones. I’ve had residents complain about a suspicious old truck parked on the street. This is a good neighborhood, Jones.”

  I wondered if the complaints were about the age of the truck, rather than its presence. “You on flatfoot patrol now?”

  “I know when I smell a rat. What are you doing here?”

  “I’m working.”

  “Who’s your client?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “If you take Lenny’s investigation into your own hands, don’t think I won’t throw you in the slammer.”

  “Investigating isn’t illegal, last time I checked the constitution.”

  “I don’t give a damn about the constitution—this is Palm Beach.”

  I had nothing to say to that.

  “Leave the murder investigations to the professionals. Let us do our job. ”

  “You’re not investigating Lenny. That’s Miami-Dade and the FBI. And I am leaving it to them. They’re investigating things down there, like professionals. While you hassle law-abiding citizens for where they choose to park.”

  He gulped, and I got the sense he was getting thirsty. “Let me put it this way then, genius. You move your ugly truck away from here, or I’ll impound it.”

  “For what? I’m not breaking any law.”

  “Disturbing the aesthetic.”

  I was impressed by Ronzoni’s vocabulary. I wondered if he’d read that in a magazine. But wherever he’d gotten it, he held the cards. He could impound the truck for any old made-up reason, and I’d be stuck. I’d get it out, sure, and he couldn’t search it. For that he needed grounds. But he had no intention of doing that. He just delighted in making a home deep down in my craw.

  I didn’t say anything more. I just slid back across the cab, started the truck and drove away, window down and all. I saw Ronzoni dusting his lapels as I drove away. I pulled out onto Route A1A, and headed down past the golf course, and then I took a left on North County Road, and drove north for a minute or two. Then I cut back around to Bradley Place and parked in the exact spot I had been in five minutes earlier. Ronzoni was gone, but whatever eagle-eyed neighbor had objected to my presence probably wasn’t. So I couldn’t continue to sit there for however long it pleased me. I had to come up with a plan B. I had to facilitate things, oil the gears.

  Deputy Castle had said I should call, should I need anything. So I did. She was on patrol as it happened, and I told her what I wanted to do, and I told her that I was happy for the sheriff’s office to tag along, to sit bored for hours with me and then head off and see what we would see. She said the investigation was Miami-Dade’s, so the PBSO wouldn’t want to tag along unless I found something concrete, but she was happy to facilitate the pouring of the cement. That was her phrase, not mine, but I kinda liked it.

  The patrol car pulled up onto the driveway of the Biltmore and stopped right in front of the door. The doorman didn’t come out. Deputy Castle went in. She was inside for twenty minutes or so, and then she came out and got in her car and turned the engine on to fire up the AC. I was only about seventy-five yards away, but she called me.

  “She’s unflappable,” said Deputy Castle.

  “Celia?” I asked.

  “Yes. I told her that we believe that Alec Meechan shot Lenny, and we believe that he also killed her husband. She seemed more embarrassed by what people might think than the fact that we knew who her husband’s killer was.”

  “Yeah, she was pretty upfront about their relationship.”

  “Well, I told her we knew she was one of the last people to see Alec, and that our office had found evidence that suggested her late husband and Alec were committing insurance fraud and Alec may have killed Will to cover it up. She didn’t give me anything to go on with that, so I gave her some sisterly advice.”

  “Aha.”

  “I suggested that Dade County Sheriff might want to chat with her, so she shouldn’t go anywhere. And then I said, just between her and me, that because Lenny was shot at Stiltsville, and that area is now national park, that the FBI would be all over it, and she might want to go to the ATM and get some cash out. She didn’t get it at first, so I told her the FBI had frozen all Will’s company assets, and that they might do the same to her personal assets in case Alec was trying to steal from her. ”

  “What did she say?”

  “Like I said, she's unflappable. She said Alec had no access, and I said I hoped not. But if he’s ever been here, taken documents or anything with him, he might have what he needs. These people are clever.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. She didn’t look happy, but that might have been because she was talking to me. I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Unflappable.”

  “Exactly,” said Deputy Castle.

  “Well, thanks for trying.”

  “If anything does happen, you’re gonna call me, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. Stay safe.”

  She hung up, and then she pulled out of the driveway and down onto the street, and she offered me a serious nod as she drove by. I stayed put. I kept my eyes moving: windshield, interior mirror, side mirror, repeat. I didn’t want Ronzoni sneaking up on me again. If I saw him I was taking off and he was going to have to pull me over in West Palm, where he had no jurisdiction. I watched the Biltmore. Nothing happened a lot there. I figured at worst Celia would react by going to the bank and pulling out some cash, no harm, no foul. My hope had been the idea of having her cash impounded might jag her into action of some kind, and if she did know where Alec was, or even where he might have gotten to, that she might spill some beans to Deputy Castle. It didn’t work, but as Lenny always said, if you don’t drop a line in the water, you never catch a shark.

  And then there was a nibble. Or it might just have been the current tugging on my metaphorical line. But either way, a conservative silver Mercedes pulled up to the front door and a valet jumped out, and a moment later Celia Colfax got in and drove away. I suspected we were headed for Worth Avenue or somewhere similar, one of the s
hopping precincts where the local banks liked to congregate. But I was wrong.

  Celia headed off the island and north up Route 1. We passed the port where Alec’s cars were impounded, and the dock where Drew Keck had polished his boat, then past the turnoff for my new place on Singer Island. We hit traffic in Juno Beach but Celia kept going, all the way into the well-heeled town of Jupiter. Just before the bridge over the Loxahatchee River she cut back along route A1A, the beach road, into an area that was a mix of light industrial and trailer parks. She pulled the Mercedes to the curb in front of a valet station that itself stood in front of a jungle of palm trees, behind which sat a restaurant called Guanabanas. I pulled into a small lot opposite, grabbed an old Patriots cap and dashed across the road.

  Guanabanas was popular with both locals and tourists, a warren of stone pathways between copses of palm and banyan trees, and palapa-covered bars. It was a large place that felt intimate because of all the nooks and crannies created by the trees. A few people sat at a bar not a million miles in style from Longboard Kelly’s, just fancier drinks, more tourists and higher prices. Plus it was by the water. Which is where I thought Celia Colfax would be. I bypassed the host stand and headed down that way. A string of tables under white umbrellas lined the patio overlooking the water, an offshoot of the Intracoastal that wrapped around the small island opposite. At the end of the row of tables I saw Celia. She wore shades but no hat, and had not yet gotten a drink. She was alone. I didn’t want to stand there, waiting to be spotted, so I slipped on my ball cap and retreated to the bar. I took a stool and made sure I could see Celia, and then I ordered a beer. I was looking at her back, over her right shoulder. A waitress appeared and took an order, and then returned to her with a large fruity drink with an umbrella in it. I wondered if that was lunch.

  My view of Celia was in the direction of the water, where most people would focus their attention, so it didn’t look suspicious that I was facing her. Even so, I took occasional glances at SportsCenter playing on a TV above the bar, and then back to Celia. At the top of the hour I saw SportsCenter restart, and the phone rang at the host stand. I watched the opening of the show on the television, something about college baseball, and then I glanced at Celia. She was gone.