Ron Base - Tree Callister 04 - The Two Sanibel Sunset Detectives

by Ron Base

  Rex said, “Just make sure you spend it right here on Sanibel. Don’t go running off to the South of France and spending it there.”

  “You’ve got my word on that,” Tree said.

  ________

  Outside the Big Arts Center, Tree was still thinking about his encounter with Detective Owen Markfield and his pal, Officer T.J. Hanks, and how dumb he had been to even entertain the notion Markfield might leave him alone. This morning’s confrontation was proof that the cop was not about to do anything of the sort.

  “Hey, there,” a voice called as Tree reached his Volkswagen Beetle. Tree turned to see Ryde Bodie pull up in a black Cadillac Escalade. “I thought that was you, Tree,” Ryde said, leaning out the window. “Where are you headed? Off to do a little private detecting?”

  No, Tree thought. I’m headed into the office to try to figure out how to get a vengeful cop off my back. But Mr. Ryde Bodie behind the wheel of his Cadillac SUV doesn’t have to know that.

  “How about you, Ryde? What do you do here on the island?”

  “On the island? On Sanibel I relax and raise two kids. This is my escape to paradise. The place where I chill out and recharge the batteries.”

  “Okay,” Tree said. “What do you do when you’re not on the island?”

  Ryde Bodie grinned and said, “Off the island, I bring people together for everyone’s mutual benefit.”

  “That’s intriguingly vague,” Tree said.

  “Is it? Do you think it is? Well, it’s not as intriguing as it sounds. It’s kind of boring most of the time, actually. Finding one person with big money to invest and then finding another person with big money to invest and bringing them together to make even bigger money.”

  That still sounded vague to Tree, but he wasn’t about to press it. “I’d better be getting to work,” he said.

  “Hey, Tree, we should keep in touch. You never know when I might need a private detective.”

  “Do you think you’re going to need a private detective, Ryde?”

  That induced another grin. “Like I say, you never know. Who knows they’re going to need a detective, until they need a detective, right?”

  Tree pulled out his wallet and handed Ryde his card. “Give me a call,” Tree said.

  “I might just surprise you,” Ryde said as he drove off.

  3

  Where’s Rex?” Todd Jackson asked. He had dropped into Tree’s office at the Chamber of Commerce Visitors Center for his morning coffee.

  “He’s still at the Big Arts Center.”

  “Is he doing that Oscar show again this year?”

  “He’s even got me involved in it,” Tree said.

  “I don’t get that show at all,” Todd said. An elegant man with a carefully trimmed moustache and an endless enthusiasm for everything, Todd ran a crime scene clean-up company called Sanibel Biohazard.

  “It’s going to be great,” Tree said. “Did I ever tell you I once thought about becoming an actor?”

  “Now that you’ve got nine million dollars you can do that,” Todd said.

  “Who says I have nine million dollars?”

  “Rex.”

  “He really thinks I have that money?”

  “He does. And he doesn’t.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “He believes, in general, you’re too honest to steal, but then again, he suspects we are all susceptible when it comes to that kind of money. Even you.”

  Tree rolled his eyes.

  Todd leaned forward in the chair fronting Tree’s desk. “I’m still trying to get all this straight,” he said. “Elizabeth Traven, the wife of the late, unlamented media mogul Brand Traven—the husband who she may or may not have murdered—hooks up with a group of former intelligence agents who rip off the president of Tajikistan to the tune of nine million dollars.”

  “Supposedly they ripped him off,” Tree said.

  “Then Elizabeth disappears and because you’ve done work for her before, these guys—the former intelligence agents—they hire you to find her.”

  “Correct.”

  “So you do find Elizabeth, but then she disappears again, and the next thing she turns up dead in Key West along with her two accomplices. In fact, just about everyone involved in this crazy scheme seems to have ended up dead. Everyone, that is, but you.”

  “That’s because I wasn’t part of it,” Tree said. “I was only doing what I was hired to do—which was to find Elizabeth.”

  “But Detective Owen Markfield of the Sanibel Police Department thinks you’re lying.”

  “Owen Markfield along with the police in Key West and the Lee County Sheriff’s Department, as well as any number of other law enforcement agencies.”

  “But they have no proof.”

  “There is no proof.”

  “And therefore you are innocent.”

  “Let’s just say I don’t have nine million dollars,” Tree amended.

  “They found five hundred thousand dollars of the missing money in Key West, but they think there’s more, right?”

  “Elizabeth swore up and down the millions everyone was looking for never existed. At the time I thought she was lying, but it turns out she wasn’t.”

  “The government of Tajikistan says there are millions.”

  “What do they know?” Tree said.

  Todd shook his head. “I know a lot of the guys over at the Sanibel Police. They all think Markfield is an egotistical, self-promoting jerk. But nobody wants to get on the wrong side of him.”

  “I’m afraid it’s too late for me,” Tree said. “I’m already on his wrong side.”

  “My friend,” Todd said. “You are in a manure wagon load of trouble.”

  “That much I’ve figured out,” Tree said. “The part I’m having trouble with is how I get out of it.”

  “Give back the money?”

  Tree groaned. “That puts us at square one. I don’t have the money.”

  They were interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. They both turned as a small African American boy dressed in a T-shirt and shorts entered Tree’s office.

  “Marcello O’Hara,” Tree said.

  “Hey,” Marcello said. “How you doing, man?”

  Todd got to his feet, shook Marcello’s hand, and said, “Good to see you. You’ve grown since the last time I saw you.”

  “I’m grown up now,” Marcello said confidently.

  “Is that so?” Todd said. “Well, I’ll leave you two adults to it. I’ve got a crime scene over in Bonita Springs needs cleaning up. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Todd sauntered out while Tree rose to give Marcello an uneasy embrace. Todd was right, the boy had grown since he last saw him. But not too much and certainly not so that anyone would mistake him for an adult. And he had put on some weight. But not much weight. He still retained the round face of an angel. A devilish angel, certainly, but an angel, nonetheless. Not knowing quite what to say, Tree fell back on the universal question asked by all adults unexpectedly encountering children who make them nervous: “How’s school going?”

  “It’s what they call a Teacher In-Service day,” Marcello said. “It means they go to school, but we don’t.”

  The boy eased himself into the chair recently vacated by Todd. Tree regained his seat behind the desk. Marcello looked around the room with that combination of childlike innocence and disconcerting worldly awareness Tree remembered from their initial encounter. Marcello was his first client; the boy had a grand total of seven dollars to spend on a private detective. Marcello’s father, the nasty Reno O’Hara, willing to sell his son’s liver to the highest bidder, had ended up dead, as had his mother, leaving Marcello an orphan in the care of foster parents. Tree had promised to keep in touch with the kid who helped launch whatever his private detective business had amounted to.

  And he had kept in touch. Sort of. From time to time.

  “How’s your family?” Tree asked.

  “They aren’t my fam
ily, but they’re okay,” Marcello said, referring to the Lakes, the couple he was living with. They had moved onto the island the previous year, and Marcello was now attending the Sanibel School, the island’s highly respected middle school on San-Cap Road. Marcello was doing pretty well in the seventh grade. Tree knew that much about the boy’s progress.

  “So everything’s all right?”

  “What? You think I only turn up here when things aren’t okay? You think maybe I’m here to hire you again?”

  “No, of course not,” Tree hastened to reassure the boy. “I’m concerned about you, that’s all.”

  “No need to be concerned about me,” Marcello said. “In fact, the reason I’m here is because I want to talk to you about what I would call a business proposition.”

  “A business proposition?” Tree wondered what kind of business proposition a thirteen-year-old boy might be offering. But where Marcello was concerned, anything was possible.

  “Yeah, because I know things aren’t going so well for you, and I want to maybe help you out.”

  “What makes you think things aren’t going well?”

  Marcello looked around the room. “Clients aren’t exactly lined up down the stairs, know what I mean?”

  Tree smiled and said, “So how are you going to help me, Marcello?”

  “Okay, I’ve started up a new business.”

  “Have you? What kind of business?”

  “The private detecting business.”

  Tree raised his eyebrows in surprise and said, “Oh?”

  Marcello nodded. “I was sort of inspired by you, know what I mean? This whole Sanibel Sunset Detective thing? I figure if grownups needed a detective to find out things for them, kids do, too.”

  “I see,” Tree managed to say. “What are you calling your business?”

  “It’s called The Sanibel Sunset Detective Agency.”

  Tree paused to take this in before saying, “Interesting choice of names.”

  “What I think we should do,” Marcello continued, “is form what they call a partnership. You and me together—the two Sanibel Sunset detectives, you might say.”

  “You might say,” Tree said.

  “Just to show you I’m bringing something to this, I’ve got two clients I’m ready to share with you.”

  “That’s very generous,” Tree said. “Exactly who are these clients?”

  “That’s the thing,” Marcello said. “I don’t want to divulge what you might call their identities until I know we got a deal—for our partnership.”

  Tree didn’t know quite how to respond, so he said, “I’m not sure what to say, Marcello.”

  “You’re blown away by my generosity, I guess.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” Tree said.

  “All you have to do is say, yes.”

  “Why don’t I say, Let me think about it.”

  Marcello looked surprised. “What’s there to think about?”

  “For one thing, I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to be going into business with a thirteen-year-old. I’m not even sure I can do that.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “To be a private detective—to start your own agency—you have to be licensed by the State of Florida. You’re too young, at least for now, to get a license.”

  “It would be a silent partnership.” Marcello said it so fast Tree was certain he had already anticipated this argument and formulated an answer.

  “I’d rather you concentrated on your schoolwork.” That sounded lame even to Tree.

  Marcello wasn’t fooled for an instant. “That’s adult talk for blow it out your ear.”

  “I am an adult,” Tree said.

  “I already told these two clients that I could get them hooked up with you.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that until you talked to me.”

  “I just talked to you. Can I bring them in?”

  “You won’t tell me who they are?”

  “Not until you meet them.”

  Tree sighed. “Marcello I’m not comfortable with this.”

  “Hey, I was your first client.” Marcello becoming thirteen-year-old-tough. “You wouldn’t even be in business if it wasn’t for me.”

  He had a point there. “Okay, okay,” Tree said. “I will talk to these clients of yours. But I doubt there’s much I can do to help. When will you bring them?”

  “Tomorrow,” Marcello said.

  “Haven’t you got school?”

  “We’ll come over after school,” he said.

  “But this doesn’t mean we’re partners.”

  Marcello gave him a sweet, innocent smile, as he rose to his feet, a smile that made him look like the guileless kid he most definitely wasn’t. “See, you tomorrow,” he said.

  4

  Freddie was in Chicago meeting with the investors group she headed that had acquired the five Dayton’s supermarkets in the South Florida area. Thus their house on Captiva Island’s Andy Rosse Lane was dark and empty when Tree arrived home that evening with the pre-cooked rotisserie chicken he had acquired at Dayton’s.

  Tree turned on the lights and placed the chicken on the counter, got himself a Diet Coke from the refrigerator and then sat out by the pool, enjoying the comparative quiet of a Captiva evening—comparative if you discounted the occasional hoot from the merry makers down the street at the Mucky Duck as they celebrated a perfect Florida sunset.

  Already he missed Freddie, even though she’d only been gone a day. He missed the glow of her conversation, the warmth of her presence, the quiet, comforting knowledge that two equaled one. This was the way it had been for over ten years, and would continue to be for—a lifetime? Yes, definitely, as far as he was concerned. He could not imagine a life without Fredericka Stayner. But he sometimes wondered about her as he had wondered—as only an ex-newspaperman married four times could wonder—about all the women in his life who had eventually drifted off. In some cases, they had not so much drifted as raced for the nearest exit.

  Certainly Freddie was not happy with this new landscape her husband inhabited, this world of the private detective that had turned out to be so much more—what? Complicated? Dangerous? Deceptive? All of the above?

  Yes, definitely all of the above.

  Particularly the deceptive part. He had become something of a master of deception. Or, as a realist might say in plainer English, a liar. Master of deception sounded much better, of course, as though that required an expertise of sorts. Being a plain, old-fashioned liar didn’t require much of anything.

  His cellphone sounded. He fished it from his pocket. Speak of the devil: Freddie. “I was just thinking about you,” he said into his phone.

  “How are you, my love?” Freddie’s voice, crackling from Chicago.

  “Missing you,” he said, with more vehemence than he intended.

  She paused a beat before she said, “Is everything okay?”

  He considered telling her about his encounter with Owen Markfield that morning, but decided against it. Another strategic omission—or was that also part of the web of lies he tended to spin these days? Whatever it was, he didn’t want to worry her or distract her from the business in Chicago, so he merely said, truthfully enough, “Just feeling a little lonely this evening, that’s all.”

  “Well, if it’s any consolation, I’m sitting here in my room at the Palmer House feeling the same way,” Freddie said.

  “No dinner plans?”

  “They wanted to go out, but I decided to have something in the room and talk to you instead.”

  “How did it go today?”

  “Well enough, I think,” Freddie said. “Everyone seems satisfied with the progress we’re making, although we’re behind schedule with this new SAP system. Part of the reason I’m here is to see if I can get everyone moving a little faster. What about you? How’s business?”

  Not good, but he wasn’t sure Freddie would want to hear that—or maybe that’s exactly what she wanted to hear.
He said, “I received a business proposition today.”

  “Oh? From whom?”

  “Marcello O’Hara.”

  “Our Marcello?”

  “The one and only.”

  “Thirteen-year-old Marcello.”

  “He wants to go into business with me.”

  “Doing what?”

  “The two Sanibel Sunset detectives. He says he’s got a couple of clients for me.”

  “You’re not taking any of this seriously, are you?” A note of concern had worked itself into Freddie’s voice.

  “No. However, Marcello is bringing his clients around tomorrow.”

  “Tree, you shouldn’t be leading him on.”

  “I told him we couldn’t be partners,” Tree said.

  “That doesn’t sound very definitive.”

  “Come on, Freddie. He’s only thirteen years old. No way can he be my partner.”

  “How is he, otherwise?”

  “He seems fine. Very businesslike. Very Marcello. Focused on one thing. Not very interested in hearing about or discussing anything else.”

  “But you’re not going to do it, are you? You’re not going to partner with him.”

  “I just told you,” he said. “What? You think I’m crazy?”

  “I’m not going to answer that question,” she said good-humoredly. She did say it good-humoredly, didn’t she?

  “And I haven’t even told you about the Oscar show,” he said.

  “What Oscar show is that?”

  “The film society at Big Arts does an annual spoof of the Academy Awards. This year they talked Rex into being master of ceremonies.”

  “I’ll bet they didn’t have to do much talking,” Freddie said.

  “Rex has got me involved. We had our first rehearsal this morning.”

  “How did it go?”

  “I think I’m going to knock ’em dead,” Tree said only half-jokingly. “You know when I was younger, before I got into the newspaper business, I thought about becoming an actor.”

  “There are those who would say you are too good an actor,” she said.

  “Would you be one of those?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I would say this is a conversation moving onto dangerous ground,” he answered.