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

by Ron Base

  Tree nodded. “Every winter for a couple of weeks.”

  “Then you know what it was like,” Bonnie said.

  “We were pretty easy to please back then,” Tree said. “Put us on the beach looking for seashells or throw us into the ocean, and we were happy.”

  “Do you still go shelling?” Ryde asked.

  Tree shook his head. “I can’t even remember the last time I swam in the ocean.”

  “I swam in the ocean this morning,” Bonnie said.

  “Bonnie’s a former dancer,” Ryde said, as if that explained swimming in the ocean.

  “A long time ago,” Bonnie said.

  “Before you and Ryde were involved in business together?”

  “Long before.” Bonnie smiled sweetly.

  “That’s why she moves so well on stage,” Ryde said. “She is such a pleasure to dance with.”

  “Where did you dance?” Freddie inquired.

  “Vegas mostly,” Bonnie said. “A little bit in Atlantic City. But mostly Vegas.”

  Ryde said, “Robert Goulet once asked her out.”

  “And then stood me up,” Bonnie said ruefully. “Not much of a claim to fame. I was just a kid. Eighteen. Lying about my age.”

  Paola and Manuel both jumped as Curtis reentered with the drinks. Ryde helped him distribute them. Once everyone had settled again, Freddie looked at Ryde and said, “What about your children, Mr. Bodie? I understand you have a boy and a girl. How do they like it here?”

  “They’re settling in.” Ryde cast a glance at Paola and Manuel before he continued smoothly: “It’s a big change for them, but Madison likes her school. Joshua’s a little more problematic, but he’s going to be okay. He just needs more time to get used to things changing.”

  “It’s too bad they’re not here tonight,” Freddie said. “I’d like to meet them.”

  Ryde looked past Freddie and said to the hovering Curtis, “How are we coming with dinner?”

  “Almost ready, Mr. Bodie,” Curtis reported. “Maybe everyone would like to get seated.”

  “You heard the man,” Ryde said, bouncing to his feet. “It looks like dinner is served.”

  As they walked toward the table, Ryde clapped Tree on the back, and said, “It’s good to see you, Tree. Glad you could make it—so I could meet your beautiful wife.”

  Freddie said, “The wife who didn’t get her question answered.”

  Ryde’s face went blank. “What’s that?”

  “About your children.”

  He broke into another smile. “Right. The kids. They’re at a sleepover at a friend’s house.”

  “How wonderful that they’ve managed to make friends so fast,” Freddie said.

  “Isn’t it?” Ryde held a chair for Freddie. “Why don’t you sit here beside me? I’m fascinated by the supermarket business.”

  Tree held Bonnie’s chair so that she was seated beside him. Curtis entered and poured more wine. Ryde aimed a grin around the table at his guests once Curtis departed. “Isn’t this great?” he said. “Having you all here like this.” He raised his glass. “Cheers everyone. To many happy Sanibel sunsets.”

  “Happy sunsets,” said Bonnie.

  Everyone clinked glasses. Everyone that is except Paola and Manuel. They sat stiffly, glowering at the other guests.

  Curtis appeared from the kitchen carrying a tureen of soup. As he approached the table, Ryde began to frown. “Curtis,” he said. “What’s this? I thought we agreed we weren’t going to serve soup tonight.”

  For a moment, Tree thought the man who appeared in the doorway was a late-arriving guest, and wondered who this guy was who would turn up in black leather wearing a motorcycle helmet.

  Then Curtis dropped the soup tureen. It smashed to the floor. Tree followed the descent of the tureen, so it was a moment before he noticed the newcomer was pointing the ugly snout of what appeared to be a sawed-off shotgun.

  Ryde started to his feet, his mouth opening to say something, when the black-clad intruder pulled the trigger. The blast blew a hole in Curtis’s chest, spraying blood, and sending him staggering back. Beside him, Bonnie began to scream. The hatchet-faced woman was on her feet as the intruder raised the shotgun again. Without thinking, Tree lurched forward and grabbed at the weapon, knocking against the intruder. He slipped on the soup-covered floor as he fired a second time. Ryde cried out and fell back.

  The shotgun spun out of the intruder’s hands, landing on the table. Manuel raised a knife and plunged it deep into the intruder’s chest. The intruder cried out, turned, and again slipped, crashing to the floor.

  The hatchet-faced woman snarled something unintelligible before she hurried from the room. Manuel looked at Tree and then, still holding the knife, disappeared, as if the unfolding drama had been played out on a stage, and he had dropped through a trap door in the floor.

  Tree spun around, searching for Freddie. A fine mist seemed to have descended in the room. Through the mist, Tree could hear Bonnie screaming. Real horror movie screams. Freddie was not joining in, however. She was too busy holding Ryde Bodie in her arms.

  17

  Detectives Cee Jay Boone and Owen Markfield showed up to investigate the shooting and stabbing on Rabbit Road. Curtis, the bodyguard, was pronounced dead at the scene, as was the black-clad gunman in the motorcycle helmet. Ryde, suffering a gunshot wound to the shoulder, had been rushed to Lee Memorial Hospital and was now in the intensive care unit. Bonnie also was taken to the hospital suffering shock.

  Markfield kept looking at Tree and shaking his head, as if he could not believe Tree was at the scene of yet another dead body. Freddie said she did not want to stay in the house now filling with crime scene investigators, everyone stepping gingerly around a floor covered with an unsightly mixture of soup and blood.

  Markfield and Cee Jay escorted Tree and Freddie outside. The Florida night was warm and pleasant. The driveway was jammed with police and emergency vehicles. Officers had set up crime scene LED lights on tripods, lighting the outside of the house like a movie set, which in a macabre way, it was. Someone had set lawn chairs in the backyard.

  Tree let Freddie do most of the talking, since her recollection of events was clear and concise as opposed to his, shrouded in blurry movement through a shifting fog: the arrival of the intruder in the motorcycle helmet with a shotgun; the hatchet-faced woman frozen in place; Manuel raising a knife; everything moving too quickly. Freddie was able to bring focus and form to all of it.

  Tree slamming into the gunman was made to seem like an act of selfless courage rather than the unthinking action of a guy who an hour after the event could barely remember what he had done. Markfield shook his head again and then focused on Tree with a look that might have been mistaken for grudging respect.

  “So, after you knocked the gun out of this guy’s hand, tell me again what happened,” Markfield said.

  “Then Manuel stabbed him with a knife,” Tree said.

  “And then he and this woman named Paola, they took off?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why would they run away?”

  “I have no idea,” Tree said.

  “Ryde said they were business associates from Mexico,” Freddie said.

  Markfield shot Cee Jay a look before again focusing on Tree.

  “So as a result of this Oscar show, Ryde Bodie invited you here tonight. Is that what happened?”

  “He invited us for dinner,” Tree explained patiently. “Bonnie was also present when we arrived. She and Ryde are supposed to dance together.”

  Markfield made more notes. “And there was no other reason for the dinner?”

  “Not as far as I know,” Tree said.

  “No business discussed?”

  “What kind of business would we discuss?”

  “I don’t know,” Markfield said. “These two Mexicans are business associates, apparently. And you are working for Bodie, are you not?”

  “Yes, I suppose I am,” Tree said. “But tha
t wasn’t discussed.”

  “This is the guy who owns the house on Captiva Drive that recently burned to the ground,” Markfield pointed out.

  “What? You think we all sat around talking about setting more fires around the island?”

  Markfield didn’t respond. Instead, he busied himself writing in his notebook. When he lifted his head again, he said, “Why do you suppose anyone would want to shoot Ryde Bodie?”

  “I don’t know,” Tree said. “I have no idea. At first I thought the guy was a guest.”

  “A guest in a motorcycle helmet,” Markfield said.

  “I wondered about that,” Tree said.

  Cee Jay: “You don’t know if Mr. Bodie had any enemies?”

  “Other than the guy who tried to kill him tonight, no,” Tree said. “Do you have any idea who he is?”

  “He wasn’t carrying any identification,” Cee Jay said. “He’s a kid in his twenties, Latino. He was using a sawed off twelve gauge shotgun, a Super-Shorty, it’s called. Very compact. Easily hidden. We found a Kawasaki Ninja outside that he must have rode in on. You’re sure you don’t know anyone who might have a grudge against Bodie?”

  Tree said, “You probably know more about why someone would want to shoot him than I do.”

  Cee Jay did not say anything.

  “Here’s the thing you should be concerned about,” Freddie interjected. “Ryde has young children, a son and a daughter. Someone should find out where they are, make sure they’re okay, and let them know that their father is in hospital.”

  “Any idea where they might be?” Cee Jay addressed Freddie.

  “Ryde said something about a sleepover, but he didn’t say where.”

  “That doesn’t give us much to go on,” Markfield said.

  “But we’ll see what we can do.” Cee Jay, reassuring.

  ________

  On the way home after the police finally released them, Freddie tucked her hand under Tree’s arm and laid her head on his shoulder and said, “That was pretty amazing what you did back there.”

  “You think so?”

  “First of all, you probably saved Ryde’s life by jumping that guy. Maybe our lives, too. After he finished with Curtis and Ryde, he probably would have let us have it.”

  “Let us have it?”

  “Isn’t that what they say?”

  “Only in old gangster movies.”

  “Everyone else was panicking and ducking for cover, but somehow you kept your head about you. Like Harrison Ford in Patriot Games.”

  “Harrison Ford in Patriot Games?”

  “You know, those Irish terrorists are about to assassinate members of the Royal Family in broad daylight. Harrison doesn’t run away from trouble, he runs towards it and saves the day.”

  “I’m your Harrison Ford,” Tree said.

  “You’re better than Harrison Ford,” Freddie said.

  “Except I can barely remember doing any of the things you just said I did.”

  “The point is you did them.”

  But it was a blur. All of it. A blur.

  18

  That’s the word they used on the radio,” Todd Jackson was saying Monday morning when he arrived for coffee with Tree and Rex at the Visitors Center.

  Rex put his coffee down on Tree’s desk and said, “Hero? They actually said that?”

  “It was right there on the radio,” Todd said. “I practically drove off the road.”

  “You shouldn’t be operating heavy machinery at a moment like that,” Rex said.

  “So Tree,” Todd said. “How does it feel to be a heee-ro?”

  “Come on, give me a break you guys,” Tree said from behind his desk. He’d almost not come in that morning, but Freddie was up as usual and on her way into Dayton’s—nothing, not even a Saturday night dinner party shooting, would stop her going to work. So Tree had trundled down to the Visitors Center, only to spend the morning deflecting calls from local media outlets anxious for comments from “the hero” who had “prevented a worse tragedy” after a “Sanibel Island dinner party erupted in violence, leaving one man dead and another in critical condition in Lee Memorial Hospital.”

  “This is the part where you say, ‘I’m no hero,’” Rex said.

  “I’m no hero,” Tree said.

  “I think you’re crazy,” Rex said.

  “Much more likely than me being a hero.”

  “I see it as part of your ongoing campaign to single-handedly destroy tourism on the island,” Rex said.

  “So give us the blow by blow,” Todd said. “Tell us exactly what happened.”

  “Interestingly enough, I don’t remember much,” Tree said. “I heard the shotgun blast, and I remember seeing this fellow Curtis blown back.”

  “One heck of a mess at that range,” Todd interjected.

  “And I remember worrying about Freddie, thinking that I had to get to her. Otherwise, though, it’s all pretty much a blur, until the police arrived.”

  “Thank goodness,” Todd said. “Otherwise, Tree would get a big head, and he’d be impossible to live with.”

  “He’s impossible to live with now,” Rex said.

  The telephone rang. Tree looked at the readout and didn’t recognize the number. It could be another reporter. Or—just maybe—a potential client. He was still in business, after all. He picked up the receiver and said, “Sanibel Sunset Detective. Tree Callister speaking.”

  For a moment there was silence on the other end of the line, and then: “Hey, buddy. How are you doing?”

  “Ryde?” Tree could hardly believe it was him on the line.

  “Look, I’m sorry about the ruckus the other night. Are you okay? What about Freddie?”

  “I’m all right. I’m surprised you’re able to make a phone call.”

  “Thanks to you most of the blast missed me,” Ryde said. “They got me out of intensive care about an hour ago.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Tree said. “You had me worried. I wasn’t sure you were going to make it.”

  “Oh, I’m going to make it,” Ryde said. “But I feel badly for Freddie. Please apologize to her for me. I hope she’s okay.”

  “She’ll be glad to hear you’re going to be okay,” Tree said. “Have you talked to the police?”

  “No, the doctors wouldn’t let them near me, but it’s a matter of time before they come back. In the meantime, Tree, I need you over here.”

  “What do you need me for?”

  “Security. I’m all alone here. What with Curtis gone, I don’t have anyone to keep an eye on things. So as of now, Tree, I’m hiring you—or rehiring you, I guess.”

  “I don’t know that I’d be much good to you as a bodyguard, Ryde.”

  “You already saved my life once. That’s a pretty good start.”

  “Whatever happened or didn’t happen was more a case of blind luck than anything to do with my abilities as a bodyguard.”

  “Look, I’m still alive today, and you’re the reason why. Now, please, get over here. I’ve got no one else I can turn to.”

  ________

  The four stories of Lee Memorial were built around an impressive atrium. A piano player kept things calm in the main reception area, giving the visitor an unexpected feeling of peace. The tinkling sound of a piano in the atrium and all was right with the world.

  Except for the odd patient with a bullet in him, Tree reflected as he stepped on the elevator to the third floor.

  He found Ryde in a private room, lying on his back sound asleep, pale and unshaven, hooked up to a breathing tube, an intravenous drip, and a catheter snaking out from under his bed covers.

  Ryde came awake slowly as Tree seated himself beside the bed. He struggled to produce a weak smile, nowhere near his usual incandescence. “Hey, buddy,” he said. “Glad you’re here.”

  “Ryde, you don’t look good,” Tree said.

  “I’m okay,” he said. “Looks worse than it is. Isn’t that what everyone says?”

  “Only in
bad movies.”

  “Hey, life is a bad movie,” Ryde said. “I just hope Freddie’s okay.”

  “She’s fine,” Tree said.

  “Wonderful woman. A beauty. You’re a very fortunate man, Tree. She’s something else. That’s my big regret about all this, that Freddie and I didn’t have a chance to get to know each other better. Such a shame. Spoiled a great evening.”

  “Spoiled a great evening? Ryde, a man is dead. You’re shot. And your kids, what about them? Are they okay?”

  “The kids are fine.” Ryde closed his eyes, and for a moment Tree wondered if he hadn’t drifted off. Then they opened again and he murmured, “Poor Curtis. I’m afraid he didn’t do much of a job protecting me. You’d think at the least he would have made sure the front door was locked.” He winked at Tree. “Good thing I had my secret security guard there, right, buddy?”

  “Do you know who tried to kill you?”

  “Isn’t that the damnedest thing? Can you believe what happened?”

  “No, I can’t, Ryde. One moment Curtis is starting to serve soup. The next moment there’s a guy in a motorcycle helmet blasting away with a sawed-off shotgun.”

  “I told him specifically I didn’t want a soup course. This is Florida. It’s too hot. We talked about it in the afternoon. He knew I didn’t want soup. Can you believe that?”

  “You know Manuel stabbed the intruder?”

  “He’s a tough little guy that Manuel, I wouldn’t mess with him. Paola, too.”

  “What happened to them? Why did they run away like that?”

  “The thing is, Tree—and please tell Freddie this—you don’t have to worry about Joshua and Madison. They are safe. Wonderful kids. I’m glad they didn’t see their old man shot like that. No, no. Just as well they weren’t there. Neither one of them likes soup, anyway.”

  “Where are they, Ryde?”

  “Safe. Not to worry about them. Right now, we got bigger problems to deal with.”

  “What problems do we have, Ryde?”

  “I wonder what kind of soup Curtis made,” Ryde said. “You tell him not to make soup, and then he goes ahead and makes it. Now he’s dead. How do you like that? What kind of soup was it?”

  “Ryde?”