The Shop

by J. Carson Black

  The vague worry that had plagued him since Memorial Day weekend had hardened into dread in the last couple of days. But he wouldn’t give in to it. He couldn’t. You needed a steady hand on the tiller in situations like this. Frank knew Mike, and even his own wife thought he was weak. Both of them confused weakness with caution.

  In truth, Mike Cardamone was the loose cannon. He was the one who didn’t think things through. Maybe it was because he’d been in the CIA for so long. Mike thought like a spook. That incessant desire to snip every loose end, even if doing so could lead to a complete unraveling.

  Frank didn’t want to think about it, but it kept digging its way into his thoughts. Where would Mike stop? For God’s sake, was he going to go after everybody?

  The thought chilled him.

  Frank was fairly certain Mike didn’t know about Riley and that crazy, hostage-taking asshole, Luke Perdue. Mike lived in DC. He hadn’t been down here in months. Still, he had an uncanny way of finding out things.

  There had been no hint of anything like that in their phone conversations. Mike did talk about the standoff at the Starliner Motel. He talked about the surveillance they’d put on Luke’s sister Amy, but he never mentioned Riley.

  Frank’s gut clenched. Mike was a spook at heart. He wouldn’t tip his hand. If he knew that Luke Perdue and Riley were sleeping together, he would have logically made another assumption: that Luke could have showed Riley the photos.

  A couple of days ago, Frank had taken Riley out on the boat—just the two of them, on the pretext of a day out together. Riley’d acted like it was a big drag to go out with her dad, but Frank knew she was actually happy about it. That was the thing about Riley. Every emotion showed on her face.

  He told her he knew about Luke. As always, she was defiant. “He was my choice! We loved each other! You don’t even know what real love is.”

  Riley had a point there. Sometimes he and Grace seemed more like co-conspirators than man and wife. They spun scenarios, talked tactics well into the night, didn’t touch one another in public. But there was another side to their marriage.

  “It was over, okay?” Riley said, her face stormy. “He broke up with me. And now he’s dead! That should make you happy!”

  It was embarrassing. His daughter making a fool of herself over a pot-smoking loser. Frank managed to get the truth out of her: Luke told Riley he was going to get some pot from his truck, and then snuck off into the night. Probably couldn’t stand all the drama—Frank could relate to that.

  But the thing was, it happened that night. The night in question. Frank could not let that go. But Riley wouldn’t—or couldn’t—tell him anything more. She did manage to rub Frank’s nose in it about the pot. “Yes, Daddy, we smoked pot. We had sex, too. Lots of sex—I could tell you the positions, all the things we did.”

  He almost slapped her, but didn’t. She was still the fruit of his loins, and he owed it to her to protect her. Even if she was dumber than Pontoon, their goofy Irish setter.

  Riley had to make everything a fight. She thought her behavior was shocking. But she couldn’t even be shocking consistently. Riley had always lacked focus. It was difficult to take her tantrums seriously.

  She was needy, and that kind of neediness made him recoil—the reason he avoided her as much as possible.

  He was sure Riley had not seen the photos from that night. It wasn’t just wishful thinking on his part. There was a certain logic at work here. If Luke left and never came back, if he refused to see her, then he didn’t get a chance to show her the photos.

  The problem was, so much was open to conjecture. When they recovered Luke’s phone, the first thing Mike did was have forensics done. Turned out to be a throwaway phone. There was nothing on it. The phone had never been programmed, which meant they’d been outwitted by a meth-using, leaf-blowing redneck.

  Luke’s real phone was still out there somewhere. Frank knew it and Mike knew it, and all this uncertainty could lead Mike to think of Riley.

  Mike didn’t know Riley the way Frank did.

  Riley couldn’t keep a secret. She would have told Frank about the photos long before now. She would do anything for attention, and if she knew about those incriminating photos on Luke’s phone, it would have come out already.

  He’d just have to put it out of his mind.

  Today he needed a distraction, and he’d found it.

  Franklin still marveled that his cousin, four times removed, was a bestselling author. Frank had written his own book, but it had sat in a drawer for three years because his writing teacher said it needed work.

  It had been a fluke, how Nick ended up on his radar screen. Lifeline DNA Genetic Testing offered to trace Frank’s ancestry back four generations. They’d offered the service for free, in gratitude for a favor Frank had done for them in his previous life as a congressman. Since it was a freebie, he took it. All he had to do was supply his DNA, wait for the report to come back, and voilà, turned out he was related to a bestselling author.

  When Frank e-mailed Holloway in May, Nick told him he wasn’t really looking for long-lost relatives. He’d had his DNA tested because he was writing an article about genetic testing companies for Esquire, but added, “If I ever get out to your neck of the woods, we should get together.”

  And now Nick was here, doing research for his new book.

  Frank hoped Nick would take a look at his manuscript. He had little doubt he’d find a publisher—he was, after all, famous in his way—but he wanted the book to be good.

  And although Nick didn’t know it, he owed Frank. Big time.

  He took the Hinckley under the drawbridge and aimed for Bayou Joe’s. Idling into the Massalina Bayou, watching a pod of dolphins at play in the sequined water, he felt his usual sunny optimism sweep over him. Life was good. He could handle whatever came his way. There had been some rough seas, but it would all turn out all right.

  The restaurant straddled a small dock where boaters could tie up on three sides, a maritime spin on the old-fashioned drive-in. It was one of Frank’s favorite places.

  A man detached himself from the shade of the overhang, walked down the dock, and helped him tie up. He wore a ball cap, sunglasses, a khaki-colored shirt, and Army-green cargo shorts. Muscular calves, no socks, boat shoes, duffle at his feet, and what looked like an expensive saltwater fly rod case propped up against the wall of the restaurant. Franklin knew immediately it was Nick. Taller than he’d expected, and the stubble from a couple days growth of beard made him look more rugged than both his book photo and the television interview he’d given to Larry King after the Aspen bloodbath. One word came to mind: manly.

  Nick Holloway could be a Haddox.

  Frank took pretty good care of himself, watched what he ate, worked out every day in his home gym. Pretty decent shape for a man of fifty-five, but he was nothing like this man.

  The guy said, “Nick—”

  “Holloway. I know. Franklin. But you can call me Frank.”

  They shook. Good strong hand. “Nice boat,” Nick said.

  “The Hinckley T44 FB. I wanted a sports fisher, but I love the Hinckley, so I had this one modified. Downriggers, live bait wells, all that good stuff. You know your way around a boat?”

  “I’ve been on one or two in my time.”

  They followed the waitress to a small table on the covered dock and sat down.

  “So,” Frank said.

  “So.”

  “We finally meet face-to-face. Cousin.”

  “Cousin.” Nick grinned.

  “What made you change your mind?”

  The waitress came. Frank didn’t need to consult a menu. He ordered a Trash Burger and a Heineken. Nick ordered a grouper sandwich and water, no ice, lemon.

  Nick said, “Nearly getting killed has a wonderful way of sorting out your priorities. To be honest, I didn’t think I needed any more family, but after I got a second chance, I decided I should look you up.”

  “I’m glad you did.” F
rank leaned forward, elbows on the table. The smell of french fries and battered fish floated on the air along with the subtler smell of the bayou—decaying plants, feeding fish, a hint of petroleum. Waves lapped gently against the dock. Frank said, “I’ve been reading your book. It’s thrilling.”

  “Good. It’s a thriller.”

  The food came.

  “What was it like? Waking up under that Navigator in the garage?”

  “Escalade.”

  “Oh, it was an Escalade?”

  Nick nodded. “Before I even opened my eyes, I smelled motor oil. It was like an out-of-body experience.”

  “How did you find out everybody else was dead?”

  “A detective told me. For a while, he even suspected me.”

  For one dizzying moment, Frank thought about telling Nick the truth, that Nick had him to thank for being here now, eating a grouper sandwich at Joe’s. But as a man once said, that wouldn’t be prudent. It was something he could never tell anyone. “You ready for some fishing?”

  That slow grin again. Guy had a way about him. “Absolutely.”

  “I think you’re going to like the boat. Kings are running just offshore. Or, if you want, we could go for grouper, you want to go farther out.” The two beers were making him feel benign, expansive. The sun was shining, and the fears he’d had earlier seemed to dissipate into the air. He nodded at Nick’s baseball cap. “What is that, anyway?”

  Nick looked confused. “What?”

  “A band or a boat?” Feeling jocular. Good food, good company.

  Nick looked at him, sunglasses catching the light and bouncing it back.

  “The writing on your cap. Chernobyl Ant. Is it a band or a boat?”

  “Oh, this?” Nick gestured to his cap. Smiled.

  “Neither,” he said. “It’s a racehorse.”

  26

  Brown water spilled out of the spaces between the tailgate and the truck body as it was raised from the pond outside Gardenia.

  It was late morning, not two full days after the drive-by shooting at Maddy Akers’s house.

  An hour before, a man walking his dog along his usual route by the highway spotted something in the pond. The something he spotted was the juncture where the top of the tailgate met the side panel of a late-seventies GMC Silverado, two-tone burgundy. The color of a Dr. Pepper can.

  This could be the truck the shooters drove.

  But it wasn’t Jolie’s case now. She was here as a witness, at her fellow detective Louis Gatrell’s behest. He wanted to see if she could identify the truck.

  Jolie had not been in to work since the night of the shooting. She’d meant to drive to Weems Memorial in Tallahassee, had planned to be there in case Amy Perdue regained consciousness. But as soon as the scene at Maddy’s house was secured and Jolie had been tended to by the paramedic, Sheriff Johnson sent a car to transport Jolie back to the Palm County Sheriff’s Office, where she had been relieved of her firearm. She was told to hire an attorney, which she did. Yesterday, Jolie spent the morning answering questions in the officer-involved shooting hearing.

  Jolie would not be going to Tallahassee. She would not be allowed to follow any of the leads she had developed. She was on paid leave pending a final report on her disposition as a detective with the Palm County Sheriff’s Office.

  It didn’t look good.

  But then, nothing looked good. She couldn’t sleep, could barely make herself eat. As much as she needed to make up for all the sleep she’d already missed, Jolie found her mind playing the scene out over and over as she lay in bed at night. She felt lost without something constructive to do to get her mind off the carnage. Jolie couldn’t help but feel she should have been able to stop the shooting. If she had acted sooner—

  Going down that road was madness, she knew. But she wanted to do something. Wanted to at least be at the hospital where Amy was.

  Jolie had been questioned, somewhat harshly, about her use of deadly force in a city neighborhood. Her lawyer told her not to admit to going there on her own—even though it was clear to everyone that was precisely what she’d done. Jolie did admit to firing her weapon.

  As she left, Skeet called out to her, “Hope you have another job lined up. If I have anything to say about it, you’re toast.”

  “The way you run things, we’re all toast,” she muttered under her breath. The lawyer, a tight-faced woman from Panama City, poked her in the ribs.

  Jolie was pleasantly surprised that her proximity to this pond didn’t bother her at all. It was possible that her fear of the pond behind her house—and her fear of the bathtub—were momentary glitches. Whatever they were, she seemed all right now. This left her free to think about how much trouble she was in.

  She’d seen Sheriff Tim Johnson’s face at the station earlier. He wouldn’t even look in her direction. His disappointment was heavy in his features, his eyes. He seemed tired and sad. Sad was an expression people adopted when they looked back. When there was something to regret.

  He’d looked like a man who was preparing to give a good friend some very bad news.

  “What do you think?” Louis asked her as the truck was winched onto the flatbed tow truck that would take it to “The Barn.”

  Jolie squinted against the sunlight, trying to concentrate. “It could be.”

  Louis sighed. He looked weary, too. He’d been brought off the bench, and now he would be working the Maddy Akers homicide around the clock. “Could be? Can’t you do any better than that?”

  “It was dark.”

  Louis shrugged. “Guess that’s the way this is gonna go.”

  “I’m just not sure, all right?”

  “I wasn’t saying anything against you,” Louis said. “I was talking generally.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, it’s a bitch.”

  Over lunch at the Jack in the Box, Louis caught Jolie up. Amy Perdue was on life support and was unlikely to regain consciousness. There had also been a development regarding James Dooley.

  The Strange Case of the Boastful Hit Man, was the way Louis described it.

  According to Louis, Dooley hadn’t been home for two or three days. This morning, unable to get a warrant, Skeet made the call—exigent circumstances—and sent a team in to breach Dooley’s house. Inside, the trash stank to high heaven. The man’s two dogs, kept in the backyard, had gone through all their water and food and were now with animal control. James Dooley appeared to have absconded. It bothered Louis that he’d left the dogs. There was a BOLO on both James Dooley and his 1985 brown Chevy truck.

  Turned out they didn’t have to go far to find him. He was in their own jail. Dooley had been incarcerated for three days at the Palm County Sheriff’s Office jail in Palmetto after committing a minor traffic violation. An enterprising deputy ran him for wants and warrants, arresting him on the spot for a broken taillight.

  Skeet found out about Dooley’s incarceration when he put the BOLO out and got the call from the Palmetto deputy who arrested him.

  His Chevy Fleetside had been sitting in the impound lot in Palmetto for three days.

  Louis told Jolie that Skeet went to Palmetto and interrogated Dooley himself. Of course he knew it was a wild-goose chase. Dooley couldn’t be in two places at once. According to Louis, it left Skeet in a foul temper.

  There was no evidence that Chief Akers had ever hired someone to kill his wife.

  In the aftershock of the drive-by, Jolie’s mind had fallen into certain lines. She was sure Maddy was the target, that Amy was collateral damage. But what if it was the other way around?

  Jolie was beginning to believe there never was a hit man.

  Maybe this was about Amy.

  Jolie said, “Louis, you recovered Amy’s phone after the shooting, right?”

  “Sure did, and put it into evidence, just like it says in ‘The Big-Boy-Pants Detectives’ Handbook.’”

  “Have you done forensics yet?”

  “We’ve been busy with
other things.”

  “There might be evidence on that phone.”

  “Evidence?”

  Jolie had to frame this carefully. “I think she and her brother Luke were into something bad. There might be information on her phone about that.”

  “And you know this because?”

  “She said something about it when we talked,” Jolie lied. “She said there were photos.”

  “Photos.”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “Photos of what?”

  “She didn’t say. But she said I’d know ’em when I saw them.”

  Elbows on the table, Nick Holloway leaned forward and smiled at Frank Haddox. “Ever hear of Giant’s Causeway?”

  A gull hovered like a baby’s mobile just beyond the rafters of Bayou Joe’s, its bright eyes on the last of Frank’s onion rings. Frank thought the bird looked alternately clownish and homicidal.

  “Giant’s Causeway?”

  “The racehorse. Nearly won the Breeder’s Cup in 2000. I own one of his offspring.”

  “You own one of his offspring?”

  “Actually, in partnership. We drew straws to name him and I won. I named him after my favorite fishing fly.”

  “Oh. Well that’s interesting.”

  “You know what one of my partners wanted to call him? Spotcheck Billy. Guy’s a Little Feat fan, Spotcheck Billy’s in one of their songs. I don’t think that’s an appropriate name for a Kentucky Derby hopeful, do you? It lacks…”

  “Gravitas?”

  “That’s the word exactly. Gravitas.”

  With that, their conversation petered out. Frank began to wonder if this was such a good idea. He didn’t know the guy. In fact, Holloway seemed a little…off. Maybe bestselling authors were like that. All that time alone inside their own heads—maybe they weren’t adept, socially.

  He could feel the guy scrutinizing him from behind his dark glasses. The way the light bounced off them—Frank couldn’t see the man’s eyes. For the first time, Frank questioned his decision to leave his security detail behind.

  Frank decided right then this would be a short day. They’d go out a ways, do a little fishing, and be done by early afternoon. He wouldn’t call off the fishing trip altogether though. Something told him not to piss this guy off. Go out for an hour—they wouldn’t even have to talk—then leave him back at the dock. That decided, he stood up. “What do you say we go get us some kings?”