Heat

by R. W. Clinger

  On my way out of the apartment building, I happened to take a glance at the mailboxes inside the lobby. There were maybe forty-two in all, row after row. Some were steel-colored, and others were bronze. Each had a foggy glass window at the front, a knob to open, and a keyhole. I saw the one for apartment 4-B, peeped through the foggy glass; empty. As luck would have it, though, I grinned as I read the oblong sticker on the rusted box. My heart began to sting, and I had some pent energy left in me after my hopeless and uneventful trek to the fourth floor. The mailbox read in thick blue letters: Clarissa Monigal. Clarissa just happened to be the granddaughter of Laura Monigal and the cousin to Clifton Monigal. Amen to that.

  Chapter 35: Rotunda Disturbed

  Downtown Hurricane Bay

  HBIA

  2:15 P.M.

  My office sat approximately one-point-three miles away from Rudy Shower’s apartment building. I decided to do some hardcore Googling on Clarissa Monigal at my office upon returning there after my productive escapade on Coral Street.

  I parked on St. Paul Street, two doors down from my agency. The street’s shade comprised of a bunch of Magnolia trees covered in Spanish moss. After locking up my ride, I wasn’t taken aback to see Peter Rotunda standing next to his screaming-white Cadillac. He had his arms crossed, sunglasses poised perfectly on his nose, and his legs were separated with just enough space to intimidate me. He spoke clear and loud.

  “Axle Dupree, I think you’ve been dragging your feet about finding the murderer of Rudy Shower and the arsonist who torched my bar.”

  I knew a confrontation with the man appeared inevitable. I just wasn’t ready for it as of yet. I still needed to learn more about a long list of related people, places, and events that all concerned the questionable doings in Hurricane Bay. And Peter showing up at my office did not help my investigation. I walked around him, reached the three limestone steps that led up to my office, and used a key to let us in.

  Over my right shoulder, I said, “Would you like a strong drink, Peter? I actually think I’m ready for one.”

  “Not at this hour in the day. Drinks are designed for evening hours,” he said, walking behind me and entering the office as my shadow.

  “I won’t agree with that, sir. I guess it all depends how badly the day is panning out.” I flicked on the light in my office since the windows were miniature and offered very little, if any, sunbeams. Then I sat down behind my desk and told him to have a seat across from me, which he did.

  He twiddled his thumbs and stared at me with his beady eyes. A scowl formed on his face. “Tell me I haven’t wasted my money on you, Axle.”

  “You haven’t. Things are becoming quite heated in your case.”

  He cleared his throat and leaned forward a few inches, making some heavy eye contact with me, probably to intimidate me. “Tell me how things have gotten heated.”

  I told him that I thought Underground Spectacle had something to do with the death of one of his employees and the fire at his bar. Then I asked, “Do you remember the issue Hurricane Bay had with Laura Monigal and arson?”

  He inhaled with great strength, exhaled the same way, and said, “Her name has recently crossed my mind. I know all of the firebug facts that happened in her past. Who’s to say that she didn’t hire someone to burn down my bar and accidentally murder Rudy Shower, just as she had hired the jurors at her trial to declare her innocent?”

  I told him about my trip to Rudy’s apartment. I also explained I’d learned that Edgar Sign had a correlation to Clarissa Monigal, Laura Monigal’s granddaughter, though I wasn’t sure of the connection.

  “The marshlands, of course.”

  “How so?” I asked, confused by his comment, and yet interested at the same time.

  “The Sign family purchased over two thousand acres of marshland from the Monigals. This occurred in 1968, long before you were born. Laura wanted top dollar for her property. Brady Sign, Edgar’s uncle, an environmentalist, wanted the land to study its wildlife. The biologist wrote a lot about frogs and other amphibians. He made it quite clear to the Monigals that he didn’t want to pay a lot for the acreage. Long story short, the two families fought over a price for over a year. In the meantime, the Sign estate in Tallahassee accidentally burned to the ground because of an electrical fire. Fortunately, no one got hurt. Two weeks later, the marshland had been sold to the Signs for their asking price.”

  “Do you think that Laura Monigal set the fire at the Tallahassee estate because she was mad at the Signs?”

  He raised his left hand and pointed at the tip of his nose. “You’re a clever little bastard and spot on.”

  What he said made sense. But I still didn’t understand a few things about Laura and arson. “If your place of business was torched by Laura, or someone who Laura just happened to pay to do the torching, why would she be mad at you?”

  He shrugged. “I guess this is what I’m paying you to find out, Mr. Dupree.”

  “Exactly.”

  Chapter 36: The Return of Margo Pagino

  Downtown Hurricane Bay

  HBIA

  3:11 P.M.

  Not even five minutes after Peter Rotunda exited my office, Margo Pagino helped herself to the seat across from my desk.

  “Is it true that you know where Bobby is?”

  “Bobby was never missing,” I replied, irritated that she had arrived at my office without an advanced notice.

  “Bobby is missing.” She scowled at me by purposely slanting her eyebrows inward, behaving like a concerned mother.

  I shook my head. “You’re mistaken, Margo. Something tells me you already know where your son is.”

  “Malarkey!” she yelled. She jumped off the seat, but then fell back into its S-shape. She seemed to calm down and said, “My baby boy would not purposely hide from me. I’ve paid you a great amount of money to find him. Would I waste cash like that if I knew where Bobby was?”

  She could have paid me a million bucks, unable to make the slightest bump in her checking account. Being pragmatic, I disagreed with her, but wasn’t ready to divulge that information to her, nor her son’s whereabouts. I also didn’t want to divulge to her what I had learned of Edgar Sign and Underground Spectacle. Rather, I ignored her comment.

  “Who can you think of that would try and pin arson on you, Margo?”

  Color washed out of her face, and she scrunched her nose a touch, creating wrinkles around her nostrils. “What are you saying, young man?”

  “Hear me out,” I conferred. “Your romance series is all about a woman named Fire.”

  “It is. She’s made me famous. I like to think of her as an immortal diva since she has given me wealth and a good life. Fire is the daughter I never had.”

  “Good for you and her,” I said. “Now, two of your Fire novels have appeared outside my lover’s bungalow. Both were set on fire with gasoline. And let’s not forget the two fires in Hurricane Bay. One at the Flaming Flamingo and the other at Bungalow Fifteen. Someone would think you started all of these fires, or have an association with the person who did.”

  “I’m not an arsonist,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t help it that some lunatic in this city is setting my novels on fire and decorating Hurricane Bay Beach with them. That is out of my hands. The cops should be dealing with that nonsense.”

  “They are, Margo,” I said, perhaps over-enjoying my moments with her because she just happened to be squirming in her seat. “Now tell me who might loathe you. What person would want to hurt you and make you responsible for the fires?”

  She sat straight up, shook her head, and began to play with the gold beetle-shaped necklace at her throat. “I have no enemies, Mr. Dupree.”

  “We all have enemies. The world we live in would be perfect if we didn’t.”

  “Not I,” she said, continuing to shake her head.

  I leaned back in my desk chair, crossed one leg over the other, and touched the center of my chin in deep thought. “Tell me a little bit
about Fire’s March.”

  A brief smile lit up her face because she probably liked to talk about her stories and characters. “It was my third novel in the Fire series. It sold very well. Then it was made into a movie, which people in Europe seemed to love, but not Americans.”

  “And who was its publisher?”

  “Paxtonian Books out of Miami?”

  Right again. Good for her. “And who edited the book, Margo?”

  She looked away from me and stared at the window that overlooked St. Paul Street. She rubbed her hands together with nervousness and snapped, “I don’t have to answer that, young man!”

  “Let me answer it for you then. Laura Monigal edited your third novel. She was hired by Paxtonian for a short period of time. You were clever enough to pave a way to get her fired. The two of you, let me say, rubbed each other the wrong way.”

  “She was a cowardly bitch! Her skills were minimal, and Fire’s March deserved better. Other people agreed with me that Laura didn’t know what she was doing as an editor. No one else had the balls to admit that she needed to be fired.”

  “Is it true that Laura Monigal loathes you?” I asked, acting professional, cutting into the epicenter of the matter, and confirming with her exactly what I had already known.

  She nodded. “We despise each other. She had a degree in business, which had nothing to do with English, editing, and writing romances.”

  “She could be attempting to pin these crimes on you. How do you feel about that? Or are you the arsonist you say you’re not? Fill me in.”

  “I’m done here,” she said, angered at me. “You’ve made this a very unpleasant visit, Mr. Dupree. You’ve been rude and unruly. I do hope you come to your senses.” She stood and walked out of my office, shaking her head.

  Some women didn’t know how to handle me, did they?

  Chapter 37: Clarissa Monigal

  Downtown Hurricane Bay

  HBIA

  4:15 P.M.

  Who was Clarissa Monigal besides Laura Monigal’s granddaughter and Clifton’s cousin? Being quite curious, I took the next hour to creep on the Internet and find anything I could on the woman, mostly from using Google. Although very little information about her was unearthed, what I did find ended up being valuable. Her beauty struck me. Blonde and petite, she dressed well. I would not have been surprised to learn that she had taken place in numerous beauty pageants as a younger woman. I learned her age: twenty-seven. And I also learned where she worked: as an editor at Tampa Palm Press for the last four years. She drove a Honda Accord, wasn’t married, and occupied her time by dating a young doctor named Reed Simons.

  More details of the woman unfolded in a matter of minutes. She lived on Coral Street for the last two years. She was hospitalized the year before because of measles, surviving the ordeal with just a few scars on her arms. Cats, romantic movies, and flowers were her interests. Her birthday fell on Valentine’s Day, and she liked to read romance novels. In 2011, she earned an award by the city of Turtle Bay as Courteous Citizen for donating her time at the Autism School for Young People. Clarissa enjoyed sunbathing, Mexican food, and blond men.

  Perhaps the most interesting thing about Clarissa that I learned concerned the book of published poems she had with Paxtonian Books in 2009, which had the title Sunshine Atrocity. The small work ended up being released in hardback, showcased a leather binding, and had a print run of two thousand copies. Each was signed by the author, sported gold-accented pages, and was leather. Approximately seventy poems (some short and others almost epic) broached topics of infidelity, self-mutilation, and phobias.

  Reviews call the book “thematically brilliant and moist for the mind,” according to the Turtle Bay Regional. Others referred to it as award-winning, although it had never optioned for that. Clarissa had interviewed with Oscar Sol of the Hurricane Bay Inquire.

  When asked by Sol how she felt about her work, she said, “I’ve used fingernails on my soul to deliver some of the pieces inside SA. An artist has to sometimes do that to share their disjointed body parts with their vulnerable readers.”

  After further creeping, I learned that she had once worked at Paxtonian Books, following in her grandmother’s footsteps. Perhaps Clarissa obtained her position at the publishing house with the help of Laura Monigal. I also learned that Clarissa had edited two of Margo Pagino’s romances, which included Fire’s Flight and Fire’s Myth. Online magazine Interviews with Ms. Monigal suggested a rocky rapport with Margo Pagino.

  Clarissa had supplied the following comment with the media, “Margo Pagino is a very cruel and biting woman. Working as her editor is destructive. I choose never to work with her again. She’s a mindless virus without manners, and I can easily admit to despising every inch of her.”

  I learned that Clarissa Monigal had an affiliation with Margo Pagino. Not once had Margo shared those details with me. Why had the writer decided to purposely keep that tidbit of knowledge away from me? Had Margo been hiding something significant about the arsonist-at-large? Could I place her as a key in deducing who the arsonist was?

  The facts collected on Clarissa were quite clean and didn’t tarnish the woman’s reputation except for her association with the romance author. Perhaps Clarissa had something to do with the two fires on Hurricane Bay Beach and burning Margo’s paperback novels. But how was I involved? Clarissa presented herself as a complete stranger to me, and of no importance in my life. I knew nothing of her until now. How and why could she be linked to the fires and the death of Rudy Shower? Had she taken after her grandmother, Laura Monigal, and also practiced arson? Did bad blood run like that through the Monigal family, transferring corruption from one generation to the next?

  Let my investigation lead me astray once again.

  Chapter 38: Laura Calls

  Downtown Hurricane Bay

  HBIA

  5:05 P.M.

  The telephone in my office rang. I thought about removing the landline numerous times, but enjoyed the cucumber green phone from 1983, and its ring, which sounded like brrraaarrrrring. Another reason why I didn’t want to toss the phone away I used for my business. The agency’s phone number was listed all over the Internet and in the local directories. How could I throw that business away?

  I decided to take the call and picked up the line on the first ring. “Hurricane Bay Investigative Agency. Axle Dupree speaking.”

  “Mr. Dupree?”

  The caller turned out to be none other than Laura Monigal from Turtle Bay. Wasn’t it a coincidence that I had just learned that her granddaughter had worked as a Paxtonian Books editor? The world got off on being filled with bizarre events that occurred every day. Even Hurricane Bay could not be exempt from those happenings.

  “What can I do you for, Mrs. Monigal?”

  “Miss,” she corrected me with a sharp tone.

  “My apologies. Miss it will be.”

  “I’d like to arrange an appointment with you, if you don’t mind.”

  Of course, I didn’t mind. “My office is open from nine in the morning until five, Monday through Friday. Appointments outside those hours can be pre-arranged.”

  “Mr. Dupree, I won’t be visiting your agency. I need to speak to you here in Turtle Bay. The sooner the better, of course. There’s something private I would like to discuss with you.”

  “Private?” I asked, intrigued by her call and why she had wanted to make an immediate appointment to see me.

  “Yes. It’s very private. This is why I want you to visit me tomorrow, here at my estate. Unfortunately, I am booked until two in the afternoon. Tell me you can make it tomorrow evening, let’s say eight, Axle.” She sounded hurried, in a rush of sorts, and somewhat out of breath.

  “I can,” I said, rolling my eyes. Frankly, I didn’t want to drive to Turtle Bay, even though it wasn’t that far from Hurricane Bay. With an already jam-packed schedule because of my investigation, the fires, a murder, and questioning those on my suspect list, I asked her, “Can you share
whatever you have to say to me over the phone?”

  “And fear that your line is bugged, Mr. Dupree? What kind of investigator are you? Any fool knows that all calls can be traced and recorded.”

  “I’m sure my telephone line here at the office is not bugged, Miss Monigal. If it were bugged, I wouldn’t have a single client.” My words came out sharp and to the point, almost rudely.

  “Mr. Dupree, if you could please not speak to me in that manner.”

  “Of course,” I replied, respectful of the woman, though I believed her world and actions mysterious, questionable, and deceptive. “I will clear my schedule for seven tomorrow evening.”

  “At my estate,” she demanded, curt and to the point, still rushed.

  “Yes. And what a lovely estate it is,” I said, ending our communication until the following day.

  * * * *

  5:54 P.M.

  I made the drive to Clarissa Monigal’s residence in Alcove Bay; a wealthy area of Hurricane Bay with a private manmade lake, Alcove Park, and resort. The acreage nestled among thick mangroves and wrought-iron gates that reached to heaven, which concealed the vast area. Rent stayed high, and condominiums were always occupied. To gain residence at Alcove Bay, you had to know someone of importance, come from money, or sleep your way into the community. Clarissa had acted out two of the three methods, keeping her sex life a secret.

  No one was at home, which was just my luck. So much for playing prudent investigator when there wasn’t anything or anyone to investigate. Clarissa’s condo looked empty of her inhabitance. Although the place looked furnished and dusted—I noticed those pertinent details after peering inside its half-moon-shaped windows—it was bare of the owner, a maid, or caretaker, which all of the Alcove Bay residences had. The place was tidy but sealed closed, without any activity whatsoever. Having my head held low, emotionally disjointed at that moment, I left a few minutes after arriving, realizing a dead end when I saw one.