Beaumont interrupted him. “We haven’t had a homicide here since a woman put cream, Splenda, and cyanide into her husband’s morning coffee. She was his third wife, twenty-eight to his seventy-nine. His other heirs got a court order for an autopsy. The wife got thirty years in the Lowell Correctional Institution instead of his $200 million estate. That was fifteen years ago, so we’re a bit out of practice in the murder area.”
“We’re hoping you’ll come on as a paid consultant,” Hansen said. “Read the case files, look into the backgrounds of the two victims, and see if anything seems suspicious to you.”
“Sure,” I said, rather flattered that my detecting skills still had some market value. “I can do that.”
“Good,” the chief said.
The mayor nodded his agreement and looked pleased. I stood and took another doughnut, this one chocolate-coated with sprinkles. Now that I was part of the team, I didn’t think it impolite to have another. No one had mentioned my fee, but I wasn’t above working for doughnuts and the chance to get back into the “murder area.”
“What if these two deaths turn out to be something other than accidental?” I asked as I returned to my chair. “Murders happen . . .”
“Let me be frank,” Beaumont said. He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s my job to make certain that the beaches have enough sand, that mosquitoes are controlled, and that nothing threatens property values. We don’t want to be like Detroit, where the average home price is less than the cost of a steak dinner. Murder is something that isn’t supposed to happen here.”
Or like Chicago, I thought. Obviously there was no way anyone would ever equate Naples to Chicago or Detroit, crime wise, absent having a band of drug-crazed killers riding motorcycles along Fifth Avenue South and spraying people on the street with automatic weapons fire. But I got his point: A murder in this town would go over like a turd in a punchbowl, as they would say at the Baby Doll.
“How soon can you start?” Hansen asked.
I looked at my watch. I had nothing pressing to do for the rest of the morning. I figured that I could read the files, make some notes, and be back in Fort Myers Beach in time for lunch. “Now is good,” I told him.
“We’d prefer that you not take the files out of the building,” Hansen said. “I’ll set you up in a conference room down the hall.”
In case I felt the urge to turn the files over to the Naples Daily News? But they were writing the checks, so they made the rules. We stood and Beaumont asked, “Would a fee of $5,000 for this initial phase be acceptable?”
Acceptable? Be still my beating heart. “That’ll work,” I answered, trying not to salivate.
I wondered what he meant by “initial phase.” More than just reading the files and offering an opinion? Whatever it was, I was being extremely well paid for doing it. When the check cleared, I could have my boat repainted, take Marisa on a Caribbean cruise, and have money left over for a ring job on my ’Vette.
5.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
I was seated at a polished mahogany table the length of Soldier Field located in a second-floor conference room near the mayor’s office. There were two three-ring binders on the table plus a fresh cup of coffee and another doughnut, this one powdered sugar.
Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked a park. On one wall of the room was the Seal of the City of Naples. It contained a drawing of city hall and the words “City of Naples, Florida, On the Gulf.” There were seven stars along the bottom. I guess dollar signs would have been considered garish, even if appropriate.
The park was nicely landscaped with flowerbeds and palm trees. A fountain whose bowl was shaped like a seashell spewed a stream of water from the mouth of a stone fish. A Chicago friend had a statue in his backyard of a cherub with the water coming out of his penis. It’s all a matter of personal taste.
Through the window, I also could see a single-story concrete building across the park; a sign on the front lawn said this was the Naples Police Department. I used to work out of a Chicago PD station house on South Wentworth Avenue on the city’s South Side, in Chinatown. The atmosphere there was very different from where I now was; not nearly so picturesque, but the Chinese food was better than any you could find in Naples.
Joy Yee’s Noodles, where I often ate lunch, was a favorite among cops, and also FBI agents whose offices were nearby on West Roosevelt Road. One noon hour, when I wasn’t there, a man who must have been new to the city attempted to rob the place. Like the guy who tried to stick up the Baby Doll Polka Lounge, but worse. Talk about a bad day. Bill Stevens used both scenes in his Jack Stoney books.
The binders contained reports from the uniformed police officers first on the scenes of the two Naples deaths, from a detective named Samuels who arrived later, from the Naples crime scene investigator (idea for new TV series: CSI Naples), and from the Collier County coroner. Everything was professionally done. I was not at all certain I could add anything to what seemed to be a very complete and competent investigation. Except for the fact that Wade Hansen wasn’t buying it. He had good credentials, so I gave a lot of weight to his instincts. He’d been the chief of police in Fall River, Massachusetts, before taking the Naples job. Like Cubby Cullen, he’d learned the job up north, packed up his skills and his sidearm, and set up shop amongst the palm trees. I guess I was now in the category too.
The first victim was a woman named Eileen Stephenson. As Hansen said, she was seventy-eight years old when she died. She was found floating facedown in the swimming pool behind her house by the pool cleaner at ten A.M.
Her son told police she swam laps at seven every morning. There were photos of the pool and of her body, at the scene and in the morgue. She had short brown hair and looked to be in very good shape for a woman her age, presumably from the swimming.
Also in the file was a copy of her obituary from the Naples Daily News. It reported that Eileen Stephenson won a bronze medal in the breaststroke at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne. I guessed it was this fact that caused Hansen to be suspicious of the death, especially in light of the absence of an autopsy and the fact that there was no evidence that she had any medical issues. A Detective Samuels had interviewed her doctor, who reported that she’d had an annual physical two months before her death, and she was in good health. She could have had a heart attack or stroke while swimming but, given her medical condition, as well as her swimming background, I could see why Hansen suspected murder.
The obituary said that Mrs. Stephenson’s husband, Bruce, had died four years earlier and was the founder of a company called Stephenson Industries, which manufactured such things as titanium missile parts and engine casings for motorcycles. It must have been very successful because, according to the obit, the Stephensons had been philanthropists, donating large sums of money to worthy causes in Naples and back home in Indianapolis.
Hmmm.
Rule number one of investigative work is to follow the money. There’s a rule number two, but I’d been off the job awhile and had forgotten it. Something about sex, I think. Presumably, Mrs. Stephenson’s son and daughter were her primary heirs. I made a mental note to see if I could get a complete list from her will. Whoever they were, they could now afford nicer cars.
I turned to the second file. The deceased was a man named Lester Gandolf, who would never be older than seventy-two. The police report stated that his wife, Elizabeth, age sixty-eight, found him at one a.m. lying at the bottom of the marble staircase in their house. She said that she and Lester had gone to bed at ten that night. Lester was reading when she fell asleep. She was awakened by a noise, saw that he wasn’t in bed, and went looking for him. She said that it was not his habit to get up like that and go downstairs, or anywhere but to the bathroom, as old men do during the night.
My Chicago friend with the statue once told me, while we were sitting on his back porch drinking beers and watching the cherub relieve himself, “I remember a time when urgency and frequency referred to sex, a
nd not urination.” Not a condition I looked forward to. His one other pearl of wisdom was, “Remember Jack, nice girls like it too.” Maybe not as deep as a saying by Confucius, but useful nevertheless.
Elizabeth Gandolf did allow an autopsy, which found her husband to be in good health—except for the fact that he was dead from a broken neck. She told the coroner that Lester had no history of dizziness or of any other medical condition that could cause him to trip. His medical records reflected that as well.
Of course Lester could have gotten up that night, decided to go down to the kitchen for a ham sandwich, and tripped on the stairs. But still, something did seem possibly rotten in the State of Denmark, as Hansen had suggested.
Lester Gandolf’s newspaper obituary was also included in the file. Like the Stephensons, the Gandolfs were very wealthy. Billionaires, in fact, rich enough to hit the annual Forbes magazine list of the nation’s Upper One Percenters. Lester’s grandfather started a meatpacking company in Chicago, which grew into a multinational company called Gandolf Foods. I’d heard of it. It owned many recognizable brands found on supermarket shelves.
Lester and Elizabeth Gandolf were prominent philanthropists, too; they supported many of the same Naples charities and arts organizations as had the Stephensons. The Gandolfs were also major contributors to, and fund-raisers for, the Republican Party. I suppose you could have held a caucus for the Collier County Democratic Party in a phone booth, if there were still any phone booths. If not, a broom closet would do.
If Eileen Stephenson and Lester Gandolf, both apparently in good health when they died, had been murdered in a small town like Naples and their deaths made to look accidental, any competent investigator would try to find all of the connections between the two victims because that might suggest a single killer and uncover a motive. An obvious connection was that they were both rich and moved in the same social circles. Someone would have to dig deeper. Maybe by saying “initial phase,” the mayor meant that the someone was me.
After reading the files, I had a revelation. I wanted that third doughnut. Powdered sugar is not my favorite kind, but one must adapt to the circumstances while on duty. I ate it while I drank the rest of my coffee and contemplated what I’d just read.
Hansen entered the conference room, sat at the table, and said, “Well Jack, what do you think?”
“I think that both of these cases bear further investigation. I can see why they’re troubling you.”
“Will you lead that investigation for us?” he asked, as I suspected he would. I hadn’t decided what my answer would be.
“I have a business to run,” I told him.
“Your bar in Fort Myers Beach.”
“That’s the one.”
“The city budget has a large contingency fund for use at the mayor’s discretion. Mayor Beaumont considers this matter to be of very great importance, as do I. We will make certain you are well compensated for your time, plus expenses, and have any resources you need. That’s in addition to the $5,000 you’ve already earned for giving us your opinion about whether there is, in fact, anything to investigate.”
As I said, I was living a very comfortable life. I didn’t need the money that Chief Hansen was offering. But, I realized as I was reading those files, the part of my brain that controlled deductive reasoning, think of it as the Sherlock Holmes lobe, had been dormant for too long. And Sam Longtree, the Seminole Indian who was my bartender, was a very competent fellow who could pick up any slack created by my detective work. He was well named because he had the physique of a Sequoia: Six foot five inches of pure muscle.
“I still don’t know if I can add any value to your investigation, chief,” I said. “And I don’t want to cause you any trouble with your detectives. You know, who’s the hotshot asshole from Chicago?”
“Let me handle my people. Part of the reason we brought you in is so we can keep the investigation confidential. Word gets out we think there’s maybe a serial killer bumping off the citizenry, we’d have a major-league cluster fuck, ending up with both the mayor and me unemployed.”
“Okay,” I told him. “I’m willing to give it a shot.”
Shot, as in the old college try. Not as in gunfire, I hoped. I didn’t want any more holes in my hide.
6.
IF THE MOUNTAIN WON’T COME TO MUHAMMAD
Marisa and I were having dinner at the Tarpon Lodge on Pine Island, a relatively undeveloped barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico connected to the Florida mainland by a causeway near Fort Myers.
The lodge provided a real taste of Old Florida. It was built as a hunting and fishing hotel in 1926 and has been preserved pretty much in its original condition, which is why I like it. So much of coastal Florida has been bulldozed, paved, and overdeveloped that, but for the water and palm trees, you might be in any part of America. But parts of Old Florida still remain; you just have to know where to look.
It was a balmy, moonlit evening as we sat at an outdoor table on the covered porch, which overlooked the calm waters of Pine Island Sound. White tablecloths and candles. A light wind rustled the palm fronds, and the jacaranda trees on the property were in full, purple bloom. There is a reason that this stretch of gulf-front land, running from Fort Myers to Naples, is called The Paradise Coast.
I was enjoying my fish tacos and Marisa her blackened grouper, which she accompanied with a nice pinot grigio. It was an odd time and setting to be talking about murder, but that’s just what we were doing. By the time the dessert course arrived, key lime pie for me and crème brûlée for her, I’d told her all about my new assignment in Naples.
That was a direct violation of the confidentiality agreement I’d signed. But I trusted Marisa implicitly; she was a very smart lady, and I wanted her insights and opinions about the case, especially because my detecting skills were somewhat rusty. Rusty in the sense that I’d been on the case for a while and hadn’t a clue about who had done what to whom. That’s not the kind of situation report—sit rep, we called it in the corps—you want to give to your superiors: Sorry fellas, I haven’t got Clue One about what’s happening, and here’s my invoice.
“So what’s your next step?” Marisa asked, putting me on the spot.
“I don’t have enough hard evidence yet to hold up in court, but it’s clear to me that Colonel Mustard did it in the library with the candlestick.”
Marisa smiled. “So you’ve got nothing.”
“That would be correct,” I admitted under her withering cross-examination. “One of Hansen’s detectives, a man he trusts to keep it quiet, is pulling together backgrounds on the lives of Eileen Stephenson and Lester Gandolf. Obviously I can’t go around Naples knocking on doors and asking about them. Other than that, I’m keeping my options open.”
“I may have an idea.”
That sounded promising, so I said, “Tell me.”
“If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, Muhammad must go to the mountain,” Marisa said, enigmatically.
“I see,” I said, sagely, even though I didn’t.
She continued: “The answer to the mystery might lie within the confines of Naples high society,” she explained. “I’m suggesting that you must get inside that rarefied circle in order to figure out what’s going on.”
“You mean, like, going undercover?” I’m a quick study when someone gives me the answer.
“Right. Those people aren’t going to open up to Detective Sergeant Jack Starkey, retired, owner of The Drunken Parrot, and resident of a houseboat in Fort Myers Beach,” she said, running her finger around the rim of her wine glass, causing that high-pitched, squeaking sound.
I’d once seen a man appearing at the Illinois State Fair play “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and other patriotic songs on water glasses using that same technique. It was highly entertaining, if you were having a slow day.
“I see,” I said again, still not.
“So you’ll need to do a Jay Gatsby number on them,” Marisa said, taking a sip of her pino
t.
I’d read The Great Gatsby but I still wasn’t following her idea.
She took a dainty bite of her crème brûlée and dabbed at her mouth with the white cloth napkin. “You should pose as one of them, a rich guy,” she explained. “Move among them and see what you can turn up. I assume that the mayor and police chief can help you do that. And maybe an instructor in etiquette.”
I was much impressed by her idea. If she ever tired of the real estate business, maybe we could be partners in a private investigation firm: “Starkey and Fernandez de Lopez, No Mystery Too Tough, No Injustice Too Small.” She could be the brains and me the brawn.
“That’s a brilliant plan,” I said. “Dinner’s on me.”
“It already was,” she said. “I require something more.”
“Shall we adjourn to the Phoenix and see what we can come up with?”
“Works for me, big guy,” Marisa said with a seductive smile. In fact, all of her smiles were seductive.
I caught the waiter’s eye and said “Check, please,” wondering if I could put this dinner on my new expense account, now that Marisa had all but broken the case. If I’d thought of that earlier, I’d have had the lobster.
7.
MY NAME IS FRANK CHANCE
I awoke to the sound of seagulls cackling outside an open window and waves washing up onto a beach. I opened my eyes and saw lace curtains being blown inward by a warm breeze. I was lying in a canopy bed between lime-green satin sheets.
For a brief, surreal moment, I could not remember where I was. Certainly not aboard Phoenix, because I don’t own lace curtains, a canopy bed, or satin sheets. Before I met Marisa, I slept in a sleeping bag atop my bed. It saved on laundry. She bought some sheets for me at Target.
I sat up, yawned, and stretched, just like Joe did every morning, and looked around the bedroom. It was bigger than an average-sized 7-Eleven. There was antique furniture, an Oriental rug over a parquet floor, large framed oil paintings on the walls, and a high ceiling with a painting of fat little cherubs romping in the clouds.
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