Shallow Grave

by Karen Harper

  “It’s kind of like a high rollers hunt club,” Grant answered for Stan. “Special privileges to stay or shoot here on more-or-less virgin land. There is some fencing back a ways to be sure prime game stays in there.”

  “Certain guests stay there?”

  “There are two treetop cabins, specially built,” Grant said. “You know, the price you pay for private paradise. There are four German industrialists there now, with guides, valets and drivers.”

  So, Nick thought, as Stan drove them away from the verboten area marked only by that crude wooden sign, that might bring in a fortune from people who had a fortune. Deepest Africa in the heart of Florida.

  They came upon the half-eaten carcass of a white-tailed doe. Actually, the corpse looked more dissolved than eaten.

  “See—pythons at work, right, Bronco?” Stan asked.

  “Looks like it to me. You’d think something that could run away wouldn’t end up like that inside a slow-moving snake, but, yeah. Ten to one, there’s a big Burmese python or more than one nearby. The snake would have squeezed it to death, then ingested it—part of it anyway. I saw some armadillos back there, and the snakes like to hide and mate in their burrows. With armadillo protective plates, the snakes couldn’t digest them anyway, but this—for sure.”

  At the largest of the gator holes they approached, to Nick’s surprise, Stan stopped the buggy and climbed down. “I want to show Bronco one heck of a big boy, since he’s familiar with gators,” he said. “Sit tight. We’ll be right back. I haven’t let anyone bag the gator I call Big Mac, because I’m kind of proud of him, like he’s been here since the dinosaurs.”

  Nick wasn’t anxious to get out in gator land anyway, and those biting fire ants had been mentioned more than once. While Bronco and Stan walked a short distance, he and Grant shot the breeze, as his dad used to say. It felt amazing to be out here on this immense stretch of land with open sky. Even if someone didn’t hunt, the trophy here was feeling free.

  Nick could see Stan talking to Bronco, pointing things out. Bronco wasn’t saying much, but shook his head a couple of times and shrugged. Yet he looked intent on whatever Stan was saying. They came tramping back through the sawgrass and got in.

  Time seemed unnecessary and almost silly out here, but Nick glanced at his watch. Two thirty, so Claire and Darcy would be in the middle of their lesson with the kids and a few adults. Although she was a big help to him on the Tiger Cage Case, he wished she’d just stick to the Comfort Zone kids for now, at least until she had the baby.

  * * *

  Nick could tell something was really eating at Bronco as he drove them back into Naples. “Did I say something to upset you?” Nick asked.

  “Not you. Him. Stan the man, ‘Big Cat.’”

  He turned more toward Bronco. “What did he say?”

  “Actually, a really good job offer.”

  “Catching gators or snakes?”

  “You a mind reader, boss?”

  “No, a demented defense attorney. What kind of job?”

  “Real lucrative. And with the wedding and us wanting to get a house of our own and all soon...”

  “Not a full-time job, I hope. I need you, Bronco. Tell me the specifics.”

  “Rooting out pythons on the property, but that would take a lot of time. Big pay by the hour, whether I find a snake or not, extra for each one I bring in dead or alive. He wants to put a couple of them on display.”

  “In cozy captivity—in the same cage or area? Wouldn’t that breed more? He doesn’t think his guests want to hunt them, does he? I hope he doesn’t want to show people how they eat deer. Gross and cruel. Listen, once you’re working that vast spread, I might never see you again, or Nita either. Not meaning a python would get you, but it would be a time suck. He offered a lot of money?”

  Bronco quoted the offer. It was double what Nick paid by the hour, and he was paying Bronco at almost consultant levels.

  “I should have realized he had an ulterior motive,” Nick muttered.

  “An altered motive?”

  “Never mind. I know you’re skilled at that, Bronco, as much as catching gators. You did a great job helping to head up that massive hunt with six hundred others earlier this year. I can’t afford to lose you, but I suppose you can’t afford to turn down that much money. Still, maybe this is a blessing in disguise since I don’t trust Stan Helter. Until we get all this figured out, maybe it’s a job you can take—if you’re willing, and if he’ll let you do it half-time. And, since you’re getting married soon, you’d better learn to ask your future wife. Those pythons can be deadly, but, believe me, a wife can be too if you overstep or don’t consult.”

  “Is that a joke, boss?”

  “Not if you want a long and happy married life, my friend. I haven’t been married that long, but forget your tough man gator-and-snake skills when it comes to a woman. Got that?”

  “Sure. Thanks. I thought you’d be real upset. If I can stay working for you, and I can keep an eye on that place too, then I’m game.”

  “Don’t say you’re ‘game’ if you’re going to work on that hunting ranch.”

  “Okay. I’ll keep my eyes open there and my mouth shut. Bet you’re going to say that’s another good marriage move, right?”

  * * *

  The hand signals and pool party had been a big success. The kids had taken to Sean well, and they’d all learned “scuba talk signals.” Several of them, however, thought that made them ready to dive with the mask, fins and tank, but Sean had said that was for another day and he’d love to come back.

  After Darcy walked Sean to his truck and paid him, Claire and Darcy, as cosponsors, said goodbye to everyone. They waved them away as they pulled out of the driveway while Heck and Gina were kind enough to stay out back to start to clean up. Only Marta and Duncan, as well as Lexi and Jilly, remained.

  “I’d like to swim like that,” Duncan said with a hint of a smile. “Like a fish, breathing underwater.”

  “Maybe you can learn, since Sean’s coming back,” Claire said, happy he seemed content, even hopeful. Smiles were rare from Duncan.

  “Because,” he went on, looking suddenly serious again, “it would be a great place to hide.”

  Marta put in, “You don’t need to hide anymore Duck—Duncan. He’s not here.”

  The boy shrugged. “I just think he is sometimes.”

  Claire and Darcy exchanged quick glances. Claire was tempted to say something comforting, but she wasn’t sure what. The child had lived with fear and pain so long that it might take his father being caught and imprisoned to really make him feel safe.

  “Well, gotta go, and thanks again,” Marta said, and opened the squeaky truck door so that the boy could climb in. It was an old truck with a dented side door. Claire assumed it might have been Irv Glover’s.

  They pulled out, honked and drove away. Darcy hugged Claire and Lexi, and went around the side of her van while Claire opened the door for Jilly and made sure she fastened her seat belt. Sometimes lately, Claire wished she could strap herself into one too.

  “See you soon!” Lexi called as Jilly rolled down her window. “I like the game where we name the baby!”

  “What game—and baby?” Claire asked, as if she didn’t know.

  “If you would just find out from the doctor and tell us if I’ll have a brother or sister, it would be way better,” Lexi scolded.

  “From the lips of children,” Darcy called out. “Our children.”

  Claire pulled Lexi back a step and Darcy backed out just as Claire saw Bronco’s new truck approaching down the cul-de-sac. As she turned to wave, she heard a thump-thump and Lexi screamed.

  Claire turned and screamed too, jerking Lexi back so hard they almost fell. Darcy, halfway down the driveway, hit the brakes. Under her van—huge, run over, maybe dead—a long brown and beige mottled sna
ke lay coiled with several dead rats near its fangs.

  16

  Claire pulled Lexi farther away. But it was dead, wasn’t it? The snake was run over—in pieces.

  Darcy and Jilly stayed in their vehicle. Bronco slammed his truck to a stop on the street and jumped out with Nick right behind him.

  “What in—” Nick said before he saw what it was.

  “It—we didn’t see it!” Claire called to him. “Darcy ran over it. Are those rats it was eating?”

  Nick leaned forward to study it but didn’t step closer. Claire stayed frozen where she was with a hard hold on Lexi.

  “Even if part of it moves, it’s dead, boss,” Bronco said. “It’s been dead awhile.”

  “So it was killed, then planted here, like the gator in the pool,” Nick said. He turned his head to look at Claire, a steady, wide-eyed stare, as if he were in shock. She tore her gaze away. Three of their neighbors were hurrying over, the Blakes and Mrs. Nelson.

  “Cover that with something,” Nick told Bronco.

  “Got a tarp in the back,” he said, and jogged toward his truck.

  “Hey, that’s one of those Everglades pythons, isn’t it?” Tony Blake, their neighbor on the north side, asked. “Man, that’s one way to get rid of them. But in our neighborhood?”

  Nick was punching numbers into his phone, but told him, “We don’t think it just crawled in, so don’t worry. Part of the price I pay for being a criminal lawyer.”

  “Oh—oh, yeah, thank God,” he said, and hurried back toward his house, hopefully not to bring more gawkers. Bronco spread a bright yellow tarp over the corpses. But Mrs. Blake stayed on the curb, taking pictures or video with her cell phone. Claire could tell Nick wanted her and Mrs. Nelson, who was talking on her phone, to go away too. He turned his back to them and spoke to someone on his phone; she assumed the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers.

  Wildlife—would her marriage to Nick always be that? If so, he was worth it. She moved herself and Lexi into the line of Mrs. Blake’s vision, and she got the message and backed off too. But what would she do with the pictures on her phone? At least there was nothing but a tarp to photograph right now.

  When their neighbors left, Claire and Lexi came closer to stand behind Nick, who was off his phone now. Though Claire just stared at the tarp, she could still picture what was under it. Stomach-churning, but no blood, which might mean, like the gator, the snake had indeed been dead before being placed here. And the dead rats—a warning for someone not to be a rat, not to squeal, as the Mafia lingo went, or else? But to squeal about what? Were they the rats or the dead snake? What exactly was the message? And from whom?

  * * *

  Nick was hoping the same two Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers would not come back, but they must have specific areas they covered, because here they were. He knew they’d see a pattern and be suspicious, but then word would probably spread anyway. Though Bronco had covered the gross corpses, the neighborhood was coming around in a growing crowd, including parents with little kids. This was not a good way to make local friends.

  Nick had been hoping to keep this contained, but he figured now it was like Pandora’s box. Questions and answers would link him to the BAA, to Ben’s death, and blow it up in the papers again when they needed to protect Ann and Brit. Then too, he had some other hot cases going at the firm, so he couldn’t be positive this was tied to investigating Ben’s death. But the use of animals—killer creatures—could be a link.

  “Same MO,” the older FWC officer—Andy Kurtz—said when he lifted the tarp and peered underneath. “Another dangerous animal, dead on arrival, but not cut up this time—though it musta been dead when the car wheels mashed it. Man, the rats are a strange touch. What the heck can it mean, other than you got someone with a sick sense of humor or real ill will, Mr. Markwood?”

  “Yeah, I got that message too.”

  “You being a lawyer and all might explain it. Some folks resent those big per-hour fees, you know.”

  Nick’s gaze snagged Claire’s again, and he didn’t answer. She’d sent Lexi inside with Darcy and Jilly, but she looked as if she were going to dry heave. She’d insisted on staying, on helping—par for the course. He loved her for her support and tenacity, but this was getting dangerous. Someone was desperate enough to risk being seen dumping dead animals in broad daylight, though the neighbors had evidently noticed nothing suspicious or even unusual.

  “By the way,” Wayne, the younger of the two wildlife officers, told him, “we did a necropsy on the gator. It was killed with a gig—a sort of spear point in its small brain. And whoever did it was skilled. It hardly showed the spot on the head. The slashes on its throat were done postmortem—not much blood—with a large knife.”

  Nick just nodded as he and Claire exchanged another quick look. Were they both thinking of Gracie Cobham’s sons slicing into that possum?

  Bronco kept hovering, and Nick was grateful for that. If anyone knew gators and pythons, it was his right-hand man. He hadn’t said much, but he spoke now when the officers finally removed the tarp to a murmur from more neighbors who had gathered when word spread.

  “See that little dark point on the back of the snake’s head, boss?” he said, pointing. “Gigged too, I bet. Same bastard at work, even if both gators and Burmese pythons in the Glades are legal kills now.”

  Officer Kurtz told Bronco, “You got that right—and good for you for spotting that gig mark. I’ll put that in my report.”

  “I hope you can take all this away like you did before,” Nick urged them. “You did a great job with the gator and—”

  He saw a police car coming. That’s all they needed, a police report, questions, the newspaper or TV finding out about this, especially if it went over the police radio. What if Mrs. Blake had already posted pictures who-knew-where online? All he needed was this going local, let alone viral.

  Nick was sorry he didn’t recognize this Naples PD officer or he would have asked him for a favor, but no such luck. This was most definitely not his day.

  Bronco pointed to Nick as “the man,” the homeowner here. The policeman, Officer Scott, introduced himself, then squatted to look at the carcass.

  “Not seen one of these big babies in person,” he said. “Well, shouldn’t say baby. Are those three things, one partway in its mouth, rats? This some kind of hate crime, Mr. Markwood?” he asked, straightening to turn back to Nick. “Saw a report from FWC says you got a dead gator tossed in your pool. You got any enemies?”

  “I’m a criminal attorney, so I’d have to say yes,” Nick told him, keeping his voice down in the growing crowd. “But I don’t know who would do this. If someone thinks this is going to make me back off cases I’m on, no way. I’ve dealt with snakes and rats before, the human kind, and, in more ways than one, this hits too close to home.”

  Claire had stuck close again after he’d introduced her to the officer. Nick saw her biting her lower lip, tears in her eyes, but she still nodded in silent, stalwart agreement. What would he ever do without her?

  * * *

  That night, when everyone had gone and Lexi was finally asleep, Claire and Nick huddled, sitting up in their bed with their backs against pillows and the headboard.

  “I asked every neighbor who showed up if they’d seen anything unusual in the way of vehicles,” she said. “Carol Blake had seen a pool-cleaning van, so it could have been that. I’ll need to find out if anyone had their pool serviced or cleaned. Carol didn’t recall what it said on the side, so if none of the neighbors can attest to its presence, that’s probably a dead end.”

  “I’ve thought it a hundred times today, but I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he said, and reached out to lift her hand to his lips and kiss her palm, but she wasn’t finished.

  “Nick, it would have taken more than one person to shove that
big snake under Darcy’s car, and then arrange it that way. Coil it up, place the rats and all. And someone with access to wild territory.”

  He just shook his head. He’d made a sketch of the positioning of the snake and the rats, trying to discern if there was a hidden meaning besides the apparent threat.

  Ironic that he and Bronco had so recently discussed the job offer from Stan Helter about catching and killing snakes. Helter had access to snakes on the ranch, but why would he intentionally link his wanting to kill pythons to one being on their property? And it was unlikely he could have beaten them back here to leave this one on their driveway, though he could’ve just ordered one of his staff to do it. Could it be just chance, a threat from another case Nick was working on that had nothing to do with the BAA? He couldn’t think of one that fit, so he’d bring it up in a staff meeting.

  “Life goes on, right, sweetheart?” he asked. “Dead gators and snakes aside, we’ll have the wedding here next weekend anyway.”

  She sighed. “Yes, and pray it goes well. The plans are set now, and Bronco and Nita are still willing after all of this, and so excited.”

  He saw she still had the plastic-covered note Ben Hoffman had written on her nightstand, and he was going to protest if she spent much more time staring at it. They’d been discussing whether they were holding back possible evidence.

  Nick saw the time on the digital clock next to the letter read nearly midnight. They had to settle down and get some sleep, Claire especially since she’d taken her sleeping meds a while ago. But like him, she was revved up. How in heck had a kiddie visit to a petting zoo morphed into all this?

  “We’re not going through that stack of mail tonight,” she told him, as if she’d read his thoughts about needing sleep, but he dumped the mail on his lap from his nightstand anyway. It had come in the late afternoon, and they hadn’t had time for it or anything else but calming Lexi and each other.

  “But what if there’s a note here—a message to go with the snake?” he insisted. He sat up straighter, shuffling through the pile of letters and tossing the magazines on the floor.