Cracker Dix was there, dressed in his usual — cargo shorts, Hawaiian shirt, and flip-flops. He’s an expatriate Englishman who has lived on the island for years. He came over to me, sipping from a can of beer. “Can I talk to you for a moment?” he said, and beckoned me into a corner.
“Matt, do you know Leah, the deaf girl who cooks at the restaurant where I work?”
“Sure.”
“She reads lips, you know, and she saw something the other day that didn’t make any sense to her.”
“What?” I asked.
“She’d come out of the kitchen and was standing just inside the dining room when she saw a man say, ‘Wyatt’s a dead man.’ She didn’t think anything about it until the next day when she heard about his murder.”
I made a “come on” gesture with my hand. Cracker tended to drift off subject after too many beers.
“Leah said there were two men at a table eating dinner. One had his back to her, and the other one was facing her. That was all of the conversation she saw. She just didn’t think anything about it. She sees parts of conversations all the time.”
“Did she recognize the man?” I asked.
“No, but she got his name. After she heard about Wyatt, she went to the credit card receipts and got his name and credit card number. I wrote them down for you.”
I looked at the scrap of napkin he handed me. It had a name, Michael Rupert, and a long string of numbers. “Does this mean anything to you?” I asked.
“No,” said Cracker, “I never heard the name. The numbers are his credit card number.”
“Thanks, Cracker. Have you said anything about this to anybody else?”
“No. I figured you might want to deal with this yourself. I told Leah not to mention it to anybody either.”
Chief Bill Lester joined us late in the morning, coming to pay his respects, and bring me up to date on the investigation. “The autopsy results came in last night. No surprises. He was killed by the gunshot behind the ear. The crime scene investigators didn’t find the slug that killed him. It’s probably buried in the sand on the beach. Wyatt was sitting in his chair on the balcony when he was shot. They found the slug fired into the back of his neck under his chair. It had gone through his neck, taking out part of his chin, and then through his left thigh. The techs think Wyatt slumped forward when he was killed, and the second bullet was fired in a downward direction. It was pretty much spent by the time it went through his body twice, and it just bounced around on the floor.”
“What was it?”
“The bullet?”
I nodded.
“Forty-five caliber.”
“Can you match it to any other murders?”
“Not from around here. We’ll run it through the federal database, but I don’t have high hopes for that. The killer picked up his brass before he left, so we don’t have that to work with. If we see another slug from the same gun, we can match it, but that’s a very long shot.”
“What about time of death?
“The medical examiner thinks he’d been dead about two hours when Donna found him. Puts it at about seven.”
“There’re security cameras in the elevators,” I said. “Did you check them?”
“Yes. We think we’ve got a pretty good shot of the killer coming up the number two elevator at six fifty-five. Unfortunately, he had his head down, and he was wearing a ball cap. His face is completely shielded.”
“Anything else?”
“No sign of breaking and entering. Either Wyatt didn’t have his front door locked, or someone had a key. Nothing was missing from his condo except his laptop. No signs of struggle. No fingerprints; at least none that don’t belong to people who had a reason to be there, friends and visitors. We’re beginning to think it was a professional hit.”
“On Wyatt?” I said. “That makes no sense. Who’d want to kill Wyatt?”
“I don’t know, Matt. I’m just following the evidence.”
CHAPTER THREE
Debbie was where she always was on an early evening, behind the bar at Moore’s Stone Crab Restaurant on the north end of Longboat Key. She had been at the memorial, but left in mid-afternoon for work. She was a blonde forty-something refugee from Ohio winters and had been tending bar on the island for more than twenty years. Some years before, she had taken some computer courses and became a world-class hacker. Not many people knew that, and she liked it that way. However, she was a good friend, and I knew I could count on her to help. Particularly, since it would help solve Wyatt’s murder.
The bar was horseshoe shaped and the plate glass windows gave a twelve-mile view down the bay to the city of Sarasota. There were docks and piers fronting the restaurant, and they were often crowded with boats bringing customers for the generous portions of seafood offered by the establishment. I arrived just before five to an empty bar. Debbie pulled a cold Miller Lite from the cooler and put it on a coaster in front of me. I cocked my head in a questioning manner, and she said, “Okay Royal. I’ll get you a damn glass.”
She came back with a frosted glass. “Sorry I had to leave early today,” she said.
“The party was winding down. I don’t think anybody’s at the Hilton but Cracker, and he’s drinking at the outside bar.”
I hadn’t been in for a couple of weeks, and we talked quietly, catching up on the island gossip. Occasionally, a waitress came to the back service bar, and Debbie would excuse herself to fill the order. The TVs were all tuned to ESPN, and highlights of Sunday’s NFL games were being played and replayed.
“Deb,” I said, “do you think you could hack into a credit card company’s main server?”
“I can. The question is, will I?”
“If I asked nicely?”
“Okay. What do you need?”
I handed her a piece of paper with the credit card number and Michael Rupert’s name. “I think this guy may have had something to do with Wyatt’s death. Will you see what you can find out about him?”
“What’s his connection?”
“I don’t know. He may have been the trigger man.”
“Where’d you get his credit card number?”
“I can’t say, Deb. I promised absolute confidentiality to the person who gave it to me.”
“No problem, Matt. If I thought I couldn’t count on your discretion, I sure wouldn’t go around hacking computers for you.”
“You’re a sweetheart.”
“And Wyatt was my friend, too.”
A couple I didn’t know came into the bar and effusively greeted Debbie. It was the time of the year when the snowbirds were starting to return, and they would stop in to see old friends at the places they frequented while on the key. I waved at Deb and walked out into the gathering twilight.
I was on the dock in front of my condo just before noon the next day, washing my boat and sweating in the heat. My cell phone rang. It was Debbie.
“Matt, this guy is a ghost. That credit card is the only thing he has in his name. The bills are sent to a post office box in Fern Park, Florida, wherever the hell that is. The only other Michael Ruperts I found are way too old or still just boys. This has to be your guy, but there’s nothing else about him anywhere.”
“I’m not surprised. It was a long shot, but at least we know where the bills go. He’s probably using an alias and has a fake driver’s license and the credit card to use when he’s traveling.”
“You want me to keep looking?”
“No, thanks. I’ll see what I can turn up with this information.”
She hung up, and I went back to the business of scrubbing the boat’s hull. Who was Rupert? The fact that he didn’t seem to exist made me think that he might be a contract killer. But who would be interested enough in Wyatt’s death to pay someone to kill him? And who was the man at Cracker’s restaurant with Rupert the night before the murder? I’d have to find Rupert and backtrack to whoever ordered Wyatt killed.
CHAPTER FOUR
Logan Hamilton was my fr
iend. He and I had come to the island at about the same time, and we discovered a mutual enjoyment of the watering holes on the key and the people who frequented them. Logan had worked in the financial services industry, retired early, and was enjoying life in the sun. He was originally from a small town outside of Boston. He’d come to Florida as a college student, and then was a soldier in Vietnam, first as an infantryman, and after flight school, as a helicopter pilot. He traveled the world in his business, never really settling down and never marrying. He was a gentle and kind man who quietly supported every charitable endeavor in our little world.
I found Logan at Tiny’s, a small bar on the north end of the key. It took up a corner adjacent to the Village, the oldest inhabited part of the island, home to people who could never afford the condos on the gilded south end. He was sitting on his usual stool, a baseball cap covering his balding head. He was wearing a golf shirt, shorts, and running shoes without socks, his usual attire. Logan stood about five feet eight and had put on a little weight over the past couple of years. His graying hair was fighting a losing battle with baldness. A Scotch and water sat on the bar in front of him.
I took the stool next to Logan. “Hey, buddy.”
He turned toward me and lifted his glass. “How’re you doing, Matt?”
“Fine. I need to talk to you about something I heard yesterday.”
“What’s up?”
I looked around to make sure no one else was within earshot. “I think I know who killed Wyatt. I’m going after him.”
“Whoa. Hold on a minute. Turn it over to the cops, Matt. They know how to handle these things.”
“Won’t work. I doubt they could get enough evidence to arrest him, much less convict.”
“How do you know you’ve got the right guy?”
I knew that Logan would keep his mouth shut, so I told him what I’d learned from Debbie and Cracker. “It’s not much evidence for the cops to go on. No prosecutor is going to take a case this thin into court. I’m not going to let this guy walk.”
“Bill Lester says he thinks it was a professional hit.”
“If that’s the case, the shooter knows who hired him. I’ll work up the chain.”
“Matt, listen to yourself. You’re a retired lawyer who hangs out on the beach. This guy’s probably a professional. You could be getting in way over your head.”
I was in good shape. I pointed out that I ran every day and worked out occasionally with a martial arts instructor, honing the skills the army had taught me long ago. I could take pretty good care of myself in a fight and knew how to use a gun. “I used to be a professional myself,” I said. “I can handle this.”
“Need some help?”
Logan had made his argument for sanity. It hadn’t taken, and he was ready to do whatever it took to help out. That was vintage Hamilton. A friend.
We’d been in a couple of scrapes during the past year; more than one would think could happen on a small island resting in the sun of South-west Florida. Logan always backed me up without question. It was his nature.
“Not yet,” I said. “Let me take the first step and see what I find out. I’ll let you know what happens.”
“You ready for a beer?”
We sat for an hour or so. I told Logan my plans, such as they were. I wanted him to know where I’d gone in case I didn’t come back. It was getting near evening, and the working people from the Village were stopping in for their after-work drink. Each one stopped to shake my hand and offer condolences on Wyatt’s death. It was the island way.
CHAPTER FIVE
Fern Park is a small unincorporated village that straddles U.S. Highway 17-92 on the north side of Orlando. Convenience stores, shopping centers, car washes, grocery stores, topless joints, and a large sheriff’s substation border the road. This was once a town, but when it went bankrupt in one of Florida’s semiregular boom or bust periods, the city fathers decided to unincorporate the town and let the creditors stew.
The Fern Park post office occupied a small building on a side road directly behind a large carwash and small strip shopping center. I parked my rental car and went inside. I was looking for box 158. It was one of the small ones, with a glass in the door front. I saw three envelopes resting there, taking up most of the space. I couldn’t read the addresses on the envelopes, and I knew that the postal employees wouldn’t tell me to whom the box was assigned. I’d just have to wait to see if anyone came to pick up the mail. I hoped Mr. Rupert expected the letters and would be along to collect them. Not much of a plan, but I didn’t have anything else to work with.
On the first Friday in November, the weather was still warm, the humidity high. Autumn in this part of Florida arrives when the air becomes drier and the temperature drops to a more bearable level. It was a little late in coming this year, but a cold front was predicted.
I took a seat on the bench at the bus stop in front of the post office. The schedule posted there told me that a bus came by at the top of the hour. That would give me about forty-five minutes. I could see box 158 from the bench, and I wouldn’t raise anybody’s suspicions by waiting for the bus.
A bus came and stopped. Two passengers got off and walked toward the shopping center. I waved the driver on, and sat through the cloud of diesel exhaust belching from the vehicle as it pulled away.
Another hour went by, and another bus stopped, this time going in the opposite direction. Same driver. I waved him on and sucked up more fumes. I’d brought a book and a bottle of water to the bench. I sipped and read, enjoying James Born’s latest mystery. I glanced up every minute or so to see if anything was going on at the box. It was nearing noon, and I was sweating like a pig. My water bottle was empty, and I was getting hungry. Another bus stopped, moved on.
I was idly watching a young woman wearing shorts and a halter top entering the post office. Nice body, long legs, blonde hair to her shoulders, a little butt twitch as she walked. My kind of girl. Then again, I’m not all that choosy.
I was suddenly hit with the revelation that she was standing in front of box 158. My heart kicked up a notch. I got off the bench, and strolled toward the plate glass window that took up the front of the building. I couldn’t see which box she was using, but as she moved away, I saw that box 158 was empty. The blonde had three envelopes in her hand as she walked to an ancient Toyota parked in the space next to my rental.
She pulled out of the parking lot, the old car spewing black smoke from the exhaust. I eased up to the road and let her get about a block ahead of me. I followed. She was traveling east and after about four blocks turned right and in another block turned into an older looking apartment complex. She made a couple of turns on the interior roads and parked in front of a one-story building housing four apartments. I pulled into a space twenty feet away. She went to one of the doors, knocked, handed the mail to the man who answered, and walked back toward her car.
I walked over to meet her and showed her a badge that identified me as an honorary officer of the Longboat Key Police Department. Bill Lester had given it to me along with a nice certificate when I’d donated five hundred bucks to a police charity. It looked real enough if one didn’t examine it too closely, and I didn’t give her a good look.
“I’m Detective Charles McFarland,” I said. “I’d like to ask you a couple of questions if you have a minute.” I gave her a big smile, the one that I was sure had melted the hearts of tougher women than she.
“Sure.”
I gestured toward the apartment. “Is that Michael Rupert’s place?”
“Is he in trouble?”
“No. Just routine.”
“That’s the name he told me, and that’s the name on the mail.”
“You don’t know him?”
“No. I clean for him once a week and check his mail every day. He pays me in cash, and I don’t ask questions.”
“Ever see any other people with him?”
“No. You sure he’s not in trouble?”
“Not
yet. Thanks for your time.”
She shrugged, got into the Toyota, and left in a cloud of exhaust.
CHAPTER SIX
I walked to the door, pulling a pair of latex gloves out of my pocket. I took the .38 out of another pocket, attached a silencer to the barrel. I knocked. The same man answered. He was about five feet eight and thin, with ropes of muscles binding his torso. His short-cropped blond hair was wet and matted to his scalp. He was shirtless and barefoot, wearing only gym shorts with an elastic waistband. He was sweating in the humid air, droplets coursing down his hairless chest. He looked at my pistol and, showing no surprise, turned and walked back into the room, gesturing for me to follow.
The living room was sparsely furnished, holding only a sofa, a large TV, and a set of barbells complete with a bench. The man had apparently been working out when I knocked.
He sat on the sofa. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.
“A friend of Laurence Wyatt’s.”
There was no change in his expression. “How did you find me?”
“That’s not important. You don’t seem too concerned that a friend of the man you murdered is standing in your living room pointing a gun at you.”
“Ah. You’re Matt Royal. I spent some time on Longboat Key, scoping the place out. I heard about you. Saw you at Mar Vista with Wyatt one day. You’re a lawyer, an upstanding citizen. People like you don’t kill in cold blood.”
“You’re pretty sure of yourself.”
“I know your type. You’ll turn me into the law, but there’s no evidence connecting me to the murder of your friend, and if you were wired, my security devices would have let me know the minute you walked in the door. You’ll never prove anything.”
Wyatt's Revenge: A Matt Royal Mystery Page 2
