Cold Case Killer

by Dorothy Francis

  “I don’t want you in fear. I want you in love.” Punt punctuated the words with another kiss.

  “Would you settle for a combination of the two?” I asked.

  “I’m not ready to settle.”

  “I can understand that.” I followed Punt to the kitchen where he brought cooked rice from the freezer along with a closed carton. “What’s that?”

  He grinned. “I cannot tell a lie. It’s leftovers from last week. I enjoy cooking and creating specialties, but Su Ying at the Chinese Garden does a much better job with chicken and cashews than I do. It’s my favorite.”

  “And mine.” Punt’s been on the wagon ever since drying out at a Miami rehab center, and tonight he mixed non-alcoholic Yellow Birds with just a touch of banana flavoring. We enjoyed the drinks and the meal, lingering over coffee. At last I helped load the dishwasher before we sat together on the couch, listening to an album of Andy Williams and Frank Sinatra golden oldies. In spite of the romantic music, my mind kept replaying visions of someone tossing a coral rock, writing a death threat.

  We avoided talking about those things, and after we went to bed and turned out the lights, Punt had his own way of taking my mind off everything unpleasant. I snuggled against him until the warmth of our eager bodies escalated into a fiery heat that threatened to consume us.

  Afterward, we lay in a loose embrace. He fell asleep first, and when I heard his even breathing, I tried to sleep, too. But replays of the past two days’ happenings kept zinging through my mind. Warning notes. Threatening phone calls. A chunk of coral through my window. And on top of all those images, I could still see Randy Jackson’s face on the TV screen demanding revenge.

  In the night stillness, I reflected on the truth that Randy and I shared a lot in common. We were survivors. I refused to let the death threats get me down. I’d survived my mother’s murder, Jude’s abuse, months of near poverty before I was able to open my business. But those things weren’t as mind-numbing as Randy’s twenty years in prison. I hated admitting that Randy and I had a lot in common. Maybe everyone’s a survivor of some soul-deadening happening they hide deep within themselves. As Gram says—we’re all in this together.

  Throughout the night, Punt seldom moved, only now and then reaching to touch my arm, my thigh, as if to make sure I still lay close. Although calmed by his nearness, I slept fitfully, worrying about the threats, about my office window that would have to be repaired. At midnight bells pealed from a distant church. At two o’clock I heard cats yeowling somewhere on the Ashford property. At four o’clock garbage trucks began their banging and clanging in spite of city ordinances forbidding such noise at that hour. Key West, the city that never sleeps. Tonight I believed it.

  In the morning shortly after seven, I slipped from Punt’s bed, and into one of the jumpsuits I kept at his apartment. I let myself outside and tip-toed down the steps.

  Sunshine began to warm life into the island. People were hurrying toward Garrison Bight and the daily party boats. Closer at hand a cruise ship towered over the scene at Mallory Dock—a scene that included many homeless men and women sleepily awakening to greet their day whatever it might be. The police were supposed to keep the Mallory area clear of vagrants, but many times the cops were lenient, closing one eye to the offenders who usually wanted nothing more than a safe place to sleep under the stars.

  It was over two miles to Duval Street, and along the way the salt-sweet tradewind barely overcame the stench of spilled beer and other debris I hate to think about. I knew the walk to my office would do me good and perhaps clear my head of the fears that threatened to set up permanent camp in my mind. I tried to avoid thinking of Punt waking up without me at his side. But he’d know where I’d gone and he’d understand—in a way—I hoped.

  I’d passed Sloppy Joe’s, which hadn’t opened for the day, and I’d almost reached Fast Buck Freddie’s where a few tourists already stood peering at the eclectic clothing and souvenirs in the window. Across the street, two guys loitered near the wall outside St. Paul’s Episcopal taking turns drinking gin straight from the bottle.

  I walked faster, suddenly feeling vulnerable and alone. I’d almost reached my office when a man stepped from my doorway and sauntered toward me, looking me up and down as he approached. One hand hung at his side, his other hand formed a mound in his jacket pocket. I wanted to run.

  TWELVE

  When we met head-on, the man smiled and I swallowed the scream that clogged my throat.

  “You Keely Moreno, right?”

  I nodded, wary at meeting anyone who hadn’t telephoned ahead for an appointment.

  “Jose Mendez here. We meet again:” He held out his hand and I shook it, embarrassed that I hadn’t recognized him as Gram’s friend, the truck driver.

  “Good morning, Mr. Mendez. I recognize you now, but my office doesn’t open until nine o’clock.”

  “Maybe you’ll make an exception in my case.” He grinned and pulled a paper from his pocket and thrust it toward me like a flag of truce. It crinkled in my hand, reminding me of yesterday’s early-morning threat. For a moment I couldn’t bear to look at it.

  “I’m here from my day job at Strunk Lumber. Last night I was moonlighting with my own truck, picking up a few extra bucks on the side. I kept guard over your shop, and Punt Ashford asked me to repair your front window this morning.”

  “Oh.” I relaxed. “Oh, wonderful! I really need your help, and I apologize for failing to recognize you immediately.”

  “I’m ready to work now if it suits you. Got my tools here in my truck. Probably could finish the job before you open for the day.”

  “That’d be great, Mr. Mendez.”

  “Jose, please.”

  “That’d be wonderful, Jose.” I’d been so busy eyeing him that I hadn’t noticed the Strunk Lumber truck parked at the curbing a short distance from my doorway.

  “Then I’ll get right to work. Hope a little pounding won’t bother you none.”

  “I’m sure it won’t. I’m pleased to get the window repaired so soon.”

  A quick repair is almost unheard of in Key West and I knew Punt must have pulled a lot of strings with both Jose and Strunk Lumber to make this one happen. I watched for a few minutes while Jose brought two sawhorses and a crowbar from his truck and began prying off the drywall he and Punt had nailed in place the night before.

  “How’d you happen to break a window like this one, Miss Moreno? Plate glass—takes quite a blow to knock a hole in it.”

  “An accident. Take care not to cut yourself.” I unlocked my door and stepped inside before he could ask more questions that would remind me of last night’s threat. Gram swooped outside her shop to serve as sidewalk supervisor and to offer Jose a cup of coffee when he finished the job.

  The repair took almost two hours and Jose had to call Strunk’s for help, unable to handle the large sheet of glass alone. After he’d cleaned up the mess and stored his tools inside the truck, Gram invited us both to her shop for coffee. I declined her offer when I saw a middle-aged man heading toward my office, leading with his stomach as so many men of his age do. After thanking Jose for the repair and Gram for her invitation, I stepped inside my workplace.

  “Mr. Grovello?” I asked, smiling, as he entered. “I’ve been expecting you. Consuela’s references are always valuable to me.”

  “Ace. Just call me Ace.”

  Ace had the Mack truck look of most of Consuela’s boyfriends—big, burly, semi-handsome. He differed from the others in that his body had gone to flab, and he wore Italian loafers, chinos, and a golf shirt instead of barefoot sandals, jeans, and tank top. I noticed the glint of a gold doubloon hanging from a chain around his neck. The keepsake of a successful Atocha diver, I thought, remembering Consuela’s words as well as the pendant doubloon Punt’s dad always wore.

  “Looks as if you’ve had a problem here.” Ace glanced at Jose’s truck with its Strunk Lumber logo.

  “Nothing important.” I white-lied and forc
ed a smile. “A problem window. Do sit down and let me tell you about foot reflexology and how it may help you.”

  “No need to give me the hard sell.” He laughed. “Our friend Consuela’s already done that. I’m ready to see some action.” He remained standing, peering at the bookcase near my desk, then at my shelves of lotions and towels, my treatment chair.

  “In that case we’ll go right ahead and get started.” I led him to the client’s bench and filled the footbath, adding lemon-scented fragrance and snapping on the whirlpool. A half smile curved his lips when he inhaled the aroma and he nodded his approval.

  “Please remove your loafers and socks and let this water swirl around your feet for a few moments. It’ll help relax you.”

  “No tension here, Miss Moreno. I’m loose as a goose.”

  “Please call me Keely. Great that you feel at ease. Some first-timers arrive tense as fiddle strings and it takes a few moments for them to relax.” Ace Grovello’s actions belied his corny loose-goose imagery.

  His fingers fumbled at his loafers and it took him three tries to remove each shoe. After pulling off a sock, he folded it in thirds and placed it inside a loafer before removing the other sock and dealing with it in a like manner. Then he carefully lined up both shoes until they lay parallel to the footbath. He stared at the swirling water a moment, before he eased one foot into it and then the other without saying a word.

  “Do you live in Key West, Ace?”

  “Lived here all my life. Used to dive for Mel Fisher. Right now, I run a B&B near the far end of Whitehead Street. The Sand Dollar. One of the best inns on the island. At least that’s what my customers tell me. I get lots of repeaters.”

  Ace stared at his feet as if he thought they might disappear. I kept the conversation going. “That’s a beautiful pendant you’re wearing.”

  Ace brightened and grinned. “It’s an artifact from the Atocha. Mel Fisher presented it to me after I made a spectacular dive and found an emerald ring once worn by the queen of Spain. Mel had a lot of divers working for him, but he always named me as his favorite. Yes, that’s what he said many times—Ace, you’re the best diver in the whole bunch.”

  I didn’t tell him that Beau Ashford wore a doubloon half again as big as his. Never a good plan to antagonize a customer. Ace and his bragging began to grate on my nerves, but I listened and smiled while he spouted details about his many impressive finds.

  “Why, I’m the one who helped Mel find the mother lode, Keely. Oh, the gold we brought up that day! Mel had worked for years searching for that mother lode, and I’m the one who helped him find it. Me. Ace Grovello.”

  Could I stand a whole hour of this? I took a deep breath and handed him paper slippers.

  “Let’s move to the treatment chair, Ace. Sit and relax in it, then place your feet on the footrest while I lower your head. Relax. Relax. I’ll get you a pillow to make you more comfortable.”

  Ace clutched the sides of the chair like a child visiting the dentist for the first time, but he relaxed some when I placed a pillow beneath his head and began massaging his feet with rose-scented oil.

  “Are you having pain in some special area of your body, Ace?”

  “Oh, a few twinges here and there.”

  Men! How they hated to admit weakness. “Can you be more specific? Each part of your foot corresponds to a part of your body. When a body weakness appears, it may be because blood and nerve functions have slowed. This may allow acids and calcium to form in your joints. If you can pinpoint your pain, I can be of more help to you.”

  “Left shoulder. Get a few slight morning twinges in that left shoulder. Not every day, but now and then.”

  I smiled, translating that to mean his left shoulder was killing him and he could hardly haul himself out of bed in the mornings. I began with a general massage of his left foot before I zeroed in on the area below his small toe. He jerked his foot away with such force it slipped from my hands.

  “Easy, woman. Easy on those toes. You digging in with all ten fingernails?”

  “No. I never do that. You’re feeling inner crystalline deposits breaking away.” I picked up his foot again, eased up my pressure, and continued to work the area as gently as I could. At the same time, I tried to take his mind off any discomfort he might be feeling. “Tell me more about your diving experiences. You must know information that no other people know.”

  “Right. I sure do.” He thought a few seconds before he continued. “Bet you never heard that the divers, well most of them, had a fear of gold. It was a love/hate relationship. They loved gold, yet sometimes it scared the bejabbers out of them.”

  “Fear of gold? I never heard of that.”

  “Well, that’s the pure truth. Those guys were afraid of the gold. Once a diver surfaced carrying a valuable chain or some coins, we crewmen whooped and cheered for a while, but we could hardly wait to get back to land and offload those finds. And for good reason, too. Lots of bad things happened when we had gold aboard a dive boat—enough frightening incidents to make us all superstitious.”

  Ace began to relax and I encouraged that with another question. “Can you tell me about such an incident?”

  “Well, one night after we’d made several big finds, I lay asleep aboard our dive boat Northwind. The craft was nothing but a diving platform. Unseaworthy. Dangerous. But that didn’t make me no nevermind back in those days. At age twenty I knew for sure I’d live forever. That night, suddenly I heard a voice shouting, ‘Take care! Take care!’ I jumped up. Took me a few minutes to shake myself awake. I ran toward the bow where the voice had seemed to be coming from. The boat rocked in high waves and I saw a canvas bag near the edge of the deck. A narrow, flat bag, and it was about to slide overboard.

  “I flung myself onto it—almost slid overboard myself. But I saved the bag. Turned out it held gold salvaged from several days’ dives. Me, Ace Grovello. I’d saved it. The guys made me out a hero, but I’d only done what I had to do. We headed for shore early the next day and offloaded that gold onto Mel’s dock.”

  “You really believe something had put a curse on that gold?”

  “I’ve thought about that night a great deal. Don’t know what to believe. Maybe someone, maybe Mel himself, had been careless with that sea bag. Or maybe spirits long ago lost in the sea were trying to reclaim their own. But I know what I heard. A warning voice woke me up that night.”

  Ace’s story made me shudder. It saddened me to think of all the people—people with families and hopes and dreams—that had perished when their galleons floundered on the coral reefs. But by the end of that story and a few others in which Ace always played the hero, I’d dubbed Ace my windbag du jour. I finished his treatment, brought him his loafers and socks, and offered him a glass of lemonade.

  “Thank you for being a good patient, Ace. I hope the treatment will help relieve your shoulder problems.”

  “That’s to be seen, isn’t it?”

  Ace drank the lemonade, setting the empty glass on the bookcase beside my desk as he pulled his wallet from his pocket, withdrew bills, and paid in full for my advertised special of six treatments. I opened my appointment book, ready to schedule a new date and time for him, but my telephone rang and while I was talking to another client, Ace left without rescheduling. I really didn’t care if he returned, and I’d give him a refund if he asked. If Consuela spent much time with that guy, she’d more than earned her freebie.

  I called Punt to thank him for having the window repaired but got no answer, and I left no message. I wanted to see his agency become a success and I hoped he was out with a client. Next, I phoned Maxine although I knew she might be working somewhere, but she answered on the second ring. I had hardly wished her good morning when she blurted her news.

  “My Randy, he agree to meet with Punt Ashford. He didn’t give me no argument. None at all. Oh, Keely, I’m so grateful to you for giving us this opportunity. You think Punt Ashford will agree to see us?”

  “Yes. I’ve a
lready talked to him and we’re to meet him this afternoon after my last appointment. You’re to bring along your threat note so he can examine and compare it to mine. That doesn’t mean he’ll take the case. It just means that for starters he’ll listen to us. Why don’t you stop by here and we’ll go over together?”

  “Will there be a parking place at Punt’s office?”

  “Yes. He has a parking slot for clients.”

  “Good. We’ll see you this afternoon.”

  After I replaced the receiver I sighed. I knew that sooner or later I’d have to meet Randy Jackson, but I didn’t want to meet him alone. It comforted me to know both Maxine and Punt would be present once we reached Punt’s office.

  My eleven o’clock appointment cancelled, but Consuela swished through my doorway to check on Ace. Her purple spandex shorts held my attention for a long moment, then I sighed. Maybe I was a tad envious of Consuela’s looks, her glamorous outfits. I wondered what it would be like to be beautiful and to dress like a runway model. I quashed my thoughts and smoothed the collar of my jumpsuit when she spoke.

  “Did he show up?”

  “Of course. I gave him a treatment. He paid—and left.”

  “Not make a second appointment?”

  “Not then. But don’t worry. He paid in full. You’ll get your freebie even if he stops treatments and demands a refund.” That appeased Consuela and she left.

  Punt stopped by in person to check the window job and to mention waking up to an empty bed. I thanked him for the window repair and made the usual excuses for the empty bed. He accepted them with grace and an invitation to lunch. We walked the short distance to Kelly’s on Whitehead Street. Punt requested garden seating and the waiter led us to a table surrounded by hibiscus bushes, sea grapes, and palm trees. We ordered grouper sandwiches—my favorite midday meal. My mouth watered in anticipation as I opened my sourdough bun, picked up a lime wedge and squeezed juice onto the fish.

  After we finished eating, Punt pushed his mirrored sunglasses to the top of his head, picked a pink hibiscus from a bush, and tucked it behind my ear.