The sun was going down over the lake, and the clouds sitting on the horizon provided us a view of soft colors—mauve, misty purple, and pale pink. It was lovely, but when we took our eyes off the horizon and looked around the camp, the beauty was marred by the seedy condition of the place. What must have once been a quaint piece of old Florida now looked like a rural ghetto. The fish-cleaning station was lopsided, one leg broken off and propped up by a metal clothesline pole. The waste water treatment facility seemed to be failing. The odor of sewage permeated the place. A scrawny pelican sat on the fish-station railing, a look of hopeful desperation on his beaky face.
The small streets wide enough for only one car needed gravel. My tires threw up dust as we pulled into the camp, looking for number 225. Few houses had street numbers or outdoor lights.
“Let’s ask someone. I saw an arrow back there that pointed this way to the office.” I pulled around a curve and saw another office sign. This one lay on its side, the arrow pointing downward.
“You think that’s some kind of sign?” Grandy asked. “You know, I mean a ‘woo woo’ sign. This place is giving me the creeps. Let’s get out of here.”
“Don’t be silly. That’s just a broken-down sign. No ‘woo woo.’ ”
I pulled up in front of the only trailer in the area that had a porch light on.
“I’ll wait in the car. Leave the keys,” said Grandy.
I knocked on the screen door, careful to keep my touch light. The pitted aluminum frame looked as if it might vibrate off its hinges with little jarring.
“Yup,” said the man who answered the door. He wore baggy jeans, no shirt, and suspenders that stretched over a huge, hairy stomach and chest. The hair—so black it might have gone through a Miss Clairol processing—didn’t stop at his neck but continued up onto his chin and covered his face. He was bald on top with a fringe of white hair over his ears.
I jumped back a bit at the sight. He reacted the same way when he saw me.
“Whoa. I never seen a gal with such spiky hair. That’s real scary.”
Scary? Me? I considered saying something about the kettle and the pot, but thought better of it.
“It’s a fashion statement. You get that, right?”
He looked puzzled, then smiled to let me get a look at his two remaining teeth.
“I’m looking for number 225.”
“You ain’t more cops, are you?”
“No. We’re, uh, friends of his fiancée.”
“She’s dead.”
“We’re here to pay our respects.”
He leaned forward. I leaned back.
“Just wanted to get a better look at ya. How do you get your hair to do that?”
“How do you …” I began, but stopped. “Gel.”
“You mean like Vaseline?”
“Kinda.”
“Something I should try.”
I wondered where he might try it, but decided not to pursue that line of thought.
“Number 225,” I repeated.
He pointed, and I stepped off his porch with a thankful wave of my hand and made for my car.
“You were smart to stay in the car,” I said to Grandy.
“I saw. These doors automatically lock when you drive, right?”
We pulled up to the trailer pointed out by my hairy office informant. There was a light on inside.
“You staying in the car?” I asked Grandy.
“I can’t figure out what’s safer. We can’t come back later, when no one’s home?”
I shook my head.
She hesitated for a moment, then opened the car door. “This is no fun at all.”
We walked up to the door. This trailer, although it had no outside light, seemed newer than its neighbors, and there was even some attempt to tidy up the yard with plantings, a bougainvillea in bloom, and a small palm tree that looked as if it were making a valiant attempt to stay alive, although its fronds were yellowing.
I knocked and waited. We heard footsteps, and the door opened. The man who stood there was over six feet tall and had longish brown hair that curled against the collar of his polo shirt.
He looked familiar. This was the man I’d seen at the protest rally yesterday morning.
“Well, well. Eve Appel. Long time no see. Come on in. I wondered when you’d try to look me up.”
He was also the man who held the secret of Madeleine and my “green” history.
Chapter 9
I hoped my surprise didn’t show on my face because I wanted the upper hand in dealing with this guy. He held too many of the cards in play: he was Jenny’s former fiancé, and he had spotted me at the rally and recognized me and Madeleine. And he could be the killer.
“Well, well, George Bennet. I certainly wasn’t surprised to see you at the protest—it’s still your kind of thing, I see—but I’m a bit taken aback to discover you were Jenny’s fiancé.”
“ ‘Was’ is the operative word. She broke it off.” He waved us into the trailer.
“Oh, by the way, this is my grandmother. I don’t think the two of you ever met.”
He shook Grandy’s hand and stepped back, his gaze taking us in. “The two of you don’t look alike, but I heard about Grandy enough in the past to know that Eve has come by her spunk honestly.”
Though Grandy produced one of her magnetic smiles, I knew she wasn’t taken in by George’s we’re-just-old-friends gambit. There was no accompanying sparkle in her eyes.
I decided to let him do his welcoming act and see what he had to say.
“Coffee? Tea?” He gestured to a sofa. “Have a seat.”
Grandy, still smiling, pulled me down onto the sofa next to her.
“Thanks, but we’re not staying long. We ….” I could hardly admit to the real reason we were here—to snoop. Returning his clothes had been my pretext, but I’d been so thrown by the trailer park and its sleazy manager, I’d left them in the trunk.
He filled in where I left off, “… wanted to offer your condolences on my fiancée’s death?” His tone was no longer welcoming or friendly, but sarcastic.
So he wasn’t really happy to see me nor did he think we were simply paying a social call. I never was real good at playing sociable. That was Madeleine’s forte.
I shrugged away his cynicism. “I knew Jenny. She was a customer of mine. I’m curious about your relationship and why it ended.”
“Let’s be honest here, Eve. You mean you want to pry into that relationship now that Jenny is dead. Did I kill her? No, I did not. I loved her. With reservations.”
“Those reservations got in the way of enduring love, I gather.”
Grandy put her hand on my knee and pinched me to let me know I was being too pushy. I ignored her. We were here now, so I wanted answers.
“The cops questioned me earlier. Now you show up. Does your friend Detective What’s-her-name think I’d be willing to tell you more than I told her? Is that the plan?”
Years ago and back up North, George and I had shared similar values when it came to land development. That was all. We had never been close friends. There was always a hostile edge to the man. And it was certainly emerging again. Yet I couldn’t blame him for being offended by my visit. If he did love Jenny, and if I could believe he didn’t kill her, then I was interfering with his grieving in a most intrusive way.
I decided to play nice. “I’m sorry about Jenny, but I do think it’s kind of odd that the two of you got together. You seemed to be on different pages when it comes to protecting the environment.”
“When the company approached her about the races, I thought I could talk her out of it. But then I couldn’t, so I decided we’d simply agreed to disagree on that matter. She may have felt differently.”
“ ‘May have’? Isn’t that the reason the wedding was called off?”
He ran his fingers through his graying hair, most of it tied back into a ponytail. “I really don’t know why she called it off. She just said there would be no wedding. She wo
uld give me no reason other than she just changed her mind about things.”
“What things? Did she say?”
“Nope. She wouldn’t talk about it. She told me to get out and said not to call her or try to see her again. That was that.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Are you?” There was that hostile edge to his voice again.
Grandy rose from the couch and walked over to where George stood on the other side of the room. “Listen, buster, if she says she’s sorry, then she’s sorry. Eve doesn’t lie.”
George looked down at his feet and muttered his own “Sorry,” to which Grandy replied, “You damn well better be. Let’s go, Eve.”
I had some other questions I wanted to ask him, especially about his discussions with Jenny concerning the mud bog event, but Grandy’s hand was firm on my sleeve, and she pulled me out of the trailer and over to the car before I could object.
“We were just getting warmed up, Grandy.”
“You think so? I think he was winding down. We wouldn’t have gotten anything else out of him tonight, not with that other woman there.”
What other woman? I guess Grandy’s eagle eye or keen hearing had detected something I missed because I was too busy focusing on George. Why was I not surprised that he had so quickly replaced Jenny with someone else?
“You saw or heard something that tipped you off to her presence?”
“Nope. I smelled something. The strong fragrance of the perfume, Poison.”
“You’ve got the nose of a bloodhound.”
“Did you sleep with that man when the two of you were back up North and taking part in those protests?” asked Grandy.
“Good God, no. He asked, but I refused. There’s something about him I never liked.” I started the car and spun the wheels on the dusty road leading out of the fish camp.
“Well, that was fun,” said Grandy as we bumped along. “And we know so much more now than we did.”
“Really?”
“Yep. George has a new woman, but I wonder if she’s all that new. Maybe she’s the real reason he and Jenny broke up. I’ll bet you have some opinions on that.” She fixed me with her probing eyes.
“When I knew him, he thought he had to bed every woman he met. I get the feeling that hasn’t changed.”
“So Jenny breaks up with him and his ego can’t take the blow? He kills her?”
“I don’t think George feels deeply enough to want to take that kind of radical action.” I yawned. I hadn’t had much sleep since the protest and the discovery of Jenny’s head. I shuddered at the memory, then yawned again.
“Protests aren’t taking action of a radical nature?” asked Grandy.
“They’re part of his persona. I’m not certain down deep inside what he believes. In fact, I’m not sure there is a deep down inside.”
Madeleine called and offered to take the early shift the next day, saying her morning sickness was progressing into an afternoon condition. When I suggested she stay home the entire day, she insisted she needed to get out of the house because David followed her around as if he expected her to expire at any moment.
“He went through the pregnancy with his first wife, so you’d think he’d know better. He’s driving me crazy. I told him I was pregnant, not terminal, but he still hovers.”
I heard something in the background of the call, then Madeleine’s voice again. “Go away, honey. I’m talking to Eve. It’s girl stuff and nothing you need to know.”
She came back on the line. “Is there some kind of sickness called ‘pregnant husband’?”
“Hang in there. Grandy and I will pop over to the coast while you mind the store and visit some of our clients to see if they have any consignments for us. We’ll be back around noon.”
“Could you take David with you?” she asked.
“I hope you’re kidding.”
Madeleine must have heard us pull up because she started down the steps from the motor-home shop and waved at us as we got out of the car. The look on her face was troubled.
“We had a really bad morning. No sales. I think most of the community found out about our taking part in the protest and are boycotting us. Our business may be down the tubes.”
A car drove in and parked behind mine. Darrel’s beater. Shelley got out, carrying a cardboard box and some clothes slung over her arm.
Shelley toted everything up the stairs to the rig and dropped the items on the counter. She smiled a hello to Madeleine, then said in a whisper, “Eve, I need to talk to you. Alone.”
Madeleine gave me a hug. “I’m off, and I’ll give Grandy a ride to your place. We can all have dinner together tonight. How’s that sound?”
I nodded, and the two of them left.
“So what have you got there?” I pointed to the box and clothes in Shelley’s arms.
“Consignment items. Mom’s stuff. I thought you could sell them. I’ve got more things in the car. I’ll get them.” Shelley ran back to the car and opened the trunk to extract another box and more hangers with clothes on them.
She certainly had been busy cleaning out her mother’s house. And in such a short time. Only two days ago Jenny had been alive. I never knew Shelley was so cold-blooded.
“Darrel says there’s no sense in keeping this stuff around the house when we can make some money off it.”
So, the idea for closet cleaning was Darrel’s, not Shelley’s. That made sense. I wished I could shake some sense into Shelley when it came to Darrel. The guy was an insensitive lout. I knew I should keep my opinions about her boyfriend to myself.
“Darrel’s being an insensitive lout.”
She flopped down on one of the chairs inside the door. “I know, but that’s Darrel. I kind of admire his honesty.”
Oh, so that was what we were calling crude behavior these days.
“Anyway, I want you to do something for me. I’ll have some money soon, and I want to hire you as a private detective to find out who killed my mother.”
“That’s up to Frida.”
“I know, but I don’t think the police will do a good job. I know you will, Eve. You’ve solved murders before and you have lots of friends who help you like your mob-boss guy and your boyfriend, Alex.”
“I don’t think we can count on Alex. He’s real busy right now. Besides, I’m not an investigator. You can’t really hire me.” I hesitated before I continued, “I don’t want to be nosey, but you mentioned money. What money? I thought your mother was having trouble making ends meet.”
“Oh.” She looked disappointed. “Well, I guess I can tell you, but don’t tell Darrel I let you in on this. I re-upped the contract for the mud bog event to be held later this summer on the ranch.”
“What? I thought you didn’t approve of using the land that way.”
“Well, I didn’t, not until I talked to Darrel. He pointed out that the land would just sit there. This way it’ll be used.”
“You mean abused, don’t you? Think of destroying all that habitat for birds and other animals. Alligators even.”
“I don’t like alligators. I wouldn’t mind if they all disappeared from Florida. They’re ugly, ugly animals.”
Well, yes they are, but they are part of the ecosystem. I opened my mouth to say just that, but she stopped me.
“Look, Eve, I’m not going to change my mind. Mom was right. I don’t like it, but I need the money. Think about what I asked and get back to me. Please don’t tell Darrel I asked for your help. He’d think it was a waste of our money.”
So now it was “our” money. Darrel was moving right in. Could he also have been responsible for the murder, knowing that with Jenny out of the way, he could make a grab for the money, little as it was, through Shelley? Maybe he thought there was more money than there actually was.
I watched her drive off and wondered if Frida considered Darrel as much of a suspect in Jenny’s murder as I now did.
Several days later, Grandfather Egret called, divining in his Mi
ccosukee way or through some mechanism unknown to me that Grandy was still in town. He invited us all out to his and Sammy’s place for swamp cabbage, collard greens, beans, home fries, and frog legs. Madeleine’s evening stomach seemed to be adjusting to housing a new life. She thought the idea of fried food sounded just fine. Nappi was also in town with Jerry, so we all gathered at the small, rustic house near the Egrets’ airboat business. Since the number of chairs in the house was limited, I brought in a few of my lawn chairs for extra seating. It was elbow to elbow for the eight of us, but the food made up for lack of space. The only person missing was Alex. I don’t know what anyone else thought, but it felt odd without him there. I hadn’t heard from him since our blowup. I’d tried to call him, but his cell went to voicemail, and I didn’t leave a message.
I sat next to Sammy, and he and I chatted in our usual friendly way. He seemed particularly upbeat during the evening, as if something important was on his mind. Finally he leaned over and whispered, “My mother is coming for a visit. I want you to meet her.”
I almost swallowed my frog leg whole.
“That would be lovely, Sammy.”
He seemed relieved at my answer. “Good.” He patted my knee.
I was aware of the stares of several people across the table, including Grandy and Nappi, who had both kept close tabs on me throughout the evening.
“Let’s go outside and sit on the porch with our coffees,” said Sammy.
I knew that would only stir the fires of curiosity in our watchers, but I didn’t care. Sammy and I were adults, and Alex, well, I told him we would talk, but neither of us had reached out since his proposal at the biscuit. I knew I didn’t want to leave it this way; however, for now I was confused and didn’t think my confusion would help us.
We settled into the two old porch rockers and put our feet up on the railing. A limpkin screeched from across the canal behind us.
Mud Bog Murder Page 9
