Ron Base - Tree Callister 02 - The Sanibel Sunset Detective Returns

by Ron Base

  “Stay here.”

  “Don’t go up there, Dad.” Chris sobbed harder.

  Stairs led up to the second floor. Double doors opened onto the master bedroom.

  Clothing in pale springtime colors trailed across a plank floor adjacent to an unmade king-size bed. A woman wearing a black thong lay on a bright blue Duvet, her face buried in a pillow. Tree’s eyes went to the rose tattoo at the base of her spine.

  The red, red rose of Kendra Callister.

  Tree called her name. She did not answer. She was never going to answer anyone again. He saw what looked like a belt around her neck. Someone had used the belt to strangle her.

  Tree backed away trying not to think the worst, trying not to think that his son, sobbing away downstairs, had killed his wife.

  Trying not to think what everyone else was going to be thinking.

  Chris was still in the chair in the living room, his face streaked with tears. His whole body shook. Tree wrapped his arms around him and said, “Listen to me, Chris, just try to calm down, okay? Take deep breaths.”

  For the first time since Tree could remember, Chris actually listened to him and gulped for air.

  “How long ago did you get here, Chris?”

  “Maybe ten minutes,” he said.

  “Was anyone else here?”

  Chris shook his head.

  “I need to ask you this, okay? I need to ask you if you did this. Chris? Did you kill Kendra?”

  He sobbed some more and shook his head. “I walked in, found her upstairs, on the bed—”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “She called. She said she wanted to see me.”

  “About what?”

  “She didn’t say. She told me where she was and asked me to come over. I had a hell of a time finding this place. It took me forever.”

  “Did anyone see you come in?”

  Chris had calmed. He brushed at the streaming tears as he shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Is that your vehicle outside? Or is it Kendra’s?”

  “It’s mine.”

  “Where did Kendra park?”

  “I don’t know. Her car is back at the house in Naples, I guess.”

  “All right, what I want you to do is get out of here, go back to my place.”

  “I shouldn’t leave her,” Chris said.

  “If you don’t go, and they find you here, they are probably going to arrest you. You’re the husband. Your wife is dead, and here you are.”

  “It doesn’t look good,” Chris admitted.

  “Get in your car. Drive over to the house. I’ll call Freddie and tell her you’re coming.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to take care of this.”

  31

  As soon as Chris left, Tree went back up to the bedroom.

  He eased around the bed, not wanting to look at Kendra. He felt empty, drained of any emotion. He had a job to do, and he would do it. The mourning and guilt could wait for later.

  He found Kendra’s brown leather shoulder bag on the floor in the corner and used a tissue to unzip it. He rummaged through its contents, poking away with the pen he carried.

  The purse contained a set of car keys, a wallet, a vial of NYC Hamptons perfume, a Blackberry. Tree used the tissue to ease the wallet out. It was long and elegant in glossy brown leather. It contained one hundred dollars in cash, as well as credit cards, a driver’s license—and a laminated Red Rose business card.

  He slipped the card into his pocket before replacing the wallet. He then fished out her Blackberry phone still using the tissue. The Blackberry was password-protected and so he couldn’t get into it.

  He went into the bathroom. The counter was filled with her toiletries: eyeliner, mascara, eye shadow, foundations, face powders, perfumes.

  A plastic makeup bag with a paisley design was propped against the mirror. Tree opened it and used his pen to move around a makeup brush, blush-on, a mirror, and a Data Stick Pro USB flash drive.

  He dropped the flash drive into his pocket and then found a face cloth in the bathroom closet and used it to clean any surfaces his son might have touched. It struck him that in addition to wiping away traces of Chris, he was probably doing the same thing for Kendra’s killer. Unless, of course, Chris was the killer. No, that couldn’t be. He must believe in his son’s innocence. And because he believed, he could rationalize what he was doing. He could convince himself he was doing what was necessary to protect his boy.

  When he finished, Tree went back downstairs and rummaged in the kitchen until he found a box of business envelopes and stamps. He addressed one of them to himself, folded an advertising flyer for Jerry’s Foods three times, dropped the flash drive and the Red Rose business card into its fold, shoved the flyer into the envelope and sealed it. He fixed a stamp to the outside of the envelope and then left the house and crossed to eighteen twenty-two and placed the envelope in the mailbox.

  He reentered the house and called 911 on his cell. He told the operator that someone was dead in a frame house on Woodring Road. He hung up without answering any more questions.

  Then he called Freddie. “Kendra is dead,” he said.

  “What? How?”

  “I don’t have a lot of time to talk now,” Tree said. “The police are going to be here any moment. Chris will be at our house shortly. He’s pretty shaken up. After the police talk to me, they’re going to talk to you and Chris. I’m going to need you to verify his story.”

  “Which is?”

  “That he’s been with us since this afternoon. Simple. Nothing complicated.”

  “But that isn’t true,” Freddie said in that frighteningly realistic tone she adopted when the subject of lying came up.

  “I know it isn’t,” Tree said.

  “You want me to lie to the police.”

  “Otherwise, in all likelihood, Chris will be arrested for his wife’s murder.”

  Freddie paused for a long time before she said, “You should not do this.”

  “Freddie, please.” Tree did not try to hide his desperation. “This one time, don’t argue. I need you to do this.”

  “I’m just afraid you are digging a hole that we can’t get out of.”

  “Freddie.”

  “Here’s Chris now. Call me later.”

  When he started to object, Freddie hung up.

  Without agreeing to anything.

  32

  At four o’clock in the morning, Detective Owen Markfield said, “So here we go again, Tree. I arrive at a murder scene and presto! You appear.”

  Tree was too tired to respond. This must be what it’s like to be worn down to the point where you are willing to admit to anything: yes, yes. I am Sanibel Island’s first serial killer. Sixty years old and exhausted, but ready to kill again. Now, please, let me get some sleep.

  He looked blearily around the police conference room. By now it was all too familiar: the stale air, the sense of claustrophobia, the dryness in his throat, the numb, hopeless feeling that comes from being in big trouble.

  They had been at this for hours. He had told various police interrogators a more-or-less factual version of the events that had led him to the house on Woodring Road and Kendra’s body. However, he had left out the part where he found his son in the house.

  “Here’s the thing, Tree.” Markfield had removed his suit jacket, loosened his tie, and rolled up his shirt sleeves, ready to do the heavy lifting.

  “You’re at this spaghetti dinner. You hear some things that lead you to this house on Woodring Road belonging to Ray Dayton, your wife’s boss.”

  “That’s correct,” Tree said. “Just like I’ve told you three or four times.”

  “You know that your son and daughter-in-law are in a great deal of financial difficulty. Now here she is shacked up in the house belonging to a man you dislike intensely, a man who apparently you’ve come to blows with in the past. Gets you pretty steamed up. Does all that sound a
ccurate so far?”

  “Maybe I wasn’t all that steamed up,” Tree said. “More along the lines of, I couldn’t believe what the two of them were up to.”

  “You get to the house, and now you’re boiling. This is your son’s wife, and she’s fooling around with your wife’s boss. So you go charging in, and there’s Kendra, not wearing much of anything, waiting for lover boy. I wouldn’t blame you for seeing red. Losing it. The two of you argue, fight. You grab her and the next thing you know, she’s on the bed, face down, and you’ve got that belt around her neck, and she’s not moving.”

  Markfield paused. Silence crowded the room.

  Tree said, “Let’s see, first it was me murdering Brand Traven. Now I’m killing my daughter-in-law. I’m having trouble keeping track of all the carnage.”

  The door opened and a sleepy-eyed Edith Goldman poked her head in.

  Markfield frowned and said, “We’re not finished, Edith.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  Edith stepped further into the room. She wore jeans and a blue blazer over a white blouse. “Tree, I want you to stand up and leave.” She glared at Markfield. “If you’re going to charge my client, do it now. Otherwise, you have no reason to hold him, and he’s out of here.”

  That brought Markfield to his feet. “All right, Tree, you can go. But at the moment you are our number one suspect. Be aware of that.”

  “If you want to speak to my client again, you call me first,” Edith said.

  Markfield kept his eyes on Tree. “Don’t leave the island. Understand?”

  Tree looked at Edith. “My client will go where he damned well pleases,” she said.

  33

  No reporters waited for Tree and Edith as they came out of police headquarters. One of the few good things about a murder on Sanibel Island at this time of the morning—the local media were sleeping soundly, unaware that a former Playboy model had been found dead in a house belonging to one of the island’s most prominent residents.

  Edith said, “God, Tree, can you possibly get yourself into any more trouble?”

  “I don’t think so, Edith. But then I never expected to get in this much, so I guess you never know with me.”

  Edith shook her head. “Let me see. They’ve already got you on aiding and abetting in connection with one murder. Now you are the prime suspect in a second murder. I would say that’s about as bad as it gets.”

  “Thanks, Edith,” Tree said. “I really appreciate your support.”

  “I’m just trying to be honest with you,” she said. “Incidentally, they impounded your car.”

  Tree groaned. “They keep doing that. I don’t think they want me, they want my Beetle.”

  “On top of being deprived of a night’s sleep, I suppose I have to drive you home.”

  “You are a heck of a lawyer, Edith.”

  “I’ll remind you of that when you’re sitting in jail for the next twenty-five years.”

  Freddie was dressed and waiting for him when they arrived at Andy Rosse Lane. Edith drove off. Tree wrapped his arms around his wife.

  “The police were here talking to Chris,” she said. “They left about twenty minutes ago.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “In bed. Sound asleep. He was pretty exhausted.”

  “How is he doing?”

  “Not good. I’m not sure how well he did with the police, either.”

  “It can’t have gone too badly since I’m the one on the verge of being charged with Kendra’s murder.”

  “You’re not serious,” Freddie said.

  “Even if I’m not, the police are.”

  “But why would you murder your own daughter-in-law?”

  “If you believe the police, I found out she was having an affair with Ray Dayton. I went around to the house on Woodring Road where she was staying, confronted her, and choked her to death.”

  Freddie had gone pale. “Don’t tell me Ray and Kendra were having an affair.”

  “I don’t know about an affair, but they were having sex.”

  Freddie was shaking her head. “Chris thinks Ray is a friend.”

  “Some friend.”

  Freddie shook her head some more. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Sure you do, Freddie. You suspected something wasn’t right with Ray.”

  “But not my own daughter-in-law!” Her voice rose in unaccustomed anger. “What the hell was he thinking?”

  “He wasn’t thinking. That’s the whole point with the Kendras of the world. They act as some sort of heat shield that stops guys like Ray Dayton thinking.”

  “What made you go over there tonight?”

  “This was a joke at the Kiwanis dinner,” Tree said. “I was furious. I suppose I wanted to catch her with Ray. I suppose I had some crazy idea about trying to protect Chris.”

  “All the more reason, why someone might think you killed her.”

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes searched his. “But you didn’t kill her, Tree. Not my husband. Not you.”

  “No, it wasn’t me,” Tree said.

  “So why am I so suspicious you’re still not telling me everything?”

  “You’re right, I’m not.”

  “I thought you were going to stop doing that.”

  “Was I? It’s so late, I can’t remember.”

  “Tree. That’s enough.”

  Tree took a deep breath before he said: “Chris was in the house when I got there.”

  That turned Freddie paler. “Don’t tell me he killed Kendra.”

  “He says he didn’t. I believe him.”

  “So you made it look as though you might have done it.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Oh, God, Tree,” she said in a choked voice.

  There were tears in her eyes. Freddie, crying. He couldn’t remember the last time that happened. He took her in his arms. She laid her head against his shoulder. Her tears dampened his shirt. “It’s going to be all right,” he said.

  “No,” she said with a vehemence that surprised him. “No, it’s not.”

  34

  Rex said, “In Hondo, John Wayne plays this weird guy named Hondo Lane who has a mangy dog and who used to live with the Apaches.

  “Hondo falls in love with a rancher’s wife played by Geraldine Page. She’s crazy about him, but can’t do anything about it because she’s already married and has a son. Hondo solves that problem by killing her husband. Since Geraldine is in love with Hondo, she brushes off the guy’s death in about two seconds. Then the Apaches show up; there’s a shoot-out, and then Hondo and the married woman he made a widow set off together for California. The dog and the kid come along, too.”

  “You gotta wonder what’s going to happen to a couple like that,” Todd Jackson said.

  “What do you mean?” Rex said.

  “For example, Hondo’s idea of being a dad is to toss the woman’s son into a deep river and the kid literally has to sink or swim. What happens when the kid becomes a teenager and comes home late? What does Hondo do then? Shoot him? Then there’s the whole thing about the murdered husband. She’s gotta wake up every morning and think, ‘Here’s the son of a bitch who killed my husband. Maybe I’m next.’ Not a recipe for happiness, if you ask me.”

  “A lot of those 1950s movies would set up these great dilemmas—what do you do when the man you love kills your husband?—and then ignore them,” Rex said. “But then that’s the thing about those movies, isn’t it? You shoot some Apaches and live happily ever after.”

  Todd said, “I hate pictures where you realize that everyone you’re watching on the screen is dead.”

  “That cuts you out of a lot of movies,” Rex said. He looked over at Tree who was standing at the office window. “Hey, Tree, your coffee’s getting cold.”

  “That TV truck is still out there,” Tree said.

  “They’re waiting for you to kill someone,” Rex said. “You’re the Hondo of Sanibel Island.”

  “I kn
ow this isn’t funny, I know I shouldn’t laugh,” said Todd Jackson, laughing.

  Tree came back to his desk and sat down heavily. He reached for his coffee.

  “What can you do?” Rex said. “I’m best friends with the guy who is single-handedly destroying tourism on this island.”

  “Sorry about that,” Tree said.

  “It’s worse than burnt pancakes on a Sunday morning, as we used to say in Oklahoma.”

  The telephone rang.

  “Aren’t you going to answer it?” Rex asked.

  “It’s a reporter,” Tree said.

  “You’re more famous than Mel Gibson,” Rex said.

  “Or Lindsay Lohan,” Todd said.

  “But Lindsay is cuter,” Rex said.

  Rex and Todd finished their coffee and left a few minutes later. Tree sat at his desk. The tension drained away for the first time since he had arrived at the office, trailed by reporters and photographers who now were awake and anxious for comment on Kendra’s murder. He told them he had nothing to say. Several reporters argued that he was a former newspaperman and therefore should have plenty to say.

  But say what? Tree wondered. How did he feel? Wasn’t that the question everyone always asked? He had asked it a couple of thousand times himself during his years as a reporter. A stupid question.

  He felt lousy. How else could he feel?

  The phone rang some more. He ignored it in favor of staring out the window while he tried to extract something profound from recent events. His mind was blank. There was nothing profound about what he had done—artfully trapping himself so that if he told the truth, his son might well go to jail for the rest of his life. If he continued to lie, he was headed for jail. Real life had a way of canceling out profundity.

  He turned to the mail piled on his desk, sifting through the bills and advertising flyers until he found the envelope that he had mailed from Woodring Road. He tore it open and the USB flash from Kendra’s makeup bag along with the Red Rose business card dropped to the desk.

  He picked up the stick and inserted it into the side of his PC. The computer asked him if he wanted to download the twenty photos it said were on the flash. Tree agreed, and the computer went to work.