Octopus Alibi

by Tom Corcoran

  I hadn’t eaten. I smelled restaurants, clouds of fish and garlic, suppers from a hundred kitchens. I felt tequila corroding my stomach, stress acid hurrying the process. A drunken man staggered up the Grinnell sidewalk. He clutched a string of Styrofoam trap line floats, dodged saplings, trash cans, low-hanging fronds. He sang in a monotone, “Daylight come, me wanna go home.” He had turned a work song into a dirge.

  I almost offered to sing harmony.

  14

  I WALKED THROUGH A cloud of sweet night-blooming jasmine, lifted my bike up Naomi’s concrete steps, and unlocked her door to stagnant air. My sneeze probably woke the neighbors. Two days battened up, and the mildew had gone berserk. I lifted several letters from the mail basket, stuck them in my shirt pocket, and rolled the bike inside. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t want to chain it in the yard. I felt watched, spooked by the street.

  Think like a pro, I chided myself. The news report of her death had drawn prowlers. I had scared them off. A pro or a plastic hero.

  Detective Lewis had warned me not to “foul evidence,” so I couldn’t open windows again. I wanted to touch as few things as possible. I would have to suffer stuffiness.

  I stood in semi-darkness with the door open so I could air out the living room. Give it a try, I thought, listen to the walls, commune with the psychic magnet. Maybe Lewis’s mental trick had worked, conjuring spirits, whatever she had done in her silent study of Naomi’s home. If a crime had occurred, what were its motives and method? Who had gained revenge or satisfaction or instant income? In the chemical glow of street lamps, I waited for rhythms of knowledge, a pulse of enlightenment.

  Two minutes, and I bagged it. I wasn’t tuned to receive New Age fuzzies. I saw no flickers down foggy tunnels, felt no insights, heard no guiding truths. The musty room gave me a crappy, hollow sense of gloom. Shadows and odd tints emphasized objects I never had noticed. I had looked carefully at her books nine hours earlier. Why hadn’t I seen the small TV built into the white bookshelf? Had I ever checked out the rack full of silver spoons, or read the barometer on the hallway wall?

  If I had missed solid objects, and didn’t know she had a lover, what else had I missed about the woman? Better question. Did I know anything at all? Did I not know things because she had held back? Or had I idealized her, viewed her myopically, blinded myself to her real world?

  One thing I knew for certain. Laughter had thrived in the room only three days ago. The space now felt empty to me, aged like a body hit by disease, a town struck by disaster. Perhaps I discovered what Lewis had felt. Vibrations were frauds that misled or gave no answers. I didn’t doubt that my attitude stifled the process. But if spirits were there, they weren’t delivering comfort that I recognized. They made me cranky and pushed my ass to confront my mortality.

  One death at a time.

  I let myself into Naomi’s small office, flipped on the gooseneck lamp next to her desk. I was tempted to try again, to sponge up vibes. I finally figured out the problem. Stupid-ass tequila gets me every time. Sends me on mental slaloms, the logic of salt and cacti. I jumped tracks, told the ghosts to take a hike. The big insight: Things I could touch or see would help me more.

  The computer brought itself up to speed. I nosed around, switched on her radio. It was tuned to the “smooth jazz” station. She had written phone numbers with a Sharpie pen on her mouse pad. I saw nothing but Key West prefixes, knew most of the numbers. Her grocery and chores list included “heavy trash bags,” “half-inch plywood for 1st fl. windows,” “Clorox,” and “drop dry cleaning.”

  I opened the antique chest’s top drawer. She had stocked typical office supplies. Push pins, a stapler, a plastic bag full of rubber bands. My Cuervo-addled brain sent out a sidetrack warning. Shopping lists and paper clips fell outside my idea of deciphering crime. Could my investigation get more mundane? Or more dead end?

  I closed the middle drawer after finding only a dusty cordless phone, two cookbooks, and an inexpensive Kodak Max camera. Only six frames exposed. I had better luck in the chest’s bottom drawer. In a fat manila folder, I found eleven dated envelopes. In each I found color prints. I stacked them according to dates. The most recent was two years old. One blank envelope held enough negatives to have generated all of the prints.

  The photos told me nothing new. One packet held group shots, twenty-four permutations of twelve women at a luncheon. Another held a sequence of people mugging at an East Martello party. Another envelope held pictures taken in Naomi’s yard, her flowers and plants, bamboo wind chimes, an orchid. Yet another depicted a ceremony that welcomed two women debarking a cruise ship. Odd that she had taken so many photographs and never had asked me about cameras or processing or types of film.

  One fact stood out. The prints were sharp, well focused, with good depth and no distortion. These days even point-and-shoot cameras, the small autofocus zoom jobs, capture quality images on 35-millimeter film. The joke was to call them “drunkproof.” I had never seen crisp pictures from disposable, plastic-lensed cameras like the Kodak Max. I checked again in the bottom drawer, looked around the office. I didn’t see photos that lacked sharpness, didn’t see another camera. Maybe she had left one in the purse that I had stashed in my house.

  Naomi’s computer was as orderly as her home. Her hard-drive files were stacked in alphabetical order. I clicked the window’s “Date Modified” box. The files restacked themselves, newest at the top. Her financial folder, the one I’d already found in Microsoft Excel, was most recent. Just below that folder was a Word file named “dear ms. d.” Its date showed that Naomi had saved it two weeks earlier. I double-clicked its icon.

  Ms. D. was the imaginary recipient of Naomi Douglas’s diary. The file held only one short paragraph.

  I’m feeling left out. These old men are running around town, acting thirty years younger. They rub stuff on their hair so they don’t go bald. They take a pill so they get tent poles instead of bratwurst. Fair is fair. Where is the pill so my titties don’t point to Panama? How about a drug to turn my hot flashes into moments of cerebral bliss? Let all the doctors level the playing field, stop these lonely nights.

  Her office was also a confessional. Her words sounded rational, angry, frustrated. Not the words of a woman involved in a love affair.

  I checked Naomi’s phone number file. One complete number for Ernest Bramblett, plus an area code without the last seven digits. I dialed the first one and got a recorded message. No longer in service. I called Information for the other code. A digital voice asked what city I needed to search. I didn’t know what part of the country I had called. I said, “Miami Beach,” hoping that it might draw a human response. The digital voice told me to try area codes 305 or 786. I dug out the phone book, found the page that listed area codes alphabetically by location. No reverse list, by number. Patience …

  Noises, outside. I wanted to think that the rapping I heard was a shutter loose in the night breeze. Another knock, this time for certain, the door.

  I stuck Naomi’s negatives in my shorts pocket, then thought again. Old negs weren’t going to tell me a thing if the pictures didn’t scream in my ear. I put the envelope in the bottom drawer, went to the second drawer, lifted the Max, and hurried to the foyer.

  Detective Lewis looked beat. She wore the same clothing she had worn that afternoon. She said, “What’s your deal, Rutledge? Did you have a thing going with the widow lady, too? You working this late, I get the idea you’re being more than a dutiful executor.”

  The pot calling the kettle black? “Nothing but friendship, detective.”

  “You’ve been here for twenty-four minutes. Anything to show for it?”

  “A shopping list. She wanted plywood to protect her home from weather. It’s my assumption that she intended to live through the hurricane season. She had six extra rolls of Scotch tape. Maybe she wanted to live long enough to use it all.”

  “You’re quite the sleuth,” said Lewis.

  “You left here today, you peel
ed rubber. You were going snorkeling and yachting, and maybe look me up when this was all over. Now you’re out in the dark, peeping and timing.”

  “I got emotional this afternoon. Once I got away, the place nagged at me. It was too clean. It made me nervous. Did she always keep it spotless?”

  “She wasn’t a fanatic, but it was never messy.”

  “I saw spotless,” said Lewis. “Too clean, unless she was some kind of neat freak. Also, we got some info from the phone company. What’s in your pocket?”

  Busted for the Kodak Max? She wasn’t that good. I followed her eyes to my shirt. “Naomi’s mail,” I said. “It arrived after we left.”

  “Taking it home?”

  “That wasn’t my plan. They’re probably bills, and I have to pay them all, anyway. That’s my new job.”

  “They’re all bills?”

  “I didn’t look. I stuffed them in here while I wrestled my bike inside. The woman trusted her estate to my care. Why are we worried about one day’s mail delivery?”

  Lewis ignored me, looked at my bike, then around the room.

  I said, “You’ve had a change of heart?”

  “Keeps my mind off other things. The sheriff made some calls. Whatever they were doing, Steve and Naomi were great at covering up. They were on committees together, worked civic and charity functions, planning groups, you name it. They spent a lot of time together, and no one thought a thing.”

  “Maybe he ran for mayor so he could be closer to her.”

  Lewis swiveled her chin. Her eyes went cold. “Thanks, Rutledge.”

  I did the mental math. He was running for mayor when he and Lewis had their “fling,” as she had called it. I’d done nothing but get crap on my shoes since this all started. Lewis looked like she’d like to crap in my shoes.

  “Sorry,” I said. “My brain’s shot. Do you still think Steve took himself out?”

  “One thing at a time,” she said. “Right now I’m thinking Naomi.”

  “Okay. Since I’m already in the doghouse, let me ask one thing and not expect an answer. If they were an item, what in their past required that they keep it secret?”

  She waved her hand between us. “You care for a stick of gum?”

  “Okay, officer. But I’ve had only one drink. Is it impairing my judgment?”

  “He was married, he was mayor, he was twenty years younger. Even in Key West people have reasons for discretion.”

  “Point taken,” I said. “Don’t blown secrets become murder motives?”

  “For one person, in this case. But Yvonne had already pushed him out of her life. She didn’t stand to gain a thing by his death, especially his manner of death. She loved the political power trip. In her little mind, I’m sure, it was better to be the ex-wife of the mayor than the widow of a suicide.”

  “Speaking of relatives, you said that Naomi’s brother, Ernest Bramblett, might make a choice suspect. You thought he was either dead or the killer.”

  Lewis clammed up. She looked to be summoning thoughts.

  I said, “What was Naomi’s last incoming call?”

  “We had a bitch of a time. Turned out it was some outfit contracted by the Highway Patrol, looking for donations.”

  “Not a prime clue, then.”

  Lewis shook her head. “No. But Naomi saved two calls. One from Ernie, the brother, and one we haven’t identified. She and the second caller talked money. We traced both originating numbers to pay phones. The timing tells us that her brother couldn’t have been in town when she died.”

  “That doesn’t mean he didn’t arrange her death.”

  “That’s a leap I haven’t taken yet,” she said.

  “The leap to conspiracy?”

  “No. That she died by other-than-natural causes.”

  “Back to square one.”

  “Be patient,” she said. “And get your ass out of here. It’s my turn to sit and think.”

  “I’ve got the computer running.”

  “You can shut it down,” she said.

  I gave Lewis the two license tag numbers from my wallet, the ones Sam had left in his message. I told her I needed names and addresses. They were unrelated to anything going on in Key West. She sneered, offered no promise that she would help me.

  “One last thing,” I said. “It’s a blow to my ego, but I found my heart and soul in the junkyard.”

  “Join the fucking club.”

  I told her about my framed photos in the trash. I gave her content, no emotion, but I caught myself selfishly grieving for the pictures. She thanked me for the info, didn’t ask what the photos depicted. She wasn’t enthused about their being a clue.

  * * *

  I hadn’t gone a hundred yards on my bike before I recalled the smell of Randolph’s BMW. I was no expert in island trees, didn’t know locations of native and nonnative species, but I knew of an acacia in front of Teresa’s old condo in the Shipyard. I had left my Shelby Mustang there for two nights last winter. Acacia buds had fallen into spaces around my hood and trunk, then fallen out of sight, then rotted. It had taken me weeks to clean them all out. Months passed before I rid my car of the smell that I recognized in the BMW.

  Okay, I thought. He had leased Teresa’s old apartment, paid the month-to-month rip-off fee. Not okay was that Whit had been in town longer than two people were admitting. He probably had spent time, nights, at the condo before she had moved to my house.

  Ass backward, my efforts. I was finding evidence where I’d rather not, coming up short where I needed it.

  I found Teresa stretched on the porch lounge chair. She had kicked off her shoes, hung her skirt on the back of a chair, and passed out in her work blouse and panties. Before she crashed, she had uncorked a thirty-dollar bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. Fruit flies had found it and made sure it wasn’t going to waste.

  I let her sleep. I finished the glass that she had poured for herself, then sat on the porch and stared at her. I asked myself if she was worth all my trouble and pain. I waited for an answer, but my brain went on strike. I shooed the flies, listened to her snore once in a while, and finished half the bottle.

  15

  DEEP IN SIESTA, I wasn’t fooled. I knew the ringing was on videotape, on another sailboat in the marina. Staniel Key’s only real phone was in a compact building two hundred yards away. The sounds I wanted were shallow harbor waves, tidal slosh on the hull, slapping halyards, gulls, creaks in the rigging, soft nautical tunes from a cassette player on deck. The television intruded, fouled my midday hammock idyll. I couldn’t believe that someone had spent thousands on a yacht to escape to this Bahamas outpost and still need a Betamax. Maybe they would find the irony, pitch it over the side. Sure as hell, and soon, the salty air would melt rubber rollers, corrode play-back heads, pock capstans so that a ringing phone would drag, go vibrato, sound like a water-filled trombone playing taps …

  A ringing pulled me from my dream.

  I woke alone in the queen-size, in my bedroom on Dredgers Lane. Doves cooed from power lines, dawn light played on high crotons. I went barefoot to the kitchen phone. Grit on the floor reminded me to sweep soon. I felt as if I had slept fewer than twenty minutes.

  Sam Wheeler said, “I got it from Marnie that you’d hung in town an extra day. You get me my info?”

  Beyond slipping the license tag numbers to Carmen and Bobbi Lewis, I hadn’t tried to track them further. I had been minding my problems, but that was a lame excuse.

  “No sweat,” he said. “I’ve got plenty to keep me jumping. But don’t quit the case. I had a run-in yesterday, hell of a coincidence. Our boy Detective Marlow was riding his bike on the strand where Sunrise hits the ocean.”

  “A man needs his leisure time.”

  Sam said, “You should’ve seen him in his municipal bike helmet. He’s got another officer in tow, and this boy’s all tricked and buffed out. Elbow pads, knee pads, enough radios to monitor the Space Shuttle. He’s probably wired into NATO, filing flight plans for Air Force On
e. Got arms big around as my legs, but I didn’t call you to bad-mouth steroids.”

  I heard the shower out back, checked the porch. Teresa had undressed where she’d slept and piled her clothing on the lounge chair. I said, “If Odin was exercising, where do his Benson & Hedges fit in?”

  “They fit in fine. I walked out of this ratty-ass motel—I’ll get to that in a minute—and they’re sitting on their bikes, leaning against a post. Marlow’s fired one up. The other boy’s living clean. He’s checking out babes in wedgie bikinis, ogling the jailbait butt cracks. He’s resting his tongue on the handlebar. They acted surprised to see me.”

  “They were waiting for you?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Sam. “The odd thing, after his huffy turf speech in the restaurant, he wasn’t pissed to find me nosing around.”

  “He passed the time of day?”

  “He spit out questions so fast, he could host an after-dinner quiz show. I was going to ask for prize money.”

  “Did you get pushed into hiring a private eye?” I said.

  “Marlow made his pitch. I pretended to take the bait, to maybe find out who’s been following me for thirty hours. I mean, let’s make sense, here. Why should I pay some fuckhead to be my shadow?”

  “Was that one of those tag numbers?”

  “The green Chevy,” he said.

  “Did you call Captain Turk?”

  “That’s the best part.”

  “The ratty-ass motel part?”

  “Not what you think. Turk remembered a dude nicknamed Wally Loads. Wally used to run a Midnight Express to the Gulf Stream.”

  “Sightseeing cruises?”

  “You believe that brand name? As if the boat was never supposed to be used in daylight. Anyway, Wally’s crew did heavy lifting and very little sightseeing. They’d work a bit, up to no good, and make it into the Dania canals in time for breakfast. Wally hung out in Lauderdale bars all day every day. He didn’t sleep much. Who did back then? Turns out Loads did some camp time for Uncle Sam, came back to a halfway house. They turned him into a motel desk clerk here on the beach. I found him in the phone book. You wish every ex-con was Wally Loads. He’s got more class than the damn motel, that’s for sure.”