Wrecked

by Mary Anna Evans

  “I know Cyndee Stamp. She’s Greta’s cousin.”

  This was news to Faye.

  “Their family relationship raises some more questions,” the sheriff said, “because it’s not cool for an insurance adjuster to funnel work to a family member, especially if she’s using an ethically questionable power of attorney to do it.”

  Faye rose from the table, twitchy with nervous energy. She might as well use that energy to see if anything else in the house looked fishy.

  “I’ll do some more checking into the Greta-and-Cyndee situation,” the sheriff said, “but it’s a far reach to say that Cyndee and Greta murdered the captain, just because they have some fishy business practices. As for the captain’s rare books, maybe we should make sure some of them are actually missing before we go too far down that alley, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” Faye muttered as she thought dark thoughts about insurance fraud and elder abuse.

  “Faye, I get the definite sense that you think I should be handling the captain’s death differently, despite the fact that it was very probably accidental.” The sheriff’s voice was remarkably calm for someone asking “Do you think I’m incompetent?”

  Faye tried to answer him, but he kept going. “Do you care to tell me what you think I should do about a drowning case with not the first sign of foul play? That’s a pretty weak basis for a presumption of murder.”

  Faye might have a suspicious nature, but she was honest. “No. I’ve got nothing but some missing pictures, a missing visitors’ log, and some shady characters that were seen around the house. And a dead drone.”

  “I’ve got no clue who shot Ossie, and that’s for true.”

  Now even the sheriff was talking like Ossie was a human.

  “I’m listening to you, Faye. I am. You’re telling me that the shady characters who’ve been seen at the captain’s house had at least a half-baked excuse for being there. And we don’t know for sure that he didn’t move the pictures and paperwork himself. Tell me you haven’t turned that whole house upside down.”

  “No. I haven’t.”

  “I know you’ve been hired to help with law enforcement before, so let’s talk for a minute, professional to professional. I know what I saw when we assessed the body on-site, and so do you. There was nothing to suggest a struggle, not under the water and not on top of it. Nothing to even suggest that he fell out of the boat and couldn’t get back in. The medical examiner said that he most likely drowned, but the evidence isn’t conclusive. A heart attack or stroke wouldn’t be out of the question, but a violent attack is.”

  He paused, like a man working hard to lay out a convincing argument. “You want me to treat this like a murder, but that’s hard to do when the body says something different.”

  Faye closed her eyes and sighed, glad that the captain’s last moments didn’t involve a beating or a struggle. “Has the autopsy told you anything else yet?”

  “No sign of foul play. Some of the lab work is still out. Blood alcohol was undetectable.”

  Faye studied the beautiful green teacup. “The captain was a complete teetotaler. Literally. He drank almost nothing but tea. And root beer.”

  “Then that explains the undetectable blood alcohol levels. The toxicology lab’s still working, but they haven’t turned up any drugs yet, legal or not. No poisons, either.”

  “So there’s no sign of a murder.”

  “Affirmative. And don’t forget this. A clean toxicology report doesn’t just reduce the possibility of murder. It reduces the likelihood that he committed suicide.”

  “Suicide? Oh, that’s not possible. I never saw him without a smile.”

  “Do you know how often I hear the family members of suicide victims telling me how happy they were before they offed themselves? By the way, suicide by drowning isn’t too common, but would you care to guess what demographic group is the most likely to die that way?”

  “The captain’s?”

  “Yep. Older, Caucasian, and male. It hurts to get old alone, and the numbers say that it’s harder for men. We can’t rule out the possibility that an older man without much close family might not tell anybody that he’s too depressed to go on.”

  Faye walked through the captain’s cherished library, brushing her hand over the gilt lettering on old leather books. “He was in the right demographic for a cardiac event, too.”

  “Affirmative. It wouldn’t have had to kill him, just incapacitate him so that he couldn’t save himself from drowning. Autopsies aren’t foolproof in these cases, but the medical examiner did find water in his lungs. Everything about the condition of the body screams ‘accidental drowning.’ And there’s nothing about his house to suggest otherwise, but it does seem weird that those pictures and that sign-in sheet are missing.”

  Somehow, despite the sheriff’s towering pile of evidence that was supposed to make her feel better, Faye still wasn’t completely sure that her friend wasn’t murdered. As long as that possibility existed, she wasn’t sure that she would ever rest well again.

  “I hear you, and I understand what you’re saying,” she said. “Tell me why I can’t let this go.”

  “The truth is, Faye, I don’t disagree with you. There’s no arguing that all the evidence points to a tragic accident. Still, there are a few tiny, cold, uncomfortable things that don’t really count much as evidence, but they bother me. You pointed out one of them yourself. Nobody ever knew of Captain Eubank going diving. He never said he didn’t, but he never said he did. And we all know how much he loved to talk about his hobbies. Is that even circumstantial evidence? Yeah, I guess, but it ain’t strong.”

  Faye looked around at the shelves of books. A tranquilizer dart sized for a rhinoceros couldn’t have shut the man up if somebody asked him a question about Micco County history. And she was supposed to believe that he was a secret scuba diver?

  “Here’s something weakly, barely circumstantial that I bet you don’t know,” the sheriff went on. “Considering our location here on the Gulf, it’s no surprise that we deal with more than our share of drowned scuba divers. Usually, the victim is found without his mask, because it’s just a reflex to rip it off when you’re terrified. And there’s usually a weight belt right there around the victim’s waist that they didn’t or couldn’t get off while they were trying to get to the surface. It’s a sad thing to say, but scuba divers usually die from panic. The literature backs me up on that.”

  His words called up the searing image of a human being trapped underwater, struggling with panic and despair. Faye had been holding onto hope that the captain hadn’t known what was happening. She’d prayed that he’d died quickly, without panic and pain. She was afraid that the sheriff was about to obliterate that hope.

  “The captain didn’t fit the usual profile, and that’s bothering me. He’d shucked his weight belt, so he wasn’t in a total panic. Most likely, he made a mistake or his equipment malfunctioned, and he saw that he was running out of air. He dropped the belt, just like he was supposed to, and he tried to make it to the surface, just like anybody would do. The autopsy suggests that he took water into his lungs at some point, but that could easily happen in those last moments when he’s trying to get to open air. Probably, this was all a tragic accident, but I’m an investigator and that means I’m suspicious at heart. I understand why you don’t want to let this drop.”

  This attitude surprised her. She said, “I appreciate that, Sheriff.”

  “Bottom line, Faye? Captain Eubank just didn’t make it, and that breaks my heart. Nothing will bring him back, but the world will feel like a better place if I can find out what happened to him.”

  “Then I don’t suppose you mind if I look around his house a little more before I go?”

  “You’re doing exactly what a good friend would do, but you need to get out.”

  Faye thought this was a remarkable change o
f attitude. “I’m sorry. What?”

  “You said that there were some photos missing? And a sign-in sheet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then, now I have a possible theft to investigate. Have you touched a lot of stuff?”

  Faye looked regretfully at the teacup. And the spines of the captain’s books. And the worktable and chair. And the doorknob. And the desk’s drawer pull.

  “Um…yeah? I did touch a few things. But I already told you that the place has got to be full of my fingerprints.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want you to smudge somebody else’s. Leave everything as it is and stop touching stuff. I’ll get Baker and her assistant back out there to look for physical evidence later today, but I want to talk to you myself right now. At the very least, you can show me all the places where you’ve been leaving a trail of fingerprints.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Faye didn’t know how to atone for the fact that she’d left fingerprints all through the captain’s kitchen and library. Oh, heck, she’d probably also left a broad trail of hairs, clothing fibers, and footprints, not to mention skin particles that were just loaded with her DNA. But then so had Greta, and they’d both had Jeanine’s permission to be in the house.

  At first, she thought her best plan was to go wait for the sheriff in her car, so that she wouldn’t do any more damage. Then she thought about how she’d go about opening the door without adding another set of her own fingerprints to the mess that was already there. And if she used the hem of her shirt to cover her fingertips when she turned the knob, would she be wiping off the prints of a thief? Or a murderer?

  Of course, if she just stayed where she was, sitting on an antique wooden chair in the captain’s beautiful library, she’d continue to drop bits of her DNA on his gleaming oak floor in the form of hair and bits of skin. So what was she supposed to do? She decided that the library was already heavily contaminated with her DNA, but if she avoided touching anything, she could keep her fingerprints and skin oils to herself. She shoved her hands in her pockets.

  It took about five minutes of reading the spines of the shelved books for Faye to decide that she might go stark raving mad before the sheriff arrived. Fortunately, her ringing phone saved her from both boredom and madness.

  The call came from someone she didn’t know, but the number was local. She answered it, and a hoarse, angry voice began speaking as soon as she said hello.

  “There ain’t no call to be interfering in anybody’s business. Their livelihood! What’d you say to Emma Everett and Jeanine Eubank, anyway? What right d’you have to tell them my paperwork ain’t up to snuff?”

  Confused, Faye took a moment to respond. She’d definitely interfered in Greta Haines’s business, but this was not Greta’s cultured, upper-crust voice nor was it Greta’s meticulous grammar.

  Faye’s mother had taught her to use particularly meticulous grammar when she was angry and thus in danger of cursing, so she said, “To whom am I speaking?”

  “This is Cyndee Stamp, and you oughta know it. I run an honest business, and there ain’t a thing wrong with me paying a visit to two nice ladies and asking if they need me to do some tree work for ’em. Where do you get off, telling Emma Everett and Jeanine Eubank that I might maybe be a crook? I ain’t never been so embarrassed as I was this morning, making follow-up calls just like always, and getting an earful of spite from Ms. Everett.”

  Faye could just imagine what kind of spite Emma would put in the ear of somebody trying to cheat her. “You’re right. There’s nothing wrong with making a business call, doing some work, and getting paid for the work you did. I do that kind of thing every day of the week. I don’t, however, ask old ladies to sign over their insurance checks. I especially don’t slip them the paperwork to sign over those checks without explaining the consequences of their signature.”

  “Um…what? I hate paperwork and neither of them ladies ever got any from me, not yet. I give my clients a written estimate when they ask for it, not before. I do my work. I give ’em a bill, and they pay it. Ain’t none of my business what goes on between them and their insurance companies.”

  Faye thought that she might just believe Cyndee. Then again, she had been stupidly trusting before.

  “Does your cousin Greta Haines ever contract her clients’ work to you?”

  “Um, yeah. She brings me business, she pays me for the work, and she takes a cut. When did that get to be illegal?”

  “Maybe it’s not illegal. But you might want to talk to Greta about where she gets the money she uses to pay you. I’m pretty sure her business practices are unethical—so unethical that they could cost Greta her license—and they may well be illegal. If I didn’t want to lose my own business, I’d check into how she’s running hers.”

  There was a wordless sound on the other end of the line, as if Cyndee didn’t know whether to thank her or curse her. Instead, she simply said, “I’ll do that,” and ended the call.

  Fifteen minutes later, Faye was very glad to see the sheriff pull into the captain’s driveway. Her wait wasn’t quite over, however, because he took the time to walk around the house before coming in.

  This gave Faye a chance to think that he was right to be thorough, but she doubted that he was going to find anything because she knew for a fact that Greta had a key. He wouldn’t find any signs of a break-in if she was the one poking around in the captain’s stuff.

  Then she saw the sheriff walking around toward the side door, putting on a pair of crime scene gloves. A moment later, he stuck his head in the door and said, “Come out here. I found something. Somebody’s broken into this house.”

  * * *

  The evidence of breaking and entering was not subtle. Someone had broken a windowpane in the captain’s master bath. Faye had missed it when she went looking for the photos, but Lieutenant Baker had looked in there during her walk-through. This meant that somebody had broken the window since the afternoon of the day that Amande discovered the captain’s body.

  The vandal had chosen a window on the opposite side of the house from the driveway. It overlooked one of the captain’s monumental azalea beds and it was shaded by large trees that kept it from being visible from the street, the back yard, or the neighbor’s property. It was well-hidden from anybody who wasn’t poking around in the bushes or standing in the captain’s bathroom.

  Summer breezes played with the lace curtains the captain’s aunt had hung in that window long ago, when the house was hers. Their hems brushed against broken glass strewn across the windowsill.

  Faye was so glad that it hadn’t rained. Jeanine had said that she didn’t want anything out of the house, but she might feel differently if Faye brought her these antique curtains and offered to hang them for her. Jeanine had lost so much to the wind and rain, and she’d lost so much to death. She might enjoy having something so lovely at her windows.

  “But Greta knew where the key was,” she said, not willing to give up her pet theory that the unpleasant woman had been the one who stole Joe’s photos and the sign-in sheet. “Why would she break the window?”

  “Well, maybe somebody else did it, somebody besides Greta.”

  “She might have already broken in before Jeanine told her where to find the key. Maybe on the day I saw her in the yard.”

  The sheriff gave a brisk nod. “You’re right. It could have been her. We can’t afford to eliminate anybody at this point.”

  “Or it could have been her cousin Cyndee Stamp, the tree contractor. I just got a threatening phone call from her.”

  The sheriff’s voice was concerned. “What kind of threats?”

  Faye thought back through the conversation and corrected herself. “Maybe ‘threatening’ is too strong a word, but she definitely wanted to tell me how I should behave. And I don’t think she knows about Greta’s little powers of attorney.”

  “Mayb
e Cyndee is the one who’s been in the house. Come look at this.”

  He walked to the base of a large tree that overhung the corner of the house.

  “See the damage to the gutters?” He pointed up. “And the siding is scraped really bad. It’s even splintered here and here.” He pointed to two battered boards that were impossible for anybody standing in the back yard to miss. “It looks like that big limb broke off. You can still smell the sap.”

  He wasn’t wrong. The turpentine-y smell of pine burnt her nostrils.

  “The storm brought down a lot of branches all over Micco and Wakulla Counties. You’ve seen that, Faye. The captain was lucky that this one wasn’t bigger and that it didn’t hit the house squarely.”

  “I see it and I smell it, but I can tell you that the house wasn’t like this both times I was here before. Everything I could see was immaculate when I saw Cyndee and Greta—shingles, siding, window, everything.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. The captain had already made everything shipshape before he died. The house and yard were neat and beautiful on his last day.”

  Sheriff Rainey didn’t question her memory. He didn’t try to get her to doubt herself. He took her statement at face value, because why shouldn’t he? This made Faye feel respected and heard. It made her respect him as a law enforcement officer.

  “You’re right about how the captain kept his house and yard,” he said. “Setting aside the tree and the damage to the siding and gutters, the broken window is the critical clue. It has to be evidence of a break-in.”

  “Exactly. Or sabotage. Maybe I’m too suspicious, but I have to wonder whether Greta and Cyndee damaged the house, and maybe even broke the window. That way, they could ensure that there would be an insurance claim she could file for Jeanine.”

  “Thus giving them a chance to skim some or all of the money for themselves?”

  Faye laughed and said, “Yeah. That’s what I was thinking. Like I said, I’m suspicious.”