But Manny had a second priority. He stood in a room full of people who trusted him to entertain them and, at a bare minimum, to keep them safe. If Cody reached around behind him and pulled that gun out of his waistband, Manny’s guests would be at risk, all of them, and he wouldn’t stand for that. He began plotting a way to get between Cody and Amande.
And between Cody and his gun.
* * *
Sheriff Rainey knew he was personally responsible for this hellish situation. All he’d done was walk through the door, but criminals knew that he was the law walking around on two legs. And they hated him for it.
When he’d made his entrance and unwittingly put all these people in danger, he hadn’t had a clue who killed the captain, nor did he understand what had happened to Nate Peterson. Faye Longchamp-Mantooth seemed to have some idea of what had been done to the captain and Nate, but he didn’t, not really. Cody’s current behavior made it obvious that he was guilty of something terrible, and it was most likely the murder and attempted murder.
Yes, he’d had his suspects and Cody was one of them, but he’d had no evidence pointing directly to him. Heck, poor Nate could have killed the captain, for all he’d been able to determine. Nate’s current condition, quite serious according to his doctors, didn’t mean that he hadn’t committed murder while he was still hale and hearty.
The sheriff reflected that he’d solved this crime simply by wearing his badge into a bar. This didn’t make him feel very good about himself as a top-flight investigator.
* * *
Cody was now within reach of the door that would take him out into the night, and Faye’s daughter with him. He hovered near it uncertainly, and Faye saw his problem. With his left arm around Amande’s body and his right hand holding a knife to her neck, he didn’t have any hands left to operate the door. He covered his hesitation with aggression, speaking to the crowd with a sneer.
“Here’s what’s gonna happen. I’m going out this door and I’m getting in my boat and I’m taking her with me. You people are going to let me go and you won’t come after me if you want her to stay alive. Maybe I’ll take her with me where I’m going. Or maybe, when I’m far enough away, I’ll give her a life jacket and leave her floating in the water to wait for you. You’re gonna wait four hours—no, five—before you come looking for her. If you don’t, the body you find floating in the water won’t be alive.”
Faye tried not to think of her daughter afloat as a living needle in a big, watery haystack. She tried not to think of sharks and hypothermia. She tried not to think.
Cody lowered his lips to Amande’s ear. “Need you to do something for me, honey. Reach over there and turn the doorknob for me, then open the door real slow. I’m a little twitchy, so be real careful not to upset me. Okay?”
Amande didn’t nod, because the knife’s big blade was in the way, so she whispered a barely audible, “Okay.”
Faye saw her reach for the doorknob, but her arm wasn’t long enough. Seeing this, Cody edged closer and the back of her hand brushed the knob, but her arm wouldn’t rotate enough for her to grasp it. She and Cody commenced an awkward dance as he tried to maneuver her into position without turning his back on anybody. This effort was not entirely successful.
When he turned and Faye saw him in profile, she saw a bulge above his rear waistband that put the taste of ashes in her mouth. Manny stood to her left and she could see that he had a clear view of the man’s back, too. He knew what Amande was up against.
Cody shifted his grip on Amande so that she could reach the doorknob. As he did this, his jacket shifted enough to reveal what was under the bulge. The handgun was small, matte-black, and terrifying. Faye let her gaze shift Manny’s way. Their eyes locked and it was obvious that he saw what she saw.
Without speaking a word, they understood each other. Something needed to be done before Amande passed through that doorway.
* * *
Amande had twisted herself into a position that let her reach the doorknob while still being physically restrained by a knife at her throat. Her hand lingered on its worn metal, unwilling to open the door and let the night in.
Cody used the fingers gripping her torso to pinch Amande’s side, hard. His breath was hot on her cheek as he said, “Any day now, bitch,” but the maneuver to let her reach the knob had put a few inches of spaces between them. If she was going to make a move, now was the time.
She looked for her mother. Faye was there, just an arm’s-length from Manny but farther from Amande. She was too far to reach, too far to touch, but Amande could look in her eyes. She saw comfort there.
Faye held her gaze and her face told Amande everything. No, not that. She didn’t want to see that.
Amande didn’t want to see self-sacrifice on her mother’s eyes. She saw it in the set of her jaw and in her ready-for-anything stance. Amande didn’t want Faye to give herself up for her. How could she signal the word “No” without shaking her head or moving the neck where a blade rested?
She couldn’t. She could only watch as her mother waited for her chance.
Cody nudged Amande to open the door and she had to move herself another inch away from him to get enough leverage to twist the knob. Her eyes were still on Faye as a bit more space opened up between her and Cody. It was even possible that the blade was one hair’s-breadth farther from her neck. Now was the time.
At that instant, Faye’s eyes dropped to the floor at her feet and rose again, telling Amande what she had to do. Amande was terrified, but if there was anything in the world that she trusted, it was her parents. Craning her neck back as far from the blade as she could manage, she did what her mother asked. She let her knees buckle, trying to slip between Cody’s arms and trying to let herself drop. He had the reflexes of a very young man, or she would have made it. As it was, he caught her under an armpit before her knees hit the floor.
* * *
Faye saw Manny’s eyes on the gun. They told her how he planned to make his move, and she let him do it. He went high. He went for the gun, knowing that this would leave him wide-open to the knife.
Faye went low, knocking Amande loose from Cody’s grip. They dropped to the floor, and Faye made herself as big as possible, sprawling over her much-larger daughter’s crumpled body. Then she waited for the slash of a blade or the stunning impact of a bullet.
* * *
Amande lay flat on the floor. Her flyweight mother was on top of her, using her tiny body as a human shield. Once the room stopped spinning, Amande planned to shake Faye off and pin her to the floor. After all, Amande was the one stupid enough to spend time with Cody-the-murderer. She should be the one exposed to blades and bullets. Unfortunately, her head had hit the floor pretty hard, so she was having trouble operating her arms and legs.
A pair of deck shoes blurred past her face and she wanted to be ill. Now Manny was risking everything for her, too, and that just wasn’t how things were supposed to be.
* * *
Manny saw Faye wrap both arms around Amande and drop her to the floor, away from the knife. It was time to gain control of the gun.
He grabbed a roll of quarters out of the cash register, holding them in his right hand where they would add heft to his punches. Then he broke a bourbon bottle on the side of the bar, crafting himself a wickedly sharp weapon for his left hand. He lunged at Cody with both the fist and the bottle swinging.
He resisted the overwhelming impulse to give the knife a wide radius. He had calculated his odds of snatching the handgun out of Cody’s pants, and they were best if he faced the knife and went straight for his target. If he lost a little blood in the process, so be it.
Manny saw the knife carve a slash into his arm more than he felt it. He would feel it later, if there was a later.
* * *
Ray Peterson threw a bar napkin on top of his tablet computer and dropped an expensive fountai
n pen on top of it.
He rose.
* * *
If he’d been navigating through an open space, Joe knew that he could have reached Amande and Faye in just a few long steps. In this crowded bar? It would take him a long time to get there. Too long.
He had just one option. He needed to go up and over.
Joe put his size fourteen foot on the seat of an empty chair and used it to leap onto the nearest table. Hopscotching from table to table, he launched himself from the last one, confident that his flying body would strike Cody dead-center.
There was a single problem as he took flight. Somebody was in his way.
* * *
Lieutenant Baker’s first indication of trouble came when she opened the door to the bar and grill and walked into a scenario that made no sense at all.
She saw Cody standing over Faye Longchamp-Mantooth and her daughter. She saw Manny and his homemade weapons. She saw Joe’s face, nine feet above the floor, as he ran across a room full of tabletops. She saw Nate Peterson’s father put a gun to Cody’s chest.
And she saw how wrong she’d been.
* * *
The sound of a gunshot at close range deafened Faye, and presumably Amande, so they were both spared the sounds of Cody’s suffering, which didn’t last long. Shot through the heart, he died quickly.
They did, however, hear the words spoken as Ray Peterson yanked a snubnose .38 out of his pocket and pressed its muzzle against Cody’s chest.
“What kind of monster leaves his friend for the fishes to eat?”
Cody’s pleas for mercy were pathetic and Ray brushed them all away. He just said, “This is for Nate. You can tell Satan hello for me,” as he pulled the trigger.
And then all sound was blotted out for Faye by that single gunshot, even the screams of a roomful of people.
Chapter Forty-Two
“You’re the one who cracked the case,” the sheriff said to Faye, as they sat in his office and tried to disentangle what had happened to them. “You deserve to see this.” He slid a tablet computer and a cocktail napkin across his desk toward her.
The napkin was covered with the elegant, stylized script of a rich man writing with an expensive fountain pen. In large letters and numbers, he had written down the passwords to open the tablet and to access his note-taking software. Faye used them, and she found the notes Ray had taken for two explosive articles he was writing for his newspaper.
One set of notes was a meticulous compilation of the sins of Greta Haines. Ray had before-and-after photos of multiple properties that she’d sabotaged to drum up business. Faye recognized the captain’s house and yard among photos he’d taken both by drone and with a handheld camera. Ray had testimony from people pressured to sign powers of attorney. And he had witnesses prepared to testify that Greta had worked the same scams during the last hurricane. She was going down, and she would likely take Cyndee with her.
The other notes were for an article to be co-written with Nate. They included a transcription of Nate’s testimony, taken at his sickbed:
After Joe sent me his photo, I showed it to Cody and Thad. Since it showed the Philomela, we decided I should crop it, so nobody else would know where it was. Cody’s yellow bimini was so obvious. It said, “Hey, look at me!” and we didn’t want anybody to know we’d been down to the wreck.
That was the only time we dived on the wreck together, and we just took one bottle of brandy as a souvenir. We weren’t ever going back, as far as Thad and I knew, because we liked the idea of protecting it from people who would destroy it for money. At least, that’s how Thad and I felt.
Cody talked me into finding out where Joe stored the photos, saying that they were dangerous. They could show treasure hunters where the ship was. I thought that was a little extreme, but it was fun feeling like a secret agent. I helped him figure out how to destroy Joe’s pictures. I cropped the cover photo. I helped steal that one bottle of brandy. I own those mistakes, but that’s all I did. I didn’t know Cody killed the captain until I realized he was trying to kill me.
I didn’t know that Cody was hiding in the swamp when he shot Ossie. He heard the sheriff and Joe make plans to fly Ossie with Lieutenant Baker, so he hid and waited to shoot her down. I accidentally made things easier for him by taking her up before the lieutenant got there and by doing such a crappy job of flying her.
It didn’t occur to me that the shooter was Cody until I was in the middle of telling him everything Joe said about where he stored the photos. I realized that something wasn’t right and I called him on it, but he seemed sorry. Said he’d gotten too caught up in the shipwreck. Acted like he wanted to make things up with me by going out for a dive someplace new, deeper than we usually went. (I really should have suspected something when he didn’t invite Thad.)
My guess is that he sabotaged my gas. Too much helium and nitrogen. Not enough oxygen. I know the symptoms of nitrogen narcolepsy, and I have a pretty good idea what it’s like to die from lack of oxygen. That’s what it was like.
I realized what was happening and kicked hard for the surface. When I got there, Cody and his boat were gone.
I had a long time to think about things when I was floating out in the Gulf. It’s clear to me that the captain died the same way that Cody wanted me to die. There was no way that the captain was going to stay quiet about Cody using his library to find the Philomena. Cody had never imagined that people existed who couldn’t be bribed to shut up, so he had to do something. But he knew the captain well enough to know that if he promised to take him diving and keep him safe, the captain would believe him. How anybody could kill a man like the captain is beyond me.
Somebody has to stop Cody before the same thing happens to Thad. And who knows who else?
It took Faye a moment to come up with the words for what she was feeling. When she did, she said, “I know exactly why Ray shot the man who did this to his son. What’s going to happen to Ray?”
“He killed Cody in front of a crowd. It wasn’t self-defense. He showed up with a gun and he left us this note, so there was at least some degree of premeditation, although he can certainly afford a lawyer who’ll say it was temporary insanity. And maybe it was. So I don’t know. I do know that it’s going to be hard to find a jury in Micco County who will want to see Ray suffer for what he did.”
Faye knew that she didn’t.
* * *
Faye Longchamp-Mantooth had hardly shown herself out of the sheriff’s office when Lieutenant Baker showed up on his doorstep.
“I was wrong,” she said. “If it weren’t for Dr. Longchamp-Mantooth, Cody might have gotten away and taken that young woman with him.”
“I suspect Cody would have found Amande to be more than his match. She’d have probably brought him to us, hog-tied and with a signed confession pinned to his shirt.”
Baker wasn’t in the mood to joke.
“I should have respected your judgment.”
“You were right about the missing woman,” he said. “The neighbor came forward as a witness as soon as word got out that we’d arrested the husband for looting. That neighbor’s gonna be a local hero when word gets out, because he put a battered wife and her kid in his car, drove twenty-four hours, dropped her off at her sister’s, slept for twelve hours, turned around, and drove home. And never breathed a word to anybody about where she was until the man who hurt her was safely in jail.”
“So I heard. I understand that the neighbor’s wife’s got a future as a local hero, too,” Baker said. “She had the good sense to get video of the missing woman telling why she’d run away, complete with closeups of her cuts and bruises. And cigarette burns. Even if we hadn’t nailed him on the looting, we’d have him on the domestic violence.”
“You’re kind of a hero, too, Lieutenant. You put her sorry husband in jail.”
This made Lieutenant Baker laugh
out loud. “Up next to Dr. Longchamp-Mantooth and Manny laying down their lives? Or the next-door neighbor who probably saved her life? No way. I’m just a cop who was right about one case and wrong about the other.”
“Same here, Lieutenant. But sometimes you’re not right at all, and this time we know that neither of the bad guys is going to be hurting anybody any time soon. Cody won’t hurt anybody ever again. You were right to chase your case and I was right to chase mine. I think we should enjoy the moment, don’t you?”
* * *
Several long days sitting in the hospital at Nate’s bedside had convinced Amande that she knew all there was to know about him. Faye was amused, but she did enjoy listening to her daughter explain things from Nate’s point of view. Maybe he was as innocent as he claimed.
Faye had a suspicious soul, but she was inclined to believe him. And she was inclined to believe his father’s obvious remorse. Ray blamed himself for not finding out the truth in time to prevent the attempt on Nate’s life. He was having trouble finding a way to take responsibility for the captain’s death, but he was on a roll, guilt-wise. Give him time, and he’d find a way.
Faye sat at the bar at Manny’s Marina, eating breakfast with her daughter as Amande prepared for her daily “Let’s go cheer Nate up!” trip to the hospital. Manny had done an admirable job of frying their eggs with just his left hand. He would be working in a sling until the deep cut that Cody had carved into the muscles of his right upper arm had healed. Somehow, Manny managed to give that arm sling a hip pirate charm. He gave his spatula a deft bounce, and a patty of hash browns flew into the air, flipped, and landed right beside Amande’s fried eggs.
“Hey, Manny. Got any hundred-and-fifty-year-old brandy on one of those shelves behind you?” Amande dug her fork into her hash browns and waited for his answer.
“Naw, but I’ve got some that’s pretty good. Smooth, and it don’t cost a hundred bucks a sip. But you’re not twenty-one yet, are you, little girl?”
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