Bone Valley

by Claire Matturro

  “What about Rasputin?”

  “Oh, he’s jes’ fine. The fire didn’t get to the porch. And, Lady, like I said, it ain’t nothin’ I can’t fix. It’ll jes’ take a while.”

  Before I could absorb all that and respond, Jimmie started in on me. Where was I? Why had I run out in a storm? And why had I left an iron skillet of sizzling oil on the stove?

  I interrupted him to give him a condensed version of the story—that is, a man broke in the house, wrapped me in a quilt, and demanded a videotape, making me think that it was Jason Quartermine, or a thug he hired, trying to get the tape of the faker plaintiff back. But, now I wasn’t so sure it was Jason’s doing. I mean, why would Jason want people to hate panthers?

  “Uh-oh,” Jimmie said. “He wanted a tape? You mean, like, a tape? A videotape?”

  “What do you know about a tape?” I asked, my voice suddenly snappish in the rain as little red bells of warning went off in my sore head.

  “Was he a big guy?”

  “I already told you that, strong anyway, if not big like tall big, but big like big big.”

  “Big guy that wanted a tape?”

  “Jimmie, tell me what you know about a big guy and a tape.” I motioned Josey in close so she could hear Jimmie over the phone. Something in the emphatic way he had said “Uh-oh” suggested to me that Official Law Enforcement was going to want to hear the answer. “Talk loud so Josey and Olivia can hear you,” I said to Jimmie.

  “How do, Olivia, Josey,” he shouted out, his weedy old-man voice carrying with surprising volume. “I reckon he might’ve been after my videotape. One I done made with your camera.”

  “The one with the faker plaintiff doing yard chores, right?” I asked.

  “No’m, the other one.”

  Oh, now what? Long ago, like a day or two in another lifetime, I had decided that Jimmie was hanging on to the firm’s video camera so he could tape himself and Dolly, and I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to steal a video of two old people fooling around. Surely there couldn’t be a porn market for that?

  “Reckon I best tell you what’s been going on,” Jimmie said, still shouting fit to kill. “I got me a videotape of Miguel breaking into a shed in the backyard of a big man, and then he stolt him some stuff from the shed.”

  “How’d you know he was stealing it? Maybe it was his shed and his stuff?” Josey asked, shouting at the phone in my hand.

  “Miguel done broke in. He done tried pryin’ open a door, and when he couldn’t get that to work, he jes’ broke out the window, made him a good-size mess, and then he went on in.”

  “What’d he take?” Josey asked in a perfect, coplike way.

  “Bags of fertilizer and some other stuff.”

  Uh-oh. But why would Miguel steal fertilizer after the bombing of his sailboat, and why steal what he had already purchased?

  And this didn’t seem to have anything to do with why a big guy had put me in a cage with a panther.

  “What’s this got to do with a big man?” I asked.

  “It was some big man’s shed.”

  “Where’s the tape?” I asked.

  “It’s over at Dolly’s house,” Jimmie said.

  “Why is it there?”

  “I’s workin’ on it over there so that you wouldn’t catch me at it. Watchin’ it, her and me, tryin’ to reads the labels of the other bags of stuff Miguel toted out a that shed. Looks like it says pot-ass-see-um something on it.”

  “Potassium sulfate?” I asked, and Josey swung around and stared at me like I’d just confessed to a felony.

  “So what happened?” I asked, thinking I should divert Josey’s stare from me.

  “Miguel done stolt all them bags a stuff, and then he run out a there real quick, so I took off trying to follow him.”

  “Why were you following Miguel? Why’d you get that video in the first place?” I shouted over the phone. “I mean, I gave you that camera so you could catch the faker plaintiff being a fake, not to spy on Miguel and about get me killed. Why were you taping Miguel?”

  “I didn’t like how you was foolin" round with Miguel, so the day you was goin’ canoein’ with him, I done followed you out to the canoe outpost.”

  Remembering Jimmie skulking up, carrying the video camera that day, I nodded as if he could see me over the cell phone.

  “After you and that Miguel fella paddled off, I stayed on at the canoe outpost for a bit, thinkin’ maybe I’d ask about getting me a job there. Didn’t seem like too much longer before you and that Miguel fella was coming back in. You didn’t see me, but I saw y’all having like, maybe, a fight or something at your car. Then you done sped off in one direction and he done sped off in another.”

  “So you followed Miguel from the canoe outpost?” I asked. “Can you tell me where he went? Where this took place—I mean, where you videotaped him and the big guy’s shed?”

  “Sure ’nuff can. I got me the address and everything.” Jimmie recited a house number on Morgan Johnson Road, in Manatee County.

  “Say that over again,” Josey shouted at the cell phone. When Jimmie did, Josey repeated the numbers back to herself a couple of times.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?” I asked.

  “I’s tryin’ to catch up with that Miguel fella again, follow him to where he’s stayin’. I’s gonna tell Miguel I got me this tape of him stealin’ I’d take me to the law if’n he didn’t leave off of you. See, the day I got this tape, afterward I tried to tail Miguel but he done lost me in all that damn traffic on the Trail. But I figured he’d’ve come back sooner or later to the big guy’s house. So I’s waitin’ up on him. I waited plumb through a whole night outside that big guy’s shed for him. That’s how come I didn’t show you the tape a him stealin’ stuff. I knowed if you knowed what I was up to, you’d make me give you back the video camera.”

  “Damn straight,” I shouted, in perhaps not a ladylike manner.

  Josey put a hand on my back, and then took the phone from me. “Finish your story,” she said over the cell to Jimmie. I shut up and squeezed into Josey so I could hear Jimmie.

  “Like I said, I was hangin’ ’round the big fella’s house, hopin’ to catch that Miguel fella again.”

  “Okay,” I shouted at the cell, “but how did the big guy connect you and me?

  “Reckon I shouldn’t’ve mentioned you and the tape to that big fella,” Jimmie said, a little less of the shout in his voice, but still audible.

  I snatched the phone back from Josey. “You told the big guy about me?”

  “Well, see, when Miguel didn’t come back and I couldn’t figure out how to find ’im, I done knocked on the front door of the house, and I told the big fella I’s an investigator workin’ for you, and I done got a tape of this here Miguel fellow stealin’ his fertilizer and I’s gonna turn it over to you, but first I gots to know how to find Miguel, if’n he knows. That big fella took it real bad, real bad, and was about to beat up on me when some real estate guy drove in. Anyhow, when the realty guy got out of the car and seen us, the big guy backed offa me and I lit outta there lickety-split.”

  “Jimmie, did you give that man my address too?” I asked.

  “No, no, ma’am, I didn’t. You shouldn’t be thinkin’ I’m that stupid. But…could be, yeah, that he followed me. He didn’t spend no time with that real estate guy ’fore I seen him hop in his SUV. I seen this from my rearview mirror, and I sure thought I’d done lost him on the Trail, you know how the traffic gets, but maybe not.”

  Oh frigging great, my handyman-houseguest-client led a madman right to my own personal door.

  Then I wondered why it would matter to the big guy that Jimmie had a video of Miguel stealing fertilizer from him. Big Guy must have been afraid that videotape would hurt him in some way, or he wouldn’t have tied me up in a quilt, ransacked my house looking for the tape, and then forced me to tell him where it was in my office.

  The only thing I could figure out, standing there
in the rain at the scene of a disaster, was that the big guy was afraid the tape of Miguel stealing the fertilizer from his shed would implicate him in the fertilizer bomb that had killed Angus.

  “Fertilizer bomb,” I said, looking right at Josey.

  “About that,” she said.

  “What?” Olivia asked.

  “The big man must have been the one who made the fertilizer bomb that killed Angus. I mean, he had the fertilizer and the potassium sulfate. When he realized Miguel knew he had the stuff, and there was a tape showing Miguel taking it out of his shed, he must have panicked, and tried to get the tape back from me,” I said. “He didn’t want to be linked to the fertilizer and potassium, or to Miguel.”

  “Y’all still there?” Jimmie shouted over the cell phone.

  Josey snatched the cell phone back from me. “You need to be real careful the man after that tape doesn’t come back to Lilly’s house, you hear?” she shouted. “Wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to get out of there.”

  “Ain’t hardly a fit night for travel.”

  I snatched the cell phone back. “Go to Dolly’s. Lock the doors and give Bearess half a cup of coffee to make sure she stays awake. And don’t lose that tape.”

  Josey grabbed the phone back, but then it went dead. She shook the cell, she banged on it, and she cursed at it, but the cell phone was still dead.

  “Don’t you think the rain finally got to it, maybe shorted it out?” Olivia asked.

  “Well, frigging great,” I said. “Let’s find somebody else with a cell phone and call the Sarasota PD and get them out there to my house.” I made a move in the general direction of the clot of men in yellow DEP rain slickers, but Josey beat me to it. She barreled her way into a crowd of wet men, and told them to find a phone that worked, or a radio, and call 911 and tell them an officer needed assistance and to get a team of armed deputies to the address on Morgan Johnson Road. And, then, to send a Sarasota police officer to Dolly’s house on Tulip Street.

  Josey squeezed my arm tight. “Come on. You two come with me.”

  With a sinking feeling, I realized my Big Night Out wasn’t over yet. I also knew without being told that Josey, Olivia, and I were going to the address that Jimmie had given us.

  Chapter 32

  From Boogie Bog to Morgan Johnson Road in Manatee County was not a short trip, but Josey did her best to make it so by driving like a crazy woman. I was sorry I hadn’t stayed at Boogie Bog. One of those nice DEP men would have eventually taken me someplace where I could have gotten a shower, a bottle of water, and a room full of sympathetic law-enforcement people.

  Nonetheless there I was, and as we drove, I added up what I knew: a big man had tried to kill me and recover a tape of Miguel stealing fertilizer from his shed; Angus was killed by a homemade fertilizer bomb; Miguel had fertilizer receipts in his truck, but denied they were his; and Angus and M. David and a third man—be it Miguel or Big Guy or unknown third party—had hoisted a few cold ones right before M. David went to hell.

  “So, the big guy who put me in the lion’s den blew up Angus and tried to frame Miguel for it,” I said, beginning to think out loud.

  “How’d he try to frame him?” Josey asked.

  I took a big breath and debated the wisdom of explaining about the receipts. Maybe, technically, I had broken the law in first stealing, then hiding, the receipts. Though Philip Cohen would defend me free of charge, I’d still rather avoid getting arrested. At that moment, it seemed prudent not to explain about the receipts.

  Then I thought about the night of the explosion.

  “That explosion was meant to kill both Miguel and Angus, I bet,” I said. “Only Miguel stepped back from the boat just in time. The frame was…the killer must have known that Miguel had a record for using a similar bomb to blow up some Bush-hogs. Naturally he expected the police to figure Miguel was building a bomb on his boat, and, maybe it accidentally went off. Those fertilizer bombs are notorious for being overly sensitive to motion, and they were on a boat, which rocks, after all.”

  “Not bad,” Josey said. “But how’d you know Miguel stepped back in the nick of time? And how do you know so much about fertilizer bombs.”

  Having lied about being on the pier the night of the explosion, I thought I’d sidestep the first question, and go for an honest answer on the second question. “Philip explained it all to me. You know, good criminal-defense attorneys like him know all that stuff.”

  “Then back it up a step—” Olivia started to say, then squealed as Josey lost control taking a curve too fast.

  When we finished fishtailing and spun back into some kind of control, I said, “Taking it back a step, the big guy set up Miguel and Angus for killing M. David and then decided to kill Miguel and Angus, hoping the police would think it was accidental.”

  “That setup is easier to see,” Josey said, as she drove over a downed limb and we bounced in the cab and I landed with a jolt along my spine that I knew I’d feel tomorrow. If the panther was awake, I’m sure she didn’t enjoy that bump much either.

  “Just concentrate on driving,” I said. Besides, I wanted to show off. “Everybody knew Miguel and Angus hated M. David, not that that was an exclusive club. But, what with Boogie Bog and the Antheus Mines—”

  “And the murdered panther and the orange-defamation lawsuit,” Olivia tossed in.

  “Yeah, we figured Angus and Miguel had fifty kinds of motive,” Josey said.

  “I never did think having those matching Dos Equis beer bottles at the gyp ponds made any kind of sense. I mean, who plans a murder, and then leaves their beer bottles behind in two places as evidence. So those bottles were planted,” I said.

  “Dos Equis,” Josey said. “How’d you know about that?”

  “Attorney work-product privilege,” I said, and stumbled right on. “So, those bottles were probably supposed to have Miguel’s and Angus’s prints on them, both the ones in M. David’s den and at the gyp ponds.”

  “Watch out,” Olivia screamed as something large crashed down in the road in a gust of wind and Josey deftly skidded around it without crashing or stalling.

  By now, the life-or-death driving in the storm wasn’t nearly as scary as when we’d first started our journey to the killer’s house on Morgan Johnson Road, and rather calmly, all things considered, I said, “And the phone call from the pier where Miguel had his sailboat, that could have been made by anybody, but the natural assumption would be either Miguel or Angus made it to set up a meeting that night with M. David. I mean, especially after y’all did get Angus’s prints off the—”

  “How’d you know about that?” Josey said.

  “Attorney-client privilege,” I said.

  “Bull, no way Miguel knows all this,” Josey said, a bit snappily.

  “So the guy at Morgan Johnson Road is the killer,” Olivia said, forestalling conflict in the cab. “And not Miguel.”

  Not Miguel.

  I hoped we’d figured at least that much out correctly.

  A little remorse at running from Miguel flicked me in the face, but I rubbed it aside. Okay, sure, now I knew Miguel wasn’t trying to kill me, but probably just explain. If I hadn’t been paranoid, I might have saved everybody, especially me, a whole lot of grief. Between us, Miguel and I probably knew enough to fit the pieces together. Certainly Miguel knew who the big guy was.

  Okay, even without Miguel’s input, and accepting that there were some loose ends here, I’d still figured out enough of the story to explain why we, and hopefully official backup, were driving to the big guy’s house at dangerously high rates of speed.

  “I’ll lay down a big bet that Galleon Theibuet lives on Morgan Johnson Road, and that Sherilyn put him up to all this,” I said, and leaned back against the bench seat of the cab in grim satisfaction.

  But then Josey slammed into a big-ass lake of water on the road and lost control, spinning toward a stand of small oaks. As I squeezed my eyes in anticipation of a crash, I saw Lenora, plain as if she
was sitting in the pickup with us. And heard her, just as clear as if she were repeating her story for Olivia and Josey, saying, “But M. David used this buyer for cover, sent out this real down-home guy, in cowboy boots and one of those little western string ties.”

  A cowboy who worked for M. David had cheated Lenora out of part of her land.

  A cowboy who was M. David’s bodyguard kept unusually detailed documentations of his bosses’ unsavory activities.

  A cowboy from Montana with a dollar in his shoe ended up a Florida real estate millionaire after M. David deeded over 48 percent of Delilah Groves to him.

  Josey cursed as the truck careened into a resting place, slam-dunk against a tree.

  Olivia took my hand and held it tightly, like we were teenage lovers. Or women fixing to die.

  Chapter 33

  If Olivia and I and Miguel and Josey had ever sat down and talked it out, we might all have made better choices.

  If Miguel’s red pickup hadn’t been parked in front of the house on Morgan Johnson Road, we might all have made better choices.

  But if wishes were wings, we could all fly, as Grandmom used to say.

  As it was, after a cursory examination of the dent in the front of the truck, and a careful study of Samantha and her trailer, Josey had us back dashing through the storm to the address Jimmie had given us in nothing flat. And finally, finally, we turned on Morgan Johnson Road, and Olivia squinted through the weather and her glasses. “There it is, there it is,” she said, and pointed.

  “That’s Miguel’s pickup, isn’t it?” Josey asked.

  But before I could say anything about Miguel’s pickup, or anything else, Josey skidded her own truck to a stop on the street.

  “I can’t wait for backup, not with Miguel in there.” Then Josey jumped out of the truck. After a few running steps, she stopped, knelt down, and pulled a gun from a holster around her ankle. Olivia and I stumbled over each other getting out of the truck, and we hadn’t landed firmly on the driveway before Josey turned and shouted back at us over the rain, “Get in the truck and stay there.”