by Ron Base
“So far it’s been pretty easy.”
“Also, I told my editor we had a personal relationship.”
“You should not have told him that.”
“Well, we do sort of have a personal relationship.”
“Tommy, we don’t have any relationship at all. Until a few moments ago, you were a voice on the phone. An irritating voice.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Mr. Callister.” Tommy sounded wounded. “Anyway, my editor’s letting me stay on the story, but I gotta come up with something. I’m due to be on Twitter in five minutes.”
“On what?”
“Twitter. I’ve got to tweet our readers. Part of the job.”
“Do you ever take off those dark glasses, Tommy?”
“No, sir.”
“Because you think it’s cool?”
“I’ve only got one eye.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m a little self-conscious about it.”
Tree shut the car door and said, “Okay, here’s what I’ll do. I’ll give you a quote.”
Tommy looked relieved. “Thanks, Mr. Callister. You’re saving my ass here, you really are.”
“But hold off on any feature for the time being.”
“I will get that story, though, right?” Even with the obscuring Ray-Bans, Tree could see that Tommy’s face had taken on a more canny expression. Tree wondered if it wasn’t too easy to underestimate Tommy Dobbs. The way you might once have underestimated Tree Callister.
“You want that quote or not?”
Tommy fumbled in his pocket and brought out a metal object the size of a cell phone. He stuck it under Tree’s nose. “Okay, Mr. Callister. Fire away.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s an Olympus LS-10 voice recorder.”
“You don’t take notes?”
“Notes?” Tommy looked confused. “What are you talking about?”
“Notes. Writing things down in a notebook.”
“Why would you do that when you’ve got a voice recorder? That way you don’t make a mistake with the quote.”
Hard to argue that logic.
“I heard there was a house for sale in McGregor Woods and went around to look at it.” Tree said. “When I got there, I found the door open. I stepped inside, and that’s when I found the body.”
“You’re a private eye these days, Mr. Callister.” Tommy spoke formally into the voice recorder. “Police are speculating you were at the house on a case. Care to comment?”
“I’ve said all I’m going to say,” Tree said.
“Are you going to investigate the murder you uncovered, Mr. Callister?”
“I didn’t uncover anything. I found a body.”
“How does it feel, Mr. Callister, a former Chicago news man now involved in a murder here in the Fort Myers area?”
“That’s enough, Tommy.”
A Blackberry suddenly replaced Tommy’s digital recorder, thumbs moving adroitly over the keyboard. “What are you doing?”
“Tweeting my readers,” Tommy said. “Sending out your quote. Then I do a short piece for our Internet home page, and after that get it on Facebook. This afternoon, I’ll add it to my blog.”
“Any chance it will ever appear in a newspaper?”
Tommy finished with his Blackberry and produced a small, black Sony Digital Cyber-shot. He pointed it at Tree. “Quick photo,” Tommy said.
Tree barely had time to remove his glasses before there was a sharp click. Tommy adjusted the setting.
“Okay. Now I’m gonna get video for the website, if you don’t mind, Mr. Callister.”
Tree rolled his eyes. Welcome to the new journalism.
14
The Travens lived in a massive house of interlocking grey stone on Captiva Drive. The house was set behind an iron gate among artfully clustered palms. Grecian columns fronted a sweeping staircase guarded by two stone Great Danes. Gleaming white porches ran the length of two floors.
Tree parked the Beetle outside the wall and came through the gate along the drive. The air filled with the low rattle of cicadas. He could hear the occasional car on Captiva. Otherwise, all was silence. The world here, walled and safe and perfectly arranged, appeared deserted, like so much of Florida. The state was full of people, wasn’t it? Sometimes Tree wondered.
He climbed a wide sparkling stairway that might have gone all the way to heaven, but stopped at a landing where there was a bell to ring. Almost immediately—as though he’d been waiting—a small, elegant man opened the door. White hair retreated from a sun-burned face. He wore a shirt without a wrinkle in it, so white it hurt the eyes. He must have bought the gleaming black loafers a moment before he opened the door.
“Yes?”
“I’m looking for Mrs. Traven,” Tree said. “Is she around?”
“And you are, sir?” The question came with a Spanish accent.
“Tree Callister. I’m doing some work for Mrs. Traven.”
“Yes, Mr. Callister.” He seemed to recognize Tree’s name. “Come inside. Please.”
Tree stepped past him into a foyer the size of a football field. The foyer dropped into an equally vast living area. Glass walls framed the waters of Pine Island Sound in a breathtaking panorama.
The house was separated from the water by a sheen of green lawn, intersected by lush gardens. A bird-like girl in a straw hat with a brim you could land a helicopter on, floated among the flowers. Tree caught a glimpse of a thin pale face, before she bent to snip a white flower from a bougainvillea plant.
“Seven bedrooms, eight bathrooms,” a voice announced a moment before Elizabeth Traven trailed into view.
She wore a black halter top and white shorts matched with Manolo Blahnik sandals mounted on four-inch heels. One look at Elizabeth Traven in the morning and you wanted to book your Sanibel-Captiva vacation.
“There’s also a multi-level terraced pool, and a spa. I’ve never been in the pool. I don’t like them.”
The heels clicked to a stop a few feet away. Those pale eyes seemed to bore right through him. “You can have it for eighteen million dollars.”
“Thanks,” he said.
She turned and click-clicked away. “Come along Mr. Callister. Did you meet Jorge?” Tree glanced at the small perfect man who was Jorge. He was rewarded with a show of perfect teeth.
“He’s rather like the fellow who worked for Richard Nixon. What was his name, Jorge?
Jorge actually bowed slightly before he said, “Manolo Sanchez, madam.”
“My husband loves Richard Nixon. They should have gone to jail together. Probably would have ended up lovers. Did I just say that?”
Tree looked at her.
“Anyway, Jorge is Brand’s Manolo Sanchez. He has worked for my husband since Brand was a teenager. You marry Brand Traven, you also get his trusted scout, Jorge.”
Jorge showed all the emotion of a piece of mahogany.
“Jorge reports back to Brand every week on my various comings and goings. Anything unusual about the spelling of your name Mr. Callister? Two l’s is it not? I wouldn’t want Jorge to misspell your name when he reports to my husband. We wouldn’t want any erroneous information going back to him, would we Jorge?”
Jorge said, “No, madam.”
Elizabeth gave Jorge a withering look. “Go away and play.”
He bowed slightly before disappearing, not quite in a puff of smoke, but close enough. Elizabeth gritted her teeth and said, “That man.”
Tree followed her through a kitchen the size of a barn. Gleaming copper pots dangled from a rack above a trio of La Cornue stoves Freddie would have murdered for.
“Would you like something, Mr. Callister? A drink?”
“Not for me, thanks.”
They entered a family room filled with photographs. Brand and Elizabeth on their wedding day occupied a prominent position atop a brass trestle table. She was not wearing white, Tree noticed.
Elizabeth threw herself onto a lea
ther sofa the length of the room. “Sit down, Mr. Callister. I thought we agreed we were to meet at your office next week.”
Tree seated himself across from her and tried to keeps his eyes off those legs. He said, “That was before certain events occurred.”
“Before you found a headless body on Barrington Court?” She sounded as though finding corpses was not so unusual. “You are all over the news.”
Tree nodded. “I thought we’d better have a talk before I went much further.”
“I suppose you told the police about our association.”
“The police would be here by now if I had,” Tree said, pleased with himself for having kept his mouth shut.
“I read they haven’t identified the body yet. It wasn’t Mickey Crowley?”
“This woman was blond and white. It may have been someone named Dara Rait.” Elizabeth looked at him blankly.
“Does that mean you don’t know anyone by that name?” Tree said.
“Why should I know anyone by that name?”
“What about Reno O’Hara?”
“What about him?”
“Do you know him?”
“Mickey Crowley, Mr. Callister. No one else interests me.”
They were interrupted by the arrival of the girl from the garden, mounted on a motorized wheelchair that moved forward with an electronic hum. Without her garden hat, she looked even smaller and more bird-like, with thin brown hair, blunt cut, oversize imploring eyes, and a hesitant smile. In her hand was the bougainvillea flower from the garden. The wheelchair came to an abrupt halt when she saw Tree. The hesitant smile dropped into confusion.
“Oh, sorry, Auntie Elizabeth, I didn’t know you had company.”
Auntie Elizabeth allowed a flash of irritation before quickly hiding it behind a welcoming smile. “Don’t be silly, Hillary. Come in and meet a business associate, Mr. Tree Callister. Mr. Callister, this is my husband’s niece, Hillary Traven.”
Hillary motored over to shake Tree’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir,” she said, making it sound as though it genuinely was a pleasure.
She showed him the flower. “Isn’t it just the most beautiful thing? Florida flowers are so bright and lovely, don’t you think? The bougainvillea was first discovered in Brazil by a French botanist who named it after the explorer and naval admiral, Louis-Antoine de Bougainville. They were traveling together at the time. Did you know that, Mr. Callister?”
“No I didn’t,” Tree said.
“Hillary is thirteen,” Elizabeth said. “A very precocious thirteen.”
“Are you visiting?” Tree asked.
“From Wisconsin,” she said. “Uncle Brand and Auntie Elizabeth are putting up with me. Well, not Uncle Brand so much, at least not right now.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me auntie,” Elizabeth said.
Hillary appeared not hear. “What about you, Auntie Elizabeth? Did you know about the bougainvillea? I looked it up on Wikipedia. I’m always looking up things there. Do you, Mr. Callister? Do you use Wikipedia?”
“Hillary, darling,” Elizabeth said patiently, “Mr. Callister and I are in the middle of a business conversation.”
Hillary’s pale face lost its happy sheen. “Oh? Sorry. I shouldn’t interrupt. You’re not supposed to interrupt are you? Not when you’re my age.”
“It’s all right,” Tree said.
She thrust the flower into his hands. “There. A peace offering. Forgive me?”
“No problem,” Tree said, uttering a phrase he had taken a blood oath never to use.
Hillary flashed a smile at her auntie. “Are we having lunch?”
“Of course, my dear. Mr. Callister and I are just finishing up. I’ll join you in a few minutes.”
Hillary turned her wheelchair around and started out of the room. When she was gone, Elizabeth’s face darkened. “Brand absolutely adores her. The daughter he never had, I suppose.”
“She’s charming,” Tree said.
“I’m glad you think so.” Elizabeth said it in a way that suggested she didn’t.
“Where were we, Mr. Callister?”
“Finding dead people.”
“Yes, yes, headless corpses who aren’t Mickey Crowley. We haven’t moved forward very far then, have we?”
“What would you like me to do?”
“Nothing has changed. I still want information about Mickey Crowley.”
“All right. But you should know the police are all over me.”
“That won’t stop a man of your resourcefulness.”
Tree couldn’t help but smile. A man of his resourcefulness, indeed.
Elizabeth rose in her heels, towering above him. He half expected her to snap a whip. “Good to see you, Mr. Callister.”
“Are we still meeting next week?”
“At which time, Mr. Callister, I’m hoping you have a good deal more information than you do right now.”
15
Yellow crime scene tape marked the house at Barrington Court. Two vans with “Sanibel Biohazard” printed in big letters inside the chalk outline of a body were parked in the driveway.
Tree parked his Beetle on the street. As he walked toward the house, two figures in bright blue plastic Tyvek suits emerged. They wore goggles and respirators, their feet clad in plastic shoe covers. They carried big green bags that they placed in the back of one of the vans. Tree approached them.
“Is one of you Todd Jackson?”
The smaller of the two talked through his respirator and sounded as though he had arrived from another planet. “Todd’s inside.”
“I’m a friend of his,” Tree said. “Any chance I could have a word with him?”
The guy nodded and disappeared into the house. A couple of moments later, Todd came out through the garage, removing his respirator and goggles. His smooth brown face was drenched in perspiration. He grinned when he saw Tree.
“Hey, Tree, what are you doing? Returning to the scene of the crime?”
The two men shook hands and walked together down the drive to the second van. Todd opened the side door and got a bottle of water out of a cooler. He offered one to Tree, who shook his head.
“What’s it like in there?” he asked.
“You found the body, huh? So you got some idea. For us, it’s the usual deal. A lot of blood because they hacked off her head. Looks like they used an axe or something.
“An axe?”
“Hatchet. Something like that. A real mess. And of course we had a head in the sink. Not every day you get that. Another big mess. You want to see inside?”
“Can I?”
“Don’t see why not. We’re in there, so it’s been released as a crime scene. Besides, ain’t no cops around for the moment. Come on. I’ll show you what I do for my daily bread.”
Tree wasn’t anxious to go back inside the house, but he was supposed to be a detective, and this is what detectives did. They revisited the scene of axe murders.
Scott got him outfitted in a Tyvek suit, shoe covers, goggles, respirator, the whole biohazard package. They stepped inside. This time the air filled not with the stench of death but with the sharp nostril-cleaning tang of ammonium.
“Here’s the deal on CTS Decon—that’s Crime and Trauma Scene Decontamination to you. Bloodborne pathogens, bodily fluids that are still in floors, carpets, baseboards or walls, all that shit can lead to mould, bacteria, and fungus. People in the house can become sick months or even years later if we don’t do our job properly.”
A large silver canister-like vacuum stood next to the kitchen counter. They had mostly finished in here. The sink sparkled through the dimness. No human head occupied that gleaming cavity.
In the dining room, workmen used small shovels to lift lumps of congealed blood into plastic containers lined with heavy-duty bags. Others worked on mopping up the dark brown dried blood smeared throughout the room.
“We use enzyme solvent to liquefy the blood so we can get it off the floor, along with urine an
d other potentially infectious materials or OPIM, as we like to call them.”
“An acronym Ray would love,” Tree said.
“You can impress him at Fun Friday.”
“I doubt anything I do or say is going to impress Ray Dayton.”
“You know he’s jealous,” Todd said.
“Of me? You’re not serious.”
“He’s got a crush on your wife.” Tree looked at him. Todd shrugged. “Therefore, he’s jealous of you. You can see that, can’t you?”
“I’d like to think he hired Freddie for her brains and ability,” Tree said.
“He did. But in the meantime, he thinks he’s fallen in love with her.”
Tree decided it was time to change the subject. He nodded in the direction of the table where he had found the woman’s torso. “How long do you think she was dead?”
“The body starts to decompose within fifteen minutes after death,” Todd said. “So by the time we got here, I’d say she’d been dead for a couple of days.”
“Do the police have any idea who she is?”
“If they know, they’re not telling us. Of course, they don’t tell us much of anything. I hear you were looking for a short sale when you found the woman—or were you playing detective?”
“I don’t know if I would call it playing,” Tree said.
Todd laughed. “Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me. The cops probably don’t believe you, anyway. So what about it, Tree. You serious about this detective thing?”
“Look at me. I’m standing around watching you guys clean up OPIM.”
“Whatever went on in here, it doesn’t look as though anyone actually occupied the place. Or else they recently cleaned it out. There’s one other thing.”
Todd led him to the back of the house into a recreation room. It, too, was empty except for a hospital gurney in the middle of the room.
“What’s that doing here?”
“We wondered the same thing. When we got in here, I thought for sure they were using the place as a meth lab. We do a lot of those, let me tell you. But it was clean, nothing like you usually run into when you find a house they’re using to make street-grade methamphetamine, really nasty stuff like acetone, methanol, ammonia, benzene, iodine and hydrochloric acid. It all leaves a toxic residue that coats every surface and stays in the air, so there’s no doubt about what’s gone on.”
