Southernmost Murder

by C. S. Poe

  I crossed my arms. “I told you it was real.”

  “Makes me wonder if Cassidy was doing any sort of surveillance on the Smith Home,” Jun stated, looking at Tillman. “To have gotten in and out as quickly as he did.”

  “We’ve not found evidence of that, but I’ll be sure to check,” Tillman said, nodding as if he sort of agreed with Jun’s assessment. He quickly snapped on a pair of latex gloves from his coat pocket, then pointed a small flashlight into the unit. He ducked his head and climbed into the mess.

  “What’ll happen to the skeleton?” I asked, loudly so Tillman could hear. I moved away from Jun to the opposite wall of units, keeping the distance between me and Skelly as big as possible so I didn’t touch any of the broken bones. “If it’s really Smith, he needs to be put to rest in the family plot.”

  “First, it’ll go to the county medical examiner,” Tillman said.

  “Smith was missing his left eye,” I continued. “And his personal diaries talk of breaking his hand and ribs in his younger years. If those can be confirmed by a doctor—”

  “Yes, yes,” Tillman said, cutting me off as he came back out of the unit. “If it’s Smith, I’ll make sure you folks are able to do what you need for him.” He held out a small, black leather book perhaps no longer than five inches. “Is this the diary of a merchant sailor?”

  “Do you have any gloves so I can touch it?”

  Tillman reached into his pocket before offering me a pair of latex gloves.

  I took them. “It really should be handled with cotton gloves.”

  He frowned.

  “This’ll do for now,” I added quickly before taking the booklet. Jun moved around the skeleton to my side, both men peering over my shoulders as I gently pulled the leather clasp free. “It’s in amazing condition. Usually this clasp is the first part of the leather to deteriorate and break off.”

  I opened the book, the front page stamped in big letters: DIARY, 1867, NEW YORK. It had lovely artwork of fairies around the wording. At the time, it was a generic diary designed for the masses. The left page featured a list of memorable events occurring throughout the year, as well as information on stamps and postage. I caught a faded signature on the title page and brought it closer to try to decipher it.

  “I hate entries in pencil. They’re impossible to read—but I’m fairly certain this name is Edward R. Rogers.”

  “That’s him?” Jun asked.

  “That’s him,” I confirmed. I turned the pages carefully. Nearly every predated entry had a short line or two written by the owner. “I’m sure the man kept many years of diaries, but this is the one that was stolen, so the entry Peg mentioned, about Smith and Jack, it has to be in here somewhere.” I looked at Tillman. “I don’t suppose you’ll let me read through it?”

  He took the diary back—carefully, I noted. “Do you believe a long-dead pirate is the reason Cassidy was murdered?”

  “Yes,” I said automatically. “I believe that Cassidy was searching for a lost treasure, supposedly once salvaged by One-Eyed Jack. There may be a clue in the diary that can point us to Cassidy’s motives and who may have been with him last night.”

  Tillman looked at the booklet. “Meet me back at the station.” He pulled back the sleeve of his coat to check his watch. “I need a few hours to deal with this,” he continued while waving a hand at the skeleton. “Say, four o’clock.”

  I WAS hungry and tired when we left Store Yourself, and really not in the mood to go back and forth from Stock Island eighteen hundred more times. But considering Tillman didn’t have to let me look at that diary for any reason whatsoever? It was pretty cool of him to agree. And without tooting my own horn, it was true that I knew the most about Smith. If there was any chance I could find the reason for Cassidy being in the Smith Home that would in turn lead to his murderer, I don’t think Tillman would pass the opportunity up, regardless of whether he liked me or not.

  Plus, he was still playing nice with Jun to keep the Feds out of his hair in any sort of official capacity.

  “Let’s get lunch,” Jun said as he started the car.

  I lowered the passenger seat to lie down more comfortably. “Pick any place,” I said around a yawn. “I’m going to take a quick nap.”

  “Would you rather go home?” Jun asked. “I can make us lunch—”

  I waved a hand lazily. “It’s okay,” I murmured. “You know I can sleep anywhere. At work I sleep under my desk.”

  “All right,” Jun said, and I could hear the smile in his voice.

  Traffic through Key West could be hairy at times, since the town had been doing construction for what felt like forever. Sometimes it got backed up between New and Old Town, and for those who commuted to Key West from the Upper Keys for work? Forget it. It was as much of a headache as riding the L train to Williamsburg during rush hour. So I wasn’t terribly surprised that, when I woke up, we were just getting back into Old Town.

  “We could have eaten in New Town,” I said around a yawn.

  “Chain food,” Jun said, deftly moving around a group of girls on bikes weaving in and out of traffic. “I can eat junk anywhere.”

  “I guess so. There’s a nice little café on the next street, if you want something like that.”

  “Perfect.” Jun took the turn I indicated and stole a parking spot on the side of the road before the car behind had a chance to cut him off and grab it. We got out, and Jun paid the meter again, then joined me on the sidewalk. He was still wearing his shoulder holster and coat.

  “You don’t have to keep wearing that.”

  He glanced down, almost like he’d forgotten.

  “The donuts aren’t going to open fire.”

  “Does it make you uncomfortable?”

  “No.”

  Jun took my hand and changed the subject as we walked to the café at the end of the block. “When we both have vacation time again, I’d love to take you to Japan.”

  “Yeah?” I asked, perking up. “Even though I don’t speak a lick of Japanese?”

  “Doesn’t matter. You’ll be with me. Plus, there’s enough English and romaji to get around.”

  “What the hell is romaji?” I asked.

  Jun’s mouth quirked. “Japanese words written in the Latin alphabet.”

  “Oh. Derp.”

  He chuckled. “Would you like that?”

  “Totally,” I said. “Do you have any family there?”

  “No. My sister, Misako, and parents all still live in DC.”

  Jun was a born-and-bred American, but his parents were from Japan and understood the importance of having their children learn about their Japanese roots. He’d told me years ago about his family speaking English in public, and at home he and his sister were schooled in Japanese. By high school Jun was also fluent in Mandarin, something he and Matt had in common, which I guess was probably what brought them together on the job.

  Jun opened the door to the café and followed me inside.

  “Welcome to Southernmost Coffee and Tea,” a chipper guy at the counter said. “What can I get you?”

  I approached, eyeing the menu briefly before saying, “Decaf coffee and—oh my God, is that a maple candied bacon cronut?”

  The guy glanced in the glass case. “Yup. It’s pretty good too.”

  “That. I’ll take that.”

  “For lunch?” Jun murmured behind me.

  “Yes, for lunch!” I looked at the employee and shook my head. “I can’t take him anywhere.”

  He laughed and motioned to Jun. “For you, sir?”

  “Since we’re having dessert for lunch, a regular coffee and the key lime cronut.”

  I paid for the… uh, lunch, and Jun carried the tray out to the porch. We sat at a free table among a number of other patrons, enjoying the picture-perfect day, cool breeze, and a very unhealthy meal. For a moment I was able to disregard the fact that we were knee-deep in a murder and long-lost pirate treasure mystery.

  Jun was smiling and watchi
ng as I wrecked my cronut. “Good?” he finally asked.

  “Yes,” I said around bites. “Candied bacon, Jun. This is a gift to humanity.”

  He cut his cronut into more accessible pieces. “I figured key lime because, when in Rome….”

  “Yeah, if you went ten days without trying at least one of the thousand things we key lime-ify down here, you’d be insulting the entire island.” I watched Jun eat for a passing moment. “Hey.”

  He looked up.

  “When did you tell your parents?”

  “That I was an FBI agent?” Jun asked dryly.

  “No.”

  He chuckled and set his utensils aside. “I didn’t tell them until I was in college.” He took a sip of coffee.

  “Why’s that?”

  Jun shrugged and set the drink down. “I suppose the same reason so many wait to mention it. I was afraid of how they’d react.”

  My heart beat a little harder. “Was it bad?” I asked, hearing my own voice drop to a near whisper.

  But Jun gave me a little smile. “No. Not really. In retrospect, had I known what their reaction would be, I’d have said something earlier to spare myself the turmoil. But it wasn’t the sort of thing discussed in our family.” He leaned back, staring at his cronut for a moment. “I guess I sort of assumed they’d react poorly, which I then regretted for a long time. But my father is rather traditional, and with me being the oldest and the son….”

  I leaned over and patted Jun’s thigh. “But everything is okay with you guys?”

  Jun put his hand over mine. “Yes.” He let out a breath and picked up his fork once more. “It actually opened a dialogue between us that wasn’t there before. I think my parents would like you.”

  My heart went thumpy thumpy. The idea of meeting his parents was both terrifying and extremely exciting. I stuffed another bite of cronut into my mouth and said around the food, “Earlier today, I was thinking about why Cassidy was in the home.”

  “Have any ideas?”

  I took a sip of my decaf. “A treasure map.”

  Jun raised an eyebrow. “How’d you decide that?”

  “Well, let’s say, for the sake of argument, I’ve been wrong and that Smith is Jack.”

  Jun nodded.

  “And that the Santa Teresa was a real ship, and it did sink, and there was a fortune lost somewhere in the waters off Key West.”

  “That’s quite a lot of ‘for the sake of argument,’” Jun pointed out.

  “I know, but let’s say in every instance I was wrong and Cassidy was right.”

  “Very well.”

  “Glen mentioned Cassidy believing Jack found the lost Spanish treasure in 1871, the same year he disappeared from public accounts. It’s the same year Smith died under mysterious and conflicting circumstances. And yet, if he did discover the mother lode, where’d it go? How do that many coins just vanish? Maybe Jack hid them before he died. Maybe he even died because of the coins.”

  “I’ve never heard you say ‘maybe’ so many times when it comes to history,” Jun said warily.

  I made a face and shook my head. “Believe me, to say any of this without facts and evidence is making the cronut come back up, but it makes sense, doesn’t it? Cassidy was convinced of all of this, and why else would he break into Smith’s home but to look for a clue as to where the fortune was stashed? And since we’re dealing with pirates, it has to be a map.”

  Jun sipped his coffee again. “I suppose I can see where you’re going with this.”

  “The map is in the captain’s study,” I continued. “That’s where you saw evidence of people.”

  “Yes, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you if something was amiss more than the knocked over ropes.”

  “And until the police let us in, we can’t say for certain if anything was taken by the Smith Ghost intruder,” I concluded. “But I can guess.”

  “How?”

  “One of Smith’s actual maps was on display.” I held my hands out, palms up. “This far into the game, I’d be shocked if it hasn’t been stolen.”

  Jun was quiet in response, ruminating on the shaky facts and assumptions.

  I took another sip of my decaf before asking, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “Why?”

  “Someone killed Cassidy. And… I know it was a man. A living, breathing man. But I can’t deny that who I saw upstairs might as well have been Smith’s twin. And the phone calls—Don’t go back inside, and saying he was Smith.”

  “Someone is trying to intimidate you, that’s all.”

  “So is that a no?”

  Jun sighed. “In Japan there is an event called Obon. For many in this day and age, it’s seen more as the time of year to have a family gathering, but it stems from the belief that in summer, the spirits of loved ones return to visit the homes of their relatives. Families travel to clean the graves of their ancestors, and shrines are given candles and fruit.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “My point is, these beliefs are hundreds of years old, and all around the world, you hear stories of ghosts. Perhaps this worldwide phenomenon originated for good reason.” Jun smiled.

  “Nice and cryptic, thanks.”

  “Do I believe Smith is haunting the home? No. But I do believe someone wants you to think that.”

  THE RADIO didn’t really play Jun’s preferred music—considering most of it was pretty explicit or indie, like whoa, but all the back-and-forth driving we’d done that day proved that occasionally something would come on that he liked. I just found it a little amusing that my straightlaced G-man knew all the lyrics to songs like Styx’s “Renegade.” He murmured the words under his breath, his deep baritone adding that little extra oomph a song about running from the law probably should have had to begin with.

  “Did you know this song was released on their album, Pieces of Eight?” Jun asked.

  “So?”

  “Isn’t that the type of Spanish coin that sank on the supposed Teresa?”

  “Yeah, but—oh. That’s freaky.”

  He chuckled.

  “It’s like a sign.”

  “But what sort?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe we’re on the right track.”

  I’d asked Jun if we could burn the last of our free time at the library before going back to Stock Island. Not that I hadn’t spent hours and hours and hours researching and combing through the archives there already, but I’d always been looking for photographs and documents on Smith. And while I was sure Cassidy had done his fair share of work on Jack at the library, I couldn’t be certain of how far he’d gotten.

  The woman who managed the archives was… how do I say… particular. And by particular, I mean, if she wasn’t impressed by the person inquiring their first time, she’d never let them dig through her endless supply of history. Yes, I know, it was a public library and they couldn’t exactly restrict the public, but she was about two hundred years old and there was just no reasoning with a gal like that.

  Miss Louise Marble had a real passive-aggressive way of turning down the folks who wanted to look through her records in the climate-controlled room. If she didn’t like the person, or didn’t believe them to be a serious historian, she simply said, “Oh no, we don’t have anything on that subject in the archives.”

  I very well knew she did, but she’d clam up and just stare at the person until they left. If the research being done wasn’t to the benefit of Key West, a reputation she was extremely protective of, you’d better believe nothing would be gained from the library. Now, because my work had been in favor of Smith’s legacy, I’d proven my validity to Miss Louise fairly early on in my transition down to the Keys. She was still a bit persnickety regarding my “freshwater Conch” status, but was thrilled with the restoration I’d conducted on the home, so I guessed that was worth more to her than me not being a true local.

  Lou Cassidy, though? Conch or not, he’d been trying to defame Smith in my mind, and most likely in hers as well.
I doubt he’d gained much access. So now that I was essentially hunting down the same information, I’d need to be careful how I went about wording my research needs. I couldn’t afford to be on Louise’s shit list.

  The Monroe County Public Library, with its pinkish building front, was on Fleming Street. Jun parked nearby and followed me up the steps to the front doors. I waved to a few employees who saw me come in before making my way to the archive area. The building had a hushed sense of calm about it, that particular sort of quiet that could be found nowhere but libraries. It was relaxing, albeit nap-inducing at times.

  “Miss Louise,” I said, louder than I would have spoken in a library, except that she wouldn’t have heard me otherwise. “How are you, dear?”

  Louise looked up from her work, her stern expression softening ever so slightly around the edges. “Well, well. I haven’t seen you in some time, Aubrey. You just took what you needed and that was it, was it?”

  See? Like a grandma you never want to be on the wrong side of because she’ll remember how you upset her when your birthday came around and you’d get nothing but a check for four dollars and eighteen cents.

  “I’d never, Louise,” I answered. I offered a little takeout container—a cronut I’d bought before we left the café—because a little wooing never hurt anyone. “Apple crème. It’s a limited flavor.”

  Louise took the container and gave the cronut a suspicious look through her bifocals before eventually smiling. “You’re a good boy, Aubrey.”

  “Thank you.”

  She looked at Jun standing behind me. “Introduce me,” Louise chastised.

  “Oh, sorry. Louise, this is Jun Tanaka. He’s visiting from New York. Jun, this is Louise Marble, the smartest woman on the island.”

  “Ma’am,” Jun said, reaching out to gently shake her extended hand.

  “Aubrey likes to suck up to me,” she said to Jun before giving me a look that could peel paint. “But I don’t mind because he’s good at it. Except I still don’t like that nose ring, mister,” she concluded, giving me another hard glare. She didn’t like my nose ring, my earrings, my hair, my shoes—but she wasn’t hardly as critical of anyone else, and considering the access she gave me to the old records, I think her intense dislike was some sort of weird approval.