by Carl Hiaasen
Evan Shook grinned, then winked. “You, my friend, just died and went to heaven.” As a precaution he’d arrived early to scout the downstairs for random carrion. He didn’t want a repeat of the bloated-raccoon fiasco that had ruined his prospects with the Texans.
“The bugs are chewing me alive,” Ipolene complained. “Can we please go inside? Such as it is.”
The tour of the unfinished house took a while, due to Woody Spillwright’s diminished lung capacity and his wife’s endless questions. Sidestepping stacks of drywall and raw lumber, Evan Shook remained chipper and upbeat, at one point even volunteering that he could be flexible on the price. He was eager for the Spillwrights to experience the spectacular vista from the master bedroom suite—lush green mangroves veined with azure creeks and gin-clear tidal pools. And beyond: the Gulf of Mexico.
It was Evan Shook’s belief that Mr. Spillwright would be so blown away by the exotic seascape that he would make an offer on the spot, providing he didn’t collapse in a wheezing phlegm-fest before reaching the top of the steps.
Eventually they made it, Woodrow’s wife shouldering him up to the final landing. After a recuperative pause, they entered the suite like wide-eyed pilgrims. Even Mrs. Spillwright seemed dazzled as she stood in the plywood frame of the unfinished bay window, a soft salty breeze on her cheeks.
“Well,” she said. “This is really something.”
Evan Shook wore the smile of a barracuda. “Didn’t I tell you?”
“It’s paradise,” croaked Woodrow Spillwright. Dreamily he took in the cries of the terns and gulls. “How soon will it be finished?”
“Depends.” Evan Shook cocked a hopeful eye toward Ipolene. “Would you two be interested in a custom kitchen? I can show you some sketches.”
Later, after the Spillwrights had been stabilized at the emergency room in Marathon, Evan Shook would ask himself how in the name of Jesus B. Christ he’d failed to notice the humongous beehive on the suite’s interior east wall. The oozing honeycomb was immense, at least six feet high and half again as wide. Yet the bees must have been calm when Evan Shook led the Spillwrights into the bedroom—of that he was certain. Otherwise he would have heard them buzzing, there were so damn many. Thousands? Millions?
Evan Shook speculated that the swarm must have been agitated by the scent of Ipolene’s perfume, which smelled like rotting orchids. Or perhaps the insects were roused by the heat of the morning sun. For whatever reason, the savage little bastards went ballistic.
With gravity now his ally, Woodrow Spillwright descended the stairway in a humping blur, his wife yowling on his heels while slapping the bees out of her hair. Evan Shook lagged behind to flail uselessly at the angry intruders. Barely a week had passed since he’d been up to the fourth floor, but evidently enough time had passed for the bees to construct a Vegas-style hive. If only his contractor worked half as fast, Evan Shook mused bitterly, the goddamn house would have been finished a year ago.
Although he got stung thirteen times, the pain was negligible compared to his distress at losing the sale. The Carolinians hit the ground running. By the time Evan Shook caught up, they were already locked inside the Cadillac, feverishly trying to make sense of the keyless ignition. Evan Shook was tapping plaintively on the glass when the engine revved to life, and he was forced to leap clear as old Woodrow peeled out. Through the tinted windshield Ipolene could be seen shaking a bee-bitten fist.
In the driveway next door stood Andrew Yancy, a newspaper tucked under one arm. He waved amiably as the Spillwrights sped off.
“Go on. Try it,” Lombardo said.
Yancy dubiously eyed the plate. Brennan was standing by their table, waiting.
“It’s yellowtail,” he said.
“I believe you.” Yancy took a small bite. The fish had been fried whole until crispy, Cuban-style. It tasted all right.
Brennan folded his arms. “See? Ain’t it the best?”
Lombardo said, “Give us a few minutes to talk.”
When they were alone, Yancy said, “It’s not exactly fresh, Tommy.”
“Yeah, but it’s not spoiled, right? It’s not fucking contaminated.”
“Last time I was here, that asshole tried to bribe me.”
“For God’s sake, Andrew, it’s the Keys. Eat your lunch.”
Yancy’s official job description was “sanitation and safety specialist.” Tommy Lombardo had been assigned to train him, more or less. Lombardo was FDA-certified but he was also a local. Shutting down a restaurant for code violations—not cool. In his entire career on roach patrol, Lombardo had never ordered an emergency closure. He wanted Yancy to let Stoney’s Crab Palace re-open that afternoon.
“They have a thing planned for that kid who got shot. Phinney? A fund-raiser to pay for his burial. There’s a country band lined up and everything,” Lombardo said. “Have a fucking heart.”
“The food service area is a maggot festival.”
“No, they cleaned it up. Why do you think I had you drive out here on a Saturday? Brennan, he’s been working like a dog.”
“Which is probably what he’s serving for an appetizer,” Yancy said.
Lombardo was exasperated. “See, this attitude of yours? Man, just ’cause you used to be a cop.… These are hard-working people. You can’t treat ’em like criminals.”
“The law says no vermin in the kitchen.”
“The law says? Okay, Andrew, the law also says you’re supposed to be certified by the state fire marshal. Are you? Nope. The law also says you’re supposed to take the food manager’s exam before you can work as a state inspector. Did you do that? Nope. You got this job because the sheriff made a phone call, which is no big deal, but all I’m sayin’ is let’s not get carried away with what the law says and so forth. Brennan’s a good guy who’s just tryin’ to make a fair living.”
Yancy pushed the plate away. “There was a used rubber in the oysters.”
“Yeah, I read your report.”
“How does that even happen?”
“It’s not all Brennan’s fault,” Lombardo said. “The employment pool down here, it’s sketchy. As a cop you should know.”
Yancy stood up from the table. “Well, let’s go have a peek.”
The kitchen was much cleaner, he had to admit. No rancid shellfish or rodent droppings were on display. Yancy swabbed the food preparation surfaces and checked the temperature in the refrigerators and salad cooler. Brennan, who was cracking stone crabs, proudly showed off his new hairnet. Yancy dropped down and shined a flashlight under the stove, where Brennan had apparently unloaded two or three cans of Raid. Yancy scooped up a handful of dead German cockroaches and a tick, which Lombardo shrugged off.
“There’s bug parts in your fucking raisin bran,” he whispered. “The government says it won’t hurt you.”
Brennan piped up: “Nilsson was crazy about my food.”
“He died from your food,” Yancy reiterated.
Lombardo shook his head. “No, no, it was something else.”
“Tommy, I read the autopsy. Hepatitis A.”
Brennan said, “Then he must’ve caught it from that sushi pit on Cudjoe. That place is naaaasty.”
Yancy nodded toward the fresh stone crabs piled on the cutting board. “Those are beauties.”
“Aren’t they?”
“Too bad they’re out of season until October.”
Brennan brought the mallet down on his thumb and yipped. “But these claws are imported from Panama. No—Mexico!”
“I think we’re just about done here,” Lombardo said.
“Wait a minute.” Yancy walked over to the stand-up freezer and pointed with the toe of his shoe. “Is that a tail? Tell me that’s not a tail.”
“Goddammit,” said Brennan.
Someone had slammed the freezer door on a rat.
“Least it’s not alive,” Lombardo observed. He was very much a glass-half-full breed of civil servant. “Come on, Andrew, have a heart.”
Yancy
grunted in capitulation. Snooping for E. coli didn’t make his adrenaline pump. He was way more interested in discovering how Nicholas Stripling got rich, and what Mrs. Stripling stood to gain from her husband’s death.
Lombardo gave Yancy some forms to sign, and Stoney’s was back in business. Brennan embraced Lombardo and extended an ungloved hand to Yancy, who shook it tepidly and headed straight for the restroom to scrub off the crab drippings.
When he returned to the dining area, he found Lombardo alone at a table, polishing off the remains of the yellowtail and a pitcher of sangria. Brennan stood at the bar talking to Madeline, Phinney’s hard-luck girlfriend, who had come to arrange the memorial fish fry.
“Be right back,” Yancy said to Lombardo.
“Hey, take your time.”
As soon as Madeline spotted Yancy approaching, she bolted out the fire exit. He hurried after her but she was already on her bicycle, pedaling like a maniac down Shrimp Road.
Lombardo came out the door squinting into the sunlight. “What’d you do to scare that poor woman?”
Yancy truly had no idea. He took a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and placed it in Lombardo’s hand. “Put this in the jar,” he said, “for the kid’s funeral fund.”
“Where are you going? Brennan wants you to try the chowder.”
“Not until they find a vaccine,” said Yancy, and jogged for his car.
“This is exactly what I’m talking about!” Lombardo yelled after him. “You gotta work on your fucking people skills!”
Caitlin Cox stepped off the airplane in Key West without her husband. Yancy couldn’t get much out of her on the drive to the Marriott—small talk about the asinine security lines at Miami International, the bumpy flight, the sweaty Canadian dude sitting next to her.
Yancy waited at the hotel bar while she checked in. Twenty minutes passed, half an hour. He felt like a cop again. Maybe she was getting a massage.
He was about to go upstairs and pound on her door when she finally made her entrance, having changed into a tank top and black capri slacks. She wore the same jumbo sunglasses that she’d had on at the funeral. She sat down on the bar stool beside Yancy and said, “You ready? Don’t you have a notebook or something?”
“Just tell me what you found out.”
“Dad had a two-million-dollar life insurance policy. Guess who’s getting it all?”
“Doesn’t mean she murdered him,” Yancy said.
Caitlin looked annoyed. “That’s a shitload of money, Inspector.” She ordered a Grey Goose martini.
Yancy asked why she and her father hadn’t spoken to each other for so long.
“What difference does that make?”
“Was it because of Eve?”
“She told him I had a drug problem, which I did. Ancient history. She also told him I was stealing from him, which I wasn’t. Don’t you want a drink?”
“Iced tea, thanks. How old are you, Caitlin?”
She laughed. “Almost twenty-four. I know what you’re thinking.”
“How long have you been straight?”
“Two years. Okay, nineteen months.” She picked up a menu. “How’s the swordfish?”
Yancy said, “I honestly wouldn’t know.” One of these days he’d be inspecting the hotel’s kitchen. “Most guys like your father own big life insurance policies. That’s not unusual.”
“Eve told him I was snorting heroin, which was none of her business. I was a model, okay? That stuff was everywhere. But I never stole a nickel from Dad. Now, did I run up some credit card bills? Yeah, but that’s not the same as embezzlement or fraud, whatever. Anyway, Dad cut me off so I told him to go fuck himself, and that was it. He never called me back, and I never called him. Do I feel shitty about that? Yeah, but I can’t change what happened.”
The bartender brought a tall glass of tea and some cocktail nuts. Yancy was reaching for a pecan when he thought he saw it move. He yanked away his hand and, with a straw, cautiously probed the bowl for lurking insects. None were to be found, of course. These days he was imagining crawlers everywhere, a dispiriting occupational hazard.
Caitlin said, “You some kinda germ freak?”
Yancy selected a different pecan and, in hopes of appearing normal, popped it gaily into his mouth. “Have one,” he said.
“Uh, no thanks.”
He chomped down forcefully with his molars to pulverize the nut, just in case. Caitlin checked her iPhone for messages. “There was this girl, back when I was modeling? She was from Austria, natural blonde, and she had a germ thing, like you. Every night she filled the bathtub with Purell and soaked for, like, an hour. Seriously.”
“Did you know your dad had retired?” Yancy asked.
“Is that what my stepmother told you? That lying thundercunt. Dad wouldn’t ever quit working, not ever.”
“But how would you know? You hadn’t spoken to him in years.”
She glared. “Whose side are you on anyway?”
“Nobody’s. Tell me what he did for a living.”
“Eve didn’t clue you in? He sold electric scooter chairs to old folks that can’t walk very good. So they can motor themselves from the kitchen to the bathroom, whatever. Haven’t you seen those infocommercials?”
Caitlin ordered another martini, and seemed pleased when the bartender belatedly asked to check her ID.
“They’re fast little buggers, those scooters,” she went on. “Dad mopped up, too. I mean—Florida? Hullo? There are so many geezers down here.”
Yancy had seen the TV ads late at night. In addition to the chairs’ compact turning radius, a main selling point was that elderly customers didn’t have to pay out of their own pockets; Medicare covered the cost.
It was possible that Nick Stripling had retired honestly, Yancy thought, but more likely he’d been running a scam and shut it down before the feds nailed him. That could explain the two plainclothes Ken dolls at the graveside service.
“How do you know your father didn’t just pack it in and go fishing? Sounds like a sweet retirement.”
Caitlin was adamant. “Not Dad. No way.”
“There were a couple guys at the funeral who looked like federal agents,” Yancy said. “Was Nick having any problems with the law?”
“No! I mean, I don’t think so. You should go ask Eve. Ha! Good luck with that.”
“Nobody from the government ever spoke to you?”
Caitlin fidgeted. “A few years back, when Dad and I were still tight, he had some hassles with the IRS. I mean, who doesn’t, right? But he got it all straightened out.”
Yancy asked how she’d met her husband, and she seemed perturbed that he’d changed the subject.
“Simon worked security on some of my fashion shoots. He’s the one who got me off dope. He used to be an MP in the army, did a couple tours in Iraq. But getting back to Eve, here’s something else: She’s already trying to get the court in Miami to declare Dad legally dead! That’s how bad she wants to get her slutty paws on the insurance. But Simon says it takes five years in a missing persons case.”
Yancy said, “Not if they find something.”
“Even just an arm?”
“Any persuasive evidence of death. An airplane crashes, sometimes all that’s left of a victim is a burned wallet or a shoe or a shred of skin. That’s enough for most judges. They won’t make a family wait five whole years.”
Caitlin was getting more peeved. “What the fuck is your problem? Everything I say, you knock it down. How much did Eve pay you?”
“I’m holding out for new Michelins on the Subaru.”
“She murdered my father for two million bucks, okay? Any jackass can figure that out.”
“Dial it down,” Yancy said. He nodded at the bartender, who smoothly retreated. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, Caitlin. I’m saying you need more proof if you want the cops to get fired up.”
She raised her hands. “I thought you were the cops.”
Yancy made up something about foll
owing chain of command. Caitlin would be on the next flight to the mainland if she knew he was assigned to restaurant inspections.
“What about the boat sinking?” she demanded. “That story was so bogus.”
A week earlier, the hull of Nick Stripling’s boat had been located under seventy-five feet of water off the coast of Marathon, in the same area where the debris had been recovered. There was no money in the local Coast Guard budget to raise the Summer’s Eve, even if investigators had wanted to. The official report said the vessel likely had capsized in rough seas.
“Somebody pulled the plug,” Caitlin Cox asserted, “after Dad was already dead.”
“So, hire a salvage company,” Yancy said.
“How much would that cost?”
“A lot. It’s a major job.”
“Shit.”
Yancy decided it was too soon to mention what he knew about the small shark tooth removed from Nick Stripling’s arm. “Eve told me your father wasn’t much of a swimmer.”
Caitlin slammed her drink on the bar. “Are you kidding me?”
“Yet she put his favorite speargun in the casket, which seemed weird,” Yancy said. “Most spear divers I know can swim like a fish.”
“Dad was a damn porpoise, I’m not kidding. He could hold his breath forever. Now do you believe me about Eve? The reason she said he was a shitty swimmer was to make it seem like he just gave out and drowned after the boat went down. Which would never happen.”
“Besides the insurance money, did she have any other reason to kill him?”
Caitlin leaned close. “Try a hot boyfriend.”
“Go on,” said Yancy.
“In the Bahamas!”
“You know this for a fact?”
“Let’s move to a booth,” she said.
Eight
The salesman at the Ford dealership informed Eve Stripling that the import duty on a new SUV in the Bahamas was 75 percent, a figure she made him repeat. After doing the math in her head, she realized that the new Explorer she’d been eyeing would cost, like, sixty-five grand.
“That’s robbery,” she observed.
“But I’m afraid it’s the law,” the salesman said sadly.
