Bone Deep (24 page)

“I don’t
have sex
, Marion. Making love, is what I call it, and it
is
a
big deal. That’s not going to change. But there are other kinds of closeness. Like tonight, I was tying up at the dock—this was after my late charter—and Loretta came out and yells, ‘No matter what the sheriff says, I didn’t do it!’ Can you imagine?”

I smiled. “Your mother’s a character.”

“She used some swearwords, too, so right away I knew she’d done
something
. Used to be, I’d call you and we could laugh about whatever it was. Not just Loretta’s behavior, of course. Whatever was on my mind. That’s what I wanted to tell you. No matter what, I want to keep our friendship.”

“What did Loretta do?”

I was being too literal or sounded overly concerned. Hannah explained, “It’s not what she did. I miss talking. Not the serious talks—lord knows, we’ve had enough of those. Just picking up the phone and gabbing about things. Birdy and I, we send texts back and forth, and we talk, but it’s different talking to a man. You, I mean. Not just
any
man.”

“I appreciate that,” I said.

Hannah yawned. “I’m being silly . . . and it’s late.”

I liked the way this was going and wanted to keep it alive. “It’s weird you brought it up. Not fifteen minutes ago, I was talking to Duncan’s aunt in Montana. She’d ask me to call. First thing I wanted to do when I hung up was tell you about it.”

“Really?”

“I know exactly how you feel.”

“Talking like friends,” Hannah agreed, “I miss that. Did Duncan’s aunt say anything about the owl carvings? The way that stone felt when I held it, I’d like to know more.”

I’d chosen the wrong topic for light conversation but trusted Hannah enough to stay on track. “Actually, she told me about three
stones, plus some other artifacts. Have you heard of the American Indian Movement? Twenty years ago or more—Duncan’s aunt wasn’t sure of the dates—she came to Venice Beach with some other AIM members on a protest bus. Something happened there that she’s ashamed of.”

I pictured Hannah sitting up in bed, heard the click of a light switch, serious enough about the subject not to push for a quick explanation. “What’s her name?”

“Rachel. She was married but went back to her maiden name, Rachel Fallsdown. Tomlinson’s known her for a long time.”

“Did she bring the owl stones to Florida? I’m guessing she lost them somehow.”

“That’s not when it happened. Her group came to Venice to protest a collection of Indian relics owned by”—I decided to omit Finn Tovar’s name—“Well, it doesn’t matter, but a guy who was disliked by Florida Indians—Seminoles, Miccosukee—and I don’t blame them. Rachel at the time must have had a drug problem. She didn’t tell me that, I’m guessing. Somehow she got involved with the guy, this collector, and he paid her cash to become what they call a pot hunter.”

“Is that like
pot hauling
? Rachel shouldn’t blame herself if she needed money.” Hannah was more tolerant of smuggling marijuana than most because of where she lived and how she’d grown up.

“Out west, pot hunters are people who dig up Indian relics. And, yes, Rachel did it for money. The collector put her in touch with more buyers. She sold the owl carvings and some other things to different people over the space of a few years. Then her conscience started getting to her, so she stopped and turned traditional, went back to the reservation. Duncan doesn’t know she’s the one who stole the carvings.”

Hannah processed the obvious questions in silence. “She was right to trust you, Marion. Now she wants to make amends. I hate to ask, but how long does she have to live?”

I didn’t remember saying that Duncan’s aunt was dying, and it didn’t matter. Hannah, with her good instincts, had figured it out. “Pancreatic cancer is fast,” I said. “She’s already on a morphine drip.”

“Does she know you’re the one who stole that owl stone back? I’m wondering why she didn’t confess to Tomlinson . . . No, wait. He probably slept with her, and it’s none of my business anyway. What’s important is that you find the other carving before she dies. That’s why she wants them, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think I would’ve liked Rachel if I’d met her a few years ago,” I said. “And vice versa. She’s a good person, though. She wants a clear conscience, and to do all she can for her tribe before she goes. I was struck by that—we all make mistakes. We all run out of time.”

Hannah said, “Heaven knows,” with a familiar huskiness in her voice that made me want to see her, not turn left at the stop sign ahead, Dinkin’s Bay and my lab not far. Which she sensed. “I’m glad you told me. Maybe I can help. A private investigator is allowed computer access to files you wouldn’t be able to open.”

Hannah, who had inherited a part-time agency from her uncle, didn’t know I had friends who worked for the world’s most sophisticated spy agencies—the NSA and others. And that’s the way it had to stay, but I indulged her, saying, “Sure—would you mind running a background check on a few people?”

Dalton and Harris Sanford, and Owen Hall were the names I wanted to give her.

While Hannah got pen and paper, I decided there was something I could admit. When she returned to the phone, I told her I
was diving with Mick’s group in the afternoon and, on Sunday, joining Mick and several other collectors at an unnamed spot on the Peace River.

“This isn’t just about the owl stones, is it?” she said.

Good. She’d figured that out, too.

I replied, “It depends on what the Florida Wildlife cops find and who they arrest when they get there,” and used an insider’s inflection to communicate what I couldn’t say.

A bad-boy glint came into Hannah’s voice. “Why, Marion Ford. You never struck me as the tricky type—but, then, my Uncle Jake didn’t either.”

“I’m too straight, you mean.”

She said, “I don’t know about that, but it would be nice to believe you’re not a drug-smuggling criminal.”

“Believe it,” I said.

“I want to,” Hannah replied, then rewarded me by saying, “That leaves you with Monday open, sounds like. Why don’t the two of us go fishing—just you and me?”

The next afternoon, as I stepped through the gate into the elephant’s pasture, Leland Albright told me, “Years ago, redneck kids lived around here and they’d shoot at him with pellet rifles. A .22, a couple of times, and tranquilizer darts. Used the poor old boy for target practice out of pure meanness.”

“Tranquilizer darts?” I said. “How did kids get ahold of something like that?”

“Every cattleman in the area uses them. Shooting a steer with a pneumatic rifle is a lot easier than culling him out of the herd, then roping him. That’s why Toby doesn’t come to the fence for strangers. Elephants are smart.”

Toby was plodding toward us but not in a rush. With Owen, I remembered, the elephant had stayed away.

It was nearly sunset. In my truck, where plywood now covered the broken window, my dive gear was still wet from diving with Mick’s fossil group.

Leland commented on how vicious people could be, then said, “If it was the twins, Toby would move a lot faster. I don’t get out
here much. Plus, it’s bad for animals to associate people with food. Try to tell Tricia that. Esther is the steady one, but she’s just as bad when it comes to spoiling Toby.”

It was an opening to ask about the twins. Did he know about yesterday’s screaming match between Ava and Tricia? Instead, I waited while Leland unlocked the block-and-steel building I’d thought was for storage but had a little office, too. Bars on the windows beneath a metal roof painted white to deflect heat; cool inside, with air-conditioning, and fluorescent lights that snapped on.

Something else: Chipped megalodon teeth and other fossils were scattered haphazardly on the desk and cabinets as common as golf balls at a driving range. I followed him through the office into another room with a steel door that locked—two antique gun vaults and cabinets inside—then into a double garage, where there was a tractor, tools, and maintenance stuff but no scuba equipment that I saw. A pneumatic rifle, though, stood in a rack next to a medicine cabinet.

Leland noticed me looking at it and said, “The redneck kids didn’t bother loading the darts with tranquilizer. They did it just to shoot at something alive out of meanness. Even if they had, Toby’s hide is too thick.”

On the bench was a packet of darts, needles an inch and a half long. I asked, “How does Owen get along with the elephant?”

“Okay, I guess. No, that’s not exactly true. When Madison and I first married, he was only four, and he had a bad experience. Toby was just being friendly, but Owen has kept his distance ever since.” Then Leland touched a button to open the garage, me blinking at the sudden sunlight. Outside, pasture sloped toward cattails and the pond, the skeleton of a barn beyond.

“When my father was alive, I stayed out here by myself a lot. We didn’t get along, but I guess that’s typical.” He handed me the lid from a storage container. “How’s your son doing?”

“Haven’t heard from him,” I responded, then asked, “Have you ever dived that pond?” It threw him for a moment, but then he saw me staring across the pasture.

“Oh, I forgot. You need more water samples.”

“My dive gear’s in the truck,” I said.

Leland kept his hands busy while he told me, “That’s a bad idea. There are snakes as thick as your leg down there. Gators, too, sometimes, but the gators don’t last long.”

“Why’s that?”

“Like I said, elephants are smart. My grandfather’s first one was a bull—bigger than Toby, even—this huge guy, but sweet as could be unless he saw an alligator. He’d stomp them to death. Thought they were crocs, I guess—something in their brain from way back in jungle times. Toby’s the same way. They all are. Did you look at the pictures Owen gave you?”

I said, “I’m not sure what you mean,” then remembered the old photos I’d looked at in the Jeep. “Oh—Barnabus, that was the first elephant’s name,” I said. “Him, and there were at least four others in a couple of shots. From what I know about boys—though you grew up here, Leland, and it’s hard to imagine a boy not going in for a swim. What about Owen?”

“Swim in the pond, you mean?”

“He told me he likes to dive.”

“Neither one of us, no way. The elephants own that pond—ask the gators,” Leland replied, then closed the subject by asking why I hadn’t heard from my son.

We talked about that while he did a few things, then carried what looked like a block of brown salt outside. Heavy, like a salt lick for cattle, although I wondered. Toby was waiting, but at a distance.

“He doesn’t know you,” Leland explained. “Those damn rednecks terrorized him for years. As much as he loves this stuff, he still remembers.”

A block of molasses, is what I suspected, but asked, “Is that salt?”

Leland said, “Watch this,” standing close enough for me to smell alcohol on his breath. Then used a post to shatter the block, the largest piece slipping from his hand. Said, “Damn . . .” and picked it up, calling, “Toby . . . Hey. Say hello to our visitor!”

It was a command. Twenty yards away, the elephant’s head bobbed, he trumpeted a halfhearted farting sound.

Leland glanced at me for approval, then ordered, “Toby—wave!”

The elephant flapped a haze of flies from his ears and lifted one massive front foot.

“Good boy.” Leland held out the block. The elephant approached, a white cattle egret settling itself on his back. “When he was younger, he could do all the tricks. Rear up on his hind legs, all the basics, but I don’t make the old boy work for it anymore. You reach a certain age, you know?” The man smiled, relaxing for the first time since I’d arrived half an hour earlier.

It was after seven, the sun hot above cypress trees at the water’s edge, yet the sun vanished behind Toby’s gray mass as he neared. A musky peat bog odor and buzzing flies accompanied him. His trunk, framed by ivory tusks, became a separate creature, extending, mouthing the air for taste, then swiping the block from Leland’s hand and slinging it into his mouth.

Wave a magic wand and shrink yourself to the size of a chimp.
That’s what I felt like, standing next to a five-ton bull elephant, when his trunk snaked toward me and sniffed my crotch.

“You’re okay,” Leland said, “he’s harmless.”

“I hope he’s not looking for peanuts,” I replied, “Right now, he could mistake me for female.”

Introverts process humor by first inspecting it for sarcasm. A beat later, Leland laughed, patted the animal’s trunk. “You wouldn’t want to walk in here with a pellet rifle. That’s why we have all the gates and fences and signs. Damn rednecks, but ol’ Toby here has never hurt a flea.” Another friendly pat on the trunk. “Have ya, big fella? Sometimes I wish you’d caught one of those brats.”

I replied, “Who could blame him?” aware the elephant’s saucer-sized eye, a star-black cornea linked to a brain, was focused on me. From the nearby pond floated the scent of carrion, but no vultures were feeding in the cattails. Yes, he remembered crushing the gator . . . And he remembered me.

Leland dusted his hands together, saying, “Eat the rest, old-timer,” and returned to the garage. I walked backward until the elephant released me by concentrating on what was scattered on the ground.

“Cane sugar,” Leland explained. “My grandfather used a great big pot to boil it down for the elephants. Now we buy it in blocks. The twins would let the old boy founder on the stuff if I didn’t keep this building locked.”

Another opening to ask about Ava and Tricia, but I waited. Better if Leland brought it up himself.

•   •   •

NO . . . BETTER TO WAIT
until Leland pretended to find a bottle of Smirnoff in the office mini-fridge, saying, “Wonder who left this?”

“Maybe they left some mixer, too,” I hinted.

The third in line to the Albright fortune appreciated that. “I guess the sun’s over the yardarm, so why not? I’ve had two of the worst days
ever
.” He looked up from the fridge. “You probably already heard what happened yesterday. Esther didn’t tell me until late last night.”

The yelling match. Yes, he knew.

Stupid to play stupid, so I said, “The scene at your pool? Yeah, from Tomlinson.” The building had central air but was cooler here in the office, which was small—a desk, a file cabinet, and two chairs on rollers, vinyl on both chairs cracked. I chose the one without armrests and sat, placing my canvas briefcase beside the chair.

Leland found plastic cups and ice, saying, “Smirnoff . . . it’s crap compared to Grey Goose. Stoli’s okay. Belvedere’s better,” then poured. “What did your friend say about their argument? Esther only gave me the censored version, and I don’t believe a damn thing Ava tells me anymore.”

His daughter Tricia, I guessed, had refused to talk.

I said, “This is the sort of third-party situation where I’ve told my son never to open his mouth.”

“Good advice.” Leland, no longer relaxed, poured another inch into his cup, handed me mine, and sat, stretching his long legs. “But, Doc, put yourself in my place. It’s not like you’re being paid to breach a confidence. You still haven’t cashed that check—I called today.”

I tilted the ice to my lips but didn’t drink. How carefully had Esther censored the truth? That’s what was holding me back.

Leland said, “Jesus Christ, I deserve to know the whole story. I’m asking you as a favor. Wouldn’t you want to know?”

I said, “Yes, I would,” which made the decision his, not mine. I told him what Tomlinson had said minus the accusations the
women had traded. “Risky to paraphrase something I didn’t hear,” I explained.

No need. Leland sighed, sagged back in his chair, and swallowed. Looked at the ceiling until he had it under control, and finally said, “Esther told me
without
telling me, if you know what I mean. I’d like to break that yoga bastard’s neck. You ever see him? Short little shit, tattoos and a nipple ring—likes to show off his abs, Esther says. Seducing Ava is bad enough, but my little girl, too? Tricia usually has better sense.”

Laughing, exhausted by it all, he exhaled toward the ceiling. “I’ve been paying that prick to screw my wife and my daughter. That’s what it amounts to. Enrique—Ricky, they call him. Stupid me, huh?”

I said, “I don’t think you told me how you and Ava met.”

He replied, “What you’re asking is was I drunk and the answer is no. Just . . . tired of living alone, I guess, and it’s unusual for beautiful women to laugh at my jokes. That’s how it started—this was in Nassau, I own a small piece of a hotel there. Ava was doing a shoot for our management company and was supposed to fly home the next day. Like they say in the movies, one thing led to another. That was . . . two years ago.”

“Where’s she from?”

My questions were siphoning energy from Leland’s anger and he didn’t like that. “You’re wondering if I ran a background check, and I should’ve. But she moved around a lot, worked mostly for hotel PR firms, and there are a lot of Ava Johnsons in the world. What it comes down to is, I married a tramp and it’s going to cost me a lot of money. But I’m done paying for her goddamn boyfriends, I’ll tell you that much.”

Leland, six-six but delicate as a pianist, drew his legs under him
and tried to puff up like a tough guy. “What I should do is break the little prick’s neck, and I still might. I could, if I got mad enough.”

I nodded as if convinced. “He’s not worth going to jail for,” I said, then tried to switch the subject, asking about a shark tooth I was holding, but Leland remained fixated on the yoga teacher. So I returned the tooth to a cluster of broken fossils and listened.

“Know what Ricky had the gall to do? A week ago, he talked Owen into investing five grand in his franchise, whatever the hell he calls it. It’s not a lot, but it’s my money. Owen signed a promissory note for what’s no better than a pyramid con. I found out Tuesday, and then the son of a bitch stops by my pool for drinks like I’m a clueless old fool. I canceled the deal, of course. So what’s Ricky do? He sent that freak to threaten my family.”

I hadn’t heard that part. “This was yesterday?”

Leland said, “I assumed you knew. Some greaser on a motorcycle . . . But wait, Esther wasn’t clear about that. Maybe your friend was already gone by then.”

I put the cup aside. “Tricia took the car, so Tomlinson hitchhiked back to his van. What did the guy look like?”

Leland said, “That explains it,” then described Quirt: a biker wearing gloves who didn’t remove his helmet when he appeared at the pool gate, then came through the gate while Esther, then Ava, watched from the kitchen. Ava told the girls to go away, claimed she could handle it. But it was Esther who had confronted the man.

“He threatened to torch our house if Owen didn’t pay up. Esther was shaking when she told me last night. Called her a bitch and other names—she wouldn’t say what—and Ava, of course, played ignorant about the whole thing. You know, clueless about her boyfriend’s gangster methods.”

Rather than telling him Quirt had been arrested, I waited to see
what I could learn. “Tomlinson was definitely gone by then,” I said. “He wouldn’t have tolerated that.”

“I would hope not. The bastard comes onto my property and talks to my daughter that way. Tonight, I’ll stay at a hotel or have my stuff moved to the island. I don’t ever want to see Ava again. I told the twins the same thing, stay away from that witch.” He stood, his drink finished, but caught himself before pouring another.

I asked, “Did Esther get his license number before she called police?”

Leland didn’t wince physically, but I sensed his discomfort. “No. She . . . she thought Owen might owe him money for another reason. I didn’t tell her about the promissory note.”

I had been holding back, but so was he. Time to put it out there—most of it anyway—and hope for some clarity. I said, “I think we do need to talk about it,” and waited for Leland to turn, his expression defensive. “I know about Owen’s gambling problem. And there are some other things you should be aware of, Leland.”

“Owen’s
what
?” He stared at me a moment. “My personal life is none of your damn business.”

I said, “I didn’t cash your check, remember? I thought we were talking as friends.”