Bone Deep (7 page)

I didn’t believe him. Mick the tour guide wasn’t the ski mask type. Plus, Mick had been shirtless, wearing baggy shorts that couldn’t conceal a weapon. Tomlinson and Fallsdown were automatically eliminated.

“That’s your second lie,” I said. “What happened was, three men showed up and surprised you. You panicked. Two were friends of mine, so I’m not going to ask again. Who did you shoot?”

His confusion appeared genuine. “
Three?
I heard footsteps upstairs, but I was already on my way out. My bike was hidden in the trees and that’s where I was headed when this dude in a ski mask steps out. Like, waiting for me, you know? The asshole
shoots
at me. Then I hear sirens. I figure shit’s about to really go down, so I took off, hoping he would try to cut me off at the road. When he did, I circled back to the beach and saw you.”

A burglar, hoping to escape with a heavy duffel bag, would not arrive on a bicycle. Strike three.

I did a slow scan—no boats around—then told Deon, “Lose the sweatsuit. You might make it to the beach.”

When my propellers were clear, I turned the boat and didn’t look back.

•   •   •

HALFWAY TO THE BEACH,
my cell rang. It was Tomlinson. He talked for two nonstop minutes, and answered one question, before I interrupted, “There’s something I have to do. Call you back.”

Deon Killip—the man’s real name, it turned out—was bawling when I dragged him onto my boat. “The next time you talk to
someone like me,” I suggested, “don’t say ‘bike’ when you mean ‘motorcycle.’”

“Awful,” he gasped. “I thought sharks would bite my legs off before I drowned. Thought I was gonna die for sure out here, man.”

“You still might,” I said.

In the cooler, buried in ice, were bottles of beer. I opened a Kalik and fit it into Deon’s shaking hand.

“Now,” I added, “is when you tell me
everything
.”

When I spotted Tomlinson, he was wandering the beach three miles south of the late Finn Tovar’s house—he, too, had done some running from a man in a ski mask.

“Heard some shots, looked out the window, and there he was,” he had told me on the phone. That’s as far as Tomlinson got before I had interrupted and turned the boat around to retrieve Deon. Half an hour later, when I called him back, Tomlinson offered his approximate location, but added, “Can’t talk right now. I’ll fill you in on the way to Dinkin’s Bay.”

There was no sinister message in his reply, but I’d rocketed along the beach anyway, searching. Now I understood. My hipster pal had taken solace in the company of three women, all carrying bags and tiny shovels, all dressed in swimsuits designed to cover, not reveal. Modest, middle-aged ladies who were so busy digging, I was almost to the beach before their male companion noticed. I watched him hug the ladies one by one before he got in the boat, then waved good-bye while I backed away.

“They’re in their bittersweet years,” Tomlinson observed, when
it was safe to speak. “Sweet enough to want more and too old for bitterness if they make new mistakes.
Fun
, when they’re that age. We exchanged cell numbers. Lillian—the stocky brunette?—she’s a doll.”

“Where’s Duncan?” I asked.

“With me until we heard sirens, then he disappeared. Mick, who knows? He went out a window. I don’t think he actually had permission to be in the house.”

“What a shocker,” I said. “Does Dunk have a cell phone?”

“It’s one of those disposable phones that migrants buy. I left two messages but kept it short. I didn’t want to burn all his minutes.”

“We’re not leaving without him. Ever cross your mind he’s handcuffed in the back of a squad car while you were hunting seashells with your new girlfriends?”

“Shark’s teeth,”
he corrected, and produced a handful from his pocket. “They were everywhere, man. Never seen anything like it.” Then shook his head. “The sirens were probably an ambulance or firefighters. Maybe cops, but just a coincidence. They stopped a few blocks away. Scared the hell out of the guy in the ski mask—or maybe he actually was chasing me. That’s what I thought, anyway, for the first quarter mile.”

On the beach, the ladies were still watching us, so I steered farther offshore before shutting down. “We’re staying right here,” I said, “until we hear from Duncan—or you give me a good reason.”

Tomlinson eyed the duffel bag that contained the four Pelican cases, but minus one little wooden box. “You’re the one who ran off and left us,
hermano
. Where’d the bag come from? The guy in the ski mask?” My friend’s expression changed. “Geezus . . . don’t tell me you killed the guy, Doc.”

I said, “I didn’t see anyone with a ski mask.”

“Yeah? Well, we sure as hell didn’t leave Dinkin’s Bay carrying a bagful of camera cases. I’d remember that.”

I pushed the bag away with my foot. “We’re not leaving without Duncan. Tell me what happened.”

Tomlinson’s Buddha eyes accused
You did something
, but he said, “Dunk is a Yavapai Apache, for heaven’s sake. Stop worrying.”

“He said he was Crow.”

“Ask him about it when you see him. Dunk’s probably halfway to Sanibel by now.”

“Atlanta, more likely, with his sense of direction,” I said. Then stifled my Christmas Day eagerness to show off the owl carving by insisting, “Tomlinson—
talk
.”

The story he told matched details in Deon Killip’s story, plus filled in a few holes. Deon claimed to be a full-time bartender and part-time burglar—a drug addict, too, which I assumed because of his constant sniffing. He’d overheard two customers talking about Finn Tovar’s death and a treasure in antiquities in Tovar’s home that had yet to be inventoried before probate.

The customers were attorneys, Deon believed, or at least successful businessmen from the way they had dressed and the twenty-dollar tip they’d left.

He’d heard the men say that the court had sealed Tovar’s house with padlocks because the man’s enemies started filing claims against the estate the day after Tovar died. The violent antiquities collector, according to Deon, had also been a lifelong thief. Thief, as in digging on phosphate company land, but also thief as in
thief.

“The old man lived alone in that big house,” my abductor had told me. “I checked around. No one knew for sure what was in there, but there were a lot of rumors. I tracked down a maid he’d fired—she hated Tovar. Nice old lady living in this trailer park,
trying to support her daughter’s babies. She described what sounded like a false wall downstairs—he’d slapped the shit out of her just for being in the room. I don’t think she believed I was an undercover repo man. That’s what I told her, but it didn’t matter. We worked out a deal.”

Deon claimed he’d told no one about his plan to rob the house—a claim I doubted. He was a drug addict who lived with his stripper girlfriend. Same when he swore he’d found the .22 caliber pistol behind a false wall where Tovar had stashed his most prized artifacts.

“What’s that tell you?” Deon had rationalized. “The shit’s stolen. Otherwise, he’d put it in a bank. The maid said Tovar had a big safe upstairs. But, no, he
hid
this stuff. A whole roomful. I just took a few pieces.”

Their stories meshed. Tomlinson finished his account, saying, “I figured the guy in the ski mask was SWAT team—black Ninja clothes. That he was after Mick or some hidden meth lab. Didn’t matter when he started shooting. Man, we were so
out
of there
.”

Tomlinson looked at the bag again and said, “Your turn, Doctor Ford.”

It was three p.m. Inland, anvil clouds were gathering heat and moisture—a couple of hours before the first boom of thunder would chase us back to Sanibel. I started engines and idled toward shore to give myself time to think.

“This is
me
you’re talking to,” Tomlinson pressed.

I remained cautious. “When you were in Tovar’s house, did you or Duncan touch anything? Or leave anything behind?”

“My ass puckered when I heard shots. So I
almost
left something, but just a false alarm.”

“This is important, stop screwing around.”

Tomlinson gave me his
Okay, Teacher
look while opening the
cooler. “One of us could’ve touched the door, maybe, on the way out. But I don’t think so. It was wide open and that’s the way we left it.” He pawed through the ice. “Hey . . . you already drank two beers? The six-pack of Kalik was for me, man.”

I said, “If Duncan tries to hitchhike, police will pick him up. I think I was right. I think he jumped parole. Why else would he take off on his own?”

“It’s what a medicine man does,” Tomlinson said, miffed about the beer Deon had drank. “He’ll change shapes—shape-shifters can fly when they need to. Or buy a bus ticket. No . . . What I think is, Dunk will go to the closest lodge. So stop worrying.”

“Lodge?”
My mind had to shift gears. Brighton Indian Reservation near Orlando was the closest, but that was seventy miles east. “Police will spot him on the highway,” I said.

Tomlinson popped one of the remaining beers, tilted the bottle back, and used the back of his hand as a towel. “Cop’s would’a had to be damn quick on their toes to catch him before he got to the lodge. We passed one on Venice Avenue. Dunk saw it. Didn’t you?”

“Saw what?”

“A lodge, man.”

“In Venice?”

“Right there in front of your eyes.”

I have learned to disengage when conversation with Tomlinson becomes cryptic ping-pong. It’s his specialty. He enjoys the game too much. So I opened the electronics cabinet overhead and pretended to fine-tune the Doppler weather radar—a storm building over Myakka, which was phosphate country . . . another storm east of Englewood, but still plenty of time to get home.

Finally, Tomlinson lost patience and explained, “A Masonic lodge. Dunk’s a Freemason—a lot of Skins are.”

“Why didn’t you just say so?”

“As if you’d believe me.”

“With good reason,” I said, which sucked me right back into his game.

“Believe what you want. You’ve never wondered why Mohawks fought the British? They were Masonic warriors just like Ben Franklin and Paul Revere. Near Sedona, the rez there, a lot of Skins are in the Brotherhood. Wisconsin—the great Sauk chief, Black Hawk, was a Mason. Red Jacket in New England. When Lewis and Clark crossed the Rockies, more than one unsuspecting Skin greeted those white bastards with a Masonic handshake. So it only makes sense that’s where Dunk would go.”

This was said to reassure me about the fate of our Crow or Apache friend from Montana—or was it Arizona?

I gave up. “Let’s review here. The house you broke into was robbed. You do understand that?”

“Robbed?”
he asked.

“Shots were fired. Judges don’t like it when firearms are used during the commission of a felony. Valuable property was stolen, so it’s grand theft. Someone saw you leave that house—the guy in the ski mask, if no one else. If police find fingerprints, they’ll match them on a computer. If they . . . no,
when
they question Mick, the magic tour guide, he’ll tell them about you and Duncan. See why I’m concerned?”

Tomlinson appeared confounded until his eyes found the duffel bag, then they zoomed in on me. “Jesus Christ, Doc. You hijacked the robber and took his swag.
Then y
ou killed him. I was right from the start.”

No . . . I had struck a deal with Deon Killip and dropped him a
few miles north on Turner Key, where his stripper girlfriend had relatives.

“Call the Masonic lodge in Venice,” I said. “I’ll explain on the way.”

No answer at the lodge, but Tomlinson’s phone buzzed an hour later off Stump Pass, south of Englewood Beach.

“What’s your twenty, Magic Man?” he asked, grinning. It was Fallsdown. I slowed, preparing to turn around, but Tomlinson waved me onward.

“Let me guess,” I said. “He’s in Key West, not Atlanta.”

Tomlinson covered the phone. “Dinkin’s Bay—Dunk had to stop at the 7-Eleven to buy more phone minutes. Should I tell him what we have?”

By then, I had unboxed the owl charmstone but hadn’t shared all the information with my pal—nor would I until I decided on a next move.

“Let’s surprise him,” I said.

•   •   •

I SPENT THE NEXT DAY,
Saturday, expecting a knock on the door and a refresher on my Miranda rights. I had hidden the bag, minus the charmstone, deep in the mangroves on the western fringe of Dinkin’s Bay, but was still uneasy.

A close inspection of the duffel bag’s contents would have to wait until I deemed it safe.

Tomlinson and Fallsdown didn’t know what I’d done but must have shared my uneasiness. They had avoided the lab and kept a low profile.

In the afternoon, my cousin, Ransom Gatrell, stopped to say
hello. With her cinnamon skin and Bahamian accent, we are an unlikely family, but Ransom is my closest relative and among my most trusted friends. She was leaving for Key West that night. We had a good talk. She offered some insights into Hannah’s behavior, then shared a few details about her own love life that caused me some brotherly uneasiness, the woman was so succinctly graphic.

“Never seen a man so fast to embarrass,” she said more than once, although her intonation varied with her laughter.

I shared a few secrets with her, too, but of a less intimate nature.

Leland Albright called as Ransom was leaving and hinted again at his offer of a consulting job. “Don’t tell me you’re not qualified,” he said. “I did some research on you. Tomorrow, I’ll show you what an old phosphate mine looks like if you’re willing to discuss a business proposition.”

In the morning, he wanted me to come to his home in Sarasota and we would drive to his mining property together.

I told Albright, “Let me think about it,” and walked Ransom to her car.

His offer was tempting. Tomlinson and Fallsdown were going to a Lakeland gun show in the morning to search for more relics dealers. Duncan was delighted to see the little stone owl but was pressing ahead with his search for the second carving. I had been dreading the trip to Lakeland. In a building full of right-leaning gun advocates, Tomlinson would require careful monitoring—or a gag. Leland’s invitation would spare me all that . . .
if
police didn’t arrive and recite my Miranda rights, then lead me away in cuffs.

I spent late Saturday with old baseball buddies, then worked with the dog on blind retrieves using hand commands, which he often ignored in favor of shorter routes. The early, wakeful hours of
Sunday morning were spent thinking about the duffel bag hidden out there in the mangrove darkness.

What exactly had I taken from Deon, the petty thief? Valuable, no doubt, but how valuable? Sooner than later, news about the robbery of the late Finn Tovar’s house would get out. The aftershock I expected would be proportional.

Someone
would come looking.