Deceived (A Hannah Smith Novel) (14 page)

As I explained this, the special prosecutor swung around to face me from the casting platform and was nodding before I’d finished. “I’m not making moral judgments. You want to know why I’m so interested?”

“Let me finish,” I said. “What I’m saying is, sometimes a new law can make criminals out of people who’ve never broken a law in their life. But my Uncle Jake wasn’t among them and I get the feeling you believe he was. Isn’t that why you keep asking about him? Half the population of Sulfur Wells was being investigated, you said. That’s only about a hundred people, not counting kids.”

Ransler shrugged in a way that suggested he was open to all possibilities. “It crossed my mind, but so what? Your uncle’s dead, plus the statute of limitations ran out years ago—on smuggling, at any rate.”

Had the special prosecutor just implied something?

To communicate disapproval, I cleared my throat before saying, “If you did background checks, you know Jake was a highly decorated detective, Tampa police force. Wounded while saving the lives of at least two other deputies, maybe more. If you’re asking questions because you suspect Jake of murdering Mr. Helms, you couldn’t be more wrong.”

Joel Ransler flexed his jaw and smiled at the same time, giving me his handsome Sundance Kid look. “No,
you’re
wrong. The reason I’m interested in your family is because”—he laced his hands together and flexed his jaw again—“well, there are a couple of reasons, and I’ll just be up front. You’re an unusual woman. I find you attractive, Hannah. Didn’t I already say that?”

“It wouldn’t matter if you had,” I replied, trying not to sound flustered. “I’m in a serious relationship. If that’s why you offered to hire me as an investigator, though—”

“Hold on a second,” he said. “I’m trying to explain something.” He stopped, reconsidered, then switched gears. “Does that mean you decided to take the job?”

“If someone’s trying to rob my mother and some of her friends, sure, I’d like the chance. But not if it’s because you’re interested in me personally.”

“Two entirely separate things,” he responded. “But I do
like
you. You’re not glib, you don’t chatter, and you don’t act like you have to prove yourself. Something in your background made you different. So I’m curious about the people who raised you—on a personal level. But my interest is professional, too. Is that so offensive?”

No, but neither could I respond sensibly, so I blocked the subject by asking, “Do you want to tie up or is this close enough?” I had swung my skiff parallel to the dock and shifted to neutral.

“Let’s get out and look around,” Ransler said, amused. “Want me to take the bowline?”

I seldom accept help docking but the man had proven he was competent, so I replied, “When you step out, watch that decking. It looks bad.”

•   •   •

JOEL WAS GOING
through his briefcase while I roamed the dock, checking the shallows for fish, but also imagining the murder that had occurred here. As he searched folders, he surprised me by asking, “Are you mad at me for some reason? Something’s bothering you.”

I wasn’t going to bring up the crime scene photos, so I reminded him, “I was attacked by dogs and someone with an axe not a hundred yards from here. And Mrs. Helms died somewhere over there”—I motioned toward the trail—“a woman I knew my whole life. You can’t blame me for thinking the place is a little spooky.”

Ransler glanced around us, willing to be supportive. “Yeah . . . it is, isn’t it?” Then tested his heel on the dock but not hard because the planks were rotten. “And her husband died where we’re standing. Drug smuggling and violence. There is a weird vibe, I agree.”

“That’s another thing,” I said. “I still don’t know why you wanted to come here. Are you looking for new evidence about the murder? Or . . .” What I wanted to ask was
Or a quiet place to drink margaritas, just the two of us?
but didn’t. Couldn’t bring myself to be mean to a man who, thus far, had only been thoughtful and complimentary.

Joel was perceptive, though. He got the message and became more businesslike. “A twenty-year-old murder isn’t the reason. Not the main reason anyway. I wanted to confirm something.” He looked at the bay for emphasis. “You just proved that if your attacker came by boat, he has to be a local. And not just any local, he’s probably a commercial fisherman—or someone who learned the channel smuggling drugs. Make sense?”

Not entirely. I had already told him and the detectives about the old horse trail that led through the mangroves to Sulfur Wells but mentioned it again.

“I’d like to see it,” Joel said.

“We’ll need more mosquito spray,” I told him, “and we should have brought a machete.”

“I don’t mind bugs. But first, there’s something you should know. I wanted to be sure of the details before I said anything.”

In his hand was a crime scene map. Finally, the special prosecutor told me that Dwight Helms had been murdered with an axe. Then asked a question my Internet research hadn’t prepared me for.

“You ever hear any rumors about who found Helms’s body? The department never released the names to the public.”

I remembered a newspaper story crediting
an unnamed informant
, but that’s all, so I shook my head.

Ransler was serious now. “There were actually two people who reported the body, both men. Do you remember anyone around named Arnold?—that was his first name. The dispatcher either didn’t get his last name or he refused to give it.”

“Arnold,” I repeated. “We were taught to call adults by their last names, mister or missus, so I seldom knew an adult’s whole name.” I mulled it over. “
Arnold.
It sounds familiar, but I’m not sure why. So far, no one comes to mind.”

“That was a long time ago, I know—more than twenty years, but there’s a reason I’m asking, Hannah.” He paused. “Or . . maybe you
know
the reason.”

The way Joel said it put me on guard. I sensed a trap. “If you have something to say, say it,” I told him. Then stared at him for a moment before taking a guess. “Was my Uncle Jake one of the men who found Mr. Helms?”

“Yes,” Joel said. “He was the first to call it in—a little after midnight, according to the report. I assumed you knew.”

“Jake?”

“Captain Jacob Hansen Smith. That’s him, right? I was hoping you could help me with the name of the second man.”

When I turned away to collect myself, Joel reached as if to put a hand on my shoulder but stopped when he saw me flinch. “Your uncle was never a suspect, I wasn’t lying about that. He still isn’t, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Jake never said a word about finding a body—but I was only eight or nine at the time, so—”

“That’s right,” Ransler cut in as if he hadn’t thought it through. “You were only a kid. Of course he wouldn’t have said anything. Even later, why bring it up? I’m such an idiot sometimes.”

The special prosecutor shook his head, disappointed with himself, and continued to apologize. My mind was already on something else. I was picturing how it had been for my uncle the night he found the body, used my eyes to match crime scene photos with the area around the dock.

Twenty feet away was a huge buttonwood. Dwight Helms had lost part of his hand near the base of a large tree—possibly the same tree. They had found his ankle and foot, his boot still tied, near the diesel engine that was now red with rust, but, on a night twenty years ago, had glistened beneath flashbulbs. Helms had curled himself in a fetal position beneath the derrick. He had died there, his head crushed by several blows. Jake, or a man named Arnold, had been the first to find the carnage—the first to report it, anyway, which gave the murder a new importance.

Arnold . . . Arnold.
The name continued to bounce around in my head. It
was
familiar, I felt sure of it, yet my memory couldn’t attach the name to an adult who had lived on the island.

Then it hit me. Arnold—or
Arnie
for short! It was the name of Loretta’s secret lover. I had never discovered the man’s last name because I didn’t
want
to know it. A nickname didn’t prove her old boyfriend was a murderer, of course, or even that he was the same Arnie, but it was a startling connection. Suddenly, I wanted to know more about Arnie—especially now that the reputation of my late uncle might be involved through association.

“Hannah . . . are you okay? I wasn’t trying to be graphic.” Joel was touching my elbow, I realized. It took me a moment to understand I had missed something he’d said, something important, apparently.

I took a full breath and forced a smile. “Fine, fine—my attention wanders sometimes. What were you saying?”

The special prosecutor had been easing into the facts about the murder. “The way Helms died was so brutal, I see only three possible options. I’m not going to bother you with details. I’m projecting from the killer’s point of view.”

“Options?” I asked.

“Motives, I mean. It was a crime of passion or a revenge killing or . . . a message, like a warning to other smugglers. That’s my read. The murder was so brutal, it scared people, so they avoided the subject by telling outsiders that Helms had been shot. After a while, the lie became accepted as fact. We both know that a lot of islanders went into drug running. If the killer was sending a message, it worked in one way: the murder scared them. The question is, what was the message the killer—or
killers—
was sending?”

I nodded as if I agreed but was trying to recall more about Loretta’s lover. The relationship had gone on for a decade. I suspected I had seen the man on more than one occasion—in church, most likely—yet had no idea who he was or what he’d looked like. Loretta had guarded the secret carefully, but it was my own distaste for the truth that had provided the strongest shield.

Now Joel was saying, “I didn’t come here to trap you. More than anything, I was trying to help. The way Helms was killed isn’t related to what happened to you Friday night. My theory hasn’t changed. You surprised a burglar—some local crackhead, most likely—hoping to find money or drugs. He probably heard the dogs, too, and grabbed the first weapon he saw—an axe. It was a
coincidence
.” The man sighed. “Instead of making you feel better, I screwed up by assuming you knew more than you did. Sorry, Hannah. Like I said, I’m in an ugly business. Sometimes I forget there are still people you can be open and honest with.”

This time I let the prosecutor place a hand on my shoulder—but as a comfort to him, not to me. His regret seemed genuine, and I soften easily when touched by the upset of others. “Joel,” I said, “I believe you, okay? So let’s drop the subject.”

“Rance,” he corrected, then squared himself so both hands were on my shoulders, holding me as if to reassure me of his support. He had done the same thing the night I was attacked.

“Rance,” I conceded, then joked, “I usually don’t tolerate pushy clients.”

Sundance Kid from the movie, yes, Joel had the same jaw-flexing smile as we stood face-to-face, joined by the warmth of his hands. Smart gray eyes, too, with a glint—boyish, but in a devilish way. For a moment, I felt comfortable standing close to this good-looking attorney who was trying so hard to win my approval . . . but then the look in his eyes struck me as more devilish than boyish and I began to doubt my own judgment. Two of my aunts had died because they had misread the intentions of charming men. I knew nothing about Joel Ransler, had yet to even run a background check, yet here we were alone, just the two of us.

“Hang on a second,” I said, then ducked under his arms and walked toward my skiff.

“Where you going?” He sounded hopeful when he added, “The thermos of margaritas in the cooler—we could probably both use a drink.”

I replied, “I’m getting bug spray. If you want to see the horse trail, we need to go. I’ve got to be back by noon and the tide’s falling fast.”

“Noon?”

“I have an afternoon charter,” I told him.

Birdy Tupplemeyer wasn’t paying me, but that didn’t make my excuse any less true.

After an hour with the redheaded deputy, I was beginning to agree with her mother that a hash cookie or two was just what the doctor ordered for a girl whose mind never stopped working and who wanted to be everywhere at once, especially any island with a beach or high ground, even if it meant trespassing, or wading through swamp.

Birdy’s willingness to trespass had almost gotten her into trouble the previous night. She had slipped under the gate of a landfill, only a mile from the condo where she lived, and was hiking among the piles of raw earth and asphalt when a security guard in a golf cart had appeared out of nowhere.

“He was pretty good, had his lights off,” she explained. “I don’t know if he saw me or not, but I went over the back fence anyway. I’m trying to borrow a night vision unit from a friend. If he doesn’t come through, our next visit will have to wait for a night or two.”

Something else that had to wait was our trip to Cushing Key, but that was because of low tide, not our lack of equipment. When we left the dock at one, the flats resembled green meadows, the bay was so shallow, so I drove us straight through Captiva Pass and into the Gulf of Mexico.

“That’s the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen,” the redhead grinned, then asked, “What’s the name of the island?” We were running along the outside in water that was turquoise, wind-streaked. To our right floated a strand of silver beach, miles long, with coconut palms that leaned westward.

“Cayo Costa,” I told her, then explained that some locals still called it
La Costa
. “Years ago, Cuban fishermen kept fish ranches there—
rancheros
. They caught mullet but made most of their money smuggling rum.”

“Some things never change,” the off-duty deputy replied.

I wasn’t sure how to take that, so I continued to tell her about the island. “At the north end, there’s a tiny cemetery and a park where you can camp. Next time, bring a swimsuit. We’ll anchor off a patch of rocks that’s good for snorkeling—fire coral and a lot of fish to see. I’ll bring a speargun.”

“I’ve got a bra and panties,” Birdy replied. “There’s nobody around. Plus, I’m so flat-chested, who’s gonna notice?”

“Up to you,” I said, then anchored near the rocks and waited while she splashed around, using my mask and fins. I was playing tour guide, which wasn’t as interesting as fishing but fun and more relaxed, even though the redhead fired question after question at me. For the last hour, too many of her questions had been about Joel Ransler, so it was a relief to get a break while her mouth was plugged with a snorkel.

Fifteen minutes later, wearing clothes but hair still wet, she was lecturing, “It happens every time, Smithie, I swear to Christ. I’ll go months without a date, then finally meet a decent guy. Moment we start sleeping together, you can count on it, an even better-looking guy appears out of the blue. Total stranger. Would I like to go to dinner, maybe fly to Paris for the weekend? That actually
happened
to me, by the way.”

“How’d you like Paris?” I asked, giving it an edge.

“Didn’t go, smartass. I should’ve—I’m not dating anyone now, so see where it got me? When God needs a laugh, He hauls out His list of single women and tacks it to a dartboard. Keep your options open, Smithie, that’s all I’m saying.”

Smithie
, that’s what she had decided to call me, which was okay. I had made a mistake by describing the special prosecutor as “handsome,” then mentioning the name of the movie star he favored. This was after telling her I had accepted Ransler’s job offer, but I hadn’t gotten around yet to the more unpleasant topics of Alice Candor’s behavior last night or the unsolved murder. Nor had I told her much about Marion Ford, but it was time, I decided, to set her straight.

“Once you meet Marion,” I said, “you’ll understand why I’m not interested in Joel, even if he is an attorney—or any other good-looking man.” I had my hand on the throttle when I realized how clumsily I’d spoken. Birdy, with her sharp sense of humor, couldn’t resist.

“You prefer guys who aren’t good-looking, huh?” she asked. “Smithie, you need to think this over.”

“You need to hang on,” I replied, and shoved the throttle forward. The redhead gave a startled whoop, and we were both laughing while I made a slow turn, then pointed my skiff south.

At South Seas Resort, I cut through Redfish Pass, dropped off plain and was soon idling along the back side of Captiva Island. To keep the off-duty deputy quiet, I pointed out houses owned by people I knew—multimillionaires, many of them, and some my clients—before I killed the engine and got off the first question, asking, “Remember the fishing reel missing from the attic?”

“That charity, nonprofit thing,” she said. “I’m glad you took the job. You’ll get to know your hot attorney better. Plus, I can help you if the bastards turn out to be con men.”

“I was talking about Teddy Roosevelt,” I said. “This is where he anchored his houseboat. Nineteen seventeen.”

“No kidding?” Birdy swiveled her head as if expecting to see a brass plaque.

“Maybe not the exact spot but close,” I said. We were drifting between Buck Key and Captiva, the gas dock at Jensen’s Marina to our right, several skiffs anchored off the pool bar at ’Tween Waters just ahead.

“Do people still harpoon giant stingrays? That reel must be worth a ton of money. Sounds to me like your grandfather must’ve been Teddy’s favorite fishing guide.”

The woman seldom asked one question at a time, but I was getting used to it. “Manta rays,” I corrected, “and it was my
great-
grandfather. But he was too young to captain a boat.”

“Teddy must have liked him, though. Vom Hofe, was he a famous reel maker? Quite a present to give a boy—or was he a teenager?”

I replied, “There was a local girl the president made friends with, too. She was younger, only nine or ten, but they say he liked people with spirit. He gave her a pair of boots. If I find the book he wrote—or maybe the library has a copy—there are photos of the manta rays they harpooned. Huge animals, the size of cars.”

“Teddy Roosevelt slept here,” Birdy said, smiling, her eyes taking in the scenery.

I told her the boat the president had lived on was a one-room house built on a barge that was fifty-some feet long. “For a while, it was anchored behind Castaway’s—that’s a nice place to stay when you get some time off. Years later, a storm pushed it way back in the mangroves. One day, if you want, we’ll try to find what’s left.”

In reply, Tupplemeyer asked several questions nonstop, which I didn’t have to answer because a friend of mine, Nathan Pace, appeared on a dock not far from where we were drifting. Nate had been skinny in high school but was now a bodybuilder and good-looking, despite a crooked tooth and his shyness.

“Damn, who’s the hunk?” Tupplemeyer whispered as we idled over to say hello. “I like guys with muscles. He’s gotta have money, too, if he lives there.”

No, but the famous photographer Nate sometimes slept with was wealthy—a nice man named Darren. I didn’t explain all this to Birdy, though, until we were a mile or two from Captiva. The tide had risen, and we soon had the mounds of Cushing Key in sight.

•   •   •

AS WE MUCKED
our way toward the island’s interior, Deputy Tupplemeyer, who oozed confidence but who knew nothing about swamps, sounded uneasy when she asked, “Any snakes around here?”

By then, we were friendly enough to have traded several more barbs, so I was tempted to reply,
No—alligators eat them all.
I might have said it, too, if I thought she would have slowed her pace. Now that we were on land, following Birdy was like being pulled along by a propeller that had been revved too high or a generator that discharged currency into the ground. The woman’s energy seeped in through my feet, my ears, and was beginning to short-circuit my own more careful method of thinking.

Normally, I wouldn’t have put up with such a person. In fact, when she had latched onto the subject of Joel Ransler, I had come close to inventing an excuse to end the trip early. But I didn’t, and was glad. I admired the woman’s spirit. She was curious and enthusiastic about . . . well,
everything
, and her positive attitude was seeping into me as well. Plus, she was funny—often crude, true, but at least she came out and spoke her mind.

“I’d bet my ass there are snakes galore,” Birdy insisted, finally stopping for a breather. She used a tree limb to steady herself, looked to the left, then the right, seeing muck, spiderwebs glistening in the shadows, and a tangle of mangrove jungle where prop roots hung like bars in a cave. “Nothing else would live in a place like this.”

“Except for mosquitoes,” I said, then couldn’t help saying with a straight face, “Gators eat the snakes. No need to worry about them.”

Automatically, the deputy’s hand moved toward the holster she wasn’t wearing. “
Alligators!
You serious?”

“We get an occasional saltwater croc, too,” I replied.

“Shit,
now
she tells me. I should have brought my Glock.”

“They’re a protected species,” I reminded her.

“I’m a protected species, too, when I’m carrying a Glock,” the deputy answered. “Screw the law, how big?”

I was losing control, so walked ahead of her and didn’t look back. “Ten, sometimes twelve feet long. I’ve never seen a
really
big one. Not on this side of the island anyway.”

“
This
side of the island! Jesus Christ, I pity the poor guy you’re dating—what do you consider big?”

Now my chest was shaking, couldn’t help myself, so I kept walking.

She called after me, “Maybe we should head back to the boat. Hannah . . . where you going? Hey . . .
Jungle Jane
! Goddamn it, I’m talking to you!”

I stopped and turned and let my laughter go. When Birdy realized I was joking, she gave me a fierce look and hissed, “Asshole!” but soon was laughing, too, then tried to imitate a Southern accent. “Yep, big-ass gators’ll eat you city folk. Diddle you up the be-hind, too, if rattlers and rednecks turn scarce. Ya’ll gotta be
mindful
.” Her voice returned to normal. “
Shit!
Can’t believe I just got taken in by some rube chick.”

Now I was tearing up, I was laughing so hard. “Sorry . . . sorry,” I croaked. “The look on your face when I said
gators . . .
My lord!”

“Paybacks are hell, Smithie,” she fired back, then plucked a foot out of the muck and inspected her shoe. Almost new Reeboks—Tupplemeyer had gotten hooked on jogging while at the police academy and had shown me the soles to prove she ran three to five miles daily but had a pronation problem, or possibly the term was
supination
—she wasn’t sure but had promised to look it up when we got back.

“Those shoes are ruined,” I said. “At least I told you the truth about that.”

“Okay, okay, you were right, so stop harping,” she said, pulling her other foot out of the mud. “How much farther?” To the Indian mounds, she meant.

I was wearing cheap white rubber boots I always keep on the boat and was secretly pleased by her admission. “We’ll hose those down and throw them in the washer later,” I suggested. “You can meet Loretta.”

“Your mom? I’d like that. The poor woman has to be a saint to raise a daughter like you. Did you hear what I just asked?”

“Weird,” I smiled. “I’ve been thinking the same thing about
your
mother.” I continued walking before answering, “Not far. Once we get on the mounds, there really could be rattlesnakes. Pygmy rattlers, mostly—I’m serious this time. But they’re not aggressive, so don’t worry.”

“Not aggressive,” she says, “my ass.
You
go first. I’ll follow from now on.”

Near the center of Cushing Key were two shell mounds that rose abruptly out of the swamp like miniature volcanoes but cloaked by trees, Spanish bayonet plants, and cactus. We saw no snakes but used cell phones to photograph shards of pottery and tools made from big whelk and conch shells. Artifacts everywhere.

“It’s pronounced
konk
, not
cawnsh
,” I corrected Tupplemeyer for the second time. She had summoned me to the western edge of the highest mound where she’d found a wall of conch shells embedded like bricks, the sharp ends pointed outward.

“A defense against invaders,” the former archaeology major told me. “I read about this. There’s no rock around here to quarry—that’s what the Maya and Aztec did. So they used shells. All four sides of the pyramid covered with shell spikes except for one path to the top. Smart, huh? These things would cut the hell out of someone.”

She was referencing the sketches she’d seen by Frank Cushing—the island’s namesake—who the Smithsonian had sent to Florida in the 1890s.

The redhead knelt and took more photos but had yet to so much as touch a shell or a piece of pottery—shards of baked clay, yellow-orange, that had accumulated over the thousands of years people had hunted and cooked and lived their lives here. I was impressed by the respect she was showing for the state that was her new home.

“
Whoa . . .
look at this!” Birdy called after pulling foliage away. Then began snapping more photos while I squatted beside her. She had found a large conch horn, its point sawed off as a mouthpiece, and part of a bowl with a triangular pattern etched around the rim. It was so simple and eloquent, I tried to imagine the artist—a woman, no doubt—who had lived on this island and who had done her work with extra care.