Found: A Matt Royal Mystery (18 page)

Paulus helped settle the raft on the railing of the tower and then climbed down the ladder. The deck was slanting to starboard and it was hard for Paulus to keep his footing. He looked up. The lookout was hanging over a railing that surrounded his perch. He was dead. Kuhlmann struggled with the raft, letting it slowly dangle from the tower to the deck by its bow rope. Paulus felt the U-boat shudder as it settled farther into the water. He grabbed the raft as it hit the deck. “Paulus, see that little cylinder attached to the raft?”

“Here it is.”

“When it’s time to launch, pull that cylinder and the raft will automatically inflate. There are provisions for several days in a container in the raft. Water and food.”

“I’ll wait until you get down here.”

“I’m not coming,” said Kuhlmann.

“Hans, come on. It’s our only chance.”

“My men are all dead or dying and going down with the boat. I think I’ll join them.”

The U-boat rode lower in the water now. The bow had broken off and sunk and the rest of the boat was rapidly following. Nobody had come out of the boat, but men were still alive, trapped in the twisted metal that had only minutes before been a sleek submarine. The screams of the sailors trapped below were pitiful, each man aware that his life was over.

Paulus was about to say something else, to argue with Hans, to remind him of his wife waiting in Flensburg for him to return, when the captain saluted him and said, “Go with God, Paulus. Survive this goddamned war.” Then he was gone, disappearing down the hatch.

Paulus stood for a couple of moments at attention, saluting the departing captain, and then activated the raft, pushed it overboard, and got in. In less than a minute, the remaining part of U-166 slipped beneath the waves and Leutnant zur See Paulus Graf von Reicheldorf was alone.

J.D. stopped by the Sarasota police station on her way to see Porter King’s girlfriend. She had promised Captain Doug McAllister that she’d return his file on Katie Fredrickson. She wouldn’t mention that she’d made a copy of it. She was admitted to the building and directed to the homicide bureau. She was surprised to see Doug in the office late on a Saturday afternoon. He waved her in and pointed to a chair.

“J.D., good to see you,” he said. “Want some coffee?”

“No thanks, Doug. I’m surprised to see the boss working on Saturday.”

“Murders don’t take days off.”

She smiled. “I think there was a movie with that title, or something like it.”

Doug laughed. “Maybe so.”

“I had to come downtown so I thought I’d drop off your file.”

“Find anything interesting?”

“Nothing that I didn’t already know. I’m afraid Katie’s dead.”

“Looks that way. What brings you downtown?”

“I’m looking for a suspect in a murder and I want to talk to his girlfriend. She lives on Gulfstream Avenue. One of your patrolmen is sitting on her building.”

“I didn’t know that,” he said.

“I talked to your chief of patrol a couple of hours ago,” said J.D.

“The girlfriend lives in high-dollar territory. Who’s the guy you’re looking for?”

“His name’s Porter King. He lives on Longboat. I executed a search warrant on King’s condo and found him cleared out.”

“Is this about the man gunned down in the condo parking lot out there?”

“Yes. The only murder we’ve had lately.”

“You think King killed him? I heard you had video of the murder.”

“We do have the video, and the guy who pulled the trigger is dead. I think King is involved somehow. It looks like he’s trying to kill one of our other witnesses.”

“Do you have a motive?”

“No. Not for the murder and I can’t figure out why King would want to kill a harmless old man, but he was overheard threatening him. We think he sent a lowlife to take care of the witness.”

“Do you know who the lowlife is?”

“Yeah. Some idiot named Bernie Caster. David Sims has him in the Manatee County jail.”

“Is he talking?” McAllister asked.

“No. Clammed up. He might be mixed up with Sal Bonino.”

“The local Mafia. Those guys aren’t the sharpest crooks I’ve run across, but they’re well organized.”

J.D. looked at her watch. “Gotta go, Doug. Thanks for the file.”

“Always glad to help. Call me someday and we’ll have lunch again. Let me know if any more of your investigation bleeds over into my territory. I’d be glad to help out.”

Josie Tyler seemed nervous, a bit twitchy as J.D. would later describe it. She was tall and blonde and late-twenties and wore a lot of makeup. She was a thin woman with big feet and big boobs, the latter no doubt the work of a plastic surgeon with no sense of proportion. She was sitting primly on a leather sofa, her knees held tightly together, her too-short skirt riding high on skinny thighs. She wore high-heel mules and a sequined T-shirt at least a couple of sizes too small.

J.D. had been a bit surprised when she looked at the address she had for Josie, and realized that it was an expensive high-rise condo on the bayfront in downtown Sarasota. When she knocked on the door and identified
herself to Josie, a look of concern briefly crossed her face before she invited J.D. inside. The view from the living room was expansive, taking in the bay, New Pass, Lido Key, the southern tip of Longboat Key, and a large swath of the Gulf. The place screamed money, lots of it.

After J.D. and Josie had taken their seats, J.D. said, “I’m trying to find Porter King, and I thought you might be able to help me.”

“Why are you looking for Porter?”

“I’m just following up on something he saw on Tuesday. We talked earlier this week, but he’s not at home now, and I have some new information I want to run by him.”

“What new information?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t talk about that. Do you know where he is?”

“No. He was supposed to be here this afternoon. I thought you were him when you knocked on the door. Did you try to call him?”

“Yes,” said J.D., “but his phone goes directly to voice mail. I left a message this morning, but I haven’t heard back.”

“When I tried to call him this morning, I got his voice mail, too.”

“May I ask what your relationship is with Mr. King?”

“He’s my boyfriend.”

“How long have you been together?”

“A couple of years.”

“I thought he only moved to this area a year ago,” J.D. said.

“That’s right, but he used to visit when he still lived in New York.”

“How did you meet?”

Josie sat quietly for a moment as if trying to formulate an answer. “Mutual friends.”

“Who?”

“Why are you asking about all this?”

“Ms. Tyler, I’m investigating a murder. Every bit of information can help me solve it.”

“You don’t think Porter was involved in anything like that, do you?”

“No,” J.D. lied, “but every bit of information helps.”

“Well, I don’t think I want to talk to you anymore.”

“Josie,” J.D. said, her voice harsh, “I’m going to peel you like a grape.
I’m going to find out everything about you, where you grew up, where you went to school, every job you ever held, every man you ever screwed, and then I’m going to come back here and we’re going to have this conversation again. And if I find anything in your background that doesn’t look right, we’ll be having this conversation in an interrogation room down at the police station.”

Josie sat back with a jerk, her face white and wrinkling as if she were about to burst into tears. J.D. almost felt sorry for her, but she was pretty sure that Josie Tyler was holding out on her. And J.D. didn’t have time for it. She sat and stared at the blonde, waiting.

“Okay,” Josie said, her voice loosening, taking on more of a southern inflection. “I grew up in Live Oak, Florida. You know where that is?”

J.D. shook her head.

“Up near the Georgia border. It’s a small town, and I left as soon as I turned sixteen. Didn’t finish high school.”

“Weren’t your parents concerned? Didn’t they look for you?”

Josie laughed bitterly, more a croak than a laugh. “I doubt they even knew I was gone. When my old man got horny, he might have wondered where I was. He didn’t have anybody to stick it into.”

“I’m sorry,” said J.D.

Josie shrugged. “Shit happens. I went to Jacksonville and waitressed and cleaned hotel rooms and worked on an assembly line in an electronics plant. I lived with two other girls, and we starting doing some drugs, you know, just to take the edge off.”

“Did you ever get arrested for the drugs?”

“No. We never did a whole lot of them. Then I met an older man who started paying my rent, so I moved into a cheap little apartment, and he’d come by now and then and jump my bones. I was still working at the plant, but I was doing okay. Then, out of the blue, the man up and died of a heart attack.

“Then a friend of his came by and offered to pick up where his buddy had left off. In other words, he’d pay my rent if I’d fuck him whenever he wanted it. He wasn’t bad looking, and I took the deal.

“This guy owned a topless joint out on North U.S. 1, and he said he
thought I could do pretty good if I’d get a boob job. He paid for it and I got these suckers.” She put both hands on her breasts and jiggled them. There didn’t seem to be a whole lot of play in them.

“I was making pretty good money,” Josie continued, “but the owner caught me screwing one of the customers for a little extra dough. He went through the roof, screaming that I put his life in danger. He said you never know what kind of disease the dirtbags who hung out at the club might have. He kicked me out.

“I had a few bucks saved, so I went to Tampa and got a job dancing at a club out on Dale Mabry Highway. A couple of years ago some dude paid me and two of the other girls to party with some high rollers at a hotel on Clearwater Beach. That’s where I met Porter.”

“He was part of the group of high rollers?” asked J.D.

“Yeah.”

“Did he set up the party?”

“No. Somebody else did that.”

“Do you remember his name?”

“No. I only saw him one more time.”

“Another party?”

“Yeah.”

“Where was that?”

“His house, I think.”

“You think?”

“I think he owned the house. I’m not sure.”

“I take it Mr. King is paying for this place.”

“Right. He owns it, I guess. He has a lot of money.”

“How did you two hook up?”

“After one of the parties, he made me a proposition. He’d take care of me if I’d take care of him, if you know what I mean.”

“I do. Where were you Wednesday?”

“Right here.”

“You didn’t go to Naples?”

“No.”

“Did Mr. King spend Tuesday night here?”

She thought for a moment. “Yeah. He was here. Left early on Wednesday morning.”

“Did you see him on Wednesday?”

“No.”

“Did he tell you to say you’d gone to Naples with him if anybody asked?”

She hesitated. “You’re not going to tell Porter anything we say today, are you?”

“No, but if you don’t tell me the truth and I find out, and I will, you’ll be charged with impeding a criminal investigation.”

“Yes. He told me to say that.”

“Do you know if he went to Naples?”

“I don’t have any idea.”

“Okay, Josie. I appreciate your honesty. I’d like for you to look at some pictures. See if you can identify any of the men who might have been at the parties.”

“If it’ll help.”

“I’ll have to get the pictures and bring them by later today or tomorrow. Will you call me if you hear from Porter?”

“I guess so. I don’t want to get in any trouble.”

“You’re doing fine, Josie. You keep cooperating with me, and I promise you won’t be in any trouble.”

Logan Hamilton was sitting in my living room when Jock and I got back to the key. It was late afternoon and he was sipping some of my Scotch and watching a college basketball game on TV.

“Mind if we come in?” I asked as we walked into the living room.

“Make yourselves comfortable. There’s some barely passable Scotch in the kitchen, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“I don’t drink Scotch,” I reminded him.

“I can tell.”

“Where’ve you been the last couple of days?” I asked.

“Practicing for the tournament.”

“You mean,” said Jock, “that you’ve actually been out on the golf course? Did it help?”

“Not exactly. I cured my slice, though.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah. Now it’s a hook,” Logan said.

“God help us,” said Jock. “You’re planning to embarrass me, aren’t you?”

“Well, not exactly planning to, but it’ll probably happen. What’s going on with the investigations?”

“Let’s wait until J.D. gets here so I don’t have to repeat myself,” I said.

“Fair enough. Can I have another Scotch?”

“I thought you didn’t like my Scotch.”

“Beats no Scotch,” Logan said. “Barely.”

I booted up my computer and found the county property appraiser’s website that should show me the owner of the land in Avon Park. The site
was down. A banner said that routine maintenance was taking place and the site should be back up by the opening of business on Monday.

My front door opened and J.D. walked in. “You guys been here drinking all day?” she asked.

“We just got back from Avon Park,” I said. “Found Logan here depleting my whisky supply.”

“Did you find out anything in Avon Park?”

I told her about our trip and what we’d discovered and about not being able to find out who owned the Fredrickson’s grove property. “I’m not sure that any of it means anything, but I’d like to know who bought that grove from Jim Fredrickson’s estate. They’ve got more weapons out there than an infantry squad.”

“I wonder what’s in the safe,” she said.

“Me too,” I said. “How’d your interview with King’s girlfriend go?”

“She’s a piece of work, but I think she finally told me the truth. Most of it anyway.” She told us about her day, what she’d found at King’s and her interrogation of Josie Tyler.

Logan asked, “Have you put together a timeline?”