Kendel Lynn - Elliott Lisbon 02 - Whack Job (2 page)

TWO

(Day #1: Friday Afternoon)

Sea Pine Island is shaped like a shoe. Or a foot. Or perhaps more accurately a foot wearing an unattractive ankle boot. The bridge to mainland South Carolina hooked on at the ankle and the Harborside lighthouse decorated the big toe. I was headed to Island Memorial Hospital, snuggled in around the heel area, from Tug Boat’s up near the ankle—all connected by Cabana Boulevard. I contemplated Gilbert Goodsen’s shooting while I drove, the glorious September sunshine easing some of my tension. A mild cold front blanketing the entire eastern United States lowered both our temperature and humidity. Still warm by most standards at eighty-two, but a perfect Labor Day weekend to me. I loved to drive with the top down, but can’t for most of the summer. With a natural wave in my dark red hair, too much humidity exposure and I resembled Shaun White in his wild-man glory days. Might work on the snowboarding circuit, but not on the fundraising circuit.

I turned onto the winding drive to Memorial Hospital, then parked the Mini beneath a sprawling oak and debated my options. Emergency visitors generally use the Emergency entrance. Which entails walking through a germy lobby, explaining oneself to the admissions clerk, then waiting a ridiculously long time for permission to enter the secure area. Or one could enter through the automatic doors in the ambulance bay with complete disregard to the posted Authorized Personnel Only sign.

With a quick step across the tiny lot, I hustled to the bay and through the doors, wearing a slightly panicked look on my face. Part worry, part shock: an aggrieved relative searching for a recent emergent situation. I glanced at the large white board posted on the wall midway down the hall. Spotted “Goodsen 12” written in sloppy black marker and kept on walking.

The rooms were conveniently laid out in sequential order. I found Goodsen’s room just around the corner. Though “room” may be overstating. It had two solid walls and two curtain walls, one of which covered the entrance. Curtain 12 stood open.

“What have you done now?” a doctor said to Gilbert as I entered. The doctor wore a long white doctor’s coat with Island Memorial stitched in blue above the left breast pocket. His name badge said Dr. Carl Locke and the accompanying picture must have been taken fifteen years earlier. Short gray hair now thinning on top; defined jaw line now giving way to gravity.

Gilbert noticed me in the doorway and waved away the doctor. “Hey, Elliott. Meet the doc, here. Worried about me, but I’m fine. I’m a trooper. Don’t worry.”

Dr. Locke nodded at me and left, with one last worried look over his shoulder. Gilbert’s right arm was haphazardly bandaged from bicep to shoulder, as if the medic let Gilbert wrap it himself, one-armed, lying down in the back of a speeding bus. An IV ran up his left arm, and he still wore his bloody and ripped clothes from lunch. A purple plaid button-down and blue seersucker Bermudas. A thin white blanket covered his feet.

“Are you alright?” I asked Gilbert. “The doctor didn’t look too happy.”

“Not bad considering you tried to kill me.” He pointed at a bent fork on the roller tray next to his bed. “I must’ve fell on that when I went down. Every time you pushed my arm down, you rammed it in deeper.”

“I’m sorry, Gilbert, but I didn’t want you to bleed to death. Though that explains why you were screeching like a woman in labor.”

“The bullet seared right through my arm, almost missed me altogether. I bobbed and weaved at the right time. Got to be faster than a gunslinger to bust a cap in me.” Gilbert scooted up and adjusted his IV tube, then pulled the blanket over his knees, exposing his mismatched socks. One blue, one brown.

A young nurse wearing pink scrubs and a teddy bear pin popped in. “Can I get you anything, sir? Ma’am? Cup of ice chips, water, coffee? Magazine?”

Gilbert glanced up, and tried to grimace out a smile. He ran his hand through his thinning black hair and nearly knocked the IV stand over. “No, no. I’m fine. Well, not fine. I went down in a hail of bullets in a bar fight today. Took a piece of lead in my arm.”

“Some ice chips, then?” she asked.

“We’re good for now,” I said with a smile. “It was actually more of a severe fork injury.”

I slid the curtain shut behind her. “So talk to me, Gil. Who shot you and why?”

“This is just a misunderstanding about a boat. What I really need your help with is with my wife,” he said. “I know you help folks out on the side, you know, us loyal Ballantyne supporters, with investigations and string-pulling and favors.”

No doubt he was referring to the discreet inquires I sometimes handled for Ballantyne Foundation patrons. My director duties for the largest charitable organization in the South sometimes extended beyond paperwork and party planning. I helped with minor issues like a pilfered Pomeranian or a questionable houseguest. Not gunshot wounds or grand larceny. I was working toward my PI license and still needed over five thousand hours. So really, every little bit helped.

I nodded at his mismatched socks, then his wounded arm. “Is this about the divorce?” As long as I’d known them, Jaime’d held the threat of divorce over Gilbert’s head like Wile E. Coyote wielding an ACME anvil.

“No, of course not. It’s not related.”

“You meet me to talk about the divorce, then some guy shoots you and steals a satchel full of cash, and it’s not related? Come on, Gil, how is Jaime involved?”

“She’s not. She wouldn’t shoot me. Or get a guy to shoot me. She may be high-strung, but she’s not violent. Really. That often. There was the one incident with the garden hose, but that was an accident. Mostly. I only asked you to meet at Tug’s because I had some quick business there, and figured we’d talk over lunch after. Killing two birds.”

This was going to be convoluted. I sighed and sat, perching on the edge of a squat stool on wheels. I crossed my legs and noticed my stained pants and the faint stench coming from them. I rolled the stool across the chipped linoleum floor to the wall-mounted hand-sani dispenser and helped myself to a squirt.

“What kind of business deal did you arrange in a bar?” I asked.

“It was a down payment on a new boat. A gorgeous fifty-foot ocean trawler listed in the
Islander Post
. How was I supposed to know the guy would rob me?”

“He had you bring cash to a bar? Does that sound legitimate to you?”

“Tug’s is a public place. A little overcrowded today, probably why the guy was so nervous. The banana was my idea. You know, so I wouldn’t walk up to just anybody with a bag of cash.”

“Shouldn’t he have held the banana, so you’d know who to walk up to?”

“It works either way. Like I said, it was a public place and a good plan.”

“Of course. You do realize you chose the closest restaurant to the bridge? Only one minute to reach Cabana Boulevard, then thirty seconds to the rest of the United States.”

I could almost see a little light click on above his head, and he paled a shade, started fidgeting.

Now I’m definitely going to talk to Lola at the manager’s office, I thought.

“Okay, okay. I made a mistake, and now I’m the one with the bullet hole. Can we please get back to Jaime before these pain meds knock me out? They’re taking me to X-ray soon.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry. Go ahead.”

He adjusted his thin blanket over his feet. “This is all discreet, right? Confidential?”

“Absolutely. Of course.”

“Ed Ballantyne is considering me for the Ballantyne Board. For Leo’s old spot.”

At my raised eyebrows, he added, “I know, I know, Jaime wants on the list, too. So I asked Ed to help me keep the divorce civil. Jaime’s being unreasonable. I need someone to negotiate a small matter. She wants something from you, to be on the board, so she’ll be friendly. I’m in sales, I know what I’m doing.”

I glanced at his arm. “Uh-huh.”

“She kicked me out of the house. My house! I’m living on the
Tiger Shark
now, which is why I’m shopping for a new boat. I need to upgrade if this goes on much longer. And the way she’s playing it, it’ll be months.”

“I’m not a lawyer or a marriage counselor. I’m afraid I can’t really help with this.” Especially with my recent track record with relationships. Okay, my complete lifelong track record if you must know all of my business. Never married, never engaged. Never even co-habitated. Though I once babysat a fish for a whole month.

I stood to leave and carefully wheeled the stool back into the corner.

“Wait, Elli. Just listen. Jaime took something of mine, something personal, and I want it back. A Fabergé egg. A real one, not a miniature. Turquoise blue enamel with gold trim and a deep orange fire opal clasp. Jaime’s mad because she thinks I’m hiding assets.”

“Like fifty thousand dollars for a new boat?”

“You can cut the sarcasm, I’m wounded here.”

“Just asking. Why not just list it as part of the divorce paperwork? She’ll be forced to turn it over in the settlement.”

“It’s mine, not hers. A family heirloom.
My
family heirloom.”

“Still, you should list it. That’s my best advice. Let the lawyers work it out.”

He fidgeted with the blanket again. It was thinner than a dryer sheet and couldn’t have been doing much more than making him itch. “Well, I can’t prove I own it. It’s not insured.”

“Not insured? So you mean stolen?”

His face turned tomato red and his tone turned indignant. “It’s been in my family since 1902. Given to my great-grandmother as a gift upon the birth of her daughter, my grandmother. They left Russia when the war began at the turn of the century. It’s not like they declared the egg at the border. Jaime knows it’s priceless to me, so she’s blackmailing me.”

“
Are
you hiding assets?”

“Of course not. How can you even ask?”

I rolled my eyes, then leaned against the back wall. Even though I wasn’t considering Gilbert for the vacant Ballantyne board seat, Mr. Ballantyne might be. And believe it or not, Mr. Ballantyne outranked me. Besides, Jaime was on my short list of candidates, and as eccentric as our board members may be, extortion wasn’t a practice we particularly admired.

“I’ll talk to Jaime,” I said. “See if she’ll at least let you inside the house to retrieve it. Maybe switch the egg for something else. Like a swap.”

“It’s not in the house. She broke into my office and stashed it someplace. And she won’t admit she did it, even though we both know she did.”

My palms started to itch. “How can she blackmail you if she won’t admit she has it?”

“No one else took the egg, no one even knows about it. She’s just playing hardball. She’s a tough noodle, that one.”

“Uh-huh.” Finding stolen trinkets and misplaced heirlooms was actually my strongest skill set at the Ballantyne. Not what one would expect from a charity director, but you’d be surprised how often it came up. And right now I really really needed a notch in the win column. Even I wasn’t that impressed with the job I did last month. But how was I supposed to know you don’t feed a goldfish every single day?

“And the egg and the shooting, they are completely unrelated?” Pleasing Nick Ransom was definitely not on the top of my list, but neither was kicking a hornet’s nest with a bare foot. Angering one of Sea Pine’s finest did not score points with my boss, the aforementioned Mr. Ballantyne. And I needed those boys in blue for my PI activities. The captain signed off on my actions. At least the ones I reported.

“Look, I already told you,” Gilbert said. “This hoodlum ripped me off over a new trawler. Jaime’s only involved because she’s locked me out of the house and I can’t live on my old boat. You’re an investigator. I hear a really good one, too. Please get my egg back. It’s important to me, so it’s important to you. I’m good for the Ballantyne. Tons of wealthy clients. Wealthy clients equal wealthy donors. And vice versa.”

I sighed. “Investigator in training.”

“It’ll be easy. Negotiate with Jaime. Tell her I’ll give her half the value of the egg as an asset. That’s twenty-five g.”

I watched him for a minute. The earnest look on his face, his bandaged arm propped on the tray next to the bent fork I nearly jammed to the bone. His one blue sock peeking out from the blanket. I walked to the curtained doorway. “Twenty-five thousand? Aren’t Fabergé eggs worth more, like millions?”

“It wasn’t owned by Alexander the Great.”

“I think that’s the wrong Alexander. By like fifteen hundred years.”

“I’m not a historian. You get my point,” Gilbert said and adjusted the blanket.

“Do you have a picture of this egg?”

“Trust me, you see a blue egg with a fire opal and it’s my family’s. No one else in the whole state of South Carolina has a Fabergé egg.”

The pretty in pink nurse popped in again. “Just checking. You ready for those ice chips now? Maybe another blanket? And later we can get ice cream.”

“No ice chips,” Gilbert said. “Though I think a double scoop of mint chip might help with the pain from this gaping gunshot wound.”

She nodded and patted his foot, then left.

“What’s with the nurse?” I asked. “She another reason Jaime’s mad at you?”

“God no, what is she, twelve?”

Well, she’s hanging around for some reason, I thought. Those bubble gum scrubs screamed pediatrics, not trauma.

A burly technician in gray scrubs walked through the curtain door. “Dude, heard you got forked.” He expertly pushed away the roller tray, unhooked the IV bag from the tall hanger, and adjusted the height on the bed. “Time for X-ray. You feeling better? Those meds kicking in?”