Murder Key (26 page)

Murder Key

THIRTY-NINE

             
On the last Monday in November, I went jogging on the beach. It had been a quiet weekend and I’d used the beach each morning for my workout. I kept a sharp eye out for go-fast boats, but none came in close to shore.

             
I returned to my condo, showered and met Logan for breakfast at Izzy’s. He was on his way to the airport for a trip to Atlanta to begin his work-week traveling the state of Georgia.

             
He took a sip of his tomato juice. “Think you’ll be safe without me around this week?” he
asked
, grinning.

             
“It looks like things are settling down. Maybe we took the wind out of their sails. The senator’s gone and Byron’s in jail. All in all, a pretty good Thanksgiving.”

             
We chatted and ate our breakfast. I ordered another cup of coffee. Logan didn’t drink what he called “that noxious brew” and had once declared that coffee-drinking was about the only vice he’d never indulged in.

             
Logan stood to leave. “Take care of yourself. I’ll be back on Friday, and we can go fishing. Maybe K-D
awg
can join us.”

             
That seemed like a good idea. K-
Daw
g was our usual fishing buddy, and the only one who took it seriously. I finished my coffee and sat for a while reading the paper. As I was paying the check, my cell phone rang, and I stepped outside to answer.

             
It was Rufus Harris. “I’ve had a forensic accountant spend the weekend going over the senator’s books
.
He made an interesting find.”

             
“He got a line on the drug money?”

             
“Not yet, but he found some strange payments going to a lady in your hometown.”

             
“Orlando?”

             
“Nope. Sanford.”

             
Sanford is a small town just north of Orlando, and it’s the place where Jock and I grew up.

             
“What’s that all about?” I
asked
.

             
“Don’t know yet. The lady’s name is Janet Horvath. Know her?”

             
“Never heard of her. Was it a lot of money?”

             
“No. But it was steady. Every month the senator wrote a check to Janet for a thousand bucks out of his personal account. There’s no notation as to what it was for, and the payments stopped about ten years ago.”

             
“Why do you think that’s significant?” I
asked
.

             
“I’m not sure it is, but I thought the coincidence of the payments going to a woman in your hometown was too much. Could this be a reason they were trying to kill you?”
             

             
“That doesn’t make sense to me. I never heard of the woman. Let me do some checking in Sanford and see what I can turn up. I’ll let you know.”

             
I went home, and did a computer search for Janet Horvath. Nothing. I accessed the Property Appraiser’s web site in Seminole County where Sanford was located. If Janet had ever owned property in the county, she didn’t now, and the histor
i
cal record was devoid of any mention of her name as a deed holder. There was no phone listing for her, so I called the information operator. Nothing.

             
Maybe I could find ou
t something in Sanford. I grabb
ed a change of clothes and my shaving kit and pointed the Explorer toward I-75 and Sanford.

* * * * *

             
My timing was good. At
Tampa, I turned onto I-4, and
passed through Orlando shortly after mid-
day. The traffic on the express
ways had not begun to build for the afternoon rush hour, and I cruised through the city heading east, which on that part of the Interstate is actually north. Go figure.

             
I took the Highway 46 exit and drove into my childhood. Many things about Sanford had changed over the years, but as I entered the restored downtown, I felt as if I’d stepped through a time warp.

             
The old buildings, some dating to the late nineteenth century, lined the brick-paved First Street.
In
my childhood the
se buildings
had
housed
department stores, drug stores and other commercial establishments
. Now
there were mostly antique and other specialty shops.

             
The town sits on the southern bank of Lake Monroe, a 9,400 acre body of water through which flows the St. Johns River. For many years Sanford had served as a great inland po
rt, and later a rail center. It had
always been home for me, and though I had no relatives left there, I felt a stab of nostalgia as I drove into downtown.

             
I called an
old friend, Mick Columbus, who ha
d practiced law in Sanford for more than fifty years
.
He
knew most of the people who
had ever
lived there. He invited me by his office for coffee, a ritual that is largely missing from the modern practice of law.

             
Mick’s office was in an old two-story
building that once housed a hot
el. It sat across from a decaying structure
that in Sanford’s heyday had be
en the railroad terminal, long since fallen into disrepair, the tracks ripped out of the
ground and sold for scrap. The
new
terminal, older than I am, was out of Highway 46, between downtown and the Interstate.

             
Mick greeted me effusively, and we spent some time chatting about the old days and people long gone. Finally, I told him I was working on a legal matter, and I asked him if he had ever known Janet Horvath.

             
“Oh, sure,” he said. “She used to waitress down at the Colonial Room. Quite a gal. Died a few years back.”

             
The Colonial Room was a small restaurant on First Street that served breakfast and lunch and was a favorite of the locals. At noon on weekdays, most of the courthouse crowd was there, savoring the daily special.

             
I sipped my coffee. “What ca
n you tell me about her?”

             
“Not much. She came to town twenty-five or thirty years ago, pregnant. She didn’t bring a husband with her. She’d been here about three months when she had a baby girl. Rented a house out by Pinecrest School and went to work at the restaurant. Nobody ever knew who the girl’s father was. It was quite a topic of conversation when Janet first came to town, but like everything else, that died down, too.”

             
“What happened to the daughter?” I asked.

             
“I don’t think I ever heard. I seem to remember that for a while she was barten
d
ing down at Wolfy’s, but I don’t know
whatever
became of her. I can’t remember what her name is, either. I haven’t seen her since her mom died.”

             
We chatted for a little longer, and I took my leave, promi
s
ing to stop by the next time I was in Sanford.

             
I drove the three blocks to Wolfy’s to see if anybody remembered a girl named Horvath. The bar and restaurant s
at on a city-
owned peninsula that had been dredged from the lake bottom years before. It was a popular nightspot with an unbeatable view of the lake. The municipal marina and a small hotel share
d
the spit of public land.

             
The bartender filled my beer order, putting a Miller Lite and a cold mug on the bar. I asked her if she knew a girl that used to work there named Horvath
. S
he said she didn’t.

             
She took a swipe at the bar with her towel. “I’ve only been here a couple of years, though,” she said. “The manager will be here in a few minutes. He’s been running this place forever.”

             
I sat quietly,
taking the occasional sip of
beer. The flat water of the lake reflected the late afternoon sun, causing a glare that turned everything to shades of gray. It looked as if all the color were being leached out of the earth. I saw the snout of an alligator poking out of the water near the marina docks. Further out, a bass boat skimmed the surface, its wake curving behind, as the fisherman brought it in toward the marina ramp. At the far western end of the lake, I could see the I-4 bridge, full of vehicles heading through the rush hour traffic toward Deltona and Orange City. Orlando workers going home.

             
“I’m Tommy Bradseth,” said a man, as he slid in next to me. He had a head full of unruly gray hair that looked like a Brillo pad. It hadn’t seen a comb that day, or maybe that week. He wore rimless glasses perched low on his nose. Gesturing toward the bartender, he continued, “Paula said you were looking for somebody who used to work here. I’m the man
ager.”

             
I turned to him, introduced myself, and we shook hands. “I’m trying to locate a woman whose last name is Horvath. I don’t know her first name, but I was told she used to work here.”

             
“Yeah,” Bradseth said, “that’d be Beth Horvath. Her mother used to work over at the Colonial Room. She died a few years back.”

             
“Beth’s dead?”

             
“Not that I know of. Her mom died of cancer about ten years ago.”

             
“What can you tell me about Beth?”

             
“She was a good kid. Hard working. She was going to school at the community college and working here at night. When her mom got sick, Beth had to drop out of school to help out. She worked double shifts every chance she got.”

             
“Do you know what happened to her after her mom died?”

             
“Not sure. Last I heard she had gotten a waitressing job over in Orlando and was back in school at UCF.”

             
The University of Central Florida was located on the eastern edge of Orlando. It had grown over the years into one of the largest universities in the country. One could get pretty well lost in a school with over forty thousand students.

             
I’d finished my beer, and signaled Paula for another one. “Can I buy you a drink?” I asked the manager.

             
“I could handle a Coors. Thank you.”

             
I poured beer into my new cold mug. “Do you know where she worked in Orlando?” I
asked
.

             
“No idea. Some bar. That’s all I know.”

             
We finished our beer, talking about how Sanford had changed over the years. I left Wolfy’s and drove to the Hilton in Lake Mary, just down the road from Sanford. I got a room and spent the evening with a mystery novel.

* * * * *

             
On Tuesday, after a breakfast of eggs, bacon and grits in the hotel coffee shop, I headed to Seminole High School. The campus was off 25
th
Street, its buildi
ngs no longer new. It was from
Seminole High School that I had left for the Army and Jock for college. It seemed a long time ago.

             
The building where I had gone to school no longer existed. It was a gracious old Greek Revival structure built in the 1920's. After seventy years, the school board decided to get rid of it. A lot of memories died that day at the working end of a wrecking ball.

             
I checked in at the office and told the secretary that I was an old grad, and wondered if I could peruse some past yearbooks. She took me to the library and pointed to the shelves where row
after row of the books called
Salmagundi
were stored.