Sandy Gingras - Lola Polenta 01 - Swamped (18 page)

“Yeah,” I remember.

“Now it says, ‘If it’s midnight on Wednesday, and you want to rest your bones, MM12 on Caloosahatchee Highway has what it is you need.”

“Oh,” I say.

“You don’t think it’s anything?”

“It just changed?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing,” he says.

Since nothing is about all we have to go on at this point, I say, “Let’s take a ride in the morning.”

Chapter 32

Route 33 is an old highway bleached white from the sun. There are black skid marks on some parts of the road.

“Once they put in Highway 10, this road became redundant,” Joe tells me as we’re driving. “I think the kids race out here on their quads.”

The shoulders of the road are sandy. There are tufts of grass growing up from the cracks. There are some old businesses here and there, all boarded up. We go through miles and miles of sugarcane as we go further inland.

The thing about Florida is, you want to stick to the coastline. Once you turn inland, things get weird really fast. You feel like you’re on the set of a horror movie, one with a prison break and an insane guy with a machete and some huge psychotic alligators. I know that’s a little prejudiced, but jeez, inland Florida is creepy. I don’t know what Walt Disney saw in it.

We keep checking the mile markers. We haven’t passed another car for fifteen minutes. At MM39, there seems to be nothing. I keep driving. Then, on the side of the road, there’s a rest stop. It’s not boarded up. It’s just bathrooms—women on one side of the building, men on the other. Nobody’s around. I pull in. The parking lot is pretty substantial, about twenty slots. I go check out my side. Joe checks out his.

My side is a room with three sinks, three stalls, a garbage can and a paper towel dispenser. It’s beige and kind of stinky. Not incredibly stinky, but not the cleanest place either. There isn’t that much to look at. I come back outside. There’s a water fountain out here, but not even any vending machines. I let Dreamer out of the car, and we walk around a little. There’s nothing but empty old highway and some dried patches of grass and then a wall of dense jungle. You could never just go for a walk in the woods in Florida. You’d need hip boots, and you’d probably be eaten by some snake in about a minute.

Joe strolls over to us.

“Anything?” I ask.

He shrugs, “I used the facilities.”

“Brave,” I say. “When, they said ‘rest your bones,’ I thought they meant a hotel.”

“I thought they meant a beach that rented out hammocks or cabanas.”

“This isn’t really a tourist spot,” I say confused.

“That you would recommend on a web site…?” he wonders, looking around.

We both look around like we’re missing something. It’s very quiet in that buzzing Florida way. “It’s not close to anything, or on the way to anything.”

“Midnight would be really dark here.”

We get back in the car. We head over to the new ‘rest your bones’ location. It’s the same. I mean, the location is different, but that’s it. It’s about twenty miles north, but it’s just a remote rest stop. “Strange,” I say.

We drive home, both of us lost in thought. Suddenly Joe pulls out his cell phone. He calls information. “in the city of Ft. Palms,” he says, “ a business called Big Bass Inn.” He does this again for Fleetfoot Café and SAM’s market. Then he gets quiet. He puts away his phone in his shirt pocket.

“What?” I ask.

“There are no listings for any of those places.”

“They don’t have phones?”

He looks over at me disparagingly. “They don’t exist,” he tells me.

Chapter 33

“I think this tarot guy is doing this woman’s cards and telling her she needs to let her female energy flower out all over him, and he tells her what specific sex acts she needs to perform on him in order to release her squashed feminine energy,” I tell Squirt when Dreamer and I arrive at the office. I laugh. I say, “Can you believe it?”

“That’s an abuse of power,” Squirt says. She crosses her arms over her chest. She’s not amused. Not one little itty bit.

“I guess,” I say.

“He should be reported,” she says.

“Is there a tarot ethics board?” I ask her.

“No,” she says, “but there should be.” She slips some papers together neatly. “Do you know his name?” she asks.

“Nope,” I say.

“Can you find out?” she asks, not so patiently.

“Probably,” I tell her.

“Then we’ll go and straighten out his masculine energy,” she tells me.

“You and me?” I ask.

“The ethics board,” she says. She clicks a sheaf of papers on top of her desk so that all of their edges are aligned. Then she runs them through her massive electric stapler. I’ve never seen anything like that stapler. It’s a big black thing with an open jaw and looks like a huge black beetle. “Chomp,” it says definitively. “He can’t be allowed to go on in that manner. Just think of the damage he’s done to that woman and probably many women like her. He’s a predator,” she insists.

“People come to you and they’re vulnerable,” she explains. “They’re looking for answers. Well,” she looks at me, “you know how it is. You can’t take advantage of their need for answers. It’s just not allowed.”

She looks down at her desk. “Diamond?” I say.

“Just find out who he is,” she tells me.

“Aye, aye skipper,” I say.

“I’ve been running this place for ten years,” she says.

“Did you know Paulie was thinking about leaving?”

“I know,” she says.

“What do you think?” I ask her.

“I think you better study for that test,” she says.

“It’s hard,” I reply.

“I know,” she says, “I took it.”

I look at her. She says, “Go on, get going.”

“Did you pass?” I can’t resist asking her.

She looks at me. I shrug. I go into my office and call information and ask for Feather’s number. I call and ask her the name of her Tarot reader. She’s remarkably agreeable. “He does regular Tarot readings. And he does energy work,” she explains.

“My secretary just wants a reading,” I explain. I don’t think she wants her energy messed with. My secretary—the Private Investigator, I think. I shake my head.

“Oh, he’s good,” Feather tells me blandly. She evidently doesn’t remember anything about our conversation yesterday. I wonder if she remembers anything about anything. “Good luck,” she says, “tootle-oo.”

“Tootle-oo to you too,” I say.

I bring the name and number out to Squirt. She’s wearing a black suit today, with a black shell underneath. She looks a little like her stapler. She takes the piece of paper. I almost hear her brain go “chomp” as she clamps onto it. “I’ll make us an appointment,” she says smiling.

Joe calls my cell phone . He says, “Marie and I found something.”

I drive right over to Marie’s house.

“What is it?” I say when I get into Marie’s trailer.

“Well, we’re not sure,” Joe says. “I came over about fifteen minutes ago to check on Marie. We were having a cup of coffee. And it struck ten o’clock. The bird came out of the clock and it pinged ten times.”

I wait.

Joe says, “For some reason, I actually looked at the clock.”

“Uh huh,” I say.

“It’s a birdhouse,” he says.

“Oh!” I say looking up at it. There it is right over the kitchen sink plain as day. “Did you take it down and look at it?”

“Marie wanted to call the detective, but I said we should wait for you.”

“So you haven’t looked?” I ask. I can’t believe it.

They shake their heads. “How ’bout,” I say, “Marie you call the detective, and Joe and I will take the clock down.”

She bites her lip. “We…ll,” she says.

“Do you have rubber gloves?” Joe asks Marie.

She hands them out from under her sink.

He puts them on, climbs on her step stool and takes the clock down. My chest is pounding and Joe’s yellow rubber hands are shaking. I love this job.

Marie is quickly calling the detective. “Don’t tell him we’re looking,” I tell her.

But of course, the first thing out of her mouth is “Lola the Private Investigator is here and Joe and they are looking at the birdhouse right now.”

“Sheesh,” I say to Joe.

He smiles at me.

“The detective says don’t touch it or he’ll charge you with tampering with evidence,” Marie says.

I pause. “Will he, you think?” I ask Joe.

He shakes his head. How should he know?

“We’re just peeking,” I tell her.

I can hear the detective’s voice coming from the phone: “No peeking.”

She hangs up. “He says he’ll be right here.”

“I wonder if he’ll use a siren,” I say.

Joe smiles.

“Do you have some tweezers,” I ask Marie.

“But…,” she says.

“We just want to be ready when the detective gets here.”

When she leaves the room, Joe and I really look at the clock. It’s a simple enough birdhouse. Ernie put some clock and spring mechanism inside that he probably bought at a craft store. There’s a clean out drawer at the base of the house. The knob is a heart. “Aha” I tell Joe, pointing. I like to say Aha, and I don’t get to say it very often.

When Marie comes back with the tweezers, she gives them to me. I try to get the drawer open with them before she can say a word, but something’s bunched up inside and the drawer won’t open.

Marie says, “You shouldn’t…”

“It won’t open anyway,” I say.

We sit back and wait for the detective.

“Do you think that’s what whoever hit me on the head was looking for?” Marie says.

“Could be,” Joe says.

“What do you think is in there,” she says.

“You won’t let us look, remember?” I say.

“Well,” she says.

“I think it’s a photograph,” Joe says.

“Maybe,” I say. “It felt fatter than that when I tried to get the drawer open, and it crunched a little like paper.”

There’s a knock on the door. BOOM. BOOM. Resounding.

Marie lets Detective Johansen in. He got his little kit for fingerprint dusting. He’s got plastic gloves and his own pair of tweezers. He smells really good, like fresh air and aftershave. Crisp.

He pauses. “I should take this back to the lab,” he says.

“The lab!” I say appalled.

“But I’ll open it here,” he says.

“The drawer,” I tell him pointing.

He looks at me.

“I’m just helping out,” I say.

He tries to open the drawer just like I did, but it sticks.

“I tried that,” I say.

He looks at me again.

“Ssshhh,” Joe tells me.

The detective wiggles and jiggles the drawer. Nothing. He grabs the heart pull with his gloved hand and tugs. The drawer comes out, and there’s a folded up sheet of paper springing up out of the drawer. Maybe two or three sheets from the bulk of it.

He unfolds the sheets. We all lean in to look. The first page is filled with figures. It looks like some sort of list of investments: “Bought ITN Dec. 6 at $2.00 sold Jan 15 at $6.50”… like that. There’s a title at top: “Capital Advisors.” There are two pages of this.

“That’s Dick and Richie’s company,” Marie says pointing at it. “That’s the statement they sent me a week ago. I gave it to Ernie because I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.”

“You have money invested with them?” the detective asks.

“I had an IRA that my husband made me start years ago, and when it matured, I just stuck the money in the bank. It was hardly making any interest. It isn’t a fortune, but it helps me live nowadays.

“Richie told me he could make me twenty percent if I invested it with him. And he did! In one month, the $500.00 I gave him became $600. So I gave him more money, this time for two years. He said I could make even more if I did the long term investment. He had a two or a five year plan. I picked the two year. Who has five years to wait when you’re this old?”

“But why is it in Ernie’s birdhouse like some kind of secret?” I ask.

Chapter 34

There’s a Ciccone’s accounting firm right next to a Soft-Tee ice cream place in a strip mall. Marie told me that this is the place Ernie visited the day he died. I ask the receptionist if I can see the same person as Ernie saw, that Ernie had recommended him. She says walk-ins always take the next available representative. Otherwise, I’d need to make an appointment. “How ’bout if I just wait?” I tell her.

She sighs, “It’s not our policy.”

I tell her, “Let’s make an exception for a murder case, okay?” It would be nice right about now to whip out my P.I. license. If I had one.

She sighs again. “Take a seat.”

The seats here are plastic form uprights with metal legs. It’s not comfy. After thirty minutes, my butt hurts. After an hour, and many people coming and going, I’m ushered into a back office and introduced to Mr. Phillips. Mr. Phillips is very, very young. But it says CPA on his desk, so I gotta believe he’s had enough schooling.

I tell him I’m here investigating Ernie’s death, and am checking to see if Ernie really was here that day from 2:00 to 3:00.

“Yes,” he tells me, referring to his appointment calendar.

“And you helped him to do his taxes?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss what we worked on.”

“Why not? He’s dead. Can you just tell me if you did work on his taxes, or not?”

“I guess I could tell you that we did not.”

“No?” I say.

“He had another matter he wanted to consult with me on.”

“What?”

“Listen,” he says, “I told the cops this a couple days ago. It was all a joke.”

“What do you mean?” I ask. “He was playing a joke?”

“No. The investments were a joke. He had some papers that, I guess were his sister’s, and they said, for example, bought ITM Dec 6 at $2.00, sold Jan 15 at $6.50, when anyone knows that ITM trades over 30 and has for years. It listed all the cash assets in Mutual Liberty Fund. But Mutual Liberty has been closed to cash assets for a year. And there were some companies I had never even heard of.”

“They were new?”

“They were fictitious. Mr. Stank wanted to know what it all meant. I told him the same thing I’m telling you. It was a joke.”