The Turtle Mound Murder (23 page)

Ruthie rummaged through Penny Sue’s Louis
Vuitton and finally came up with a rumpled, blue card for
Charlotte’s Cleaning Service. She turned it over. “This must be it.
Says LF and a number.”

“Right, Lyndon Fulbright. I took the card
and headed back to the pay phone. I dialed the number and got:
The cellular customer you have called is unavailable or out of
the area.
I slammed the receiver down and retrieved my quarter.
“No luck; just like the Judge,” I said, retaking my seat. “Either
the phone’s turned off, or Lyndon’s out of range.”

“The phone’s turned off. We saw Lyndon only
hours ago—he must be in range. He’s probably sleeping, since he was
up all night with Penny Sue.”

“I guess we’ll have to go to The
Riverview.”

“What about Penny Sue? Suppose they release
her while we’re gone?”

“Woody will give her a ride home.”

Ruthie winced. “That seems so cold.”

It did. If I were being questioned by the
police, I’d like to have a friendly face waiting when I got out.
Still, Penny Sue might not be released at all if we didn’t find
Lyndon. If she were in our place, what would she do? “Penny Sue can
reach us on her cell phone and we can be back here in a matter of
minutes.”

I found the young officer who’d responded to
our 9-1-1 call and relayed the message for Penny Sue. He sullenly
agreed to deliver it, although it was clear he didn’t expect Woody
to let our friend go any time soon. I thanked him for his help and
returned to the reception area. “Come on,” I said to Ruthie.

We were at The Riverview in twenty minutes,
which was ten more than it usually took due to torrential downpours
spun off by Lizzie. I dropped Ruthie in front of the restaurant and
waited. Fortunately, the place wasn’t busy, even though church had
been out for a good half hour.

I relaxed into the Mercedes’ soft leather
seat and watched the rain pelt the windshield. There’s a raw energy
to storms that I find exciting. It’s almost sexual. Ruthie says
it’s the negative ions. Atmospheric turbulence knocks electrons
free, charging the air. Or maybe it’s lightning that does it. In
any event, the air truly acquires an electric charge, which
explains why hair will sometimes stand up on your arm.

While the hair wasn’t standing up on my arm,
I was enjoying Lizzie’s brutish display. Of course, I was
relatively dry and safe inside the car. I say relatively dry
because a goodly amount of spray entered as Ruthie exited the Benz.
Yet, I could hardly complain about the spray that coated Penny
Sue’s leather seats and fogged the windows—Ruthie nearly had to
crawl to make it to the restaurant.

I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on
the warble and sway of the squalls. It didn’t work. Thoughts of
Penny Sue and Zack kept intruding. What was Woody doing to her? And
Zack—I looked at my watch—could be in New Smyrna Beach in less than
four hours. Three if he didn’t check luggage.

Darn, what was keeping Ruthie? I cleared a
spot on the fogged windshield and stared at the restaurant. I made
out her form talking to a lady in front of the glass doors. The
woman was gesturing toward the river. I saw Ruthie nod, tuck her
head, and race toward the car.

“The yacht’s gone,” she reported, wiping
water off her face as she climbed in. “The hostess said it left
right after she got to work, at about ten this morning.”

“Left?” I asked, feeling numb. Lyndon said
he’d leave if the storm was coming ashore. But the storm was miles
away and no one knew where, or if, it would make landfall. New
Smyrna Beach was in the strike zone, heck, so was the rest of
Florida and most of the East Coast. By leaving now, Lyndon could
well be sailing into the storm’s path. It didn’t make sense …
unless he was running from something.

I put the car in gear. “Let’s go back to the
police station.”

I cut through the parking lot and took a
left on Flagler Avenue. The rain was coming down in proverbial
buckets, flooding the road in low spots. I hit the scan button on
the radio and found a weather forecast. Lizzie had taken an
westerly turn and gained speed. If the storm continued on its
present course, the level one hurricane would make landfall between
Cocoa Beach and Jacksonville.

“New Smyrna Beach is smack dab in the middle
of that range,” Ruthie said, her voice tremulous.

I squeezed the steering wheel and took my
foot off the accelerator as the car hydroplaned in a deep pool on
the west side of the North Causeway Bridge. “Don’t worry. Lizzie
will turn north. They always do. New Smyrna’s never taken a direct
hit.”

Ruthie wasn’t convinced. She bit her lip.
“Maybe it’s overdue—did you ever think of that?”

I had. Though I’d quickly dismissed the idea
as nothing more than statistical gibberish, mathematical
masturbation. A spurious application of probability theory, I told
myself. That, notwithstanding the fact that statistics had been my
worst subject, I’d barely squeaked by with a D. Nonetheless,
statistics said the storm wouldn’t hit. It couldn’t hit.

“Don’t worry. After the smudging, the condo
can withstand anything.”

Ruthie twittered. “It didn’t do much for
Stinky. We should have used more sage.”

I glanced sideways. She was serious. “We’ll
do it over after we get Penny Sue.”

“Do you think Lyndon killed Stinky?” Ruthie
said suddenly. She’d probably picked up my earlier thought.

“He’s a more likely candidate than Penny
Sue. Woody says we can’t vouch for Penny Sue’s whereabouts while we
were napping. We can’t vouch for Lyndon, either. Perhaps Stinky was
trying to break into our condo, and Lyndon surprised him. Lyndon
struggled with Stinky and the gun went off.”

Ruthie tilted her head, considering. “A gun
shot, right out on the deck, would have awakened us for sure.”

“A silencer.”

“Only criminals have guns with silencers.
Besides, Lyndon would have had to hang around after Penny Sue went
to bed, or left and come back. Why would he do that?”

Why would Lyndon do that? I eased the car to
a stop at a traffic signal. My theory would work only if Lyndon and
Stinky were in cahoots somehow. What could Lyndon possibly want
from us? Not money or jewelry, he was clearly wealthy. The way
Penny Sue mooned over him, Lyndon didn’t have to resort to
nefarious means; sweet talk could get virtually anything.

A gust of wind caught the traffic signal
just as it turned green. The fixture bobbed spastically like a fish
on a line. I zipped forward, half afraid the thing might fall on
us.

Ruthie’s objections were valid, my
hypothesis was flimsy. “Okay, if Lyndon wasn’t involved, Stinky
must have been killed before we got home. What about the guy in the
red pickup?”

“He’s a friend of Deputy Moore, you saw them
talking yourself. The deputy’s friend wouldn’t murder anyone,
right?”

Wrong. It happened all the time in cop shows
which were, at least loosely, based on real life. “Mr. Pickup tried
to run us off the road,” I reminded.

“Yeah, with Stinky and Pony Tail. Mr.
Pickup’s a friend of Stinky’s, he wouldn’t kill him.”

“He might—” I hit the brakes and swerved as
a palm frond blew in front of the car. “Damn,” I exclaimed, my
heart racing. I took a couple of deep breathes to calm myself
before continuing. “Mr. Pickup might kill under the right
conditions. We know he’s a friend of Deputy Moore’s, so he can’t be
a hardened criminal.”

“Unless Deputy Moore’s a dirty cop,” Ruthie
cut in.

I’d thought of that, yet put the possibly
out of my mind. I hated to think my judgment of Ted Moore was so
wrong. Especially because I’d trusted, even liked, him. He seemed
so genuine and unpretentious, the exact opposite of Zack. “That’s
another story. Bear with me a moment. Suppose Mr. Pickup is/was a
friend of both Deputy Moore and Stinky. He had too much to drink
that night at JB’s and decided to have a little fun with Stinky and
Pony Tail. Though they were really trying to run us off the road,
Pickup was horsing around. The Deputy realizes who Pickup is from
our description of his truck and the bumper sticker. The day I saw
them talking on the highway, Moore was warning him to stay away
from us and to keep his buddies at bay.

“After that, Mr. Pickup finds out that
Stinky intends to rob or rape us. So, he follows Stinky to our
condo to try to stop him, there’s a struggle, and a gun goes off.
Stinky’s killed and Mr. Pickup runs away.”

Ruthie nodded slowly. “That’s possible, but
no more likely than Lyndon doing exactly the same thing. Besides,
if Lyndon’s not involved, why did he leave town?”

I turned up the windshield wipers. The
blades slapped frantically like a metronome on amphetamines, yet I
could still barely see the road. I slowed the car to a crawl. “The
hurricane. Lyndon probably has access to sophisticated weather
data. He may know something we don’t. Or maybe he and Penny Sue had
a fight. We never had a chance to talk with her.”

Ruthie massaged her temple, looking worried.
“Penny Sue would have told us about a fight. She had plenty of time
while we were waiting for Woody.”

“There was a dead man on the deck—it wasn’t
the best time for chitchat.” The cell phone played a little song at
the exact moment I reached the light on Riverside Drive. Luckily,
I’d already stopped, because the sound almost sent me through the
roof. I hesitated, a hard knot forming in my stomach at the thought
it might be Zack. Thankfully, it was Penny Sue and the knot
dissolved.

“Lord, where are you?” she asked loudly.
“Get me out of this place!”

* * *

We were at
the police station in a
matter of minutes. Penny Sue was waiting in the doorway, a young
officer by her side. I pulled up front and waited. A moment later
she fell into the backseat, drenched and angry.

“Twerp. You’d think they’d have the decency
to walk me to the car with an umbrella,” Penny Sue groused,
brushing water from her clothes. “The rain’s going to spot this
silk blouse.”

I put the car in gear and pulled away
slowly. “Never mind—at least you’re out. Was it awful?”

Penny Sue reared back and pressed her lips
together huffily. “The chair was hard, Woody was rude—kept asking
the same questions over and over—but, it wasn’t so bad. He doesn’t
have anything on me! All Woody knows is that Stinky, whose real
name is Clarence Smith, was killed with a gun. He has no idea what
kind of gun, how long Stinky’s been dead—nothing. He had to let me
go. Besides, Swindal called to tell Woody they’d sent for Daddy,
and Zack would be here shortly.”

Zack … the mere mention of his name made my
stomach curl. With all of the tension of the previous few days, he
was the last person on Earth I wanted to see. If only there were
some way we could straighten everything out before he arrived. Fat
chance.

“Did you reach Lyndon?” Penny Sue
interrupted my thoughts.

Ruthie answered, giving me a sidelong
glance. “Uh, no. He’s left.”

“What do you mean, he’s left?” Penny Sue
snapped.

“The boat’s gone, and he didn’t answer the
telephone.”

“Are you sure you called the right number?”
Penny Sue asked testily, reaching across the seat for her
purse.

“We called the number on the back of the
card.”

“Back of the card?” Penny Sue said, as she
unloaded her purse on the seat. “The number’s on a note card, you
know, his stationery. You’ve called the wrong number. See.” She
handed a featheredged note card to Ruthie.

Ruthie stiffened.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, one eye on Ruthie,
the other on the flooded street.

“
Mark how he trembles
…” Ruthie
murmured.

“What?” I asked loudly, in no mood for word
games. Zack and a hurricane were both on the way, the road was
practically under water, and my head was beginning to throb.

Ruthie angled the note toward me. The phrase
was embossed across the top, while Lyndon and a phone number were
handwritten in the center. I stared at the paper, I’d seen the
stationery before. Ruthie had even commented on how expensive it
was when we found it with Rick’s pesticides.

“Mark how he trembles ...” Ruthie repeated
forcefully, her eyes narrowed with concentration. “Shakespeare.
The Comedy of Errors. ‘Mark how he trembles
… in his
ECSTASY!
’ Ecstasy: Lyndon’s yacht!”

A chill shot up my spine.

“So what?” Penny Sue demanded. She leaned
across the seat and snatched the note from Ruthie and the cell
phone from its cradle. “Y’all called the wrong number,” she chided,
punching a number into the phone. I watched her in the rearview
mirror as she waited. After a couple of minutes, she hung up,
clearly in a snit. “No answer. What number did y’all dial?”

“The one on the back of Charlotte’s card,”
Ruthie replied weakly.

“Charlotte’s card?!” Penny Sue roared,
digging into her purse like a hungry dog after a bone. I saw her
retrieve the blue card and line it up against Lyndon’s stationery.
Her cheeks and neck flamed. “The number’s the same! What is
Charlotte doing with Lyndon’s telephone number?”

I swallowed the knot that had formed in my
throat. “It’s worse than that, Penny Sue. Ruthie and I found the
same stationery in a drawer full of pesticides at the condo.
Remember, Ruthie? What did the note say?”

She bit her fingernail nervously. “It was
the directions for mixing the chemicals.”

“Are you sure? Wasn’t there was something
else? Although, the real question is: ‘Why did Rick have Lyndon’s
stationery?’”

“Lyndon and Rick? How could they possibly be
related?” Penny Sue asked.

“Boats get bugs,” I offered lamely.

“Rick treated the yacht and picked up a
piece of Lyndon’s stationery?” Ruthie nodded slowly. “Possible, I
suppose.”

“Yeah, but what does Charlotte have to do
with all of this?” Penny Sue said, folding her arms across her
ample chest. “And, when did you find the pesticides and note? I
never heard anything about it.”