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One
“No, Maureen. I didn’t say that! What? No, that’s not what I said, either!”
“Dad! I think I got something!”
Bobby Rialto didn’t know what to do. Should he continue the inane conversation he was having with his soon-to-be ex, or should he help his son, Little Bobby, land a fish? He did what any good father would do. He hung up on his ex and stowed the phone on a shelf under the helm in the boat’s center console. He thought about just chucking it into the Gulf, but he didn’t want to spoil the natural beauty of the pristine waters with his wife’s spasmodic phone calling, and he didn’t want Little Bobby to see him act so childish—although he really felt like seeing how far he could skip the phone over the swells.
“Let’s see, buddy!” Bobby said. It was obvious Little Bobby had a fish on his line, probably a Spanish mackerel or mack, as people like to say. The line was taut, and the fish ran parallel to the boat. “Just play her in. Keep the line taut and reel in a little when it goes slack.” Little Bobby did as his father instructed. A couple minutes later, the fish splashed about three yards from the boat. Bobby got the long-handled fish net. “Just lead it over,” he said to his son. The boy was a good fisherman, steady and calm, and he reeled in the fish and pulled it over toward the net. “Got it!” Bobby said as he scooped up the Mackerel with the net. The fish still fought as Bobby brought in the net. Little Bobby put his reel down and stared down at the fish, still thrashing in the net on the boat’s deck. The mackerel was sleek and beautiful. “But we’re not keeping him, are we, Dad?” “No, son,” Bobby said. “We only keep what we can eat, the rest we’re careful with, and we let them go.”
Spanish mackerel have razor-sharp teeth, and Bobby didn’t want to get his hand sliced while trying to remove the hook. He had on fishing gloves, although they weren’t complete protection. By this time, the fish was tired, most of the fight gone. Bobby gently pulled the netting off and grabbed it firmly with his right hand behind the neck. He had a dehooker tool in his other hand, which he used to get the hook out of the fish’s mouth. “Okay, son,” Bobby said. “Lean the rod over on the stern and hook the hook on one of the guides.” Little Bobby did exactly as his father requested. He had been fishing on the Gulf with his dad since he was six. “Got it, Dad!” “Now, come over here and get in the picture.” Little Bobby squatted behind the net where his Dad was holding the fish. Then Bobby realized he’d put the phone up. He told Little Bobby to get the phone, which the boy did. Getting back into place, the boy smiled for his picture. “Alright,” Bobby said. He held the phone out as far as his arm could reach. “Smile for Mommy!” Little Bobby grinned, and Bobby took a series of pictures.
“Can I hold the fish?” Little Bobby asked.
“Not this one. These guys are dangerous even when they’re out of the water.” Bobby thought for a second. “Tell you what, you hold him by the tail and we’ll both put him back in the water, okay?” Little Bobby nodded in the affirmative. Then he and his dad picked up the fish, walked over to the gunwale, and placed the mackerel gently in the water. “Okay, bud. You let go of the tail, and then I’ll let go of his head.” Little Bobby did as his dad said, then Bobby released the fish. As he did so, he pulled his hands back quickly. The fish was motionless for a second, and then it disappeared like a dart into the Gulf’s pale green depths.
Bobby splashed his hands in the water and then cupped some and used it to wash Little Bobby’s hands. “There’s a towel under the helm up there,” Bobby said. The boy walked up to the helm, found the towel, and brought it back to his father. “We’ll wash up when we get back, okay?”
“Fireworks?” Little Bobby asked.
Bobby looked at his watch. They had just enough time to get back to Destin before the fireworks show.
“Can I have a Dr. Pepper?” Little Bobby said.
Bobby nodded yes.
“Dad, when I got your phone for you. Mom’s called a bunch.” Little Bobby got his drink out of the cooler and sat in one of the seats under the boat’s soft-top. Bobby looked at the phone’s screen. Maureen had called…about fourteen bazillion times. He didn’t relish finishing the conversation with her, so he made sure the ringer was off and slipped the phone into his back pocket. He felt it vibrate. Had to be Maureen again. Didn’t even have to look.
The evening was spectacular. It was the Fourth of July, and Bobby was fishing with his son in his favorite place—the Gulf. He walked over to the cooler, grabbed an ice-cold Diet Coke, and started the 21-foot Sea Born’s 150 horsepower outboard. The engine roared to life, and the water frothed behind the boat as Bobby expertly turned around and headed back to shore. They were only about two miles out, and when you were on top of a big swell, you could see the flat beach and maybe even make out the town of Destin itself. No navigation needed out here. South is into the Gulf, and North back to land. Bobby wanted to savor every moment of the ride back. He increased the throttle to about twenty knots. The water was perfect, and the ride back was smooth.
Two
“Are they done yet?” Andrew Donovan asked.
Retired Dr. Sam Russo stood at the stern of his thirty-foot sailing sloop, which he had bought from Donovan a few months ago. He was grilling shrimp on a small grill mounted on the outside of the boat’s transom. “Just,” Sam Russo said. “Here, give me your plate. Is there any of that Sancerre left?”
Donovan handed Russo his plate. As Russo put a couple of skewers of shrimp on the plate, Donovan lifted the Sancerre bottle from the ice bucket. “We’ve almost killed it. I’ve got some nice bubbly, but we’d have to go get it. When do the fireworks go off?”
Russo looked at his twenty-year-old Omega Seamaster dive watch. It had been an anniversary present from his late wife for their tenth anniversary. “It will last longer than either of us,” she had said.
“Sam!”
“Sorry, Andy. I kind of got lost there for a moment. Ah, it looks like the fireworks should start right about now.”
Andrew Donovan shrugged and divided the few drops of the Sancerre between his glass and Sam’s glass. Then he sat down, drank the rest of his wine, and bit the first shrimp off the skewer.
Sam Russo put another skewer on his own plate and sat down on the cockpit bench opposite Andrew. He and Andrew Donovan went way back. They had gone to college together, Auburn, then Andrew had gotten his MBA in commercial real estate at Penn State, while Russo had gone to Emory to become a doctor. Although their lives had taken completely different paths, they had remained the best of friends, essentially brothers. Andrew had been Sam’s best man at his wedding. He had stood beside Sam when Marie, Sam’s late wife, took her last breaths in the hospital. He and Sam had gone way out into the Gulf to spread Marie’s ashes, which had been her wish, into the beautiful blue-green waters. That had been five years ago on a day very much like today.
“You all right?” Andrew asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“What’s it been? Five years now?”
Sam drank the last of the wine and put the glass down on the weathered teak deck at his feet. Ever since Marie’s death, which had been on the seventh of July, this part of summer had been bittersweet for Sam. This year, things seemed to be worse, not better. Time heals all wounds? Yeah, don’t think so. Time throws salt on them and makes them hurt worse.
“Sam?” Andrew gently prodded his friend.
“Yeah, Andy, five.” Sam Russo stood up. He had eaten just one of the shrimp on his wooden skewer. He slid the other four off and threw them into the water. The skewer he put in a small black plastic garbage bag, which hung on a hook by the sliding companionway hatch. He wiped his fingers on a paper towel and threw that into the bag, as well.
“It doesn’t get easier, does it?” Andrew said more than asked.
“No, Andy. It doesn’t.”
“At least you have Aimee!” Andrew said.
Aimee was Sam Russo’s granddaughter. She had come to live with him down on SeaBreeze Island a little over a year ago when her parents were going through a particularly nasty divorce. She liked living with her grandfather over living with her ever-bickering parents, so she stayed on. Aimee had just started college, Florida State, this year. Sam loved her to death. He smiled at the thought of Aimee. “I don’t know where I’d be without her…and you.”
Andrew stood up and patted his old friend on the back. “We been through the wars, haven’t we, old buddy?”
“We’ve been through it, Andy. We’ve been through it.”
At that very moment, as if on cue, the first firework shell arced into the sky and kerwhumped into a huge, red, white, and blue burst that filled up half the sky. As the cinders trailed down toward the earth, everyone on the dock yelled and clapped. Fourth of July fireworks at Destin Harbor had begun.
Three
Around ten-thirty that evening, the fireworks tailed off. The dock at Destin Harbor was normally quiet at that time of night, but tonight all the boats that had been out in the water to watch the fireworks were coming in and docking. Sam Russo made sure the coals in the little transom-mounted grill were doused, and then he and Andrew Donovan walked toward the parking lot where they had each individually parked their cars.
“God, that Sancerre was good!” Donovan said.
“You know I’m taking Aimee to France this Christmas. Why don’t you come with us?”
Donovan laughed. “I’d love to, but I got a few plans of my own then.” Both Donovan’s parents were dead, and his little brother lived out in San Francisco. Donovan didn’t get much time to spend with his brother; besides, his brother hated capitalists, and Andrew Donovan was nothing if not a financially successful man. But Sam Russo and Andrew Donovan walked on in silence, through the crowds of families leaving the docks to go home, dead tired husbands carrying sleepy children and grumpy wives trying to hold it all in…for the sake of the kids.
As they neared the bottom of the steps that led up to the main parking lot, Sam noticed a lot of commotion coming from a floating dock where a lot of the sport fishing boats were tied up. He stopped to look. “Can you see what’s going on?”
Needing glasses, but too vain to wear them, Andrew Donovan squinted in the direction Sam had indicated. “Bunch of guys out there under that sodium vapor light arguing about something.”
“Drunks,” Russo said.
“Probably.”
Then there was the sound of emergency vehicle sirens approaching. Donovan started to trudge up the steps. “Hold on,” Russo said. “Let’s see what’s going on.”
Donovan backed off the steps and stood to the side with Russo. “You worried someone might need a doctor?” Donovan laughed. “I thought you guys quit doing that. Tired of getting sued by ambulance chasers.”
“Well, no,” Russo said unconvincingly. “But if someone needs medical help, and we’re there, I’m bound by my oath to give it. At least that’s how I’ve always interpreted it.”
The sirens quit, and now the sky over the parking lot was lit up in red and blue, not because of the Fourth, but because those were the colors of the emergency lights on the various vehicles.
“Is that Sheriff Fletcher?” Sam Russo asked. He was looking toward the top of the steps.
“Looks like, but I don’t know him as well as you do,” Andrew Donovan said.
It was indeed Sheriff Arnie Fletcher. Sam knew Sheriff Fletcher through Maud Baxter, a mutual acquaintance. So, the sheriff, about four deputies, and then three EMTs came down the steps, the EMTs carrying a portable stretcher.
When Fletcher saw Sam Russo, he stopped. “You guys go ahead. I’ll be right there,” he told the deputies and the EMTs. “Don’t touch anything if you can help it.” Fletcher stepped to the side over where Russo and Donovan stood to let the emergency guys through. “Dr. Russo,” Sheriff Fletcher finally said. “Would you mind coming over with me? I might need a little quick medical expertise.”
Sam Russo said he was happy to.
“Sam, I’m going to go on home,” Donovan said. “If you got any time tomorrow, I want to drive you out to a place.”
Sam Russo laughed. “Because of all my real estate expertise?”
“You’re a smart guy,” Donovan said. “I need a third eye, but I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag just yet.”
“How about after lunch? I’m meeting Aimee at Marino’s at twelve?”
With that, Andrew Donovan and Sam Russo gave each other a farewell pat on the back, and Donovan started up the stairs to the parking lot.
“Doc, you coming?” the ever-grumpy Sheriff Fletcher asked.
Four
“Deputy, you want to get these people back?” Sheriff Fletcher ordered.
The crowd was pushed back to the land end of the floating dock. This left Sheriff Fletcher, Sam Russo, a couple more deputies, and the three EMTs all standing together, huddled, looking down at a severely bloated corpse.
A man and his young son had found the corpse floating out in the Gulf after the fireworks. “And your name is?” Sheriff Fletcher asked the man.
“Bobby Rialto,” the man said. “And this is my boy, Little Bobby.”
Sheriff Arnie Fletcher had on that stone face that the police get when they’re on the job…and, if they stay on the job long enough, that they have 24/7. A deputy stood beside Fletcher, making notes in his notebook. Fletcher nodded at the man, then he turned to Little Bobby and said, “Hello, son.” Sam Russo and Andrew Donovan stood on the other side of the corpse. Sam squatted down to look at the body; Donovan was doing his best not to look at the body and not to throw up.
“My boy and I was out doing some fishing, you know, macks, and then we came in for the fireworks.”
“Yeah, I was the one that found him, Sheriff,” Little Bobby said proudly, using the same tone of voice a ten-year-old boy would use if he’d been the one to catch a four-hundred-pound blue marlin.
“We would have missed it, except for the light from all the fireworks. He was floating about twenty yards away from us.”
Fletcher asked the man exactly where he was.
“We was just a few hundred yards out. Right at the mouth of the pass, over to the east side. Not anchored. Just floating. Then my son saw it.”
“You got a GPS?” Sheriff Fletcher asked.
Bobby Rialto said yes.
“Mind if we take it with us so we can download the data?”
“No, Sir. I’d like to get it back sometime, though.” Bobby Rialto smiled as he said that.
“If you’d give your contact information to Deputy Williams here, then y’all can be on your way,” Sheriff Fletcher told the man. Then Fletcher stepped over toward the corpse and looked down at it. “So, what do you think, Doc?”
“I think I’m retired, and you might want to ask the coroner,” Sam said.
Fletcher looked down the dock, up toward the parking lot. “I would if she’d ever get here.”
“She? I thought the County Coroner was that Martin something or other guy,” Andrew Donovan said.
“Retired a month ago. Now we got an interim lady. She’s good.”
“But?” Sam Russo asked. He detected a slight lack of confidence in Sheriff Fletcher’s voice.
“She’s also overworked. But don’t go spreading that around. She’s on loan from the State Police. Doing double duty.” Deputy Williams stepped over and whispered something in Sheriff Fletcher’s ear. Then Williams walked away. Fletcher lowered his voice. “Off the record and no one’s going to hold you to it, but what do you think?” he asked Russo.
“Well, without doing an autopsy…”
“I know without doing an autopsy,” Sheriff Fletcher said testily. “Sam, what do you think? Off the record. I need to know which way to go with this.”
Sam Russo pointed to the man’s head. “He’s got a small gash here, but it’s not big enough to have killed him.”
“So, you’re saying he drowned?”
Russo thought for a second before answering. “Not necessarily. Again, you’d have to do…”
“I know,” Sheriff Fletcher said. “An autopsy. But I need off the cuff.”
“Well, off the cuff, I’d say that he probably drowned, but normally, people who drown have foam in their mouths, and they have cyanosis. That’s…”
“I know what cyanosis is,” Sheriff Fletcher said.
“I don’t,” Andrew Donovan said.
“It’s a blueish cast to the skin from lack of oxygen,” Russo explained.
“I don’t know about the foam part, but this guy doesn’t look blue at all,” Sheriff Fletcher said.
“That’s the point,” Russo said.
“Well, if he didn’t drown, and he didn’t die from getting that head wound, what else could have killed him?”
Russo stepped around the body and walked over to Bobby Rialto. “When you found the man, was he floating face up or down?”
Rialto started shaking his head slowly. But then Little Bobby answered, “He was face up.”
“You sure?” Rialto asked his son.
“Yeah, Dad. Remember, I said he looked like my reading teacher, Mr. Hanks.”
“Hanks?” Sheriff Fletcher asked.
“It’s not him,” Bobby Rialto said quickly. “But yeah, it looks like him.”
Sheriff Fletcher turned to Dr. Sam Russo. “So, let’s say he was found face up. Does that help?”
“Not definitive, but it adds weight to it,” Sam Russo answered.
“To it what?” Fletcher asked.
“To him not drowning,” Russo explained. “Those guys usually float face down.”
Five
“So, tell me about what happened last night?” Aimee Russo asked.
Sam Russo and his granddaughter, Aimee, were having lunch at Marino’s—overpriced groceries and imported foods, overpriced wines, and delicious prepared foods bar with uncomfortable seating.
“You missed the fireworks,” Sam said.
“Brent and I went out on his dad’s boat and anchored over at Crab Island. I told you that.”
Sam Russo pointed to his mouth. He was chewing. He swallowed and chased that with a sip of water. Dabbing his mouth with his cloth napkin, he said, “Yeah, I remember. You told me you and Brent were going out; I just didn’t know about his dad’s boat.”
“I told you that,” Aimee said, slightly defensively. “You weren’t listening.”
“Sorry,” Sam said.
Aimee finished her lunch and put her fork down on her plate with a decided clink. “Brent’s dad told Brent about a body being found?”
“Brent’s dad know anything specific?” Sam asked. The father of Aimee’s boyfriend worked for the DA’s office as an investigator.
“Nothing he’s telling Brent, if that’s what you mean,” Aimee said. “What do you think? You and Mr. Donovan were there, right?”
“We were having supper on my boat and had just finished up and were on our way back to the parking lot, but then Arnie asked me to come over and look at the body.”
Aimee smiled. “What was it like?”
Sam Russo laughed slightly.
“Come on, Granddad! I’m in pre-med!”
Sam described the bloated corpse to Aimee…in painful detail.
Aimee had a huge smile on her face. “Cool!”
“Not for him,” Sam said, but he wasn’t correcting her.
“And you’re not sure about the drowning part, right? Was it just him floating face up?”
Sam drained the rest of his water. He saw Margot Kintz walk in. She was SeaBreeze’s part-time interim mayor and the county’s full-time assistant DA. She saw Sam and waved at him. Sam waved back. When he returned his attention to Aimee, she was all smiles. “Is there something I need to know?”
Sam Russo frowned. “You mean about Margot?”
“Yeah.”
Sam shuddered.
“I guess that’s a no, then,” Aimee said. But there was still that hint of something in her voice that Sam couldn’t place.
“So, other than floating face up? Nothing specific. You’d need a tox screen. But, sure, there was something bothering me about his skin color.”
Aimee started giggling.
“Why?…” Sam Russo started to ask his granddaughter, but then the answer became obvious. Margot Kintz walked up, slid a chair over from a nearby table, and sat down.
“I like your suit, Ms. Kintz,” Aimee said.
“Thank you!” Kintz said. She was dressed in an all white pantsuit, obviously no blouse, or if there was one, it wasn’t buttoned up very high. The stark white of the raw cotton cloth went very well with Kintz’s dark complexion.
“Don’t you like it, Granddad!” Aimee asked. She had a wicked smile on her face.
Sam felt himself blushing. As a medical professional, a surgeon, he was also silently calculating how many rounds of plastic surgery Kintz must have had. She and Andrew Donovan had been…well, an item…last year. Russo knew the woman was north of fifty, but she didn’t look a day over thirty-three. No doubt about it in Sam Russo’s mind, Margot Kintz was beautiful. And she was poisonous to be in a relationship with, although it had been clear of late that she’d taken a shine to him. Which made him very uncomfortable.
“So, how are things?” Sam asked Kintz awkwardly.
“Things would be better if you guys hadn’t found that body at the docks last night. My boss wants to call this a drowning and be done with it, but a little bird tells me you don’t think it’s that cut and dried as that.”
Russo assumed the little bird was the sheriff. He shrugged and wished he could figure out how to get away without being rude and without answering any of Kintz’s questions. But it was obvious Margot Kintz wasn’t going anywhere. “Well, yeah, I told Arnie he needed to get an autopsy.”
“And?” Kintz said.
“And, not very much else. We just glanced at the guy. I didn’t even roll him over.”
Kintz laughed. “Nice one, Doc! Roll him over!” Then, “But in all seriousness, Arnie said there was reason to think it might not have been drowning.”
Sam Russo was uncomfortable. “Look…” he started to say, but Aimee interrupted him.
“What Granddad means to say is that the body was found floating face up. Drowned people are usually found floating face down.”
Russo really wished Aimee hadn’t said any of that. He could also see that she was enjoying seeing him squirm. “There’s a lot to it.”
“Give me the kindergarten version.”
“It’s basically got to do with whether there’s water in the lungs. The water changes the corpse’s weight distribution, so in people who drown, it makes them roll over and float face down.”
“I see,” Kintz said. Then, “Well, I’m going to go over to the food bar and get a light lunch.” But she didn’t move.
“Margot?”
“Nothing. I just really wish you hadn’t told me about the face up and down part. I could have gone blissfully through my day being only mildly incompetent. But now that I know this little gem,… Well, I wish you hadn’t told me, is all.”
Six
After lunch with his granddaughter, Sam Russo walked home. It wasn’t far. Actually, nothing was far from anything on SeaBreeze Island. The island was that small.
Just as Sam turned onto his street, Andrew Donovan called. “Pick you up in five?”
“Ah, yeah, sure!” Sam Russo said.
“You forgot, didn’t you?”
Russo laughed. “I think I’m a little worse for the wear today. But no, I didn’t forget. I remembered about halfway through lunch with Aimee.”
Donovan laughed, and they both ended the call.
Russo got to his house and walked in. It was as cold as an icebox inside, just the way he liked it. The mail had come, and he leafed through it, standing over the kitchen trash can. Russo’s bills were all on automatic withdrawal. The mail was all junk. Right then, a car horn sounded. Had to be Donovan.
“Didn’t anyone tell you it’s rude to honk when you’re picking up your date?” Russo said as he climbed inside Andrew Donovan’s new, massive, all-electric car.
“Didn’t anyone tell you it’s rude to point out other people’s rudeness?” Both men got a laugh out of that. Donovan waited until Russo had buckled his seat belt, then he slowly drove off—the posted speed limit in the residential part of SeaBreeze was a mere 20 miles per hour, and sometimes Sheriff Arnie got a burr in his saddle about speeding. Donovan had been ticketed more than once already this year.
“So, where are we going?” Russo asked. “Out toward the estates on the east end?”
Donovan shook his head no. “Other way.” He stopped at the main road through SeaBreeze Island and took a right.
“I didn’t even realize there was a west part of the island,” Sam Russo said.
“A lot of folks don’t know much about it, which is why I’m interested in it,” Donovan said. As he drove, the bridge to the mainland came into view. “There are only a couple of nice houses out there. Then there’s a lot of swamp that can’t be built on.”
“And?”
Donovan stopped right before going onto the bridge. He had his left-hand blinker on. Once the oncoming car drove by, Donovan turned left onto a barely visible two-track dirt road. The road was bumpy and bounced Sam Russo around. They were driving along the island’s north shoreline. Beyond was the sound, which separated SeaBreeze Island from the mainland. “It’s beautiful, I’ll give you that,” Russo said. He had his window down.
Donovan didn’t say anything in response. A moment later, he pulled off the two-track onto a high place and parked, turning the engine off.
Donovan undid his seat belt, moved his seat back from the steering wheel, and let the back of the seat down. “What do you think?” he said after breathing in and out a few times.
Russo didn’t say anything for a moment. But then, “Yeah! This place is heaven. But how are you thinking of developing it?”
Donovan grabbed an old leather briefcase from the backseat. He’d used this old, beat-up briefcase ever since he’d started his company. He was sort of superstitious about it. “Here, hold this,” Donovan said as he balanced the briefcase on the center console. He pulled out a manila envelope, unclasped it, and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “Here’s where we’re at on Google Earth,” Donovan said. He closed the briefcase and put a printout on top, orienting it so that both he and Sam Russo could see it. “Here’s the town, the bridge, and we’re parked about right here.”
“There’s quite a bit more land out here than I thought there would be.”
“Right, but like I said, most of it’s swamp or just too low to build on.” Donovan pointed to two red dots on the map. “Those are the only two structures out here. Both are residential.” Then Donovan took a plastic mechanical pencil and drew faint lines around each of the houses. “That’s about where their property lines are.”
Russo looked up from the map. “So, this is all over this way?” He was pointing away from the sound, inland.
“Yep, southwest from here. About two miles.” From the high place they were parked on, there was a low swampy area, and then beyond that a break of tall thin pines a couple of hundred yards away, about two football fields. “This first house is just beyond that bunch of pines over there. They got about three acres on their property. The second property is between them and the Gulf.”
“Any of them have beach access?”
“Nope, and that, my friend, is part of where the beauty of this thing is.” Taking his pencil, Donovan traced around a much larger area. “That’s the parcel I’m thinking about buying. It’s owned by a family up in Montgomery. They’re ready to sell. Probably tired of paying property taxes on it.”
“Can we walk out there?”
“We can do better than that,” Donovan said. “This little two-track skirts the first property and then goes through the parcel I’m looking at all the way to the beach.”
“Well, shall we?” Sam Russo asked.
Andrew Donovan smiled. “Let’s!”
Seven
“Right through there is the beach,” Andrew Donovan said. They had driven over the bumpy two-track road for the past twenty minutes, Donovan regaling Sam Russo with his plans. “I’m thinking high-end but smallish condo community over by the bay with a new marina. Not sure if we’ll have to dredge it to accommodate larger sailboats and yachts. I’ve got an expert from the Netherlands who builds these things all over the world looking into it.”
“What if you can’t get it?” Sam Russo asked.
“It will work either way. It’s just that it would be more spectacular if we could get the big boats in here.”
“Maybe Bill Gates will come by.”
Donovan laughed. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Donovan had stopped the car. Russo undid his seat belt and got out. “How far is the ocean?”
“Just through those trees,” Donovan said.
The two men walked through the break of scrub oaks to the beach. It was pristine. The Gulf waves languishing on the sand.
“So, who gets this view?” Russo asked.
“Down at the end of the island, I’m putting in larger estates. Not sure how many yet. Just a few. Might or might not have their own private marina. But the beach itself is going to be accessible to everyone.”
“Even people who don’t live in the development?”
Donovan smiled. “Trying to do good here, Sam. But I’m not sure if I can pull that one off. I might be able to have the beach up at the front be open to the public, and maybe back here residents only. I’ve got an attorney looking into that one for me.”
Sam Russo looked at his friend long enough for Donovan to figure out what he was thinking. “No, not Margot. But she did recommend someone. And before you ask, no…that ended last summer before you and I took our trip.”
They stood there for a few more minutes, then returned to the car.
“You can crank up the AC,” Sam said as he climbed inside.
Donovan started the engine and turned the air up full blast. He turned around and headed back the way they had come. After a few minutes, he slowed to take a right. “This might be even bumpier, but it’s a shortcut back. Goes by those two residences I told you about.
As advertised, this new dirt road was worse than the other one. After five minutes of bumping and swaying, a large house came into view.
“So, who lives here?” Russo asked.
Donovan slowed to a crawl. The dirt road they were on skirted the south side of the house’s vast side lawn. “Who used to live here, more like.”
Russo frowned.
“The guy they found out in the water, we saw him last night on the dock, that was Knut Halvorsen.”
“You know him?”
“Knew him,” Donovan corrected.
“But how did you figure out he was the guy?”
“Mutual friend called me first thing this morning and told me about them finding his body.”
“Did you know this Knut guy? What kind of name is Knut, anyway?”
Donovan slowed, then stopped. “Danish; yeah, I knew Knut a little, but not a lot. But I’m not sure what Arnie wants to keep out of the papers and whatnot. So when my buddy told me about it, I didn’t let on you and I had been there.”
“Good thinking,” Russo said. “And this is where the guy lived?”
“With like his fifth wife,” Donovan said, laughing.
“He should have done what you do?”
Donovan looked at Russo with a blank expression on his face.
“Girlfriends?” Russo explained, smiling. “I guess that’s the polite term.”
“Very funny!” Donovan said. Then he started the car again and put it in gear.
“Go slow, I want to see the guy’s house,” Russo said.
“You’re incorrigible!” Donovan drove on slowly.
“Slow down,” Russo said after a second. “But don’t stop.”
“I’m only going about five miles an hour; hard not to stop.”
“Well, stop behind that tree.” Russo pointed to a cedar tree growing along the fence line.”
Donovan stopped behind a small cedar growing along the fence separating the house’s expansive and manicured lawn from the almost invisible dirt road he and Russo were on.
Russo undid his seatbelt. “You got any binoculars?”
“Small pair in the glove box.”
Russo opened the glove box and found the binoculars. They were ten-power. He adjusted them for his eyes and looked through them toward the house.
“May I ask why you’re being a peeping Tom?”
Russo handed Donovan the binoculars. “Right at the end of the back corner. I think that’s the pool.”
Donovan looked through the binoculars in the direction indicated. It took a second, but then he whistled softly. “Goodness!” Donovan handed the binoculars back to Russo. “Do you know who that is?”
“No, but I think she needs to get her bathing suit back on,” Russo said.
“My God, you’re such a prude! But seriously, that’s Halvorsen’s wife. I think her name is Ivana.”
“His wife?”
“Yep, and naked as a jaybird!” Donovan laughed.
“But her husband just died.”
Donovan laughed. He looked through the binoculars back at Ivana again. “Well, whatever’s going on, she’s not wasting any time. Take a look at this.” Donovan handed Russo the binoculars.
Russo looked again. “Okay, there’s a guy there!”
“Yeah,” Donovan laughed. “I know him, too. His name is Dario. He’s Italian. He’s my pool guy.”
Russo laughed. “I bet he’s Ivana’s pool guy, too, if you know what I mean.”
Donovan started up the car again, and they drove the rest of the way back to the main highway. “You want me to take you back to the house?”
Russo didn’t answer for a second. “She sure isn’t wasting any time.”
“Halvorsen’s widow?”
“Yeah. I mean, surely Arnie’s told her.”
“You’d think. But look, Halvorsen must have been what, seventy at least.”
“And she’s how old?”
Donovan laughed as he turned onto the main road. “You’re the doctor. You tell me. I mean, you saw it all.”
“Early thirties.”
“And then there’s Dario, who’s what, twenty-five?”
They drove in silence for a few seconds, then Russo said, “You know, if you didn’t know better, you’d think something might be going on.”
As they entered the commercial area of SeaBreeze, the traffic started to pile up. “Well, something’s going on, that’s for sure,” Donovan said.
“But does it have anything to do with Halvorsen’s death?”
Traffic started to move again. Donovan laughed slightly. “Who knows, boss. We might have some shenanigans on our hands.”
“Shenanigans?”
“Yeah, shenanigans. You know…murder?”
Eight
Most of his life, Sam Russo never had time for anything but work. Now that he was retired, he felt like he needed some hobbies. He had tried painting, but that took a level of skill and talent he didn’t possess. A trip with his friend Maud Baxter last year to the local garden store on the mainland had piqued his interest in growing potted plants. Now, he had the equivalent of a small botanical garden growing on his front porch and out in his postage stamp front yard.
After Andrew Donovan brought him home, Russo spent the next few hours happily tending to his plants. After that, Aimee came over. Her boyfriend, Brendt, had had a change of plans. Something about helping his dad with repairing their garage door. So Russo took the opportunity to have supper with his granddaughter. He knew that once she was out of college and into medical school, these opportunities would become quite scarce.
One of the big things Sam Russo loved about being retired was having time to read. At the moment, he was reading a history of modern France and a biography of Groucho Marx. TV had never been a big thing in Russo’s life. He had all the subscriptions, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, and the like for Aimee, but he had never watched any of that. Around ten, he took his book to bed with him. After reading a couple of pages, Sam Russo tossed the book to the side. Before closing his eyes, he touched the picture of Marie, his dead wife, that he kept on the nightstand. She was always the first thing he saw when he woke up. And she was the first thing he saw when he shut his eyes.
Nine
Three things happened the next morning when Sam Russo awoke. One: his alarm, an old radio-alarm clock, blared; Two: he awoke with a start, flinging his arm so that it knocked over the side table lamp; and, Three: his phone rang…it was Donovan.
“Russia’s launched a nuclear offensive at the US, and the rockets are all aimed at Florida?” Sam grunted.
“What? Donovan said.” But then, “Okay, gotcha…it’s a little early, right?”
Russo swung his long legs over the side of the bed and planted his size thirteen feet squarely on the honey-hued bedroom carpet. He rubbed his face. “Something like that.”
“Well, time waits for no man,” Donovan said. “Get up and get some coffee. I’m picking you up in ten.”
“Make it twenty. I need to run myself through the shower.”
Twenty minutes later on the dot, Donovan pulled up in his Silver Jeep Grand Cherokee. Not the supersleek, EV marvel he’d driven yesterday. “How many cars do you own?” Russo asked as he climbed into the passenger seat. He had a travel mug of coffee with him, which he put on the dash while he buckled his seat belt.
“Here or in storage?” Donovan asked.
“Just drive.”
“Someone’s grumpy this morning!”
“My beauty rest was interrupted.”
“Restus interruptus,” Donovan quipped. He laughed at his own humor.
“You’ve been making that joke since Freshman English,” Russo said. He was also laughing. It felt good to remember the past, the good parts. He drank some coffee from his travel mug. Five minutes later, Donovan pulled into SeaBreeze’s main commercial parking lot. He parked over by a tiny, two-story, white clapboard building, which was the Mayor’s office, pulling into a parking space, and cut the engine. Russo frowned. “We’re not going where I think we’re going?”
“We are indeed, and I would tell you why, but we’re here, so why waste time?”
Donovan and Russo got out of the car and walked into the tiny office building. The sign on the building, which said “SeaBreeze City Hall,” was almost as big as the building itself. That’s an exaggeration, Russo thought, but it was also a good description. They walked into a small, shoe-box-sized lobby. The Mayor’s office was to their right—a flight of stairs upstairs, straight in front of them. Donovan opened the Mayor’s office door and walked inside. Russo followed. Straight in front of them was a counter with a bell on it, like those old-time hotel bells. Donovan rang the bell. After a second, Margot Kintz yelled out for them to come back. Donovan went first, Russo following.
Kintz’s office was not much bigger than the shoe-box-sized lobby. She sat against the far wall with a small desk in front of her. On the desk was a computer, a blotter that had seen much better days, and a stack of file folders. To Russo’s unpracticed eye, the file folders looked much like legal briefs, and he assumed Kintz was moonlighting while holding her mayoral office hours. Two metal chairs with thin plastic seats and molded backs stood in front of Kintz’s desk. Donovan sat in the far one. “Have a seat, Sam,” Margot Kintz said in an offhand fashion. Then she turned her attention to Donovan. It was obvious the woman still had feelings for the man, but Russo couldn’t tell if it was love or hate. One or the other, maybe both. “So, you wanted to see me about the zoning issue on the Vermillion estate? I thought we already discussed that.”
Donovan said that they had, but he brought up a minor point. After batting the minor point around a few times, Kintz agreed to bring it to the SeaBreeze council. “I hope this is it,” Donovan said.
“That bunch? Just bring a couple of bottles of wine to the next council meeting. Should grease the rails.” Kintz flashed Donovan a perfunctory smile. She looked inquiringly at Russo. “Anything else I need to know about?”
Russo didn’t know exactly what to say, but Donovan did. “I told you last night about seeing Halvorsen’s widow and the pool guy.”
Kintz’s head pivoted toward Russo. “He means on the phone!”
Russo nodded that the message was received.
“Well, I been digging into the guy,” Donovan said. He pulled a piece of yellow paper folded longways out of his shirt pocket, opened it, and slid it over to Kintz where she could see it. Kintz picked up the paper, then put on her reading glasses and scanned it. “This is Halvorsen?” she asked. “How did you get this so quick?”
“The guy I told you about who does the odd jobs for me.”
“The not necessarily so legal spying on people jobs?”
Donovan shrugged. “If you want to put that kind of spin on it. I just think of him as creative.”
Kintz looked at the paper again. Russo couldn’t quite see what was written on it, but he did recognize Donovan’s handwriting. What he could see, though, was a vertical list of items with numbers off to the side of each item. Kintz looked at Russo again. “You know about all of this?”
“Not really, but I could guess.”
“Did you find anything out about Dario?” Donovan asked.
Kintz pulled a file from the bottom of one of the stacks on her desk and opened it. “You were dead on the money…assault, minor drugs, battery, dodged a fraud conviction because he had a good attorney a couple of years ago. So, there’s that.”
Now, the picture was beginning to clear in Russo’s mind. “So, you think he was responsible for Halvorsen’s death? So what was he doing now when we saw him with Ivana? Apart from the obvious.
Kintz leaned back in her chair, or at least she tried to. The back of the chair hit the wall behind her. So she sat forward with a somewhat disgusted look on her face. “Andrew here thinks Dario’s calling the shots.”
Russo knew Dario wasn’t calling the shot. Wrong body language when he saw the man by the pool. Dario was like a hungry dog on a very short leash. Ivana, of course, held the leash.
“You don’t think so, Sam?” Donovan said.
Russo shrugged. “I’m not a cop, but I’m pretty good at observing humans. Ivana looked like the one calling the shots to me.”
Kintz smiled at Donovan. “Told you so!”
“So what do we do now?” Russo said. “I’m guessing you guys need my help somehow.”
Kintz explained that her boss, the county DA, had ordered her to close the case and call Halvorsen’s death a drowning. “My hands are tied. But you guys…”
It all started to make sense.
“You want us to do what exactly?” Russo asked.
Kintz explained. “We’re going to flush Dario out and get him to rat on Ivana. Well, you two are.”
“I’m not going to like how we’re going to do this, am I?” Russo asked.
“Come on, Sam! This will be the most fun since spring break Junior year!”
Russo remembered spring break in Junior year. He also remembered having to call his dad to bail Donovan out. Donovan was too scared to call his own father.
Donovan and Kintz went over the plan, and then Kintz had to leave. Mayoral office hours were over… “Thank God!” They walked her out of the building and watched her get into her car. Of course, Kintz drove a brand-new BMW Z4 M40i—blood red. “Keep me in the loop,” she said as she sat down in the car. Russo couldn’t help but notice that Kintz’s dress pulled up to the top of her thighs. The BMW’s engine purred like a lazy big cat when she started it. “See you guys!” Then Kintz drove off, diagonally cutting through the empty parking spaces of the big parking lot.
Donovan turned to Russo. “You got the plan?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think I like it.”
Donovan scoffed. “Just like spring break, Junior year. You’re such a goody two-shoes!”
Russo told Donovan to pick him up tonight. “I’ll walk home from here.”
Ten
“I told you I didn’t like this!” Sam Russo said. He and Donovan had been hiding behind a dumpster for the past half hour, waiting for Dario and Ivana to show up. The dumpster was for a seafood restaurant. It stank of rotting fish and half-eaten crab. Russo thought he was going to throw up. Couldn’t they have picked a better place to do this?
“You called her, right?” Donovan asked in a whisper.
“Yes, for the tenth time,” Russo whispered back.
A car drove up and parked nearby. The engine and lights shut off. A man got out of the car, shutting the door with a whack. He was smoking. The cigarette ember glowed brightly, then the man tossed it to the ground and stepped on it.
The man chirped the car locked and then walked over to the edge of the parking lot where Donovan had said to meet. He must have been nervous because he lit another cigarette. Russo could track the man as he paced back and forth from the ember’s glow.
“I think this is it,” Donovan said. “Check your earbuds and the phone.”
Russo got out his phone and tapped the screen. The phone lit up. “Okay, say something.”
“Something,” Donovan said.
The app on Russo’s phone recorded what Donovan had just said. Russo listened to the recorded few seconds, hearing what Donovan had just said, this time only through his earbuds. “We’re fine,” Russo finally said. He gave his friend a thumbs up, but he wasn’t sure Donovan saw it because of the dark.
“Okay, here goes nothing,” Donovan said.
Donovan backed away from their hiding place and walked back toward the docks a few yards, then he walked down to a set of steps that led up to the parking lot from the end of the dock. Russo heard the footfalls through his earbuds, although he’d lost visual. A few seconds later, Russo heard the following:
“You bring the cash?” Donovan’s voice said.
“Jesus, man! Where’d you come from?”
“Who cares? Did you bring the cash?”
“I want to see the photos first!” Dario sounded like he had recovered from being sneaked up on. Now, he was starting to throw his weight around.
“Cash!”
“To heck with you, Man! You ain’t got them, do you? How the heck did you get my number anyway?”
Russo heard footsteps. He wanted desperately to stick his head out and look, but he dared not.
“Alright, here!” That was Donovan who said that.
There was a moment of silence, then a shuffling sound. “How do I know you’re deleting these?”
“I told you. You don’t. You’re going to have to trust me.”
“But you have to trust me!”
Russo nearly had a seizure. That was a woman’s voice—specifically, a woman from the Balkans. Even more specifically, it had to be Ivana.
“Hey, did you lead her here?” Dario said.
Then everything became garbled. Russo heard struggling. Murderer or no murderer, he couldn’t let his friend get hurt. He stepped out into the open. He ran toward where he thought Donovan was, but then two gunshots rang out.
Instinctively, Russo hit the deck. This knocked both earbuds out. Now he was not only almost blind because of the dark, but he couldn’t hear anything.
There was another shot, and then the whole place lit up like the Fourth of July.
“Police! Put the gun down! Get on your knees! Keep your hands where we can see them!”
Police vehicles surrounded Donovan, Dario, and Ivana, and all of their lights were on. Five deputies with guns drawn…there were at least five, Russo would later tell his granddaughter, maybe more, I couldn’t see…ran forward. Two of them wrestled Dario to the ground and handcuffed him. Ivana didn’t put up much of a fight. Donovan was on the ground, sitting. Despite all the cops, Russo ran up to him. “I’m fine, Sam. Just got the wind knocked out of me!”
“Should I arrest these two idiots, too?”
Sam looked up to see Sheriff Arnie’s rather large stomach looming above him like the Goodyear blimp.
“I’ll take care of them.” That was Kintz.
Donovan stood up and then helped Sam up.
Kintz walked over. “Good job! And don’t worry. I’ll talk the DA out of charging you two idiots!”
Then Kintz, Arnie, and the cops walked off with Dario and Ivana, leaving Russo and Donovan standing there.
At first, neither of them said anything, but then, “What did she mean by talking the DA out of charging us?” Russo asked.
Donovan rubbed his jaw where he had a bruise forming. “I think she was just covering her tracks.”
“I hope so,” Russo said. But he didn’t sound too convinced.
“I’m pretty sure she winked at me when she said that.”
“What?”
“Kintz winked. She was faced away from Arnie and you. So it was just me that saw it. But she winked.”
The two men walked in silence back to Donovan’s car. He chirped the door open. After they were inside, he started the engine. “Hey, you want to go sailing tomorrow?” he asked Russo.
“Maybe, but not with you!”
“What do you mean not with me?”
“You’re a little dangerous to be around!”
“All right, be that way. I’ll just ask Kintz if she wants to go.”
Sam Russo didn’t say anything.
“You know she winked!” Donovan said, laughing.
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