Bone Island 01 - Ghost Shadow (16 page)

Or by someone else. Someone else who may have known her lifestyle and her hours, and who might have followed her. If all the timing was right, she had been taken in the early or even late afternoon, before the real nightlife and music started.

Frowning, he came to stand beneath the sea grape tree. There were a lot of wild crotons in the area as well, making it a place where there was cover-where people might be hidden.

As he did so, he looked around, studying the patches of overgrown grass and weeds around them.

The wind rustled the leaves on the tree.

The sun glinted through.

David frowned and walked a few feet. He bent down. Something had caught the sun for just a moment.

It was a charge card, a “gold” card.

“You have a tissue?” he asked Katie.

She produced one. He carefully picked the card up by an edge. It bore the name Lewis Agaro.

Lewis Agaro. He was the kid he had chased down in the street for Pete Dryer. The kid who had been accused of being a pickpocket, when it was probably Stella Martin who had done the picking.

“You know the name?”

“Yes. I know who the kid is, but I sure don’t see him murdering anyone. He was terrified when the cops looked at him for maybe being a thief. I’m pretty sure Pete will remember him, too. I think the kid was innocent, Pete just let him go. I think a few guys had been rolled by Stella, and they’d complained, and Pete was ready to call her out for her extracurricular activities.”

“So, you think-”

“No, but I want to talk to the kid myself before the cops do. And I want to find Danny first.” He frowned pensively. “Look. There’s something sticky on the card.”

Katie studied the card, as well. “What does it mean-anything?”

“Maybe. If Stella rolled her last john, she might have lost something along the way-this guy’s stolen credit card. If you’re right about her being killed here, it might help us. If you’re right, it might lead us to the kid Stella spent her last night with-Lewis Agaro,” he said. “But what the hell is on the card?”

She started to touch the card, but stopped, aware they might need to find prints on it. She looked him in the eyes. “If I’m not mistaken,” she said, “I think it’s the remnants of drying chocolate ice cream.”

“Danny Zigler,” he said.

“I just don’t see it, I really don’t see it,” Katie said. “I can’t believe Danny could be a murderer. He worked for your grandfather. I’d have had him work for me. Seriously, if we had to arrest everyone down here who didn’t make a fortune and was happy just to be, we’d be arresting a lot of people. And he’s responsible-he’s not living off anyone else. He does work. He just doesn’t need to own the world.”

“Katie, I came back, Sam Barnard came back-and Danny Zigler was suddenly busing tables at O’Hara’s. Don’t you think that’s a little suspicious?”

“No,” she said stubbornly. “Everyone is grabbing extra help with Fantasy Fest on the way. Hey-I don’t manage O’Hara’s, and I don’t want to,” she said. “Jon Merrillo hires on extra help when Uncle Jamie is away. Danny Zigler has worked there before.”

“Look, I don’t want Danny to be a bad guy, either,” David said. “But he was at O’Hara’s the night Tanya died, and he’s hanging around there now-and he was seeing Stella Martin. That makes him suspicious.”

“I don’t think that’s politically correct anymore,” Katie said. “He’s a person of interest.”

“Right. And I’m interested. And I want to talk to him before they get him down at the station, but I don’t want to hang on to evidence too long.” He looked at her. “Katie, I’m going to talk to Danny Zigler. I have to find him, of course, but he should be at the ice-cream parlor. I…”

“You don’t want me around,” she said.

“It will be easier for me to speak with him alone. And…”

“David, look, I appreciate the fact that you’re afraid for me, I really do. But it’s broad daylight. I’ll hang in clear sight, all right?” Katie said. He was still staring at her. “David, this is my home. A home I love. I intend to stay here, live here and be part of whatever the future brings. I cannot become afraid of my own home.” She inhaled, meeting his eyes. “I know how badly you want the truth, and I understand completely. But Tanya’s death went unsolved for more than a decade. Let’s face it, sometimes, things are never solved. I can’t become paranoid, but we should always know how to be very careful.”

“Do you ever carry Mace or pepper spray or anything like that?” he asked her.

“No. And I’m afraid I never took karate classes, either.”

“I’ll talk to Liam about getting you something,” David said.

“David, really-” She broke off, seeing his eyes. “Pepper spray sounds like something good to keep in my bag,” she agreed.

“All right. Listen for me to call, please,” he told her.

She nodded. “I’ll just get a bite to eat,” she said.

He went his way.

David didn’t know the man he found working at the ice-cream parlor.

When he asked about Danny Zigler, the man exploded, issuing a barrage of Spanish that David didn’t really follow. But he knew enough to understand that Danny Zigler was being cursed.

“I’m sorry-he didn’t show up for work?” David asked.

“The little rat bastard just disappeared,” the man said. “He was due in to open up at eight this morning, clean the machines, get it all going. At ten Mrs. Clasky calls me to tell me that the place is not open, and here I am myself, working, when I gave that good-for-nothing a job!” the man said.

“Did you try calling him?” David asked.

The man glared at him as if he was an idiot. “Of course, I call him! His phone is turned off.”

“Have you been to his house?” David asked.

The fellow, a tall, beefy man, leaned on the counter. “Do you see me here? If I’m here, I’m not going by his house!”

“Do you have an address for him?” David asked.

The man looked angry and exasperated. “You the cops or something?” he demanded.

“I’m the ‘something,’” David told him.

The man stared another moment, muttered, then reached under the counter for a memo pad. He wrote down an address off Union Street. David thanked him.

David’s cell rang as he started toward Union. It was Liam.

“Hey,” David said. “Have they brought anyone in for questioning yet?”

“No. Uniforms are out looking for Danny Zigler, I guess he and Stella were an item, and Pete is trying to track down the crowd that was outside O’Hara’s the other night. He thinks one of those college kids has to know something.”

“Zigler didn’t show up for work.”

“We don’t have anything for a search warrant, and he didn’t answer at his place,” Liam told him.

“So-do you have anything?” David asked.

“Yeah. You’d asked me before about tracing down Mike Sanderson-Tanya’s new boyfriend, the guy she was supposed to meet up at Ohio State.”

“And?”

“We know this much about Mike Sanderson-he used one of his credit cards for gas in St. Augustine on the thirteenth-the day after Tanya was killed,” Liam said.

Katie felt Bartholomew striding along at her side. She cast a sideways glance his way. “Where have you been?” she asked.

“Naturally, I have been using my charm and persuasion to discover the truth,” he told her.

“Oh? So-where have you been seeking this truth?” she asked him.

“I hung around the museum for a long time, just watching the crime-scene folks,” he said.

“And what did you learn there?”

“That they’re not going to get much of anything. Oh, well, I guess everyone knows this-there was no sign of a break-in. They had the owners and managers all gathered in an area, and that lieutenant fellow-Dryer-was pretty hard on them all, demanding to know how many keys were out and around. Two fellows-snowbirds-own the place, but there are three managers, and they’re all local. Dryer wasn’t getting anywhere, but Liam Beckett tried a bit more of an understanding approach, and it turns out that one of the managers left one of the employees to lock the place up a few nights ago, and she managed to lose the keys. They didn’t rekey the place, they just had another set of keys made. Whoever broke into the place used the keys, apparently knew the alarm code and didn’t disturb a thing-other than the Carl Tanzler/Elena de Hoyos exhibit. Oh-they found Elena. The mannequin of Elena, that is. She was just behind one of the other exhibits. So, this is what I know-whoever did it was bright enough to grab the security tapes, use gloves-and find out the alarm code before bringing in Stella Martin’s body.”

“So we are thinking local,” Katie murmured. “Because I’d say whoever did it had to have followed people around. When the employee lost the keys, he had to have found them-and he had to have known what they opened.”

Bartholomew grinned. “That, my dear, was not difficult. There was a medallion on the key chain that advertised the museum.”

“That opens it up, I guess. Hey, did the police hold anyone from the museum?”

“As far as I know, they have a task force going over everything that they have and they’ll be bringing folks in for questioning by this afternoon,” Bartholomew said.

“You were gone overnight,” Katie reminded Bartholomew.

“Ah, yes. I came back to the house, but you were-occupied. I turned on the coffeemaker again this morning. You didn’t even realize it!” He was hurt.

“I’m sorry, Bartholomew,” Katie said. “I really am. I didn’t see you and David had gone down first.”

“David!” Bartholomew said, and sniffed. “You have rushed headfirst into this!” he said.

“I keep telling you, make up your mind. You like him or you don’t like him,” Katie said.

“Since he was with you, he definitely didn’t kill the prostitute,” Bartholomew said. “All right, I like the fellow enough. He reminds me of someone I knew a very long time ago.”

“Really?”

Bartholomew swept aside, as if he were physically there, as a group carrying fresh margaritas came down the street, laughing.

They could have walked through him.

Bartholomew liked to think that there was substance to him.

“Sea captain,” Bartholomew said. “Decent fellow.”

“Maybe he was one of David’s ancestors,” Katie said. “The family dates back to the early years.”

“That’s what I figure,” Bartholomew said.

She didn’t reply; a woman standing with a beer just outside Sloppy Joe’s was staring at her. It was evident that the woman was wondering if Katie was a crazy person talking to herself, or if she had started drinking too early.

Katie turned down Greene Street. Captain Tony’s had been the original Sloppy Joe’s. Sloppy Joe, however, had been a real Key West character. Angry over a hike in his rent, he had simply moved his establishment in the middle of the night, lock, stock and barrel. Now, Sloppy Joe’s was right on Duval, and the space on Greene Street was Captain Tony’s.

She stepped on into the bar.

A large, open doorway led to a setting with the feel of rustic outdoors, but air-conditioning still coursed through the place. The “hanging tree” was in the center of a sitting area, and it had become vogue for visitors to leave behind their bras, elegant and old-fashioned, whatever someone might be wearing.

Katie took a table near the tree. It was impossible to know, through the years, what was authentic and what was legend about the place. Fact or fiction, the stories behind the bar and the building were true Key West legend.

As she took her seat at the table, she closed her eyes and thought about all of the history behind this very spot.

Sloppy Joe, Joe Russell, had become friends with Hemingway when he had cashed a check for him that the banks wouldn’t. He had been larger than life, just like Hemingway, and the two had been good friends. But, before that, the building had been a telegraph station that had first received the news about the Maine, an icehouse doubling as the city morgue, a cigar factory and a bordello.

The hanging tree in the middle of the room was now covered in undergarments. Throughout many years, it had been the place of execution for Key West and its environs. A woman had died here, accused of killing her husband and child, and she supposedly haunted the ladies’ room.

“What can I get you?”

Katie opened her eyes. A perky and very young waitress smiled as she asked the question.

“A giant iced tea and a menu, please,” Katie told her.

She seemed disappointed that Katie hadn’t come in to drown her sorrows with some form of expensive alcohol, but her smile barely cracked. “Coming right up!” she said.

Bartholomew had seated himself next to Katie, extending a booted leg from one chair to another and doffing his hat. He looked disgusted.

“Is there a reason we’re here?” he asked.

“I like the place.”

“You’re hoping that it’s teeming with ghosts who will give you all the answers you want. Well, don’t count on it. They’re all still whining over the past, and they’re not going to help you with anything in the present,” he said.

“You’re wrong,” she said. “Stella Martin’s ghost helped me tremendously.”

“So, she should have told you who killed her, flat out!” Bartholomew said.

“But she doesn’t know. Still, she led me to a clue.”

“Yeah?”

“A credit card-and it was smudged with ice cream.”

Bartholomew let out a chortle. A few tables up, Katie saw a woman frown and look around. Then she shivered. She had felt that a ghost was near, apparently.

“Behave,” Katie murmured.

“Me? You’re the one who appears to be talking to herself!”

She grimaced and waited for her tea. She thanked the young girl, sipped it and halfway closed her eyes. She tried to open up to anything that might be going on.

“Can you hear the rope swing against the branches?” Bartholomew asked softly. “You can hear it, back and forth, back and forth…swinging with the weight of a man.”

She kept her glass in front of her lips. “You died here.”

“Yes, I died here. I was snatched out of bed and dragged down to the hanging tree-for an act of piracy I did not commit. A bastard pirate named Eli Smith attacked an unarmed American vessel out in the straits, but when he was confronted by the authorities, he swore I was the guilty party, and I was hanged before the truth could be known. I was dead by the time a friend-the original Craig Beckett-came around to decry the act and tell them that I had truly turned merchant when my privateering days were over, and it was Eli Smith who attacked the vessel in the eight-gun sloop Bessie Blue. The true tragedy is that I, of all men, would have never attacked that ship. I was madly in love with Victoria Wyeth, and she died in the attack. Her father became a madman because of her death.”

“Why did they believe Eli Smith and assume you had attacked the ship?” Katie asked.

“Because Victoria had been the love of my life, and we were going to run away together. Her father sent her out ahead, planning to make her live with relatives in Virginia until she forgot about me. I knew that I didn’t have a chance of living with her, happily ever after, if I didn’t convince her family that I was the man she should have, and Craig Beckett was highly respected. I’d been on a simple fishing expedition with him when the attack had taken place, and he had promised that-after dealing with a smuggling problem up the islands-he’d see to it that the old bastard Wyeth learned that I had been a privateer, and that I had never been a cutthroat pirate. All right, in some instance, there might have been little difference. But I had never, ever attacked an American ship. But that night, I was down toward the south of the island, sound asleep, and a lynch mob broke in on me. I managed a bit of a defense-slashed the nose off one hairy, old bastard!-but there were two dozen of them, and me. And so I was hanged from the neck until dead, and when I come in here now, I can still hear the rope scrape against the tree.”

She forgot where they were, forgot that people might be watching, and set her hand over his. “Bartholomew, I am so sorry.”

He nodded. “Well, there were interesting years, and dreary years. I wanted to get to know Hemingway, he was an odd and interesting fellow-and that Carl Tanzler, he was certainly a curiosity. I wondered what I was doing here. My Victoria seemed to be long gone. Then I came across you, and well, if nothing else, Katie-oke is entertaining, and I think I’ve decided that I’m hanging around because you so obviously need help and guidance!”

“Bartholomew, that’s very sweet, but seriously, I’m all right.”