Bone Valley (11 page)

“Maybe Dolly’d like to go with me.”

“Only if she signs a waiver of liability. You too. Can’t have y’all getting hurt and suing me or the law firm. I’ll bring home the firm’s video camera and some film tonight. But meantime, as soon as I’m finished here, I’d like for you to follow me out to a wildlife sanctuary and help the woman who runs it. Just do anything she asks you to do, all right? I’ll pay you. Don’t let her pay you.”

“Sure,” Jimmie said. “Dolly, would you care to join me?”

As it turned out, the idea of cleaning out cages filled with soggy newspapers full of bird poop didn’t much appeal to Dolly, and she said a polite, but firm, no thank you to Jimmie’s kind invitation.

Naturally, when we got out to Lenora’s, after only two misturns down identical-looking dirt roads and Jimmie, following in his ancient car, honking at me on every turn, there was no sign of Lenora’s old Volvo. Instead there was a trendy-looking little SUV. The front door of the old cracker house that served as a bird-and-animal rescue center was open, so we walked right in. Instead of Lenora, we found a wide, squat man, with the big arms and thick neck of a former football player, or a wrestler.

“Adam, U.S. Fish and Wildlife,” he said, after I introduced myself and Jimmie. “Lenora and I have been working on this place for years.”

As Adam wasn’t wearing a uniform, I assumed this was a day-off venture, and I was glad to know Lenora had someone else to count on.

“I’m Lenora’s friend, and I’ve brought my…er, gardener, Jimmie Rodgers, to help out. He will do whatever you tell him to.”

“Is he bonded?” Adam asked, staring first at me, then at Jimmie, then back at me, with the suspicious eyes of someone with law-enforcement experience.

“Yes,” I lied.

After a few more exchanges, Adam seemed to accept Jimmie and gave him a preliminary order. As Jimmie trotted out to gather cleaning supplies, I asked Adam, “Do you expect Lenora today?”

“No.”

“Could you tell me where she is?”

“She’s not here.”

“Then, please tell me her last name.”

“I thought you said you were her friend.”

I sighed. “Fine,” I said. “I was out here both Saturday and Sunday. I took a jay home with me. But we were working too hard to discuss personal details like last names. I just want to know if she’s all right.”

“She’ll be fine.”

Jimmie came back into the room, whistling and carrying a jug of bleach and a handful of rags. “You gonna stay and help out?” he asked, looking at me.

Yeah, like I was going to handle bleach in my gray Brooks Brothers suit. “Busy day at the office, sorry, got to run.”

I left, but not before I gave Lenora’s guardian my business card and a request that he ask Lenora to call me.

By the time I drove back to Smith, O’Leary, and Stanley, it was nearly three and I slammed my way back inside my own office. I pulled out some depositions in an active legal-malpractice case and started churning away.

Depos are boring as a rule, and I lost interest fifteen seconds into the project. I jumped up and stuck my head out the door. “You file my notice of appearances for Angus’s estate and Miguel in that stupid orange-defamation case?”

“Yes. And I’ve done a notice of death in Angus’s case. I’ve asked Rachel to research whether the cause of action dies with him, and to prepare a rough draft of a motion to dismiss if it does, and I will have a draft of an answer to the two complaints ready for you to review by tomorrow.”

“You’re drafting the answer?”

“Yes. I’ve admitted the defendants’ names and addresses, and I have said ‘without knowledge’ in response to the other allegations in the complaint. That’s how you always draft answers to the complaints, isn’t it?”

Well, yes, but I had a degree from a state university’s law school that gave me the technical right to deny knowledge. I wasn’t sure what I thought about my secretary practicing law. Besides, all of this strongly suggested that nobody needed me. “You know I’ll have to add the affirmative defenses, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Bonita said, her face resting in her neutral, but attractive, expression.

“Well, I’ll certainly look it over,” I said, then remembered to say, “Thank you.”

“If you would like to talk about Angus—”

“Later,” I said, not entirely trusting myself to talk about that, even to Bonita, who often acts as my therapist, and I shut myself back in my office. I picked up the stupid, boring depos, highlighted some stuff to better absorb later, and then put them down again. I jotted fifteen minutes on my time sheet, and booted up my computer. I couldn’t get my mind off Angus and Miguel. So I was going to go with that flow.

The last meaningful things Angus had said in my presence concerned M. David Moody. M. David Moody had some interest in me right before he learned whether there was a special circle in hell for Big-time Mine CEOs who gouge the earth and leave ponds of radioactive crap behind. M. David had wanted Antheus Mines to dig up east Manatee County by the west fork of Horse Creek. Angus had wanted to stop M. David and Antheus. Both of them had been murdered.

My client and my anti-client.

Linked by phosphate.

That felt like a circle I needed to figure out.

Starting with M. David the devious.

Within seconds, I’d typed Angus’s client number into the LEXIS computerized legal-research system, and gone to the major news database, and punched in M. David’s name, limiting my search to the last two weeks.

In quick order, I read through the standard newspaper stories about his murder—facedown in a phosphogypsum pond had actually made for some modest national attention. It seems the weirder the murder, the broader the publicity. But none of the stories had anything to add to what I already knew.

So, I went further back, and concentrated on business news.

In no time at all, I read enough to be horrified by the mess the Boogie Bog corporation had left. Angus had told it right at the meeting—billions of gallons of toxic sludge, the by-product of processing the phosphate ore into fertilizer, was stored on-site behind what the company and the press euphemistically called earthen dams. In other words, all that kept that radioactive semiliquid waste from pouring out and over all in its path was a pile of dirt around it.

I didn’t feel too secure.

But I was damn glad I didn’t live down the hill from Boogie Bog.

Up until now, I’d thought Manatee County was a pretty neat place, a county that had all Sarasota had to offer, but with lower real estate prices and less pretentiousness.

But billions of gallons of poison sitting behind piles of dirt sort of made me rethink that one.

As for Boogie Bog, again, Angus had it right. The corporation had just cashed in its chips and left all that toxic sludge for the state of Florida to clean up.

Only, there was no way to clean it up.

I remembered what Josey had said. It was like nuclear waste—there’s nothing safe anyone can do with it.

From that research, I segued into the corporation business stuff on Boogie Bog. One news story in a Florida business magazine indicated that a year before the Boogie Bog Corporation declared bankruptcy, M. David had resigned as its CEO and sold all his stock back to the corporation. Because the stock was privately held, its value at the time of sale was set by a CPA’s independent accounting at a high price, based on the corporation’s land, physical plant, and equipment holdings as well as its balance sheets, which, of course, had been inflated to improve the company’s credit worthiness. However, because the corporation had insignificant ready liquid assets, it had to borrow the money to buy back M. David’s shares. Taking on the additional loan had proved to be the debt that broke the already fragile back of the camel, so to speak.

In other words, M. David had gutted the corporation.

Some of his colleagues in Boogie Bog had not been as financially lucky as M. David had been. When Boogie Bog’s corporate finances hit bottom, so did much of their individual fortunes.

Perfect motive, I thought. Any of the damaged Boogie Bog corporation players could have killed M. David for revenge.

But for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how Angus fit into that picture.

Outside my window, I heard the sound of various cars starting up, and glanced up. Yep, after five. The worker bees were going home. I should do likewise since I was clearly not accomplishing anything. But, not wanting to be caught in the five o’clock traffic, or worse, have Jackson see me leaving at five, which was way too early for an attorney to leave this office, I settled back in my red leather chair and concentrated.

On M. David.

He didn’t just take the money before the ship went down, he took the money that made the ship go down. Just like him. He’d increased his fortune, skated clear of the coming bankruptcy, and probably slept soundly at night, proud, I rather imagined, that his actions effectively dumped Boogie Bog’s toxic waste on the good taxpayers to deal with.

Yeah, okay, that made his manipulative coup de grace in trying to ruin my life before I was twenty-five seem pretty minor. But I was still mad.

And M. David would know that. I mean, the man wasn’t stupid, and I hadn’t been shy in expressing my attitude toward him. Given our history, I couldn’t even imagine why M. David had a file on me, and had apparently been planning to make an appointment with me.

While I was cogitating, Bonita stuck her head in the doorway. “Anything else you need before I leave?” She was holding Rasputin’s cage, and the jay punctuated her question with loud, insistent squawks.

“No, thank you,” I said.

Good nights all around, and I was alone.

Alone in my office, I did what I do. I started to make a list of things I knew and the things I needed to learn. The first thing I wrote down was: “Find Miguel.”

And that took me right back to the explosion. A wave of nausea passed through me as I remembered. This time, instead of blocking the memories, I pressed through them, mentally examining the details of what I had seen and done that night. And what Miguel had done that night.

One detail surfaced insistently. Miguel had been so emphatic that I should flee. Why, I wondered, had Miguel insisted I run away?

And why, really, had I?

Yeah, like most Americans, I had some basic, ingrained instinct to avoid the police, honed perhaps in my case beyond the norm by an adolescence spent living with Delvon and Farmer Dave growing marijuana and avoiding truancy, social workers, juvie hall, and high school expulsion by good timing and luck.

Then, like the bad fairy of negative thoughts had just sprinkled me with paranoia dust, I suddenly realized how convenient it was for Miguel that he had stepped back from the boat even as Angus stepped onto it.

Like that actor who puts his irritating wife in a car and then suddenly remembers he left something inside the restaurant and is, thus, conveniently out of the way when someone shoots his wife to death.

Stepping aside from death at the right moment is suspicious.

While that suspicion licked at me, I couldn’t figure out any reason Miguel would want to kill Angus. Or blow up his own sailboat.

But if he had, then he surely would not want me hanging around to say to the police: “Oh, hey, wasn’t that good timing that Miguel stepped back from the boat just before it blew?” Like he, Miguel, knew exactly what was coming.

Was Miguel a killer?

I chewed unhappily on that anxiety until it was time for me to go home. On my way out, I stopped in the equipment room and picked up a video camera and some blank tapes for Jimmie, and headed toward my house.

My house. Home, my sweet haven and harbor.

Yeah, okay, so wrong again.

At my front-door
stoop, Dolly and a man with long, red hair were jumping around, throwing air punches at each other while a small contingent of my neighbors watched.

Delvon—with his usual grand entrance.

Bearess ran over to me in a doggy frantic way, barking at me as if I were supposed to do something.

After studying the situation for a second, I could tell Delvon wasn’t really trying to hit Dolly, he was just self-defensively dodging and feinting. Dolly, however, appeared ready to smash his face if he’d just hold still and let her land a punch.

One of my neighbors said, “We’ve called the police. He was trying to break into your house, only Dolly stopped him.”

“Oh,
mierda,
” I shouted. “That’s my brother.” Apparently it had never occurred to Delvon that long, red hair and a torn T-shirt worn over cutoffs that also had big holes in them, and black chukka boots on pale, skinny legs, wouldn’t, like, you know, raise an eyebrow in a sedate, suburban, Sarasota neighborhood.

I pushed my way between Delvon and Dolly, who finally landed a punch, but on me, because I made the mistake of standing still in front of her. Fortunately, being as she’s about eighty, it didn’t hurt that much. I yelled a lot at everybody to stop it, I told Dolly to tell the police that it was all a mistake, and then I dragged Delvon back to my Honda and we sped away.

No way I wanted the local police to have a look at Delvon.

“How’d you get here?” I asked.

“Traded a bag of crip for an old car.”

“Crip?”

“Man, you’re out of touch. It’s a superpot. I grow it by—”

“You traded a bag of pot for a car?”

“Yep.”

“Get a title?”

“What I need a title for?”

I sighed. “So you can get auto insurance.”

“What I need car insurance for?”

“It’s the law. Under Florida law, you need a title and car insurance.”

“Want to show me where it says that in the Ten Commandments?”

I sighed again, longer and slower. “Where’s the car?”

“Oh, I traded it to a guy on I-75 for a ride to your house and a six-pack. He dropped me off at your place and I was just minding my own business when that crazy lady came over and started beating on me.”

There was probably a chapter missing in the story of the frequently traded car. But I didn’t care to know it any more than I wanted to know how he’d gotten out of the airport with a band of highly trained federal security personnel chasing him.

Instead, I explained about Lenora, and the birds, and the chemo, and the big piles of messes, and the cages of hungry creatures, and how she needed more help than Jimmie alone could provide.

“Cool,” Delvon said. “I can help. Lift and tote. Get a prayer circle going for her.”

“She might need some medicinal marijuana. It helps with the side effects.”

“Cool. I got some. Organic. Not the crip, I had to trade that for the car, outside the Atlanta terminal. Man, that place sucks.”

“Where is it?”

“In Atlanta. Man, where else would the Atlanta airport be?”

“I mean the pot.”

“Oh, I stashed it in your carport, behind the potting soil, in that little storage room.”

Frigging great. With my luck, Dolly had seen Delvon stash it, assumed it was a bomb, and would lead the police right to it.

“You still got that ferret?” Delvon asked.

“No.”

“Too bad, that was a cool little dude.”

We drove the rest of the way to Lenora’s exchanging non sequiturs. Once we pulled up to the house, I was relieved to see that Jimmie’s car, and therefore presumably Jimmie himself, was still there. Delvon and I piled out, and Jimmie, reeking of bleach, tumbled out the front door, his fatigue apparent.

“Damnation, that fish and wildlife guy like to wear me out,” he said. Then he looked at Delvon.

“Praise Jesus,” Delvon said. “The FBI is out after me ’cause—”

“Delvon,” I said, “shut up.”

“Oh, this here’s your brother, the religious ’un. Pleased to meet you. I’m Jimmie.”

“Delvon, can you stay here and help Jimmie as long as y’all can this evening? There’s at least an hour of daylight left. Maybe there’s a place here where Delvon can shower and sleep? Or maybe he can stay with you, Jimmie?” I asked, thinking a wanted airport terrorist staying with me so soon after Dolly the helpful neighbor had alerted the police to strange doings at my house might not be a totally great notion.

“Not much of a spot to sleep and the shower don’t work and it’s full of stuff, anyways.”

“I guess there’s an epidemic of that,” I said.

“Huh?”

“You know, your shower doesn’t work.”

“Huh?…Oh, yeah, that. Like I’s saying, they’s a hose out back hung up in a tree that I done used for a shower, you don’t mind cold water and getting naked in the great outdoors. Sure plenty to do. And they’s some real cute critters out here.”

While Jimmie and I chattered, Delvon had been looking around. Then he beamed and said, “Cool.”

“Well, come on, then,” Jimmie said to Delvon, “and let me show you what that bossy old wildlife man said I should be doing. I reckon we can both sleep in my car.”

I watched the two of them wander off. No doubt by the time I got home, they’d be drinking and smoking and trading arrest stories. I wrote a note of explanation, folded it, addressed it to Lenora, and put it under a magnet on the refrigerator, emptied my wallet of cash for Delvon and Jimmie, with a note that they should run to the nearest store for supplies and food, and then I prepared to flee the scene.

Then it hit me: Why would Jimmie sleep in his car?

I caught up with them in the backyard, where Jimmie was explaining about feeding the raccoons, and I interrupted. “Lenora doesn’t stay here at night. Why are you?”

“Why am I what?” Jimmie asked.

“Sleeping in your car? If there’s no place to sleep, I don’t think you need to stay here at night. I just thought it’d be a good place for Delvon to sleep—temporarily, that’s all. So why are
you
going to sleep here in your car?”

“Oh, I…” Jimmie stopped talking and looked down at the raccoon. “You know them things can carry rabies virus without being sick, so less’n you’ve had the shots, you ain’t suppose to play with them.”

“Jimmie, why are you sleeping in your car?”

“’Cause that’s where I been living. See, ’cause I kinda got kicked out a my apartment.”

“What do you mean, you got kicked out?”

“I got kicked out.”

Okay, that articulated the problem better. “What’d you do?”

“I didn’t pay any rent for a couple a months.”

Well, that’d pretty much do it for an eviction, I thought. Plus, that explained why he was hanging around my house. The poor man was homeless.

I sighed. Deeply. Confronted with a desire to help and a desire not to have Jimmie and Delvon both living with me, coldheartedness sounded pretty good at the moment.

“We’ll be jes’ fine, don’t you worry,” Jimmie said.

“Jesus slept outside,” Delvon said.

“Just come to my house when you’re done here,” I said, knowing full well I’d regret this. “We’ll work out something more permanent tomorrow. One of you can have the futon and one of you can have the couch.”

“Cool,” Delvon said.

“You always was a good-hearted woman,” Jimmie said.

Internally, I cursed the thought of funding a new apartment for Jimmie in the land of high rents and wondered what Delvon’s cash reserves were, as he was certainly going to need to buy some clothes, normal ones at that, and I think I said my good-byes, but, anyway, I got in my car and drove off.

No doubt the police and possession charges awaited me at my house, but I went home anyway. Instead, I was actually rather pleased to see Bonita, her daughter, Carmen, and Armando, the more squat of her mismatched twin boys, all waiting for me inside the carport, by my side door. Dolly was entertaining them with a story that involved a lot of hand waving, and the rest of the neighbors had left. Johnny Winter, the albino ferret that once saved my life, was wrapped around Armando’s neck, and neither of them seemed happy to see me.

“I need to return the bird,” Bonita said, and held up the cage in my general direction.

“Why?” I asked, pointedly not reaching for the cage.

“Johnny the ferret was most determined to eat it,” she said.

“You could take Armando and Johnny and leave me the bird,” Carmen said, in her happy, hopeful, seven-year-old voice.

I glanced at Armando and Johnny. They glared back at me.

I reached for the birdcage. “Thank you for trying,” I said.

“Henry is bringing pizza if you would like to join us for supper,” Bonita said, no doubt prompted by guilt at returning the bird to invite me to join her faithful suitor and her five children for supper.

“Thank you, but I have plans,” I said.

“I’m not taking that bird,” Dolly said. “It’s bad enough I have to take care of your dog.”

This from the woman who had alienated the affections of my own dog and then, in effect, stolen Bearess from right under my nose, was too much, and I opened my mouth to say rude things, but Carmen tugged at my arm.

I looked down at her perfect, sweet face. “What, Carmen?”

“I bet if you gave him a nicer name, he’d be nicer,” she said.

“What?”

“The bird,” Bonita said. “Carmen thinks Rasputin is a bad name.” So explaining, Bonita gathered up her two children and the ferret and they left.

As Bonita drove off, Dolly managed to squeeze out enough information between her complaints that I gathered she had told the police it was all a big mistake and they’d left. Neither of us mentioned the organic marijuana now stored in the little room off my carport, and I decided not to say rude things to my neighbor after all, but went conventional: “Thank you.”

After Dolly left, I took the stupid jay into the house, where I realized I was about half starved, and I put the birdcage on the patio table on the screened-in back porch and walked back to the kitchen, where I triple-washed my hands and grabbed a sack of sunflower seeds and a box of Save the Forest trail mix bars. Seeds for the jay, trail mix bars for me—just to tide me over until I could shower and fix a decent meal.

Rasputin raised hell and refused to eat the sunflower seeds.

After I explained to him in careful detail exactly why it was in his best interests to shut up and, no, I wasn’t going to fetch him any bugs, I bit into my trail mix bar. Organic, free of high-fructose syrup, but sweetened with rice-bran syrup and honey.

As I chewed, Rasputin danced and pranced and screamed.

I looked at the bird. Then I looked at the trail mix bar. What the heck, it’s mostly oatmeal, seeds, and tasty, healthy dried fruit, I thought, and broke off a piece and shoved it in the cage.

Rasputin pecked at it, then he ate it. Then he looked at me with a look that, I swear, said, “More please.” I gave him the rest of the bar and watched him eat it.

For the first time since I’d known the bird, it curled up, calm and quiet, and just sat there, looking rather serene in a fluffy juvenile-bird sort of way.

Well, I’ll be damned. All the poor thing needed was something sweet.

I could relate. I ate another trail mix bar and headed toward my shower.

A half hour later, dressed in an old camp shirt and a pair of threadbare yard-work shorts, minus bra and panties, I was contentedly washing and chopping produce for a big salad when the doorbell rang. Figuring it for Delvon and Jimmie, I didn’t bother to fluff my shower-damp hair or worry that I was dressed like riffraff.

But when I opened the door, Miguel jumped into my living room and into my arms.

Who grabbed who first I couldn’t say. But we were hot and full of hands and hugs and tongues even before I got the door shut.

He kissed me like the scene in the movie right before the soldier boy goes off to war, and I kissed him like I knew he’d never come home to me.

I could not get enough of this man. I pressed so hard against him he almost stumbled backward. His hands slipped up under my shirt and I was glad I hadn’t bothered with a bra. His trained Rolfer’s fingers flicked at my nipples, and, as if it had a mind entirely of its own, my right leg rose and curled about his, and I thanked my yoga teacher for all those cursed hours of flexibility training.

Just about the time I was going to rip his shirt off him, I remembered something: Who knew my brain could work at that stage of excitement, but this man, my mind reminded my body, was the man who had suspiciously stepped aside from an explosion with almost premeditated precision.

I pulled out of his embrace and demanded to know what was going on.

“Don’t worry. I parked my truck at the community center. In case anyone is watching your house,” Miguel said, slightly panting, as I unwound my leg from his.

“Why would anybody be watching my house? Are
you
watching my house? What the hell is going on?” I asked, rather shrilly given my ardor seconds before. “And how’d you get your truck back?”

His hands crept out from under my shirt, and wrapped themselves around my neck, and I tensed, realizing I was alone with a suspicious man who had just put his hands around my neck in the classic TV setup for strangulation.

Then he began to massage my neck and the tops of my shoulders. “You need to relax,” he said, his voice hypnotic. “Let me help you relax.”

“How’d you get your truck back?” I asked, leaning into the massage.

“Easy enough. We think alike, you and me. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”

“How’d you get your truck back?” I repeated, pulling out of the massage in my frustration. I wanted to know what was going on more than I wanted his hands all over me.

“After I knew Angus was dead…” Miguel said, and then paused, his fingers still, his face sad.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He dropped his hands and walked toward the couch in the living room, where he more or less collapsed.

“Once I knew he was dead, there wasn’t any point in hanging around. The cops were coming, I heard the sirens. People were shouting and diving into the water, looking for survivors, I guess. So I ran.”