Ron Base - Sanibel Sunset Detective 01 - The Sanibel Sunset Detective (8 page)

“A hottie?” His mind flashed to a view of Elizabeth Traven’s legs. “She’s too old to be a hottie.”

“Tree, she’s still a hottie.” Freddie, adamant.

“She wrote a book on Marx. The philosopher. Not one of the brothers.”

“Stalin, too. She’s very anti-communist.”

“She’s doing Trotsky. One of my favorite communists.”

“Her books are doorstoppers,” Freddie said. “I’m surprised she has the time, what with her interestingly checkered past.”

“We all have one of those.”

“An interestingly checkered past? Not me.”

“Two ex-husbands? That’s checkered.”

“Just seems boring to me.”

“Maybe that’s how Elizabeth sees her life,” Tree said.

“The rumors about Bill Clinton?”

“There are rumors about Bill Clinton and everyone.”

“Not about Bill and me,” Freddie said.

“One of the reasons I married you,” he said. “Everyone else was sleeping with Bill Clinton.”

“Either that or you had already married them.”

“Ha. Ha,” Tree said.

Across the bar, Ray Dayton let out a victorious whoop. A helmeted gladiator on the big screen TV had won his approval. Mr. Ray didn’t attend Fun Friday every week but when he did, he dragged Freddie along. She insisted Tree be present for moral support—and also to provide the escape route when the combination of beer and sports took their toll on her boss.

The song ended. They moved off the dance floor. Freddie said, “I hate to say something cliché like, ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’”

“But?”

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

Tree had been wondering the same thing but he didn’t like to admit it to Freddie. You could say you were a detective all you wanted, but actually being a detective with a client, well, that was something else.

“To me this sounds like another situation where the person ought to go to the police,” Freddie continued.

“Elizabeth Traven should go to the police?”

“Don’t you think so?”

“She shouldn’t have come to me?”

“Let me put this as gently as possible: why would she come to you?”

“She saw my ad. She said she was driving past and decided to stop. On a whim.”

“For which she paid fifteen hundred dollars in advance.”

“Small change as far as she’s concerned,” Tree said.

Freddie didn’t respond.

“I can do this,” Tree said, as much to convince himself as Freddie.

“Can you?”

“Supposing she goes to the police. What does she tell them? ‘This woman has done nothing to me, but I’m nervous and suspicious.’ The police aren’t going to do anything. They can’t.”

“Okay, the police can’t do anything. What can you do?”

“Something,” said Tree.

“Something doesn’t sound like much of anything, Tree.”

At the bar, Mr. Ray let out another whoop. Freddie squeezed Tree’s hand and grimaced. “Lord, give me strength.”

“Freddie, Freddie!” Ray’s flushed face made the snowy white of his hair absolutely glow. Beside him, Rex Baxter, holding a Bud Lite, had stopped talking to Todd and focused on the TV. Ray slapped Todd on the shoulder as Freddie settled against the bar. “I want you to hear this guy. He talks just like you. Todd, tell her what you just told me. What are those initials?”

Todd grinned. “OPIM. Other Potentially Infectious Materials. Part of the service we offer. That way customers know we’re not limited to crime scene stuff.”

“Listen to him,” Mr. Ray shouted. “Listen to this son of a bitch. That’s what it is now. All these—what the hell do you call them?”

“Acronyms,” Freddie said.

“Yeah, right. Give him your HMR, Freddie. Give him the damned gospel according to HMR.”

Freddie rolled her eyes. “Home Meal Replacement. I’m trying to encourage Ray to expand our offering.”

“I’ll trade you one OPIM for two HMRs.” He cackled with laughter.

The noise from the drinkers and diners all but drowned out the keyboard player’s version of “Crackling Rosie.” Ray threw his arm around Tree. “We haven’t talked.”

“Haven’t we?”

“We should talk, Tree. You and me. The two of us, buddy.”

Buddy
? Tree thought.

Ray led Tree outside as the sun dropped into the gulf. Tree always marveled at the speed, as though it couldn’t wait to get away. They went down a ramp to the dock. An emerging moon threw shadows across pleasure craft that never seemed to move. That was his problem, Tree reflected as the Ray Man guided him to a stop. He couldn’t imagine owning a boat. How could he live in Florida thinking like that? He wasn’t even interested in helmeted young men throwing footballs at one another. Something must be terribly wrong with him.

An electronically enhanced “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” disturbed the twilight. He glanced up at the windows along the porch, angry black eyes frowning down on him. He thought of Freddie peering out through one of those eyes, worried. Ray blew martini-scented breath at him. “Freddie’s doing just fine.”

“That’s good to know,” Tree said.

“I screw around, pretend I don’t like all this new stuff she’s bringing into the business—best practices, all that shit. But you know what, Tree? I love it, love what she’s doing. Hauling me along. I’m kicking and screaming all the way, but she’s getting me there, you know why?”

“Why Ray?”

“Because I’m no fool. The business is better for what’s she doing and thanks to her, I’m gonna be richer than ever.”

Tree grinned innanely and said, “That’s great news, Ray.”

The Ray Man tightened the pressure on Tree’s shoulder. A sign of affection? Or an attempt to break his arm?

“But I’ve got to be honest with you, buddy. Do you mind if I’m honest?”

“I wouldn’t want it any other way, Ray.”

“Okay, good. I’m gonna lay it right out there. The one thing that worries me about all this is you.”

“Me?” Tree couldn’t help sounding surprised. Not that he didn’t have a pretty good idea how the Ray Man felt about him.

“I mean, what is it with this private detective crap, anyway? What is that all about?”

Tree wasn’t sure Ray wanted an answer, so he didn’t try to give him one.

“Freddie tells me you used to be a pretty good newspaperman up north.”

“I was in the newspaper business for a long time,” Tree agreed.

“I mean those bastards really buggered up Vietnam, didn’t they? Turned the country against our boys with their anti-war bullshit.”

“That was so long ago, Ray. But I seem to recall Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon might have had something to do with it.”

“So long ago, Tree? Guess it depends on your perspective, doesn’t it? Not that I hold it against you, personally.”

“That’s a relief,” Tree said.

“The important thing is, you had a career. You amounted to something. There was achievement.”

“I don’t know how much achievement was involved,” Tree said.

“No, no. Don’t put it down. A job. Career. That’s good, a good thing. But this private eye stuff. I mean what is that all about, Tree? What is it all about?”

“It’s what I do, Ray,” Tree said.

“Gawd almighty, man. You’re sixty years of age. You’ve got a beautiful, talented wife. And you’re a freaking detective?”

“That’s what I am, Ray.”

“No, let me tell you what you are, Tree, and I’m gonna be brutally honest here because I’ve had a couple of drinks, okay?”

“Okay.”

“You’re a laughing stock, my friend. Okay? You’re not a detective as far as most people around here are concerned. You’re a laughing stock.”

“Honey, it’s time to go home.”

Tree turned to find Freddie backlit by the light from the porch, standing at the bottom of the ramp. Ray gave up his claim on Tree’s shoulder leaning forward, peering at Freddie, as though not certain who she was.

Freddie said, “Vera’s inside, Ray.” Vera was the Ray Man’s long-suffering wife. Mrs. Ray, they called her. When things got bad enough on a Friday night, a phone call was made to Mrs. Ray.

“Tree and I were just having a little heart-to-heart,” Ray said. “Man-to-man stuff. We’re buddies, Tree and me. Right, Tree?”

Tree didn’t say anything.

“It’s time to go,” Freddie said.

“Buddies. Okay? Tell her, Tree.”

She took Tree’s hand. “Good night, Ray.”

“You’re pissed off, and you shouldn’t be.”

“I’m not pissed,” Freddie said.

“You are.” Mr. Ray sounded hurt. “It’s guy stuff, that’s all.”

They left him swaying on the dock in the descending gloom.

“I’m sorry about that.” She squeezed his hand.

“It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not.”

“You know he could be right. Maybe I am a laughing stock.”

“Not as far as I’m concerned.”

He hugged her. “That’s all that counts.”

10

T
he swish of lawn sprinklers broke the morning silence in McGregor Woods. Handsome houses with terra cotta tile roofs set along gracefully curving roadways shimmered under an already-bright sun.

Tree parked around the corner from the Barrington Court address Elizabeth Traven had given him. A U.S. mail truck moved slowly from mail box to mail box, the driver leaning out the open door to deliver mail. An elderly woman in baggy jeans pulled at an excited Jack Russell.

Tree didn’t play the radio fearing he would draw unwanted attention. He needn’t have worried. The world was deserted. He occupied himself trying to imagine some sort of life behind the cool exteriors of the lovely McGregor Woods houses.

Imagination failed.

The night before he had googled Elizabeth Traven and her husband.

Brand Traven was as arrogant, intellectual, and gleefully controversial as Tree recalled. Elizabeth was the “tawny beauty,” as one of the London tabloids described her, a best-selling author of revisionist biographies of Marx and Stalin. She had interviewed Brand for her Stalin book, although the Mayfair wags had a field day wondering what Traven would know about Stalin. It made no difference. Shortly after the interview, he left his wife of twenty-three years and moved in with Elizabeth.

With Elizabeth at his side, he was no longer merely the owner of newspapers and TV stations in the United States and Great Britain. Now he was part of a dynamic, attractive power couple, welcome in the world’s best drawing rooms, friends with presidents, prime ministers, movie stars, Wall Street titans.

Members of the British Royal Family dropped by their Kensington digs. Mick Jagger strolled on the beach near their Captiva summer house. Wasn’t that Bono with the couple in Paris? The rich and influential, dressed in bright costume, flocked to their Manhattan townhouse each winter for their annual Blue January fete. Elizabeth and Brand one year showed up as eighteenth century Medicis, Cosimo and his wife Marguerite. The humor! The charm! Endless.

Their extravagances were gleefully reported. The private jet sent to retrieve Elizabeth’s fur coat because the she was cold in Florida (Cold in Florida? chorused the locals. Impossible). The renowned French chef flown to Tahiti to prepare dinner for two hundred nearest and dearest. The world’s grandest yacht rented for a family vacation at a cost that would have funded an African country for a year.

In a simpler time none of this would have been questioned. Brand would have been all-powerful in the media world he created with hard work and personal sacrifice, the respect for his achievements undiminished, his authority unquestioned.

But the gods who decide these things decreed Brand Traven create his empire as the Internet exploded, putting into jeopardy the future of print and traditional broadcasting, canceling the licenses to print money that newspapers and television had traditionally represented. The global economic downturn, as Traven’s own media called it, did not help matters.

Traven’s inability to turn his empire around in the face of changing technology, his refusal to accommodate the new realities of doing business in a publicly held company, not to mention his increasingly opulent lifestyle, drew the ire of investors. Elizabeth and Brand partied on apparently oblivious as the empire wobbled, share price tumbled, and investors increasingly grumbled.

The end came when Brand was stripped of his corporate powers and charged with defrauding the very empire he created—stealing shareholders’ money, they said. Brand loudly disagreed. It was his money. He had started the company, built it from virtually nothing before taking it public. How dare anyone question how he spent what he earned.

Ill-considered public statements about victimization at the hands of aggressive, politically motivated district attorneys followed, statements that set the public’s teeth on edge and surely helped bring about the obstruction of justice conviction.

Brand was sentenced to seven years in prison. Not a bad outcome, given the time other CEOs were serving. Nonetheless, he launched appeals and wrote eloquently of the injustice of it all. To no avail. Once the rich were in jail, it became apparent, no one was particularly anxious to let them out again.