SHADOW OVER CEDAR KEY (9 page)

Zipping her jacket against the wind, she turned away from the wrecker and the small car suspended behind it, ready for towing, and sighed. Cara would not now, would not ever, have the chance to talk to private investigator Anthony Rossi.

CHAPTER 7
 

“That guy’s drowning isn’t going to ruin our weekend,” John said, as he turned off Route 347 toward Fowler’s Bluff, nineteen miles from Cedar Key. “If he was dumb enough to stay up drinking, and then leave town before daylight, I’m sorry, but he got what he had coming.”

Brandy searched for a fresh page in her notebook. “He wasn’t on the road out of town. He was going in the opposite direction. Besides, I think he had important information for Cara.”

“There’s no question he was drunk.”

She looked out into the lonely pine forest. “I just wish I could help Cara,” she said in a small voice.

At a wide bend in the Suwannee River they found the fish camp, its store, rickety pier, and boat slips dwarfed by the broad sweep of brown water. Wind ruffled the river’s surface and shook the Spanish moss on the oaks along the shore. On the opposite bank stretched miles of undeveloped hardwood swamp that ended in a dense band of cypress and oak at the river’s edge.

John parked beside the store, pleased. “This is my idea of a real vacation spot, surrounded by a wildlife refuge. One of the few places in the lower Suwannee that has any houses at all.”

Brandy stepped out into the cool, moist air and let Meg jump down and dash to the end of her leash. “Unless you count houseboats.” A sizable white one was chugging downstream. By the position of its windows, Brandy judged it had a bedroom, bath, and living area. She could make out fishing rods in a holder on the rear deck and, as it passed by, a large man with bushy black hair at the railing.

John followed her gaze. “Probably out for his last few days of fishing before the storm hits.” He pulled a metal tape measure from the glove compartment and stepped over to the nearest boat slip.

Brandy walked the retriever briskly to the pier and stood with her hands in her jacket pockets, thoroughly chilled.

A few minutes later John strode up the wooden steps of the one room store and disappeared through a door plastered with ads for cold drinks, bait, and fishing lures. Brandy bent down to pat Meg, then looked around. The camp had a row of small frame cottages beside the dock, as well as a boat ramp and slips. A skiff with a kicker rocked in the closest one.

“Good fishing,” John announced, trotting back down the steps with a brochure. “Catfish, bream, even trophy-sized, large mouth bass. A great place to stay. The slips are plenty wide enough for our pontoon boat.”

Except for this one store, the riverbanks looked completely isolated. “Alligators?”

“Well, of course.”

“Water moccasins?”

“We wouldn’t be swimming.” He glanced around at the lonely vista. “Very reasonable price, too. I told the woman we’d be back soon.”

Brandy tried to muster enthusiasm as she gazed across the murky water. Yet she was seized by the same dread she’d felt the night before when they were seated in the shadowy Island Hotel dining room. Meg flopped at her feet, whining. “Any marinas nearby?”

“One about fifteen miles down river near the Gulf. At the little town of Suwannee.” A crooked smile again lit his face. “This is real Florida. No neighbors knocking around the hall. No restaurants. No lounges and art galleries. Just trees and river and fish.” He gave her a meaningful look that told her he wanted them to be alone, with no distractions.

“It’s quiet, all right.” Brandy watched the houseboat slip out of slight around the bend, then turned her back on the dark river and huddled into the car. Something was wrong, but she did not know what.

Shell Mound Road ran straight as a shot to the county camp ground, then ended in a gravel drive that wound under twisted branches toward the Indian midden itself. John parked next to a single strand of cable that protected the mound. Across it a dim trail led upward. Outside the car again with Meg on her leash, Brandy looked up at the shroud of Spanish moss draping the oaks, then across the bay to her right, and at the Gulf before them. The wind was still sharp and she pulled her jacket tighter.

John picked up the paper bag of sandwiches and stepped over the wire. “Took prehistoric Indians hundreds of years to build this mound up with oyster shells and all kinds of refuse. It took Americans only a few years to start plundering it.”

“At least it’s against the law to disturb it now.”

Brandy followed him up the rise, carrying the cooler in one hand and restraining the excited retriever with the other. “We’ve got to tell the caretaker about the vandalism Cara saw.”

A thick growth of oaks, cedars, and palmettos crowded the trail, and beneath the carpet of leaves she could feel the crunch of shells. Meg ran beside her, nose to the ground. At a hollow to the left she whined and pulled, but Brandy brought her to heel and labored up toward the broad summit. Here John stood, breathing in the scent of cedar, and smiling down at the silent flats of saw grass and needlerush. Beyond them the Gulf, dotted with tiny islands, stretched to the horizon. Brandy clamored up beside him, coppery hair blowing in her eyes. Yesterday’s brilliant blue sky had been replaced with a flat gray.

“There’s a bench,” she said, leading the way to the bottom of the trail on the other side. “A place to picnic.”

“My kind of Florida again.” John snapped the pop top on a cold drink can, lifted out ham sandwiches, and rustled around in the bag for chips while Brandy pulled out a dog biscuit.

“A treat for a sweet girl. Cara’s taken good care of her.” She fed the biscuit into Meg’s moist mouth. “No one’s around. I’m going to let her run a bit.”

John gave a short laugh. “Maybe find the ghostly wolfhound, I suppose, a canine spirit companion?”

Brandy smiled as the retriever leapt up the trail, nose to the ground, and disappeared beyond the summit. They could hear her tearing about in the underbrush. “Can’t think what Meg is so excited about.” Brandy gazed around the thicket. “Wonder where Cara was last night?”

More scratching on the other side of the midden, a low growl. Brandy stood up.

“Better call her back,” John said. “Digging here’s illegal, remember?”

But Meg saved her the trouble. She came loping over the mound, tail wagging, eyes in the creamy mask alight. In her mouth she carried something dark, something with a strange shape. Brandy shivered when the retriever dropped it, panting, at her feet. A man’s soiled shoe.

Brandy picked it up, holding it at arm’s length. Where had she seen one like it? “That’s odd. It’s a perfectly good shoe. No holes in the sole. Why would anyone leave one shoe?”

John rose and stretched. “All kinds of crazies in the world. I told you that when you wanted to come here last night. Watch my sandwich. I’d better take a look.” Meg ignored the tantalizing ham and trotted before him, eager tail high. Brandy took another meditative bite, scanning the marshes. They were quite alone.

When John reappeared a few minutes later, his face was tense and had a sudden sallow hue. “I’ll stay here and you go for help. The man didn’t leave his shoe. The man was still in it.”

Within twenty minutes of Brandy’s call from a farmhouse on Route 347, a white cruiser with a green stripe and gold star screeched to a stop beside the cable. Deputy Snapp, a thin, blond young man in a dark green uniform, stood several yards from the rough grave and studied the foot, clad in a sandy sock, protruding toe-up from the mulch. At one side Meg had scraped up a pile of dirt and leaves, as she unearthed the part of the victim closest to the surface. Only a portion of the lower leg in dirt-stained, tan pants was visible. Yet they knew that several feet below must be a face.

“Very recent.” Snapp’s voice sounded strained. “No dang odor.”

Brandy suspected he had not processed a murder scene before. He was careful not to walk closer, either from fear of contaminating the crime scene or from distaste, and his hands shook as he tapped in the stakes and strung yellow evidence tape around the mound. After he ducked back into his cruiser and made a call, he advanced toward the bench where John and Brandy had taken refuge.

In a dog-eared spiral notebook, the deputy wrote down each of their statements in a slow scrawl, and then ordered them to wait for the homicide detective. Under a lowering sky they sat side by side on the bench, the forgotten picnic beside them. Brandy lifted a note pad out of her canvas bag and began making a list.

John sighed. “I guess we’ve shot the rest of our day.” He glanced at Brandy’s pad. “You might write down everything we won’t be able to do.”

“That poor guy won’t be doing much, either.” Brandy looked at the depression next to the trail and went on writing. “I was jotting down the list of questions I want answered at the historical museum.”

Meg, on a tight leash at Brandy’s feet, let out a bewildered “woof’ and dropped her head between her paws. Her delightful find had brought no joy. As for the shoe itself, Snapp left it on the ground where Brandy had dropped it.

“Captain’s sending Detective Jeremiah Strong,” he said at last. “He’s a plumb stickler for collecting and labeling. A lay preacher, too.” His tone sounded apprehensive.

In half an hour the homicide detective pulled up in a gray and maroon Ford Taurus. When the door of the sedan opened, a tall, solidly built black man stepped out. A unique specimen, Brandy thought, especially in rural, mostly white Levy County. He skirted the tape, stood for a few seconds, hands behind him, surveying the scene. In a few minutes the Mobile Crime Scene van tore around the curves of the gravel road and parked behind his car. Two technicians waited in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement van, while the detective came toward them with the confident, slightly pigeon-toed stride of an athlete.

“Sergeant Jeremiah Strong, Homicide” he said. “Levy County Sheriff s Office.” He was pulling a notebook and pen out of the inside pocket of his gray sports coat when he noticed the shoe. “Get a bag out of the kit in the trunk,” he called to Snapp, who had lagged behind.

In a few minutes the young deputy had advanced with a brown paper bag, stooped over the potential exhibit, and hesitated. “Pick it up with your fingertips, by the edge of the sole,” Strong said. “Put your name on the bag, the location, and the date.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s two-thirty.”

He then turned a solemn expression toward John and Brandy. The effect was intimidating. Jeremiah Strong was six feet four of taut muscle. He had closely cropped hair, a high forehead, widely spaced eyes, and teeth that looked very white below his neat mustache. Brandy thought the detective probably had no difficulty persuading witnesses to cooperate.

But the tone of his first words surprised her. Nodding at his nervous assistant, he said softly, “The Good Book do say, ‘Be patient toward all men.

Again they identified themselves and gave their statements. “I’d be much obliged if you’d stay awhile longer.” Strong closed his note pad, his voice polite but firm. “Let’s see what we got here. Then you can go along.”

He took slow steps around the scene, hands clasped behind his back, occasionally stopping to make a brief note. At one point he seemed to be sketching a diagram.

“No footprints over here,” he announced, “but some dragging over the leaves. Someone had a mind to cover up the signs.” He knelt and peered at the ground. “Over here, Deputy. Reckon we got ourselves a few drops of dried blood. Better save them before we start digging. Hand me the camera and two envelopes from the kit.”

When Snapp gave Strong the envelopes, he scooped soil samples from the site with care. “This isn’t the murder scene.” He shook his head. “We still got to find that.”

He circled the entire area with the camera, shooting it from every direction and angle. Then he knelt again beside the cable and drew a line in the dirt. “Access to the scene’s here. We all stay on this path.”

Finally he stood and started back toward the dark blue van, signaling to the technicians. A stout man and a slimmer colleague came forward with short-handled shovels and began the tedious process of sifting through the soil and uncovering the body.

Brandy turned to John on the bench. “I’m sure I’ve seen that cheap walking shoe before.” She tried not to look at the dark shapes circling high above the marsh—turkey buzzards. “I need to tell the detective that Cara was here last night, that she saw someone digging and may even have gotten a picture.”

He frowned. “Hearsay. He’ll question everyone. You let Cara tell him herself.”

Suddenly the stout crime scene technician sat back on his heels and gave a shout to Strong. The detective hung the camera around his neck, strode to the edge of the rough grave, and bent down. “The guy’s not local. Never saw him before.”

Tucking her pad back into her bag, Brandy stood, walked a few steps and called to Strong. “Could my husband or I take a look? A man was missing from a car accident in Cedar Key this morning. He’d been staying where we are, at the Island Hotel.” She moved closer, thinking of that familiar shoe. “His rental car went into the Gulf, but divers couldn’t find a body. A Cedar Key policeman named Doggett was the officer on the scene.”

Strong raised his eyebrows. “Maybe the gentleman would see if he can I.D. this body.” He squinted at the dimensions of the grave. “Looks like our perp got careless at the end of his job. Buried the head and torso pretty deep, but he wasn’t so particular about the feet and legs. Maybe got scared off.”

Cara, Brandy thought. He heard Cara and left sooner than he meant to. Lucky thing, Meg’s nose.

The technicians scraped the last of the earth away from what Brandy supposed was the head. Strong straightened up and motioned to John. ‘We’ll check his pockets for an I.D. after the medical examiner’s been here. Have a look.”

For added security, Brandy wrapped Meg’s leash around her wrist. “Does the man have glasses?” She remembered that the diver had found a broken pair in the sunken car.

Strong shook his head again. “Not that I can see. He’s face up, though. Makes it easier.” By then John had threaded his way up the path to the edge of the hollow and looked down. “It’s Rossi, all right,” he said to Brandy in a tight voice, then looked at Strong. “His name was Anthony Rossi. Came from New York City.”