T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 03 - Southern Peril (30 page)

Thank goodness.
He’d removed the hidden microphone and receiver, as promised. The knot in my gut disappeared. I could enjoy the moment. An agent shadowing us, Morgan and I went into the empty kitchen and he prepared sandwiches of sliced prime rib with red onion and black truffle mozzarella cheese. We ate in one of the booths and discussed movies while Brad’s people scoured Argo’s.

As I figured
he would, Garland decided to take me up on my offer of accommodations. He’d finally shown up—three days after I’d tackled him—complaining to Spud about the fact that his shoulder still hurt. After he’d had a long shower and more than twelve hours in a comfy bed, Garland’s next order of business was food. I found him and Spud downstairs, in the Block’s kitchen, tending to a row of gas burners loaded with sizzling pans. The aroma of roasting garlic and unfamiliar spices brought my taste buds to attention.

“What are the two of you doing?” I asked.

“Garland is teaching me how to make booey-base.” Spud’s tall white chef’s hat sat cockeyed on his head. “That’s a fancy name for fish stew, but if I can learn to make it from scratch, Frannie will be totally impressed.”

I’d never heard my father use the word
totally
in such a fashion.

Garland moved among the pans, turning and flipping and adding ingredients. “Your daily specials menu is rubbish. I’m mak
ing bouillabaisse and chipotle-lime bacon-wrapped jumbo shrimp,” he informed me.

“Alrighty, then.” I eyed the Block’s cook, who stood back, observing.

“Hey,” he said. “Opportunity knocked. Who am I to turn him away?”

I moved between Garland and my father. “First of all, Garland, you do realize that you are a fugitive of sorts? You’re supposed to be a pile of ashes inside a prayer bench, not out here whipping up gourmet meals! Second of all, Spud almost burned down the Block trying to cook Spam-and-cheese sandwiches. We promised the fire chief that he wouldn’t use any heat-generating appliances. And third of all, the Block’s customers—”

Garland shoved a spoonful of something in my mouth. “Taste this.”

Flavors of shallots and garlic and sweet red pepper exploded on my tongue. I closed my eyes to fully savor the moment of ecstasy. “My gosh, that is
good.”

“You were saying something about me being dead?” Garland asked.

I found a tasting spoon and ate another sample. Even better than the first mouthful. “Just stay out of the dining area, would you? Brad—your DEA friend—has a tendency to pop in without warning. Obviously his people are still looking for you, since you bailed on their attempt at witness protection. Everyone else still thinks you’re dead. And I’m not in the mood to be accused of the accomplice thing.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Garland did a half salute and went back to his food. “I’ve really missed playing around in a kitchen. That’s been the worst thing about being dead. That and not being able to talk to my kids.”

Ruby bustled through. “What’s going on back here? Our
customers are salivating like dogs out there, from the smells. Did we get a new cook or what?”

“Or what,” I answered. “And the specials today are bouillabaisse and chipotle-lime bacon-wrapped shrimp.”

“Huh.” Ruby stared at Garland. “What’s a bouillabaisse?”

“Fish stew with several kinds of fresh fish, for crying out loud. And spices,” Spud said. “What planet have you been living on?”

Ruby pointed at Garland as though he were a foreigner and didn’t understand English. “Who’s that?”

“A friend,” I told her. “He’s helping out in the kitchen today.”

“Huh.” She plucked a shrimp from a big pan, took a bite, and let out a moan of pleasure. “How many orders of this shrimp can he make?”

The Block’s regular cook grinned. “Fresh batch of shrimp just came in today. I’d planned to batter and fry it, but we’ll give ‘em something different tonight. We’ve got enough for thirty-five, maybe forty orders.”

“Fifty,” Garland said.

“Huh.” Ruby grabbed another bacon-wrapped shrimp and ate it on her way back to her customers.

“That’s if the help would quit eating it,” Garland muttered.

Spud adjusted his tall hat. “How much longer do I have to keep stirring the pots of booey-base? My arm is about to fall off, for crying out loud.”

An
excited buzz spread fast among the Block’s regulars. Garland ran out of bouillabaisse by nine. The last order of shrimp went out at nine-thirty. Spud said he’d had enough cooking lessons for one night and clomped upstairs to bed, but Garland put the Block’s cook to work and whipped up single-egg crabmeat omelets for the late night partying crowd. I closed the kitchen at eleven, told the
bartender to put out bowls of pretzels if anyone was starving, and hauled Garland—and a plate of mini omelets—upstairs to my kitchen table.

Cracker met us at the door, his nose working. I served Garland a glass of Pinot Gris, poured myself a beer, made a stack of toast, and we plopped down to eat our feast.

“I know you have lots of questions for me,” I said, “but I’d like to go first.”

Swirling his wine, he nodded approval. I took it to mean a yes for me going first.

“I’m assuming it was the DEA who faked your death. Possibly Brad Logan’s idea. What I need to know is, why?”

Garland sipped from his wineglass, looking much more like the famous chef than a street bum. The rest and a shave had done him wonders. “How much time do you have?”

I made a hand motion:
All the time you need.

“I knew that something was eating away at Rosemary. She never did tell me what was going on.” He played with the wedding band on his ring finger, turning it in circles absentmindedly. “When I found drugs in her bathroom, I realized she had a problem. And here’s the thing that really got me: The prescriptions were written by one of my best friends.”

“Jonathan.”

“Right. He’d written her a scrip for an antidepressant, sleeping pills, and something that was supposed to be for weight loss. Rosemary didn’t need to lose weight. And I never suspected her to be depressed.” Garland ate a few bites of omelet. “I confronted John about it, and he got defensive. Spouted the rules about patient confidentiality and all that garbage. That’s when I realized that John was drinking much more than usual. And Leo and Michael weren’t exactly themselves, either.”

“When was this?” I wanted to keep the time frame straight.

“Right before Rosemary died. Of an overdose, dammit! Rosemary had never taken anything more than an Excedrin in all her life, and all of a sudden she’s dead from a drug overdose? I knew she had to have gotten the drugs from John or one of our other doctor friends.” Garland’s face went sour.
“Friends.
You think you know somebody …”

“You think they were supplying her with drugs and she became addicted?”

“I know she was using something. I’d get home from work to find Rosemary relaxed, like zoned out. Never out of control, but spacey. I begged her to talk to me, to tell me what was going on. She never did. And she’d always be bright and happy the next day, kiss me, act like her old self. But I knew she had to be on something. And the only place she could have gotten the pills was from one of the doctors. Our
good friends.”

“And then she died,” I said.

“She left Argo’s earlier than usual, said she had a splitting headache. When I got home, she was slumped over in the hot tub, not breathing. EMS got there in minutes, but they couldn’t revive her.” Garland’s eyes grew wet. “I didn’t want the kids to know, so I told everyone it was a heart attack.”

Understandable. “Is that when you bugged the Green Table?”

“Yes. I had to know why Rosemary died. I knew the doctors were involved, even though they acted like they were still my best friends in the world. Came to the funeral, sent flowers, called every day. Kept coming to the restaurant to eat on Fridays, like usual. So I set up the microphone and started recording everything I could when they were at the table. I had to learn the truth.”

I nodded. “Morgan, of course, found the microphone. I have all the transcripts from the computer—the conversations you recorded. Argo’s is now clean, by the way. Morgan disassembled and destroyed the electronics.”

“Before they raided the place?” he asked.

“Fortunately, yes.”

Garland made the sign of a cross before continuing. “Listening to the doctors, I learned that they were part of a prescription drug ring. They owed somebody, the ringleader, a bunch of money. And I figured that Rosemary was involved in the whole mess.”

“If it’s any consolation, drugs make people do things they would otherwise not do. Your wife had a drug problem, I’d guess.” I gave Cracker a crumble of omelet remains. “Anyway, you’ve explained the hidden microphone. But you didn’t tell me why the DEA wanted everyone to think you were dead.”

Realizing no more gourmet crumbs were forthcoming, Cracker found Garland and laid his wide head across the man’s knee. Garland rubbed Cracker’s neck. “I went ballistic. I overheard the current phone number for the network—one of the docs read it from a piece of notepaper while the other dialed. I called later that day, set up a meeting, pretended to be a buyer. My plan was to go after them and deal with the doctors later.”

“What happened?”

“I met the runner at a deli. I had him by the throat, trying to get some information out of him, when I realized he was just a kid. Maybe eighteen, nineteen years old. I let go and he ran off. That’s when Brad and another agent appeared. They’d been tracking the drug ring and keeping tabs on me, too. Of course, they wanted to know how I knew about the network and why I’d been arguing with the kid.”

My beer bottle was empty. It might be a long evening. I got another from the fridge and refilled Garland’s wineglass. “What did you tell them?”

“That I didn’t think my wife’s death was an accident.” Cracker puffed out a sigh of contentment and shut his eyes. Garland kept stroking the dog’s fur. “And that I was trying to find out what had been going on in front of my own nose.”

“And they decided to fake your death because …”

It was to keep him safe, Garland said. Before the kid ran off, when Garland had him by the throat, Garland was screaming at him. Told the kid who he was and that his wife, Rosemary, was dead because of the network. Brad figured the information would filter back to the ringleader and that Garland might end up dead, too. So he came up with the fixing-a-light-on-the-ladder plan to speed up the process. They hid Garland away and put him on twenty-four-hour protection for the duration of the investigation.

“I hated to put my daughter and son through that, but Brad swore that it was the only way to ensure my safety. And
their
safety. He promised me that the DEA was close to busting the case wide open, after which everything could go back to normal.” Garland rubbed his eyes. “As though living life without Rosemary would be normal.”

So then, basically, Garland had been in protective custody. Probably holed up in an out-of-town hotel. He must have ditched the program. I asked why.

“They put me in a dingy hotel near Camp Lejeune. I was going stir-crazy. Your dog could protect me better than those numnuts they had watching me. Besides, I wanted to keep an eye on my son. I had to make sure he was okay.”

“It was
you
following him, then!” I felt a smile come on, despite the bittersweet circumstances. “The DEA was watching Morgan, but you were, too. He said he kept getting the sense that he was being followed. And he kept imagining that he saw you at different places.”

“Guess I don’t make a believable bum.” Garland returned my smile. “They froze my accounts. I tried to use a credit card and the clerk said it had been reported stolen. My house was being watched. I’ve been sleeping and showering at the homeless shelter.”

I raised my beer bottle. He raised his wineglass. “Welcome to the Block,” I said. “Make yourself at home, Garland. Really, though, I’m
not so sure that teaching my father how to cook is a good idea. He has a knack for getting in trouble. Something in his DNA, I think. He can’t help himself.”

Garland replied that Spud made a fine sous chef and said I shouldn’t worry so much. And it was his turn to ask questions. We talked long into the night, even after the Block downstairs went quiet and I heard the staff pulling down the big industrial garage doors to lock up. I told Garland what I knew, leaving out the unnecessary parts. Such as the part about Jonathan being in love with his wife. And the part about his son eavesdropping on folks just for kicks.

When you’re flying at the right altitude and staring at the big picture, certain facts cease to serve a purpose, other than to cause hurt and confusion. Garland was a good man. He didn’t need all the details.

The next morning,
Fran arrived bearing edible gifts: homemade banana-nut bread, mini sausage biscuits, and fruit salad. We gathered around the feast for brunch. Spud and Garland were talking about an upcoming coastal fare cook-off, which raised one of my mental red flags, but I didn’t have too much time to think about it. The phone rang and, making herself at home, Fran answered.

“It’s for you, sweetie! Sounds like the cute drug man, Brad.”

I took the handset. “Hello?”

“The cute drug man?” he said.

“It is descriptive.”

“You
do
think I’m cute, then.”

“I think bulldogs and donkeys are cute, too.”

“Mind if I come over?” he said.

“Yes.” I certainly wasn’t going to let him come sniffing around
my house again. Garland was not the type of man to hide in a closet. “I’m about to take Cracker for a walk.”

“I need to be walked, too,” he said. “I’ll be there in a few.”

Cracker
isn’t fond of being hooked to a leash, but he puts up with it as long as he can be in the lead. I let him forge ahead, nose to the ground, energized by whatever scents he picked up from the paved Riverwalk.