Death By Sunken Treasure (A Hayden Kent Mystery Book 2) (17 page)

Twenty-Nine

Thoughts glued me to my seat at Dana’s kitchen table. How little I knew about the people I loved, and even my own town, took me by surprise. Options, fears, excuses, all swirled in my thoughts like a washing machine on high speed.

I couldn’t grasp any facts out of my thoughts. I texted Mallory back a one-letter response: “K.” It would have to do. No way could I tell Dana about Jake’s accusation that he got the drugs from her. Not now. Tension between us was the last thing I wanted. None of this information fit with the Dana I knew and loved. It made as much sense as landing on Mars and finding a Mickey D’s. Completely and totally bizarre.

I drove slowly home from Dana’s. Tiger Cat waited patiently for his late supper as I entered the alarm code. I stopped to give him a quick cuddle and some kibble, then I put in the stay code for the alarm and stumbled on exhausted feet down the hall to my bedroom and its attached bath, stripping as I walked.

The hot water brought no insights into the events of the day. Instead, the motions of sudsing and rinsing made me tired. I was even too tired to eat. I only wanted to crawl under the sheets. I hoped my subconscious mind would come up with something to help me wrap my mind around Dana supplying Mike with drugs. In a compassionate way, I could almost accept that. Add Dana giving Jake drugs for Mike and my brain exploded.

The same thoughts that haunted me when I fell asleep waited for me when I woke. If my dreams offered any solutions, I couldn’t remember them now. Tiger leapt off my chest as I stood and headed for a cold shower, hoping the shock would shake something lose in my brain. I pulled a pair of khaki cotton trousers and a blue and white striped blouse from my closet, shoved my feet into a pair of brown loafers, and headed to do my makeup.

The mirror told me that the events of the night before left me unmarked. At the very least, I had expected dark circles under my eyes. My hand found my cell phone and I flipped to my messages and studied the series from Mallory again. Time hadn’t changed the string. I thumbed in a quick message then sent one to Janice inviting both women to meet me after work at my house. I promised a pizza party and beer or wine. While putting the finishing touches on my face, both women responded they would see me later.

The drive to work happened in slow motion. I pulled into our lot and parked beside Grant’s cherry red Jaguar. A note flapped in the breeze on his windshield. A swirl of fear curled in my stomach as I grabbed the white paper and unfolded it. The message was from Grant. He wanted me to see him as soon as I got in.

A spurt of anger fought with the adrenaline rush. I strode toward the office and onto the porch, pulling the door so hard it slammed back against the stop. Vaguely I registered Ruth’s surprised expression. I tossed her a brief hello as I stalked past. At Grant’s door, I didn’t knock. I yanked the door open and stopped dead in front of his desk.

“You bastard.” The top of my head felt tight. “You are such a juvenile.” I dropped into the chair across from his desk with enough force to scoot it back on the wooden floor. “What do you want that’s so important you had to scare ten years off my life?” My hands gripped the armrests.

“I wanted to continue our conversation from last night. You usually get in early after a day off. I didn’t want you going to your office and letting the day get away. I figured you would see the note. I left one on your chair too.”

I almost dislocated my eyes rolling them as widely as I did. “You set me up.”

“You’re late,” he countered.

I made a big show of looking at my watch. Then I pulled my cell phone from my handbag and swiped the screen to show the time. “Hmm, both say nine o’clock. Since when is that late?”

He smiled and shrugged. “I thought more about our conversation yesterday. I wanted to give you a chance to prove your accident theory.” He raised his hand in a stop gesture. “Don’t tell me about your murder theory. Not unless you have hard proof.”

For the second time that day my stomach turned somersaults. My thoughts played ping-pong with each other sorting through the cast of characters. Finally, I took my courage in both hands and told him about my meeting with Dana, omitting any mention of Jake, or my confrontation with him.

He rested his lips on his steepled fingers. He pushed them closer together. The pressure made his fingertips tremble. “Okay, let’s talk about your theory and see how it works based on what you just told me.”

My thoughts leapt down the same path I thought he followed. “Grant, it’s not what you’re thinking.”

He arched an eyebrow. “And what is that, Madame Carnac?”

“Dana did not kill her son.” I paused for a beat. “Deliberately.”

I tried to follow his gaze as he turned his face to the window and the view of the small hammock behind our office. The emotions I saw reflected in the glass chasing themselves across his face told me more than any words. He was struggling with something. When he turned to face me, I let out the little breath I’d been holding. His gaze looked calm. The little muscle in his jaw danced. “I ate dinner with my detective friend last night,” he said.

Not wanting to break the spell, I stayed motionless.

“There is some talk that Dana is a suspect.”

“I thought the death certificate resolved that issue.”

“Until the toxicology report came back.” His gave me a measuring look. He took a keyring from his pocket and selected a key. He inserted it into the top right hand drawer in his desk, pulling the drawer open and fanning through some papers.

When he pulled his hand out, he handed me a thin folder. Grant’s silence and solemn demeanor told me without a doubt the paper would challenge everything I thought I knew.

I held a report on sheriff’s department letterhead. The pages were photocopies of prescriptions from Dr. Green. Some written to Mike, some to Dana. All for narcotics. The dates went back a year. The prescriptions were written within days of each other. I opened my mouth to speak when Grant pulled some more pages from his drawer and handed them to me. More prescriptions, all for narcotics, all written to Dana. The doctor’s addresses ranged from Key West to Miami. Dana. Doctor shopping. It validated everything Dana told me.

“Isn’t this stuff confidential? Why did he give it to you?” My eyes searched his expressionless face.

He ignored my questions. “It’s proof that even if Dana didn’t kill her son, she was accumulating drugs more than any single human being would need.”

While I studied my thoughts, he came around the desk and gathered me in a hug. He propped himself on the end of his desk, his long legs stretched out in front of him. “Dana had financial problems. I guess she saw this as a solution. We don’t know who the drugs went to, but we can’t dispute the evidence.”

“Jake,” I whispered. He cocked his head and waited for me to continue. A wave of tiredness washed over me. I didn’t think I could move. “Mallory texted me. Monroe County arrested Jake last night. There were a lot of drugs in the bar. Mallory’s boss is representing him. Dana and Jake had an affair. A long time ago.”

My words were as disjointed as my thoughts.
Dana, how could you let things get so bad? Then another thought struck. I flipped through the prescription copies. The dosages kept increasing. I bit my tongue to keep my thoughts from flowing out of my mouth.

Grant gently reached down and gathered up the papers scattered on my lap. “Go home, Hayden. This is too much for you to handle right now.”

His sympathy brought tears to my eyes. My thoughts froze.

Did Dana fear he’d change the beneficiary? Cut her out of the insurance too? Did she feed Mike an increased dosage and let him dive? I got out of the chair like an automaton. I couldn’t believe it. Dana was his mother. There was nothing I could do about Dana giving drugs to her son. She admitted that. But selling them to others? No. I was going to find some way to exonerate Dana of that charge. It couldn’t be true. Nothing she told me suggested that.

“What are you thinking?” Grant’s voice broke into my personal hell. I couldn’t quite grasp the meaning of his words, but I understood he had told me to go home.

Without responding to his question, I turned on stiff legs and walked out his door and through the lobby back to my car.

I pushed the starter button on my vehicle and pulled out of the office lot. I turned my car west on U.S. 1 heading for Marathon. The miles passed without my paying any attention. I drove over the Vaca Cut Bridge when a big red sign caught my eye. The Filling Station. The place Mike filled his tanks. The guy behind the counter told me Kristin picked them up.

I cut my car sharply to the right, cut off the car in the lane next to me, and drove into The Filling Station parking lot.

I didn’t have a game plan for my questions. I said a quick prayer that I would think of something when I got into the shop.

I leaped from my car and marched to the door. Any movement felt better than the endless turmoil of my thoughts. Maybe I could get some questions answered here. Find the key to exonerate Dana. It took a minute for my eyesight to adapt to the darkness inside the shop. When they did, I saw a young man with blond hair flopping over his eyes behind the counter. He looked more surfer than diver.

“Did you know Mike Terry?” I asked

The man lifted his hand and brushed back his hair. I noted a tattoo of The Petard figurehead on his forearm and the words “Breathe or Die” under the figure. He slewed his eyes to follow the direction of my glance. “Used to bartend there.” He chuckled. “So yeah, I knew Mike. He was my boss, him and Jake Patterson.” He smiled, showing a gap where his canine tooth should be. He flicked the tip of his tongue through it.

He continued to gaze at me expectantly. Repelled, I took a step back. “Did you ever fill his tanks?”

“Nah. He did that himself. Filled ’em and took ’em.”

I decided to follow the old attorney adage. Never ask a question unless you already know the answer. “Anyone else ever pick up his tanks for him?”

He ducked his head down, and I lost him behind the flop of hair. “No.”

I sighed and turned to go.

“Wait,” he called after me. “Just the last time. His foxy ex picked them up. I just arrived for my shift. I was late. Saw her in the parking lot. Then some old lady drove in and met the ex in the parking lot. She took the tanks. I remember she struggled pretty good with them.”

Dana. That had to be Dana. “How did you know they were Mike’s tanks?”

“By the markings. Mike’s nitrox tank had an E. We’d run out of gas, so he left them.” He gave a triumphant smile as if he’d answered the final
Jeopardy!
question correctly and won a million. “Anyways, I was gonna help her but didn’t have to. Mike’s ex put the tanks in the old lady’s car. She gave her his dive hydration system too. We’d cleaned, serviced, and filled it with my special nutritional mix.”

Contaminating a scuba tank was hard and required knowledge and access to air. You had to empty the tank and remove the valve or fill it with bad gas. A ribbon of pain shot through my head. Bad gas, or in Mike’s case, air. Dana wouldn’t be able to do either. She could contaminate the self-contained underwater drinking apparatus, called a SCUDA, or a camelback hydration unit with some sort of liquefied drugs. That would be easy, especially if Mike was expecting to find a full unit with his gear.

A jab of pain pierced my heart.

As I left the dive shop, the deteriorating green door of the Filling Station creaked closed behind me. My car sat just outside on a weedy patch of pea rock. I slid behind the wheel and rubbed my sweat-slicked palms on my slacks, then reached for my cell and fingered Dana’s speed dial. She answered on the first ring.

“I’m glad you called,” she said. “After I told you about helping Mike with his pain I was worried what you would think of me.” The clink of china filled the silence. I heard the soft flutter of her swallow. Her voice sounded slow, edged with tiredness.

“It’s not for me to judge, Dana. You did what you thought best for your son.” I pulled in a breath and blew it out softly. “Did you pick Mike’s tanks up?” I held my breath and waited for her answer.

“Yes, and that other thing, the water bag. He asked me to. I took them to his house and left them.” Her voice sounded bewildered.

“Was Lisa home?”

She paused, then said, “No. I left them on the back deck near the outdoor shower. Hayden, what is this all about?”

“I’m not sure. Was Mike’s boat there?”

“At the dock? I think so. I didn’t pay much attention.” Dana slurred the last words.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I drank a glass of wine with lunch. I’m afraid it overwhelmed me.

That threw me off balance. Dana drank from time to time, usually cordials, but she handled her liquor well. I heard a muffled sniffle and decided I interrupted a private moment of sorrow and the wine story was a cover. We said goodbye.

I started the car and pulled out of the lot. Lost in thought, I turned east instead of west onto U.S. 1 back in the direction of my office. The sign for Long Key State Park loomed in front of me before I realized my mistake.

Dana admitted to picking up the tanks. I ran my hands over the cool leather of the steering wheel as I pulled a U-turn in the park entrance and headed for home. She said she dropped the tanks off at Mike’s house. Lisa or Rutger could have changed the gas. They had the knowledge. Wait. The heel of my hand hit against my forehead. The ME report said the hydration system, like a camelback water system for runners, was connected, but empty. Why was Mike so thirsty that he had emptied the unit during his dive? Did someone mix salt or something worse in the energy mix that should have been the only liquid in the hydration system?

“Jake,” I muttered. “This all points to him.” I lifted a hand. “He was involved with drugs, knew Mike’s diving rig, habits, and dive style.” I dropped my pinky down towards my palm. “Partners with Mike.” My ring finger came down. “On the outs with Mike.” Down went my middle finger. “Had access to the boat keys at The Petard.” My index finger followed. “Knew where Mike kept his boat and his gear.” My thumb turned in making my hand into a fist. “Knew about Mike’s drug use and tolerance.”

A bubble of excitement formed in my chest. I glanced at my watch. I had time to go to Mallory’s office and cajole her into taking the rest of the day off. I wasn’t ready to bring Janice into the discussion yet. When I did, I wanted to be convincing enough to get her to go to Deputy Diego with me and add the charge of murder to Jake’s list of drug-related offenses. Janice’s credibility was beyond question. I needed someone like her on my side to help me refute the information Grant’s detective friend gave him.