Quint Mitchell 01 - Matanzas Bay (35 page)

She closed the door and I retreated to my car. No doubt I’d been a pawn in Erin Marrano’s little game. She was right when she said she would be viewed as the victim. Within one week, her husband murdered, her birth father and twin brother equally dead. This left her as the sole heir of a fortune totaling several million dollars.

All of us are the product of gene pools contributing more than a sequence of chromosomes. I wondered about the Henderson gene pool. Erin Marrano seemed to be an intelligent and insightful person. Supposedly, she’d been a caring and dedicated teacher. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling any answers would be found deep below the surface. Like my work at archaeological surveys, the deeper we dug, the more soil we turned over and screened, the more likely we were to discover hidden artifacts from the past.

Clayton Ford Henderson was a complicated man who abandoned his children and possibly killed his wife. His son used the abuse he suffered as a child as an excuse for murder.

And Erin Marrano?

If scientists examined the Henderson genome I wondered what they might find. Perhaps under their electron microscopes, they’d discover Erin Marrano was the smartest, most devious of them all.

FORTY-FIVE

A month later, I wangled an invitation to a reception at the University of North Florida’s Young Republican Club. The guest of honor was Kurtis Laurance and he was meeting with his VIP supporters prior to his speech at the University’s Fine Arts Center. Over a hundred people were crowded into the meeting room, and I stood in the back holding a glass of red wine waiting for Florida’s next governor to make his appearance.

After twenty minutes, he entered through a back door along with his entourage of campaign workers and local politicos. He worked the room like an old pro, shaking hands with everyone, making small talk, cracking jokes. He finally made his way along the perimeter and, while talking with several elderly women, spotted me hovering nearby. Laurance turned away, concentrating instead on the two women and their concerns about homeowner’s insurance.

One of his aides came over and whispered in Laurance’s ear. The candidate offered apologies to the women and moved to the front of the room. Taking a bottle of water one of his aides handed him, he swallowed a mouthful before addressing the throng of supporters.

“Friends, I want to thank you for coming out today and helping us eat these hors d’oeurves. I was afraid we’d have to carry them back to our plane with us, and I really don’t need any more calories.” He chuckled and patted his flat stomach while the rest of the room echoed his laughter.

He spent ten minutes ticking off the major planks in his campaign platform, the same talking points he’d repeated five and six times a day at stump speeches throughout the state for the last two months. When he finished condemning corruption in the previous administration, the need to cut taxes and bring more jobs to Florida, Laurance answered a few questions. Then he thanked everyone again, asking for their vote in Tuesday’s primary election, and said, “Ya’all better hurry and get yourselves a good seat. You don’t want to miss hearing my speech again.”

Everyone laughed and applauded Kurtis Laurance as his aides hustled him toward the rear door. While the rest of the crowd hurried in the other direction to find their seats for his speech, I made my way toward Laurance’s retreating figure.

Laurance and his entourage moved along a narrow corridor. I called out to him, “Mr. Laurance.”

They all stopped, turning toward me. “I wonder if I could have a minute of your time.”

My face had mostly healed, but there were still a few faint bruises around my eyes. I must have looked suspicious because several of his aides immediately moved in front of Laurance, shielding him from any potential trouble. A Florida Highway Patrolman stepped forward to block my approach.

“No, it’s okay,” Laurance said. “Mr. Mitchell and I are old friends.”

He broke away from the others and strode rapidly toward me, a swagger in his step. If anything, he appeared even more confident than the man I met four weeks ago. All the polls showed an overwhelming victory for his ticket, and he wore the mantle of success as an invisible cloak. “You’re looking good, Quint.” He extended a hand, but I ignored it.

“I heard about what happened with you and Erin. Terrible. Just terrible.”

“Looks like nothing can stop the Laurance bandwagon now.”

“That’s up to the voters,” he said, looking at his watch. “I really have to go. I’m already a half-hour behind schedule.”

“I know you sent Tallabois after me.”

“Ridiculous. Lem was a loose cannon. You said it yourself. Heaven knows I couldn’t control him. That’s why I offered you his job. Whatever he did, he did entirely on his own. And the truth is the police don’t have any proof he did anything, except get himself killed by that maniac.” He turned to wave at an aide waiting impatiently at the end of the hall, tapping on his watch.

“I’m sorry you got caught up in the middle of this, Quint, but I had nothing to with it.”

“I guess you didn’t have anything to do with Walter Howard having his knees smashed either.”

Laurance edged closer, bending toward me. Lowering his voice to almost a whisper, he said, “For God’s sake, Mitchell, I was a kid. I can’t tell you how sorry I am for what happened back then. But people change. I was twelve years old. People change,” he repeated.

People do change, but my few encounters with the man told me that for all his success, despite his charisma and beneath the smooth veneer, Laurance was a manipulative and ruthless bully who’d do almost anything to get his way. Perhaps the voters believed those were strong leadership traits, but I wasn’t convinced.

“What do you think the voters would say if they knew you played a part in crippling a civil rights leader?”

Laurance seemed taken aback and regarded me through wide eyes as though I’d suddenly popped into the corridor in a cloud of smoke from another dimension. He straightened, slipping back into the confident pose of the CEO of the St. Johns Group and Florida’s next governor.

“Hell, Mitchell, this is Florida. If that gets out, it might even bump my numbers up a few percentage points.”

With that, he turned his back on me and walked away.

EPILOGUE

The moon perched above the cluster of low buildings forming St. Augustine’s horizon. Down below, the tiny San Sebastian River, no more than a tributary of the Matanzas River, flared with amber highlights. I couldn’t help thinking about how the landscape would soon change, drastically altered by the condos and hotel of the Matanzas Bay development going up across the street. St. Augustine, with its bloody yet proud past, seemed to be one of those places where change was a reluctant visitor. Yet the town was changing despite itself.

Serena and I sat on the roof of the San Sebastian Winery, sipping a glass of their Castillo Red. A local blues band had completed a rowdy set, and we were enjoying the stillness of the night.

“Here’s to a positively lovely evening,” Serena said, holding her glass toward the full moon, and then to me.

We tapped glasses and sipped. Around us, clusters of locals and tourists were talking and celebrating their own personal victories. Five weeks had passed since my battle with Jarrod Watts, and all of the purple bruises, headaches and bloodshot eyes had finally disappeared. Serena agreed with me that this was worth celebrating.

“Any time of the day or night is lovely if you’re around,” I said with a straight face.

Serena laughed, but seemed to appreciate the compliment. “Maybe you should get hit in the head more often,” she said. “You’re turning into Mr. Sensitivity.”

“Let’s keep that between us. Okay? I don’t think it’d be good for my business.”

Streams of moonlight reflected across the rooftop, and Serena’s face glowed with an inner radiance. She reached out and ran her fingers over my cheek. “Good to have the old Quint back.”

“Good to be back.”

She smiled, but I saw apprehension in her eyes. “You aren’t giving this up, are you? Next time you might not be so lucky.”

“Hey, I’m fine. Nothing that a few more nights with you won’t clear up.” I brought her hand to my mouth and nibbled at her fingertips.

“You’re impossible,” she scolded, pulling her hand back, “and you’re trying to change the subject.”

“Listen to me, baby. My profession doesn’t even make the top ten most dangerous jobs list. Commercial fishermen and lumberjacks are far more likely to have a serious accident than private investigators.”

Her expression said,
you’re full of beans
.

“Hey, it’s true. My job is usually boring and no more dangerous than yours.” I pointed at my face. “Believe me, this private eye is done with murder cases. I’m only chasing after old women with walkers from now on.”

I’m not sure she bought it, but some of the tension slipped from her face. “I just don’t want to worry about you all the time.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be here to take it one day at a time, if that’s the way you want it.”

She squeezed my hand, and we sat in the glow of a citrine-colored moon while we finished our wine. I caught our server’s eye and asked for the check.

“While you take care of that, I’m going to the little girl’s room. I had a wonderful time tonight. Thanks.”

“The night doesn’t have to end here. There are a couple of four-legged creatures in Jacksonville Beach jumping at the chance to deposit hair on your dress.”

“I’ll think about it,” she said, and walked toward the rest rooms.

While I waited for the check, I studied the moon and thought about the twists and turns my life had taken since I uncovered William Marrano’s body. I’d settled back into my old routines at Mitchell Investigative Services, tracking down skip traces and uncovering insurance scams. The publicity from the Watts case even helped me land the Gulf Breeze Insurance account.

Everything had worked out for Kurtis Laurance, too. The news hounds were describing his overwhelming primary victory in terms usually saved for Nobel Prize Laureates and rock stars. Laurance still had to win the general election in November, but the pundits were already speculating on his upcoming administration, comparing him to other southern governors who made the leap to the White House.

I thought about Erin Marrano and her part in Henderson’s, and perhaps her husband’s, death. Maybe I should have pursued it more vigorously, but like she told me, I had no real evidence. Only my paranoid theories. I considered going to Buck Marrano with my suspicions, but in the end decided against it. There was no way the state attorney or a grand jury would bring charges against William Marrano’s widow. Not on my gut feelings.

Hundreds of years from now, these mysteries will still be waiting for an archaeologist’s spade, but what interested me at the moment was the more immediate future. I couldn’t change the past, but tonight, for some reason, the future seemed alive with possibility.

I checked to see if Serena was on her way back to the table before pulling my cell phone from my pocket. I stared at it as though sensing it held the answer to a great enigma. I hadn’t heard from Samuel Parks since that afternoon I exploded and told him to find another therapist. His daughter’s tragic death would always lie heavy upon both of us, but I hoped he found a way to achieve some peace.

Without thinking, my hand reached up to the medallion hanging around my neck. I had retrieved it from Watts’ dead fingers and it now hung from a new silver chain. My finger slipped between the top two buttons of my shirt, and I felt the smooth figure of the dolphin. In the past, touching the cold metal was a way to connect with my brother and reinforce the guilt I carried with me as a constant reminder of my failure. Now, as I touched the hammered stainless steel, I pictured the acrobatic leaps and smiling snout of a living creature.

My past had become part of my internal structure as much as the blood pumping through my body. But on this night, I felt the past had controlled me for too long. It couldn’t be changed, but perhaps the future might. Taking a deep breath, I flipped open my cell and pulled the old numbers out of my head. I punched them carefully into the phone and hesitated a moment, my finger shaking slightly, before pressing the green Send button.

The ring caught me by surprise, and I almost changed my mind. I listened as it rang again, wondering what I’d say. With any luck, no one would be home. The voice on the other end startled me. It had been so long. Finally, I said, “Hello dad, it’s me. It’s Quint.”

The End

Author’s Note

While
Matanzas Bay
is a work of fiction, it should be noted that St. Augustine played a major role in the Civil Rights Movement. Throughout 1963-1964, blacks picketed segregated establishments, conducted sit-ins, and marches. Dr. Robert B. Hayling, a local dentist and Air Force veteran who led the movement, was viciously beaten by the Klan during this period. This was the genesis of Walter Howard’s story.

Carl Halbirt has been the City Archaeologist of St. Augustine since 1988. Working with a cadre of volunteers he’s helped to recruit and train through the St. Augustine Archaeological Association, Mr. Halbirt has salvaged and preserved remnants of the old city’s storied past. I’m grateful to him for allowing me to observe one of his surveys, and for the important work he’s doing.

Thanks also to my friend Kay Day for contributing “Clayton Henderson’s” poem,
A Flash of Silence
, which added greatly to the story.

Readers familiar with St. Augustine will recognize the various landmarks mentioned in the book. The St. Augustine Lighthouse and Alligator Farm, for example, are popular destinations for visitors and, to my knowledge, no acts of violence have taken place there. Other places depicted in the story, like the Stuff of Dreams restaurant, are fictional. Everything else is true, except the parts I made up.

Keep reading for an excerpt from the next Quint Mitchell Mystery,
Bring Down the Furies
.

Quint Mitchell is on the move again. The private investigator tracks the “Heart Throb Bandit” to the tiny hamlet of Allendale, South Carolina on behalf of a client. In another time, Allendale felt the wrath of General Sherman’s troops as they blazed a fiery path through Georgia and Carolina during the Civil War.