The governor despised the candidate who won the seat and refused to appoint the man to finish the last three weeks of Commissioner Willis’s term. Gravy was dining in the next booth at the Silver Slipper in Tallahassee when he overheard a conversation among the governor’s staff and offered to be a three-week commissioner.
Since then, Gravy and I toast whenever a county commissioner’s tenure hits the twenty-four-day mark. His record would never be broken.
At 7:05 a.m. Gravy sat in his spot, already making headway on his biscuits. He had the daily newspaper spread out in front of him. Dressed in Levi’s and a starched blue buttoned-down shirt, he looked fresh and ready to take on the day. He smiled at me broadly. I, on the other hand, felt and looked like crap.
Gravy ignored the circles under my eyes and waved to the waitress to bring me a cup of coffee.
“Before you tell me your latest crisis, did Sheriff Frost hand over the payroll records you needed?” he asked.
When I nodded in the affirmative, Gravy said, “Do you have any idea what I went through to get them?”
He said he had a client in his office last week when his cell phone kept vibrating.
“I didn’t have time to look at it, and it would have been rude.”
The phone would rest every few minutes and then start vibrating again until he finally turned it off. A few minutes later his secretary knocked on the door and handed him a fax with a four-word message: “Call me! Sheriff Frost.”
Gravy said, “I excused myself and called Frost’s office. They patched me straight to his cell phone.”
Frost told him that he would hand over the records I requested not because he gave a rat’s ass about Walker Holmes or his rag newspaper, but because he respected Gravy. And officers of the law should respect each other.
“He wanted me to know I owed him a favor,” said Gravy. “And he would hold me liable for how you used those records.”
I asked, “What did you say?”
“Thank you, Sheriff,” said Gravy, laughing.
He finished his last bite, threw his napkin on top of the plate, and pushed it away. He asked, “What’s your latest crisis?”
I handed him the note.
“Who is S E H?” Gravy asked.
When I told him, he whistled.
“It was delivered anonymously to me last night,” I said between sips of coffee. “Dare confirmed it’s Sue’s handwriting.”
Gravy’s smile disappeared. “Well, you need to hand it over to the state attorney.”
“I’m going to let you give it to them but not until I verify the handwriting,” I said. “Do you know someone who can do the analysis if I give them another sample of her writing?”
He said, “There’s a retired forensic tech in Mobile I’ve used before. My paralegal can drive it over to him, and we’ll probably get a reply in a few days, depending on how busy he is.” Gravy looked me in the eyes, “Once it’s analyzed, what will you do?”
“I’ll publish it,” I said. “Then, you can deliver it to the state attorney’s office.”
Gravy said, “The state attorney won’t be happy that you publish it before handing it over to his office, but as long as it’s Sue’s handwriting they can’t do much more than complain.”
“It’s Sue’s handwriting.”
“If it’s not, you might have to deal with an obstruction of justice charge, but it will be more bluff than reality,” said the attorney. “No one believes this is a homicide. There is no active investigation.”
Gravy pointed to the front page of the daily newspaper spread out on the table. The headline read “Hines Honors Wife, Opposes Park.”
He said, “However, anything you write will look like you’re attacking Bo Hines to clear your name. You’ll be playing into his argument that that you’re a tabloid publisher out for big headlines to attract readers and that you’re trying to sell ads at his expense. Is that wise?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll use words like ‘appears to be,’ ‘possibly,’ and ‘awaiting confirmation by experts’ to cover my ass.”
Gravy just nodded and stared ahead while the harried waitress brought me the omelet I had ordered. After she had walked away, he asked, “What else do you want from me, other than being your errand boy?”
I told him about Bree and Monte Tatum. Gravy and Tatum graduated from Pensacola Catholic High, though Tatum was about six years older. I knew there was some bad blood between them, but not quite sure why.
“He’s an asshole,” Gravy said. “That sounds exactly like something he would do. He could never get a date like a normal person.”
As I tried to stomach the omelet, Gravy continued, “Tatum liked to hang around good-looking younger guys with pretty girlfriends. He came over to FSU when I was in school and hung around the fraternity house, even though he was in his mid-twenties. He partied with the young couples, bought them drinks, and got them drunk. Then he’d start feeding the girl cocaine on the side. The girl got hooked and would do anything with Tatum for more.”
He took a sip of his Tab. Who still drank Tab, especially for breakfast? I wondered.
“I had this girl I was seeing when I first moved back to Pensacola. Joy was a bank teller, a sweet girl, beautiful. We were in bed one night. I got up to go the bathroom, and she was gone when I returned. Joy left in such a hurry she forgot her phone on the nightstand. The phone log showed she had just received a call from Tatum. When I confronted her about it, Joy told me he had coke for her.”
I said, “I thought Tatum had cleaned up his act and was all respectable now.”
“Maybe but a guy like that doesn’t ever change,” Gravy said. “Tatum dumped Joy two weeks after I ended our relationship. She couldn’t give up
