At the bar I saw Bobbie frowning at me as she slammed drinks down as fast as possible. Every seat was taken and the buzz was intense. Young people in bathing suits, older people with shorts and colorful shirts. There were two European couples, the corpulent girls in string bikinis and the two guys in what appeared to be colored jock straps. The assembled crowd watched us, pointed to the balcony above, and seemed to devour the excitement that only a gruesome murder can deliver.
The sheriff’s deputies questioned us individually. We were spread out at the four corners of the fenced-in pool, and we each had our own officer. It was almost comical the way they handled it, but I suppose they couldn’t rule us out as suspects. It did happen in our room, but we hadn’t even been there.
“Mr. Moore, you were the one who found the body, right?”
“No. My roommate found the body.”
“Mr. Lessor?”
“Yes.”
“Were you with your roommate, Mr. Lessor, before he found the body?”
“I was with him maybe five minutes before.”
“So he went to the room and five minutes later, he calls you and,” he glanced at a paper in his hand, “a Miss Maria Sanko to come up and see the body?”
“I don’t have a stopwatch. My guess is that-”
“Five minutes.”
“I guess. I’m not a good judge of time, but-”
“So Mr. Lessor had at least five minutes by himself?”
It sounded for all the world like the first thing this guy wanted to do was accuse my partner. So I obviously thought the quickest solution to the problem was to start defending James.
“Mr. Lessor,”-I’d never called him mister in my life-“did not kill anyone. He was shocked. He didn’t even know this guy.”
And this deputy didn’t know James. James hated cops. As an accountant, his father had been arrested in their home for failing to pay withholding taxes from the company he worked for. Strict orders from the company’s owner. But it was James’s father who did the time.
Cops stormed into their home and cuffed his father in front of the family. His father was locked up and spent years in prison. James said they emasculated him. James hated cops.
The officer glanced back at where they were interviewing James. The look in his eyes told me there was going to be trouble.
“Just a moment.”
He walked back to the far corner of the pool, conferred with that officer for a moment, then came back.
“Mr. Lessor did not know the victim, is that correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“Isn’t it true that the victim was a private detective?”
How he’d already arrived at that conclusion I didn’t know. Unless James had already told them.
“I don’t know that for sure. I mean, we saw their pictures online and-” Online. Wrong word to use.
“And why were you looking them up online?” The line delivered like a B-movie actor. Intimidating. Threatening. “If you didn’t know the victim, why were you searching for him online?”
“They were-”
“They? Was someone else killed too?”
I sensed it was not going well. This thing with James and a dead Weezle was a little more complicated than I’d imagined. And maybe Mary Trueblood was right. Now everyone was going to know about the gold. I was just worried about James.
“Mr. Moore, again I’m asking you, why were you and Mr. Lessor looking up the victim online? You claim neither you nor Mr. Lessor knew him.”
And so it went. Everything pointed to James searching for the guy online and then finding the body. And the insinuation was that if James had five minutes before he called us up, he had time to kill the guy who broke in.
I know James. I’ve known him since we were in grade school. He’s my best friend, and while he may be a good talker, he’s not a fighter. He’s terrible at confrontation. James couldn’t kill anyone. And why would he? These guys, Weezle and Markim? We’d never heard about them until this morning.
I figured Maria was getting the same questions, and James was probably being grilled about what he did for those five minutes, bristling every second of the interview.
And Mary Trueblood, she was probably telling these officers that we were there to find forty-some million dollars worth of gold. At this moment I wished I’d listened to my inner voice back in Carol City. I should have put my foot down and said no. Anytime James thinks something is a good idea, it isn’t.
“You can’t account for those five minutes that Mr. Lessor was gone, correct?”
I must have told the cop at least five times that I could account for those five minutes. “The elevators here are very slow. Very slow.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They took him away. Cuffed. I couldn’t believe it. Honestly my mouth was hanging open. They handcuffed him, walked him to one of the squad cars, pushed his head down, and had him climb in the back of the car. He glared out the window, staring at me with a scowl on his face.
“Is he being arrested?” This was quickly turning into a nightmare.
“He refused to go voluntarily to the station. He was uncooperative.”
James hated cops. He knew that sometimes when you leave with an officer, you don’t come back. For years.
“He found a dead body. That’s it. That is not a crime.” I was screaming at the uniformed officer. They held me back as I tried to rush the car. What the hell? James was not a murderer.
“My God. We just stumbled on a corpse with his head bashed in. Give the guy a break.”
The officer gave me a grim smile. This was Florida and things are a little different down here. I mean, we got our private investigator license from the Department of Agriculture. That’s who licenses PIs. Seriously. I hesitated as I realized we might lose our brand-new license if I attempted anything that was illegal. Immoral. Or just not right.
“For God’s sake, at least take the cuffs off of him.” Neither of us had ever been handcuffed. Neither of us had ever been in a squad car. This was a first.
“Where are you taking him?”
“To the station.”
“And where is the station?”
The officer rolled his eyes. “Behind Boardwalk Pizza.”
“And that’s where?” My tone was intense. I didn’t know the area, and I needed geographical references.
“About two miles north of here on the highway.”
“James, I’ll pick you up as soon as this is over. Call me.” I shouted as loud as I could.
Another uniform walked down the stairs, our laptop case in his hand.
“We’ll need to take your computer. If it’s clean, we’ll get it back to you.”
“I’m a private investigator. I have information on cases we’re working on. You can’t just take that and-”
“Yes. We can.” He kept on walking.
We’d only owned it for three days. Other than the AAAce Yellow Page ad and James’s new subscription to Match.com, there wasn’t much stored on the machine. And I watched as my best friend was transported through the parking lot and down the side road that led to the Overseas Highway. Everything was a blur. We’d come down here to make a little side money and now he was being held on suspicion of murder.
I felt Maria Sanko’s hand on my arm. I didn’t brush it off.
“Skip, I’m sorry.”
“He’ll be out in an hour. He didn’t kill that guy. They’re just fishing.”
