Ron Base - Tree Callister 03 - Another Sanibel Sunset Detective (15 page)

“You slept with her, you slept with Susan.”

“That’s not true, Chris.”

“I was with her last night. She was crying in my arms. Devastated by what you did in Key West.”

“Nothing happened in Key West. No matter what she told you. Her name isn’t Susan, incidentally. It’s probably Cailie Fisk, although there is no guarantee that’s true, either. Nothing about her is true. I don’t know why she’s saying the things she’s saying, but I never touched her.”

“You never spent the night in her room in Key West?”

“There’s an explanation for that, if you sit down and listen to it.”

“I don’t want any more of your crap. That’s all I’ve ever gotten from you. Either nothing—which is all mom ever got—or a lot of crap that turned out not to be true.”

“Chris, think about this. Think about what you’re saying. You know how much I love Freddie. You know I would never do anything to hurt her. You know that.”

Chris stood there, his body trembling, Tree still uncertain if his son would hit him. Instead, he shook a finger at this father. “This is it with you. It’s finished, I don’t want to have anything more to do with you and your lies. Understand me? Nothing.”

Chris retreated to the door. Tree jumped to his feet to block his exit. “Get out of my way,” Chris said, curling a fist.

“Did you tell Cailie or Susan where we were staying in Paris?”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Did you?”

Chris lowered his head, nodding. “We may have discussed it, I suppose.”

“What about the kir royale and La Closerie des Lilas, did you talk about all that?”

“She wanted to know about you and Freddie.”

“Look, there’s something going on here. I’m not sure what it is, but this woman is not who she says she is, and for some reason she seems determined to destroy me, my relationship with you, and my marriage to Freddie.”

“Any destroying that’s going on, you’re responsible for it.”

“It’s not just Key West. She followed us to Paris, too, and she was probably watching our apartment and tailed me the night I went to the Closerie. We had dinner and then I drove her back to her hotel. That’s when she came on to me.”

“You’re lying!”

“Nothing happened. I left. The next thing, she’s on Sanibel, and now she’s even sent Freddie a letter claiming we are having an affair.”

Chris’s face had gone flat. “Susan wouldn’t do that.”

“Call Freddie, she’ll confirm what I said.”

“Lie for you, you mean.”

“Yeah, right, nothing Freddie would like better than to protect me if she really thought I was having an affair. She’s got the letter. She’ll show it to you, if that’s what you want.”

Chris stood silently, not moving. Tree put his hand on his son’s arm. He angrily shook it off. “Don’t touch me!”

Stone-faced, Chris shouldered Tree out of the way and escaped out the door. Tree looked at his hand. It was shaking. Rex Baxter poked his head in. “Everything all right?”

Tree looked at him. “Why shouldn’t it be?”

Rex shrugged. “It’s just that there seems to have been a lot of yelling and screaming going on, tourists downstairs scattering for Naples.”

“Sorry,” Tree said.

“So everything’s not all right,” Rex said.

His son was sleeping with the woman who claimed to be having an affair with his father. Tree’s wife was grappling with the notion that her husband was fooling around, determined to believe him but nagged by suspicions fueled by her husband’s lack of communication skills.

What could possibly be wrong?

Aloud, Tree said, “Do me a favor will you? I need to find out if there is a woman named Susan Troy staying on the island. She may be using the name Cailie Fisk.”

“This is the gal with Chris I met the other night at the Lighthouse.”

“That’s the one.”

“Are you doing some sort of background check on her? Make sure she’s suitable for your son?”

“Could you phone around for me?”

“Does this make me an official associate private detective?”

Tree smiled. “You’re in charge of our fleet of boats.”

21

Tree parked the Beetle in the Island Inn parking lot, and then went through the walkway onto a white sand beach where a series of white-painted clapboard cottages faced the gulf.

Just as he was deciding whether to check with reception before proceeding, Elizabeth Traven,
wearing dark glasses and an electric blue one-piece bathing suit that made her shimmer in the sunlight, appeared in the open doorway of the nearest cottage—a goddess waiting on the doorstep.

She waved when she saw him and then stood waiting, one hand on her hip, until he came over. She did not seem all that surprised to see him.

“How did you find me?”

“Hank Dearlove left an Island Inn brochure lying around.”

“Poor Hank,” was all she said.

“So you know he’s dead,” Tree said.

“Why don’t you come in out of the sun?”

Tree followed her into a sun-drenched sitting room. The white-painted furniture reminded him of the cottages his family occasionally rented on the island in the early 1960s. A flat screen television was the sole concession to the twenty-first century. Not exactly Elizabeth Traven’s kind of place.

She swung around facing him, removing her sunglasses. The strains of disappearing had not disrupted her beauty. The incandescence of her swimsuit threw off unexpected heat. “I just came back from the beach,” she said. “Can I get you anything?”

Tree shook his head.

“Well, now that I’ve been tracked down by that crack private eye, Tree Callister, I’m going to have a beer.”

“Seems kind of down market for you, Mrs. Traven.”

“I am a simple woman of the people, Mr. Callister,” she said with a smile. “You should know that by now.”

She swayed into the tiny kitchen to an old-fashioned refrigerator rattling away in a corner. She opened the door and bent to retrieve a can of Budweiser Lite. Faced with the view of her pear-shaped derriere, Tree was struck by the realization that once again he was alone with a woman without enough clothes on.

She straightened and snapped the cap on the beer, seeming to sense his unease. She smiled. “I’m making you nervous.”

“You’re making me wonder what’s going on,” Tree said.

“Are you sure you don’t want anything?”

“Just some information.”

Elizabeth perched on a sofa beneath windows that opened outward to allow a breeze from the ocean and the cries of children on the beach. He could hear himself a long time ago in those sounds.

He was distracted from his past by Elizabeth crossing the long legs that he used to spend far too much time trying not to look at.

“Why don’t you sit down?” she said.

“Right now, I prefer to stand.”

“In case you have to make a run for it?” Her smile brightened. “I’m not going to bite you.”

“Every time I find a dead body, it seems you are not far away.”

“You think I had something to do with Hank’s murder?”

“Did you?”

She took a sip of her beer before she said, “I was a long way away when that happened.”

“I’m guessing Dearlove realized a guy with a machete named Edgar Bunya was after you and decided he’d better get you out of Key West. Only you couldn’t come back to your house, so Dearlove got you this place.”

She drank some more of the beer.

“I take it from your silence you know who Edgar is,” Tree said.

“We have met,” Elizabeth acknowledged.

“Edgar jumped me last night and, when he realized I didn’t know where you were, he went around to see Dearlove. When Dearlove wouldn’t talk, Edgar killed him.”

“How much of this have you told the police?”

Instead of answering, Tree said, “Miram Shah claims you’re the love of his life. So does Javor Zoran.”

That made her snort. “Miram is a fool.”

“Funny, Hank Dearlove said the same thing before someone killed him.”

“Well, it’s true. He never should have hired you in the first place. He did hire you, didn’t he?”

“So did Javor.”

“Good grief.” She rolled her eyes. “You’ve seen the two of them. What do you think?”

“Where you are concerned, Mrs. Traven, I’m never sure what to think.”

“Well, I’m telling you they both have the wrong idea.”

“Why do I suspect that if they do have the wrong idea, you gave it to them.”

“That’s not true.”

“There is what you tell me, and then there is the truth.”

“You were hired to find me. You’ve found me. Congratulations. Great detective work. Now you can report back. Mission accomplished, as they say.”

“Except there is more to it,” Tree said.

“Is there?”

“For instance, there’s Edgar Bunya’s money. What have you done with it?”

“I want another beer.” But she didn’t move.

“We don’t have a lot of time for your games, Mrs. Traven. Edgar Bunya probably killed Hank Dearlove. I know he is looking for you. If I can find you, so can he. The police are going to be on me again today, and I don’t feel much like lying to them again. So you’d better start telling me what you’re up to.”

“Oh, dear, Mr. Callister,” she said with a mirthless smile, “I’m afraid you’ve learned something about the art of extortion since the last time we met.”

“I’ve had a great teacher,” Tree said.

“This started out purely as a business arrangement,” Elizabeth said, and Tree believed for the first time that he had cornered her to the point where she had to talk. Whether or not there was any truth to what she was saying was something else entirely.

“I met Zoran at a party in Miami. He and Miram Shah along with Henry Dearlove had known each other over the years, from the time when Hank was with the Central Intelligence Agency.”

“Zoran headed security for Slobodan Milošević. Shah was the deputy director of the Pakistani secret service. But by the time you met them, they must have been unemployed.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Out-of-work spooks. What do they do with themselves?”

“What do they do?”

“They realize that in a world less and less friendly to despots, the kind of people they used to deal with regularly might be in need of the help that only they could provide.”

“What kind of help?”

“Help getting into the United States. Hank came up with the idea that there might be a lucrative business in smoothing the way for various individuals with less than sterling credentials wanting to emigrate here.”

“Legally?”

She waved a dismissive hand. “Strings are pulled. Money changes hands. But eventually, everything has to be done properly.” She gave a wan smile. “Eventually.”

“I don’t understand where you came into all this,” Tree said.

“They needed someone to liaise with their clients. It turned out that both Zoran and Shah were in this country under somewhat shaky circumstances themselves, meaning they were reluctant to leave. So they wanted an associate who had a clean record, internationally speaking, and who could speak to clients on their home ground.”

“And collect the cash payments?”

“That was part of it, yes.”

“Is that how you got your hands on the ten million dollars?”

“Ten million dollars? Where did you come up with that figure?”

“Edgar gave it to me.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said.

“Is it?”

She exhaled and uncrossed her long legs, a familiar maneuver that in the past had always worked to distract him. Not this time. “Mrs. Traven, I’m two seconds away from going to the police and telling them what I know.”

She let out a groan, as though this was all too much for her. “All right. Do you know someone named Emomali Rahmon?”

“Should I?”

“He is the president of the Republic of Tajikistan, somewhat amusing since he isn’t really a president and Tajikistan is not really a republic.”

“What is Rahmon?”

“A ruthless dictator, but a
nervous
ruthless dictator, meaning he has seen the Arab Spring and a number of other events that don’t bode well for the world’s despots, and has decided the business of being a dictator is not what it used to be. He started looking for an exit strategy that would bring him to Florida where he has managed to bank much of his considerable fortune since coming to power in the early nineties. Hank Dearlove entered into negotiations. They sent me to Paris to pick up the down payment.”

“Ten million dollars?”

“No,” she said vehemently. “That was the eventual amount to be paid once Rahmon was successfully installed in a beachfront condo on Captiva Island. I never, ever, saw that kind of money.”

“Why not simply wire-transfer the money into a friendly bank account?”