Deadly Catch (32 page)

No wonder Ben Merritt had done such a quick background check on me after I’d discovered Maddie’s body. “So, I was supposed to be the alpha dogs’ hit man, huh? That’s funny.”

“Yeah. Merritt’s still not convinced you’re clean.”

I grabbed the tongs and moved the steaks to the warming rack. “How did Dave Reilly fit into this mess?”

“Simple. He was on Merritt’s dole. What better way to ensure safe delivery of your haul than to make sure that your man was on patrol any time a shipment was coming?”

Kate stuck her head out the door and held up a beer. I checked mine and signaled thumbs up. “Anything else?”

“Some good news, maybe,” Pickron said. “I’m recommending to the city council that J.D. Owens be awarded a medal of valor and a meritorious promotion to sergeant.”

“I appreciate that, Sheriff, he damn sure deserves it.” I was almost starting to like this guy.

“Of course, we’re talking city here, and I’m county. But I think they’ll see things my way.”

More than likely. During my brief time here I’d learned that Sheriff Bocephus Pickron has a lot of pull in these parts, city and county.

“There’s one more thing. I’m going to do my best to see that Tom Mayo’s name and record are cleared. And George’s lawyer’s firm has agreed to see if Mayo’s widow might be eligible for death benefits, pro bono.”

“Now that
is
good news.”

“By the way, I contacted the Sheriff’s Department in Wakulla County. They sent a team with the Forest Service to check out the area around Little Gator Lake you told me about.”

“They find anything?”

“You were right again. Barfield or somebody had been growing pot there. They found over a hundred plants.”

“What about the trip wires?”

“Old road flares, not even wired to go off. Strictly for show to scare people away from the area.”

“That’s good. At least Barfield wasn’t trying to kill anybody.”

“Yeah. Hey, McClellan, you want your job back?”

“No thanks.”

Later that evening Kate and I drove to the beach to walk off our steak dinner. The moon was high over the gulf, casting its shimmering light onto the water. A westerly breeze kept the early August night comfortable.

“I still can’t believe it about Lamar,” Kate said, holding her flip flops in one hand as the foaming surf rolled over our feet and then sucked at the sand underneath as it retreated from the beach. “Why on earth would he let that woman talk him into doing those awful things?”

“Love, money . . . who knows?”

“And Brett; he always seemed so nice. He treated Maddie like a princess. How could he turn out like that?”

I tightened my grip on Kate’s hand and guided her around a dead horseshoe crab that had washed onto the beach. “Pickron thinks Brett got greedy. Merritt said Brett was running the boat when they made the one-time haul of Panama Red. Brett stashed a couple of bales somewhere for safe keeping and tossed ’em overboard into the grass flats behind the Trade Winds. The next day when he went to retrieve the bales, he only found one. You know about the other bale that was found later, washed up on the island.

“And when the Panama Red started showing up around the area schools, it didn’t take much figuring on Ben Merritt’s part to realize why the inventory was a couple of bales short. Merritt delivered the organization’s message of displeasure to Brett, and that’s when he decided to skip town with Maddie and the money he’d made from the Panama Red. Problem was, Clayton Barfield wasn’t the kingpin of the organization; somebody up north was. So, when Brett decided to heist a couple of bales for his own little operation, he was into the big boys for a bundle. There was no way he could come up with that kind of money.”

Kate sighed. “So it wasn’t just a romantic elopement they had planned, was it? Brett was running away from trouble and dragging Maddie into it.”

“Yeah, but I believe he really did love Maddie, and because she was pregnant I think they planned on getting married soon. But before they could leave town, Brett and Maddie had their confrontation with Lamar, and that ended that.” I wasn’t convinced the marriage part was true, but for Kate’s sake it seemed like the proper thing to say.

Kate stopped. She wedged a toe beneath a live starfish that had washed ashore and flipped it back into the surf. “That’s why Lamar put Maddie’s body behind the Trade Winds, isn’t it? He wanted to throw suspicion off of him and make it look like her death was related to the drug smuggling. And that’s why he sent you there to fish, hoping you’d find her body. And then he told you to try The Stumps and sent you that message about staying out of the water, didn’t he? He wanted you to find Brett’s boat. Dang it, Mac, he was trying to throw the blame off of him and onto you the whole time.”

I pulled Kate close and gave her a big hug. “Come on,” I said, taking her hand and leading her back up the beach toward the truck. “We’ve got a trip to plan.”

Many thanks to Karen, the best wife, friend, beta reader, critic, and editor a guy could be blessed with, for all the many hours invested and words of encouragement; to Fred Tribuzzo of the Rudy Agency, my friend and agent, who always goes above and beyond the call of duty; to Edward Stratemeyer, creator of
The Hardy Boys
, and Franklin W. Dixon, who in his many guises first piqued my interest in mysteries and provided untold hours of adventure and pleasure to a young dreamer.

A native of Georgia, E. Michael Helms grew up in Panama City, Florida, an area renowned for having the “world’s most beautiful beaches.” Helms turned down a chance to play college baseball and joined the Marine Corps after high school graduation. He served as a rifleman with the Second Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment during some of the fiercest fighting of the Vietnam War, and was awarded the Purple Heart medal for wounds received in action. Helms’s memoir of Vietnam,
The Proud Bastards
, has been called “as powerful and compelling a battlefield memoir as any ever written . . .” and has been in print for over twenty years. Helms is also the author of the two-part Civil War saga
Of Blood and Brothers
, and he is working on future volumes of the Mac McClellan Mystery series. He is the father of two daughters, and “Granddaddy Mike” to grandsons Liam and Levi. He and his wife live in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Upstate of South Carolina. For more information, visit him online at
www.emichaelhelms.com
and at
www.facebook.com/EMichaelHelms
.