Matt Royal Mystery - 03 - Blood Island (6 page)

"How did you know I knew him?"

"The Bradenton Beach Police Chief sent me the statements you and
Logan gave the other night. He knows you guys are friends of mine. It was
a courtesy."

"What happened?" I asked.

"Don't know. Mrs. Johnson was walking her dog at first light and
found him," he said, pointing to the distressed woman with the dog.
"Called us on the emergency phone."

"It looks like Jake was posed after he was killed. I don't get that."

"Neither do I. Maybe we'll know more when the crime lab guys get
finished."

"Chief?" It was the cop at the tape. "CSI's here."

"About time," Lester said. He turned and went up the boardwalk to
meet them. "Take Mrs. Johnson back to the station and get a statement,"
he said to the officer. "Matt, can you and Logan meet me for lunch at Mar
Vista?"

The Mar Vista restaurant, known to locals as The Pub, is in the Village at
the north end of Longboat Key. This was the original settlement on the
island, and a place where working people and poorer retirees could still
afford to live. It had been a thriving community for many years before the
developers discovered our island and began to build bigger and bigger
condominium projects for wealthy refugees from the Midwest and New
England.

The Mar Vista hugs the shoreline of a little lagoon that meanders off
upper Sarasota Bay. Tables and chairs are arranged on a patio overlooking
the water. Servers were trudging back and forth between the kitchen and
the tables, delivering lunch to the patrons.

Logan and I sat on the patio and ordered soft drinks. Logan told the
server we were waiting for one more person. The noon sun was warm and
a light breeze blew off the water, rustling the fronds of the palm trees that
provided sparse shade to the diners. A large yacht, gleaming with white
paint and polished bright work, cruised the Intracoastal, heading north
toward Tampa Bay. A go-fast boat bounced over the yacht's wake, and with
unmuffled engines roaring, passed to port.

Chief Lester arrived, walking among the diners, stopping to say hello
to some of them. Bill was mid-forties about five foot eight, and while not
overweight, sported a little paunch that didn't quite hang over his belt. He
was wearing the same clothes as that morning: a navy blue golf shirt with a Longboat Key Police badge embroidered over the left breast, khaki pants,
and black athletic shoes. No weapon was visible.

He took a seat at our table, grinned, and said, "You guys get into more
trouble. I don't know how you do it."

Logan laughed. "It ain't easy," he said. "Not at all."

"What'd you find out about Yardley?" I asked.

"First off, lie's not Yardley," said Bill. "His real name is Clyde Varn.
He's got quite a rap sheet. Fingerprints confirmed it."

"What else?"

"He didn't live in that condo in Tampa, where you met him. His driver's license, the one with the name Yardley, had an address in Brooksville,
but Varn hasn't lived there in years."

Logan leaned forward, his elbows on the table. "Who is he?" he
asked.

"He used to be hired muscle for some of the drug rings that work
out of south Florida. Apparently, he was some kind of a freelancer; worked
for whichever group needed him. He's been arrested a dozen times, but
only convicted once. Possession of marijuana. Did thirty days in the county
lockup in Miami-Dade."

I said, "What about the condo in Tampa?"

"Owned by a Bahamian corporation. We're trying to find out who
the shareholders are. That could take a while."

Logan took a sip of his cola. "Did the crime lab people find anything?"

The chief shook his head. "Not much. He'd only been dead about an
hour when Mrs. Johnson found him. He was shot on the boardwalk, about
fifty feet from the gazebo where we found him. There was blood splatter
in the area, and they found scuffmarks on the boards. Looks like the killer
dragged him to the gazebo and propped him up."

"Why?" I asked.

"Who knows? Why kill him on Longboat? Maybe they were trying
to send a message to somebody. Maybe to the two of you."

I shrugged. "If somebody was, I don't understand the message."

We sat quietly, sipping our colas. The waiter came, brought Bill a glass of iced tea and took our food orders. Logan asked for scallops, the
chief chose a burger and fries, and I ordered a salad.

Bill said, "Tell me more about this guy and your meeting the other
day."

Logan and I filled the chief in on what we knew about Yardley and
why we went to see him. While we talked, the waiter brought our food and
refilled our drinks.

Bill said, "It's got to be connected to Peggy somehow."

I chewed a bite of salad. "What in the world was he doing with
Peggy?" I asked.

The chief looked up from his burger. "I wondered about that myself.
I did some checking on missing young people in this area. Manatee and
Sarasota have had reports of about twenty people missing in the last year.
All of them were late teens or early twenties, all over eighteen. Male and
female."

Logan speared a scallop with his fork. "Why wouldn't somebody get
interested in that many disappearances?"

"Nobody put them together. There were one or two or three in
various jurisdictions, both counties, Bradenton, Sarasota, Venice, North
Port. They were all adults in the eyes of the law, so nobody got excited
about them."

"I bet their families did," I said.

"You know what I mean, Matt," said Bill. "Cops have a lot better
things to do than look for kids old enough to make their own decisions."

"I guess," I said. But I was thinking that Peggy's disappearance might
be more than it seemed. I didn't like that thought.

"Why do you think Varn told us he dropped Peggy and her friends at
Robarts Arena?" I asked Logan.

"Maybe he did."

We were driving down the key, heading for my condo. The salad had
not done much to fill me up, and I heard a faint rumbling from the area of
my stomach.

I said, "That doesn't make any sense, unless he had nothing to do
with her disappearance. That's a pretty big coincidence to get my arms
around. He admitted to spending the three days with them at Sea Club,
and then he lied to us about who he was. The kids seemed to have
dropped off the earth when he left them."

"Why don't we see what was going on at Robarts the day he says he
dropped them off?"

"Good call. The arena probably has a Web site."

We pulled into my condo complex and parked next to a huge
bougainvillea, its blood red blooms dancing in the breeze off the water.
We took the elevator, sharing it with one of my neighbors, and got off on
the second floor.

I had enclosed my balcony the year before, making it into a sunporch.
I also put an air-conditioning duct out to the area. Florida is hot in the
summer. My computer was set up there, giving me a magnificent view over
Sarasota Bay as I surfed the Internet.

My new twenty-eight foot Grady-White walkaround sat sedately in its
slip in front of the condo, bobbing slightly when a wake rolled in over the
sandbar that separated our little harbor from the bay proper. The sun was
high and the cerulean sky was dotted with puffy clouds. The Sister Keys, uninhabited mangrove islands, defined the eastern edge of the Intracoastal
Waterway across from my home. Several elderly ladies were doing water
aerobics in the pool that took up most of the space between my building
and the docks.

I Googled Robarts Arena and came up with a list of events for the
entire year. I scrolled down to the period three weeks before.

"Looks like a revival ended the same day that Peggy checked out of
the Sea Club," I said, pointing to the highlighted event.

"I can't see how that would be of interest to a guy like Varn."

"We'll have to check it out. Let's see if the evangelist has a Web site."

He did. I found it, and clicked on the tab that detailed his schedule.

"They moved on to Venice," I said, "and they've been there for three
weeks. Last night was the last evening for saving local souls. Maybe somebody's still there."

"Probably a waste of time. Let's go."

We drove to the mainland and took Highway 41 to Venice, about fifteen
miles south of Sarasota. The address given on the Web site turned out to
be a large undeveloped lot on the highway south of the city limits, about
halfway to the town of North Port.

The lot wasn't empty. A sea of canvas covered the ground, a tent
being disassembled for transport. A crew of about ten men was rolling up
the canvas. A small forklift stood nearby, ready to put the tent into the white
semi parked nearby. The trailer's aluminum side was emblazoned with red
letters spelling out REVEREND ROBERT WILLIAM SIMMERMON MINISTRIES,
WORKING FOR JESUS. Next to the sign was a painted picture of a handsome
gray-haired man, whom I assumed to be the evangelist. A sleeper cab was
backed up to it, but had not yet hooked on. It looked as if they were about
ready to leave. A forty-foot motor home was parked nearby.

We stopped next to the trailer, got out of the Explorer, and walked
around to the other side, near where the men were working with the canvas. As we cleared the rear of the truck, a woman stepped out of the door
of the motor home. She came up short when she saw us.

"Can I help you?" she said. Her voice was soft and held the inflec- dons of the southland. She was about five seven and her high-heeled sandals added another two inches. Her auburn hair was thick and hung below
her shoulders. She had the body of a woman who would do a bikini proud.
I'm not much on fashion, since I usually wear a T-shirt, cargo shorts, and
boat shoes, but I could tell that her clothes were expensive. She had
either a large diamond or a beautifully cut piece of glass on her right ring
finger. Several gold chain bracelets concentrated around her left wrist and
clinked quietly when she moved her arm.

"I'm looking for Reverend Simmermon," I said.

She smiled, showing me teeth that were so perfect they must have
been the work of a very good cosmetic dentist. "I'm afraid he's not here.
I'm Michelle Browne. I'm his administrative assistant. Can I help you?"

"Do you know a man named Clyde Varn or maybe Jake Yardley?"

She was quiet for a moment, screwing her face into a little moue, as
if thinking was not something she was used to doing. "Can't say that I do.
Who are they?"

"Same guy," I said, "but he uses both names."

"I wish I could help." She smiled again, and turned to a man who
had just walked up, in effect dismissing me. The truck driver, I thought.

I interrupted before she spoke to him. "When do you expect Reverend Simmermon?"

"Oh, he's already gone," she said, turning back to me with a shrug
and a smile. "On to the next stop. The work of the Lord never stops, you
know."

"Where's the next stop?"

"Key West. Sorry I couldn't help."

Logan and I thanked her and returned to the Explorer.

As Logan snapped his seat belt closed, he said, "Mighty helpful
little southern gal, don't you think? Did you notice that the last time she
said `help' it came out `hep'?"

"I did. That's a little more country than she'd like us to believe she
is. She's been working on that accent."

"I think so. And she's mighty pretty to be a minister's assistant."

"A little overdressed too."

We sat quietly in the vehicle for a few moments before I cranked up
and headed back north.

"Didn't Bill Lester say that some teenagers had disappeared from the
North Port and Venice areas?" asked.

"Yeah, but he didn't say when. Aren't you reaching a little on this?"

"Probably so. But I'd like to check with the chief anyway."

The traffic between Venice and Sarasota was brutal. The snowbirds hadn't
yet gone back north, and the spring breakers were descending upon us. It
took us more than an hour to go the twenty miles between the site of the
revival and the approach to the John Ringling Bridge.