Read Online Mangrove Bayou by Stephen Morrill - Free Book Online
Authors: Stephen Morrill
Tags: Mystery
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to talk to them. Then, since she still had a highball glass in her right hand, she had to put the cigarette back between her lips to take the car keys.
“I’ll keep the boat key for a few days while we investigate,” Troy said. “Are there any other copies of that key around here?”
“No. But get it back to me. That boat’s valuable. I can sell it.”
“I’m afraid it’s sealed off at the moment. Don’t worry. We’ll be looking after it. Very, very closely.”
Troy drove Tom VanDyke back to the yacht club so Tom could get his own car.
“Tom, go to the hardware store. Buy some padlocks and replace the ones on the two outside doors on that boat. Bring me the invoice and the keys when you’re done.”
“But she said there were no other keys.”
“I know she did. You ever buy a padlock that didn’t come with two keys?”
“You always this suspicious?”
“I’m always this careful.”
“She sure seemed cold about all that,” Tom said. “Her husband’s just been found dead and she’s more concerned about selling the boat.”
Troy nodded. “She didn’t blink when I told her there would be an autopsy. Most people would want to know why a medical examiner was going to chop up their loved ones. Would be upset a little that we might think a crime had been committed. Most people, told that their boat had been sealed off by the police, might wonder why and demand an answer. She didn’t.”
“Most people,” Tom said, “married just a year now, would be screaming their heads off.” Troy pulled into the yacht club parking lot and Tom opened his door. “She seemed almost happy about all this.”
“You never know how people will react, especially when drunk,” Troy said. “For all we know she’s back there now, weeping, prostrate on the floor with grief.”
“Do you really think so?”
“No.”
Chapter 11
Tuesday, July 23
It was five-thirty in the morning and the sun was on the horizon and the temperature was nearly eighty, with the humidity about the same. South Florida summer. Troy was running, as he did most mornings. He wore lightweight running shorts and some New Balance shoes and little else. He carried a hand towel in one hand but the sweatband on his forehead stopped the sweat from getting into his eyes and blinding him.
Troy, running from the Sea Grape Inn to the microwave tower and then out to Government Key, passed through the old and new. Some of the old homes were tiny wood frames sitting on lots that were mostly limestone rocks. Houses that would sell for $10,000 in nearby Immokalee, Florida would here fetch twenty times that, just for the lots. Yet owners were reluctant to sell, always thinking they could get still more, someday.
Given the state of global warming and the rising sea level, Troy sometimes thought with amusement, maybe they should sell quickly, that sooner or later everyone in Florida would have waterfront property, just not all at the same time. He’d once heard a cynical realtor comment that no one should ever buy a house from an agent who had a tide table in her car. He smiled at the memory as he ran.
The causeway to Government Key ran across Oyster Bay and no one was ever likely to build here. Those days had ended. Oh, sure, generally in Florida, land developers bulldozed wetlands, paying for the privilege by buying “mitigation” credits that supposedly re-created wetlands elsewhere but which never seemed to work. Having cleared away all the cypress, oaks and mangroves and scraped the ground down to the limestone rock, they trucked in landfill and some representative one-inch-diameter maple trees and threw up cheap particle-board condos in developments named Cypress Mill or Oakwood Estates. By the time the trees died, the thin asphalt roads buckled up and the particle-board houses succumbed to the high humidity, the developers were long gone, having retired to places not yet despoiled by people like them.
Mangrove Bayou was different; one reason
“I’ll keep the boat key for a few days while we investigate,” Troy said. “Are there any other copies of that key around here?”
“No. But get it back to me. That boat’s valuable. I can sell it.”
“I’m afraid it’s sealed off at the moment. Don’t worry. We’ll be looking after it. Very, very closely.”
Troy drove Tom VanDyke back to the yacht club so Tom could get his own car.
“Tom, go to the hardware store. Buy some padlocks and replace the ones on the two outside doors on that boat. Bring me the invoice and the keys when you’re done.”
“But she said there were no other keys.”
“I know she did. You ever buy a padlock that didn’t come with two keys?”
“You always this suspicious?”
“I’m always this careful.”
“She sure seemed cold about all that,” Tom said. “Her husband’s just been found dead and she’s more concerned about selling the boat.”
Troy nodded. “She didn’t blink when I told her there would be an autopsy. Most people would want to know why a medical examiner was going to chop up their loved ones. Would be upset a little that we might think a crime had been committed. Most people, told that their boat had been sealed off by the police, might wonder why and demand an answer. She didn’t.”
“Most people,” Tom said, “married just a year now, would be screaming their heads off.” Troy pulled into the yacht club parking lot and Tom opened his door. “She seemed almost happy about all this.”
“You never know how people will react, especially when drunk,” Troy said. “For all we know she’s back there now, weeping, prostrate on the floor with grief.”
“Do you really think so?”
“No.”
Chapter 11
Tuesday, July 23
It was five-thirty in the morning and the sun was on the horizon and the temperature was nearly eighty, with the humidity about the same. South Florida summer. Troy was running, as he did most mornings. He wore lightweight running shorts and some New Balance shoes and little else. He carried a hand towel in one hand but the sweatband on his forehead stopped the sweat from getting into his eyes and blinding him.
Troy, running from the Sea Grape Inn to the microwave tower and then out to Government Key, passed through the old and new. Some of the old homes were tiny wood frames sitting on lots that were mostly limestone rocks. Houses that would sell for $10,000 in nearby Immokalee, Florida would here fetch twenty times that, just for the lots. Yet owners were reluctant to sell, always thinking they could get still more, someday.
Given the state of global warming and the rising sea level, Troy sometimes thought with amusement, maybe they should sell quickly, that sooner or later everyone in Florida would have waterfront property, just not all at the same time. He’d once heard a cynical realtor comment that no one should ever buy a house from an agent who had a tide table in her car. He smiled at the memory as he ran.
The causeway to Government Key ran across Oyster Bay and no one was ever likely to build here. Those days had ended. Oh, sure, generally in Florida, land developers bulldozed wetlands, paying for the privilege by buying “mitigation” credits that supposedly re-created wetlands elsewhere but which never seemed to work. Having cleared away all the cypress, oaks and mangroves and scraped the ground down to the limestone rock, they trucked in landfill and some representative one-inch-diameter maple trees and threw up cheap particle-board condos in developments named Cypress Mill or Oakwood Estates. By the time the trees died, the thin asphalt roads buckled up and the particle-board houses succumbed to the high humidity, the developers were long gone, having retired to places not yet despoiled by people like them.
Mangrove Bayou was different; one reason
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