Deceived Read online

  Jenny got up and walked to the screen door. She ran her hands over the smoothed edge of screen that just moments before was rough. “Thank you for fixing that, Sam. I do appreciate it.” She walked into the condo, and Sam followed.

  It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the darkness and to see that Jenny had crossed the living room and disappeared into the den.

  “It doesn’t look like anyone’s been in here, Sam. Are you sure you saw somebody?”

  Sam entered the den. There was nothing out of place, nothing disturbed. “Yeah, I know what I saw. Do you see anything that looks…weird?”

  “No, Sam. Everything looks the way it did yesterday afternoon when I was in here doing the bookkeeping.” She opened the top desk drawer and pulled out a folder full of bills to be paid. In the drawers below were files filled with statements and paid invoices. “There’s not anything in here worth getting shot over, Sam; I can tell you that. Lee earned just barely enough for us to live on while I worked on my paintings, but he insisted I keep at it. He encouraged me to pursue what I loved, and so I tried to make things easier for him by tending to tasks he didn’t like to do…like paying the bills.”

  “What about his to-do list? Where do you think he put that last?” Sam watched Jenny move to the closet in a smaller room, her studio. He watched as she looked in the closet filled with tools.

  “This closet was his workshop,” she smiled. “We thought the next house should have a bigger garage so he could have some real woodworking equipment. We love living on the beach….” She caught herself, stopped, and started again. “I love living on the beach, but now, I don’t think I can stay in this place without him.” She paused and then rooted around on the makeshift shelves on cinderblocks that held Lee’s tools, tennis balls, and racquet, and some spare parts for their boat. “He kept his list of stuff to do for the boat in here, and a second one of projects he wanted to complete on our condo. Here’s the boat book,” Jenny produced a small green journal with a photo of their 1989 thirty-foot Catalina Stormy Monday on it. Flipping through tattered pages, she tossed it to Sam.

  “What will you do with Stormy, Jen?” Sam asked as he reviewed the maintenance log for the boat’s engine, glanced a few pages further to see the fuel and radio logs, and then closed the book.

  “I really hadn’t thought about it yet. There’s too much to think about. I just wish….” She turned back to the closet shelves, now digging furiously through Lee’s duffle bag, then his toolbox. “Here. Here’s the condo list.” Jenny held up a small, royal blue spiral-bound notepad, and handed it to Sam.

  Sam immediately recognized it. He’d seen it dozens of times before, peeping out of Lee’s shirt pocket when they went to the local hardware store to get supplies for various projects.

  Most of the pages were filled with scratched off projects. Sam remembered helping Lee with many of them: rebuilding the small steps and deck with the outside shower; installing privacy partitions around the shower to keep the wind, sand, and curious eyes off Jenny (she liked to shower outside after swimming each day in the ocean); regrouting the tiles in the master bathroom’s shower. Lee was meticulous about keeping all receipts for supplies, and they were stapled to each of the separate project pages.

  “Do you think there’s something there, Sam?”

  She looks tired, Sam thought. “I don’t know. Would you mind if I held on to it for a few days?”

  “Take it. Take the boat book, too. Oh, the boat! Sam, I completely forgot about it. Would you mind checking on it? I haven’t been there in a few weeks. We were going to get it ready for the season this coming weekend, but I don’t have the heart to go see Stormy now.”

  Sam nodded.

  Jenny felt around the inside of the closet door for the keys to the padlock on the boat’s hatch boards. “Thanks, Sam; I appreciate it.” She gulped and tears welled up in her eyes again. Sam pulled Jenny to him in a bear hug. It was the only thing he could think to do. “I’ll be here if you need me.” He patted her on the back gently until she stopped crying. “Call me if you need anything, Jen. I’m only a few blocks away, so I can be here in no time flat.”

  She nodded, and they walked silently to the back door. “Thanks for coming, Sam. Would you do me one favor?”

  “Anything.”

  “Find whoever made me a widow.”

  Sam nodded and closed the screen door quietly behind him. Jenny’s words echoed in his ears all the way back to the marina.

  Sam walked past his slip and six more boats to Stormy Monday, her deep blue hull gleaming in the mid-morning sun. The hatch boards were locked in place. Sam opened them and saw that the boat’s interior was straight, just the way Lee would have left it after a day of sailing. Everything was put away where it was supposed to be, and Sam envied the boat’s tidiness. He sighed, then climbed up the companionway steps and replaced the hatch boards and lock.

  Stepping back aboard his own boat, Sam threw the two little notepads on a shelf over the galley sink and changed his clothes. He opened all the hatches, popped in an old cassette tape of Elmore James, and got to work putting his boat back in order. As he worked, he tried to recount every call he and Lee had investigated over the past year, but he could think of nothing that would get Lee killed or his boat tossed. But then what were “they” looking for? Who were “they”? Why wasn’t Lee’s boat tossed, instead of his?

  Once he got the salon and galley back in place, he made himself a turkey sandwich, grabbed a Foster’s from the top-loading refrigerator, and reviewed the two notebooks. Maybe one held a clue.

  Chapter four

  For the next few days, Sam reviewed every page of the boat book, searching for irregular comments about engine repairs, notations in the radio log, or errant comments in cruising notes. Lee was a safety-conscientious sailor and routinely maintained all systems aboard Stormy Monday. He had upgraded the battery banks to handle a new refrigerator, added small solar panels to keep a charge on the batteries when he and Jenny anchored out on their weekend cruises, and took exceptional notes in his engineer-like block printing of all boating-related activities. “Anal retentive,” Lee used to claim about his habit of writing everything down, but there was nothing unexpected or irrelevant in the boat book.

  “Anybody home?” a voice called out from the dock.

  Startled, Sam quickly put the books on the settee beside him and threw a dish towel over them. “Yeah. Oh, hi, Chuck.” Sam waved him aboard as he climbed up the companionway stairs. “You want a beer?”

  The boat rocked as Chuck Owens clamored over the safety lines and under the cockpit’s covering bimini. “No thanks, man; I’m still on duty. I just stopped by to check on you. I don’t know how you can possibly live aboard, Sam; you got to be a damn contortionist just to get on the boat!” Chuck’s 280-pound bulk made the otherwise spacious cockpit seem small as he plopped down on one of the cushions. Noting the torn cloth, he let out a low whistle. “Wow, you must have some kinda cat on board.”

  “Yeah, a large cat with attitude,” Sam sneered, sitting opposite Chuck, stretching his long legs across to the molded seat on the cockpit’s other side. Not interested in volunteering information, he steered the conversation. “Any thoughts on what happened?”

  “No, Sam. Dan’s got half the department on it, so you can rest easy that there will be an answer. We all want to know. Have you been to see Jenny yet?”

  “Yeah, and I’ve checked on her some over the last few days. She’s trying to stay busy, Chuck. She appreciated that Andy stopped by that night. Sorry I couldn’t be there myself. I just wasn’t ready to face her,” Sam hedged a bit.

  “Understood, brother. Understood.”

  “She’s in shock, I think. She said the service is going to be tomorrow, you know. It’s just so hard to think that Lee’s…gone. You know he was a straight shooter. Nothing going on that Jenny knew of, and nothing I didn’t know about, either. Lee was just a good cop and a good husband. Now without him, Jenny is facing selling that condo. I suspect she’ll find work to keep her busy, but it would be such a shame for her to have to give up her painting.”

  “She any good?” Chuck quizzed.

  “I like her work. Mostly boat and beach scenes, the kind that tourists like to take home.”

  “You know, my wife Lisa could probably arrange something, maybe a show, since she owns the Blue Moon Gallery.”

  “That’d be great. Let me know if I can help.”

  “No, Sam, I’ll take care of it. You take a few days off and rest. Maybe think about getting rid of the big cat, too.” Chuck winked as he stepped gingerly under the bimini and over the life lines, holding on to whatever he could grab to steady himself as he wobbled onto the dock.

  “I’ll be waiting for you in the marina’s parking lot at ten tomorrow morning, Sam. Call if you need anything between now and then.”

  “Will do,” Sam called back. Sam liked Chuck. He seemed like a good cop, but at this point, Sam thought it wise not to trust anyone explicitly.

  Sam headed below again to the notepad of condo projects. After a few pages, he was sure there was nothing there that didn’t belong. As he tossed the notepad back on the table, though, it flipped over and the back cover opened up to reveal some numbers written on the back of the last page. The slanted, loopy handwriting wasn’t Lee’s.

  “2118717,” Sam whispered. He reached for his cell phone and dialed 211-8717. An annoying three-tone sound followed by a mechanical voice told him he had reached a number that was not in service, and that he should try again. Then he searched the notepad from the back, flipping pages forward. A few pages from the back was a single word hastily scribbled: “seacock.”

  “That should have been in the boat journal,” Sam thought as he continued flipping through the rest of the pad, but he found nothing else. After rooting around a drawer for a plastic baggie and heavy duty duct tape, Sam removed the companionway stairs from their position and placed them on the salon floor halfway into the V-berth so he could get to the engine compartment. Once the bulkhead-mounted light was on, he crawled into the tight space and taped the notebooks in the sealed baggie on a three-inch wide shelf directly above the starboard water tank. This shelf usually held his tools or an extra lamp when he worked on the engine, its flanged lip keeping most anything from falling into the black bilge below. Sam backed out of the engine room, turned off the light, closed the door, and repositioned the companionway stairs.

  Sitting in the cockpit, Sam looked around at his boat. “Deck needs to be repainted. Toe rails need to be caulked and sanded. And the rub rail needs to be replaced. Sheesh.” He thought about going to the hardware store to buy a bucket of paint. The sky changed from its deep, clear Carolina blue of spring to a hazy peachy-pink of evening while Sam sat contemplating boat projects and seacocks. Lee hadn’t mentioned this as a task on Stormy Monday, but then again, he hadn’t mentioned the loopy numbers or the person who wrote them. They looked like a woman’s handwriting.

  Tomorrow would be the service for Lee. Sam thought about the day ahead and headed below to spit-shine his shoes. “Not for anybody else, Lee, would I do this,” he muttered as he dug out the rarely used shoeshine kit from a locker’s depths.

  Chapter five

  The following day dawned shrouded in mist. “Appropriate,” Sam thought, as he got into Chuck’s waiting car. Sam’s own car was still impounded, and he figured it might be released to him today, though he felt it would be best to drive it to the nearest used car lot and unload it. Sam was not ordinarily a superstitious man, but driving a car tinged with Lee’s death was not his idea of good karma.

  “Morning, Sam. What a day this is going to be.” Chuck was monotone as he looked straight ahead, still seated behind the wheel of his Ford Taurus.

  “I hear ya,” was all Sam could say.

  They drove in silence until they reached the Blue Moon Gallery. Sam saw Chuck’s wife, Lisa, waving furiously with one hand as she locked the front door with the other.

  “Hello, Sam.” Lisa hugged Sam as he held open the car’s door for her. “This is all so sad. I was just telling Chuck the other day that I looked forward to his retirement. This is such a dangerous job; I fear for him every single day.” Lisa seemed to be the champion of the motor-mouth speedway as she illuminated Sam and Chuck on the potential hazards of their line of work. Her mouth only came to a stop when they reached the church.

  Sam saw the beach’s entire police force, plus a few uniforms he knew were from Wilmington and Southport. He spotted Jenny being escorted by Andy Keller into a small “chapel” room that appeared to be full to capacity between its pale green walls. Sam watched as Jenny clutched Andy’s arm for support as if a strong gust of wind might blow her through the open windows at any minute.

  Lee’s parents sat in the front row, and his brother, Larry, was there to offer support to his mother. Larry and Lee had never gotten along, Sam knew, and on the few occasions he had met Larry, Sam didn’t care too much for Larry’s bad attitude either. It seemed Larry felt entitled to more than his share of life, yet he wasn’t willing to do much to get it. Having spent years overseas with a big corporation gave him an attitude that he was somehow better than his only brother. On the rare occasions when he came to town, he gloated about his big house in New Jersey, and his trophy wife (who could never be bothered with coming to North Carolina to visit), and his shiny black Jaguar.

  But when the corporation went belly up, he served time for embezzling corporate funds. Once he got out, he was no less humbled and let everyone he met know that the world “owed” him even more. He lost his big house, his fine car, and his trophy wife all in a matter of months. So he now sponged off of his parents, living in a small, one-room “cottage” on their property. He expected his mother to cook for him, and he didn’t lift a finger to help out around the house. He was sure the “next deal” would put him back on top of the world. Of course, it never came.

  Sam recognized a few others who filed in solemnly: in addition to the police force, town officials, and support staff for the city of Carolina Beach, there was Edgar Reese, the owner of the Crow’s Nest Diner, Lee’s favorite place to grab lunch.

  And here was Jenny’s best friend, Sally Hinton, with whom Jenny had tried to set Sam up several times. Sure, thought Sam, she’s hot—nice figure, but she’s like a cheerleader on a mega-dose of caffeine. Today was a case in point: Sally nearly mowed down three people to get to Jenny, embracing her and coddling her as Jenny rigidly sat down on a small pew right near the front of the room.

  The line of people entering the chapel was long, filled with more friends and members of Lee’s church. Lee had been well-liked, Sam judged, by the number of folks who entered through the door.

  Everyone who could get to a pew was seated, and the rest stood along the back of the room. Sam sat in the row behind Jenny, and he placed a hand on her stiff shoulder as the service began.

  The minister was polite and practiced as he greeted his guests and wished everyone peace. He soon relinquished the short podium to one after another speaker, each of whom had something to say about Lee Elliott. The phrases “good man” and “pillar” were often recited.

  After the fourth person got up to speak, Sam felt nauseous. He held on for the ride as long as he could. Mercifully, it ended with Jenny being presented Lee’s badge, a flag, and a small mock-brass container of ashes, all that was left of Lee.

  Sam leaned over to help Jenny up, but Sally shot him a mother-bear look that almost included teeth, so Sam backed off and made his way out of the building.

  The morning clouds were starting to burn off. People milled around outside with their own thoughts. Edgar offered a reception of sorts at his diner, and many funeral participants looked relieved to have someplace to go. Those police on duty declined, and the rest drove willingly after Edgar.

  “Sam, do you want a ride to the Crow’s Nest?” Andy called over his shoulder as he helped Jenny into his unmarked car. Sally was already in the backseat, and Sam could see her soothing Jenny as soon as she got in.

  “No, thanks. I don’t have the stomach for any more of this today.” Sam waved him off.

  Sam watched as the parking lot emptied, one car after another. Some of the people who had known Lee, and thus Sam by default, stopped to offer condolences to Sam before leaving. Sam braved a smile, but it was the last thing he felt like doing. He shook hands and nodded, tuning out the voices so that the words melted together into a single hum.

  “Lee was killed because of this.”

  Sam felt it before he saw her, a slip of paper being pressed hard into his hand by the tall woman clothed in a stylish black suit, low-dipping hat, dark hose, and high heels.

  He snapped to attention at her words, and he held her hand two seconds longer than any of the hands he’d shook of those who had come before her.

  “What did you say?” Sam whispered as she quickly hugged him, as so many of the well-wishers had that morning. As he breathed in her smell of jasmine, he noticed a loose strand of black hair at the nape of her neck. He shoved the paper into his pocket, leaving his hand there so as not to call attention to the movement as he hugged her with the other arm.

  She just pulled away and smiled, her deep burgundy lips parting slightly to reveal perfectly straight bright teeth. She turned and walked swiftly to her little red Miata convertible while fishing her keys out at the same time. Her sassy, swinging walk was unforgettable as she deftly maneuvered over the sidewalk, down the curb, and across the parking lot.

  Sam wanted to go after her, but the line persisted. He was hugged and had his hand shaken for several minutes more as he watched the woman drive away.

  Chuck and Lisa were last in line, hanging back a bit until the crowd subsided. “You need a lift back to that boat of yours?” Chuck asked. “Or do you want to come with us to the Crow’s Nest? We probably won’t stay that long, just long enough to get some lunch.”