Dead Stop: CD Grimes PI, #6

By C. D. Moulton

A boat explodes and burns in the gulf. Those things happen – but two of the victims died of cyanide in the soup.

Critic comment
Rather too involved for my taste, but all-in-all a good story. Rather a surprise toward the end.
- GGL ***½

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. D. Moulton
• Release date: Jul 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201959463

Book preview

Chapter one

It was a hot day, with virtually no breeze coming in off the gulf and up the Myaka River to cool the tepid water. There was the slightest haze hanging over everything that seemed to hold the heat against your body.

It's the humidity, not the heat! is a favorite expression of the people living in the area and I guess that's right. It was only 91 degrees.

I like the heat. If I didn't, I'd move.

Alma, my wife, and Louisa, her maid (and best friend), had just returned from Bradenton. They were carrying groceries in while Paulo, Lou's husband and our handyman, was getting the report, so I listened.

It was one of those rock trucks, Paulo, Lou was saying. It hit the soft shoulder of the road where the cab folded under the trailer part. The weight of the load must have crushed the cab. It was all burned out.

Where? Paulo asked.

Just before we turned off on thirty four, Alma replied. I think it's the rain. There were two fender-benders on River Road before we even got into Englewood.

It's the gawkers, Jim Barrow, my boatman, said as he came from the dock. "I never saw anywhere in the world where so many people were driving around looking everywhere but at the road. Just before the drive into here I almost got one earlier. Came to a dead stop on the road to read a damned map! Gave me the finger for almost hitting them! They were sitting there in the middle of the damned road fifty feet this side of the bend, where you can't see them 'til you're sixty feet away. The only reason you're not scraping the whole bunch of us off the tar is there wasn't anything coming the other way.

Ohio license plates. They don't do that in Ohio, so why do they insist on doing it here?

Yeah! Lou agreed. On our way in there was a car backing up on I-seventy five. New York plates. Can you imagine anyone backing up on a freeway in New York?  But they do it here!

Hell! Try driving into Tampa or St. Pete, like I did last week, I suggested. You don't have any idea how easy we have it way out here in the boonies.

Ah, but tourist season doesn't get started for two more months! This is your first season to be here for the real ding-dongers. You've seen how they act in boats, but you really haven't seen anything, yet!

I don't know why they're all in such a hurry, Lou protested. On seventy five we were doing seventy, yet everyone else on the road was passing us, particularly on the way back going south. It's barely past noon, so they couldn't be in that much of a hurry to get anywhere before dark. At the speed limit, you run out of road in no more than four hours, that way. If they're going to be hitting Alligator Alley I hope they don't drive like that to Miami! There aren't nearly enough cemeteries in Florida to hold them all.

They ship most of 'em home to bury, Jim said. Want to go over to Peterson's Island and Stump Pass, CD?

That's me, C. D. Grimes, Detective, better known as just CD. I was laying around, relaxing, for a change.

Any special reason?

Scallops are in.

We gone! We need to get some of that sort of stuff in the freezer while they're plentiful.

Well don't bring any more clams! Lou said. You'll have to get another freezer!

Be back by six, Alma admonished. We're eating early. Cal and Wilma will be here, and Cal goes on duty early this month.

Cal is Calvin Jones. Wilma is his wife. Cal is with the Florida Highway Patrol. He worked with me on my first cases since moving here. He's one of those type who are always neat as a pin under any and all circumstances. He could fall into a ditch of oily scum water, crawl out through a wet muck bed, and would stand at the end without a speck or a crease out of place.

He isn't around quite as much as Jim Barrow, but Cal, Jim, Mike Nelson (a friend from the private airport where I keep my jet) and I are like a bunch of silly fool teenagers when we're together, pushing and punching at each other, and always hanging on one another – which I really don't understand. I never knew that kind of closeness with any males before coming here. We're like brothers, I guess, though I never knew my brother after I was about eight or nine years old.

There's another thing I've noticed. Cal is black, while Mike and Jim are white. They all are native Floridians by birth. I'm from the south myself, and can honestly state I've never known any true bigots who are from Florida, though I understand that, like where I'm from, there are some in the center of the state. The only racial remarks or epithets I've ever heard here were from out-of-state tourists, generally from states where there are very constant and very real racial problems. (Tampa and Miami don't count as Florida to natives. There are almost no whites in either place who aren't from somewhere else.)

Jim and I climbed into the small bay boat to head out through the waterway into Lemon Bay and toward Stump Pass. We found a place that should be full of bay scallops a little inside the pass on an earlier trip. The tide would soon be dead low, so they'd be easy to find, if they were in. I've found a few on earlier trips, so know where to look and how to look for them. I've also learned to get shrimp in the grass beds, as well as with a gas lantern off my dock, clams, blue crabs, stone crabs, coquinas and many other of those great delicacies.

I own J. R. Crane Industries, Int. (Well, 51% of it) and am actually a billionaire, but I'm a typical beach bum, by nature. I'm most fortunate I had the money to talk with the board of the Development Corporation and buy these twelve hundred acres of land where I am. I can guarantee MY land will never be filled with what my favorite murder mystery/ adventure author, John D. MacDonald, called tacky Florida developments. I can't get rid of the money, and can't understand why those people are so willing to cheapen and ruin so much for money to invest to make more money to reinvest ad nauseam.

Jim took us in close to Englewood Island, where there were people on the point at Stump Pass. He looked over the crop of girls. I shook my head.

That's another thing I don't understand. Jim is the kind who women flock to, and is also the kind who, in return, just can't resist them. We've had several talks about it. He doesn't know what drives him, but he knows that he's going to someday end up with something pretty terrible, if not fatal, so he regularly promises to be careful, but he and I both know it's inevitable. The part I don't understand is why I feel so close to anyone of that type. I had always found sexually predatory people to be repulsive before.

Maybe it's the honesty of someone like Jim.

Looking for someone special? I asked as we went back out and around Peterson's Island.

No, nothing that particularly caught my eye, he said and grinned his big grin for me.

Scotty Mac McDade came by with Slats Lattimer in Mac's new Bayliner. Mac waved, but kept going out the pass. Mac and I met on my first trip here, and we've since become good friends. He's an officer of some sort with the department of the interior or something vague. Lattimer's the county coroner. We don't like each other. At all. No reason, just an automatic personality clash.

How come Lattimer's going fishing during working hours? Jim asked. He's such a stickler for rules and regulations I'd think he'd jump at the chance to report anyone who left the office for an extra coffee break.

Then my deductive instincts as a detective say he's not going fishing. The trip is official.

Want to follow them?

Huh-uh! No way! Anyone but Slats, I'd say yes, but under the special circumstances, no. We're after scallops.

We managed to find two large buckets of scallops, which we got into just as Cal and Wilma drove up. Paulo said he'd clean the scallops for us, but that isn't the way we do things, so I had Alma bring us a pitcher of weak tequila Collins (Collinses?) and Cal joined us to talk while Jim, Paulo and I cleaned scallops. We have a sort of workbench on the dock where we can throw the shells and guts into the creek that comes to the little dock. There are mangrove snappers, sheepshead and half a dozen other types of fish that hang around for the scraps, as well as blue crabs Lou traps there. We rinsed down the boat and dock, then went to the house for dinner.

It was a pleasant evening, a light rain falling shortly after dark, with the temperature dropping ten or so degrees in as many minutes. Cal soon left with Wilma, and Jim left on his motorcycle before 9:30, so I turned on the SW radio to talk with some of the shrimpers on the gulf. The channels were buzzing about a boating accident out at the outer bank, so I switched to Bill Porth's (Sheriff's Patrol) CB band to get the scoop.

Sixty foot yacht out by the reef to do some scuba diving, anchored overnight, Bill said. About four or so they pulled anchor to move and blooey!

Blooey?

Probably didn't ventilate the hold. Gas fumes. One spark and it's like a damned bomb! A big one! I'm surprised you didn't hear it. They did on the main island. Sound carries on water.

I guess I did and thought it was probably a sonic boom from those MacDill trainers that come through here. That where Mac was taking Slats?

If they went out, I guess, yeah. Oh-oh! Got a guy who thinks he's in a jet right out there! Later! I heard the engine start and the first bit of the siren as he cut off transmission.

I contemplated calling Mac, but didn't know if he was home yet and didn't want to disturb his live-in lady.

Mac's in his late fifties while Mary is maybe thirty five. They've been living together for years and keep planning to get married soon. I could wait until morning, as it wasn't a murder. I'd still take the time to relax.

Alma, Lou, Paulo and I got into the old Jeep to go to the second bridge to try for snook. We seldom caught any, but enjoyed the conversations with people there, and it gave Paulo a chance to fish for something bigger than the pan fish around the dock. I had discovered he was phobic about being on the water after almost drowning as a child, so didn't invite him on the boats. Lou wouldn't go if he didn't.

We went home about midnight, so I was up before 6:30 in the morning. Jim came in and we sat drinking Alma's special coffee mix (OK, my grandmother's special mix. It's Alma's now!) on the dock.

You going out this morning? he asked.

No. I've got to set seedlings. You can run out, if you like.

Yeah, Al was telling me that you've been neglecting the orchids. What's that blue one Lou has on the kitchen table? One of yours?

It's Lc. Sheila's Sapphire `CD's Pride' AM. One of Gramps' crosses, named after Grams.

It's bluer than any orchid I ever saw.

It's the pod parent for the flasks I'm going to be setting out today, or some of them, at least. It's an Lc. Birnie's Sapphire cross, itself. I have a good Blue Forever I used for a pollen parent. Should be pretty good.

"All I want to know about them is when I can take a few odd blooms to use in seducing a particular princess! The one last night was so sunburned it was a lost hope. I should've known.

I'm going to run out to the reef to look around a bit. Bill said you called him last night about it. That's where Slats and Mac were going. Len says things don't seem right to him, but they were out of his territory.

What do you mean, not right? I asked, perking up. (I am a detective!)

Well, there were six bodies brought in, and Slats is still working it, but Len says it doesn't look right, somehow. He's seen gas blast victims before.

Len is Len Stewart, our homicide division head here. He has almost as much instinct about these things as I do, so I perked up a lot more at that.

"Okay. Take pictures and bring anything you find. Were they north or south? (He pointed south.)

Then the tide was coming in since about the time we went out, say four thirty. It was coming in for six hours, then out ... it would come in at Stump Pass from south, then backwash. Can you figure where something from the explosion would be on the tide now?

I'll drop by Needles O'Keefe's and have him chart it for me. Then I'll see what I can find there.

I nodded as he went to the fast boat and shoved off as Alma came in. We had a nice breakfast – mushroom, bacon and green onion omelet she whipped up – then went to the medium house to work with the orchids. I finished the cross I'd started and decided about half of another cross were ready, so I planted the group, then we went back to the house for lunch. When we finished lunch, Jim wasn't back, yet, so I decided to repot a few things in my underground cool house. When I came out I could see Jim taking something from the boat, so I went to the dock.

Find anything? I asked. He grinned and pointed to the box in the boat.

"Maybe yes, maybe no. I'm not a detective, but there are a few things I don't understand.

"I went out to where Needles said to try and picked up about everything not native to the area, then went out to the boat – or what's left of it. It burned almost to the water line. Clapper Salvage was getting ready to tow it in, so there's definitely something fishy. They'd just scuttle it in a hole, otherwise. I got a few pictures, Polaroids, which are in the cabin. You can see where the explosion came up from below, so that was legit, if nothing else is.

It was a nice Bayliner Forty – lots bigger and newer than Mac's. Beautiful boat. It had all the latest ventilators and even a lot of new emergency backup equipment, so I can't understand how it happened.

All the vents in the world don't do any good if you don't turn them on.

There are two indicators that warn you if you turn on the key and haven't used the ventilators! Maybe they weren't working. Some people are stupid enough to disconnect the buzzers because they don't like the noise.

I shrugged. What did you find?

"A life preserver, fishing floats and a small tackle box that floated up. Good thing it was overnight or someone would've found all this stuff.

A paddle, some bottles of junk, spare oil, cushions. That sort of thing. Bits and pieces of the boat itself, some pieces of clothing, a couple of lighters.

Lighters?

Those throwaway things. They float.

I took various items from the little tackle box, looked at them, then replaced them. I had the distinct feeling something wasn't right, but couldn't quite put my finger on it. I opened the little tackle box. It had the general types of things one might find in a light tackle box. Even a small first aid kit in the bottom.

So what doesn't seem right to you?

Well, several things. For one, that tackle box.

I looked a question at him.

What the hell was that little thing doing on a boat like that one? That thing is all fresh water tackle and small, even for most lakes!

Maybe it's not from that boat.

Then something else burned out there. You can see the heat bubbles and burn marks on it. I mean, maybe someone on the boat didn't know what to bring, and that was all they had, but ... well. That little ski vest is another thing. You'd play holy hell skiing behind that boat. It was brought aboard, probably by the same person who brought the tackle box. Fresh water stuff.

And a person who was used to fresh water and little lake bass fishing outboards wouldn't know diddley about deepsea boat hold ventilators.

"Now that I didn't catch!"

What didn't you catch, claps? Paulo said, coming onto the dock. Not because you haven't tried!

We each have our own ways of gambling, Jim shot back.

You're playing against house odds. In the long run, you have to lose.

My epitaph will read `He died happy!' at least.

So what's happening here? Paulo asked.

It looks like there was someone on the boat that blew up out there who came to catch bream, Jim said.

Bream? In the gulf? Paulo asked, puzzled.

They brought fresh water panfish tackle, I said.

Oh. Al wants to know if you want crab-stuffed shrimp for dinner.

"You gotta ask?"

Funny, I said the exact same words, he said, grinned, and headed back to the house.

You're weird, Jim said.

Who, me? I know. It's great fun!

"I mean you hire those two at god knows how much, supply a house for them, yet Al does most of the cooking and housework and you do most of the gardening. You pay me three hundred plus meals and crap a week, and most of the time all I do is fish and run around looking at the girls.

It's only a comment, not a complaint!

Ha! I claim I pay you a thousand a week on the tax forms. Just wait'll you have to pay the taxes on it! You people are my biggest deductions!

He started to say something, shook his head, and asked what we do next about the stuff from the boat.

"I have to find out as much as I can about everyone who was on the trip and work from there. If I can find a good reason to investigate."

I opened the little tackle box and took the items out, one at the time. There were several sizes of small hooks, sinkers, cork and plastic floats and spindles, monofilament in six and eight pound test, reel oil, a small knife, the little first aid kit, four lures, some plastic red worms, a pair of pliers, a plastic hook remover, some small screws, a screwdriver with a shaft that had a Phillips on one end and a slot type on the other, several small vials – one iodine, one with dry matches and one with some kind of white powder. The one with the powder was a plastic drugstore pill vial that looked just like another I had