Dead of Night

21

Rona Graves looked toward the shoreline, avoiding eye contact, no longer energized because we’d freed the shark. “Mrs. Matthews’s husband asked me to break the news. He’s a wreck, but he thought it was important for you to know.”

I waited.

“She’s dead.”

“Dead?” Whispered the question.

For several moments, my brain refused to process the information. Rona had to be mistaken. It was Jobe Applebee who was dead, not his vibrant, brilliant sister. Rona had accidentally transposed the names.

But no. The woman confirmed it with a single nod of her head: My friend was dead.

Frieda’s body had been found late yesterday evening, Rona told me, on a deserted road south of Kissimmee, the victim of a hit-and-run driver. Her car was discovered a mile or so away on a dirt service trail that dead-ended at an engineered drainage canal off what had once been the Kissimmee River. The car’s hood was up, battery dead.

The fatality was still under investigation, but sheriff’s investigators were theorizing that Frieda couldn’t get her car started, so decided to hike four or five miles to the main road to get help. Some drunk or crazy driver had struck her from behind.

“At first, I was going to call, but decided it was a crappy way to handle it. I had a good time the night we were out. You seem like an okay guy. I figured you deserved to hear it in person from someone you know. Someone familiar with what happened.”

Rona had worked the case. Her tone and facial expression told me it was unpleasant. Same with the hour she’d spent talking with Frieda’s husband, Bob.

I said, “Yesterday was Thursday. Her brother’s funeral was yesterday morning. She let me off the hook; said they didn’t expect me to attend. And she dies a few hours later? Unbelievable.”

“I know.”

“She had a seven-year-old son. She was crazy about him.”

“Eight years old last November. Robert Junior. I’m getting to know the Applebee branch of the family one by one. Unfortunately, it’s after they’re dead.”

I was cold and wet, beginning to shiver; needed to get home to a hot shower. I let Rona tell me the rest of it as I piloted us beneath the causeway, then steered for the power lines and mangrove point that mark the entrance to Dinkin’s Bay.

According to husband, Bob, Frieda had meetings early Wednesday afternoon with representatives from two of Jobe’s former clients, Tropicane Sugar and EPOC, the environmental group.

The timing wasn’t great. Bob and their young son had only just arrived in Kissimmee. But Frieda was eager to start backtracking her brother’s work patterns, so she’d made the long drive to the sugar giant’s corporate offices, just outside the city of Labelle.

Labelle is a Deep South town of moss-draped oaks, pasturelands, and river. It’s west of Lake Okeechobee, west of Florida’s vast cane fields.

Rona said, “Bob was so upset, I’m not clear on all the details. But the way I understand it is, her meetings went okay. The reps she met were courteous and sympathetic. They gave her a list of sites where her brother took water samples.” The woman paused. “Why would she want a list?”

I thought about it a moment. “It would be a place to start.”

“They also said she could take over her brother’s job… or something that had to do with working for them. That’s one of the parts I’m not clear on.”

I said, “Take over his contract. He had six months left.” Wednesday night, the Matthews family had dinner at a Kissimmee restaurant, and went to bed early. The next day, shortly after her brother’s funeral, Frieda took off in the family SUV, telling her husband she was going to collect water samples from a few of the sites on the list she’d been given.

Frieda told him she’d be back no later than four. At six, she still wasn’t home and wasn’t answering her cell phone. Bob called law enforcement.

Rona said, “Our sheriff’s department, they’re a good bunch. Probably because of what had happened to her brother, they didn’t wait the standard period before starting a search. Deputies went from test site to test site-she’d left a copy of the list at the motel-and found her car. It was around nine when they found her body.”

Rona wasn’t the first responder. Investigators from the medical examiner’s office seldom are. But Frieda’s body hadn’t yet been moved when Rona arrived.

An ugly scene. I could read it in Rona’s body language, her careful inflections, and the way she emphasized what little comforting information she could offer.

“I don’t think the woman knew what hit her. The vehicle was traveling fast. It was on a secondary county road-narrow asphalt without shoulders. A dredged canal on one side, cattle pasture on the other. You know the type. The speed limit’s thirty-five, but there aren’t any cops around, the traffic’s all local, so everyone flies. The car that killed Frieda Matthews had to be going twice the speed limit.”

The woman began to edit her wording. “In our business, we’re taught that… we learn there are certain indicators regarding the

… disposition of the deceased’s body… the sort of trauma. It can suggest the speed at impact in a car-versus-pedestrian fatality.”

I had a good idea what some of those indicators were, but this nice woman was trying to spare me pain by telling me that Frieda had felt none. Only a few days before, I’d tried to be similarly considerate when I’d told Frieda that her brother had died peacefully.

All lies of kindness require cooperation from the recipient. I returned Rona’s kindness by moving on to a different subject.

I said, “Why would she leave her car, go looking for help when she had a cell phone?”

“I don’t know. Maybe poor reception, or something. Our guys didn’t find the phone. We didn’t find her computer, either.”

I said, “Computer?”

“Uh-huh. That was missing, too. A laptop. You’d have to visit the scene to picture what I’m saying. But the way her body ended up, she’d been knocked so far that whatever she was carrying could be anywhere along fifty yards of cattails and dredged canal.

“They had the crime scene lights on bright. The canal’s loaded with gators. Lots of ruby red eyes in there after dark. Someone saw a couple of snakes, too. So our people weren’t eager to wade in and search. They will, though, if my office decides it’s important.”

I was confused. “Her phone and computer are missing? You said her car was parked on a service trail about four or five miles from the main road. If she had to walk several miles for help, why lug a computer? She’d have left it in the car.”

“One of the investigators was wondering about that, too. Her husband said it was her late brother’s computer, so maybe that’s the reason. She might have thought it was too valuable to leave behind.”

“Her brother’s computer?”

“That’s what he told us.”

I was shaking my head, not buying it. When a series of coincidences exceed the odds of probability, the events are either predestined or they are linked by design. And I don’t believe in destiny.

“Then the whole business stinks. The night Jobe Applebee was assaulted, they tore his house apart looking for something, maybe the same computer. Five days later, his sister’s found dead and the computer’s missing. Do investigators think it was accidental?”

“Criminal Investigation Division doesn’t make that call. Our office does. Our head MD or his assistant. I collect the data, then we wait for the results of the autopsy and toxicology to come back. It takes a while. We still haven’t even made a ruling on how her brother died.”

She shrugged, telling me it was still up in the air. “Highway Patrol won’t work a traffic fatality if there’s even a hint of foul play. They worked this one-which tells you something. A woman whose car won’t start gets killed on a narrow road by a hit-and-run. Accidental. It happens.

“Right now, they figure some poor, scared bastard is out there, locked in his garage, trying to clean the mess off his bumper. Within the next few days, he’ll either turn himself in or he’ll sneak off to some body shop a few counties away and tell them he hit a deer or a bear. That’s when they’ll nail him.”

I put my hand on her shoulder, shaking my head. “No. This is potentially a lot more serious than your law enforcement people know. A guy from the state health department called me today. They found more guinea worm parasites near Orlando. It’s biological terrorism. They’re brutal people-I saw them interrogating Applebee. If they wanted his computer bad enough, killing his sister, staging it to look accidental, it wouldn’t be a big deal. Your people need to get the FBI in on this.”

Rona said, “Know what? I agree. Too many deaths in too short a time.” A moment later, she added, “Frieda’s husband said she’d e-mailed you files from her brother’s computer.”

“That’s right. I haven’t opened them yet, but they’re on my computer.”

“If you’re right about Dr. Matthews… Doc?” The woman was thinking about it. “You need to be on your toes.”

It was nearly sunset when I backed the Aquasport into the slip beneath my house. As I tied off, Mack, the displaced Kiwi who owns the marina, yelled to remind me that this wasn’t just any ordinary sunset Christmas party I was about to miss. It was a Friday-night party. He emphasized the word in case I’d forgotten my social obligations.

I was still dazed by the news about Frieda. Felt an inner fury that I kept hidden as I waved acknowledgment. Called back that I’d try to make it.

Among the indignities of a tragic death is that the rest of the world carries on as if tragedy does not exist. A coping mechanism, and a healthy one.

Dinkin’s Bay was carrying on.

Each and every Friday, the marina hosts its Pig Roast and Beer Cotillion-acronym: PERBCOT, or P’COT, which intentionally lampoons EPCOT, as well as bewilders first-timers who expect there to be similarities.

Attendance isn’t mandatory for locals, but it’s considered rude not to at least make an appearance on the docks and say a quick hello to all the people having fun.

“Folks are askin’ for you at the party, ’Cobber,” Mack yelled. He was wearing a Cuban shirt, a plantation owner’s white strawhat, and smoking a fresh cigar. Judging from the ring of keys in his hand, he’d just locked the swinging gate that marks the terminus of Tarpon Bay Road, which is publicly owned, and the beginning of the marina parking lot, which is not.

Even though I was reeling, seeing the key ring catalyzed a slight smile. Locking the gate is part of the ceremony. Once the gate is closed, the outside world is physically, and symbolically, excluded from all demonstrations of strange and potentially embarrassing behavior that are acceptable among the marina family, but probably nowhere else.

“JoAnn’s wearing that slinky tangerine dress of hers none of us has seen in a while,” he continued. “Since she took up kickboxing, my God, what a change. A body like hers, you don’t care if a woman’s in her forties, fifties, or sixties.” He paused for a moment, puffing on his cigar. He seemed to notice Rona for the first time. “Your friend’s welcome to come along, of course. Pretty women are always welcome at Dinkin’s Bay.”

Her mood had sobered while telling me about Frieda, but she masked it well. With a damsel-like flair, she replied, “Why, thank you, sir. I don’t know if I’ll be able to attend, but I’m honored that you’d ask.”

Now ignoring me, Mack said, “You’ll have a great time, there’s plenty to drink, and the food’s as good as it gets. Oh, but a warning: You might run into a character named Tomlinson. He almost always wears a sarong but no underwear. Don’t let him scare you. He’s harmless.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that. One day, I’d like to meet a man in a sarong who wasn’t harmless.” Using the cheery mask to show she had a touch of vixen in her, too.

Mack liked that. “In that case, I may go ask Tomlinson if he has something soft and silky I can wear.”

Rona made a purring sound. “You do that, big fella.”