Longboat Blues Read online

  There was a yellow tape with black letters spelling out “Police Lines, Do No Cross” tacked across the front door of the condo. Two men wearing paper covers over their shoes were vacuuming the white rug. On the balcony, through the glass wall, overlooking the early morning placidity of the Gulf, lay a lump covered with a white bed sheet. A paramedic leaned against the balcony rail smoking a cigarette, his box of rescue equipment at his feet. I knew there was a body under that sheet, and for a moment I had the wild thought that maybe Logan’s decorator had met a fitting end in this white sarcophagus.

  Logan was sitting at a dining table just inside the door, facing Chief Lester who sat across the table. Logan was wearing a pair of shorts and a T shirt with the logo of the Suncoast Offshore Grand Prix, a boat race held every July in our waters. His hair had not seen a comb that morning, and his eyes were red rimmed. He looked tired and about ten years older that he had the night before at Moore’s.

  The chief was new to the job, having taken over from the retiring chief six months before. Bill Lester, thirty-seven years old, had spent three years in the Army Military Police Corps and sixteen years on the Longboat Key Police Department, rising through the ranks until he was second in command. When Tom Bishop retired, Bill was the logical and popular choice to succeed him. I had known Bill for years, and he had often joined Logan and me on snook fishing trips in Terra Ceia bay.

  Bill had put on a little weight lately and, while he was not fat, he would have to be careful. His round face was punctuated by a small, neatly trimmed mustache that was as black as his hair. He was wearing a pair of beige dockers, a flowery shirt and boat shoes over a pair of argyle socks. On occasion I accused him of dressing the part of an island police chief as if he were waiting for the Hollywood writers to swoop down and make a movie about him. He always just grinned.

  Leaning against the wall next to the chief was a large man of about fifty. He had a head full of hair, with the blonde of his youth losing to the gray of middle age. His face was ruddy, the face of a heavy drinker, with the little capillaries on the cheeks bursting into tiny veins of red. He was wearing a pair of brown slacks, a white short sleeve dress shirt and a solid brown knit tie. There was a tie tack of miniature handcuffs holding the tie ends together.

  “Matt,” the chief said, “Come on in. The techs have cleared this area. Just don’t go any further. This is Detective John Banion of Manatee County.”

  Banion did not move to shake hands. I stood in place, looked at Banion and then at Logan. “What’s going on Logan?”

  “It’s Connie, Matt. Under the sheet. She’s dead,” he said in a strained voice.

  It was a blow to the stomach that took my breath away. Not possible, my mind screamed. Not Connie. “How?” I asked.

  “We know how,” Banion said, stepping closer to me. “We want to know who, but I think we’ve got that one answered, too.” The stench of day old booze and cigarettes emanated from the detective, assailing my nose and churning my stomach. I stepped back.

  “What’s going on, Bill?” I asked.

  “Logan called 911 at 6:05 this morning and said there was a body on his balcony. The call was routed to us because it’s in our jurisdiction. Dave Beemer was the shift commander on the midnight and was heading back to the station to get ready to check out, when he got the call. He was only about two minutes from here and came right up. He knows Logan and recognized the dead woman as Connie and called me on my cell phone. I was on my way in to work and came right here. Manatee or Sarasota always works our homicides, so Banion was called in. Apparently, Logan called you just before I got here. He said he wouldn’t talk to us until you were here.”

  “Logan?” I said, turning to him.

  “I figured if there was a dead woman in my house I would be a logical suspect, and I didn’t want to say anything without my lawyer being here.”

  “Logan,” I said, “I’m not a lawyer anymore.”

  “You’re still a member of the bar.”

  “A retired member of the bar,” I said.

  “I want you to represent me, Matt.”

  Chapter 3

  The Longboat Key Police Department is small, and crime is almost unheard of on the island. There is the occasional theft from an unlocked car, but most of the calls to the police are about snakes in pools or cats in trees. Other than well heeled tourists, whom the town welcomes, strangers rarely visit the island.

  In the 1950’s Manatee County decided to put a public beach on Longboat Key. Longboaters, not wanting the hordes of people and traffic that strain the roads on neighboring islands, voted to incorporate a town that would include the entire island. Once the island had its own town government, the county government would have to have permission from the town to put in public facilities.

  Longboat Key is about ten miles long and one-quarter mile wide at its widest. The county line runs across the island at its center, with Manatee County to the north and Sarasota County to the south. While not unheard of, it is unusual to have one city situated in two counties. The system, however, works pretty well.

  The Longboat Key police have jurisdiction over the whole island, but because of its small size and inexperience with major crimes, from time to time the counties’ Sheriff’s offices are called upon to render assistance with their more sophisticated evidence gathering equipment and technicians as well as detectives. Longboat Key police, however, were in control, and the Sheriff’s deputies reported to Bill Lester.

  Logan’s condo was about ten feet north of the county line, and was therefore within the jurisdiction of Manatee County as well as the Town of Longboat Key.

  I had practiced law in Orlando and came to hate the mess that had once been an honorable profession. I had tried a lot of cases in my career, and I did not think I had the energy to ever try another one. I found myself dreading trial or anything else to do with the process. Then disaster. My wife left me. I resigned from the firm, sold the house in Orlando, and moved onto my boat moored at a Longboat Key marina. I became a drunk, or close to it, and my life was saved by a good man. I enjoyed the quieter life of the key, and had not once missed the practice of law. Life was one long vacation, and if I ever started thinking about getting back into the rat race, I knew all I had to do was go to the courthouse and sit in on a trial. So far I hadn’t even had to do that. The thought of trying another case brought back all the dislike I had developed for the system. I sure as hell wasn’t going to get involved in a murder trial defending a friend. But, I didn’t think now was the time to tell that to Logan.

  “Logan,” I said, “Why don’t you let me talk to these guys alone for a minute.”

  “Sure thing, Matt.” Logan walked down to the bench by the elevator and sat down.

  “What happened, Bill?” I asked the chief.

  “The broad was strangled,” Banion said.

  “Connie, Detective,” I said. “Her name was Connie Sanborne, and she was the sales manager at the Golden Beach Inn. She had a degree from Northwestern University, and an ex-husband who pounded on her regularly, until she screwed up the courage to run to a battered woman’s shelter. She put her life back together, one piece at a time, and then she moved down here and started a new life. She was bright and pretty and a good friend. She was a lot of things Detective, but she sure as hell wasn’t a broad. You keep that in mind.”

  “Fuck you, Counselor.” Banion turned and walked away.

  “Nice guy,” I said.

  “He’s pretty rough,” said the chief, “but he’s a good detective and closes a lot of cases.”

  “I guess that’s why the Sheriff puts up with him.”

  “You got it. Look, it appears that Connie was strangled. There’s no blood and her throat is bruised. We’ll know a lot more after the techs are done and the docs get the autopsy results in. Right now, we’re going with strangulation as the cause of death.”

  “Are you going to arrest anybody?”

  “If you mean Logan, the answer is no. At least not yet.
But I’d like his word that he’ll stick around town for the next few days.”

  “I’ll talk to him. He looks kind of ragged. How about if I take him back to my place for now?”

  “Sure, but he can’t take anything out of the apartment. It’s still a crime scene.”

  “We’ll get by. Call me if you need us.”

  “What happened, Logan?” We were sitting in my living room overlooking Sarasota Bay. The sun was high and the water was smooth as a mirror. A small houseboat was chugging slowly southward, barely making a wake. The large white pelicans that came from the north to winter with us were floating near the channel, resting up, I suppose, for their journey home. I had made coffee and fed Logan a couple of half stale donuts. He seemed to be feeling better.

  Logan was 5’10” and getting a little chubby. His belly hung over his belt like a small melon, not too big, but obvious. His hair was sparse now, and what was left was turning from brown to gray. A few strands were combed over the bald pate in a last ditch effort to halt the creeping erosion. He was from Massachusetts, and if you closed your eyes when he talked, you heard John Kennedy.

  “I don’t know, Matt. I got up to get a drink of water from the refrigerator, and it was just light enough to see Connie on the balcony. I thought at first that she was sleeping out there, but when I opened the door I knew she was dead. I saw a lot of dead people in Nam, so I knew. I shut the door and called 911.”

  “Do you have any idea what she was doing in your condo?”

  “No, but you know we had a thing going, didn’t you?”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “I guess we were what you might call fuck buddies. For the past year or so we’d get together now and then for sex. Just two single people taking the edge off. It wasn’t love or anything, although you know I liked her a lot. We all did. Anyway, sometimes she’d just come over and surprise me. I didn’t particularly like her doing that, but it didn’t happen often, and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.”

  “Did she have a key to your place?”

  “Yeah, but so do half the people on the island.”

  That was true. Logan was generous, and since he was gone a lot on business, he let friends use his place if they needed to sleep visiting relatives or for whatever reason. I had used his condo for a couple of nights the month before while mine was being painted. He had told me to keep the key in case I needed it again.

  “Was she planning to come by last night?” I asked.

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “What time did you get home?”

  “Late, around 2:00 this morning.”

  “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary when you came in?”

  “I was drunker than a hoot owl, Matt. I went to Bridge Street after I left you last night.”

  Bridge Street was in Bradenton Beach on Anna Maria Island near the marina that stored Logan’s boat. It had three or four rowdy bars frequented by tourists and commercial fishermen from Cortez across the bay. Logan would go down there sometimes to listen to the local rock bands that played the bars. He always had a first class hangover the next day.

  “Could you have run into Connie and not remembered it?” I asked.

  “My memory’s a little spotty about last night, but I would remember if I had seen Connie. I spent most of the evening talking to an old army buddy I ran into. He left, and I had one more drink and drove home.”

  “I wonder if she was killed in your condo or brought there afterwards. Do you think you would have heard someone coming in after you went to bed?”

  “I doubt it. I had a lot of scotch in me. I only got up because I was so thirsty. You know how booze does that to you.”

  “Maybe we’ll know more after the techs and the docs do their things. What about her ex-husband?”

  “You mean as the murderer?”

  “Is it possible?”

  “I guess it’s possible, but I don’t think she’s seen or heard from him for several years. I doubt he even knows she’s in Florida.”

  “Well, we’ll let the police sort all that out.”

  “Do they think I did this, Matt?”

  “I don’t think Bill Lester does, but that creep Banion seems to think you’re the bad guy.”

  “Will they arrest me?”

  “Not on what they’ve got now. I think they would have to turn up some pretty good evidence that you did it before they could charge you. If the time of death was before you got home, I would guess you’re in the clear. If it was somewhere between two and six in the morning you won’t have an alibi, and it might be hard to convince them that Connie was murdered in your house and you slept through it. But what about a motive? You had no reason to kill her. I don’t think you have to worry, but it’ll be a few days before we know for sure.”

  “I’m real tired, Matt. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go lie down for awhile.”

  “Help yourself. If you need anything, holler.”

  Chapter 4

  The loneliest people in the world are the old folks, widows and widowers, who frequent the piano bars of the Gulf coast, looking for friendship. They must wax a little nostalgic at the sight of older couples who have escaped the grim reaper, having a good time in the same bars. They all sing along with the piano player, and she knows most of them because they are the regulars. Sometimes, one of the oldsters will get up and sing a solo. Some of them are surprisingly good; professional entertainers in their other lives in Chicago or Indianapolis or Cincinnati.

  I was sitting alone at a table in a bar in a restaurant on Anna Maria Island. The chairs arranged around the piano bar were full of senior citizens, year round residents who were coming out now that the snowbirds had gone home. I knew some of them from previous encounters, and they would nod or wave in my direction as one left and another took the place at the piano bar. Most of them lived off their social security checks in the trailer parks that lined Cortez Road just across the bridge on the mainland. Pearl, the still sexy fifty year old piano player, who could belt out a tune equal to any chanteuse in the world, would call a name and gently tease the oldster who had just arrived, and then break into the favorite song of the new arrival. They ate it up. This was a connection, however tenuous, to other people. Someone knew their names, and cared enough to remember the songs they always requested. The song took them to a happier time, maybe to a young lover when they were all young and had a future.

  I was feeling a little sorry for myself, as I do from time to time. For most of my life the present was the greatest time in which to live, but the future always held something better. I had recently come to realize that the best times in my life were past, and while the present is good, it will not change a whole lot. The future was the present, and it would slowly get worse, until I was one of these lonely seniors looking for companionship. Not a happy thought. Maybe this early retirement was not all it was cracked up to be. Can one actually get tired of fishing?

  I was mostly concerned about Logan’s future. I had been more positive with him than I actually felt. The very fact that Connie’s body was found in his condo would make Logan a prime suspect. I didn’t think Logan did it. He was by nature a gentle man who had seen all the killing he needed in Viet Nam.

  Logan had slept all day, while I sat and read James Lee Burke’s latest novel and rigged a new fishing rod. He awoke about six, and we went to Oma’s on Anna Maria for pizza and beer. He was still tired and depressed and wanted to go back to bed. I dropped him at my condo and drove back across the Longboat bridge through Bradenton Beach and into Holmes Beach to a restaurant which seemed to change names every year. The food was spotty in quality, but the beer was cold and Pearl was always magnificent. Besides, she always played my favorite song when I walked in.

  I was concerned about Logan’s request that I represent him. I had vowed so many times never to get back into the rat race that was the practice of law. I had sat in too many deposition rooms, and listened to too many lawyers drone on incessantly
with questions that even they didn’t think were important. There had been too many sleepless nights worrying about this point or the other that might or might not come up in a case. Trial lawyers seldom sleep soundly.

  On the other hand, if I handled only one case, it would not be like the old days of juggling more cases that one lawyer should. I was certainly capable of handling a first degree murder case. I had done it several times in my career and had never lost one. But Logan was a friend, and I was of the opinion that lawyers should no more represent friends and family than surgeons should operate on their friends and family. Yet, if Logan was charged, he would need someone who really believed in him. Did I? I thought so, but I had seen too many clients who first appeared to be something they weren’t, and I was always surprised at my naivete when I learned the truth. Clients, like all people, wanted you to think the best of them, and they were not above lying to their lawyer if they thought that was in their best interest.

  I really did not know a lot about Logan. He had come to the island about a year before I did. I was aware that he had been a helicopter pilot in Viet Nam, but he didn’t talk about it much. I knew that he came from a wealthy Massachusetts family and that his parents were still alive. They had apparently despaired of him in his youth, but a tour in Viet Nam straightened him out, and he went back to college and earned a degree in business from the University of Florida. He had lived in various places in Florida since his graduation, finally settling on the key. He traveled extensively with his company, and it did not matter much where he lived.

  I was not really surprised by his revelation that he and Connie had had an affair. Many of us on the key suspected it, and we had gossiped some about it, but never mentioned it to either Logan or Connie. That would have broken the code of the key; the one that tolerated every idiosyncracy, as long as it did not cause problems for anyone else. It was a live and let live philosophy.