KEY WEST
Chapter 1
CAPTIVA
Hoping to get a head start on the weekend, I left Fort Myers and the gun club early. Rather than go directly home, I stopped at the Island Store on Andy Rose Lane. Karen Leigh was working the register. Wearing white shorts and a bikini top, Karen was one of the reasons men in my neighborhood shopped at the Island Store. For me, the store also offered a surprising selection of French and German wines and the only decent bagels on the island.
Ignoring the bottles of Italian Swiss Colony and Boone's Farm, I picked out a three-year old bottle of Les Beauregards French Chablis. I like flinty clean taste of French Chablis. Grabbing a bag of egg bagels and a package of cream cheese, I stepped up to the counter.
“What’s up Karen?” I asked.
“Nothing shaking, Mr. Cederberg.” She gave me a look that made me feel old. “You hear about the shark attack off Sanibel?” She pointed to an open copy of the Fort Myers News Press. The headline read, ‘Man Killed in Shark Attack.’ It was dated March 16, 1983. The byline read 'K.C. Jones.' I knew Katherine Jones. She was an excellent reporter and a friend.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Diver washed up near the pass with a big chunk of his leg missing. The paper says it was a shark bite and he bled to death. My dad doesn’t buy it. He said there hasn’t been an attack in years.”
“Pretty unusual, I guess. Still, they’re out there.”
“Sure enough.” She put the wine and bagels in a brown paper bag and gave me my change. Her fingers were warm and soft to the touch. I wondered what it would be like to be eighteen again. I thanked her, gave her my best smile, and sadly turned to leave.
“Hey Mr. Cederberg,” she called. “Looks like you’re losing a neighbor.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I saw a van parked off your street this morning. Said ‘Seaside Movers’ on the side.”
“Which house?”
“That business man right next to you. Mister Yea.”
“The Yea’s are moving?”
“I guess, except I’ve never seen her. Have you?”
“No. I’ve seen him several times, but not his wife.”
She leaned forward onto the counter. “Miss Thompson, thinks the wife is a fiction. She thinks he's a homo,” she whispered.
Ruth Thompson lived two houses down from David Yea. She was a nosey gossip whose opinion I usually ignored. Still, I too wondered about the mysterious Misses Yea, who, according to David was living in Ohio and always soon to arrive in Florida.
“Did you see Mister Yea, leave?” I asked Karen.
“No, just the moving van.”
We talked for a few minutes. Walking to the passenger side of my truck, I put the wine and bagels on the front passenger seat. Down the lane I saw my house and driveway of the house next to mine. David’s car was in the drive.
My house is the last in a row of six cottages on the beach south of Andy Rose Lane. The houses were all built in the last five years. The Yeas were renting the house next to mine from the Nash family. Jerry and Caroline Nash were in Italy for the year. David Yea moved in sometime January. I met David for the first time on Groundhog Day. I assumed he was Vietnamese, but he said his parents were from China and he grew up in Ohio. He seemed to be a nice enough guy, but quiet and careful.
Since then we occasionally met on the beach in the morning and ran together. He didn’t say much and he made no offers to get together after a run. When I asked about his wife, three days ago, he said she was stuck in Ohio, but he hoped she would be in Florida in the summer.
I had no real reason to care about the Yea’s moving. It was just that I disliked unexpected events. When we ran on Tuesday, our entire conversation focused on how great the weather has been. David said nothing about moving. I decided to ask him why.
I drove down Sunset Captiva Lane and parked in my driveway. Leaving my groceries, I walked next door. The house certainly looked empty. I stepped to the back door and knocked twice. When no one answered, I tried the door. It was open.
Inside, the ground floor was devoid of furniture. There was a broom in the corner next to a bag of garbage. The kitchen smelled of lemongrass, garlic, and something else, breach with a faint metallic odor. Standing at the kitchen counter, I called for David and got no answer.
I moved to the front room. The hardwood floor showed early signs of sun damage from the south facing windows; the view to the beach was partially blocked by trees in front of the picture window. Walking to the front door, I looked out into the screened-in porch. The stretch of beach was empty like the house. I debated going up stairs, but knew it was pointless. David Yea was gone.
Back in the kitchen, I noticed one of the floor tiles was broken and stained red by something still wet. Touching the stain, I stood up immediately, looked around, and listened. The stain was blood, and I was in the middle of a future crime scene.
At the back door, I checked for any activity outside and then exited quickly. Miss Thompson was watching from her upstairs bedroom window. I hoped she assumed I was just visiting, however, she was infamous for calling the police.
I walked back to my truck and grabbed the bag of groceries. Debating, I opened the glove compartment. Hidden under the owner’s manual and registration was a Colt 1911. I like the Colt because it fills your hand and has real stopping power. Guns have been a part of my life since I was a kid. As the owner of a gun club, I have a permit to carry a concealed weapon. I keep the Colt in the truck because I need to be ready for the day Ricki Williams decides to even the score.
I slipped the Colt under the bag of bagels and got out of the truck. On the back steps, I pretended to fumble with the keys, while I checked the hairs left across the kitchen door. I have an electronic security system, but sometimes the old ways are best.
The hairs were gone. Leaving the bag on the back steps, I went around the house to the front porch. The two hairs across the porch door were also missing. Someone was in the house or tried to force the door. A trail of blood led off the porch steps. Someone had come and gone.
The house was built on stilts. It was designed to withstand a tidal surge of eight feet. Under the house was a carport I didn’t use and a double wide shed where I stored dive gear and tools. The body of a man was wedged between the shed and one of the stilts in a space I would have said impossible for a cat to hide in.
Touching the body, I jumped when he moved. For a moment he fought, but when he saw me, he relaxed. The man was David Yea. His face was the color of sand at night, sort of a chalky white-gray. He was shirtless. His right pant leg was soaked in blood. He’d used his belt to tie off his leg. There were power burns on his pants. I knew from experience, his kneecap had been shot at close range by a small caliber weapon.
“David, what happened?”
“No time,” he gasped. “I’m dying. Mark came in from the water at night. I wasn’t ready for him. I managed to cut him good across the thigh. He thought he could force the truth out of me.” He laughed and spit blood. “I memorized a lie. Two lies in one. I told him the gold is one hundred feet north of center. It’s really one hundred truogng from the mark and the direction depends on the key. The key is important and the light. The light will help you.” He passed out.
I wasn’t sure what to make of his ramblings. Using all the force I could, I pulled Yea out from the shed wall and laid him on the concrete slab. I was going for the police when he came to.
“You need a doctor,” I said.
“Are you a pirate, Robert?”
“What?”
“I’m giving you the chance of a life time. There is gold buried nine miles off Key West. The light will help you to find your way. You must be stubborn as a mule and you have to think and act like a pirate. Get it right and the gold is yours. Get it wrong and…” He laughed, and then gasped for breath. His eyes rolled back. Blood streamed out his mouth.
I wanted to ask him a dozen questions, but he was dead. Lying his body back down, I looked for a rag to wipe off the blood on my hands. Standing up, I saw a patrol car park down the street at Yea’s house.
Two uniforms got out. One walked up to the back door of Yea’s house. Getting no response, he opened the door and went in and then came out and signaled to his partner. He pointed at my house.
The second officer headed towards my house. Before he could see me, I put the Colt and the rag in an empty planter where I hid an extra house key. The officer walked to the back steps and then came around under the house. He had a walkie-talkie in one hand. Seeing the body, he put his other hand on his gun.
“Thank God, I was just going to call you.” I said. “I’m Robert Cederberg. I live here. This is my neighbor, David Yea. I found him under my house when I came home. I think he tried to force his way inside, but I wasn’t sure if someone else might be inside right now.”
This announcement caused the officer to draw his service revolver and call for backup on the walkie-talkie. It took an hour for the police to search the two houses. Then a lab crew came and dusted my doors for fingerprints. Most of the time I sat in my porch with a uniform officer standing over me. Eventually a Detective Sergeant, one Helen Lintemuth, spoke to me on the porch. She reminded me of one of my high school teachers. She was in her early forties, I guessed. She was a large boned woman. Her dress was neat, but unflattering. She sat down next to me and took out a notebook.
“Mr. Cederberg, you told the officer Mr. Yea was alive when you found him.” Her voice was crisp and dry. She asked her question in a matter-of-fact way. She was going through a checklist.
“That’s right,” I said.
Police interviews were not new to me, but being interviewed by a woman detective was a new. I imagined she must be good at her job to have made detective.
“Did he say anything? Did he describe his killer?”
“No, he was alive but unconscious.”
She wrote ‘nothing’ in her notebook.
“Mr. Cederberg, I understand you own a gun club and this isn’t the first time you’ve been involved in a shooting. Did you shoot David Yea?”
“Of course not! I’m not involved. I just found him.”
“Just like when you found that prostitute dead on the beach and her boyfriend dead in your living room.”
“That was different. I was trying to help Nina,” I said.
“And now, you are trying to help David Yea.”
“I’m not,” I said, sounding a little like I was pleading.
“And, he told you nothing.”
“Nothing.”
I gave Detective Lintemuth my ‘I’m telling the truth look.’ I am not sure why I held back about Mark and Key West. Perhaps it was her sarcastic tone. It might have been because I had a hunch Mark was the dead skin diver. Maybe it was because David Yea learned a lie so thoroughly that even under torture his secret was safe. I admired that kind of strength in a person.
Detective Lintemuth stood and looked out the front screen. I stood with her. A uniform officer was pointing at his watch.
“Perhaps we should start again,” she said. “When you ran together, what did Mister Yea tell you about himself?”
“We only talked a couple of times. He said he owned a paint factory in Ohio. He has a wife, but I’ve never seen her.”
“Anything else?”
“Not really, except the girl at the market mentioned that a moving company was in Yea’s house today. I think they were cleaning up after the killer.”
“Who’s they.”
“I don’t have any idea,” I said, looking directly at the detective.
“Captain Hawkins, told me about you,” said Lintemuth. She gave me this sad kind of smile. “You keep getting involved in police matters.”
“I’m just trying to be helpful,” I offered.
“So why do you think someone wanted David Yea dead?” She leaned forward as if she was interested in my opinion. My guess was she was trying to trap me in a lie.
I said nothing. If Lintemuth was a smart as I assumed, she knew shooting a person in the knee was a way to get information. She gave me that I think you know something look, so I shut up.
“Anything more?” she asked.
“No.”
I stood up. She put her notebook in a pocket inside her coat. She had an automatic in a holster under her left arm. She went to the front door and I followed. Turning back to me, she handed me a white card with her name and a number typed on the front. “Here’s my card. If you remember anything more, call me.” She shook my hand. “Oh, by the way. Captain Hawkins asked me to tell you ‘to stay out of this.”
“Tell your Captain I said, Aye, Aye.” I gave her a salute, along with my Steve McQueen smile. I was already starting to act like a pirate.
CAPTIVA
Hoping to get a head start on the weekend, I left Fort Myers and the gun club early. Rather than go directly home, I stopped at the Island Store on Andy Rose Lane. Karen Leigh was working the register. Wearing white shorts and a bikini top, Karen was one of the reasons men in my neighborhood shopped at the Island Store. For me, the store also offered a surprising selection of French and German wines and the only decent bagels on the island.
Ignoring the bottles of Italian Swiss Colony and Boone's Farm, I picked out a three-year old bottle of Les Beauregards French Chablis. I like flinty clean taste of French Chablis. Grabbing a bag of egg bagels and a package of cream cheese, I stepped up to the counter.
“What’s up Karen?” I asked.
“Nothing shaking, Mr. Cederberg.” She gave me a look that made me feel old. “You hear about the shark attack off Sanibel?” She pointed to an open copy of the Fort Myers News Press. The headline read, ‘Man Killed in Shark Attack.’ It was dated March 16, 1983. The byline read 'K.C. Jones.' I knew Katherine Jones. She was an excellent reporter and a friend.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Diver washed up near the pass with a big chunk of his leg missing. The paper says it was a shark bite and he bled to death. My dad doesn’t buy it. He said there hasn’t been an attack in years.”
“Pretty unusual, I guess. Still, they’re out there.”
“Sure enough.” She put the wine and bagels in a brown paper bag and gave me my change. Her fingers were warm and soft to the touch. I wondered what it would be like to be eighteen again. I thanked her, gave her my best smile, and sadly turned to leave.
“Hey Mr. Cederberg,” she called. “Looks like you’re losing a neighbor.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I saw a van parked off your street this morning. Said ‘Seaside Movers’ on the side.”
“Which house?”
“That business man right next to you. Mister Yea.”
“The Yea’s are moving?”
“I guess, except I’ve never seen her. Have you?”
“No. I’ve seen him several times, but not his wife.”
She leaned forward onto the counter. “Miss Thompson, thinks the wife is a fiction. She thinks he's a homo,” she whispered.
Ruth Thompson lived two houses down from David Yea. She was a nosey gossip whose opinion I usually ignored. Still, I too wondered about the mysterious Misses Yea, who, according to David was living in Ohio and always soon to arrive in Florida.
“Did you see Mister Yea, leave?” I asked Karen.
“No, just the moving van.”
We talked for a few minutes. Walking to the passenger side of my truck, I put the wine and bagels on the front passenger seat. Down the lane I saw my house and driveway of the house next to mine. David’s car was in the drive.
My house is the last in a row of six cottages on the beach south of Andy Rose Lane. The houses were all built in the last five years. The Yeas were renting the house next to mine from the Nash family. Jerry and Caroline Nash were in Italy for the year. David Yea moved in sometime January. I met David for the first time on Groundhog Day. I assumed he was Vietnamese, but he said his parents were from China and he grew up in Ohio. He seemed to be a nice enough guy, but quiet and careful.
Since then we occasionally met on the beach in the morning and ran together. He didn’t say much and he made no offers to get together after a run. When I asked about his wife, three days ago, he said she was stuck in Ohio, but he hoped she would be in Florida in the summer.
I had no real reason to care about the Yea’s moving. It was just that I disliked unexpected events. When we ran on Tuesday, our entire conversation focused on how great the weather has been. David said nothing about moving. I decided to ask him why.
I drove down Sunset Captiva Lane and parked in my driveway. Leaving my groceries, I walked next door. The house certainly looked empty. I stepped to the back door and knocked twice. When no one answered, I tried the door. It was open.
Inside, the ground floor was devoid of furniture. There was a broom in the corner next to a bag of garbage. The kitchen smelled of lemongrass, garlic, and something else, breach with a faint metallic odor. Standing at the kitchen counter, I called for David and got no answer.
I moved to the front room. The hardwood floor showed early signs of sun damage from the south facing windows; the view to the beach was partially blocked by trees in front of the picture window. Walking to the front door, I looked out into the screened-in porch. The stretch of beach was empty like the house. I debated going up stairs, but knew it was pointless. David Yea was gone.
Back in the kitchen, I noticed one of the floor tiles was broken and stained red by something still wet. Touching the stain, I stood up immediately, looked around, and listened. The stain was blood, and I was in the middle of a future crime scene.
At the back door, I checked for any activity outside and then exited quickly. Miss Thompson was watching from her upstairs bedroom window. I hoped she assumed I was just visiting, however, she was infamous for calling the police.
I walked back to my truck and grabbed the bag of groceries. Debating, I opened the glove compartment. Hidden under the owner’s manual and registration was a Colt 1911. I like the Colt because it fills your hand and has real stopping power. Guns have been a part of my life since I was a kid. As the owner of a gun club, I have a permit to carry a concealed weapon. I keep the Colt in the truck because I need to be ready for the day Ricki Williams decides to even the score.
I slipped the Colt under the bag of bagels and got out of the truck. On the back steps, I pretended to fumble with the keys, while I checked the hairs left across the kitchen door. I have an electronic security system, but sometimes the old ways are best.
The hairs were gone. Leaving the bag on the back steps, I went around the house to the front porch. The two hairs across the porch door were also missing. Someone was in the house or tried to force the door. A trail of blood led off the porch steps. Someone had come and gone.
The house was built on stilts. It was designed to withstand a tidal surge of eight feet. Under the house was a carport I didn’t use and a double wide shed where I stored dive gear and tools. The body of a man was wedged between the shed and one of the stilts in a space I would have said impossible for a cat to hide in.
Touching the body, I jumped when he moved. For a moment he fought, but when he saw me, he relaxed. The man was David Yea. His face was the color of sand at night, sort of a chalky white-gray. He was shirtless. His right pant leg was soaked in blood. He’d used his belt to tie off his leg. There were power burns on his pants. I knew from experience, his kneecap had been shot at close range by a small caliber weapon.
“David, what happened?”
“No time,” he gasped. “I’m dying. Mark came in from the water at night. I wasn’t ready for him. I managed to cut him good across the thigh. He thought he could force the truth out of me.” He laughed and spit blood. “I memorized a lie. Two lies in one. I told him the gold is one hundred feet north of center. It’s really one hundred truogng from the mark and the direction depends on the key. The key is important and the light. The light will help you.” He passed out.
I wasn’t sure what to make of his ramblings. Using all the force I could, I pulled Yea out from the shed wall and laid him on the concrete slab. I was going for the police when he came to.
“You need a doctor,” I said.
“Are you a pirate, Robert?”
“What?”
“I’m giving you the chance of a life time. There is gold buried nine miles off Key West. The light will help you to find your way. You must be stubborn as a mule and you have to think and act like a pirate. Get it right and the gold is yours. Get it wrong and…” He laughed, and then gasped for breath. His eyes rolled back. Blood streamed out his mouth.
I wanted to ask him a dozen questions, but he was dead. Lying his body back down, I looked for a rag to wipe off the blood on my hands. Standing up, I saw a patrol car park down the street at Yea’s house.
Two uniforms got out. One walked up to the back door of Yea’s house. Getting no response, he opened the door and went in and then came out and signaled to his partner. He pointed at my house.
The second officer headed towards my house. Before he could see me, I put the Colt and the rag in an empty planter where I hid an extra house key. The officer walked to the back steps and then came around under the house. He had a walkie-talkie in one hand. Seeing the body, he put his other hand on his gun.
“Thank God, I was just going to call you.” I said. “I’m Robert Cederberg. I live here. This is my neighbor, David Yea. I found him under my house when I came home. I think he tried to force his way inside, but I wasn’t sure if someone else might be inside right now.”
This announcement caused the officer to draw his service revolver and call for backup on the walkie-talkie. It took an hour for the police to search the two houses. Then a lab crew came and dusted my doors for fingerprints. Most of the time I sat in my porch with a uniform officer standing over me. Eventually a Detective Sergeant, one Helen Lintemuth, spoke to me on the porch. She reminded me of one of my high school teachers. She was in her early forties, I guessed. She was a large boned woman. Her dress was neat, but unflattering. She sat down next to me and took out a notebook.
“Mr. Cederberg, you told the officer Mr. Yea was alive when you found him.” Her voice was crisp and dry. She asked her question in a matter-of-fact way. She was going through a checklist.
“That’s right,” I said.
Police interviews were not new to me, but being interviewed by a woman detective was a new. I imagined she must be good at her job to have made detective.
“Did he say anything? Did he describe his killer?”
“No, he was alive but unconscious.”
She wrote ‘nothing’ in her notebook.
“Mr. Cederberg, I understand you own a gun club and this isn’t the first time you’ve been involved in a shooting. Did you shoot David Yea?”
“Of course not! I’m not involved. I just found him.”
“Just like when you found that prostitute dead on the beach and her boyfriend dead in your living room.”
“That was different. I was trying to help Nina,” I said.
“And now, you are trying to help David Yea.”
“I’m not,” I said, sounding a little like I was pleading.
“And, he told you nothing.”
“Nothing.”
I gave Detective Lintemuth my ‘I’m telling the truth look.’ I am not sure why I held back about Mark and Key West. Perhaps it was her sarcastic tone. It might have been because I had a hunch Mark was the dead skin diver. Maybe it was because David Yea learned a lie so thoroughly that even under torture his secret was safe. I admired that kind of strength in a person.
Detective Lintemuth stood and looked out the front screen. I stood with her. A uniform officer was pointing at his watch.
“Perhaps we should start again,” she said. “When you ran together, what did Mister Yea tell you about himself?”
“We only talked a couple of times. He said he owned a paint factory in Ohio. He has a wife, but I’ve never seen her.”
“Anything else?”
“Not really, except the girl at the market mentioned that a moving company was in Yea’s house today. I think they were cleaning up after the killer.”
“Who’s they.”
“I don’t have any idea,” I said, looking directly at the detective.
“Captain Hawkins, told me about you,” said Lintemuth. She gave me this sad kind of smile. “You keep getting involved in police matters.”
“I’m just trying to be helpful,” I offered.
“So why do you think someone wanted David Yea dead?” She leaned forward as if she was interested in my opinion. My guess was she was trying to trap me in a lie.
I said nothing. If Lintemuth was a smart as I assumed, she knew shooting a person in the knee was a way to get information. She gave me that I think you know something look, so I shut up.
“Anything more?” she asked.
“No.”
I stood up. She put her notebook in a pocket inside her coat. She had an automatic in a holster under her left arm. She went to the front door and I followed. Turning back to me, she handed me a white card with her name and a number typed on the front. “Here’s my card. If you remember anything more, call me.” She shook my hand. “Oh, by the way. Captain Hawkins asked me to tell you ‘to stay out of this.”
“Tell your Captain I said, Aye, Aye.” I gave her a salute, along with my Steve McQueen smile. I was already starting to act like a pirate.
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