Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Walter had already closed the store for the day, so we headed straight to Ida Belle’s house, where we found him sitting barefoot on the back porch in shorts and a T-shirt.
He gave us a guilty look as we walked out, lowering the bag of potato chips he’d been enjoying with his second beer, given there was an empty bottle already on the table.
“You just closed up fifteen minutes ago,” Ida Belle said. “You had to drive home, feed the dog, and change clothes, and you’re already on your second beer?”
“What do you take me for, a lush?” Walter asked. “That empty is from last night.”
“So not a lush, just a slob,” Ida Belle said.
“You were supposed to call on your way home,” he said.
“So your mess is my fault?” Ida Belle asked and rolled her eyes. “And all those years, people wondered why I didn’t get married.”
Walter chuckled. “I’ve been leaving empty beer bottles on your tables for way longer than from when we said vows. That just made it official.”
Ida Belle shook her head. “We need to talk to you about this case we’re on.”
“What case would that be?”
“Eleanor Stout’s death.”
Walter frowned. “I thought that was a suicide.”
“I think that’s going to be the official manner of death,” I said, “but there’s some wiggle room as to the actual cause.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Eleanor had a shady business partner,” Gertie said, “and we’re trying to figure out if it was a taking-advantage situation or a birds-of-a-feather one.”
Walter still looked confused. “You think Eleanor was shady?”
“Maybe,” I said. “What can you tell me about Jasper’s death?”
Walter stared at me for a moment, then looked over at Ida Belle. Then his eyes widened and he looked back at me. “You don’t think Eleanor had something to do with that, do you?”
I shrugged. “He died in a boating accident, right? Do you know any of the details surrounding it?”
He nodded. “Some, but there’s not much to know. The boat engine exploded and the whole thing sank, so there wasn’t really any evidence to speak of that could explain exactly what happened.”
“And Jasper—I hate to ask…”
“They found embedded tissue, hair, and blood up on an old piling where he was probably tied off.”
“They didn’t recover any more of the body?”
Walter looked pained. “That boat was torn up, so they didn’t find anything but a few pieces, and that’s metal, so…”
I nodded, not needing him to explain the rest. If the boat had been ripped to shreds by the blast, Jasper would have fared far worse.
“They sent divers down to try to locate the hull, but they couldn’t find anything but scrap. Where he anchored was at the mouth of a bayou and the tide had started going out. It was a full moon that week, so the tide was running fast.”
“How much time between the explosion and people showing up at the scene?”
“A couple hours. Weather was poor that day so not a lot of people were out. And he was pretty deep into the bayous. I know sound carries, but the truth is most around here don’t even flinch at the sound of gunfire or explosions out in them bayous.
To be honest, if the top of his cooler hadn’t been launched onto the bank by the blast, we might have never known what happened. Had his name engraved on it.”
“So any evidence that might have indicated exactly what happened either sank or was swept away by the outgoing tide.”
He nodded. “But the game warden found a bit of gas in the gravel at the launch where he kept his boat parked. Best anyone could figure, he had a fuel leak and a loose wire maybe, or frayed, and a spark set the whole thing up.”
“Why wouldn’t it have happened when he launched?”
“Could be the leak got worse while he was driving out and kept going while he was anchored, building up a good amount of fuel just sitting and waiting. If a wire loosened more on the ride out or frayed more, it would be a bad combination.”
He stared at the ground for a second and shook his head.
“You don’t like that explanation, do you?” I asked softly because I could see how troubled he was.
He was silent for several seconds then said, “No. I guess I don’t.”
“Why is that?”
“I didn’t know Jasper all that well on a personal level, but we talked boats and fishing more times than I can count when we ran into each other at local stuff.
And there are two things I’m certain he was an expert at, and those were knowing where the biggest red snapper was biting and boat engines. ”
“What did Jasper do for a living?”
“Ran the family shrimp house with his father until he passed. His mother had gone the year before. He sold off and went to work as a machinist in a big outfit just up the highway. I asked him one time how he went from managing a pretty big outfit to just being another guy taking orders and punching the clock, but he said the decrease to his stress level would probably give him twenty more years.”
“Some people aren’t cut out to run a business,” Ida Belle said. “You know that. But even if Jasper knew boat engines, he still could have slipped up. People do. So that doesn’t explain why it bothers you so much.”
He shrugged. “I can’t really say. I guess it never sat well with me that someone with that much knowledge could have missed a fuel leak, especially when it was already leaking enough to leave traces on the ground.
I know most folk wouldn’t even take heed to something so minor, but this is fishing country and the serious ones are darn near marine mechanics.
I don’t know. The whole thing just felt wrong. ”
“Do you think someone could have sabotaged his boat?” I asked.
Walter gave me a pained look. “I suppose they could have but Jasper was a nice guy. Why would someone want to hurt him?”
“Maybe the nice guy was in the way of his wife’s affair.”
Walter stared. “You’re telling me Eleanor was stepping out on him?”
“I think so. With that shady yoga guy she partnered up with after he died.”
“I don’t like the way any of this sounds. Is that why she killed herself? You think the guilt caught up to her?”
“Something did.”
I took some time to decompress when I got home, then took a long, hot shower, mulling over everything I knew and trying to frame it all with what I’d learned from Walter.
So many possibilities but there was no way around the obvious one, which was that someone had tampered with Jasper’s boat.
And there were only two people that I could think of who would have a reason to do so—Eleanor and Zion.
I had just stuck some fish in the fridge to marinate, when I heard a light knock on my back door.
Since anyone who walked around to the back door usually just strolled right in without knocking, I pulled out my nine and inched around the wall to peek between the blinds.
I wasn’t sure whether to put it back up or grab a spare magazine when I saw Dorothy standing there.
Figuring a visit from Dorothy called more for a bottle of whiskey than more rounds, I opened the door and gave her a curious look.
“This is a surprise,” I said.
“Will you just let me in before someone sees me out here?”
I stepped back and waved her in. “Would you like some iced tea? Just finished brewing.”
She eyed me suspiciously. “You brewed tea? Sweet tea?”
“Is there any other kind?”
She sniffed. “I might have a glass. Just to make sure you’ve gotten your mix right. Gertie always has too much sugar in hers and Ida Belle not enough.”
I poured two glasses over ice and brought them to the table. “That’s why I split the difference,” I said.
She sat down, took a sip, then sniffed again. “Not bad for a Yankee.”
I smiled. “So do you want to tell me what’s got you sneaking over to my house? Because I know it’s not to pass judgment on my tea-brewing skills.”
She huffed, and I could tell she was wrestling with whether to say what she’d come to say or scrap the whole thing and bail. Finally, she nodded.
“This whole thing with Eleanor… I don’t like it. Don’t like any of it.”
“You mean her suicide?”
“I’m going to be honest and say I mean her entire life—her youth, her marriage, this yoga retreat nonsense, her poor and erratic choices—any of it.”
I sat back in my chair, surprised at her words. “I don’t understand. I figured you were at the retreat because Eleanor was a friend.”
“I was friends with Dora, not Eleanor. Dora was a nice lady and a good Catholic. Horrible taste in men, but we can’t all be perfect like Jesus.”
I nodded. “I’m sorry for your loss. I understand she passed several months back after a prolonged illness. Cancer?”
Dorothy’s mouth clenched and she shook her head.
“Doctors never could figure out exactly what was wrong. A useless lot, all of ’em.
The problems seemed to move from one thing to another.
They’d get her liver stabilized and her breathing would be bad.
They’d get her breathing fixed and she’d start passing out and wouldn’t have the energy to lift a cup.
And her mind was like someone had scrubbed it with bleach.
Some days I’d go to visit and she’d stare at me, even after we’d been visiting a while, and I knew she was still trying to figure out who I was.
Then other days she’d be lucid as could be.
Probably some of it was the different drugs they tried, but none of them helped.
Fact is, they seemed to make things worse. ”
“That’s hard. But surely they did an autopsy after she died to determine what was wrong.”
“No. She had an arrythmia and high blood pressure and the doctor said it was a heart attack. Given the strain on her body, not to mention the mental stress, he didn’t see the need to look into it any further. And since she’d been under doctor’s care for months, it wasn’t required.”
“And Eleanor was okay with that?”