Jensen turned to him before he got in his car and, resting his arms on the roof, called to Nick, “Appreciate the help, Counselor. By the way, the thorough search we did of Ben Hoffman’s office on the BAA grounds after his death turned up two hidden listening devices—strictly audio surveillance, not visual, but state-of-the-art. Mr. Hoffman’s death has been ruled accidental, but it does sound like a suicide, since he must have known what he was doing, going in that cage. Anyway, the case will remain open for a while. No decent prints or DNA on the bugs, which is what took us so long before we got the word on it today.”
Nick’s mind raced. Someone was spying, overhearing BAA conversations? Lane? Stan? Hardly Gracie, though they seemed to want to question her further anyway.
Jensen went on, “The deceased’s wife and daughter say they didn’t know the bugs were there. But if foul play is ever indicated in Hoffman’s death, and if you were preparing a defense case, you’d read about the bugs in the police report for fair disclosure anyway. Actually, Brittany, hard as she seems to be taking this, looks like the one with the most to gain, right, other than Stan Helter? She said her father actually forbid her to leave the BAA for another job. The place was in her name but not really in her control, and she had some kind of an argument with her father shortly before he died—she admitted that to us. I hate that we always have to look at family first.”
Jensen got in and closed the door. Damn, but the guy should write scripts for NCIS with that kind of timing for dropping bombs. Nick tried not to look upset. The police were thinking Brit was a person of interest? Jace would go ballistic, probably Claire too. Sitting in the car, she’d no doubt heard all that.
The vehicles circled the cul-de-sac and headed out. Nick tried to process everything he’d heard here and at Grant’s earlier today. And there went his wife, however well protected, off to battle without him.
* * *
Jace left work early and decided he needed some time alone to think. Besides, he was starving. He pulled into the Carrabba’s restaurant on the trail, sat in a booth alone and ordered a burger, even though it was a decent Italian restaurant. Man, no one ever made burgers like his mother used to.
He wanted a beer but ordered a soft drink. He checked his email, texts and voice mail. Lexi had left him a voice mail saying that Dad was there instead of Mommy when Aunt Darcy brought her home from school. That was weird, he thought. Big criminal lawyer, senior partner, home from work early and pregnant wife out. Maybe she and Darcy had gone again to take something to that Glover kid Lexi had talked about.
Jace practically tore into his burger and fries when they came. He should probably not have left flying early, considering he kept going in late, but his FBI contact trusted him and knew his girlfriend had problems right now. He’d get back to spraying fruit trees soon—as if that was his primary purpose instead of electronic recon of local criminals. The Stingray surveillance was a good enough gig to keep a steady salary coming in right now, but no match for his paycheck when he’d been an international airline copilot. That had kept him away from Claire and Lexi too much, though it had sure paid the bills, even after they split up and had two households. Right now there were more important things, such as saving his own skin, let alone Brit’s.
Because that argument he’d had with Ben right after Brit and her dad had argued over the future of the BAA still haunted him. Ben was both shaken and despondent over the place. Jace wished he and Ben had not argued that night too. He felt guilty that he’d had a near knock-down, drag-out with a man who might have killed himself shortly after. And when Jace, despite how much he looked up to Ben, had sided with Brit, the roof could have blown off the Hoffman home. Damn good thing Brit had left and Ann wasn’t there. He could hear Ben’s voice, his hurt, angry tone even now.
“Well, hoo-yah, fancy flyboy! Siding with Brit when she’s not the one who founded the BAA, not the one who put her sweat and blood and college-smart brains into it. Here I thought this old marine grunt and you had an understanding, a friendship going.”
Jace realized right away Ben had been drinking. His words were slurred, and he smelled it on his breath. Four empty beer cans and a half bottle of scotch sat on the coffee table. Worse, this was starting to remind him of more than one dressing down he’d had from his own father when he was young. And more than once, he’d wanted to kill his dad. Damn, but Jason Britten Sr. had always treated his marine recruit classes better than he did his own kid, who was named after him.
“Sit down, Ben,” he’d tried to calm his friend that night. “I know Brit just left. I just think she’s too talented and dedicated to helping and saving wildlife to be tied to that little zoo. She’s put in a couple of years with you. She loves big cats and wouldn’t be near one if Tiberia hadn’t more or less fallen into your lap.”
Ben kept prodding Jace in his breastbone with the tips of his fingers, hard enough that Jace either had to step back or hit back, so he gave Ben a little shove. He wondered if he’d order him to drop for twenty-five push-ups the way his dad had more than once, standing over him, yelling. Either the booze or an argument with Brit, who had not seen Jace when she’d stormed out, was making this guy into a Frankenstein. And he’d regret it in the morning when the bad buzz wore off. Who knows, but maybe Ann took off for somewhere when he got crazy like this.
“Ben, look. Let up, man. Both of us love Brit. And Brit and I care about the BAA and y—”
“You’d like to take her away, wouldn’t you? Not only marry her, but get her into some fancy zoologic—zooey, whatever—professorship or working for a big-time zoo?”
“That’s not true, unless it was here. I’d like to stay in the Naples area because of my daughter—so we both love our girls, right?”
“Let’s drink on it, then,” he said, finally stepping back and making a lunge for the bottle of scotch. He knocked it off the table onto the tile floor where it shattered.
“Ben, I think you’ve had enough and—”
“I have had enough!” he said, rounding on Jace again. “Even Ann wants to sell my BAA to that bastard Helter from hell! Brit goes to see him behind my back, and Lane would be happy to play the violin and dance at the sale of it. Helter owns half the county, so what’s so damn special about my little place to him?”
The memory, Ben’s strident voice and angry expression, faded but Jace’s own anger boiled up again as he sat alone in the restaurant booth. “Helter just wants what he wants,” he whispered as he doused his french fries with ketchup, gripping the plastic bottle so hard it dented and the bloodred sauce splattered. “Damn, but don’t we all?”
* * *
“I heard what you said to my husband about Brit being a suspect,” Claire said to Detective Jensen en route to Gracie’s home.
“Mrs. Markwood—”
“Claire.”
“Great, thanks. Claire, I didn’t say she was a suspect.”
“That was the subtext.”
“I got a temporary partner who’s a forensic psych, that’s right. Luckily, one with nine lives.”
“I’ll admit I’ve been in the Naples Daily News a few too many times.”
“Your website, Clear Path, is a good one, but you ought to consider consulting for the NPD.”
He’d been researching her. She sat up straighter. “For the immediate future I’m consulting with motherhood, present and future. But I do not read Brittany Hoffman as someone who would have her father harmed. Like Lane, she has multiple eyewitnesses, including me and Nick, that she wasn’t there to hit him or push or drag him into that tiger’s cage. She loved her father and that tiger.”
He heaved a sigh. Heading south on the Tamiami Trail, he stopped at the red light near the road to Marco Island. “Yeah, I know. Everyone I’d pursue if this was going further has alibis, except Grace Dixon Cobham.”
“So Stan Helter was in full view—of whom, his paid staff who probably th
ink he walks on water?”
“If he’s your hit pick for Ben Hoffman’s death, it wasn’t hands-on for sure. He’s got a staff of about thirty people at the ranch, and at least half of them saw him during that time period.”
“I’ll bet it shook him up to even be a person of interest. And Gracie only has her boys, Ronnie and Lonnie, to work with. We told you about the loud and crazy possum party. Do they seem the sort to you to get in and out fast and quietly without leaving any evidence behind if they killed Ben?”
“You’re starting to sound like the attorney you’re married to. Well, that happens. I know more about Skye Terriers than I ever thought there was in the books from my ten years of wedded bliss. Okay, I’m blinking my lights to let our escort behind us drop back. I’m keeping my cell phone open so I can bring them in, but getting Grace to not take off into the Glades is in your hands now. I’ll keep quiet and let you do the talking at first.”
“I’m just hoping she doesn’t think I’ve betrayed her. Once again, Detective Jensen—”
“Ken.”
“Ken. I don’t think Grace Dixon Cobham hit anyone on the back of the head or murdered anyone, even if she had a revenge motive. I know Gracie can climb a fence and has two big bruisers at her beck and call, but my training and instinct say no.”
“You play hardball, Claire. I do too, so glad to have you along for more than the ride.”
22
Claire saw Gracie under a trellis dripping with orchids behind a ramshackle table along the roadside. Behind her lay a crooked path back into thick foliage, but no house was in sight, though there was a dirt-and-stone driveway just beyond.
“Don’t pull off right in front of the table so she feels blocked in,” she told the detective.
“Gotcha, Dr. Freud,” he said. “I suppose we’d better move slow too. Don’t want to spook her. You know, speaking of that, she disappeared in less than a minute when I tried to approach her little house to talk to her last week. I swear, she just evaporated into the Glades.”
“Yeah, well, she grows ghost orchids, so you never know,” Claire kidded him back. Surely he was kidding.
Claire got out first and led the way.
“Why, you done found me!” Gracie called out. “But you changed your man.”
Claire moved right up to the table and leaned over to take Gracie’s hand in both of hers. “I’m just going to level with you, Gracie, because you have with me.”
“Sure have.”
“I knew the police had to talk to absolutely everyone who ever had anything to do with Tib—Thunder, so I said to this officer, let me go along with you because I know Gracie and how generous and helpful she is.”
“Doesn’t look like a cop,” she said, slanting a narrow-eyed look at Jensen. Claire let go of her hands—steady hands for an old woman, no apparent nerves of quickening pulse. “The same one been talking to my boys?”
“The same, Mrs. Cobham,” Jensen said. “They’ve been very helpful.”
“Hmph.”
“And I’m astounded at how beautiful these orchids are. I’d like to buy one or two for my wife. She breeds dogs, so we’ll have to hang them high. Darn critters eat stuff they shouldn’t. None of these would be toxic, would they?”
“Nope, but hang ’em high—sounds like some old Western. Used to have a TV and phone before my Sam died. Hang ’em high, like a lynching. So let me just say, though you can maybe get me for trespassing, I had not one danged thing to do with Thunder harming someone crazy or dazed enough to get in his cage. Just climbed a ladder once or twice to see him and say hi.”
“You weren’t checking on the tiger that morning, were you?” Jensen pursued.
“Nope, and wasn’t anywhere near when their overseer got hurt. Read it in the paper Lonnie brought home.”
“Okay,” Jensen said, “that’s clear enough.”
“Do have something bad to confess, though. It’s gonna get out. It hurt me too, but it’s the worst for the best.”
Claire held her breath. Gracie looked up at Claire and stood, shoving back her old wooden chair. She unhooked two orchids from above her head and handed them to the dumbfounded Jensen, then plucked two more and thrust them at Claire.
“You can call that down payment for coming out here, so I could warn the both of you. Now Brittany Hoffman is going to know how it felt for me to lose my boy Thunder.”
Fears crashed through Claire. Gracie had decided to poison the tiger if she couldn’t have him? Poison Brit? After all, one of her sons worked with poison as an exterminator. Surely she didn’t mean Jackson. But could he have eaten something strange meant to harm Brit, then fell and hit his head?
“I reported that Thunder should not be in that crummy cage in that little petting zoo,” Gracie said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Why, can’t pet a beautiful beast like Thunder, so he shouldn’t have been there!”
Claire exhaled in relief, but Jensen asked, “Reported to who?”
“Why every wildlife group I know of, local, state, even national. And those people in Tallahassee took Thunder away from me in the first place. I know the BAA got a general not-their-fault ruling, but that tiger should not be there. I admitted in the letters I shouldn’t have had him—which hurt—’cause I should have. I got a letter just couple days ago that Brittany Hoffman would receive a legal order he’s to be moved to the Family Friendly Zoo up by Tampa, where they can take care of him proper. I’ll save up my money, go visit him, though probably now without a possum dinner.”
Ken Jensen, who had no doubt seen and heard a lot of things in his career, seemed speechless. Claire didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. To have Thunder moved, even farther way, was wise and took bravery and concern. But that would be the last straw for Brit at the BAA. At least the old woman had not shot or hurt the tiger because she didn’t want someone else to have it.
“I see,” Claire said, cradling the orchids after she paid for them.
Jensen had put one of his down and was thumbing two twenty-dollar bills out of his wallet. “It took a lot of courage and honesty to tell us that, Grace,” he said as he handed over the money.
“I know Claire here has a kid, but do you?” she asked Jensen, squinting up at him.
“Yes, ma’am, two teenagers.”
“Well, I have three boys. My Ronnie is not quite right in the head, but a hard worker and never married. Lonnie, he was married once, but she took off. And the third was that baby tiger I nursed and loved.”
Claire blinked back tears, amazed that Jensen kept nodding and didn’t ask one more question. It was as if good old Gracie had cast a spell on him, on them both.
“Claire,” Gracie said with a nod as she stashed the forty dollars in her jeans pocket, “you take good care of that baby you’re carrying now. Just stay out of all this, ’cause someone—don’t know who—still must have some big bone to pick and best you not be in the way.”
They thanked her for the orchids and placed them on the floor in the back seat of Jensen’s car.
“That’s twice that old cracker woman’s got the best of me,” he muttered. “Gotta call our backup and tell them to head to Naples. I still say someone that street-smart—well, swamp-smart—could have hurt Ben Hoffman and Jackson, if she had a mind to do it.”
“She’s put one over on Brit too,” she said as he made a U-turn and they headed back to Naples, driving past the police car that followed them. “I don’t know how many blows Brittany Hoffman can take, losing what and who she loves. And here, you did sound like you suspect her of something.”
“I think she’s wanted out of the BAA for a couple of years, and either couldn’t hurt her dad to tell him or wanted to hurt her dad by telling him. Maybe the influence of her fiancé or—”
“They’re not formally engaged.”
“I guess you’d know since you share a child. But li
sten, the tiger being moved is for the best, really. I read up on that breed, and they’re really endangered.”
Claire nodded. She did not agree with Jensen’s thinking that Brit wanted out of the BAA, especially not so badly that she’d harm her father. Of course, it was fairly new information too that Ben had been rough and violent, and Brit could have resented that. It seemed this case she and Nick had been drawn into was getting more complicated, not easier, to solve.
* * *
On their way back into Naples, Claire called Nick and filled him in on everything, except how annoyed and upset she was that Detective Jensen still seemed to be suspicious of Brit. She told Nick she was going to the BAA with Jensen to break the news to Brit if she hadn’t heard about the legal decision to move the tiger, maybe comfort her.
Nick said, “Glad you’re with the police, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to be careful. Lexi and I are playing Chutes and Ladders again, but call me if I need to come out there. The officers are still with you?”
“He sent them back downtown.”
“Claire, be careful!”
She guessed she could hardly argue that she always had been. Too much water under the bridge for that. But when they arrived at the BAA, they found only Ann and not Brit. And Ann, as well as Brit, had heard the news of Tiberia’s new home.
“Brittany and Jace left for somewhere when the letter was delivered to her,” Ann told them. Her voice was froggy either from crying or from the fact she was still grieving. When Claire’s father had left—though he was not dead—it took her mother weeks to even get out of bed.
“Can we see the letter?” Jensen asked.
“Took it with her. One week and she has to surrender the tiger, that’s what it said. Tiberia’s going to a special facility near Tampa. Broke her heart, mine too, but it is for the best. It will kill me to close and sell this place—well, it’s in Brittany’s name—but I suppose it has to be done. We’ll find good homes for all the animals first. Somehow.” She glanced around, her eyes resting for a moment on Jackson’s beloved Flamingo Isle. “She and Jace were having an argument they’ve had before. He says apply to work at the Naples Zoo, got tigers there and a blind Florida panther someone took a shot at. Jace told her, ‘See, big cats need you there too, especially that one got shot.’ Scared me more what she said then. ‘Things are so bad, I might as well be shot.’”