CHAPTER THIRTY
Jock and I were sitting on the patio drinking coffee under whirring ceiling fans. The sun was up, the sky cloudless, the bay green and clear. I heard the clatter of a low-flying helicopter and soon spotted it, a Coast Guar-chopper heading north over the bay. An osprey flew low above us, a fish in its talons, gliding toward its nest on Jewfish Key. I was telling Jock about my conversation the night before with Cracker Dix.
“I’ve met Dora,” he said. “She’s the small gray-haired lady who comes into Tiny’s sometimes.”
“Yes. I didn’t remember anything being printed in the paper about the killings, so I called J.D. She said there was nothing.”
“That seems a little strange. You’ve got a reporter on the scene of two murders and she doesn’t even do a human-interest-type story.”
“Yeah. Dora spent a lot of years with major news organizations covering some of the world’s hotspots. She’d surely know how to write a story about two people knifed to death on a boat. Why didn’t she?”
Jock smiled. “I guess you’ve got to ask her that.”
I looked at my watch. Nine o’clock. I opened my cell phone and dialed her number. She answered on the second ring.
“Good morning, Dora. This is Matt Royal.”
“Good morning, Matt. How are you?”
“A bit perplexed.”
“Well, that won’t do. How can I help unperplex you?”
“I was talking to Cracker Dix last night. He said you were aboard Dulcimer the night of the murders.”
“I was.”
“But you didn’t write a story.”
“No.”
“Mind telling me why?”
“Not if you’ll buy me lunch today.”
“Isn’t there some law against bribing journalists?”
“Probably.”
“Well, you never eat much anyway. I guess a small bribe won’t hurt.”
“I don’t think so. Mar Vista at noon?”
“I’ll see you there.”
Dora Walters was a petite woman with a cap of gray hair, a ready smile, and eyes that sparkled with the vestige of the beautiful girl she’d been fifty years before. She was in her seventies now, and spent her winters on our key and her summers in the North Georgia mountain town of Blue Ridge. She’d been an internationally known reporter who had semiretired to her job on our local paper. She had traded the reporting of international incidents for taking pictures of self-satisfied partygoers holding drinks and smiling vacuously for her ever-present camera. She always seemed amused by her job and the people she covered. It wasn’t the same as reporting on heads of state, but it suited her and she was content to spend her winters slipping into parties and taking pictures and writing stories of this or that charity fund-raiser.
I walked the short distance from my house to the restaurant and was sweating in the August heat by the time I arrived. Dora was just pulling into the parking lot, so I waited at the door for her.
“Matt, you must be nuts, walking in this heat.”
“Well, it was only a couple blocks.”
“Yeah. In this heat.” She walked through the door shaking her head. We took a seat by the windows overlooking the bay. A waiter came and took our order, a salad for Dora and a burger for me. He brought our drinks a minute or two later and disappeared into the dark reaches of the kitchen.
“Why are you here this time of the year?” I asked. “Aren’t you usually still in the mountains?”
“Yes, but I had to come home for a few days to take care of some business matters. I’m headed back tomorrow.”
“So,” I said, “why no story about the murders on Dulcimer?”
“By the time I could write it, it wasn’t a story.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Observer is a weekly. Our absolute drop-dead deadline is Tuesday evening. I was on the boat on a Monday evening. The story would have to be set up on Tuesday to be in that week’s paper. It wasn’t supposed to be much of a story. And it wouldn’t have been without the murders. Just something to fill space during the summer dearth of news on the key.”
“Why were you even here? Don’t you usually go to Blue Ridge in May?”
“Usually. But I was having some work done on my house and it was taking longer than expected. So I stayed put for an extra couple of weeks.”
“So, why didn’t you write the story on Tuesday?”
“I was in the hospital.”
“What?” I was surprised. I hadn’t heard that Dora had been hurt.
“It was nothing. When Dulcimer ran aground, I was knocked off my feet. Pete Collandra was one of the medics on the scene and he sent me to the hospital to be sure I hadn’t hurt something important. I got out the next day, but it was too late to write the story. By the following week it was old news. Thus, no story.”
“What can you tell me about that night on the boat?”
“Matt, you know I’m always happy to talk to you, but why are you so interested?”
“Do you remember that a young man was killed on the beach the same day?”
“Duh. I’m not senile.”
“Sorry. The dead man was the son of a friend of mine from my army days. He asked me to look into his son’s death. The police are at a dead end.”
“I thought that pretty Detective Duncan was in charge of that investigation.”
“She is, and she’s helping me. We’re thinking there might be something that was missed on the first go-around.”
“Are you interested in the murder or the detective?”
“Both, I guess, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got a better chance of solving the murder than wooing the detective.”
Dora laughed. “Okay. But what does the murder on the beach have to do with the Dulcimer killings?”
“At first, I didn’t think there was a connection. But now I’m not so sure. I’m just grasping at straws at this point.”
“There’s not much I can tell you. It was a pretty normal evening. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just people having fun.”
“Did you see any Asian people on the boat that night?”
“Not that I recall. Why?”
“I don’t know. I’m beginning to think that some Asians were involved in the killing on the beach. I’m just working back, trying to find a connection.”
“Absolutely nothing stood out about the evening until the lights went out and we hit the sandbar.”
I thought for a minute, trying to think of anything else to ask her. Then an image jogged my brain. A camera. I’m an idiot, I thought. “Dora, did you have your camera?”
She smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“Did you get any pictures?”
“A lot.”
“What happened to them?”
She reached into her purse and came out with a compact disc. “They’re all here. Yours for the price of a small salad.”