Free Matt Royal Mystery - 03 - Blood Island by H. Terrell Griffin Page B

general direction, motioning me to follow
him down the stairs. Fats brought up the rear.

     

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
    The parking lot was crowded with police cruisers and crime-scene vans,
all bearing the colors and logo of the Manatee County Sheriff. An unmarked police car was parked near the entrance. Cracker Dix was leaning
against it, his arms folded, a bored look on his face.
    Detective Sims and Chief Lester had stopped walking after leaving
the building and were huddled in the shade of the roof overhang. Lester
was talking, gesturing, Sims listening.
    Fats and I went to join Cracker.
    "Morning Cracker," said Fats. "That wasn't me talking to you
earlier."
    "That wasn't you who called me this morning?"
    "Wasn't me," said Fats. "Matt like to have scared the shit out of me
when he came busting into my place this morning. If I'd called, I'd have
met him in the bar."
    "Sure sounded like you."
    "Cracker," I said. "Where's Logan?"
    "Home, I guess. The chief came by my place this morning and said
I needed to go with him. He didn't say anything about Logan. I thought I
was being arrested again. Then he told me about you having to shoot that
guy. I told him what I knew and he told me to come with him. Here we
are."
    I called Logan on my cell phone.
    "You okay?" I asked.
    "Yep, sitting here with a bowl of oatmeal, the paper, and a nine mil."
    "Logan, keep an eye out. If that dead guy was after me, somebody's
probably after you."

    "What in the hell is going on?"
    "I don't know. We must have kicked over a hornet's nest somehow.
Maybe we'll know more after the cops get through comparing notes."
    "Hope so," said Logan.
    I hung up.
    Sims and Lester came over. Sims didn't look happy. "Mr. Royal," lie
said, "you have fouled my nest."
    "Sorry, Detective," I said. "I sure didn't mean to."
    Bill Lester was grinning. "Matt has a way of doing that. Never means
to, either."
    This was not helping.
    The chief snorted with what passed for a laugh. "The detective wants
statements from all three of you," he said. "We can do it at the Longboat
station. Save you a trip downtown."
    It was lunchtime when we finished with the statements. I drove Cracker
back to the village and met Logan for lunch at Mar Vista.
    "Somebody went to a lot of trouble to take you out," he said, when
we were seated on the patio.
    "There has to be a reason. Somebody tried to kill us on Coquina
Beach, and now this. I wonder if somebody thinks we know something
that we don't."
    "Let's look at this logically. We're looking for Peggy. We talk to Varn
and he's murdered. The same night somebody tries to take us out. Then
we go to see Wayne Lee and within a few hours, he's killed. Next morning,
they come for you again. It's got to be about Peggy."
    "Not necessarily," I said. "Maybe it has something to do with the
body I found at Pelican Man's."
    "Has anybody been in contact with Vince Delgado?"
    Vince, the curator at Pelican Man's, had left for Michigan to visit
family the morning after we found the body. "He won't be back for a
couple of weeks. He's in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan."
    "I'm not sure it makes sense to try to tie these murders to the vulture
pit guy. All you did was find a body. How would that tie you into anything
that'd get people killed?"

    "Suppose somebody thought I knew more about that body than I
was supposed to, and they thought I was getting Varn and Wayne Lee involved in it somehow. Maybe they just took them out as a precaution, and
they figured to do the same with me."
    "That's a little far-fetched. The cops don't even know who the vulture pit guy is."
    "Did you know that his body disappeared from the morgue?" I
asked.
    "You're kidding. How?"
    I told him the story of the fake funeral home pick up, and the fact
that the police had no leads.
    "That's weird," said Logan. "Maybe you have a point. Have you discussed it with Bill Lester?"
    "Not yet."
    I brought Logan up to date on Debbie's research on Varn.
    He shrugged. "Sounds like he