Stiff Arm Steal Read online

  She sipped her tea. I didn’t speak.

  “But he always found the money for us to get by, and for our son to go to college.”

  “I’m sorry to ask this, but did he ever hurt you, Mrs. Ferguson?”

  Her eyes flashed. “Good God, no. No, never. He isn’t an angry man, Mr. Jones. Just sad. It happened so slowly I never really noticed. Our lives became gray. We did all the things people do. We vacationed on the Gulf, went to school recitals, had backyard barbecues with the neighbors. But the whole time, the world was turning gray. We existed, but we didn’t live. Sandy lost his verve. That boy, so full of life? I don’t even know who that was anymore.”

  I looked at her face, and wondered if she realized the absence of any makeup made her look gray. “Is it possible that Mr. Ferguson might have harmed himself?”

  “Why on earth would you say that?”

  “Mrs. Ferguson, I’m no psychologist, but your husband sounds depressed.”

  “Well that’s what I’m saying. He was sad. That doesn’t mean he would hurt himself. Goodness me.”

  “I’m not suggesting he was sad. I’m suggesting he might have been suffering from depression. Sometimes people suffering from clinical depression can feel so isolated as to harm themselves.” I was thinking that Mr. Ferguson might have taken his own life, but I couldn’t find the words to say it to her.

  “No, Mr. Jones. No. Sandy would not harm himself. He has a family.”

  I changed tack. “Is there anywhere your husband might have gone? A favorite place? Some old college buddy?”

  She shook her head. “No. He never kept in touch with anyone. All he did was sit in his den and do goodness knows what.”

  “Okay, Mrs. Ferguson. We’ll see if we can track down some information on your husband. But I have to warn you. What we find may not be good news.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sometimes the people we find don’t want to be found. Sometimes they’ll run away for reasons we can barely fathom. Sometimes we can’t find them. And sometimes they’ve done harm to themselves. Or worse.” I looked into her eyes to make sure she got my meaning.

  She blinked slowly. “Don’t think me cruel, Mr. Jones. But I don’t care. I’m beyond caring. I’m tired, and I’m old, and I’m gray inside, too. And I’m only forty-five. I just need to know Mr. Jones. If he’s run away, or he’s found another woman. Or he’s dead. I don’t care. I love my husband, Mr. Jones. But I just don’t care anymore. And that makes me even sadder.”

  I took a deep breath. “Okay, Mrs. Ferguson.”

  I stood up and Lizzy followed my lead. Mrs. Ferguson collected herself and stood with us.

  “You’ll go with Miss Staniforth here. She’s an expert at these matters. She’ll work with you to go through bank records, credit cards, everything we can use to track your husband and get you some news.”

  “I don’t know anything about that. My husband took care of all that stuff.”

  “That’s okay. Miss Staniforth will help you get what you need.”

  “You don’t understand. I don’t have any money. Sandy gave me housekeeping, but he took care of the banking. I have no way to pay you.”

  “Don’t you mind that. The money doesn’t matter.”

  “I can’t even pay for groceries.”

  I ushered her to the door. “We’ll sort that out, too. You just go with Miss Staniforth now. She’ll help you. And I’m here if you need me.”

  “You take a seat at my desk,” said Lizzy. “I’ll be right with you.”

  We watched Mrs. Ferguson sit down. Lizzy turned in the doorway of my office and frowned at me. She shook her head. “Just when I’m about to give up on you, Miami Jones, you go and do something Christian on me.”

  She smiled and closed the door behind her and left me listening to the patter of the rain.

  Chapter Nineteen

  THE RAIN WAS letting up by the time I drove over to Gun Club Road. I parked in the lot of the Criminal Justice Complex and went in the front. The reception desk was staffed by a civilian named Ted. He was a good egg and I’d thrown him a few tickets for Mets spring training. He nodded when he saw me.

  “You armed?”

  “No.”

  He buzzed me through.

  “Thanks, Ted.”

  He handed me a visitor’s tag. “You have a good one, Miami.”

  I wandered through the corridors and found Danielle at her desk, eating an apple and looking at a computer screen.

  “Hey, you,” she said.

  “Any news on the hard drive?”

  She picked up a pile of papers off her desk. “The tech boys got a bit there. Some nudie shots, which they enjoyed.”

  “Jenny Bellingham?”

  “God, no. Off the web. Nothing illegal though. And these.” She handed me the papers. They were printouts of emails. Exchanges between Newt Bellingham and what appeared to be prospective buyers of the Heisman trophy.

  “So he was trying to sell it.”

  “Back page.”

  I flipped through to the last page. It was a print out of a web page. An ad on a classifieds site, offering an original Heisman trophy for sale.

  “This is still online?”

  “No. Looks like Newt pulled it. But our guys retrieved a cached copy.”

  I flipped back to the emails. “So how do we find out if one of these buyers is our guy?”

  “Each email is sent from an email service provider. Three of these are from the cable company. Two of them are free online email accounts.”

  “Gotta be a free account. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to use his home cable account.”

  “Can’t rule out stupid. He is a man.”

  “Touché. So what do we do? Email them?”

  “Each email provider keeps a log of when, where, and who sent an email.”

  “What about free accounts? They can be accessed anywhere, right?”

  “They can. But for security, the email provider logs an IP address that tells us which computer location sent the email.”

  “So how do we get that info?”

  “The providers need a warrant to access that info. I’ve got an eyewitness to the crime, the victim’s authorization to access the drive and five emails that specifically mention the stolen item. Wasn’t too hard to get a warrant.”

  “So when will you hear?”

  “Usually within forty-eight hours, give or take. They can do it within an hour if we push hard.”

  I smiled. “So you’re pushing hard.”

  “No.”

  I stopped smiling. “Why not?”

  “These guys do have work to do. We push on every case, then soon the pushing stops working and the forty-eight hours becomes the minimum. We save pushing for important cases like missing kids. This ain’t that.”

  “I agree. Not sure your boss or BJ Baker will, though.”

  “Actually, my boss did agree. He knows how it works. And he knows one day we’ll need this done yesterday. He said BJ Baker will just have to wait for a change.”

  “Perhaps I’ve misjudged the sheriff.”

  “Perhaps.”

  I looked around the floor. It didn’t look like a New York police drama off television. It looked like a brokerage firm with uniforms. “What’s on your agenda?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I got a ton to get through.”

  “Well, I’ll let you get to it then. See you around, Deputy.” I winked.

  “You too.”

  I returned my pass to Ted and walked outside. The rain had stopped. The sun had broken through the clouds and was already heating up the wet pavement. I felt like I was being sautéed.

  I got to my car and started her up and turned on the air. I sat for a moment. My evening had opened up. I could go for a run, grab a cold beer, and make it an early night. Or I could do what BJ Baker was paying me for and go find his Heisman before the cops. And to find his, as Ron had put it, I’d have to find them all.

  Chapter Twenty


  “I WAS SURPRISED to get your call,” said Beccy Williams. She put a martini on the table next to me. I was in a wicker lounge chair that was built like a first class seat on an airliner. She didn’t sit. Instead, she leaned against the balcony railing and sipped her martini. She was wearing a red silky dress that in my father’s day would have been called an undergarment. The neckline dropped deep across her chest and the bottom ended only inches below her navel.

  I sipped my martini. It was dirty with three olives. “Like I said, I need your help.”

  “You always needed my help, sugar.” She wiped some condensation off the glass onto her finger, then stroked her finger across the length of her collarbone. A blind man could see she wasn’t wearing a bra.

  “How’s work?”

  “You came all this way to ask about my career?” She smiled and small dimples appeared on one side of her mouth. Her blond hair dropped across the side of her face.

  The sun was setting behind us and Hollywood Beach was drifting into darkness. The breeze had blown the clouds away and the humidity was comfortable on the coast. Despite that, I felt steamy.

  “Just making small talk,” I said.

  She took another sip. “Well, since you asked, I have been approached by ESPN.”

  “That’s great. What for?”

  “Initially, mainly sideline stuff. I plan to anchor, eventually.”

  “I saw you on Fox. Doing the sidelines at the Dolphins. You looked good.”

  She looked at me with eyes the color of the Caribbean Sea. I knew for a fact the color was all real. Truth was, she didn’t look good on television. She looked sensational. In real life she looked like she could do with a feed. I could see bones above her breasts and her arms spoke of an eating disorder, which she didn’t have. Unless you considered a liquid diet a disorder. They say television adds ten pounds. On Beccy, it added it in all the right places.

  “Will you go to New York?”

  “The audition meeting is in Bristol, Connecticut.”

  I nodded. “Their main campus.”

  “Why don’t you come with me?” She smiled. “You could show me your old haunts.”

  “They’re called haunts for a reason.”

  We sat in silence for a while. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I figured Beccy would fill the void.

  “You look good,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Working out?”

  “Not much. Running mainly.”

  “You were always a good runner. For a pitcher.”

  “Maybe too good.”

  “Yeah, you could have done with a little more beef on your bones.” She giggled. “You remember that line drive that Tucker hit at St. Lucie? Charlotte down three-four. Tying run on third and Tucker drives a humdinger back at you.”

  “I remember.”

  She shook her head and smiled. “And you catch it with your pitching hand.”

  “I couldn’t pick up a ball for a week.”

  “It didn’t seem to affect your performance later that night if I recall.”

  I shrugged. “You ever miss those days, working for the papers?”

  “Not for a second.”

  She finished her drink and sauntered to the bar to mix another. I was only half way through so she topped mine off. She sat on the wicker chair opposite and stretched across so her feet lay between my legs.

  “You got a great memory,” I said.

  “I remember every inning I saw you pitch.” She wiggled her toes as she drank.

  “If you get the gig will you move to New York?”

  “When I get the gig. And yes, probably. So this might be your last chance to say goodbye.”

  “Then I have a question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “How many Heisman trophies are there in Florida?”

  “Ooh, football trivia as foreplay.”

  I shrugged.

  She pinched her eyes. “Seriously?”

  “It’s important.”

  She took a long sip from her drink. “How many winners from Florida?”

  “No. Trophies. From anywhere. Currently in Florida.”

  “What do I look like, the Census Bureau?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “This is the retirement capital of the world. The Heisman has been awarded since 1935. You do the math.”

  “Okay,” I said, edging back in my chair. “So let’s say your buddies at ESPN wanted to do a feature on Heisman winners. How would they track them down? Who would they ask?”

  “They’d ask me.”

  “So what would you do?”

  She sipped her drink as she thought. I saw muscles in her slender thighs contract. She stared at me.

  “There’s a lot I could do. But the first would be to contact the Heisman Trust. They present the award now. They probably have some kind of alumni mailing list.”

  I nodded. “Good idea.”

  “Of course it’s a good idea. Now tell me that isn’t the reason you drove all the way down here.”

  “It’s not that far. But yeah, that was pretty much it.”

  She shook her head and teased her hair. Then she stood up, stepped over to me and sat on my lap, straddling me. She dipped her finger into her martini again and traced her finger around my lips. She put her drink aside and leaned into me. Kissed me hard. She tasted salty and dry. Memories came flooding back. This part was always oh-so-good. But the rest was like trains in the night. Headed in opposite directions. Now she was going to New York City. She wanted to say goodbye. We were consenting adults. I tried to convince myself there was no reason not to. I failed.

  I must have broken speed records getting back to West Palm.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  TROPICANA PALMS MOBILE Home Park was starting to feel like a second home. It wasn’t growing on me. I sat in the Mustang being as covert as one ever is in a bright red sports car. The streets around the park were full of kids and teenagers with nothing better to do than stand around doing nothing. The Mustang attracted some attention but not as much as I thought it might. There were more late-model cars in the park after work than I assumed there would be. Heavy on the trucks: F-150s, Silverados, Rams. A few sportier models. Nissans and Mazdas. Some people put more effort into their cars than their homes. Perhaps that was simply because they could.

  I sat kitty corner from the Bellingham’s home. The sun was low. Newt Bellingham had arrived home in his Ram and parked right behind the old Civic. He got out of the cab slowly. He looked like a man who had worked a long day. He ambled up the path and kicked his boots on the doorstep. Little puffs of cement dust swirled around. Then he went inside. There was no movement for a couple of hours. Some kids left the streets and went inside. They were replaced by other kids. It looked like they worked in shifts. I waited patiently. There was no point getting worked up, wanting something to happen. It was like a rain delay at the ballpark: the rain stops when the rain stops. Getting worked up meant you were in knots when the game actually started. Better to be relaxed and ready.

  I watched the door to the Bellingham home finally open. Jenny Bellingham stepped down. She was dressed in a pink nurse’s uniform and she wore soft white shoes. She walked to the Civic and used a key to unlock the door. In the night light I couldn’t see the shiner, but I guessed it to be mauve and yellow. She got in the car, checked her mirrors, put her seatbelt on and started it. She did a K-turn across the street and drove away from me. I waited fifteen minutes, then I got out and locked the Mustang. When I got to the door I banged hard with my fist. The home swayed a little with the impact. I shuddered to think what would happen in a hurricane. I heard movement and heavy footsteps inside. The door flung open.

  “What!”

  “Mr. Bellingham.”

  “The hell do you want?”

  “A chat. About the Heisman.”

  “I’m in the middle of SportsCenter.”

  “It’ll be on again in half an hour.”

&nbs
p; I stepped into the mobile home and he had to choose to take bodily contact or move out of the way. He moved. I walked into the room and waited for him to close the door. He was in a blue tank top and brown shorts. He had a can of Bud Light in his hand. He took a moment to gather his forces, then he marched on.

  “You found my Heisman yet?”

  “You mean, your wife’s Heisman?”

  “What’s hers is mine.”

  “It’s her father’s, actually.”

  “Well he ain’t here no more,” he said, flopping down on the sofa. Two guys were on screen, yelling at each other about who was the best basketball player ever. One said Jordan. The other had obviously never seen Michael Jordan play. I picked up the remote and turned the television off.

  “Hey, I’m watching that.”

  “Not anymore. Tell me about the Heisman.”

  “What about it?” He had to crane his neck to look up at me. “Some guy took it. You’re s’posed to find it, but you’re here busting my chops ‘cause you’re hopeless and you got nothing.”

  “So you don’t think your wife took it?’

  “No.”

  How do you know?”

  He gave me a tight grin. “Because I asked her.”

  I took a deep breath. It was a thing. I always took a deep breath before a pitch. It calmed me. And I needed calming. I really wanted to put Newt Bellingham’s head through his flat screen television.

  “Who took it?” I said.

  He frowned. “How the hell should I know?”

  “Maybe someone you tried to sell it to?”

  He looked dumbfounded for a moment, then I saw a flash of anger. “She told you, didn’t she? The bitch.”

  “If you are referring to Mrs. Bellingham, that’s not a very nice way to talk about your wife.”

  “I call it as I see it. And she’s a disloyal bitch.”

  I took a step towards the sofa and stood off at an angle so he had no way to reach me with his feet. No point getting kicked in the nuts if I happened to annoy him.