Randy White - Seduced

A flurry of legal suits had ensued.

This all happened twenty years before I was born, but there are still so many empty lots and dead-end streets that, seen from the air, Cape Coral’s outskirts resemble a jigsaw puzzle that was abandoned due to lack of interest. What the city doesn’t lack is friendliness, and an interesting mix of people, which is why the community has grown and thrived despite its shaky beginnings.

Not out here, though, north of the city limits. It was just Reggie, with me following along, beneath stars on acreage as flat as Kansas wheat. When we came to a line of cattails, he stopped. Ahead, I could hear water spilling over what appeared to be a cement weir.

Flowing water was a rarity in a canal this far inland.

“This is one investment the governor didn’t get his money back,” Reggie said. “But that’s okay, considering what I’m about to show you.” He patted his pants, then the pockets of his jacket. “You happen to bring a flashlight?”

“I left it with my gun,” I replied. “Next time you ask for my help, I’ll pack for an expedition. If there’s something you want me to see, maybe you should come back alone when the sun’s up and take pictures. I’ve got a charter in the morning.”

“You’re getting irritable, Miz Hannah.”

“Nope, I’m getting mad. Instead of walking a hundred yards, why didn’t we park the car here? For all we know, we could be standing in fire ants.”

“A Lincoln Town Car ain’t an off-road vehicle, ma’am. The governor was fussy about them tires and so am I. Hang on… Could be I got some matches from the Over Easy. They got good pie there.”

“Don’t bother,” I told him, and jogged back to the limo. When I started the engine, the poor little man looked frazzled and wobbly in the headlights, so I babied the vehicle across a field of wire grass-until I noticed several pairs of glowing red eyes in the cattails along the canal where Reggie stood. When I sped up, the animals-whatever they were-crashed into the water. They had some weight to them. I could tell because the windows were down and I heard the splash.

“My lord, my lord, they’s giant lizards,” said Reggie. He was still backing away as I pulled up. “Never in my life has there been a day like this day here. Ten, twelve feet long, one of those bastards. I might be drunk, but I ain’t imagining things. My lord… they could’a grabbed either one of us.”

“Get in the car, let’s see.”

I assumed he was right but had exaggerated the size. The canals of Cape Coral were prime habitat for Nile monitor lizards that had escaped or been released as pets. The population in the area had flourished, thanks to an abundance of house cats and family dogs.

“They have no predators and plenty of food,” I explained as we crept along in the limo. When there was a break in the foliage, I angled the headlights onto a long stretch of water.

“We’re both wrong,” I said.

“Don’t think so. Those ain’t gators, with those pointy heads and red eyes. Giant lizards, I’d swear.”

“Nope,” I said. “Lizards wouldn’t last long here. They’re saltwater crocs. I’ve seen them in Florida Bay, and Turkey Point-there’s warm water there because of the nuclear power plant. Every now and again, one will show up on Sanibel, but what in the world are they doing this far inland?”

“Water in this here canal is warm as the dickens, if that makes a difference. Does it?”

“Reggie,” I said, “you didn’t bring me here to talk about crocodiles.”

“That there’s your answer,” he replied as if he hadn’t heard me. “They hit a hot-water spring when they dug this canal and it flooded the place. So the governor bought the land cheap and put in that little dam. You think those crocs will bother us if we climb up there and take a quick look? That’s what I want you to see.”

“A weir with a spillway?”

No, the aging chauffeur wanted me to see something else.

I left the limo running and followed him to a welded barrier that was easy enough to slip around. The retaining wall between the flowing spring and the canal was a slab of concrete capped with cement. It was a cool night. As I neared the spillway, the water’s heat radiated a sulfuric warmth.

“Have a look,” Reggie said, and stepped away from the slab.

“Graffiti. So what?”

“Look closer.”

I did. Twenty years ago, Lonnie Dupree had written her name on the capstone in wet cement. She had added a date and her palm print.

“January first.” I was shielding my eyes from the limo’s headlights. “Why is this important?”

“She didn’t sign her name ’cause she wanted to, believe you me. It was after the governor threw a big New Year’s Eve party-then he did that young woman one hell of a bigger favor. Her name and handprint, he made her do it as insurance-a sort of confession if she ever talked about what happened that night.”

I couldn’t see Reggie’s face, just his cloaked silhouette, because he stood between me and the car. “She must’ve killed someone,” I said. “Or hid something she wasn’t supposed to have. Why else would they come the next day and pour cement?”

“Mixed it the same night,” he corrected, “but the work stretched into the small hours. That’s all I’m at liberty to say as of now. I wanted someone else to know, Miz Hannah. Oh”-he indicated a nearby corner-“you’ll see a spot there I sanded away twenty years ago, but not fast enough.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Evidence,” he said. “Evidence the governor left behind out of sloppiness. I thought it was taken care of, but, nope, I was a day or two late with that sander. Can you imagine? After doing what she did, Lonnie snuck back the next morning with a camera and brought along two witnesses willing to party their way to a notary and get papers signed. A cheerleader bein’ that smart, it was unexpected.”

“Pictures of what? Mr. Chatham’s fingerprints? I doubt if a court would accept that as evidence. Or was it something else?”

Reggie watched me inspect the area he had sanded but didn’t respond.

I asked, “While she was at it, why didn’t she get rid of her name and palm print? I don’t expect she told you, but you’ve got to wonder.”

“And risk making a powerful man angry? I dunno… she was just a girl, at the time, who done what she did, then came to him begging for help. Those was the drug days. No telling what she was on. L - S - D , I forget most the names. Cocaine? There was one come up from South America, it was the worst. Devil’s Breath, they called it. Kids walked around like dead folk.”

I said, “If she was on drugs, why would she care what anyone thought? She would have destroyed all this.”

“A dumb girl her age might’ve risked it. But not that Lonnie. She waited until Miz Lilly was dead, and the governor was old and weak, to play her trump card. She’d been holding that card back for twenty years. By then, her own life had ’bout run out of blue chips.”

“I was right, she must have murdered someone,” I said.

The chauffeur shrugged.

“If there weren’t crocs here back then, there had to be gators. Why bury a body, if that’s what it was, under concrete? Gators would’ve taken care of any evidence. You told me this much; tell me the rest.”

Reggie, turning toward the car, said, “I like riding in back. You mind driving while I enjoy myself another scotch?”

That night, after I’d gotten Loretta to bed and walked the nurse safely to her car, I researched Florida’s unsolved murders for the time period I’d seen etched in cement. I discovered nothing of interest until I narrowed the search to include people who’d gone missing in January of that year.