Don Bruns - Too Much Stuff

“I’ve bailed your ass out more times than I care to count, James. I’ve had a lot of good ideas.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I suggest we get some sleep and visit your friendly Islamorada Library first thing tomorrow morning.”

We agreed and headed to our respective rooms.

It was probably five a.m. when I heard the doorknob turn. The first thing I thought was that someone had made a mistake. They assumed it was the room next door.

Then I heard a clicking noise as if a key was being inserted. Pelican Cove still used keys, not the plastic slide cards that most places use.

“Who’s there?” I sat straight up in bed.

Em shook her head, wiped the sleep from her eyes, and stared up at me.

“Skip, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know. Someone’s trying to open the door.”

My girlfriend reached for the nightstand drawer beside her bed and opened it.

Standing up, I slowly walked toward the door.

“Skip, step aside.” There was urgency in her voice.

I took two steps back and heard the door handle turn again.

With a powerful thrust the door swung in, banging loudly against the wall. I saw a silhouette, both arms straight out in front.

“Get down, Skip.”

I dropped.

The first explosion was deafening, and I could just make out the second one.

I looked up from my kneeling position, peering out the open door. There was no more silhouette.

“Are you all right?” She was shouting.

“What the hell happened.”

She was standing by the bed in my T-shirt. Her blonde hair was disheveled and her face was ashen.

“Em?”

And then I saw the gun hanging from her right hand.

“He shot at us, Skip.”

“And?”

“I shot him.”

The outside lights shone bright through the door and I stepped out on the walkway. There was no one. Out in the parking lot the roar of a motorcycle split the night, then things got quiet again.

“There’s no one here, Em.”

She was suddenly by my side. Emily in my T-shirt, me in my boxers.

“Apparently, you didn’t do any damage.”

She knelt, running her fingers over the cement.

“Apparently, I did,” she said.

She held up her fingers and they were stained with bright red blood. And there was a whole lot more of it on the concrete.

The couple from the neighboring unit stuck their heads out the door.

“Jesus Christ, if that was a bullet, it destroyed our TV and almost took us out,” the guy said.

We heard commotion from down the hall and several other people stuck their heads out, trying to see if everything had returned to normal. I suppose it all depends on what you consider normal.

A guy with a dirty work shirt and thirty keys hanging from his belt came rushing into our room, walked to the headboard of the bed, and put his finger in the bullet hole.

“This where the bullet went through?”

I nodded.

“Damn. Gonna have to patch and paint.” Apparently no sympathy for the intended victims.

He shook his head in disgust and walked back out.

“You could have been killed, Em.”

“Back at you, Skip. We survived.”

“You need to go back to Miami. This is definitely not a safe place.”

“What? And leave you two guys on your own? Come on. The reason I came down was because I got the note saying someone wanted to kill you. You need me for protection.”

She pointed her index finger at me, then poked it in my chest.

“Look, I may have screwed up on the surveillance thing, but give me credit, boyfriend, I’ve pulled my weight.”

She had. No question.

James walked in behind Mrs. T.

“Boys, I think it’s time we go home. Someone is serious about stopping this investigation.” Mrs. T. appeared shaken.

As two sheriff’s deputies paraded into the room, I pulled Mrs. T. aside.

“Mrs. Trueblood, I’ve got some really good news.”

She looked skeptical. “I’d say we could use some right now.”

“We found a metal box near the foundation of the Coral Belle. Inside is a piece of paper. It’s old, it’s brittle, and it’s all folded up, so we’re taking it to the library tomorrow to see how we can open it and make it readable.”

Her mouth hung open as surprise flooded her face and all of a sudden I had the feeling that she never really expected us to find anything. And we’d pretty much expected that we would.

Ushering her out onto the walkway we walked around the bloodstains and I touched her shoulder.

“Did you hear me, ma’am?”

“Yes. Yes. You really found something? I mean, what else could it be? It’s in the right spot, and you said it’s old and-” She looked up into my eyes. “You still want to go through with this?”

“We are this much closer to finding the gold.”

“You almost got killed tonight. I can’t in good conscience ask you to stay on my account.”

“What about the dead guy?”

She looked away from me and down at the pool.

“Obviously Mr. Weezle and Mr. Markim weren’t in my employ at the time of Mr. Weezle’s death.” She still seemed rather cold about his death. “But you,” she said, “you and your friend, someone tried to kill you.”

“Twice.”

“What?”

“It’s a long story.”

“James, I can’t-”

“It’s Skip.”

“Skip, I will honor your offer.”

“Really?” I was stunned.

“Really. You’ve put yourself on the line. If you find the gold, you get one million dollars.”

There was the catch. Pretend she’d misunderstood. But hey, one million was still a heck of a lot better than the previous deal.

“With all respect, Mrs. Trueblood, it was two million dollars.”

“Whatever.”

From behind me I felt a hand on my arm. Turning, I saw Big D with a disgusted look on his face.

“You let people track through the blood here on this concrete?” Officer Danny Mayfair said with an accusing tone.

“I didn’t exactly let anyone do anything. I don’t remember being in charge of this crime scene.”

“We need to talk.”

And for the second time in two days I was interviewed by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department. This time it was more informal. I even knew the officer’s nickname and how he got it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“It’s called deacidification.” Kathy Ebert sat at her desk, piled high with papers and books, and the three of us were hanging on every word.

“And you do it here?”

“We do. On older books. Antiquarian collectors do it. There used to be a lot of acid in paper and, just like the piece you’ve got there, it turns yellow and crinkly over time. So the idea is to preserve the paper. We can stop the acid from doing any more damage with Bookkeeper Deacidification Spray.”

“But we need to open it without destroying the-”

“Bookkeeper Solution is a nonaqueous, liquid phase process that uses magnesium oxide.”

“A nonaqueous what?”

“Not important, Mr. Moore. Once we fix the letter, we’ll use Bookkeeper. Right now we want to open your letter without, as you said, destroying it.”

“And how do we do that?”

“We’re going to treat it like a cigar. Put it in a humidor.”

We watched as she pulled out a wet sponge, opened a box of Baggies, and put the sponge and our folded paper in one of the plastic bags.

“We expose the paper to as much humidity as possible. Then, tomorrow-”

“Tomorrow?” The three of us said it almost together. And we all three sounded disappointed. We had work to do and the letter was crucial to our investigation. We were hoping for today. She assured us she couldn’t hurry the process.