Sunday morning I walked Big Boy and picked up a copy of the Pensacola Herald. A huge photo of Amos Frost in his dress uniform was on the front page. The article made it seem as if he had died in the line of duty. There were photos of him leading a bible study at his church, coaching Little League, and on a SWAT call. The paper included quotes from his coworkers and friends, but oddly none from his ex-wives. The editorial proclaimed the need for more responsible journalism. It didn’t mention my name or my newspaper, but it was about me.
I went over to Dare’s for brunch. A light breeze off Pensacola Bay made it comfortable enough for us to sit outside.
Dare made a healthy version of eggs Benedict with her special hollandaise sauce, tomatoes, and turkey bacon. I brought champagne and fresh orange juice for the mimosas and sliced the fruit. A Preservation Hall album played while we cooked, and Dare shared her New York adventures. I filled her in on the last few days. Big Boy sat on the floor of the kitchen, happily eating strips of crispy bacon.
“How many battles can you fight at one time?” she asked as we sat down to eat on her back porch. In between the neighboring houses, we could see shrimpers trawling the bay.
I handed her a mimosa. “I’m about at my limit, but I have to see this through. You know that.”
Dare smiled. “It seems you’re always on some crusade, carrying the whole world on your shoulders.” Taking a sip of mimosa, she added, “And the world doesn’t care; some even resent you for it.”
“I guess I’m a real jerk.”
Big Boy was full and napped in the sun, soaking up rays. “Well I do worry about you,” she said. “You have no social life other than drinking in bars with Gravy, your staff, or some news source. You don’t go out on many dates. You’re obsessed with a newspaper that’s on constant life support. Seems like every time I see you someone has either beaten you up or threatened to shut you down.”
Dare must have seen the surprise on my face. I hadn’t mention Hopjacks or Walnut Hill. I had combed my hair to hid the stitches and had tried hard not to show how badly my ribs ached.
She smiled. “What? You think you are the only one with sources?”
“I didn’t want to bother you,” I said. “The doctor said I’ll be better in a week or so.”
“Are you in pain?”
“Only when I exhale, but the mimosas are helping.”
Dare asked, “Don’t you ever get tired of pushing rope up a hill? You and I are outsiders. Pensacola tolerates us, but its patience with you may be wearing thin.”
“Someone has to drag this place into the twenty-first century . . .”
“Even when it’s completely against its will?” she interrupted.
“Yes.” This conversation was one we had countless times. We touched our glasses and laughed. Big Boy looked over at us, sniffed loudly, and laid his head back down. He had heard it all before, too.
“I missed talking with you,” I said.
“Me, too. You can be such a stubborn jackass.”
I shrugged.
“You are a hard person to be friends with,” Dare added.
“Yeah,” I said, tossing the dog my last piece of bacon. He ignored it. I wasn’t sure if it was because he was full or the scraps off my plate were beneath him.
“Dare, the handwriting analysis came in early this morning. The expert confirmed that Sue wrote the note.”
“I knew it,” she said as she got up to clear off the table. I let Dare soak in the news and waited for her to digest it.
Dare came back to the table and refilled our flutes. I asked her, “What lies do you think Sue was writing about in her note?”
She said, “On the flight, I tried to figure it out. Sue complained how secretive Bo had been the last year or so. At one time, she was convinced he was having an affair and hired your buddy Harden to tail Bo, but nothing came of it.”
Harden had never mentioned working for Sue Hines.
“Having Julie and Jace in their home put a strain on her marriage,” Dare said. “Jace only thinks of Jace and left his fifteen-year-old alone with Bo and Sue. Julie and Sue got along at first, but it didn’t last long. Bo seemed to be the only who could connect with her.”
“Have you had any luck talking with Julie since Sue’s funeral?” I asked.
“Not yet, but we have a date for coffee on Friday,” said Dare. “I did see on Facebook that she dyed her hair a ridiculous shade of red.”
We sipped our mimosas. Something wasn’t right.
I said, “I thought Bo and Jace hated each other.”
“Jace and Bo were members of the same hunting club in Alabama. They had a falling out—as always happens in any relationship with Jace—but Sue kept them together.” She added, “I had heard long ago it was some grudge over a girl they both dated, but like everything in this town that happened before 1990, nobody will ever share any details about it. The vagueness of these people slays me. Even Sue said she couldn’t remember any details.”
I said, “I wish Roger was still here. He would know.”
We toasted her glasses to his memory. Dare said, “I miss him, too.”
“Why does every fight around here always go back to high school?” I said, not expecting an answer. “In the Mississippi Delta, you trade punches, somebody pulls you off each other, and everyone goes for a drink. The dispute is settled.”
“Not here,” Dare said. “You have two problems: Frost and Jace. Sheriff Frost isn’t going to let up, and he will impact your sales. A dead deputy is never well received by the community, and people will want an explanation.”
“Or a scapegoat,” I said.
She nodded. “Bo and Jace together can be formidable. Jace is shrewd enough to play up Amos Frost’s suicide. You can expect him to come out swinging this week.”
Dare always had the ability to push through the emotions and coldly assess the situation.
She asked, “What are you going to do with Sue’s note?”
I said, “I’m going to publish it on the blog first thing in the morning.”
“Is that smart? Why bring Sue’s death into this mess? You’ve already been called a sleazy journalist. Won’t the post feed into that?”
“The note is relevant,” I said. “It’s how we put the attention back where it needs to be. My spidey sense is saying there’s more to all this than Bo Hines stealing a couple hundred thousand dollars. I’ve got to find out what before Frost, Hines, Wittman, and the bank take me down.”
Dare asked, “You are talking with Gravy, aren’t you? You can expect threats of lawsuits if you carry out this strategy.”
“Yes, Dare. I’ll be fine.” I wish I felt as self-assured as my words sounded.
After we washed the dishes, I kissed Dare on the cheek and asked her to see if she could find out any more about the falling out between Hines and Wittman. Then Big Boy and I headed back to the loft.
As I got the dog settled and started to work on my draft on the blog post regarding the suicide note, I received a text from Alphonse Tyndall.
“Need to talk. Can you meet me today instead of tomorrow? Hopjacks at 3?”
An hour later when I walked into Hopjacks I spotted Tyndall in the corner of the bar nearest the front windows.
“What’s up, Sheriff Razor?” I asked as I motioned to the waitress to bring me a Bud Light and sat down.
He smiled and said, “Thanks for seeing me on a Sunday afternoon, Mr. Publisher.”
“I needed the break from writing,” I said. “I don’t like sitting with my back to the window. I’m trusting that you’ll watch behind me.”
“No problem, Walker.” He paused as the beers were delivered. “I don’t like how Sheriff Frost is going after you in the media.”
I ordered some fries and made another mental note to eat healthier, just not on Sunday afternoons. Rain began to fall. The smokers at the tables on the sidewalk grabbed their beers and pizzas and scampered inside.
“I’ve dealt with this crap before,” I replied, hoping the words sounded more confident than I felt. The bandages around my ribs itched, but I fought off the urge to scratch them.
“You have nothing to do with Amos Frost’s death.”
I said, “But it helps the sheriff to take the focus off him and his administration.”
Tyndall put down his Guinness. “No, you’re not listening. Your newspaper had nothing to do with his brother’s suicide.”
“What are you talking about?”
He said, “What do you know about Amos Frost?”
“Good lawman. Popular with the street cops. Sort of the opposite of his older brother. Deacon in his church. Little League coach.” I took a swig of my beer and continued, “But his personal life may have been screwed up. Two ex-wives and working on a third. Possibly struggled with a ‘young stripper habit.’ That’s all I have.”
Tyndall nodded in approval. “Not bad. You do have pretty good sources, but there may be more. I suspect he was being blackmailed.”
I didn’t see that one coming. “Blackmailed? Fooling around with strippers isn’t a crime.”
Motioning for me to keep my voice down he said, “I didn’t say he committed a crime. However, his face did pop up in one of the videos of the porn ring we talked about the other day.”
If I could whistle, I would have. Instead, I signaled the waitress for another round of beers.
Tyndall explained that the film company had found a new revenue stream—letting members participate in its videos. For two hundred dollars, men and women could have sex with the “actors.”
“You pay a membership fee. Once or twice a month you get a text to go to some place in the two-county area. Usually, they give you a mask. But Frost was too drunk or too high and didn’t wear his.”
Mentioning the three hundred pound Amos Frost having sex made me cringe.
Tyndall continued, “All the time we’ve worked on this investigation, we received little cooperation from the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office. They didn’t block us, just didn’t seem interested. And they didn’t lend us any resources that might have sped up the investigation.”
I asked, “Was Lieutenant Amos Frost the problem?”
He nodded. “When I confronted him last week about it, he first denied knowing anything, but when I offered to show him the video, he confessed.”
“Where does the blackmail come in?” I asked.
“The producer—”
I interjected, “Cecil.”
Tyndall gave me a half smile. “Cecil Rantz had asked Amos Frost to notify him if any law enforcement began to investigate his operation. He promised Frost that he would never release the video and would give him the only copy when his crew left town.”
“Did Frost tell Rantz about your investigation?”
“No, he was too good a cop to do that, but he made sure the sheriff’s office didn’t provide us resources. Lieutenant Frost admitted to me that he was trying to get the filmmakers to finish up here and move to some other location.”
I said, “So you think he saw the roof caving in on him. That he was about to be exposed.”
“Not sure. Maybe. We were supposed to meet Friday morning at Waffle House in the north end of the county. If he helped us and shared everything he knew, I would have tried to keep his name out of it. But there weren’t any guarantees.”
The summer rainstorm stopped, and the smokers migrated back outside where a waitress was wiping down the tables and chairs on the sidewalk.
“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.
“The film scheme is part of a much bigger deal, an international deal,” he said. “This week, we are going to round up all the ringleaders. We still don’t know who is financing the operation. Amos Frost’s suicide has pushed my bosses to pull the trigger and shut it down. Somebody will cut a deal.” He took a big swig of his beer and smiled. “I thought you might be able to use what I gave you to get Sheriff Frost off your back.”
We ordered one last round. The Insider traded ads with Hopjacks for free pizza, fries, and beer, so I used our trade to pick up the tab. Tyndall handled the tip.
As we finished our beers, I made the decision to share Bree’s dilemma.
“Razor, you may want to check into Monte Tatum. My sources say he has been keeping company with Rantz, maybe invested in his operation.”
“Tatum? The Green Olive owner?”
I nodded.
He said, “Monte Tatum. That makes some sense, but he doesn’t have the kind of money it takes to run the operation we’re closing down.”
I said, “I can’t tell you my source, so don’t ask. He has invested at least twenty grand in Rantz’s company. You need warrants for his offices in the SunTrust building, the club, and his house. I hear he may have videos at all three places.”
“How reliable is your source?” he asked, looking me in the eye.
I stared back. “Very.”
“Well, let me talk it over with my team,” he said as he shook my hand and got up to leave. “Don’t write anything until the sweep, and I’ll keep you in the loop.”
“It’s a deal,” I said.