“Let’s try this one more time,” I said. “Who do you think sent you that letter and why?”
“I don’t know who sent it, but it’s obviously a death threat,” Dowd said. “Somebody clearly wants me to back off the Munz case.”
He repeated what his investigator, Bunny Myers, had already told me. That Janet Bollinger had called shortly after I’d been to see Dowd, claiming to have new information that she insisted would clear Munz of Ruth Walker’s murder. Bollinger seemed hounded by guilt, the attorney said.
“Munz was dead and gone,” Dowd said. “Nothing I could do about that, but he was still my client. I felt like I’d let him down in the end. I owed him something. So I sent my investigator to see Ms. Bollinger. He shows up, finds her bleeding to death, and now he’s in the sheriff’s lockup. But I know he didn’t hurt her. He would’ve had no reason.”
Dowd’s prominent forehead and upper lip glistened with sweat. His knee bounced nervously, vibrating the table. I asked him why he thought I would know anything about the threat he’d received.
“You’re digging around for some kernel of truth that would erase any taint of guilt on Greg Castle’s part in the death of Ruth Walker. Her father hired you for that purpose. Is that not what you told me?”
“Mr. Walker concluded my services were no longer needed.”
“You’re not working for him anymore?”
I nodded.
Dowd snatched the note away from me and sat back with a puzzled expression. “So, if you didn’t send me this, who did?”
“I’m wondering if maybe you didn’t do a little cut-and-pasting yourself.”
“You think I threatened myself?” Dowd gaped at me. “Why the hell would I do that?”
“To deflect suspicion from you. Or your investigator.”
“You’re crazy.”
The bartender arrived with Dowd’s beer. He hastily folded the letter and stuffed it in his suit coat as she set the fresh bottle in front of him and snatched up his empty. A motorcycle was tattooed over her left breast, along with the words, “Live to ride, ride to live.”
“Thanks, Roxie.”
“Four bucks, sugar.”
Dowd pulled a five-spot from his wallet and told her to keep the change.
“What’re you drinking, player?” Roxie asked me, cracking her gum.
“I’ll have an Arnold Palmer, please.”
“Take a look around. Does it look like we got fresh-squeezed lemonade around here?”
“Got any juice? Preferably fresh-squeezed.”
“How ’bout a beer? We got plenty of that.”
“Ice water. In a clean glass.”
Roxie shook her head in disgust and walked back to the bar.
Dowd waited until she was out of earshot. “This letter,” he seethed, tapping his chest, “came in the mail. To my office. To me. Personally. I did not ‘cut-and-paste’ it to ‘deflect’ suspicion from either me or my investigator. Some son of a bitch threatened me and I want to know who it is.”
“Could be the same S-O-B who tried to kill me and two sheriff’s detectives a couple of days ago by screwing with the engine on my airplane. You wouldn’t happen to have any insights on that, would you, Mr. Dowd?” I watched his reaction carefully.
“I don’t,” he said, avoiding eye contact.
The attorney gulped half his beer and blotted his forehead with the backside of his tie. The door to the bar creaked open behind me. Dowd glanced over my shoulder, jittery.
Something didn’t feel right.
I leaned forward in my chair and reached down for the dive knife lashed to my calf just as a burly forearm crooked around my throat. I sprung to my feet and pivoted left, in the same manner a bullfighter slips an onrushing steer, sliding behind my assailant and grabbing his left wrist in one fluid motion, while twisting his arm behind his back and using his own momentum to slam him head-first into the table. He flopped from the sticky wooden tabletop like a Slinky onto the floor, out cold. My knife never left its sheath.
“That was totally badass!” Roxie said approvingly as she stepped over the guy and put a glass of water down on the table in front of me.
I glanced around for any other takers — there were none — then stooped to make sure that my assailant — the Camel-puffing biker whose passing acquaintance I’d made outside the bar — was still breathing. He was.
“His name’s Dwayne Streeter,” Dowd said.
“Friend of yours?”
“I used to represent him. Big pot grower. Feds popped him awhile back on an intent to distribute rap. I got it knocked down to straight possession. He was convinced I was Perry Mason after that.”
Dowd said he thought I’d been the one who had sent him the threatening letter and wanted to confront me — but not without first arranging to have Streeter watch his back in the event I tried anything hinky.
“We exchanged pleasantries outside,” I said.
“The idiot was supposed to wait ten minutes, then come in and make sure we were cool,” Dowd said, gazing down at his unconscious former client. “You must’ve made him a little nervous. You make a lot of people nervous, Mr. Logan.”
“One of my many gifts.”
The attorney said he had no theories as to who might’ve murdered Janet Bollinger, and professed to know nothing of what had happened to my airplane. The fact that someone had sabotaged the Duck, Dowd noted, was affirmation enough that the threatening note he’d received in the mail was legit. He said he’d be skipping town for awhile and staying with relatives somewhere back East until things cooled off.
“Could be Greg Castle killed those two young women, could be he didn’t,” Dowd said. “But I’ll tell you one thing, ain’t none of this conducive to my blood pressure.”
Nor to mine. A tried-and-true Buddhist would’ve accepted with equanimity such trifling concerns as a pair of unsolved homicides, a sabotaged airplane, an obstinate ex-wife, a geriatric landlady gone missing, and an AWOL orange tabby cat. I clearly was not yet a true Buddhist, not by a long shot. My throbbing headache reminded me I had a long way to go before attaining true enlightenment.
Streeter began moaning, rubbing his head where he’d smacked the table.
“He’s OK,” Roxie the bartender said. “Got nothing in there but mush anyhow.”
Dowd said he’d call me if he heard anything new.
“I’d tread lightly if I were you, Logan,” he advised me. “There’s a lot of gators floating out there. One of ’em’s likely to jump up and bite you on the butt, you don’t watch out.”
“Free legal advice. I’ll take it.”
“Ain’t nothing in this world free, Mr. Logan.”
“You’ve obviously never been to Costco.”
We shook hands.
Streeter’s girlfriend was sitting on another Harley as I walked out, smoking yet another cigarette, getting friendly with another motorcycle enthusiast. Neither of them paid me the slightest notice as I walked by.
There was a drugstore three blocks away. I bought a bottle of aspirin and chewed four tablets in the parking lot. Savannah called. She’d found a rock, smashed the window in my landlady’s back door, and searched the house. The mailbox, she said, was full. There was no sign of Mrs. Schmulowitz.
I went to a locals’ eatery that night not far from SeaWorld and the beach, ordered a charbroiled turkey burger and chili fries at the counter, then realized after I sat down outside with my meal that I’d forgotten mustard. By the time I returned to my picnic table, thieving sea gulls had made off with everything on my plate, including the pickle. The manager, who looked like he greased his hair in the deep fryer, said it was not the restaurant’s fault I’d been ripped off by wild animals. If I wanted another burger, he said dismissively, I’d have to pay for it.