Chasing Justice: A Matt Royal Mystery Read Free

the fishing grounds. I’d once read a t-shirt that said, “Longboat Key is an island of drinkers who have a fishing problem.” I always thought that pretty much captured the essence of our key. As the Bard said, “Truth will out.”

CHAPTER THREE
    Officer Steve Carey looked agitated as he walked across the living room toward J.D. “Robin Hartill is outside.”
    “Crap. What does she want?”
    “What do you think? She wants to talk to you. She’s got her notebook and camera.”
    “Okay. Tell her I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
    Robin and J.D. were friends and often had a beer together at Tiny’s, a small bar on the north end of the key. But Robin was a reporter for the local weekly newspaper, the Longboat Observer, and J.D. had hoped to keep the press at bay for at least a few hours.
    She went to the front door. “Hey, Robin. You sure got here quick. I was hoping to keep this under wraps for a bit. How did you find me out?”
    Robin laughed. “The island telegraph. Gwen Mooney was on her way to work at Doc Klauber’s when she saw your car and a couple of cruisers parked out front. She called and told me something was up. What’s up?”
    “Can we talk off the record for right now?”
    “Will I get anything out of you that I can use today for our Internet edition?”
    “Sure,” J.D. said, “just not now. I need a few hours before this gets out. I’ll call you this afternoon and cut you loose before the local TV stations go on air for their six o’clock news.”
    “Sounds fair. What’s going on?”
    “The woman who lives here, Linda Favereaux, is dead. It looks like murder. Did you know her?”
    “No, but Gwen did. Said she was an asshole, excuse my language.”
    J.D. smiled. If Gwen didn’t like someone, then he or she joined the list of assholes that Gwen maintained in her head. The list was fairly long. “Do you know why Gwen thought that?”
    “No,” Robin said, “but you know it doesn’t take a whole lot to get on that list.”
    “That’s for sure. I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll call you this afternoon.”
    The morning dragged on. The forensic people were going through the large house with great deliberation. The body had been taken to the medical examiner’s morgue. The autopsy would get underway quickly, as it always did when the victim came from the high-dollar precincts. There was no sign of the husband. J.D. searched his bedroom for any indication of where he might have gone. She found nothing. A laptop computer sat on a desk in the corner of the room, but it was password protected. J.D. called the police department geek and asked him to come over and pick it up. See if he could get past the security.
    It was nearing noon when J.D. left the crime scene. She needed to get back and start the paperwork. Her phone rang just as she was turning into the station at mid-key.
    “Detective, this is Dan Murphy at the ME’s office. We ran the fingerprints on Mrs. Favereaux. There’s a problem.”
    “Uh, oh. What?”
    “The prints don’t belong to Mrs. Favereaux. They came back as those of a woman named Darlene Pelletier. She was arrested twenty years ago for shoplifting in New Orleans. That’s the reason she’s in the system.”
    “Maybe Pelletier was Linda Favereaux’s maiden name,” said J.D. “Maybe Darlene is a first name and Linda is her middle name.”
    “Could be. I thought you’d like to know.”
    “I do, Dan. Have y’all finished with the autopsy yet?”
    “Dr. Hawkins is working on that now.”
    “Thanks for the call. I’ll see what I can find on Darlene Pelletier.”
    J.D. parked in front of the station and was getting out of her car when her phone rang again. “Good morning, J.D. This is Harry Robson.”
    “Hello, Harry. How are things on the mainland?” Robson was a detective with the Sarasota Police Department.
    “A little hectic right now. Do you know a man by the name of Nate Bannister?”
    “Never heard of him. Why?”
    “He’s one of