Mangrove Bayou by Stephen Morrill

done, lock this boat up. Tape the doors, both sides of the cabin. Tape’s in the Suburban too. Get all that out before I take the truck.”
    “Will do, Chief.”
    “When we’re done here, one of these keys on his keychain probably fits the padlock on the side door of the cabin here,” he said. “Use the beeper here to find his car and search it too, inside, trunk, outside. If you don’t see anything illegal or suspicious, drive it back to his house.”
    “Where does he live? Where did he live?”
    “Good question. Let me see his driver license.” Troy looked at the address and handed the license back to Tom. “Right up the road. Easy for you to find so you can break the news to the widow.”
    Tom stared at Troy a long moment. “Isn’t that sort of the chief’s job?” he asked.
    “It’s no one’s job. Telling people their loved ones are dead is just one of those perks that we get in lieu of better pay. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”
    “Well,” Tom said. “They do pay you more.”
    “Not enough for this.”

Chapter 10
    Monday, July 22
    Finding the Barrymore house was not hard. Troy simply got back onto Airfield Road and drove east while counting down the numbers on the mailboxes on the south side of the road.
    Most of the houses here had names posted on discrete signs at the entrances to their driveways. Many had gated entrances with cameras and electronic gate openers. Troy found the right mailbox and a sign announcing “Côte d’Or” and followed a narrow drive up to the back of a house that faced the Collier River across a long lawn. He wondered how big a house had to be to have a name. He supposed one could ask the same question about boats. There was a small parking area in front of a garage, and an entrance door to the house. There were several men working on an extension to the side of the garage. Troy went to look. They were building a concrete-block enclosure and running some electrical and plumbing.
    “Building a workshop for the owner, plus a toilet and shower,” the foreman explained. “He’s some big cheese in the banking world. But he wants more room to do some woodworking.”
    “I don’t think he’s going to be doing woodworking any more,” Troy said.
    The man looked at Troy. He looked at the Suburban with “Mangrove Bayou Police” painted on the side and the lights on the roof. He looked back at Troy.
    “Oh,” he said.
    Kathleen Barrymore let Troy into her five-thousand-square-foot home and listened as he told her what they had found.
    She was late twenties , Troy guessed, and five-three with long blonde hair. She was pretty, with a good figure, and had learned to emphasize her high cheekbones and cornflower-blue eyes. She had not yet learned to go easy on the black eyeliner and she drew it out at the corners so that Troy thought she resembled a woman in an Egyptian hieroglyph. She had on tight blue jeans and a white tee-shirt cut short enough to show a pierced belly button in front and a “tramp-stamp” tattoo in back. She was half-drunk and holding a glass of bourbon and smoking a cigarette. She didn’t offer Troy either bourbon or a cigarette and he didn’t ask.
    When Troy finished telling her about how her husband died she took a manly swig of bourbon and a deep drag off the cigarette and said, “So where’s the car? He was drivin’ one of our two Mercedes. And where’s his wallet an’ credit cards?”
    “Car is probably in the parking lot by the yacht club docks. One of my officers will bring it by here shortly. We have the wallet. I need to inventory it. You’ll get it back after that.”
    “After you takes all the cash, you mean.”
    “No. After I inventory it.”
    “So, when do I get the body back and give him a proper funeral?” she asked. She took in a lungful of smoke and blew it at the ceiling.
    They were sitting in a living room with a good view through the smoke of part of the town of Mangrove Bayou across the Collier River. Troy