Angel's Cove: A Harry Rice Mystery

by Allan Pedrazas

Overview

In his second book, following The Harry Chronicles, which won the 1995 PWA/St. Martin's First Private Eye Novel Contest, Allan Pedrazas brings back the wise-cracking Florida private eye Harry Rice in Angel's Cove.

Harry is enjoying a state of semi-retirement and a moment of serenity as the owner of the tropical beachside pub the Sand Bar when a frantic phone call from his regular day bartender, Carla, interrupts his reverie.

Carla's father's unexpected death has led her back to the small coastal town of Angel's Cove. There she discovers that the time of his death doesn't correspond with when she last spoke to him. Then a threat in the form of a dead kitten warns her to back off.

Enlisting Harry's help, she sets out with him to learn what is behind her father's death, encountering much hostility from the locals, who make it clear that Carla's father was not welcome in Angel's Cove.

Like the frosty tropical beverages Harry whips up for his customers, Pedrazas blends the perfect mix of humor and intrigue to take his readers on another memorable and suspenseful adventure.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466877856
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/12/2014
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	253
File size:	312 KB

About the Author

Allan Pedrazas, born in Tampa and raised in Fort Lauderdale, has spent most of his life in Florida and currently lives in Fort Myers Beach. He works for the U.S. Customs Service, which also provided day jobs for Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Pedrazas's first novel, The Harry Chronicles, was the 1995 winner of the Private Eye Writers' of America/St. Martin's First Private Eye Novel Contest.

Read an Excerpt

Angel's Cove

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By Allan Pedrazas

St. Martin's Press

Copyright © 1997 Allan Pedrazas
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-7785-6

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CHAPTER 1

It was a good day to walk the fish. The air was thick with a steambath humidity. Dawn's pewter sky had promised nothing less.

A tropical depression had stalled offshore, pelting the coastline all morning with raindrops the size of gum balls.

The beach was empty. So was the Sand Bar. The tourists had flocked to the malls. The locals with jobs were working. It was Father Shifty's day to do volunteer work as a pink lady at Holy Cross. I sat alone at a window table watching the storm muscle its way across the beach. Palm fronds whipped in the whirlwinds like frenzied tarantulas. Bubbling with whitecaps, the ocean resembled a giant cauldron of boiling shellfish, a feast for the deities. Rings of puddles had begun overlapping on the Broadwalk, constantly changing patterns like bouquets of liquid flowers in a child's kaleidoscope. A streak of lightning flashed miles offshore across plumes of charcoal clouds hovering above the horizon. Thunder clapped repeatedly as if played by a mad cymbalist insistent on a solo.

For all the turbulence outside, I was enjoying an inner sereneness, a liberating peacefulness that had me smiling contentedly for no explicable reason. It was one of those all-too-rare moments that occurs unexpectedly, without invitation, but is always welcome, and makes me feel this is the way life was intended to be. Everything is in harmony. All the ingredients mesh — the sights, the sounds, the smells. Even I'm in sync with it all. I'm in the flow, innocent of malicious thought. It was like recapturing that natural high that was so pervasive back in the Summer of Love when I listened to metaphysical poetry in cellars with a mute fascination, pretending I understood every word in hopes the woman poet would later mete out physical tenderness I easily understood. That was the summer I dined on wild rice and drank Boone's Farm and went skinny-dipping in Silver Lake with all the girls in the play. That summer my cat was born and the air was conditioned with flirtatious dreams and blooming souls and scents of clover. A communal spirit pervaded the campus. We embraced each other's uniqueness and rejoiced in our oneness. It was "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "Somebody to Love" and "Strawberry Fields Forever." That summer I misplaced a few of my brain cells. I was oblivious to the fuzzy ethics of politicians and I really believed in a nonviolent revolution. That was before the Chicago Democratic Convention and before Kent State, before my rose-colored lenses were shattered. So much for nonviolent revolutions. The changes would continue. My cat would die and I would come to believe the world is round and finally accept the fact that life isn't as simple as I would like it to be. I could have very easily become a cynic, and perhaps I did. Still, I never forgot that the best highs weren't from pot or wine or other chemicals. They were natural. I just never learned how to obtain them on command or how to make them last.

It would have been so easy at that moment to believe that I, Harry Rice, had at last attained a higher level of enlightenment, which I knew nothing about, a life where people were warm and kind to each other for no particular reason, where I no longer felt like an endangered species or the odd man out, where I practiced patience and forgiveness, a life where I would never have another wasted erection. Of course, that will never happen. But that's all right. I can accept that the good times will always end as long as I believe that they will eventually come back, and usually without warning.

* * *

By late afternoon the rains had tapered off to a monotonous drizzle. Business had been sporadic. The highlight had been lunch with Al and Irma from the bike shop next door. Shortly after they left an unpleasant French-Canadian couple breezed in complaining about the universe or when the moon is in the seventh house. That's an illiterate translation. My knowledge of French is limited to a teenage crush on Brigitte Bardot, and French-Canadians refuse to speak English unless they think they can get something free for doing so. They left no tip. No au revoir.

The man who quit the Kiwanis because their breakfast speakers sucked stopped in for a vodka tonic and the prevailing opinion, which I dutifully assured him his was. He left happy.

A morality salesman, without a sample case, ducked in for a quick nip while his wife tried on terry cloth jackets at the Beach Variety. His drink was bourbon and water. His crusade was anti-youth. He criticized the President. He despised animal-rights activists. The American Civil Liberties Union was the only justifiable argument he knew of for abortion. He agreed with the NRA, glory to the gun. He believed that feminists were a whiny group of uglies who couldn't get laid in a men's prison with a handful of pardons. He said homosexuality should be a capital offense and instead of wasting money trying to find a cure for AIDS we should sit back and "let God take out the faggots."

He was the personification of the hate mentality that had made media celebrities out of Ross Perot, David Duke, Rush Limbaugh, and Jerry Falwell.

I leaned over, resting my forearms on the bar. "Indulge me," I said.

He looked questioningly at me.

I said, "Finish your drink and leave. You're not welcome here." So I hadn't attained a higher level of enlightenment where I practiced patience and forgiveness.

He started to object, but he saw something in my eyes that made him reconsider. He gulped down his drink and scurried out. I should have called the police. He had stolen my natural high.

Such is the bar business. If only I had known.

I bought the Sand Bar almost on a whim because a woman tried to hire me to recover the body of the Beach Boys' drummer, supposedly buried at sea. The request wasn't that unusual. Private detectives are routinely asked to solve the impossible. That's how most make their living. Not solving a thing, but trying to, until the client gets tired of writing checks. So a request to find the waterlogged body of a rock star wasn't that strange. What was, though, was I found myself taking copious notes, seriously considering the assignment. I began to suspect it was time for a career change. There had been too many long lonely days and short lonelier nights on the road looking for teenage runaways, too many trips to sleazy motels, catching wayward spouses in acts of infidelity. I didn't want to look for any more child-support dodgers. And to hell with all those inheritance-outraged relatives who wanted someone to dig up dirt on whoever was awarded the largest share of the estate. After years of private detecting, all I had to show for it was an anemic checking account and a scarred body and bruised ego from having been rousted, beaten up, hospitalized, arrested, jailed, threatened with sterilization, knife-cut, and stitched by old-fashioned thugs, kinky wives, marcelled dopers, assorted neighborhood basket cases, hysterical lawyers, and psychotic emergency-room attendants.

I bought the Sand Bar from an ex-stripper. I thought if I owned a bar I would no longer have to deal with the same kind of people who used to hire me to find people very similar to themselves. The very people who frequent bars in droves. Mine is a peculiar logic, full of contradictions.

Though it didn't happen that way, it had been my intention to walk away from private investigations. But shortly after I took over the Sand Bar, a woman I would have done anything for asked me to investigate something for her. She got what she wanted, which, as it turned out, wasn't me.

For the past couple days I had been pinch-hitting behind the bar for Carla Meadows, the regular day bartender. She had been called out of town due to a sudden death in her family. When someone suggested we send flowers, it dawned on me that I had no idea who in her family had died or where. Nor did I know when she would be back. I simply told her to take as long as she needed. The bar is not the same without her. The regulars missed her almost as much as I did.

There is more to tending bar than keeping glasses filled and stocking garnish trays. I can teach anyone how many umbrellas go in a mai tai. When I hired Carla she didn't know a Gibson from a Manhattan, but she did know the name of the Cisco Kid's horse. Carla's still learning the drinks, but she is a good bartender. She ministers to her customers, she doesn't wait on them. She knows more than the insufferable authority, though not as much as the humble dullard. She's a charmer, a peacemaker, a bouncer, an advisor to the lovelorn, and a sincere listener. She knows to avoid hushed conversations. Those are qualities that can't be taught. That's what makes a good bartender. That's what brings in the business. Not some oaf who runs people off because he cannot tolerate intolerance.

I sure missed my Carla.

* * *

At six P.M. I was serving wine coolers to a gland-happy couple when my relief trudged in, all gloom and doom. He had been in a grand funk for a couple weeks, ever since his precious Catherine the Widow Woman had dumped him for an HMO doctor who wore Thom McAn wing tips. So much for love. Nick Triandos looked miserable, which was a slight improvement over yesterday. He was primed to work happy hour.

We switched cash register trays and completed the changing of the bar guard routine in silence.

"Hear anything?" Nick mumbled with a trace of hope in his voice. He missed Carla's motherly counsel, though she was twenty-five years his junior.

"No," I said. "I think the funeral was today. She's probably been busy."

I left the Sand Bar in Nick's care and stopped at Cuban Frankie's for the boliche and a flan. I slumped down in a booth contemplating how quickly I had bottomed out after a halcyon high just hours ago.

The waitress came over, took one look at me, and started singing, "Good-time Harry's got the blues."

I regarded her with a mock frown. "Splendid," I said gruffly. "I'm having dinner with an annoyingly happy waitress hell-bent on cheering me up."

She smiled patiently. "I don't offend easily."

"I know, Connie. I don't understand why I keep coming here."

She reached across the table and warmly clasped my hand. "Because you've got the hots for me, dear."

"Ah, you remembered."

* * *

It was a little before eight when I got home. There was one phone message on the recorder.

"Hi, Harry, it's Carla. It's about six-thirty. Well, seven-thirty your time. I thought you might be home by now. I didn't want to call you at work, just in case you were busy." There was a pause of a few seconds. "Harry, I, uh, I might need some more time off. Something isn't right here. I'm not sure what ... Something is wrong. I just don't think I can leave here like this. I know you're probably thinking I'm just upset. And you're right. I am upset. My father is dead. And I don't know why ... Wait a second. There's someone outside ... What's going on ... Anyway, I want you to know I'm not imagining things. There is something wrong. According to the death certificate, the last time I talked to my father on the phone, he was supposed to have already been dead four hours ... Wait a sec ... Who's out there? Harry, I'll have to call you back. Something's ..."

There was another brief silence before I heard her gasp and the machine clicked off.

CHAPTER 2

Carla did not call back.

I waited for over seven dog hours for the phone to ring. I would have called her, but I had no idea where she was.

I replayed Carla's message on the answering machine. "It's about six-thirty. Well, seven-thirty your time." That put her somewhere in the central time zone. "My father is dead." I assumed she was calling from where he had lived. "There's someone outside." Someone she knew? Someone unexpected? Did she see the someone or did she hear him? Probably a ground-level residence. Possibly her father's home. I must have listened to the last part of the tape several dozen times. I was able to detect a faint background noise in the space between "Something's ..." and the sound of her gasp. As many times as I played it back, I couldn't identify the noise. What was it? Had someone entered uninvited? That was my guess, because her gasp was definitely that of a startled person.

I called the Sand Bar.

"Nick, I'm worried about Carla." I told him about the phone message and my suspicions. "She said she couldn't leave because something wasn't right, something was wrong. She didn't know why her father was dead, I'm not sure what that meant. There was a thing about the death certificate." I told Nick I wasn't going to wait any longer. I was going to look for Carla.

Nick said, "What are you going to do first?"

"Break into her apartment, see if I can find an address for her father."

"I've got her spare key," he said. "Last summer when she went to California with her girlfriends she asked me to water her plants and keep an eye on her place. When she got back she told me to hang on to the key for emergencies."

"I'll swing by and pick it up. One other thing, Nick. I'm going to change the recording on my answering machine, referring calls to the Sand Bar number. Just in case Carla should call when I'm not home. So the problem is —"

"There's no problem," Nick interrupted. "I'll stay here to cover the phone, around the clock if I have to, until we know she's all right."

"Thanks, Nick."

We hung up. I changed the greeting on my answering machine and began the quest for Carla.

* * *

She lived in a two-story stucco building just off the New River. The Mediterranean-style structure was an endangered remnant of an area that once defined Fort Lauderdale in what now seems like another lifetime ago. The charming eclectic neighborhood of old Florida homes with verandas and Spanish tile roofs was rapidly being consumed by the malignant growth of the county courthouse complex and the spread of the parasitic industries of law offices, bail bondsmen, trend-of-the- month cafés, and day-care centers for the tykes of working parents. Live oaks and banyan trees had been razed to make room for asphalt parking lots and uninspired high-rises. Concrete erections had irreparably violated the town I once loved.

I parked between a chinaberry tree and a bicycle rack. The apartment building was surrounded by a dense hibiscus hedge, a fragile bastion against the sprawl of high-tech, lowbrow construction amok. I walked through the hedge's tunnel onto a flagstone courtyard, filled with the sounds of cricket melodies, rippling water from a small mosaic fountain in a pond, and the eleven o'clock forecast of Weaver the Weatherman wafting from a first-floor apartment.

Carla lived on the second floor. I slipped the key in the lock and let myself in. The scent of sandalwood hung in the air with just a hint of what reminded me of baby powder. The apartment was dark except for slices of soft moonlight seeping through the antler-shaped fronds of a staghorn that hung in a bay window. I felt around for a switch and flipped on the light.

Carla's world had more plants than a posy fancier's greenhouse. Ferns, spider plants, philodendrons, a tall rubber plant, and plants that probably had names I wouldn't recognize were scattered throughout the apartment in ceramic and clay floor pots and hung from ceiling hooks in macrame. I could almost hear the distant jungle drums inviting the ghost of Johnny Weismuller to dinner.

The living room was furnished with Pier One wicker and a collection of big cushiony pillows. The only sign of clutter was the wicker etagere stuffed with tapes, books, and magazines. I scanned the titles of several magazines fanned on one of the shelves — Self, Body, Mind & Spirit, Glamour. We had different periodical reading tastes. Her books were primarily self-help, travel guides, and several Chinese cookbooks. Our hardback interests were a little closer match. I didn't need self-help, but I liked to travel, and I was always ready to have someone cook good Chinese for me. I picked up a few of her cassettes and a funny thing happened. I began to feel a chivalrous awkwardness, like I was snooping. Over the years I had searched many homes for many reasons without feeling self-conscious about it. I was doing a job. But this was different. This was personal. There was no "official need to know" what Carla read. I wanted to know. I wanted to know more about her. Something about being in her home had drawn me closer to her in a way I couldn't describe because I didn't understand it. I told myself the better I knew Carla, the better the chance of finding her. I also knew I was merely justifying my curiosity about her. I hoped she would understand. Because as inept as my method was, it was well intentioned.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Angel's Cove by Allan Pedrazas. Copyright © 1997 Allan Pedrazas. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

A good bartender is hard to find, so when Harry Rice's day help, Carla Meadows, leaves town for an unnamed relative's funeral and forgets to come back, shamus/bar-owner Harry tracks her to Angel's Cove, the Florida panhandle's answer to Gilligan's Island. Nobody could need Harry's help more, since Carla's father Charlie evidently phoned her warning that he was sending a package ($$$$) some four hours after the Medical Examiner says he died. And when Carla—who's already been scared by a hanged cat and attacked by a giant albino—makes an issue of the mystery, the M.E. sags, indicating that he can't be sure just when or how (heart attack? drowning? blow to the head?) her father died, and that it's too late to investigate further now that the body's been cremated. He then skedaddles. Nor do any of the other colorful fauna of Angel's Cove—a profit-minded mortician, a crusading non-revivalist, the activist fisherfolk who've been molded into a ragtag militia, the troglodyte officers of the law—seem inclined to regret Charlie's passing or help his daughter and Harry take care of the stolen money Charlie sent his daughter, the pitched battle between net fishers and sport fishers, or the looniest development scam you've ever seen.

Quixotic Harry has toned down his patter since his striking debut (The Harry Chronicles, 1995), but Pedrazas plots as generously, if even more raggedly, than before.

Kirkus Reviews