Thicker Than Water

by P J Parrish

He didn’t wait for Louis to answer. He hurried back up the path to where the appraiser waited. They disappeared into the house.

  Louis stood there, squinting in the bright sun. Well, at least he knew for sure about the divorce. Now he just had to find out if Candace Duvall did.

  At the Sanibel-Captiva toll booth, Louis stopped to show his resident badge and then drove on over the causeway. He turned off Periwinkle Way, looking for the Duvall home. Bayview Lane turned out to be a secluded street, buffered on one side by mangroves and lined with waterfront homes on the other.

  He slowed the Mustang in front of an open gate. He had considered calling ahead, but he had finally decided to just show up. He wanted to meet Candace Duvall cold, with no time for her to prepare neat little answers.

  He turned into the drive, stopping the Mustang and letting out a low whistle. Before him loomed a huge three-story house. It gleamed white in the sun, aggressively modern, with big empty windows. All the native sea grapes had been cleared, leaving a patch of Astro Turf–like lawn and two new royal palms, propped up with tripods of two-by-fours.

  Louis stared at the place in disbelief. He had been expecting something else, maybe a nice old beach place with the same pleasantly seedy elegance of Duvall’s office. This place was a monstrosity, madly out of proportion with the homes around it. Zero-lot-line McMansions crowding out picturesque bungalows. And they called it progress.

  So much for sand in the shoes, Louis thought as he pulled in the drive.

  He parked next to a canary yellow Mercedes convertible. The vanity tag read CANDY 1. A second car was parked nearby, a modest older-model blue Toyota.

  At the massive bronze doors, Louis found an intercom and rang. He waited, his eyes wandering up to the small camera above. A woman’s accented voice came back.

  “Deliveries around the side, please.”

  “I’m here to see Mrs. Duvall,” Louis said. He looked directly up into the camera lens. “My name is Louis Kincaid.”

  There was a pause. “Mrs. Duvall is expecting you?”

  “No. But I’m here on behalf of Mr. Duvall’s lawyer, Brian Brenner.” Another lie. It was becoming frighteningly easy.

  It was at least a minute before the door opened. A small bronze-skinned woman in a white uniform motioned him in.

  “Wait here, please.”

  The woman disappeared, her Aerosoles squeaking on the marble like sneakers on a gym floor. It gave Louis a chance to look around.

  He was standing in a soaring circular foyer, right in the center of an elaborate mosaic of stars made of onyx, lapis and some kind of gold stone. A twin staircase curved up around him, a sinuous U of glass and chrome. Under it, the foyer opened onto what he guessed was the living room, a cathedral of blinding white light dotted with sleek pale blue furniture. Through the huge windows beyond, he could see a turquoise rectangle—the pool. And beyond that, a shimmer of blue that was San Carlos Bay.

  He turned at the sound of squeaking soles.

  “Mrs. Duvall says to wait for her in the living area.”

  Ah. Living area.

  Louis followed the maid into the white light.

  The maid left him alone again. He looked around, debating whether to actually sit in one of the unforgiving silk chairs. He decided to remain standing. His eyes wandered over the room’s severely elegant furniture and down to the white carpet with its little gold star design. This wasn’t a place people lived in; it was some designer’s wet dream. Everything was perfect. The perfect pleats of the white sheers. The perfect fingerprint-free glass tables. The perfect slant of the white orchids in their crystal vase.

  He was trying to reconcile all this with Duvall’s cozy old office when a waft of cold air caused him to turn. Candace Duvall was standing at the foyer.

  He knew Candace Duvall was in her mid-forties but she was trying real hard not to look like it. She had a tumble of heavily frosted blond curls around a small, deeply tanned face with big eyes and a pug nose. Her body was just thin enough to be called lush instead of plump, and ill-concealed in a loosely belted robe. The robe was white silk dotted with little gold stars. He wondered if she always coordinated her clothes with her carpet.

  “Luisa didn’t tell me your name,” she said.

  “Louis Kincaid.”

  She was leaning against a pillar, a languid pose. More Mae West than mourning wife.

  “You work with Brian?”

  Brian? Well, Brenner had said they were social acquaintances.

  “I’ve never seen you before,” she said.

  “I’m new,” he said.

  She came slowly into the room. From her pocket, she extracted a cigarette and a blue Bic. She lit the cigarette and drew quickly on it.

  “You don’t look like a lawyer,” she said, her eyes locked on his. They were brown and puppy-like. Her face had the shiny taut look of a recent peel. Coupled with the eyes, it made her look like one of those little Pekinese dogs.

  “What are lawyers supposed to look like?” he asked.

  “You know, Brooks Brothers. Or Savile Row, in Spencer’s case.”

  Savile Row? That didn’t square with sand in the shoes either.

  Suddenly, Candace moved toward him, stopping just inches away. Louis resisted the urge to move back. Her smell—a potent brew of flowers, cigarettes and something musty he couldn’t quite place—filled his nostrils.

  She took a step back. “You don’t smell like a lawyer either,” she said.

  “Lawyers have a smell?”

  “Everyone has a smell, their own unique human perfume,” she said. “My first boyfriend, he smelled like sawdust and Necco wafers. Not unpleasant, really.”

  She went to a sofa and sat down, crossing her well-muscled, tanned legs. “Spence, he smelled like shoe polish.” She drew heavily on the cigarette as she stared up at him.

  He suddenly could remember the smell of the shoe polish he used to shine his shoes with when he was a cop. Okay, he’d play along.

  “Roll-on or paste?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Shoe polish. Roll-on or paste? The roll-on stuff smells like burnt tires. The paste smells more like turpentine.”

  She stared at him for a moment, then laughed. She leaned forward to tap her cigarette in a crystal ashtray. The robe opened to a clear view of her tanned left breast and a large brown nipple. Louis didn’t look away. She leaned back, still smiling slightly.

  “You’re not a lawyer, are you?” she said.

  “No.”

  “You don’t work with Brian either, do you?”

  “No.”

  “What are you doing here then?”

  “I’m a private investigator.”

  She nodded, pursing her lips. “Working for who?”

  “Jack Cade.”

  She stared blankly at him for a moment, then leaned forward and snuffed her cigarette out. When she sat back again, her eyes weren’t so puppy-like anymore. “You work for the man who killed my husband and you come to my home expecting me to talk to you? What, are you nuts or just stupid?”

  Okay. Fun and games were obviously over.

  “I’m just trying to get to the bottom of some things, Mrs. Duvall,” he said. “I’d like to just ask you a few questions—”

  “I’m sure you would.”

  “Did you know your husband was divorcing you?”

  He waited, watching Candace Duvall’s face. Damn. Nothing. No surprise, no flinch, no nothing. If the woman knew anything, she was a hell of an actress.

  A flash of color caught Louis’s eye and he looked to the large windows over Candace Duvall’s shoulder. Someone had come onto the patio. A young man in a red Speedo. Tall, tanned, lithe as an Olympic swimmer, with flowing dark hair. He stood at the pool for a moment, then dove in, slicing the water as cleanly as a dolphin.

  “I think you should go.”

  Louis looked back at Candace Duvall. There wasn’t a trace of warmth left in those brown eyes now.

  “Mrs. Duvall—�
�

  She jumped to her feet. “Luisa!” she bellowed.

  “Hey, calm down—”

  “I gave my statement to the police,” she said. “I don’t have to talk to you. Now get out. Luisa!”

  Louis put up his hands. “All right, I’m going.”

  The maid appeared.

  “Show this man out,” Candace said. “If he won’t go, call the police.”

  Louis went quickly to the door, the little maid at his heels.

  “You better go,” she whispered, opening the bronze door.

  Louis put up a hand to prop the door open over the maid’s head. He glanced back at the foyer. Candace Duvall had disappeared.

  “Who else is staying here?” he asked the maid.

  “What?” she said.

  “Who was that guy out at the pool?”

  The maid frowned. “There is no one else here.” She pushed on the door.

  “Is that your car?” Louis pointed at the blue Toyota.

  The maid looked like he had asked her if that was her hearse. “No! Is not mine. Now, please leave! Or I will—”

  “Okay, okay.”

  The door closed. Louis stood for a moment on the tiled portico. With a glance up at the security camera, he went back to his Mustang. He got in, sitting there without starting the engine. He looked back at the huge white house.

  He hadn’t expected the place to be draped with black cloth or anything. But Spencer Duvall had been killed just before filing for divorce and his widow wasn’t exactly putting out grief vibes.

  Hell, what kind of vibes had Candace Duvall been putting out? She hadn’t been flirting; he knew when a woman was coming on to him, and she certainly wasn’t. But there had been something clearly sexual about her.

  The guy out at the pool. Did Candace have a lover?

  Louis stared up at the white house, his mind and senses working. Her look, her hair, her smell—damn, that was it—her smell. Shit, he knew that smell. Candace Duvall had just been clearly, unquestionably, royally, laid.

  Louis pulled out a notebook and jotted down the license number of the blue Toyota, noting it was from Dade, not Lee County. He started the Mustang and threw it into reverse. But then he paused.

  Something was bugging him. His senses were clicking back, trying to recall what he had seen. What he had smelled.

  The slender figure in the red bathing suit came into his head again.

  Oh geez . . .

  Candace Duvall had a lover all right. But it wasn’t a man.

  Chapter Nine

  Louis leaned back against the headboard and put on his glasses. He was going through the newspaper clips again and he focused now on the feature about Spencer Duvall, the one with the local-boy-makes-good angle. He had only skimmed it before, but now, after what Ellie Silvestri had told him and what he had seen at the Duvall mansion, he wanted to try to get a better picture of the man himself.

  Spencer Duvall, the article said, was from Matlacha, a tiny island north of Fort Myers. Matlacha was barely bigger than the two-lane causeway road that connected it to Pine Island on the west and the mainland on the east. Matlacha—it was pronounced Mat-la-SHAY, for some reason—was home to some old motels, a few downtrodden marinas, a number of psychics and more than a few colorful watering holes, including the infamous Lob Lolly and Mulletville. Louis only knew Matlacha because Dodie was always dragging him out there to his favorite restaurant, the Snook Inn.

  Duvall’s mother had been a waitress and his father a charter boat worker and fishing guide. Duvall’s older brother had served time for armed robbery and died in a car accident when he was just twenty-three. Duvall, on the other hand, had gone to Florida State on scholarships and come home to open his law practice in downtown Fort Myers.

  Duvall had married his college sweetheart, Candace Kolke, from Quincy, a small town up near Tallahassee. They had lived in Fort Myers until 1969, when they moved to a home on Bayview Lane on Sanibel Island. Two years ago, they had razed the old house, bought the lot next door and built the white monster. It had recently been on the cover of Florida Design magazine. The Duvalls also had a ski lodge in Aspen and a “small villa” overlooking Baie de Saint Jean on St. Barts.

  Louis took off his glasses. Baloney sandwiches and sand in the shoes, Ellie Silvestri had said. Why was he getting the feeling he was the one being fed a bunch of baloney?

  It was starting to rain again, just as it had almost every night this week. He tossed the article aside and got up off the bed. In the kitchen, he exchanged the empty Dr Pepper for a Heineken and shut the refrigerator, leaning against it.

  Spencer Duvall might have started out humble, but it looked like he got used to living the good life pretty easily, no matter what Ellie Silvestri chose to believe.

  He took a drink of beer. Rich people. He had dealt with them before—many of his PI clients had more money than God. And then there were the Lillihouses back in Mississippi, putting on a facade as fancy as the one on their antebellum mansion. The rich he had known went around making their messes and then hiring other people—people like him—to clean them up.

  He took another drink of the beer. Why was he in such a sour mood? He knew the answer. The deeper he got into the case, the more disgusted he was getting with the players in it.

  Spencer Duvall, the warrior lawyer who made a bundle getting killers and rapists off. Candace, his bitchy-itchy wife. Lyle Bernhardt, the squirrely partner, and Brian Brenner, the weasel house-wrecker. And the Cades . . . pathetic Ronnie and his creepo father.

  God, what a bunch of losers.

  The rain was beating on the roof. Palmetto pounders, that’s what they called big storms here. He looked back at his hand, flexed it and started back to the bedroom.

  He heard the slam of the screen door and quickly after, a woman’s voice.

  “Kincaid?”

  Louis squinted, seeing a shadow in the gloom out on the porch.

  “Kincaid? It’s me, Susan Outlaw.”

  He moved to the open front door. She was standing on the porch, soaked, her hair matted to head, water running down her face.

  “Mrs. Outlaw,” he said, stepping back to let her enter.

  She didn’t move. “Just what the hell are you and Jack Cade trying to pull?” she said.

  “What?”

  “What did you tell him?”

  Damn, he had forgotten that he had told Ronnie Cade to run interference.

  “What did you tell him?” she repeated. “What did you tell him you could do for him that I couldn’t?”

  Louis put up a hand. “I didn’t tell him anything. I haven’t talked to Jack Cade.”

  “Well, somebody sure the hell did!”

  A puddle was forming at her feet. Her mascara had left streaks down her face.

  “Come on in,” he said. “I’ll get you a towel.”

  She came inside. Louis didn’t know if she was shaking because she was cold or angry. He moved toward the bathroom, snagged a towel off the rack and came back to her.

  “What did Jack Cade say to you?” he asked, holding out the towel.

  She grabbed it. “He told me he would fire me if I didn’t take you on,” she said.

  Great . . .

  “That’s not all,” she said. “He also said women didn’t have the balls to do what it would take to get him off.”

  She wiped her face with the towel. “Tell me you didn’t put those thoughts into his head,” she said.

  “I didn’t,” he said simply.

  “Bullshit.”

  Louis had to fight not to match her anger. What was it with this broad, anyway? He was willing to meet her halfway; that’s all he wanted when he had asked Ronnie Cade to intercede. He took a drink of beer.

  “Well, answer me,” she said, her voice rising.

  “I don’t have to answer to you. Or anyone else,” Louis said.

  She glared at him, then threw the towel at him. He caught it against his chest. She stalked off toward the porch.

&n
bsp; “Wait,” Louis called out.

  She turned.

  “Look, Cade has spent the last twenty years in prison working up a hate for the legal system and all lawyers.” He tipped his beer toward her. “That includes you, lady.”

  Susan’s body remained rigid.

  Louis took a breath and made an effort to soften his voice. “I went to see Ronnie Cade yesterday,” he said.

  She took a step back in the room. “Ronnie? Why?”

  “I asked him to talk to you, to get you to . . .” he hesitated just long enough.

  “To what?”

  “Man, to back off,” he said, shaking his head. “Look, we’re on the same side here!” He paused. “I’ve decided to take the case.”

  She was just standing there, staring at him. Then he saw her shoulders relax some and she brushed the wet hair from her face. Her skirt was wrinkled and she had a run in her stocking. He wondered if she had come straight from the jail to his cottage. He motioned toward a chair. She shook her head.

  “I’ll get it wet,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter. The whole place leaks. Sit down.”

  She slumped into the chair. “Why’d you change your mind about the case?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She gave him a withering look.

  “It’s the truth,” he said. “I don’t know why I changed my mind. Maybe I feel sorry for Ronnie.”

  She snorted out a laugh.

  “Maybe I’m bored, maybe I’m broke,” Louis said. “Maybe I’m crazy.”

  She didn’t reply and he noticed her eyeing the bottle. “You want one?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  When he returned from the kitchen, she had taken off her sodden high heels and was rubbing her toes. He set the beer on the table next to her and waited while she took a long drink. He watched a tiny rivulet of beer trickle from the corner of her lips. She wiped it away and looked up at him.

  “Look, I could use some help on this,” she said. “I fought to get this case and I want to keep it. I’ve been working like a dog, but I haven’t got anything.”

  He could see this was hard for her. “Can Cade fire you?” he asked.

  “It takes some maneuvering, but yes, he can.” She hesitated. “I could use some more help.”