“So when they did the transfer, they did it backwards?”
“Exactly. A stupid and careless mistake made by someone.”
“Who would do that?”
“Someone who has done their homework on you.”
Something in his tone changed. Alarm? Concern? Trepidation? I couldn’t tell. “That’s not a very comforting thought.”
“Not meant to be. Listen, you should give serious consideration to laying low for a while. At least give the cops a chance to do their job.”
Easier said than done. “Will they also pay my mortgage?”
“I can float you a loan.”
“Pass, thanks.” Debt and lust were not good bedfellows. “There are two armed guards downstairs.”
“I’ve seen them. My grandmother could take them.”
“Not until she got buzzed in and I gave the doorman a very small list of approved guests.”
“I know that too. They wouldn’t even let me in the building.”
“Sorry, Liam. You didn’t make the cut.”
“Consider changing that,” he said in a reasonable way that almost, almost sounded like a request. “When he heard about the brakes being tampered with, Tony put me on this full-time.”
“What’s ‘this’?”
“Finding out who wants you dead.”
“I honestly don’t know,” I insisted. “But I’m leaning toward it has something to do with that skeleton at the beach house.”
“Have you found any explanation of why the dead girl had your stepfather’s medallion in her hand?”
“Nope. Have you had any luck with that partial note we found?”
“A little. The lab rats say the ink is consistent with the chemical makeup of mass-produced ballpoints manufactured from 1991 through 1999. Based on the moisture content of the paper, they would only say with certainty that the paper was more than five years old.”
“That’s some progress.”
“Whatever. How scraped up are you?”
The minute I heard the word scrape, it was as if a lightbulb went off in my brain. “The shoes.”
“What shoes?”
“The scraped shoes Sam found at my house. They were in with the clothing Melinda left behind when she moved out. I asked her about it at lunch, remember? She said she’d arranged for the stuff to be picked up by a charity but that didn’t happen.”
“And this is relevant why?”
“The backs of both heels were scuffed. Most women scuff the back of their right shoe more than the left. It happens when you drive.”
“I’ll warn women everywhere.”
“The shoes I found were evenly scuffed. Is there any way the pathologist or someone can tell if those shoes would have fit the skeleton?”
“Yeah, there are some general tissue depths and muscle averages they use to calculate that sort of thing.”
“If she perspired in them, there would be DNA too, right?”
“Yeah.”
“The shoes are in the back of the closet in my apartment. Beige Enzos with one-inch heels. If they were the skeleton’s, the scrapes could prove she was dragged around. If we prove that, maybe it will tell us who was doing the dragging.”
“I’m on it. Stay safe.”
NORMAL PROCEDURE AT MY mother’s upscale building was to call down to the valet and have the car brought up from the garage. Being cautious, I decided to take the service elevator down and claim the emerald green Mercedes with its tinted windows myself. Of course, my mother’s Bentley would make the long drive to Daytona more comfy, but my mother didn’t leave her keys for that luxury with the valet.
I took my tote and purse along with me as I made my descent. The elevator compartment filled with the scent of my freshly sprayed Lulu Guinness, and I fussed with my hair and adjusted the filmy sleeves of my top in the mirror. I’d paired the bright lemon and lime patterned top with simple white capris to cover the bandage on my leg. The top was Lilly Pulitzer, one of my all-time eBay highlights—twelve bucks—and the capris were BSBCG, 80 percent off due to a black smudge of grease my masterful dry cleaner had removed with just three treatments. My entire ensemble cost less than forty bucks, and that included the shoes. I’d gotten the white striped Coach flip-flops for ten dollars at the thrift store. I’d sprayed them with Clorox Hard Surface, so any cooties were history.
The teenage valet was sitting in the metal chair with a pathetically thin cushion when I stepped out of the elevator. His cheeks flamed red as he tried to hide the skin magazine he’d been, well, viewing.
“The phone didn’t ring, Miss Finley,” he apologized, making me feel about a hundred years old.
“I didn’t call. I’m just going to take the Mercedes out for the day.”
“Um,” he said as he leaped up and blocked my way. “Your mother left strict instructions that you weren’t to use her car.”
Twenty bucks got me over that hurdle.
The boring two-hundred-mile trip gave me an opportunity to think. And discover I’d developed a driving phobia. Every time a car came near me, my grip on the wheel tightened and I braced myself for a crash that wouldn’t happen. My driving anxiety subsided at about the same time the navigation system told me to head east on International Speedway Boulevard.
Daytona was a shrine to auto racing, a sport I didn’t understand. Hours of cars making left turns. I passed the Daytona Speedway on my right, then just after the airport, I was directed down a side street.
The minute I made the turn, I was sorry I’d made the trip. I wasn’t exactly in an upscale neighborhood. The Mercedes drew stares as I continued to follow the instructions called out by the onboard computer. Eventually, it led me to Happy Shores Trailer Park. I slowed and leaned forward, trying to read the addresses painted on the mailboxes.
I circled the park twice before finally finding Abby’s pitifully run-down trailer. Some of it was painted a pale blue; the rest was down to the bare aluminum. A warped plastic picket fence, about two feet high, surrounded the small lot. The roof of the attached carport was nothing but a square of rusted metal nailed into precariously leaning poles. An ancient Toyota was parked alongside the trailer.
My mother’s spit-polished, emerald green Mercedes stood out like the bastard at a family reunion.
Lifting my glasses, I could just make out dual car seats in the Toyota. This had to be the place.
A couple of other residents, seated on porches or under tattered, faded awnings, craned their necks as I got out of the car and headed for the front door.
Such as it was. Sometime in the not so distant past, someone had kicked in the door. A hole was covered with some sort of fabric, and someone had taken a crowbar or some other tool and mostly straightened the doorframe.
Pulling open the screenless screen door, I knocked softly. Almost immediately, an infant started to cry. Then another.
A woman I knew to be in her early thirties—I’d seen her birth certificate—yanked open the door. A swirl of smoke drifted from a filterless cigarette that dangled from the corner of her mouth, and a diapered infant was balanced precariously on her opposite shoulder.
“I don’t want any,” she said, then started to slam the door.
I raised my palm before it shut completely. “I’m not selling anything,” I said quickly, business card at the ready. “I’d like to talk to you about your time with Melinda Redmond.”
She eyed me like a dog that had been kicked one too many times and took a long drag on the cigarette. “There’s a name I haven’t heard in a while,” she said. “I’ve got two babies to feed and—”
“I’d be happy to help,” I lied. Babies aren’t really my thing. They’re fragile, helpless, and often puke without warning or provocation.
“Suit yourself,” she said, turning and walking into the darkened, smoky trailer.
Suddenly feeding a baby seemed like a walk in the park. The must-smelling trailer had a lumpy, torn sofa, a scratched coffee table, and a beat-up recliner. The window tr
eatments were interesting. Faded sheets held in place with pushpins.
Abby handed me the baby, and I did my best to soothe him as I followed her the few steps into the kitchen. The stovetop was crusted with burned-on food, and one of the hinges on the oven door was broken loose. I was no appliance expert, but I was fairly sure it wasn’t supposed to be like that.
A small sink was filled beyond capacity with dirty dishes. The draining rack next to the sink was also filled beyond capacity. I wasn’t sure how she could tell the difference between clean and dirty.
“What’s the baby’s name?” I asked as Abby fished into the sink and pulled out a grape-stained, opaque yellow pitcher.
“That one’s Michael. The other one is Matthew. I was stupid and named him after his loser father.”
She scooped powdered something into the not-so-clean pitcher, moved some of the dirty dishes from the sink to the counter, and added some tap water.
As Abby poured the formula in bottles and heated them in a pan of water on the stove, I bounced slightly, patting the baby’s back, and dissected his mother. Her brown hair was filthy and pulled back in a rubber band. The shorts she wore were about a size 6, but Abby was closer to a 14. What didn’t fit in the shorts spilled out over the waistband, but then she’d just had twins.
“I bought the house on Chilian where you lived with Melinda,” I said conversationally.
“That was a great house,” she agreed. “Best digs I ever lived in.”
Somehow, that info didn’t come as a shock. “And Melinda?”
Abby shrugged. “She was okay. Weird, but okay.”
“How was she weird?”
Abby traded out the stub of her cigarette for a fresh one. I bit back an incredible urge to tell her to stop smoking around the babies. In another time and place, I might have, but I needed her, and I didn’t think she’d like me standing in judgment of her.
Abby handed me a bottle and a rag that I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do with, then motioned me to sit at her Formica dinette. Brittle plastic scratched through my slacks, but I did as she asked. It was actually easier to support the baby properly with the aid of the table.
Carrying him more like a football than a baby, Abby joined me at the table, laying the baby on her ample thighs so she could stuff the bottle in his mouth one-handed. Leaning and stretching, she was able to pull open the refrigerator and grab a can of beer from inside. “Want one?”
“I’m good, thanks. You were saying Melinda was weird because…?”
She handled the flip-top with a broken thumbnail. “As foster parents go, she was one of the best. No boyfriends dropping by to cop a feel. She was pretty lax with the rules, like one of us breaking curfew. Or having sex with one of the rich kids. She’d let that stuff pass.”
“You were having sex with the rich kids?”
Abby grunted. “Those rich guys used to love scoring poor, underage tail. They’d come sniffing around five minutes into their breaks from their fancy colleges.”
“And Melinda permitted that?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. But she had weird punishments.”
“Like?”
“Vocabulary and memory exercises. Mandatory boring-as-shit field trips to museums or galleries. She used to say she was responsible for feeding our minds as well as our bodies and that thanks to some guy, we’d been given a unique opportunity to see how far we could go in life.” Abby let out a humorless little laugh. “Yeah, right. Like any of us would ever wind up Palm Beach debutantes.”
“Terri Semple is about to,” I said at the same time I felt a damp spot on my shirt. Smelly formula was leaking out of the side of the baby’s mouth. Too late I understood what the rag was for.
“No shit?” Abby said, then nodded. “I guess Melinda was right. Miracles can happen. Wow, she’s the last one I would have guessed.”
“Why?”
“She was kinda mousey and sullen. Kept clear of the trust-fund boys for the most part.”
“What did she enjoy doing?”
“Coke. Not when I first met her,” Abby clarified.
“When was that, exactly?”
“Sometime in the spring of ’91, I think. She and Melinda were really tight. Tell the truth, I thought she was a bit of a suck-up. Then they had a falling out or something. Terri hit the coke pretty hard, and then one day, poof, she was gone.”
“That isn’t in her DCF file.”
“I doubt Melinda ratted her out. Like I said, Melinda was pretty cool that way. She used to lie to DCF, tell them some of us were half brothers and sisters. Hell, most of us didn’t know who our fathers were. So long as you participated in her self-improvement crap, she’d bend the rules.”
“Such as?”
“There was this girl, what was her name? Jill, Jill…”
“Burkett?”
“Yeah. Jill Burkett was a total bitch. She’d go out and stay away for days at a time. Always had expensive stuff, so she was either turning tricks or stealing. She always claimed the stuff was a gift from one of her boyfriends, but c’mon, how many girls in foster care do you think had diamond stud earrings?”
“Do you know what happened to her?”
“She was still with Melinda when I aged out. I was only there a few months. Glad to leave, ’cause the last two months were pure hell.”
“Why?”
“Carlos the loser Lopez moved in.” C.L.? I thought, almost giddy. “Carlos Lopez?”
“He was as nasty as they come and a total perv. He raped Kelsey Nolan in the bathroom a few times. I think she was only thirteen or fourteen. Kelsey told Melinda, but Jill, who must have been doing Carlos along with everyone else, swore on a stack that she’d witnessed the whole thing, and having sex was Kelsey’s idea. Jill was always covering for Carlos, and Melinda always bought their lame-ass act.”
“Why didn’t one of you tell the caseworker?”
Abby laughed and lit another cigarette. “This girl Tasha tried to tell the DCF folks, but with Melinda and Jill vouching for Carlos, the caseworker decided the claim of rape was unfounded.”
“Was Kelsey examined by a doctor?”
“Sure, but it wasn’t like she was a virgin or anything. No one believed her then, and I doubt anyone would believe her now.”
“She’s dead,” I said, placing the bottle on the table and the rag on my shoulder. I lifted the baby and patted him gently because, well, because I’d seen it done that way. “Drug overdose in 2000. Do you remember any other people you met while you lived with Melinda?”
“Some girl named Ava moved in the week before I left. Oh, and another boy. Don or Dan, something like that.”
I’d have to go back and check the records to see if I could find those people. The baby burped, and I felt something hot and slimy drizzling down my back. I’m not sure how, but Michael had managed to bypass the rag and puke inside my collar. It was going to be a long ride home.
I would have put the baby down, but I didn’t see anyplace clean enough for an infant. “How did Melinda feed your minds?”
“By making us read glossy magazines and auction catalogs. If you really screwed up, she’d make you memorize a numerology magazine.”
“A what?”
“You know, coins.”
“Numismatic?” I asked gently.
“Whatever. She caught me selling some weed, and I spent the next week staring at a book about Lydian Lions. Said if I wanted to earn money I had to start by learning about the first coins ever introduced to the world. After that, I made sure she didn’t catch me selling again.” With minimal care, she flipped Matthew over on her thighs and slapped his back until he burped. “Look, these two will only sleep for about an hour after they’ve been fed. I need to catch up on some Zs too. Mind leaving?”
“Of course not. Thank you for talking to me.”
She put Matthew on the linoleum floor and took his brother from me. Matthew started to wriggle and fuss, but Abby just stepped over him as she led me to th
e door. “You gonna see Terri?”
I nodded. It wasn’t definite, but I was pretty sure I could come up with a plan.
“You tell that brown-eyed bitch I said, ‘You go, girl!’”
“Thank you again,” I said as I negotiated the uneven concrete steps of the trailer.
“Say?” she said, grabbing a handful of my shirt. “I was real helpful to you, and I got two babies and my husband violated his probation last week. You don’t happen to have any extra cash, do you?”
I reached into my wallet and handed her a twenty. If I’d thought it would go to the babies, I’d have been more generous. Abby, I knew, would blow it on beer and cigarettes. Probably before night’s end.
I left Daytona, stopping at the first rest stop to clean off the baby hurl and to buy a beach towel so there would be a layer between the stench and the car’s leather interior. I bought a huge coffee and headed south. On my way, I called the DCF hotline and anonymously reported Abby. She might have helped me, but she had no business being the soul caretaker of two helpless babies.
She was smart enough to figure out it was me. A shiver of fear danced along my spine. “Well done, Finley. Just what you need—another enemy.”
Everything wears out eventually, including your nerves.
fourteen
THE SECOND MORNING I woke at my mother’s penthouse, I was sore and tired from the long car trip, but at least I felt as though I’d accomplished something the day before.
This is the problem with taking a sick day when you don’t feel sick. Yesterday, I felt fine. Today, I just wanted to stay snuggled in the thousand-count thread sheets on the guest bed. Not an option.
Dragging, I managed to pull my act together and call down to the valet by 8:50 a.m. I’d be a few minutes late, but that wasn’t anything new.
Being cautious, I waited inside the locked atrium until I saw the Mercedes swing around the fountain and the valet attendant hop out. Only then did I have the guard buzz me out of the building.
Something bright flashed to my left as I walked down the marble stairs to the waiting car. As I put on my sunglasses, I discreetly looked to my left and scanned the tall hedge along the five-foot stucco wall that divided my mother’s building from the one next door. A man in coveralls and a cap was belted to a palm tree on the adjacent property. I was about to dismiss him as a tree trimmer when I realized he didn’t have any equipment. Well, unless a camera with a telephoto lens was somehow helpful in pruning palm fronds.
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