Cold Case Squad

by Edna Buchanan

  Arms folded, she listened intently as he rattled off the details.

  She seemed to be a tower of strength when he was little. The more he grew, the bigger and stronger he got, the smaller and weaker she’d become. He’d always wanted to protect her from the crime, drugs, and weirdness that lurked in the dark. She was all he had.

  She tapped her chin with an arthritic finger and pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Jewish,” she said, and nodded. “Sounds like Jewish, Orthodox.”

  “Who?”

  “The killer.”

  Sam laughed. “What makes you say that, Gran?”

  “Don’t you laugh at me, Sonny. I been around longer than you and I still know a few things. Sounds Orthodox.”

  He still grinned. “How so?”

  “The things he does. I worked for the Waldmans long enough to soak it all up. Why, I always prepared their seder, helped those children study for the bat and bar mitzvahs. Chopped the chicken liver, fixed the gefilte fish. Braided the challah—that’s bread, Sonny. Wasn’t nothin’ to learn, jus’ like plaitin’ hair. Grandma Waldman taught me all of it in her kosher kitchen. Had two sets of pots and pans, two sets of dishes, two sets of everythin’, even glasses and crystal and dishtowels—even two dishwashers—and they can never be mixed up together. I know all about it.” She sternly wagged a gnarled index finger. “So don’t you talk no smack to me.”

  He remembered the Waldmans. For more than thirty years she’d worked for generations of that large and warm family. She’d taken him to their big house in Miami Beach. He had played with the children, the first boys he’d ever seen wearing yarmulkes. When he mocked their skullcaps later, she’d lashed out, indignant. “Jus’ remember, Sonny, you never hear of anybody gets mugged by a boy in a yarmulke.”

  When the family patriarch, Rabbi Saul Waldman, died, she had taken him with her to the funeral.

  “I’m not doubting you, Gran.” He fished his notebook from his pocket. “Okay, which things are you talking about? Let me write this down. Maybe you can help me solve the case.” He spoke half in jest, but his curiosity was piqued. “Maybe you’ll make officer of the month, Gran.”

  “Don’t you play with me, boy. I know what I’m talkin’ ’bout here. The man you want doesn’t work on shabbat, the sabbath. They don’t work on Saturday.” She shook her head, then sipped her tea.

  “They have rituals for the dead.” She put down her glass. “The women, their eyes and mouths closed?”

  He nodded, seeing again the blown-up photos forever etched on his mind’s eye.

  “They never leave the dead alone. Somebody sets by them all the time, readin’ the Psalms.”

  “I remember that,” Sam said. Two years earlier, after a Jewish police officer was killed in the line of duty, a fellow officer, a fellow Jew, had remained with the corpse in the medical examiner’s morgue overnight.

  “But people who observe Orthodox customs are religious,” he said, thinking aloud as they always did when trying to solve a mystery before Sherlock Holmes.

  “Everybody’s capable of murder, Sonny. You say that yourself. Religious people kill each other every day. How ’bout that rabbi in New Jersey who murdered his wife?”

  “New Jersey?”

  “I watched some of that Court TV,” she said grudgingly. “Wasn’t bad.”

  “But burial has to be within twenty-four hours, right?”

  “There’s exceptions, like the sabbath or relatives comin’ from a distance. Other things.”

  “Well, thanks, Gran. I’ll look into it.”

  “And for the first meal afterward, the mourners eat bread and hard-boiled eggs.”

  Eggshells in the garbage. Crazier things had happened.

  He stood up, stretched, and, ignoring her protests, carried the plates into the kitchen.

  “Hey!” He noticed something. “Gran, your back door’s not locked!”

  “Oh.” She shrugged. “It keeps stickin’ and gits hard to open.”

  His lunch curdled in his stomach. “But didn’t I tell you a hundred times? You have to keep the doors locked. Where’s the WD-Forty?” He foraged for the small, nearly empty can in the toolbox in the kitchen, then squirted a few shots of oil into the balky lock. He snapped it back and forth several times. It still felt stiff and out of line.

  Exasperated, he ran his hair through his hair and glanced fitfully at his grandmother, placidly rinsing dishes in the sink.

  “Keep this locked at all times. Promise me, please, Gran. When I come on Saturday I’ll install a better lock, an inch-and-a-half dead bolt. Promise me.”

  Chapter Six

  “Now, this is what a Florida house should look like,” Nazario said. The elevated Key West–style home, with spacious verandas and multiple sets of French doors, was long and rambling. Pale yellow, with white trim, it stood alone on several acres with a dramatic view of the wide bay.

  “Looks like the widow lives large,” Burch said.

  A big green landscaping truck and several cars were parked in the driveway but no one was in sight. They climbed the wide front stairs and rang several times before a uniformed maid came to the door. She was in her thirties with dark hair tied back in a ponytail. Her rubber gloves were yellow, her expression impatient.

  She scrutinized Nazario’s business card. The lady of the house was home, she said in guarded, heavily accented English, but busy at the moment.

  “You can tell her we’re here,” he said politely.

  “No me.” She looked amused as she wagged her head.

  He persisted until she replied in Cuban-accented Spanish that they could tell her themselves and directed them to a cabana area behind the house. She smirked as she closed the door.

  They followed the wraparound veranda, past comfortable white wicker porch furniture, to a wide back staircase descending to the waterfront pool, cabanas, and dock area.

  The Natasha, a graceful three-masted sailboat, was moored at the dock.

  No one was in sight.

  The bay was magnificent, sea birds studding the sky where clouds and water converged. A splendid day, despite a forecast of thunderstorms.

  “Think she sent us back here on a wild-goose chase?”

  “No, Sarge. Listen. You hear what I’m hearing?”

  Burch paused, then slowly grinned. “Sounds like Stone beat us here.”

  The rhythmic unmistakable sounds of passionate sex in progress came from behind the louvered doors of the largest of three cabanas.

  Burch rapped loudly on the polished wooden door. “Police Department.”

  The rhythm stopped, replaced by scrambling sounds and angry mutters.

  “We’re looking for Mrs. Streeter,” Burch called out loudly, and rapped again.

  “Been years since I did this,” he said sotto voce to Nazario.

  After several more moments, the door abruptly swung open.

  “It’s Ross now, Mrs. Milo Ross.”

  She stood on one impossibly high-heeled sandal. The other was in her hand. Lush shiny black hair tumbled long around her sleek bare shoulders. Her strapless bikini was a brilliant peacock blue. A sheer wraparound skirt in the same peacock color was tied like a sarong around the suit’s minuscule bottom.

  A thin gold chain glittered around her slender waist.

  “You looking for me?” The green eyes were cool and inquisitive, despite the scarlet flush coloring her chiseled cheekbones.

  Embarrassment or passion? Nazario wondered.

  “Please.” She reached a crimson-tipped, well-manicured hand out to Burch for support, though Nazario stood closer. Clinging to his arm for balance, she attempted to slide the Manolo Blahnik sandal onto her slim, bare foot.

  Burch was impressed. She’d sized them up instantly, instinctively sensing which man was in charge. She’s good, he thought. Very good.

  She slowly wriggled her polished toes into the strappy shoe, exposing her tanned legs longer than necessary, then clung to his arm for a few more beats.

  �
�Ross?” Burch asked. “You’ve remarried.”

  “Is that a crime?” she asked lightly.

  “In many cases it should be.” He smiled back at her.

  Nazario was focused on the man in the cabana. He was no Milo Ross.

  The first clue was the name NELSON stitched over the grass-stained pocket of the landscaping company work shirt he was hastily buttoning with thick, fumbling fingers.

  Tall, dark, and shaggy haired, he was handsome in a savage way, his current expression sullen.

  “This is Nelson,” Natasha Ross said, “and you are…”

  The detectives introduced themselves.

  “We can continue to discuss the new plantings next time,” she said, briskly dismissing Nelson as he emerged, blinking, into the fierce sunlight.

  She cocked her head at the detectives. “We’re planning a more elaborate garden on the north side. Big beds full of color. What do you think?” She led them toward the house, leaving Nelson to wander off back to his truck.

  “Color. Color is good.” How uncool am I? Nazario thought, embarrassed by his own words as he spoke them.

  She showed them into the cool, air-conditioned entry, through a great room with two huge fireplaces, and past a life-size marble statue of a half-naked woman reclining on a chaise longue.

  “Paolina Borghese,” Natasha said, running a polished finger along the woman’s cold, stone arm as she passed. “Napoléon’s sister. Italian, eighteenth century.

  “I’ll have Norma bring you some coffee,” she said, ushering them into a bright yellow and white sunroom. “It’s so hot out there,” she said, excusing herself. “I need to get out of these sticky clothes.”

  “No surprise they’re sticky,” Burch muttered, as her heels clicked away on the marble floor. They watched her pause for brief words with Norma, the maid who had answered the door.

  The latest stock market quotes from New York, London, and Hong Kong scrolled continuously on a large plasma television screen. The room was full of potted palms and color. Bowls of bright fresh flowers were on every table, and oil paintings, landscapes, still lifes, and seascapes, in ornate gold-leaf frames, hung on the walls.

  “No dogs playing poker?” Burch said in mock disappointment.

  “Personally, I’m partial to Elvis on black velvet,” Nazario said. “And panthers. Big jungle cats stalking their prey.”

  “I think we just met one.”

  They were still speculating on the value of the room’s artwork when, in a surprisingly brief period of time, she rejoined them. Her white wraparound dress accentuated her deep tan and her thick hair was piled loosely atop her head in a style similar to Napoléon’s sister, still guarding the entrance to the great room.

  Norma wheeled in a coffee service and poured.

  Natasha settled in an upholstered wing chair with clawed feet and armrests hand-carved into the heads of eagles.

  As Burch explained the reason for their visit, her eyes changed. Her lips parted.

  “Charles Terrell.” She repeated the name slowly, with a hint of wonder, as though trying to recall where she had heard it before. “You’re here about Charles Terrell?” Her lashes swept down, masking her expression.

  Burch caught only a glimpse. Relief? She thought they were there for another reason.

  “Why would you come to me to discuss him?” Her eyes wandered to the scrolling stock quotes.

  “We’re checking out his accident,” Nazario said easily.

  She seemed skeptical. “But that was a hundred years ago,” she murmured.

  “We’re still interested,” Burch said. “How did you and Charles Terrell meet?”

  She sighed deeply, then leaned back and crossed her legs, as though resigned to humoring them.

  “I applied for a job at his drugstore,” she said, her lush, protuberant lips in a perpetual pout. “Fresh off the bus from Iowa. A farm girl, if you can imagine that.”

  “Hard to believe,” Burch said mildly. “Your parents still live there?”

  Something flickered in her eyes for a moment, then disappeared. “I’m not sure,” she said easily. “We’re not a close family. I felt like a displaced person, born at the wrong longitude and latitude. Didn’t like that life. I didn’t belong in Iowa, so I left as soon as I was old enough. Off to seek my future. My fortune.” White teeth flashed, her smile radiant. “The moment I saw it, I knew that Miami was the place. There’s something about it.”

  “You’re so right,” Burch agreed.

  “I needed a job. I walked into a store not far from the Greyhound bus station. Charles was the owner. I got the job. The first time we saw each other…” She shrugged.

  “Wasn’t he married then?” Nazario asked.

  Her unnaturally vivid green eyes met his. “His marriage was apparently in trouble.

  “Eventually he divorced and we married but, I must admit, it was rocky.” She smiled slightly, cautiously reminiscing from a safe distance.

  “After I had our son, Brandon, Charles began to stay out late. He left me stuck with an infant. Said he was busy working, but he was never there when I called the store.” She arched an expressive eyebrow. “I knew he had other business dealings, including a chain of weight-loss clinics with a partner, but he became distant.” She sipped her coffee. “They say the wife is always the last to know. Not true. Never. Any woman who doesn’t know doesn’t want to know. He was unfaithful to his first wife, so I assumed he was being unfaithful to me. I was trying to figure out what was going on.

  “He spent time with his kids, which meant seeing his ex-wife. I suspected she might be the one. She poisoned his mind against me every chance she got. I knew she hated me. Or perhaps he’d hired a replacement, some other pretty girl at the store. He laughed and denied it. I was so young and vulnerable.”

  Burch nodded sympathetically. Had he ever met a woman less vulnerable?

  “Who knows if we would have worked out?” she said. “At the very end, I thought it might. That last night, I was asleep when he came home really late again, with no explanation. But he was in a great mood. He woke me up, in fact. I’d wanted him to take me out to dinner earlier that night. The baby had screamed all day and Charles refused to have a live-in nanny. He had a thing about strangers in the house. He’d even locked the garage door. Charles could be so anal. He’d taken his Thunderbird apart, he said, and had his tools and the schematics all laid out. He didn’t want anybody in there until he finished what he was doing. I had tried to get in there that afternoon, looking for a can of mosquito spray. I was pissed off.

  “But that night…” She sighed. “The man was amazing. He opened a bottle of champagne, a really good vintage he’d been saving, and brought it to bed. Unusual for him. It was like the first time. We made love all night.”

  Nazario blinked, surprised that she spoke so freely about her sex life, yet seemed so evasive.

  “I wanted to sleep the next morning, but the baby was up, and so was Charles, obsessed about working on that damn car. Wish I’d never seen that stupid piece of junk. That Thunderbird was older than I was.

  “I didn’t like my Jaguar, either.” Her pout grew darker. “I wanted burgundy, but he bought me the blue because he liked it better. I was so furious I was going to run it into a tree. But that morning he promised me a Mercedes, the convertible I wanted. I left to pick up a few things at Dadeland and then grocery-shop. But did he let me leave the baby with him? No. He said he’d be too busy working on the car.” She fumed.

  “In case you’ve never noticed, babies don’t travel light. They’re hell to take shopping. He stuck me with that baby all the time. Never again. Maybe,” she mused, “it all did work out for the best.”

  “Not for Charles,” Burch said.

  “Well, of course.” She patted her lips with a cloth napkin. “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But I believe in destiny. Some things are meant to be.”

  “It must have been a difficult time for you,” Nazario said sympathetically.

>   Surprised for a moment, she agreed. “Yes, it was.” Her pout became self-pitying.

  “So?” Burch asked. “Your second husband, Asher, was there to take up the slack?”

  “Martin was so comforting,” she said. “A partner with Charles in the weight-reduction clinics, which, of course, failed. But luckily Martin had other business interests.”

  Before they divorced, she’d had a second child, then a third with Daniel Streeter, husband number three.

  “I love being a mom,” she said primly.

  Nazario had never seen anyone look less like a mom. His own mother’s anguished face appeared in a sudden familiar flashback. At the airport in Havana, her palms pressed against the thick glass between them. He never saw her again.

  “Where are your kids?” Burch glanced around the room as though moppets might suddenly spring up from behind the furniture. Nothing in or outside of the house hinted at the presence of children.

  “Brandon’s in military school, in Tennessee, I think. Isabella is at some sort of music camp in the Adirondacks or somewhere and…” Eyes narrowing, she bit her moist lower lip as though trying to recall. “Daniel Jr. is touring Europe with his dad this summer.”

  Burch thought wistfully of his own children, regretting the times he’d complained about the sounds of their happy chaos because he had to sleep during the day.

  “And you’re married again?” Nazario said.

  “Milo and I met in Hawaii. A whirlwind courtship. We were married in Vegas last spring.”

  The reason Stone found no local record of the marriage, Nazario thought. “He at the office today?”

  “A doctor’s appointment,” she said. “He’s the retired CEO of Baldwin Petroleum.”

  “Took early retirement, huh?” Burch said.

  “No, my husband retired some time ago. This all does sound like a soap opera, I suppose.” She checked her gold watch. “Now, what is the purpose of this trip down Memory Lane?”