Both of them giggled. Jesse wasn’t sure at what. Maybe that was a Plum family technique. When in doubt, giggle.
He waited. They looked at each other.
“Flo,” Corliss said. “Flo asked us to.”
“On Darnell’s boat,” Jesse said.
“Ohh, you know that,” Claudia said.
Jesse nodded. No one said anything. Full of adults and children, the Swan Boats elegantly pedaled their slow circuit of the pond.
“Flo wanted us to do it that way,” Corliss said.
They seemed to speak with instinctive deference to each other’s turn.
“Why?” Jesse said.
Again the girls looked at each other. “She wanted to jerk Harry’s chain,” Claudia said.
“Harry?”
“Harrison,” Corliss said.
“Darnell,” Jesse said.
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Both girls nodded.
“Because?”
“Because he dumped her,” Claudia said.
“She was his girlfriend?” Jesse said.
Both girls laughed.
“Aren’t you funny,” Corliss said.
“What was their relationship?” Jesse said.
“She was the one, you know,” Claudia said, “the one he kept.”
“And the other women?”
“Entertainment, you know?” Corliss said.
“Like fishing,” Claudia said, “or skeet, or bridge.”
“And Florence didn’t mind them?”
“Not as long as she had her place,” Corliss said.
“Which was?” Jesse said.
“Head nigger,” Claudia said.
Both girls giggled again.
“But Darnell reorganized?” Jesse said.
“He dumped her,” Corliss said. “For Blondie Martin.”
“And Florence took this video on his boat to make him jealous?” Jesse said.
“She would never do it with him,” Claudia said.
“Harrison was always after her to go with him and Tommy Ralston,” Corliss said.
“But she wouldn’t.”
“No. But when he dumped her . . .”
“She done it with a couple of former crew guys, and sent him the tape.”
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“To make him jealous.”
“Yeah.”
“Did it work?”
“He sent for her,” Corliss said. “Flew her up to Boston.”
“There’s no record of her flying to Boston,” Jesse said.
“He had his pilot fly her up in his private plane.”
“When?”
“Beginning of June,” Corliss said.
“She told us he was up here early for Race Week and she was going to join him.”
“What is the pilot’s name?” Jesse said.
The sisters looked at each other. They both shrugged.
“Larry,” Corliss said.
“Last name?”
They both shook their heads.
“Just Larry is all we ever knew,” Claudia said.
They watched the Swan Boats for a time. Some squirrels darted among the attendant pigeons, hoping for a peanut.
“So how come you didn’t tell me any of this before?” Jesse said.
Both sisters shrugged.
“I guess we thought you’d be mad,” Corliss said.
“Mad?”
“You know, about us sneaking on the boat and taking the pictures. We were afraid you’d say something to Willis and Betsy,” Claudia said.
“Your parents?”
“Yes.”
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“Why do you care?” Jesse said.
“They still got some control of our trust funds.”
“Of course,” Jesse said. “So why’d you come up here and see me?”
“We liked Flo. We felt bad about her.”
“And you wanted to know what I knew,” Jesse said. “For fear it might come out.”
“If someone hurt Flo,” Claudia said, “we wanted to know.
We wanted to help.”
“So you set up headquarters here,” Jesse said, glancing behind him at the hotel, “and began to ferret out the truth.”
“We’re having a pretty good time here,” Corliss said. “You ever do two guys and a woman?”
“No.”
“We like two women and a guy,” Claudia said, and pressed her breast against Jesse’s left shoulder.
It had no part in the investigation. The question wasn’t professional. But Jesse couldn’t help it.
“Ever think about love?” Jesse said.
The twins stared at him for a time and then giggled.
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43
Leaning their backsides against the trunk of her car, Kelly Cruz and Larry Barnes stood and talked and watched the private planes land and take off from Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport.
“You flew Florence Horvath up to Boston,” Kelly Cruz said, “in June.”
“Yeah, sure, I remember, last month.”
“That would be June,” Kelly Cruz said.
Barnes grinned at her. He had a thick black mustache and longish hair and big aviator glasses and a short-sleeved white shirt. And his big silver wristwatch looked complex. Neatly R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
across his right forearm just above the wrist was a tattoo that read bad news.
“Tell me about the trip,” Kelly Cruz said.
“Mr. Darnell called, said he wanted me to bring her up.
Told me she’d be in touch to arrange the schedule.”
“Darnell often do this?”
Barnes’s face didn’t change, but somehow Kelly Cruz knew he was amused.
“Often,” he said.
“With different women?”
“Often,” Barnes said.
“Anything unusual about this flight?”
“She required Cristal on ice instead of Krug.”
“What was Florence Horvath like?” Kelly Cruz said.
Barnes looked at her and she knew he was even more amused.
“How much of this is on the record,” Barnes said.
“Only the questions of fact. Did you take her? When? At whose request? Your opinions are between me and you.”
Barnes nodded.
“She was like about two hundred other bimbettes I’ve transported,” Barnes said. “Blond, stupid, sure she was sexy.
Asked me if I had ever done it at thirty thousand feet.”
Kelly Cruz nodded.
“And you left her in Boston,” she said.
“Private terminal. Carried her bags in for her. She was pretty well fried. Gave her to the limo driver. Got the plane serviced, refueled, came on home.”
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“Happen to know what limo company?”
Barnes shook his head.
“Nope. Just a limo guy with a sign,” he said.
“And you never went back to get her,” Kelly Cruz said.
“No. I usually didn’t. Most of the babes were one-way. I’d fly them someplace and Mr. Darnell would sail them home.”
“Know anybody named Thomas Ralston?”
“Fat guy, thinks he looks better than he does?”
“I don’t know,” Kelly Cruz said. “I’ve never seen him. I’m helping out some police up north.”
“What is this all about, anyway?” Barnes said.
Kelly Cruz smiled.
“So you know Thomas Ralston?”
“Yeah, sure, I think so. Mr. Ralston. He flies a lot with Mr.
Darnell.”
“Where?”
“Ports usually. Crew sails the boat somewhere and Darnell meets them there. I guess Ralston has the same deal. I never asked.”
“Did you fly either of them up to Boston?” Kelly Cruz said.
“Not this year.”
“A
nyone fly with them?”
“Usual bevy of beauties,” Barnes said. “They get drunk.
Do some dope.”
“Sex?”
He shrugged and gestured.
“I stay up front,” he said. “But yeah, I’d say quite a lot.”
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“And you know this how?”
Barnes looked at her for a moment with the expressionless hint of humor that he projected.
“Ah, trace evidence,” he said.
“Thank you,” Kelly Cruz said, and closed her notebook.
“What’d they do up north?” Barnes said.
Kelly Cruz took a card out of her purse, and gave it to him.
“Florence Horvath died up there under unusual circumstances,” she said. “You think of anything interesting, call me.”
Barnes took the card.
“They think Darnell killed her?”
“I don’t know what their theory of the case is,” Kelly Cruz said. “I’m just asking questions for them.”
“Actually, I’m thinking of something sort of interesting right now,” he said.
“Not at thirty thousand feet,” Kelly Cruz said.
“’Course not,” Barnes said. “Who’s going to fly the plane?”
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44
J esse and Molly sat at the conference table in the squad room. The sound of shout-ing and loud bad singing came from the
four-cell jail wing.
“Hark,” Jesse said.
“Drunk and disorderly,” Molly said. “On Front Street.”
“Today?”
“Un-huh.”
Jesse looked at his watch.
“It’s ten in the morning,” he said.
“No time to waste,” Molly said.
R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
Jesse nodded. Molly had a big yellow legal-sized pad of blue-lined paper in front of her.
“Okay,” he said. “Here’s what we’ve got. We know Florence Horvath was alive when she came up here first week in June. We can probably pin that down exactly if we need to.”
Molly made a note. Jesse stood and walked the length of the squad room and looked out the back window at the Public Works garage behind the station.
“And we know she was dead when she washed ashore the beginning of Race Week.”
“July twelfth,” Molly said.
“ME says she’s been in the water at least a couple weeks, maybe longer,” Jesse said. “She was alive when she went in the water, but exact cause of death is uncertain due to the ratty condition of the body.”
“You have to say ratty?”
Jesse turned and walked back the length of the room.
“We know she came up here at Darnell’s request, and on his dime. We know she knew Thomas Ralston. We know Ralston and Darnell are connected and a lot tighter than either would admit. Everybody has lied about who they know.
We know that Florence made the sex video with the two guys who used to work on Darnell’s boat. We know her twin sisters took the video. They said she told them that it was to make Darnell jealous because he had dumped her in favor of Blondie Martin. We know, because we checked the harbor registry, that both Darnell’s boat and Ralston’s boat were here in early June.”
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S E A C H A N G E
Jesse turned and walked back toward the window.
“So where’s the video,” Molly said.
Jesse stopped.
“The video?”
“She must have sent it to him,” Molly said. “What happened to it?”
“Destroyed it,” Jesse said. “It was incriminating to have, and he didn’t know there were other copies. We know that there’s some kind of high-tech sex thing going on between Ralston and Darnell. And we know they have recruited local, and very young, talent.”
“This is probably not the only place,” Molly said.
“Probably not. We’ll see if Healy can help us with that.”
Jesse continued to look at the Public Works garage.
Along one side of the garage, snowplow blades were lined up, waiting for winter. They looked like the skeletal remains of extinct beasts in the hot summer sun.
“We know both Darnell and Ralston have committed statutory rape,” he said. “And we’re pretty sure we can convict them. Darnell for sure. We’ve got him on tape. Ralston too if the kid will hold up in court.”
“And none of this tells us if either or both of them murdered Florence Horvath,” Molly said.
“Sad but true,” Jesse said.
He turned and began the trip back up the room toward Molly.
“In fact,” Molly said, “we can’t really prove that she was murdered at all.”
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“She was murdered and Darnell was involved,” Jesse said.
“How about Ralston?”
“Yes,” Jesse said.
“Him, too?”
“Yes.”
“You’re so sure,” Molly said.
“I know them,” Jesse said. “I understand them. Darnell and Ralston killed her.”
“Together?”
“Don’t know.”
“But you know they did.”
“Yes,” Jesse said.
He was standing beside Molly. She looked up at him.
“Intuition?” she said.
“I’ve been a cop for a long time,” Jesse said.
“There’s something else,” Molly said.
She had turned in her chair and was facing Jesse, looking up at him as he stood in front of her.
“Maybe I’m a little bit like them,” Jesse said.
“The hell you are,” Molly said.
Jesse shrugged.
“I mean it,” Molly said. “You are in no way like either of those two scumbags.”
“Scumbags?” Jesse said. “Strong language for a Catholic girl.”
“Scumbags,” Molly said, “all of them. The men, the women, the damned victim. All of them. After I just talk about them, for God’s sake, I feel like I should take a long shower.”
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“We do know more about them than anyone would want,”
Jesse said. “That’s how murder investigations sometimes go.
You accumulate evidence and accumulate evidence and a lot of it makes you want to puke and most of it doesn’t solve your case.”
“So how are you going to solve this one?”
“Same old way,” Jesse said. “Keep asking. Keep pushing.
Try to scare them. Maybe somebody will roll on somebody.
Maybe somebody will do something stupid.”
“Little hard to get somebody to roll on a murder rap by threatening them with stat rape,” Molly said.
“You might if you were willing to let one of them walk,”
Jesse said.
“Are you?”
“No,” Jesse said.
“Accomplice testimony doesn’t get you anything in court, anyway,” Molly said.
Jesse sat on the edge of the conference table near Molly.
“Doesn’t matter,” Jesse said. “I’m going to get them both.”
They were quiet. Molly doodled a frowning happy face on her yellow pad. Jesse sat on the table edge and let his feet swing.
“You and Jenn okay?” Molly said.
“Yes.”
“Living together is okay?”
“Yes.”
“So far.”
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“God, you’re cautious about this,” Molly said.
“I worry that I’ll do it again,” Jesse said.
“Do what?”
“Whatever drove her away last time.”
“Maybe she did something,” Molly said.
“I mean I know she did things, cheated on me and stuff, but what did I do to cause it.”
�
�Maybe nothing,” Molly said. “Maybe it was her fault.”
Jesse shook his head.
“Course,” Molly said. “If it’s her fault you got no control over it. Your fault, you do. You can be very careful.”
Jesse continued to look out the window.
After a time he said, “Thanks, Molly.”
And Molly left.
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45
W hen I’m stuck,” Healy said, “I go over it.”
“All of it,” Jesse said.
“Start at page one of my notebook and
go page by page all the way through.”
It was Sunday. They were on his balcony looking at the harbor. Healy had a can of beer. Jesse was drinking Coke.
Jenn was in the production office looking at videotape. On the floor of the patio a thick-bodied, middle-aged Welsh corgi lay on his side, his eyes closed, his nose pointed at the ocean. Jesse had put a soup bowl full of water near him. The soup bowl was white with a blue line around the rim.
R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
“I know,” Jesse said.
“But you don’t want to,” Healy said.
“I don’t.”
“I’ll do it with you,” Healy said. “A second set of ears.”
“On a Sunday?”
“Sure.”
“It’ll take all day.”
“Not a problem,” Healy said.
“Something bad going on at your house?” Jesse said.
“My wife’s younger brother is visiting with his wife,”
Healy said. “They have young children.”
“You don’t care for young children.”
“Neither one of us,” Healy said. “But it’s her brother.”
“And the dog?”
“They annoy the hell out of Buck,” Healy said. “When he can, he bites them.”
“So it wasn’t all about helping me when you dropped by.”
“It was nothing about that,” Healy said. “Why don’t you get your notebook.”
Jesse went to his bedroom and got the notebook and brought it back.
“You want another beer?” he said.
“No,” Healy said. “I’m fine.”
Jesse always marveled at people who could nurse any drink. He had already finished his Coke.
“Okay,” he said. “She washes ashore near the town wharf. . . .”
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And they went through it. Incident by incident. Interview by interview. Day by day.
“Cruz broad sounds pretty good,” Healy said at one point.
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