“The thing on the windshield,” Mrs. Plum said.
“It is useful almost everywhere north of Washington,” Mr.
Plum said. “I drive often to New York. It is a great time-saver.”
Jesse showed no sign that Mr. Plum had spoken.
“So when you thought he was off to Tallahassee to open the new store,” Jesse said to Mrs. Plum, “he was, in fact, driving up to Boston to see Florence.”
Mr. Plum spoke in the same gentle voice.
2 8 2
S E A C H A N G E
“What he’s saying is wrong, Mommy.”
She stared at him for a moment. He sat very erect, his ankles together. He drank his Manhattan carefully and patted his lips with a napkin. Jesse thought he looked prim.
“Mommy,” Mr. Plum said.
“Do you have any theory, Mrs. Plum,” Jesse said, “why he went up there?”
“No,” she said.
“Do you have any theory on why he pretends he didn’t?”
“I never went, Mommy.”
Mrs. Plum didn’t look at her husband. She kept her gaze fixed on Jesse.
“No,” Mrs. Plum said. “I don’t.”
The room was silent. The sky was very blue above the terrace. The bay beyond the terrace looked clean and bright.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Mr. Plum said.
Mrs. Plum stared at Jesse. Jesse walked over to the railing and leaned on it beside Ortiz. Mr. Plum poured himself a Manhattan from a silver shaker beaded with moisture. He offered the shaker to Mrs. Plum who shook her head. She sipped from her still-sufficient glass.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Mr. Plum said.
Ortiz ate his sandwiches. Kelly Cruz sat with her legs crossed, her hands clasped over her right knee. Jesse waited.
No one spoke. Slowly Mrs. Plum shifted her gaze from Jesse to her husband. He smiled at her.
He said, “It’s going to be all right, Mommy.”
2 8 3
R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
She continued to look at him. He sat calmly with his Manhattan delicately held with thumb and forefinger. His face was toward her, but he didn’t appear to be looking at anything.
“You are a monstrous pig of a man,” Mrs. Plum said to him.
Her voice was calm and the tone was simply the assertion of an obvious fact.
“Mommy,” he said, “please. Not in front of guests.”
“You killed her,” Mrs. Plum said. “Didn’t you.”
“Mommy,” he said again in his pleasant detached way,
“please let’s mind our manners.”
“She sent you the tape and you went into a jealous frenzy and drove up there and killed her.”
“Tape?” Mr. Plum said.
“You think I don’t know about the tape? You think I didn’t recognize her handwriting when it came? You think I didn’t find it in your study while you were out? You think I didn’t play it? You think I don’t know about you?”
Her voice went slowly, almost ploddingly, up the scale until she was almost screaming.
“That tape was private,” Mr. Plum said.
“Private?” Mrs. Plum’s voice was down into calm again.
“That is my daughter.”
“And mine,” Mr. Plum said. He seemed still to be looking at nothing. “It was private between me and my daughter.”
“Whom you have been fucking since she was thirteen,”
Mrs. Plum said.
Mr. Plum suddenly looked at her.
2 8 4
S E A C H A N G E
“Mommy,” he said firmly, “don’t be crude.”
She stared at him and then looked at Jesse and Ortiz, then at Kelly Cruz.
“He’s been doing it since they were little girls,” she said to Kelly Cruz. “All three of them. We never talked about it.
Maybe he thought I didn’t know, but I knew.”
“And did nothing?” Kelly Cruz said.
“He had money and we were well situated,” Mrs. Plum said. “He made no demands on me. It was easier to drink.”
“Not for the girls,” Kelly Cruz said.
“I loved those girls,” Mr. Plum said. “And they loved me.”
“And you destroyed them,” Mrs. Plum said. “And now you’ve killed Florence.”
“Betsy,” Mr. Plum said. “Please. Can’t this wait until our guests have departed?”
Mrs. Plum finished her Manhattan. With no apparent thought, Mr. Plum refilled her glass. She began to cry silently.
“See him,” she gasped. “See him? That’s what he’s like.
He’s like a reptile. He doesn’t hear. He doesn’t feel. He has no body warmth.”
Kelly Cruz nodded.
“I am not a reptile, Betsy,” Plum said. “I am a man with the feelings and impulses of my gender.”
“And you killed Florence,” Mrs. Plum said.
Her voice was beginning to soar again.
“You killed Florence because you were jealous that she was having sex with other people.”
“The tape was insulting,” Mr. Plum said.
2 8 5
R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
“And you killed her.”
“She betrayed me, Betsy.”
“And you killed her,” Mrs. Plum said. “Say it. Say you killed her. Say something for once in your weird reptilian existence, say something true. Say . . . you . . . killed . . . her!”
“You can’t know,” Mr. Plum said. “None of you can know how I loved those girls.”
“Which is . . . why you . . . killed her?”
Mrs. Plum struggled to speak.
“You . . . loved her so . . . much . . . you killed her?”
“I killed her to keep her from becoming worse than she had become,” Mr. Plum said. “I really had no choice.”
He picked up the silver shaker, found that it was empty, put it down and rang the little bell for the maid.
2 8 6
61
K elly Cruz turned her drink slowly on the bar in front of her. She was drinking Jack Daniels on the rocks.
“So what about Darnell and Ralston?” she said to Jesse.
They were sitting at the bar in Jesse’s hotel. Jesse was drinking a Virgin Mary. Kelly Cruz had on a black dress with spaghetti straps and a skirt that stopped above her knees. She had a nice tan. A small black purse lay on the bar beside her drink.
“We busted them yesterday, for statutory rape.”
“Will it hold in court?”
“We got Darnell on videotape.”
R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
“Righteous tape?”
“Absolutely.”
“How about Ralston?”
“If our witness holds,” Jesse said.
“She might not?”
Jesse shrugged.
“She’s a kid,” he said.
“Think they’ll do time?”
“Not my area,” Jesse said.
“What do you think?” Kelly Cruz said. “Cop to cop.”
Jesse smiled.
“I don’t think about that,” he said. “Too many variables.
How good is their lawyer? How good is the prosecutor? Will their sexual history be admitted? Will they plead out?”
“Probably,” Kelly Cruz said.
Jesse nodded.
“No jail time,” Kelly Cruz said.
Jesse shrugged.
“I arrest, they prosecute,” he said.
Kelly Cruz looked at Jesse’s Virgin Mary.
“Drinking problem?” she said.
“Yes.”
“How long you been sober?”
“I haven’t had a drink going onto a year,” Jesse said.
“Miss it?”
“Yes.”
“My husband was a drunk,” Kelly Cruz said.
2 8 8
S E A C H A N G E
“You divorced?”
Kelly Cruz nodded.
“Know where he
is now?”
“No,” Kelly Cruz said.
“How are the kids?”
“Good,” she said. “Two boys. We live with my parents.
My father’s a good father for all of us.”
Jesse finished his Virgin Mary and gestured for another one.
“No wonder you got a problem,” Kelly Cruz said. “You’ll drink a lot of anything.”
“Vitamin C,” Jesse said as the bartender set the new drink in front of him.
“Why do you suppose Willis Plum sent the videotape of his daughter to Darnell?”
Jesse shook his head.
“He’s way past anything I understand,” Jesse said.
“Maybe he thought it would embarrass her,” Kelly Cruz said.
Jesse nodded.
“Maybe he was sending it to her, you know, dismissing it by returning it,” Kelly Cruz said.
“Blondie Martin says it was addressed to Darnell.”
“Maybe he did it because he’s a whack job,” Kelly Cruz said.
“Not such a whack job that he flew up there and left a paper trail with the airlines,” Jesse said.
Kelly Cruz drank some bourbon.
2 8 9
R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
“You going home tomorrow?” Kelly Cruz said.
“Yeah. Paperwork’s done. I’m supposed to take him back with me.”
“Got anyone waiting?” Kelly Cruz said.
“My ex-wife,” Jesse said.
“You have an ex-wife waiting for you?”
“We’re trying to rework things,” Jesse said.
“How’s that going?”
“So far,” Jesse said, “so good.”
“Plum girls are home, staying with their mother,” Kelly Cruz said.
“Good,” Jesse said.
“Think anything good will happen to them?” Kelly Cruz said.
“Probably not,” Jesse said.
“Father’s gone,” Kelly Cruz said. “They’re with their mother.”
“Who is not a real lot better than their father,” Jesse said.
“No,” Kelly Cruz said.
“You did a hell of a job on this,” Jesse said.
“I know.”
“A lot of it on your own time, I suspect.”
“Some,” Kelly Cruz said. “On the other hand, I met a nice marina manager, and a very fine private pilot.”
“Good,” Jesse said. “I’m glad you profited from the experience.”
Kelly Cruz finished her drink and stood.
2 9 0
S E A C H A N G E
“Got a date with the pilot,” she said. “It’s his turn. The marina manager has already profited from the experience.”
Jesse stood. He left his Virgin Mary half consumed on the bar.
“Thanks, Kell,” he said. “You’re a hell of a cop.”
She turned toward him and gave him a light kiss on the mouth.
“You’re pretty good at the job yourself,” she said. “Good luck with the ex-wife.”
“And you with the pilot,” Jesse said.
Kelly Cruz stiffened her upper lip over her teeth and did an imitation of somebody. Bogart, Jesse thought. Maybe.
“Ain’t a matter of luck, blue eyes,” she said, and picked up her purse.
With her left hand she patted his cheek. He put his hand over hers for a moment. She was wearing a really nice perfume. They stood for a moment like that, then she took her hand away and he stood and watched her walk out of the bar.
If there’s luck involved, it’ll be the pilot’s.
2 9 1
62
I t was cool and rainy in Paradise. The boats were gone. The harbor was back to its normal maritime clutter. Jenn had made a meatloaf, and baked two potatoes. Jesse had tossed a salad. They sat now at the small table in the kitchen and ate supper together. Jenn opened a bottle of Riesling.
“Aren’t you supposed to have red wine with meatloaf ?”
Jesse said.
“I think with meatloaf you can have what you want,” Jenn said.
“That’s one of the good things about meatloaf,” Jesse said.
“Another being that I know how to make it,” Jenn said.
S E A C H A N G E
The apartment was quiet. Through the open door to the balcony they could hear the rain fall.
“I think we’re doing good,” Jenn said after a time.
“Yes.”
“How are you?” Jenn said.
“Good.”
“And that hideous case is over,” Jenn said.
“For me,” Jesse said.
Jenn nodded.
“Do you actually know what happened?”
“Sort of,” Jesse said.
“One thing I wondered ever since you told me,” Jenn said.
“Why did the twins tell you it was what’s her name? Kimmy something?”
“Kimmy Young,” Jesse said.
“If they had made up a name, or told the truth, you might never have figured it out.”
“That’s right,” Jesse said.
“You think at some level they did it on purpose?”
“Probably.”
“Because they wanted you to figure it out?”
“Probably.”
“And stop it,” Jenn said.
“Which I did,” Jesse said.
“Do you know how Florence died?”
“Sort of,” Jesse said.
Jenn waited.
“For whatever reason, after all this time,” Jesse said, “Flor-2 9 3
R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
ence decided to stop being Daddy’s girl. They had some kind of confrontation about it. The old man never quite says. And she went off and made the video with her sisters and sent it to him.”
“Some kind of perverted kiss-off,” Jenn said.
“I guess,” Jesse said. “He sent it on to Darnell. Plum never quite told me why. Then, he says, he drove up here to recon-cile. They always liked sailing, the mother says. So Florence rented a boat, packed a picnic, and they went off for a ro-mantic sail, during which time they argued, and he threw her in the water, and sailed off.”
“And he didn’t know where she’d gotten the boat so he just put it the first place he saw.”
“Probably,” Jesse said.
“God, it’s like a lovers’ quarrel,” Jenn said.
“Except he was careful to give himself a cover story and drive all the way so there’d be no record of him with the airlines.”
Jenn put her fork down and looked at Jesse for a long silent moment.
“Which means he planned to do it before he left,” Jenn said.
“Un-huh.”
“My God,” Jenn said.
Jesse didn’t say anything.
“The other daughters?”
“Home with Mom,” Jesse said.
“You think they’ll get over this?”
2 9 4
S E A C H A N G E
“No.”
Jenn poured herself some wine.
“So he’s destroyed all his children,” Jenn said.
“And his wife let him,” Jesse said.
“How could she deny so much,” Jenn said.
“She needed to, I guess.”
Jenn took a sip of her wine.
“Have you talked with Dix about this?”
“Indirectly,” Jesse said.
“You’ve talked to him about how this affected you.”
“Yes.”
“Want to tell me?”
“It was so much about sex and so little about love,” Jesse said. “And I was already worried that with you I’m too much about sex anyway.”
Jenn listened without comment. Jesse went on.
“Dix says that it’s a kind of, what did he call it, amulet, I’ve created. If what I do can cause us to break up again, then the control is with me, because I can change. If it’s things you do . . .” Jesse shrugged.
“I guess you need to
trust me a little more,” Jenn said.
“Even if my track record isn’t so good.”
“It’s about both of us,” Jesse said. “Maybe I need to trust us both.”
Jenn smiled and sipped some wine.
Jesse watched her. “It’s been a year,” he said.
“I know.”
“I think I’ll try a glass of wine,” Jesse said.
2 9 5
R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
“Like that?” Jenn said.
Jesse nodded.
“Maybe two,” he said.
“You think you should?” Jenn said. “You think you can?”
“Only one way to find out.”
“What if you can’t?”
“Then I’ll stop again,” Jesse said. “I’ve proved I can do that.”
“Have you talked to Dix about this?” Jenn said.
“Indirectly,” Jesse said.
Jenn looked at Jesse’s wineglass and grinned suddenly. He liked it when she grinned.
“You sure you want to waste it on wine?” Jenn said. “I could make you a scotch and soda.”
“I want to eat supper with you and drink two glasses of wine,” Jesse said.
“Maybe two,” Jenn said.
They looked at each other. Both of them nodded.
Jenn poured some wine into his glass, careful to make it a full glass, not to skimp as if she didn’t trust him.
“And,” Jenn said, “you should know that being too sexual with me is a great deal better than not being sexual enough.”
Jesse smiled.
“I’ll drink to that,” he said.
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