Season of Fear

by Brain Freeman

  Lala Mosqueda sat in the passenger seat.

  She said: ‘Are you sleeping with her?’

  Cab dangled his keys from his finger. ‘Nice to see you, too.’

  ‘I’ve been wondering whether you were serious about our relationship,’ Lala said. ‘I guess I got my answer.’ She pushed open the passenger door.

  ‘Wait.’ Cab reached across the car to take her hand.

  She turned back to him and sat silently. Her dark eyes were on fire. The breeze outside had rustled her coffee-black hair, and it was a web across her golden face. She was dressed in black, making her almost invisible.

  ‘I’m not sleeping with her,’ he said.

  ‘Why not? I could see the flush on her face. She wants you. She’d probably give you a hell of a ride.’

  ‘You want to play games? Fine, I’ll call her now. Funny thing is, she calls me back. There’s not a lot of that going around.’

  Lala’s lips turned downward. ‘I’m on a work assignment, you know that. I’m busy.’

  ‘So why are you here? How did you find me?’

  ‘You checked in on Facebook,’ Lala said.

  He smiled. ‘Right. Damn that Zuckerberg.’

  ‘I figured it was an invitation. Or a taunt.’

  ‘Could be,’ Cab said.

  ‘So what, did you want to throw it in my face that you’re seeing someone else?’

  ‘I’m not seeing anyone. Including you, apparently.’

  They sat in angry silence. They did that a lot. When they were together there was always heat, which was good when they were in bed and bad when they took out their resentment on each other. In some ways it was easier when they were apart. When he’d pursued a murder investigation in Door County in the spring, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Their longing for each other was palpable every time they talked. Then, when he came back to Naples, they’d fallen into their usual pattern. Reaching for each other and then pushing the other away.

  Tarla didn’t help. Tarla, with her cutting remarks, trying to drive a wedge between them. His mother feigned innocence, but she didn’t like Lala, and Lala didn’t like her.

  He could feel the heat. As angry as they were, they wanted each other. He could almost feel her breasts cupped in his long fingers and hear her telling him what she wanted. If he reached for her, they would kiss, and then they would drive somewhere and make love, and minutes later, they would have their daggers out again. He wondered what it was between them, because it wasn’t just physical. He knew her body as intimately as he’d known any woman; he’d long since memorized every tiny imperfection that made her perfect. The birthmark on the inside of her thigh. The ticklish, knobby bones of her knees. The crescents under her eyes when she’d slept badly that she covered with makeup. She was beautiful, but not in a Hollywood way like Tarla. She was real. She had a real job. She had family she loved and family she hated. She worried about real things: money, kids, storms, death. Being around her made him feel real, too.

  ‘How’s Tarla?’ Lala asked, getting to the heart of the problem.

  ‘Tarla is Tarla. She’s never going to change.’

  ‘Is she still making snarky comments about me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me what she said?’

  ‘No. I told her to knock it off, but she won’t. We both know that.’

  ‘We sure do,’ Lala said.

  ‘Is that why you didn’t call back? Because I’m with her?’

  ‘Partly. Of course, I didn’t realize that a weekend with your mother also included tongue time with a leggy brunette.’ She added: ‘Let me guess. Tarla set you up with her.’

  ‘Yes,’ Cab admitted.

  ‘Big surprise. Who is she?’

  ‘Her name’s Caprice Dean.’

  Lala’s head turned sharply. ‘Are you kidding me? From the Common Way Foundation?’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘She works with Diane Fairmont, right?’

  Cab nodded. ‘Tarla and Diane are best friends. I’ve told you that.’

  ‘Well, you’re playing in powerful circles, Cab. I guess that’s where you belong.’

  ‘Caprice asked me to do a job. It’s not personal. I won’t deny that she’s attractive, and I won’t deny that it’s pretty clear there could be something there with her if I wanted it. I also won’t deny that I’m pissed as hell that you’ve been ignoring me for weeks.’

  ‘What’s the job?’ Lala asked.

  ‘Someone may be targeting Diane Fairmont. There may be links to what happened to her husband ten years ago. The FBI and police are looking into it, but Caprice wanted someone working for her.’

  ‘Or under her,’ Lala said.

  ‘Funny.’

  ‘The feebs have the resources for this kind of case. You don’t.’

  Cab shrugged. ‘True enough, but it’s not that simple.’

  ‘Because of your mother.’

  ‘Right. Like I said, she and Diane are friends.’

  ‘Diane is a candidate for governor. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. This is a hornet’s nest, Cab.’

  ‘You may be right,’ he admitted.

  Lala opened the car door again. ‘It was a mistake to come here. I’m sorry to ambush you.’

  ‘Why did you?’

  He felt her dark eyes on him. He saw the fullness of her lips, and he urgently wanted to kiss those lips. He missed her, and he felt like a fool.

  ‘Because I believe there is something in you and me that is worth salvaging,’ she told him.

  ‘I do, too.’

  ‘Then – and I can’t stress this strongly enough – I suggest you not have sex with Caprice Dean.’

  He chose not to take the bait. ‘When can I see you again?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘I’m not trying to avoid you. I’ve got an assignment that’s keeping me away from Naples. You know that.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got my number,’ Cab said, ‘so call me maybe.’

  Lala couldn’t help herself. She laughed. She got out of the Corvette, and her movements were like a cat’s. Her black clothes fit like a second skin. When she leaned back inside, her face had turned serious again. ‘Does Tarla know about you and Diane? Your history together?’

  ‘Only if Diane told her,’ Cab said.

  ‘Is it a problem for you?’

  ‘Not so far, but I haven’t seen Diane yet.’

  ‘I meant what I said, Cab. Be careful. You may find yourself in over your head with these people. Even you.’

  ‘I appreciate the advice.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’ Lala shut the door, and she was gone.

  12

  Peach sat in the dark. It was past midnight. She didn’t like air conditioning, and the house was damp and hot. She wore a spaghetti strap T-shirt and a roomy pair of Deacon’s boxers she’d grabbed from the laundry. Her small feet were propped on the dusty living room coffee table, and her taped ankle throbbed. Sexpot Mannequin kept her company. Sexpot had hard nipples on crazy-big breasts, one arm cocked behind her head, and oddly muscular abs. She usually hung out in Peach’s bedroom wearing a baby doll and a long blond wig.

  The mannequin thing was strange. She knew that, but she didn’t care. Some people collected stuffed animals. Some people dressed up Barbies. She liked having these faux women around, who were blank slates on which she could fashion new identities. They were her alter egos.

  Justin on her mannequins. I’m not sure they like me. I think they’re worried I’ll steal you away.

  Outside, headlights beamed through the picture window, and she heard the purr of the Mercedes engine. Deacon was home. She listened to his footsteps and then the rattle of the key as he let himself inside. He brought a smell of sweat with him; he’d been at the 24-hour gym. She said nothing, and he didn’t see her in the living room shadows. He headed through the foyer to his bedroom at the back of the house, and a couple minut
es later, she heard the loud bang of the pipes as he took a shower. Their bathrooms were old, and the water was rusty.

  It was just the two of them. Peach and Deacon. They had the typical relationship of siblings who were close and not close, totally different and totally alike. They lived together; they worked together; they spent time together. Even so, he was six years older, and she still felt like a little kid around him. He had never tried to be a father to her, just an older brother with his own life. Unlike Lyle. When their parents died, Lyle had jumped into the role of fill-in dad, as if it were his calling. It changed him. It was weird how quickly Lyle aged in those years. Losing his hair. His voice deepening. Becoming so serious and strict.

  She idolized Lyle, but that was the fuzzy glow of memory. He wasn’t perfect. He’d often been harsh and judgmental with both of them. He could be neglectful, especially that last year, when politics constantly took him away. The Common Way Party was his priority then, not her. She remembered a long weekend in Tampa that last August. Deacon and Peach had gone on the road with Lyle, but instead of having fun in the city, Lyle had packed fundraising meetings into his schedule night and day, leaving them alone. Then, to make things worse, Peach contracted a case of pneumonia that left her hacking and feverish. Lyle acted as if it were her fault – like she was being sick just to inconvenience him. He’d insisted that Deacon drive her back to Lake Wales, and that had prompted a big argument, because Deacon wanted to stay. Then Deacon hit a deer on the road, damaging Lyle’s precious new Mercedes. Another big argument. Peach had been practically delirious, but she had never forgotten the curses flying for days.

  Those were among her last memories of Lyle, and she didn’t like it that way.

  The shower stopped. Not long after, Deacon turned on the light, making her squint. He stood in the living room doorway, with his muscular body wrapped in a worn bath towel.

  ‘Fruity,’ he said in surprise. ‘I didn’t know you were still up.’

  ‘Couldn’t sleep.’

  He sat down on the old sofa next to her. She could feel warmth radiating from his skin, and his wavy red hair was damp. ‘What’s Sexpot doing in here?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, you know her. She gets around.’

  Deacon laughed. ‘You get anything at the convention today?’

  ‘Actually, I didn’t go. The new girl, Annalie, hung out with me at the beach.’

  ‘Good for you.’ He pointed at her taped ankle. ‘How’d you do that?’

  ‘I stepped wrong in the sand. It’s nothing. I’m fine.’

  She thought about telling him about her visit to Justin’s apartment – and her confrontation with the stranger pretending to be a St Petersburg detective – but she knew Deacon would be stern. He was overprotective, like Lyle, and he wouldn’t like the idea of her sticking her nose into Justin’s murder.

  Was that what she was doing? She hadn’t really admitted it to herself, but it was true. She didn’t believe his death had anything to do with drugs. He’d been hiding something from her, and whatever it was had gotten him killed. She thought about Annalie. Sometimes special projects go on behind the scenes. People get recruited to do things they don’t want to do.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ she said.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Do you know what Justin was working on before he was killed?’

  Deacon shook his head. ‘No, Ogden pretty much had him under his thumb those last few weeks.’

  ‘Ogden did?’

  ‘Well, it looked that way. I saw Justin in his office a lot. You know how Ogden works. He keeps us walled off, so he can dodge the blame if things go wrong. Why? What’s going on?’

  Peach shrugged. ‘It’s nothing,’ she lied. ‘Annalie was wondering if she needed to follow up on any of Justin’s projects.’

  Deacon hesitated, as if deciding whether to believe her. Then he slapped her on the leg. ‘Okay, I’m going to bed.’ He got up, tightening the knot of his towel. ‘You mind if I take Sexpot to my room? I like it when she watches me.’

  ‘Ewww,’ Peach said.

  Her brother laughed. ‘I’m kidding. Get some sleep.’

  ‘I will. Hey, Deacon?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you know anyone named Alison?’

  He scrunched his mouth and thought about it. ‘Alison? I don’t think so. Who is she?’

  ‘It’s a name Justin mentioned.’

  ‘Well, there’s an Alison Kuipers at the law firm that Ms Fairmont uses. She signs off on legal questions for some of the jobs we do.’

  ‘So if Justin had concerns about something, he would have called her?’

  ‘Yeah, could be.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Peach said. ‘It’s not a big deal. I was just curious.’

  Deacon mussed her hair, which he knew she hated. ‘Go to bed, Fruity. It’s late.’

  ‘I will.’

  Peach waited as Deacon returned to his bedroom. He turned off the light behind him, leaving her in darkness. The pale glow of a streetlight down the block made Sexpot’s white limbs shimmer. Peach wondered what it would be like to be empty at the core, dressed up so that people saw whatever they wanted to see.

  Maybe that was her.

  She waited half an hour without moving. It was past one in the morning. When she stood up, her twisted ankle protested, but she limped toward the front door. Not making a sound, Peach slipped out of the house, past the warped gates and the No Trespassing and Beware of Dog signs. She crossed the street in the humid haze and crept beside the fence guarding Seminole Park. The ground under her feet was damp. At the gate, she slipped into the bug-infested woods and slapped away insects that tried to fly up her nose. They swarmed her, as if they were trying to warn her away.

  She ran to her Thunderbird.

  She knew there was no going back now. She was all in.

  *

  The monitor on Peach’s desk glowed in a rectangle of white light. Around her, the foundation research office was dark. She’d left the overhead fluorescent lights off. Her T-Bird wasn’t parked in its usual spot, number 52, across from the Tampa mural. Instead, she’d parked outside an apartment building two blocks away, which wasn’t visible from the office’s double doors.

  She didn’t want anyone knowing about her late-night visit, but she knew she was leaving electronic footprints. That was the risk she had to take. If someone looked, they would see that her pass card had been used to enter the building at 1:52 a.m. If someone looked, they would also see that the dormant foundation computer account for Justin Kiel had been accessed at 1:57 a.m.

  She knew his password. She hoped that no one had thought to completely deactivate his account, but when she keyed in Tyger1827, it was as if Justin had never died. His files were still there. His office e-mail was still there. She assumed the police had been through everything following the murder, but they were looking for evidence of drugs, suppliers, and customers. Peach knew there was nothing like that to find.

  She ran a search of his files. Alison.

  She ran a search of his e-mail. Alison.

  Both searches elicited no results. She tried again with the last name that Deacon had given her – Kuipers – and got no hits again. If Justin had been in touch with the attorney at the foundation law firm, he’d done it offline. Peach knew him. He wouldn’t have left digital records.

  His e-mails made her sad. Many of them were to her. As she scrolled through his file of sent messages, she found herself smiling. Then crying. He wrote to her about work. He wrote to her about music and poetry. He wrote to her with his little philosophies about the world. He wrote to her every day, and then he didn’t write to her at all. That last week, he dropped off the radar completely. As she studied his account, she saw that his last sent message was dated a week before he was killed. He hadn’t been in the office those last several days.

  However, Peach studied his mail folders and saw two draft messages. Unsent. When she opened the folder, she saw that both messages had been composed t
he evening before his death, and for some reason, he’d left them undelivered. She wondered where he had written them, because he hadn’t been in the office that night. She’d been here herself, alone.

  The first message was to her, and it included an attachment. Peach held her breath as she clicked on the draft e-mail, wondering what she would find. She expected something deep, something secret, that only she would be able to interpret.

  Instead, the mail message said simply: Cool place!

  She opened the attachment, which was a jpeg photograph taken with her own phone. She saw herself. Justin had taken a picture of her in front of a restaurant called The Crab Shack on Gandy Road. They’d eaten there several months earlier and spent hours over beer and Chesapeake-style blue crabs, hammering and picking meat from the tiny bodies. It was a happy memory. She looked carefree in the photo, with a big smile on her face, mugging and pointing her thumb over her shoulder. The restaurant, which was a tin-roof dive, was behind her, its exterior packed with kitschy decorations. A Landshark surfboard. A neon lobster in the window. Beer buckets and scrap metal crabs.

  Peach studied the photo, and when the glow of her memory faded, she looked at it again and thought: That’s not right.

  Something was wrong, something odd, but the more she looked at it, the less she trusted her instincts. It was just an old photo. She’d seen it before. No big deal. And then she thought: Why would Justin send me this again? Why that photo? Why that night of all nights?

  She sat in the darkness, but she had no answers. She clicked the Send button, and almost immediately her phone beeped as the e-mail arrived at her account.

  Peach opened the second unsent message. This one was to Ogden Bush. It read simply: I need to see you.

  Justin was trying to meet with Bush the night before he was killed, but he never sent the e-mail. Something secret was going on between Justin and Bush. That was what Deacon had suspected: Ogden had him under his thumb.

  Peach logged off the account and switched off her monitor. The office was black, so she took a flashlight from her desk drawer. Following the light, she left her cubicle and made her way along the rear wall to Bush’s office. The door was closed and locked, but that didn’t matter. This had been Deacon’s office until Bush bumped him out to a smaller desk during the campaign. Peach had a key, and she let herself inside.