‘Can you blame her?’ Tarla asked. ‘The media would have been incredibly hurtful. She deserved to grieve in her own way, not have her life blown up by scandal. That’s still true today, Cab. Common Way is her life. Regardless of whether you’re angry at her, you have no right to expose what happened and put everything she’s worked for in jeopardy.’
‘I’m not sure the secret is about politics. I’m not sure it ever was.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Drew,’ Cab said.
Tarla sprang to her feet. ‘Oh, honestly, Cab, this again?’
The silk of her night clothes swished as she padded to the windows and stared out at the rain. The Gulf was invisible. He came up behind her and put a hand gently on his mother’s shoulder.
‘Drew threatened to kill Birch,’ he said. ‘Now I know he had a very powerful motive to do so.’
‘I told you, he didn’t do it. Leave it alone. What do you hope to accomplish?’
‘Sometimes the truth is enough,’ Cab said.
Tarla spun around, and strands of golden hair flew across her eyes. Her face was flushed as she shouted at him. ‘Do you always have to be a fucking policeman?’
Cab was calm, but his mother looked embarrassed by her profane outburst. She turned back to the window and leaned against the cold glass with her forehead. He could see, in the blurry reflection, that her eyes were closed.
‘Does it really even matter?’ she murmured. ‘Does it really matter after all these years? It’s over. It’s in the past.’
‘Even if that were true, yes, it does matter. Birch wasn’t the only one who was killed that night. Lyle Piper didn’t deserve to die. The citrus farmer who tried to intervene, he didn’t deserve to die.’
Tarla turned around, and she looked chastened. ‘You’re right, of course.’
‘And I don’t think it is over. Someone named Justin Kiel was murdered last month. I think it’s because he was asking questions about the Labor Day killings.’
‘How could that be?’ Tarla asked. ‘Even if Drew was involved, he died years ago.’
‘Drew may have turned to someone else for help. Someone who is still alive. Someone who’s trying to cover his tracks. Drew had a relationship with a drug dealer named Frank Macy, and he might have used Macy as part of the plot.’
Cab stopped as Tarla’s face tensed with recognition. She was an actress and recovered almost immediately, but he didn’t miss it. The name Frank Macy meant something to her. She knew who he was.
‘Mother?’ he asked. ‘What do you know about Frank Macy?’
‘Only that he was a friend of Drew’s. I remember meeting him that summer.’
She shrank from the hardness in his eyes.
‘What else?’ he asked.
‘Oh, darling, drop it. I got enough interrogations when I guest-starred on Law & Order. That Sam Waterston, he is yummy.’
‘You’re hiding something,’ Cab said. ‘You’ve been hiding something from me all along. What is it? Did you recognize the gunman? Was it Macy?’
‘I told you, I don’t remember a thing about that night.’
He took her chin gently between two fingers. ‘Mother, this is not a game. This is not one of your movies. Innocent people have died, and they are still dying. You can’t hide what you know. Not anymore.’
Tarla blinked back tears, and she wasn’t acting. She was genuinely distressed. ‘I can’t say anything. Not to you. Don’t you understand? You are a cop, darling. Whatever I tell you, I know you will have to act upon, and I can’t allow that.’
Cab reached into his suit coat pocket. He pulled out his badge, and he put it in his mother’s hand and closed her fingers around it. ‘This is me resigning. I’m no longer a police officer. I’m a private citizen.’
‘Cab, it isn’t that simple.’
‘It is. You need to tell me.’
Tarla turned away with his badge still clutched in her hand. She looked as if she would rather open the patio door and jump than open her mouth.
‘I had no idea what I was seeing,’ she said. ‘I didn’t give it any thought at all. It was only afterward that I wondered. I never said anything, but I’ve always wondered about it.’
‘Was this on Labor Day?’
She shook her head. ‘It was two days before.’
‘Mother, what did you see?’
‘That man,’ Tarla replied. ‘Frank Macy. I recognized him. It was in the garden of the estate, near a road coming out of the orange groves. I was taking a walk, and they didn’t see me. They had no idea I was there. I saw an exchange of money between them. It was a large amount of money.’
Cab closed his eyes. He felt as if the pieces had finally come together. Two days before Labor Day, Drew paid Macy. This wasn’t for drugs. This was for murder. Drew paid Frank Macy to kill Birch Fairmont, and Macy chose to make it look like an act of domestic terrorism. And the dominoes began to fall.
‘I wish you’d told me before,’ he said quietly. ‘This changes everything. Drew may be dead, but Frank Macy isn’t. He’s alive, and he’s dangerous.’
Tarla shook her head. She looked stricken. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘What?’
‘It wasn’t Drew,’ she said. ‘I didn’t see Drew pay the money to Frank Macy. It was Diane.’
36
Peach left her T-Bird in Seminole Park, the way she always did. It was three in the morning, and with each hour, the storm got worse.
Cab Bolton had said almost nothing when he left her at the motel in Lake Wales. No explanations. No excuses. I have to get back to Tampa right now. You can stay if you’d like. The room’s paid for. Then he sped away in his Corvette as if his entire life depended on it.
Peach had no desire to stay the night in Lake Wales. Instead, she went home. She’d followed Justin’s trail, but now it had led her back where she started. She still had only one name circled in her brain, like a target. Frank Macy. He was closer than ever to the heart of everything. Somehow, Justin had made the mistake of getting in Macy’s way.
Then she realized she had one more name that troubled her. The name she didn’t understand at all. Alison.
Peach pulled a phone from her pocket. It was off; she’d turned it off before she went inside Dr Smeltz’s office. When she turned it on, the phone was slow to reacquire signal. She finally was able to open her mobile browser and hunt for the name of the lawyer that Deacon had given her. Alison Kuipers. She found an entry for the woman at the Tampa law firm used by the Common Way Foundation, and she dialed the lawyer’s direct number.
‘This is Alison Kuipers. Please leave a message …’
Peach wasn’t sure what to say. When she heard the beep, she left her number but no name. Then she added: ‘Call me as soon as you can. It’s about Justin Kiel.’
She hung up. As she did, her phone let out a noise like a wolf whistle. She had voicemail. When she checked her phone records, she saw that her brother Deacon had called while her phone was off. The call was three hours old.
She played the voicemail message and heard his voice, but it was muffled and strange. He was whispering.
‘Fruity, it’s me. Hey, listen … I got a call back from someone in state corrections. He says Frank Macy spent two years inside with a roommate named Truc. Vietnamese, gang affiliations in L.A. Truc is back on the street, and word is, he’s involved in gun trafficking. High-capacity assault weapons. Give me a call as soon as you get this message, okay? There’s something you should know about Macy and Diane, too …’
There was silence, and Peach thought that Deacon had hung up, but a moment later, he went on.
‘Listen, if Macy really is involved in something, chances are he’s not alone. Don’t trust anybody.’
Peach climbed out of her car and was immediately drenched. She didn’t run to dodge the rain; she didn’t have the energy, and her twisted ankle throbbed. She felt carried by the wind at her back. She squished through loose mud to the hole in th
e fence and made her way to 98th Street. Their house was black. Deacon’s Mercedes was parked in the driveway. He was home.
She kicked through running water in the street. It was dark brown with dirt and littered with pine needles, and it was already deep enough to carry debris from neighboring yards. She opened the gate in the warped fence – No Trespassing, Beware of Dog – and headed for the front door.
Give me a call as soon as you get this message, okay?
Ten feet away, she froze. Their front door was wide open.
The driving rain drowned out every other noise around her. Her eyes flicked to the windows, but she saw no movement behind the ratty curtains. Instinctively, she glanced over her shoulder. She was alone outside the house, but she didn’t feel less afraid.
Peach had never owned a gun. She had never even held a gun in her hand, but she wished she had one now. Or she wished Annalie was with her, pointing her own gun at the open door.
She approached slowly. The door was broken just above the door knob. The frame was splintered, and the strike plate had been torn off. Someone had kicked their way into the house. Gusts of wind carried rain across the tiled foyer. She peered inside, but all she could see was a silver sheen reflecting on the floor. She reached around the door frame to flip the light switch, but the power was off.
Peach took two steps into the foyer. In the living room on her left, she could distinguish the stark white shape of Sexpot Mannequin, who was where she’d left her, in lingerie, strong arm cocked behind her head. Nothing looked disturbed. The timbers of the house shook. With the noise of the storm muffled, she listened again. She didn’t think anyone was here, but the Mercedes was parked in the driveway. Her anxiety soared.
She called: ‘Deacon!’
Her brother didn’t answer.
She tiptoed toward his bedroom. The rainwater followed her, moving like a snake. The air was stale and still. She retrieved a tiny pen light on her keychain and cast a weak beam in front of her. She sweated under her wet clothes. Her hand trembled. The fluttering light illuminated the open door of Deacon’s bedroom, and she saw something smeared across the wood. Getting closer, she touched it, and her finger came away sticky and red.
Blood.
‘Oh, no,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, no, no, no, no.’
The flashlight lit up the bedroom. She moved it around to the bed, to the floor, to the bathroom. The room was empty, but she saw evidence of a fight. The sheets had been torn off the bed, and she saw more blood on the white mattress. She clasped both hands over her head in frustration and pulled at her hair. She bit her lip so hard that it split between her teeth.
She took her phone and dialed Deacon’s number. There was no answer.
She dialed again. And again. Each time, she heard the call go to voicemail.
Peach ran from the house, leaving the broken door open behind her. She blinked, barely able to see through rain and tears. She held up her arms against the wind in her face, as if she could keep the gusts from blowing her away. Tree branches snapped and fell around her. She stumbled forward into the street, which was swollen with two inches of water, nearly knocking her off her feet.
She fought to the park and clambered inside her car. Her face was streaked with dirt. She was spattered with mud.
What to do, what to do, what to do.
Peach dialed 911. The circuits were overloaded, and the call failed. Half the city was declaring an emergency. Even if she got through, the police weren’t coming. Not now. Not in the storm. She was on her own, and she needed help. Don’t trust anybody. That was what Deacon had told her, but she couldn’t listen to him now.
Peach dialed the phone.
‘Annalie, it’s me,’ she said when she got voicemail. ‘Deacon’s missing. I need to see you right away. Please. Meet me at the office whenever you get this message. I’m going there now.’
37
Cab couldn’t sleep.
He lay with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling. He was mostly undressed, on top of the duvet and sheets. The storm howled on the other side of the wall. The placid Gulf had become a monster, lashing the coast. Dawn was two hours away, but there would be no sun and barely any light when morning came. It was a dark day. Independence Day.
Boy or girl. He found himself going back to that question over and over. He’d lost a child, and he didn’t even know if it had been a boy or a girl. Each wave of emotion that washed over him became something else as it retreated. His fury at Birch. His anger that Diane had kept the secret from him. His sympathy for her and what she’d suffered. His pain at the thought of how far she might have gone to avenge what her husband had done to her.
Cab felt responsible. He’d been the trigger. He’d set everything in motion. That one week, that one afternoon, had rippled far beyond the moment. A child had died. His child. And then others had been killed.
His fault.
He wondered how things might have been different. If Diane had carried the baby to term, would he still be in the dark? Would Birch be alive? He imagined himself seeing a ten-year-old boy – or girl – with ocean-blue eyes, taller than he or she had any right to be. Would the thought have flitted across his mind? Would there have been some kind of kinship, some connection, between the two of them?
Not that he would ever know. All he could do was speculate.
He had never thought about wanting children. He’d grown up as Tarla’s only child, so he never spent time around babies. He’d never known his father, so he didn’t know what that relationship could be like. In the early days with Vivian Frost in Barcelona, he had fantasized about a life with her, and maybe in the back of his mind that life had included kids. Her death – her betrayal – had hollowed out his desires for a long-term relationship. He couldn’t imagine himself as a husband, let alone a father. A child never entered his consciousness.
Boy or girl.
Cab got out of bed and headed into the living room in his briefs. He thought about pouring himself a drink, but he already had a headache from the wine in Lake Wales. He watched wind and rain flooding through the halo of lights far below him. In the other high-rises, he could see a handful of apartments where the owners were awake, like him.
It was easier to think about work. About the puzzle. He knew what he had to do in the morning. He needed to talk to Caprice about Birch and Diane and the violence between them. He needed to see Diane, too.
He needed to hear about their child from her lips.
Cab turned in surprise as the doorbell chime rang through the condo. He noticed the clock and assumed it was Tarla. This was the guest apartment; Tarla lived in her own place next door. He really didn’t want to talk to his mother again. They’d shared enough anger and secrets for one night. Even so, he went to the door and peered through the spyhole. It wasn’t Tarla.
He opened the door.
Lala, her face wet from the rain and wet from crying, came through the door, closed it softly, and put her arms around him. She didn’t say a word. She knew the truth, and her own heart was breaking. That was when he finally cried, too. He didn’t sob; he didn’t have the strength. Instead, tears welled in his eyes and spilled onto his cheeks in a slow trickle. She held him tightly, and he put his arms around her, too, and they stayed like that in a kind of bubble.
When she pulled away, she put her hands on his cheeks, which were damp.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘How did you …?’ he asked, but there was only one answer. A very surprising answer.
‘Tarla called me,’ Lala said. ‘She told me you were here. She told me – what you found out.’
Tarla. Just when he thought he couldn’t stand his mother for one more day, she went and reminded him that she loved him.
‘Is it possible that she really likes you?’ Cab asked.
‘It’s possible that she knows you needed someone. Even me.’
He took her hand. It had been a long time since they’d held hands. Her grip was strong. She wanted him to feel he
r. It was a reminder to him that his attraction to Caprice was nothing but physical. Lala was different. Lala was more. That was what made her so attractive and so terrifying to him. That was why their relationship was in jeopardy. It could be deep, or it could be nothing at all, but it couldn’t be something casual.
He didn’t know what he wanted, and she knew it, but she didn’t expect him to choose now.
‘What did she tell you?’ he asked.
‘Just that Diane lost a child. Your child. That’s all I needed to know.’
‘There’s more. I don’t think the Labor Day murders were what everyone believed they were. Diane paid—’
Lala put a finger on his lips. She shook her head. ‘Not now. Tomorrow, but not now. You have to let yourself grieve. Give yourself one night.’
‘I never thought something like this would hit me so hard,’ Cab admitted. He tried to smile and make a joke. ‘Me as a father? It’s a horrifying thought.’
‘You do yourself a disservice to talk like that,’ Lala said. ‘I mean it, Cab. I don’t want to hear that from you.’
He realized that he couldn’t escape her seriousness. Nothing he did or said would make the situation less tragic. She could accept that reality, and he couldn’t. She was the Mass-every-Sunday Catholic. She was the branch on a sprawling Cuban family tree. She had a community, and he had nothing except his mother, who was a loner like him. To Lala, loss like this was a part of life you faced and accepted, because more loss was always on the way. To him, it moved the earth.
He took her, and he held her.
She knew he needed her. She could feel his arousal blooming out of his grief. He touched her golden face, and her skin felt hot. Her black hair was wet and in disarray, and the messiness of it made him want to touch it and run his fingers through it, which he did. She took two steps backward and took the fringe of her black Door County tank top in her hands. He’d bought it for her months earlier; he was pleased that she was wearing it. She peeled it up her taut stomach and pulled it over her head, baring her full breasts for him. His hands were on her.
Season of Fear Page 26
