IN THE absence of anything else, a glass would do it. It was a perfect murder weapon because so many people were walking around with one. A simple glass, taken from the caterer’s tray. A broken glass with a long, sharp edge would do the trick.
“Leslie, can I talk to you again? Let’s walk over to the rose garden where the music won’t be so loud.”
The jeweler came along readily, trustingly. A lamb to the slaughter. Baa, baa, baa.
“So what do you want me to do? Should I call the police and have them waiting when the old guy comes back tomorrow?” asked Sebastien. They walked past the statues of smiling cherubs playing musical instruments that lined the concrete drive leading to the garden.
“What time did you tell him to come?”
“I told him to come back after five o’clock. Just after closing time.”
They entered the garden, and the jeweler pulled a slim cigar from his jacket pocket. “I have another. Care to join me?”
“No thanks.”
Sebastien took a seat on a garden bench. His face was briefly illuminated as he lit up and puffed.
Poor bastard.
“I’m in a bit of an awkward position here, Leslie. I really am in an awkward position. You understand, don’t you?”
“Of course.” The jeweler sat, staring straight ahead, working on his cigar while his companion paced.
“I really don’t want the police to be called on this because I didn’t want anyone to know I bought that ring, remember, Les?”
“Yes, I remember. And you have my word, I haven’t told anyone that you did.”
“Thank you, Les. I appreciate that. That’s why I like doing business with you.”
The pacing figure took a final swallow of champagne, walked behind the bench, and put one hand on the jeweler’s tuxedoed shoulder while the other smashed the glass flute against the concrete bench. Leslie Sebastien looked up with surprise, and then alarm, as the crystal shard was jammed into his jugular vein.
TUESDAY
AUGUST 20
CHAPTER 24
Cassie hadn’t requested a wake-up call because her body clock was programmed. The digital clock on the bedside table read 6:16. Her dry mouth and burning eyes told Cassie right away that she had had too much to drink the night before. She rose from the bed and stumbled into the bathroom, squinting as she switched on the overhead light. The mirror was unforgiving.
Splashing cold water on her face, she decided that she would force herself to go for her run. That would help cleanse her system. Listening to the Weather Channel, she pulled on shorts and a baggy T-shirt and tied up her running shoes. Giselle was now officially a hurricane, having gathered speed overnight. Winds in the Gulf were being clocked at up to 90 miles per hour. But it still wasn’t clear if Sarasota would be the place Giselle made landfall.
Briefly, Cassie thought of leaving a message for Leroy, but she decided not to bother. She’d be back in less than an hour, and she doubted Leroy would be wanting to get an early start. He had been putting the drinks away pretty well, too, last night.
The sky was a soft gray color as she walked out of the hotel and did a few stretching exercises. She chose to turn right and started to jog, quickly reaching the Ringling Causeway. As she picked up speed, she passed early morning fishermen casting their lines over the causeway railing. The air was thick, and her breathing was labored. She had to lay off the vino. It was getting to be a problem. She wasn’t a kid anymore, and she’d been noticing that the mornings after were getting tougher. It wasn’t good for her looks either. Puffiness under the eyes always looked even worse on camera.
Cassie pushed on, reaching St. Armands Circle, now quiet and deserted. She ran around the loop, passing the carefully decorated display windows, noting Tommy Bahama’s and Cafe L’Europe, restaurants that Leroy had mentioned. As she completed the circle, she noticed Sebastien Jewelers, connecting it to the man that she had met at Cà d’Zan the night before.
She headed back over the causeway, concentrating on the sidewalk in front of her, forcing herself to keep going. At last, she was done. A grassy area in front of the marina across the highway from the hotel provided a good place to walk for a while and cool down. Cassie watched as a few men, carrying fishing gear, went out to boats bobbing in the choppy water. Still days away from landfall, Giselle was making her impending fury felt.
Cassie walked out on one of the docks, stopping at the end to study the cloudy horizon. You better change your attitude and get psyched to cover this story, lady. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get with the program. Why would Leroy, or anyone else for that matter, want to work with her? She was so hangdog all the time. True, she had a lot on her plate, but many others were far worse off than she. Cassie had always steered clear of people with negative attitudes. Now she had become one of those types.
She closed her eyes and promised herself that she was going to change. She was simply going to do the best she could with the things under her control. The rest was out of her hands. Hannah, the lawsuit, her place with KEY, Jim and his relationship with Gillian Cox . . . she couldn’t control any of those situations beyond giving her part in them her best effort. Covering a hurricane was a piece of cake compared with dealing with the muddle of her personal and professional life. Dig in.
Resolved, Cassie headed back down the dock, stopping by a man lashing heavy rope to a blue sailboat, securing it to the posts of the wooden dock.
“Getting ready for Giselle?”
The man paused and nodded grimly, adjusting his orange cap. “Yeah, and I have a hundred more just like this one to do today.”
“Oh, you work here.”
“Own the place.”
“Really? Well, I’m with KEY News, and we’re down here to cover the storm.”
“Is that right?” The man didn’t sound impressed.
Cassie went on, unperturbed. “We’ll probably be doing a story about hurricane preparations. Mind if we come down later and do some shooting? Maybe interview you?”
“Yeah, I suppose that would be all right,” answered the man, continuing to wrap the rope. “As long as it doesn’t take too much time. I have my hands full here. We lost a lot of boats the last time a big storm blew through, and I can’t afford for that to happen again.”
“Okay, thanks. I’d appreciate it.” Cassie paused, not knowing the man’s name. “By the way, I’m Cassie Sheridan.”
“Jerry Dean,” muttered the man, not looking up from his work.
“Thanks again, Jerry. I’ll see you later.”
Good. That was a step in the right direction, Cassie thought as she headed back to the hotel. Now she could tell Leroy that she had lined up an interview.
CASSIE’S CONSTANT hotel room companion was the television. She watched KEY to America as she peeled off her running clothes and left the set running while she went in to take a shower. With her makeup applied and hair blown dry, she came out just in time to hear the local news report in the affiliate cutaway section of the network broadcast.
“Murder at the Ringling mansion. The body of a prominent Sarasota businessman was found at Cà d’Zan early this morning. Forty-two-year-old Leslie Sebastien, a jeweler with an exclusive shop on St. Armands Circle, was discovered in the mansion’s rose garden by a groundskeeper. Sebastien’s throat had been slashed. Sebastien had attended the fund-raising concert by the Boys Next Door on the Ringling grounds last night.”
That was the man who had complimented her on her ring.
She stared at the video of the rock group that ran on the TV screen. What was with this town? Yesterday a hand on the beach. Now a murder. A murder of a man Cassie had met just hours ago.
CHAPTER 25
“The stench coming off that hand was un-freakin’-bearable, and it was so waterlogged that it was tough raising a readable print. The skin was soaked, and the tissue underneath was really bloated. But I was able to remove the outer layer of skin intact, put it on my own finger, and roll it in the ink. The good n
ews is I got one solid print. I hope it’ll be enough, because we don’t want to have to go around to every manicure joint in Sarasota and check who had spiderwebs painted on their nails.
“Look, Danny, I got to go. I got to go look at the body of the guy from the Ringling place. We need this, right? A freakin’ hurricane’s coming. I should be home gettin’ my house boarded up.”
Deputy Gregg hung up the phone, encouraged by the prospect that the forensic guys could have an ID on the fingerprint from AFIS by sometime later today. That is, if the print was on file with the Automated Fingerprint Identification System.
Danny picked up the framed picture of a smiling Colleen holding a drooling Robbie from its spot on his office desk. He gazed at it with love. He treasured his young family and wanted to keep them safe. Sarasota was where he wanted his son to grow up. Robbie and any other kids he and Colleen were lucky enough to have. He didn’t like what the last twenty-four hours had brought to their town.
CHAPTER 26
Thoughts of the pretty pediatric nurse were pushed, for now, from his tortured mind. He had gone to the fundraiser because it was expected of him, with no idea of how important it would be for him to be there. He believed in destiny. There were no accidents. Eventually the reason for everything that happened in life was revealed. Even Merilee’s death, though painful and unplanned, was, ultimately, the way it was supposed to be. And if Leslie Sebastien had to die, that was unfortunate but necessary as well.
Yes, he was meant to go to the party last night. Now he knew the ring was out there, and he had to get it back. If the police got their hands on it, the Sebastien hallmark stamped inside the band would lead to the jeweler’s sales records, which would, in turn, lead to him.
Sometimes the shameful things he had to cover up overwhelmed him. It had been that way for as long as he could remember. Being caught by his mother with the lingerie he had stolen from his sister and her teenage friends when they spent the night, a neighbor complaining that he was peering into her windows, a teacher finding him hidden in a stall in the girls’ bathroom. Those were the things he had been caught at.
There were so many others that no one knew about.
No one knew he was responsible for the attacks on those young women. “Attacks” was what the media called them anyway. He didn’t view them that way. He had hoped that those girls secretly enjoyed the time he spent with them, and that they would fall in love with him. Maggie Lynch hadn’t killed herself because of their time together. Maggie had killed herself because the media had exposed their most personal shared moments for all the world to see.
He had followed the news coverage, somewhat mollified when Maggie’s mother decided to sue KEY News and Cassie Sheridan, the reporter who had bared the intimacy he and Maggie had shared. That wasn’t enough for destroying a beautiful, young woman; nevertheless, it had brought some comfort.
But now, Cassie Sheridan was right here in Sarasota.
Destiny.
CHAPTER 27
Banyan trees, their aerial roots dripping with Spanish moss, and statues of cherubs and lions, preening on their pedestals, lined the long driveway leading to Cà d’Zan. The car carrying the KEY News crew drove slowly, observing the hubbub on the Ringling grounds. Yellow police tape cordoned off the perimeter of the rose garden while a news camera-man recorded Sarasota police detectives combing the area around the bloodstained concrete bench under which Leslie Sebastien’s body had lain. A couple of hundred yards away, workers broke down the stage where the Boys Next Door had played.
“Too bad this murder is a local story,” offered Leroy, as he parked the car next to a WSBC-TV News van in the Circus Museum parking lot. “This would be great video.”
For their purposes, however, the plan was only to get some pictures of the mansion’s bayside windows being boarded shut in anticipation of the looming storm and conduct a short interview with the Ringling docent. Leroy had made contact with him at the party the night before. Evening Headlines wouldn’t care about the murder of Leslie Sebastien, and Leroy hadn’t even bothered to mention it to New York. From the network news point of view, the murder had no national significance.
As Felix and Leroy unloaded gear from the trunk, Cassie walked across the already steamy parking lot in the direction of the rose garden. A boy, his legs straddling his bicycle, had stationed himself just outside the police tape, craning his sun-bleached head to get a better look at what the police were doing. Cassie recognized him from the local news report. “Hey. You’re the one who found the hand on the beach, aren’t you?”
The boy looked at her, taking her measure. “Uh-huh.”
“That must have been creepy.”
“Not really.”
Cassie paused to consider the boy’s nonchalance. She could play along. “Mmm. Maybe not. Maybe you’re used to things like that around here.” She nodded in the direction of the bloody bench behind the police tape.
The boy shrugged his thin shoulders beneath his blue Nike T-shirt.
“Hey, Cassie, let’s go,” Leroy’s voice called from the parking lot.
The boy turned to look at the two men, his eyes growing wider when he saw the large black and silver camera. “You with TV?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Doin’ a story on the murder?” It was less a question than a statement.
“As a matter of fact, no,” said Cassie. “We’re here to cover the hurricane.”
The boy looked puzzled. “Why would you do a story about a storm that’s not even here yet when there’s a cool story like this right in front of you?”
“Because I work for the national news. This isn’t the sort of story we do. It’s kind of complicated, kiddo. But I’ve got a question for you.”
The child waited.
“The news story reported that you were out on the beach with your metal detector when you found the hand, right?”
Vincent nodded.
“Well, I’m wondering what made that detector go off.”
“You sound just like my mother,” muttered the boy.
“Well?”
“A bottle cap. There was a bottle cap under the seaweed that was on the hand. That’s what made the metal detector go off.”
“I see,” Cassie murmured. She turned to check on Leroy and Felix. “Well, I’ve got to go, kiddo. Take care.”
Vincent couldn’t quite tell whether the news lady believed him, but he tagged along behind her, stopping to prop his bike against a banyan tree. She sure was pretty, like all those ladies on TV were. Not like his mother, who looked so tired and messy sometimes.
He followed the news crew around to the back of Cà d’Zan, where Anthony was waiting on the terrace. Carpenters on ladders and scaffolding were nailing sheets of plywood over the stained glass windows. Felix busied himself getting pans and push-ins of the activity.
“I see you’ve met Vincent,” said Anthony, nodding in the boy’s direction. The child had stopped at the edge of the terrace, far enough away that he was out of earshot. “He’s mad at me because I had to cancel on him again this morning for a lesson on clown makeup. You should probably interview him, he’s around here so much. He knows everything.”
“Does his mother know he’s out here, hanging around a murder scene?”
“I doubt it I get the impression Vincent is pretty much on his own when he leaves home in the morning.”
If my kid had found a human hand on the beach, I’d damn well keep him with me the next day, thought Cassie. But then she realized that she shouldn’t make judgments without knowing the situation better.
“You all set?” Cassie called to Felix.
The cameraman gave the thumbs-up sign.
“First of all, would you please state your name and spell it?” Cassie was glad that Felix had miked this interviewee. It was awkward enough looking down at him. She was glad she didn’t have to keep holding a microphone down to him.
“Anthony Dozier. D-O-Z-I-E-R.”
“And your p
osition?”
“I’m a Ringling docent.”
“How long have you been a docent here?”
“Twelve years. Since I left the circus.”
“Oh? What did you do in the circus?”
“I was a clown.”
Images of a little greasepainted man running around the circus ring passed through Cassie’s mind. If she let it, the thought could make her feel sad. Move on. But, involuntarily, she envisioned the FBI sketch of Maggie Lynch’s attacker.
“Okay, Mr. Dozier. Could you tell me what you are doing to get ready for Giselle?” she asked.
“Well, as you can see, we are boarding up the place as best we can. The mansion here recently underwent a major restoration, and we don’t want all that work and money to blow away.”
Cassie looked out at the green bay water. “You’re all in a pretty precarious spot here, aren’t you, Mr. Dozier? Right on the water like this.”
“That comes with the territory. Today, just as when John Ringling built this place back in the nineteen twenties, waterfront is prime real estate. Most people who can afford to buy or build on the water are willing to take the risk of an occasional storm.”
What else could she ask? This would be just a small part of the story on the storm preps they would offer the Evening Headlines tonight. They could use the docent’s sound bite about people willing to risk a storm for the pleasure of living on the water or they could use the one about waiting to see how bad the forecast got. Either way, they had enough of Anthony Dozier.
CASSIE WISHED she hadn’t walked around to the front of the mansion ahead of Leroy and Felix when she saw Sarge Tucker talking to one of the stagehands breaking down the Boys Next Door stage set. The promoter spotted her before she could turn back.
Nobody Knows Page 9
