West Palm: The Complete Novel

by Joss Cordero

  Matthew took the glass from her, sipped, and said, “Let me see his photograph again.”

  She brought up the picture in her phone and handed it over. “The photo hasn’t changed.”

  “Oh, but it has,” he said.

  Smoker knew what he meant. Details had been added to their knowledge of this face, and as a result another dimension emerged. This wasn’t just a brutal killer, but one with an elaborate fantasy life.

  Tara reached for her phone and shut it off. “I feel like I’m letting him out of the box if I leave it on too long.”

  Matthew eyed her over his drink. “That’s not included in the plan you subscribe to, unless Verizon has radically upgraded their service.”

  Smoker left the house bearing a vintage green glass cocktail shaker shaped like a barbell. It had only cost him $325.

  He got into his car, wondering how long this male menopause stuff was supposed to last.

  “Smoker,” grumbled Dottie, waking in the darkness. “You promised you’d turn your cell phone off at night.”

  “Sorry . . .” He flailed through his clothes on the chair, and finally located and silenced the phone by answering it.

  “I know it’s a terrible time to call,” came the amazon’s hoarse voice. “But I just remembered. That chemical smell I told you about? It was the smell of my fetal pig in high school biology.”

  “Fetal pig?”

  “You know, for dissection? Maybe they didn’t use them in your high school. The longer the fetal pig’s been around, the stronger the smell of formaldehyde. I was dreaming about him attacking me, and suddenly I woke up with the memory in my nose.”

  Now Smoker was completely awake. “He smelled like a fetal pig?”

  “He smelled like formaldehyde.” She paused. “I should’ve waited until morning to tell you.”

  “No, I’m glad you called.”

  They talked a little longer, with her apologizing again and him assuring her that he didn’t punch a clock and she should never worry about disturbing him.

  “What was that about?” asked Dottie, switching on her bedside lamp.

  “It was the woman who was attacked on Zaratzian’s boat.”

  “She calls you at three in the morning to talk about a fetal pig?”

  “Did you have them in your high school?”

  “We had all kinds of pigs in my high school.”

  “She just remembered that’s what he smelled like, the guy who attacked her.”

  “That’s the urgent news? I could’ve told her he was a pig, and I didn’t even meet him.”

  “Formaldehyde. He smelled like formaldehyde.”

  “I’m going to the bathroom, and then I’m going to have a snack. What about you?”

  Smoker looked down at his girth. He shouldn’t, but he knew there was a chocolate torte in the refrigerator. It was so rich that neither of them would be able to sleep after eating it.

  So he might as well have Dottie help him list what kind of people would smell like fetal pigs.

  Smoker shuffled blearily down the stairs. He’d finally fallen back to sleep, but he didn’t wake up well in the morning. He never did. He couldn’t help it. A couple of cups of coffee would bring him back to life.

  Entering the kitchen like a bear coming out of six months’ hibernation with a mood to match, his saw that his grumpy mood had been trumped by Dottie’s. Though she didn’t look up from the table where she was working with her sketchbook and her collection of miniatures, he could feel it in the air like clouds coming off a block of dry ice.

  “Zaratzian called,” she said.

  I must have misread the signals, he thought. She’s very fond of Zaratzian. Zaratzian couldn’t have brought on a lousy mood.

  “He wanted to know if you’re making progress with the amazon.”

  The air in the room now felt like it was coming off two blocks of dry ice.

  “I told him you were making great progress, but not the kind he’s paying for.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You didn’t tell me she was drop-dead gorgeous.”

  “She’s big, that’s all.”

  “Big and beautiful is what Zaratzian said.”

  “Okay, she’s good-looking. But what am I supposed to do? Put an ad in the paper saying only ugly people need apply? I’d be sued for discrimination.”

  Although Dottie refused to look up from her sketchbook and her collection of little cars and houses, princesses and princes, and all the other stuff she played around with to give herself ideas, it was clear he couldn’t walk away from this delicate discussion to make that much-needed cup of coffee.

  What he really needed was the $325 cocktail shaker he’d bought from Matthew. He addressed the back of Dottie’s head. “If we could set aside her physical attributes for a moment—”

  “Is that what they are, physical attributes? Would you mind enlarging on that?”

  “Putting aside her physical attributes,” he plowed on, “she’s vulnerable. She’s had her throat cut from one ear to the other, she’s got a maniac out there searching for her, and she’s counting on me to protect her. I’d do the same if she looked like Martha Washington.”

  “What did Martha Washington look like?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I must’ve missed that class.” She directed this retort to the objects on the table. “The point is, there’s something you’ve missed. That you’re the vulnerable one. It’s your age. You have a beautiful young woman looking up to you and calling you at home in the middle of the night. No wonder you’ve been going around floating on air.”

  He felt it was essential to change the subject. Gesturing toward her sketchbook and the miniatures, he asked, “What kind of cake are you planning?”

  Still not acknowledging his presence behind her, she said, “A groom’s cake.”

  Because his wife was a professional baker, unlike most men in the world he knew what a groom’s cake was. It was a cake commissioned by the bride as a surprise for her new husband in the shape of what he loved best. Sometimes it was a cake shaped like a football, sometimes it was a sports car, sometimes it was an easy chair with a can of beer on the arm, and in this case he realized, judging from the parade of pit bulls on the table, it was the groom’s pet.

  Whenever Dottie got a big assignment she’d go out and buy five of whatever she needed to feel the shape of the thing in different poses. But at least she hadn’t brought home a live pit bull who, under these sensitive circumstances, would be chewing him to bits.

  “So you’re making a profile?” He knew this word too. It was something like a perp profile, only it was a cake profile, which she would present to the bride with an estimate. These estimates could go sky high. A good part of the house they lived in as well as their sons’ college tuition had been paid for by wedding cakes. It sometimes troubled him how little was spent on private investigation these days and how many millions went into weddings, especially across the bridge in Palm Beach, where Dottie had a following.

  “I wonder how the groom will feel about eating his dog.”

  “He’s a man, isn’t he? He’ll see it as a tribute to himself.”

  “What does the bride’s cake look like?”

  Without as much as a tilt of her head in his direction, she turned the page and let him see the completed sketch. It looked like mad King Ludwig’s castle entwined with flowers. Dottie was famous for her flowers.

  Still cleverly shifting the conversation he said, “So you beat out Sweet Surrender.” The Sweet Surrender bakery belonged to Caitlin Hayes, Dottie’s main competition for the pastry dollars of Palm Beach.

  “The bitch was on Food Network this morning.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief, sensing he had deflected her vituperation toward him about the amazon onto her hated rival�
��so hated that Dottie had hired Smoker to penetrate Caitlin’s operation and find out if she bought her sugar flowers ready-made from China. In order to do this Smoker had greased, not the cake pan, but a disgruntled employee. While snooping around, the greased employee had opened up the bakery’s giant cooler and discovered the Longmire-Sprague wedding cake on ice a week ahead of time, a capital crime when it came to the laws of diminishing flavor. Evidently Caitlin’s greed had driven her to take on more weddings than she could handle, relying on the guests being half drunk, in a great mood, and wowed by the cake’s appearance. Dottie would never do something so unscrupulous. Of course, she had hired a PI to find it out, but at least her cakes were never less than virgin fresh.

  He shuffled over to the coffeepot.

  Dottie glanced up from her work for the first time, giving him a look that said he wasn’t off the hook, but she was too busy at the moment to pursue the amazon through the jungle of his tortured emotions.

  The first employee Ingersoll saw as he entered the Hispanic supermarket was a man about five feet tall, wearing a Tampa Bay Rays baseball cap and pushing a stack of cartons taller than he was.

  “I’m looking for the store manager,” Ingersoll informed the little Rays fan.

  “Manager,” said the man and vigorously nodded. He gestured toward an elevated boothlike office in the corner to the right of the doors.

  As Ingersoll made for the manager’s office he passed a discount bin filled with dented cans, and concluded that a portion of the store’s stock consisted of salvage and closeouts.

  He knocked on the office’s side wall; there was no door. A worried-looking man with reading glasses on the end of his nose sat in the raised cubicle poring through bills. The sight of Ingersoll’s badge and adjacent holster as he drew back his jacket seemed to confirm the manager’s worst worries.

  “I need to talk to any cashiers who were working here yesterday afternoon.”

  The manager gazed down from his perch in alarm. “Something bad happen in my store?”

  Ingersoll shook his head. “The bad thing is what happened after the customer left the store.” He reached up to give the manager a photocopy of the receipt found in the grocery bags of the murdered girl. It showed the date, and a time of 2:17 p.m.

  The manager shook his head as he read the list of items. “Nothing here get nobody sick.”

  “This has nothing to do with items purchased in your store. But whoever checked this customer out may’ve been the last person to see her alive.”

  The manager crossed himself and hurried down off his platform. “Chichi. You talk to Chichi.”

  Though there were several checkout counters, only one was presently in operation. A burrito-shaped young woman, presumably Chichi, was slowly checking out some groceries and didn’t turn.

  The manager tugged at her plump arm and spoke to her in Spanish, then pushed her toward Ingersoll and took her place at the register.

  Chichi was stuffed into a black dress bisected by a bling-encrusted belt that made no indentation because her body was endowed with neither hips nor waistline. “I see nothing.”

  “I haven’t asked you anything.”

  “I see nothing.”

  Ingersoll led her toward the corner office, but he didn’t climb inside, since there wasn’t room enough in there for both of them. But at least they were out of the way of other customers.

  He handed her a photo found in the girl’s apartment. The girl was on the beach, sitting in a deep hole dug into the sand, laughing up at the camera, and her freckled face was radiant.

  “Her name was Megan Berry. She lived in the neighborhood and may have come here regularly. She was twenty-eight years old—” He stopped, because Chichi’s face was as stony as a Mayan statue.

  “I see nothing,” she said, handing back the picture.

  “Listen to me, Chichi, this woman was murdered, right after she shopped here. Under the circumstances, I don’t care if you’re in the country legally or illegally. I don’t care about your papers, or if you have papers, or if you have them and they’re forged. And I don’t care who lives with you, or how many people live with you, or if their papers are forged too.”

  “I see nothing.”

  Ingersoll was wondering if he should try the opposite approach, that he did care if her papers were forged, when he began to notice a small figure dancing near them, not close enough to overhear but close enough to draw attention to itself. It was the little Rays fan.

  Ingersoll turned and faced him. “What?”

  The little fan drew closer. “Chichi not have good English.”

  “Somehow I don’t feel that’s the problem.”

  “You show me picture.”

  Chichi took the opportunity to return to her cash register, and Ingersoll handed the little Rays fan Megan Berry’s photograph.

  He smiled broadly. “Very nice lady. She talk to me when I spray the vegetables. I educate her about vegetables. Rice too. She very interested in rice.”

  “Did you see her when she was in here yesterday afternoon?”

  “Yesterday,” he agreed, and suddenly his merry face clouded over. “Something happen?”

  “Murdered.”

  “Madre santa.”

  Ingersoll waited for the Rays fan to collect himself.

  “Did you see her leave the store?”

  The shock appeared to have impinged upon his English. After a moment he said, “Sí.”

  “Was she alone?”

  “No.”

  “So she left with someone else?”

  “Someone else. A man.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  He held his hand above his head. “Big hat.”

  Ingersoll looked around, and pointed to an elderly Mexican in a cowboy hat. “Like that?”

  “No. Like this.” And he made a circle around his head.

  “Not a cowboy hat,” concluded Ingersoll.

  “He was not cowboy. He was one of those what-you-call-thems.”

  “Right. What-you-call-thems?”

  “Ah, Jesus Christ, I don’t know what you call them.” He turned, put two fingers in his mouth, and whistled.

  Another small man appeared from out of the aisles and trotted over.

  The Rays fan rattled to him in Spanish.

  The consultant rattled back.

  “We show you . . .”

  The Rays fan darted through the crowd, the consultant and Ingersoll behind, until they came to an aisle displaying votive candles in tall jars. Gaudy labels depicted Mary, Jesus, and biblical scenes.

  The Rays fan triumphantly handed Ingersoll a jar depicting a crumbling stone wall from the holy land. The Hebrew lettering on the label indicated it must’ve come from a kosher closeout, but it fit in with the rest of the prayer candles, and it gave a lot of hours for a bargain price.

  The Rays fan put his hands together in prayer and bobbed up and down. The consultant did the same. They looked like a pair of bobble birds.

  “I get the point.” And Ingersoll took out his notebook.

  The young man performing on the outdoor stage at City Place was a virtuoso. He played his guitar over his head, behind his back, and sounded like a dozen guitarists.

  His audience sat at café tables, most of them with shopping bags nestling at their feet, most of them reviewing their purchases, talking on their cell phones, and paying no attention to the genius. Aware of this, he increased his frenzied activity in hopes of reaching the unreachable star.

  Smoker and Ingersoll had no shopping bags. They didn’t patronize the upscale stores behind them. They patronized the tables, and they ignored the virtuoso too.

  “A Hasid?” asked Smoker.

  “In full drag. Black hat, black beard, the works.”

  “It doesn’t square with the guy on the Seafarers
surveillance tape.”

  “Not unless he found religion.”

  “With Hasids, it’s usually other people beating them up,” said Smoker.

  “Maybe he’s a Hasid who flipped. Like that nut in Brooklyn who smothered the little boy.”

  “I don’t think so. I think it’s the same guy who attacked my amazon. He saw himself on TV and knew he had to change his appearance.”

  “You’re probably right, but I’ve got to check out the Hasidic community.”

  “You know of such a community?”

  “In Boynton Beach they advertise condos with two kitchens. That’s so they don’t mix the meat and the dairy.”

  Smoker reflected it was something like the multiple bars in Matthew’s house. Or, if his menopause continued, the multiple bars in his house.

  Ingersoll gave a resigned shrug of his shoulders. “I’ll go down to Boynton Beach.”

  “It’s a waste of time. He’s already dumped the Hasid disguise.”

  “You know the drill. The thing you overlook is the one that bites you in the ass.”

  A voluptuous brunette who sang off-key joined the guitarist onstage, and got the attention of at least the men who were sitting at the tables. It was the virtuoso’s last desperate attempt to gain audience recognition. Unfortunately, the only thing they were recognizing was the dance of her implants.

  “Now he’s got an act,” said Ingersoll.

  “Another case of tits trumping technique.”

  When the number ended, there was a smattering of applause from the men in the audience as the voluptuous singer who couldn’t sing took a deep bow. “A curtain call for tits,” said Ingersoll.

  “There’s a lesson in this.”

  “Professor?”

  “Practice sixteen hours a day for twenty-five years, my son, and life will reward you accordingly.”

  The guitarist was already descending the steps from the stage and making for the nearby bar, where he would reflect on the vicissitudes of art. Without the live music, the more muted tunes from the doorways of the shops took over, blending inharmoniously.