Judy walked away with her coffeepot, looking so sad that I wondered if she spoke from experience.
I slid out of the booth and headed for a post-coffee trip to the ladies’ room, where Tanisha was lathering her plump hands. I pulled out a brown paper towel from the dispenser.
“Great breakfast, Tanisha. Thanks.”
Tanisha said, “I noticed you was with a man this morning. Nice-looking too. ’Course, how a man looks and how a man acts is two different things.”
She shook water from her fingertips, and I handed her the paper towel. She looked sternly at me while she dried her hands.
“You know how to tell what a man’s really like? You watch how he handles his package. If he’s always touching it, like he’s gotta make sure it’s still there since the last time he checked, then you know he thinks he’s got God between his legs. He’ll expect you to get down on your knees to it too. If you don’t, hoo-ha, he’ll get all hurt like you took the Lord’s name in vain. You don’t want a man like that.”
She tossed the wadded paper towel in the basket.
“You want a man that lets his stuff ride easy, acts like he cares more about your stuff than his own. ’Course he don’t, ’cause he’s a man, but at least he’s smart enough to act like he does.” She looked intently at me. “I’m just telling you this ’cause I know you don’t have no mama. A girl’s gotta have somebody warn her about things like that.”
“I appreciate that, Tanisha.”
Her face creased in a deep dimpled smile. “That man you was with this morning, he’s got a big tidy package, but I never seen him touch it once. I was you, I’d keep him around.”
Using her big behind to bump open the restroom door, she left me staring after her.
The whimper I made sounded a lot like Mazie’s sounds of stress.
26
Back in the Bronco, I sat a minute to get my act together, then pulled out my cell and made the call to Hal that I should have made a long time ago. Then I called Pete and told him what I wanted him to do. When I put the phone back in my pocket, I felt as if a thousand-pound load had been lifted from my shoulders.
I was halfway to Fish Hawk Lagoon when I remembered that I hadn’t told Guidry about meeting Frederick Vaught.
At Mazie’s house, I parked in the driveway and looked toward Laura’s house. No cars were in her driveway, and I didn’t see any sign of Celeste. Maybe she had got on her broom and returned to Dallas.
Before I went inside, I called Guidry on my cell. My fist did a victory pump in the air when I got his voice mail. I love voice mail. I didn’t want to talk to him, I just wanted to give him information.
I said, “I forgot to tell you that Frederick Vaught accosted me this morning at the Sea Breeze. I came out to run with Billy Elliot, and Vaught popped out from behind a bush. He played the big bad scary monster, told me to stop asking questions about him, said I’d besmirched his good name. Like he still has a good name. He didn’t threaten me or anything, but I thought you should know.”
Having done my duty, I clicked off and slid out of the Bronco.
A dark sedan slowly passed in the street, the driver looking uncertainly toward Mazie’s house as if he didn’t recognize it. He may not have known for sure which house he was looking for, but I knew for sure who he was—the big muscled man who wore power like a suit, the man I’d thought was Laura’s husband, the man I’d seen her with on the jogging path. The man who may have killed her.
He pulled into Laura’s driveway, the car disappearing behind the trees, and I stood staring at the space he’d left. I thought about the locksmith’s truck that had been at the house the night before. Ordinarily, if locks are changed following a crime, the new keys are immediately put into the hands of the home owner or a member of the owner’s family. But Celeste had left while the locksmith’s truck had still been in the driveway the night before, and unless she’d returned she hadn’t got the keys.
Martin Freuland surely knew that Laura was dead. If Guidry hadn’t questioned him yet, he certainly knew he would be a logical suspect for her murder. So what was he doing at Laura’s house? And what had the locksmith done with the new keys? I had an image of him calling Guidry or Celeste and saying, “I put the keys under a rock by the front door,” or some such silliness.
I didn’t really believe he would do that, but on the other hand, Freuland hadn’t backed that sedan out of Laura’s driveway yet, so what was he doing? I imagined him standing at Laura’s door, staring into the house through the glass panels. Celeste had told Guidry that Laura had tipped off the feds about his work for drug dealers. Guidry had said he was under investigation and could end up spending twenty or thirty years in prison. Maybe Laura had records in her house that implicated him, and he wanted to destroy them.
While I was wondering all that, my feet had gradually moved down Mazie’s driveway and turned onto the sidewalk, sort of ambling toward Laura’s house as if they didn’t really have a destination. I told myself that it wasn’t any of my business. I told myself that Martin Freuland hadn’t been arrested for Laura’s murder, that he was a free man, and that there was no law that said he couldn’t go to Laura’s door. But my feet kept moving, and when I got to Laura’s driveway I turned in and ambled past the empty sedan.
My Keds were careful not to make scuffing sounds, which might have seemed as if I were sneaking up on the man at the door, but it is simply the nature of Keds to do that. Especially when they’re careful.
Martin Freuland was bent forward examining the pane of glass closest to the lock. The one that would, if it were knocked out, allow a person to stick a hand in and turn the thumb switch that unlocked the door. Forget new keys, that door would be a snap to open.
I said, “You may not have noticed, but the door is locked.”
He jerked upright and spun to look at me, mouth open, eyes wide. He looked like a man who wasn’t accustomed to being surprised. He also looked desperate.
Rage began to climb me like a swarm of fire ants. I’d been deceived, tricked, conned, and manipulated. I’d had old murky fears and guilts raise their hoary heads and slash at my sense of safety. I’d been accosted by a psycho nurse who smothered old ladies in their beds, and now I was confronting a corrupt bank president who might also be a murderer. At the very least, he was obviously contemplating breaking into Laura’s house.
He walked toward me, his face not sure whether to try for appeasement or defiance. The first time I’d seen him, I’d seen him as a former football player turned orthopedic surgeon. Even knowing he was really a bank president, the form still applied. As Laura had said, the man was big. He wore an expensive charcoal suit with a pale blue shirt and dark tie, the threads of power in any profession.
He said, “You’re Ms. Hemingway. I’m told you were one of the last people to see Laura alive.”
“Who told you that?”
He made a vague gesture, erasing my question as if it weren’t important. “They say you’re taking care of her cat. I gave her that cat as a birthday present. I named him Cohiba for the cigar.”
I squinted at him, wondering how he knew who I was.
I said, “I know. Laura told me.”
His face lit. “She spoke of me?”
“She said the man who’d given Leo to her had called him Cohiba.”
“What else did she tell you?”
“Mr. Freuland, I hardly knew Laura.”
He looked slightly nonplussed when I spoke his name, then a flash of anger lit his eyes.
“She stole from me. Did she tell you that?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“She went in the vault and took it, brazen as always. Waited until the whole city was preoccupied with our George Washington celebration, and then made her move.” His firm lips stretched a fraction in an aborted smile. “She was like that. It was one of the things that made her exciting.”
“George Washington?”
He scowled, as if my surpris
e was annoying.
“Laredo has a huge George Washington festival every year. It lasts a month, and half a million people come to it. Carnivals, parades, concerts, marathon runs, cook-offs, all kinds of parties, brings in millions for local businesses. The big finale is the debutante ball on February twenty-second. Elaborate gowns that cost upwards of twenty thousand dollars apiece, lots of spectacle.”
“What does that have to do with Laura?”
He looked surprised again. “Laura was like a big sister to the debs. She showed them how to walk, how to do makeup, hair, all that kind of thing. She’d been a model.”
I made a stirring motion with my hand, meaning Get on with it!
Doggedly, as if he had to tell the story in a particular order, he said, “Every year she’d bring her model’s bag to the bank on the morning of the twenty-second. Everybody expected her to do that, she’d been doing it for years, had all the tricks of the trade in that bag. Then she’d leave and spend the day helping the girls.”
His jaw tightened, and for a minute he seemed loath to tell me the rest. “This year, she went in the vault and stuffed her model’s bag with money. Then she drove to her sister’s house in Dallas. I reported her missing, but the police didn’t take me seriously. They thought she’d just left me. It took awhile to track her down.”
I said, “I don’t suppose you told them about the money.”
He had the grace to look embarrassed. “It was too complicated to explain.”
Some perverse part of me was glad she’d gone to Dallas. At least it made that part of her story true—the part about coming from Dallas. It wasn’t much, but it was a teeny truth, and I was irrationally grateful for it.
With an effort, he got his face under control. “I didn’t kill her, Ms. Hemingway. I know I’m a prime suspect, but I didn’t do it. I was furious at her for stealing from me, but I wouldn’t have hurt her.”
I remembered what Guidry had said and almost laughed at Freuland’s self-pity. The cash Laura stole might have been illegally deposited in his bank by drug dealers. Or it might have been payoff money the drug dealers had given to Freuland as a commission for not reporting them. In either case, I wasn’t sure whether Laura had stolen from drug dealers, the bank, or Freuland. Somehow stealing either drug trafficking money or money paid to a corrupt bank president didn’t seem as onerous as stealing money honestly earned.
Freuland said, “I have to get that money back. I have to. If you know where it is, I’ll give you a handsome reward for taking me to it.”
My nostrils pinched inward and I took a step backward, the way you do when you’ve stumbled on something nasty.
I said, “I don’t know about any money, Mr. Freuland.”
I spun around so fast I almost tripped myself, and stalked away from him. As I walked, I pulled out my cell and punched in Guidry’s number again. My fingers didn’t even need to think, they’d done this so many times.
This time he answered, with a curt, “Guidry here.”
I said, “Martin Freuland is at Laura’s house. He says she stole money from the bank vault and he has to get it back. He was examining the glass pane on her front door, and I imagine he’ll be inside her house in about ten seconds. He offered to share the money with me if I told him where it was.”
Guidry actually chuckled. “People who take bribes expect other people to take them too. If she took money from the bank vault, it was probably his payoff money.”
“He wants it back.”
“I imagine he does. I’ll send somebody over there. By the way, the Autrey woman has officially named you the person responsible for her sister’s cat. Says you can do whatever you want to with him.”
“Gee, the woman is all heart.”
“Will you take him?”
“I’m not a cat shelter, Guidry, but I’ll find a home for him.”
“Good. Ms. Autrey says she’s going back to Dallas late today.”
“So soon?”
“She’s already gone through her sister’s house and collected the valuables she wanted. I guess she doesn’t have any more reason to stay.”
“What about Laura? What about her sister’s body?”
“The ME won’t release it until the criminal investigation is completed. I assume Ms. Autrey will make arrangements with a funeral home before she leaves.”
That only meant Celeste would pay the cost of a cremation or a burial and then go home. There would be no memorial service or funeral for her sister, but since Laura had only been in Sarasota a few weeks, maybe that was sensible. But if there were one, I would go, and Maurice and Ruby probably would go too. Also Gorgon, with his diamond rings. Certainly Frederick Vaught would show up and be mournful. It would be a dismal service, but it seemed to me that Laura deserved something to mark the fact that she had lived.
As I reached for the doorknob to go inside Mazie’s house, I realized that Celeste Autrey had to have been the person who’d talked about me to Freuland. She had probably described me, perhaps described my vehicle as well, so that he immediately knew who I was. It seemed strange that Celeste would buddy up to Freuland since she thought he’d killed her sister, but Celeste was cold enough to sleep on an ice mattress and think it was cozy.
Pete had left the front door unlocked again, but when I went in and saw his face, any lecture I might have given him evaporated. His eyebrows were nearly at his hairline, and his expression was one I remembered Michael wearing as a teenager—defiant and determined and hopeful all at once. I guess men don’t ever lose those traits, even in their eighties.
Mazie stood beside him, and it seemed to me that she had the same look. Per my instructions, she was wearing her blue Service Dog vest with its embroidered medical caduceus symbol.
Pete said, “We should have done this sooner.”
I said, “We couldn’t do it before now. No hospital in the world will allow a dog in ICU, not even a service dog, so we had to wait until Jeffrey was in a room. Even then, we had to have permission. From Hal and Gillis, from Jeffrey’s doctor, probably from the hospital.”
“You did all that?”
“I got Hal’s permission. He’s taking care of the rest of it.”
I wasn’t absolutely sure he could take care of the rest of it, but I was absolutely sure that somehow, some way, Pete and I were taking Mazie in to see Jeffrey.
Pete’s smile split his handsome face, and he actually gave a little hop of joy, like a boy. He said, “Then let’s go!”
He was practically out the door before he got the words out of his mouth, rushing to the Bronco and getting Mazie secured in a travel crate in the back. We made sure she had water in her bowl, put down rolled towels to protect her from sliding in the crate, and got ourselves in the front.
I took one last look toward Laura’s driveway as we backed out, but I couldn’t see through the trees. If Martin was still there, I hoped the sheriff’s deputies came in time to catch him.
27
As I got in the driver’s seat, Pete scurried to the passenger side. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I go to the hospital all the time and do clowning skits for the kids. They all know me there. We won’t have any problem.”
“Uh-huh.”
St. Petersburg is about an hour from Sarasota via I-75 north, then over to I-275 and the Skyway Bridge. Before we got to the I-75 on-ramp, Pete said, “Do you mind if I get something to eat? I was too worried to eat before.”
I swung into a drive-through lane at McDonald’s and waited while he studied the menu.
He said, “I’ll have a Quarter Pounder with cheese and fries. And a large Coke. And a pie thing. Apple.”
Happiness always perks up my appetite too. I decided to get one of the apple pie things.
I only ate when we were stopped at traffic lights, but the apple pie was gone by the time we hit the interstate. Pete was almost as fast with his burger and fries. After we had done our boa constrictor acts, we rode along in thoughtful silence.
On that stret
ch of highway, more than half the vehicles were trucks—semis, panels, pickups, or big trucks with hoists and cranes or some other special equipment. Southwest Florida has been under constant construction ever since the new kind of retirees came—no longer in mobile homes but with wads of money from the dot-com boom or hefty executive payouts from bankrupt companies. New highways have been laid, new buildings erected, old buildings remodeled, all work done by men who drive trucks.
As we met them, passed them, and were passed by them, my mind went off on a little naughty thought trip about those truck drivers. It’s what minds do when they’re not strictly disciplined. Especially female minds. I mean, let’s face it, construction workers, pool men, landscapers, all those outdoor guys have incredibly firm butts that you don’t see on other men. They also have pelvises that move when they walk. Men who sit at desks all day have flat butts and walk just by bending their knees—their hips don’t move at all. It makes a woman imagine the difference in their respective lovemaking abilities, and the truck drivers come off best.
I mused on those high-minded thoughts all the way to the exit to I-275. Then, as we headed toward the Skyway Bridge, my mind drifted to the memory of Ethan Crane’s butt, which was fantastic. Better than Guidry’s, to tell the truth, and Ethan sat at a desk all day.
While my mind was wandering down that guilty little avenue, Pete’s had different priorities. To get my attention, he made a big to-do of wadding up his pie sleeve and stowing it neatly in the McDonald’s bag with his used napkins and empty Coke cup.
He said, “That detective came back again. He asked if I was sure it was Tuesday morning I saw that lady crossing the street, and not the day before. I’ve already told him it probably wasn’t Laura after all, and now he wants to know when I saw some completely other lady. Dumb shit must think I’m too old to know what day it is.”
“That’s odd.”
“Nah, lots of people think you lose your marbles once you pass about ten years older than they are. If they’re sixty, they think seventy is old. If they’re seventy, they think eighty is old. Personally, I know people in their thirties that are older than me.”
Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof: A Dixie Hemingway Mystery Page 19
