“You say he tried to kill you?” Hernandez said. “With kale?”
“He apparently spiked the smoothie with Oxy, spiked with fentanyl.”
“I’m still confused,” the detective said. “Why would he try to kill you?”
“For the money,” Drue said. “He wanted to keep me from telling my dad that I suspected somebody at the law firm had taken a bribe. I thought it was Jimmy Zee. Turns out it must have been Ben.”
“And you’re sure it was him? Spell that name for me.”
“It’s F-E-N-T-R-E-S-S. Yes, I’m positive. After you left with Neesa, I was alone all afternoon, until he showed up with that smoothie. He sat there, watching me drink it, until I was so stoned I could barely walk. He left, but then he came back, briefly, I’m assuming to get rid of the smoothie.”
Jonah spoke up from the backseat. “Hi. This is another of Drue’s colleagues from the law firm. I work with Ben too. We found Drue at seven-thirty tonight. She was barely conscious. Another of her friends, who was with me, recognized the symptoms of an overdose. He’s the one who called nine-one-one. While we were waiting for the ambulance, we found a bottle of OxyContin in her purse. But there was no smoothie.”
“How about my files? And my notes?” Drue turned to address Jonah. “They were on the kitchen table.”
“Nothing like that,” Jonah said.
“Okay, I’m gonna take this story of yours at face value,” Hernandez said. “Do you have the guy’s address?”
“I don’t,” Drue said.
“I’ve been to his place,” Jonah volunteered. “It’s in Woodlawn.”
Brice had been scrolling through the contacts on his cell phone. He spoke up now. “I have it: 1516 Hibiscus Street.”
“What kind of vehicle does he drive?” Hernandez asked.
“It’s a silver Honda Accord,” Drue said. “Late model, and I think it’s got, like, a Mötley Crüe decal on the back bumper.”
“Do any of you happen to know if this guy has a gun?”
Drue looked at Jonah. “I never heard him talk about owning a gun,” Jonah said. “He doesn’t seem like the type to me.”
“All right,” she said, after a long pause. “Woodlawn is out of my jurisdiction. I’m gonna call St. Pete PD and ask them to pay a call on Ben Fentress, and bring him in for questioning. In the meantime, sit tight until you hear from me.”
“You’ll call us, right?” Brice asked. “As soon as you have him in custody?”
“Yes, Mr. Campbell. I’ll be in contact.”
Drue disconnected and leaned back on the headrest. “I’m spent.”
“You’re spent?” Brice said in disbelief. “This is the second night in a row I’ve been up with you at one-thirty in the morning. It reminds me of when you were fifteen, the last summer you lived with me and Joan.”
Drue scowled. “Or as I refer to it, my very own bummer summer.”
“Under the circumstances,” Brice said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to take you home. You’d better come back to my house.”
“Noooo, Dad,” Drue protested. “Ben’s not coming back to the scene of the crime. He’s too smart for that. Just take me home, okay? I haven’t slept in nearly twenty-four hours.”
“Uh, Brice?” Jonah said quietly. “I caught a ride to the hospital with Corey, so my car’s still at Drue’s place. If it’s okay with both of you, I could hang there, on the sofa, in the off chance Ben does come back.”
“Great idea,” Brice said.
“Absolutely not,” Drue said. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Overruled,” Brice said, starting the Mercedes.
Traffic was nonexistent at that hour. Drue had almost dozed off when Brice’s voice, low and urgent, startled her awake.
“Will you answer one question? Honestly?”
She knew what the question would be, and was already dreading having to answer.“Yes.”
“What makes you think my oldest friend, and your colleague, is capable of blackmail? Of actually being complicit in the cover-up of a murder?”
Drue moaned. “Do we really have to hash this out right now?”
“Yeah. We really do. It’s bad enough that you thought I would do something like that. Jimmy’s like family, he’s like a brother to me.”
“Look. It was a mistake, a terrible judgment call on my part. It’s just that Zee gives off a weird vibe, you know? Always dressed in black. And he never answers a direct question. After Yvonne Howington walked into the office, I guess I became obsessed with figuring things out. I mean, we’re the Justice Line, right? So, where was the justice for Jazmin? And Yvonne and Aliyah?”
“You could have come to me with your suspicions.”
“I tried!” Drue said. “You told me bad stuff happens. You told me you’d done your best, but boom, case closed, next case.”
“And you can’t take no for an answer,” Brice said, giving her a sideways glance. “Never could.”
“And it turns out I was right. There was something there. Just … not what I expected. Or who I expected would be behind things.”
“But why blame Jimmy? What else did you have against him?”
Drue stared out the window. “It wasn’t just the Jazmin Mayes case. There was something else. Colleen Boardman Hicks.”
“That again?” Brice’s voice was sharp. “The woman’s been gone for forty years. What’s she got to do with Jimmy? Or me?”
“I don’t know, Dad. You tell me. Since we’re on the topic of honesty, can you honestly tell me she was ‘just a high school classmate’? And there was nothing going on between you? Can you explain why Mom kept a folder full of old newspaper clippings about Colleen Hicks’s disappearance all these years? Or why the official case file, which has been missing from the St. Pete Police Department since Jimmy retired, should turn up in the attic of Papi’s house?”
Brice turned his head and gave a meaningful glance toward Jonah, who, as it turned out, was out cold, asleep in the backseat.
“Okay,” he said finally. “Yeah. You’re a smart cookie. Like your mom. I had a thing with Colleen, for, like, six months. But I broke it off with her before she disappeared.”
“And Jimmy knew about the affair, didn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Brice said reluctantly. “He knew. He was there when the nightmare started. But I’ve got no idea how that police file got in your grandparents’ attic. And I don’t know, I swear to God, I don’t know what happened to Colleen.”
Before she could ask any more questions, Jonah yawned, loudly and theatrically, to announce that he was awake.
“We’ll talk about this later, okay?” Drue asked.
“Yeah,” Brice said wearily. “It’s a conversation I can’t wait to finish.”
* * *
He rolled to a stop in the driveway at Coquina Cottage. Jonah’s shiny black Audi was parked behind Drue’s white Bronco. Brice cut the engine and reached under the driver’s seat, bringing out a blue steel revolver.
“Here.” He turned, holding the gun by the barrel, offering it to the younger man, his voice somber. “You do know how to shoot one of these, right?”
“Dad!” Drue exclaimed, horrified. “What the hell?”
“It’s my old service weapon. Smith and Wesson thirty-eight Special,” Brice said calmly. “Jonah?”
“Uh, well, not really,” Jonah admitted.
“Give me the damn thing,” Drue said impatiently, holding out her hand. “I guess you’ve forgotten that you used to drag me out to practice at the pistol range for hours on end that last summer.”
“That’s right,” Brice said. “Father-daughter bonding time. I had forgotten. So, you remember how to use it?”
Without a word, she broke down the gun to show him her competency.
“I hated every minute of that time, and at the time, I hated you too. I still hate guns,” she said. “But I guess maybe I’ve gotten used to you.”
He nodded. “Okay, kiddo. Same here. Lock all y
our doors, okay? And let me know the minute you hear from Hernandez that they have Ben in custody.”
Jonah scrambled out of the backseat and opened the passenger door for Drue. He leaned inside. “Hey, Brice. I’m no good with a gun, but if Ben shows up here again? He’s going down.”
57
August 20, 1976
“Sit there,” Sherri said, pointing to a chair in the living room. “And don’t you move. You hear?”
Colleen did as she was told, a nice girl, sitting with her shackled hands folded in her lap, her feet crossed at the ankles.
The heat in the room was oppressive. She could already feel the sweat pooling between her shoulders, running down her neck.
Sherri went into the kitchen. Her guest heard the sound of an ice tray cracking, of cubes tinkling into a glass. Liquid poured.
A minute later, her captor was back, holding a tumbler of amber liquid in her right hand and a fifth of Jack Daniel’s in her right. Colleen’s hopes soared and then died when she saw the revolver tucked into the waistband of Sherri’s jeans.
With nothing better to do, Colleen appraised the room. There was a bamboo-looking sofa, hideous oversize lamps with gold-fringed shades and ugly harvest-gold carpet. The drapes were floral swagged satin. It was an old person’s room. Brice didn’t like talking about his home life, but he had mentioned, once, that the house belonged to his wife’s parents.
Sherri went to the sliding-glass doors, pulled the drapes apart and opened the doors to the deck beyond. A strong gust of wind billowed the drapes and the rain pounded against the wooden deck.
“Where’s your husband tonight?” Colleen asked, being careful not to use his name.
Sherri took a long slug of whiskey. “None of your business.” And then she smirked. “I’ll tell you where he isn’t. And that’s the Dreamland motel with some cheap whore.”
“So what’s the plan, Sherri?” Colleen asked. “You gonna keep me here, handcuffed, until he gets home?”
Sherri gulped some more whiskey. “By the time he gets home, it’ll all be over. You, me, all of it. And he can clean up the goddamn mess he made of our life.”
A cold shiver traveled down Colleen’s spine. Stay calm, she told herself. Don’t panic.
“You know,” she said, her tone conversational, “it doesn’t have to end like this. You could let me go. Take my money, leave his ass. I mean, he cheated on you, right? You’re the injured party. Do what I did. Take the money and run.”
Sherri ignored Colleen’s advice. “We had a good marriage. Not great. But it worked. Until you came along and ruined everything.”
Colleen’s lip curled in contempt. “Keep telling yourself that, Sherri. If it was so good, how come he happily hopped in bed with me the first chance he got?”
“You mean that night back before Christmas?”
Colleen didn’t bother to try to hide her surprise. “You knew?”
“I always knew when he was screwing around. He was like a little boy, thought he had to be naughty to get my attention. I kicked him out that night, but it was Christmas, you know? And like he always did, he promised it was over, and like I always did, I believed him.”
Sherri emptied her glass and poured herself another healthy tot.
Colleen crossed and recrossed her ankles, carefully working her feet loose in the cumbersome platform sandals.
“You know, it’s really kind of rude of you to drink in front of me and not offer me one. If you’re gonna kill me anyway, the least you could do is fix me a drink.”
Sherri laughed. “Ooh. Where are my manners?” She picked up the bottle and gestured toward the kitchen. “You go first.”
Colleen stood but didn’t move, waiting until the other woman, annoyed, moved closer to give her a push.
At that instant, Colleen swung her shackled hands and knocked the glass from the startled woman’s hands, and before Sherri could react, raised her arms and gave a mighty slicing backswing, bashing Sherri in the face with the full weight of the handcuffs, knocking her to the floor.
Colleen kicked off the shoes and ran, out the sliding-glass doors and onto the deck. She slipped and went sprawling on the rain-slicked boards. She scrabbled around, terrified, finally managing to get back on her feet.
She ran toward the beach, looking back only once, to see Sherri silhouetted in the doorway, the gun raised, clutched between both hands. She fired and Colleen screamed as the bullet ripped through her shoulder, knocking her down again.
The wounded woman lay still for a moment, hearing the panting of her own breath as blood oozed from the wound. But the adrenaline still pumped through her veins and she got back up again. This time she ran without looking back, blindly heading for the cover of the stand of Australian pines and what she knew was the beach, just beyond.
She was still running when she hit the shallow seawall of broken concrete riprap. Colleen could see the waves crashing ashore and heat lightning dancing on the gold-tinged horizon. A squadron of pelicans cruised past, their shapes silhouetted against the dark clouds. But she didn’t see the carpet of slimy moss and seaweed clinging to the rocks. When her foot slipped and she fell, the pelicans were the very last thing she saw.
58
“Sit,” Drue said, gesturing toward the sofa. She went into her bedroom and found an extra pillow and a lightweight blanket.
“Here,” she said, tossing them to her guest. “But you really don’t have to do this.”
“I want to,” Jonah said, stretching out on the sofa with the pillow beneath his head. “Get some sleep, okay? I’ll hang out here. I’m too wired to sleep.”
“The first thing I’m getting is a shower and my own clothes,” Drue said.
When she emerged from the shower fifteen minutes later, her hair hung damply on the shoulders of her clean cotton T-shirt, and she was dressed in drawstring pajama pants. Jonah’s head was tilted back and he was snoring, openmouthed.
She went to the sliding-glass doors and opened them, and he sat upright, giving her a sheepish grin. “Some bodyguard I turned out to be. I’m here fifteen minutes and I fall asleep on the job.”
“It’s okay,” she reassured him. “There is zero chance Ben is coming back here.”
Jonah thought about it for a moment. “I still don’t get it. Any of it. I know you say he probably got a payoff from the insurance people, but it’s not like Ben ever cared about money. I mean, did you ever see the place where he lives?”
“No,” Drue said. “I got the feeling he was a little embarrassed by it.”
“He lives like a damned hobo,” Jonah said. “I mean, the dude makes decent money. But he rents a room from this little old lady in Woodlawn. He doesn’t even have his own kitchen. And he buys most of his clothes at Goodwill and brown-bags his lunch most of the time.”
“Did he ever tell you about the video game he was working on?” she asked. “His side hustle?”
“Insect Assassin? Yeah. He actually had me play it a couple times. Like as a beta tester. I’m not that into gaming. I had an Xbox, and I played some in undergrad school, but I kind of outgrew it, I guess. Anyway, it was more than a side hustle. He really believed Insect Assassin would make him rich. And it was a pretty cool game, I’ll admit. But the graphics were lame. He had some famous artist chick in Korea he wanted to work with, to design the graphics, but he said she was crazy expensive.”
“And that’s why he did what he did. To get the money to take his game to market,” Drue said.
Jonah nodded in agreement. “Where do you think he is now?”
“In hell, I hope. It’s what? Nearly two-thirty?” She picked up her cell phone and frowned. “Hernandez hasn’t called yet. You’d think by now they would have picked him up.”
“You know what?” Jonah slapped his knee. “Ben told me he was playing in a gaming tournament this weekend.”
“You’re right. That’s where he was the first time I tried to call him Friday night, and where he called me from yesterday,” Drue said. �
��But that wouldn’t still be going on now, right?”
“Maybe. These tournaments? I went to one with him once, to watch him play Madden NFL. Which he sucked at, by the way. These guys, they play around the clock, they only stop for pee breaks.”
“Do you know where this tournament is?”
“Probably at the same place I went to. It was this grungy former multiplex over near Central Plaza.”
“I know where that is,” Drue said. “I’m gonna call Hernandez and tell her to check that out.”
Rae Hernandez picked up after the first ring. “No, we haven’t located Ben Fentress yet. And yes, we are actively looking. I met a St. Pete patrol unit at his address. He wasn’t there, but his car was. We even woke up his landlady, but she said she doesn’t keep tabs on him.”
“We think we know where he might be,” Drue said excitedly. She looked over at Jonah, who’d looked up the tournament information on his phone.
“It’s at that same place I went to,” Jonah confirmed. “It’s called Central Gaming.”
“Oh God,” Hernandez moaned. “My kid made me take him to one of those tournaments. Once and only once. A huge room full of testosterone-challenged dudes pretending to do battle with cartoon monsters and extraterrestrials. Kill me now.”
“So you’ll call me once you find him, right?” Drue repeated anxiously.
“I’ll call you, and then I’ll call your dad, who I just got off the phone with,” the detective promised and disconnected the call.
“I can’t sleep,” Drue told Jonah. “I’m dead on my feet, but I know I can’t sleep.”
“Me neither. You wanna watch some television?”
“Great idea, except I haven’t gotten around to having cable hooked up.” She pointed out the door. “We could take a walk on the beach.”
“I like it.” He picked up the revolver from the end table where she’d placed it. “We should take this, right?”
Sunset Beach Page 36
