by Linda Ladd
“They got the jump on me, is all. There were two of them. It’ll never happen again, trust me. Now, if I were you, I’d start practicing for the early bird press conference. Better you than me. Just don’t mention my name or address.”
“Yeah, right.” Bud was grumbling, but he’d be great with the reporters. Nobody loved the cameras more than Bud, except, of course, Nicholas Black.
19
Black called me later on my cell phone and wanted to meet that night at his place. I said, “No, come to my house, or forget it.” I didn’t like to be ordered around, even if he’d done a complete rehaul on Old Betsy and made her look brand spanking new. He was sitting in the swing on my screened front porch when I got home at seven o’clock. People seemed awfully free to come over uninvited and use my swing. Maybe I ought to get a lock on the screen door or a pack of ill-tempered rottweilers as greeters. He was dressed casually, but not as casually as when he was a Swamp Cajun. He wore a black polo shirt and khakis. He looked good. He always looked good, unfortunately. He had a brown wicker picnic basket with him.
“I thought I’d bring dinner. I have a feeling you don’t eat unless somebody reminds you.”
True, but where did he get off pointing out my shortcomings? “Look, Black, if I want a nanny, I’ll move to England. This is strictly business we’re working on, and that’s all it is. Don’t try to turn it into something personal.”
He smiled, as if he hadn’t heard me. “Philippe made us fried chicken, Caesar salad, baked potatoes. Bottle of Dom Perignon.”
Philippe, also known as the French whiz chef at the five-star restaurant in the lodge, had suddenly turned into Colonel Sanders with a large wine budget. Gee, now I was really impressed. My stomach growled as I unlocked the front door, belying my sarcastic thoughts, and I realized he was right. I hadn’t eaten anything all day. Pissed that he was right, I checked my phone answering machine. Black didn’t seem to take offense at being left on the front porch, holding the picnic basket.
I watched him take it to the big oak tree in my front yard, where I had an old picnic table and a swing attached by chains to a giant limb. He was unpacking the food and white china onto my scarred redwood picnic table when I pressed the play button on my answering machine. I began to get that old feeling of suffocation that I’d had when I’d been married. For the first time in years, I felt my space was being invaded. I didn’t like it.
“Hi.” Dottie’s voice. “Come over soon and fill us in on what happened with Black last night. I’ve got this weekend off, and Suze and I are flying to Dallas, so don’t forget to check in on Harve and make sure he’s got everything he needs. Thanks a bunch. Be back on Monday or Tuesday, depending on the flights. Love ya. Oh yeah, glad the toddy helped you sleep.”
Yeah, it helped all right. For about ten hours straight. Good thing Black and his friends didn’t want me dead that night. But it was my own fault. I shouldn’t have gone with Black alone. I wasn’t using the best judgment where he was concerned, but that could be fixed.
I walked outside and relented somewhat on accepting his culinary bounty at the first whiff of crispy fried chicken.
“I’m afraid I forgot the goblets,” he said. “Do you have something we can drink out of?”
“Sure,” I said, and retrieved two jelly glasses with Mickey Mouse on them. Dottie had brought them home from a weekend jaunt to Disney World in Orlando with Suze, but they also had them at the Kroger store in Osage Beach. I sat down as he filled the jelly glasses up to the base of Mickey’s ears. We ate in a relatively comfortable silence, but I didn’t like the way he was examining me, like I was some kind of specimen wriggling on a pin. I didn’t touch Mickey and the champagne. He took a drink of his, and I was glad to see he didn’t sniff it and swirl it and taste it like a connoisseur. I always thought that looked like an affectation, but I was a country girl. He said, “I think I’m going to need a couple of glasses of champagne before I look at those pictures.”
“You don’t have to look if you don’t want to. I understand now how close you were to Sylvie. If you’d like to change your mind about this, I’d understand completely, believe me.”
“Have you had a similar experience?”
I had and he’d picked up on it, but he wasn’t going to find out about it. “I’ve dealt with family members of murder victims before. It’s never easy. Luckily, most of them aren’t required to look at autopsy and crime scene pictures.”
“I’ll have to look at them again, really study them, but I wish to God I didn’t. I’ve been preparing myself all day.” He drained Mickey but didn’t pour more. He set the glass aside. “Did you tell Charlie about my brother?”
The question came out of the blue, but I was expecting him to ask at some point. I shook my head. “I said I wouldn’t unless it became necessary, and I’ll keep my word. If I need it to come out at any point in the investigation, I’m not going to hesitate to make your relationship known. You do understand that, right?”
He nodded. “Thanks. It’d complicate my life and hurt a lot of people in ways I don’t like to think about.”
I didn’t comment. What could I say? It was his deep, dark secret. I had a few of my own that I dreaded ever coming to light. I could cut him some slack as long as it didn’t affect the job I had to do.
“Do you have the files? I might as well get started. It’ll take a while.”
I had the crime scene photographs and reports in a mailing envelope locked in a drawer inside the house. I got them and handed them over to him. He gazed out over the lake for a couple of minutes, took a deep breath, and pulled the pictures out. He looked through them one by one, studying each one, and it was almost painful to watch how each photograph hit him like a physical blow. He got through them, blew out a breath, then met my gaze. “Give me a moment, will you?” The vulnerability in the request was palpable.
Without a word, I got up and walked back into the house. He was looking at ghastly, hideous pictures of someone he loved, had nurtured, and protected as an uncle since she was a baby. What a horrible thing to have to do. I was not sure I could do it, not this soon. My cell phone rang, and I punched on, watching Black sit at the picnic table, thinking. The crime scene pictures were turned facedown now. He sat unmoving, staring out at the glass-topped green water of the cove.
“Claire? It’s me.”
“Hey, Buckeye. What’s up?” I knew him well enough to know that he was not calling with good news. No coroner ever called homicide detectives at home with good news. I braced myself. Black was still looking out over the water.
“Bad news,” he said.
“Tell me.” All tensed up and prepared to be hit with something that would complicate the case. My sixth sense was working now.
“I got the tests back matching Sylvie Border with her father’s DNA. That and the two tattoos give us a positive ID on her body.”
I frowned. “Yeah, so?”
“Yeah, but I also got her dental records from New Orleans.” Buckeye stopped and so did my heart. “The teeth don’t match.” He paused again. “The head didn’t come off her body, Claire. It belongs to somebody else. The DNA didn’t match up, either.”
I was shocked enough to sink down on the sofa. I stared out the window at Black. Oh, God, now I was going to have to tell him this, too.
“Claire? You get that? Understand what I’m sayin’? I knew the cut marks didn’t match up on the head and torso, but I thought he’d discarded tissue at the decapitation. And the head was so ravaged and torn up that she wasn’t recognizable. I didn’t expect this. It threw me, I can tell you that. We’ve never gotten into anything like this.”
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat, all thick now and swollen as if I’d stuffed a bale of cotton down it. I was having trouble believing my ears. “You’re absolutely certain about this?”
“No doubt whatsoever.”
“How? How’d he do it? I don’t get it. Where’s the other body? What’d he do with Sylvie’s head?”
/> “It looks to me like the head he put on Sylvie’s body might’ve been frozen at one time. I’m doing tissue tests right now.”
My stomach rolled. “Any idea who the head belongs to?”
“No, that’s your job. We can run the DNA through the database and see what comes up.”
“Yeah, we’ll do that.”
“And there was no match on the hairs and drinking glass you brought in to the hair we found on the tree behind the bungalow.”
“Okay. Thanks, Buckeye.”
“Sorry, but I thought you’d want to know right off. I should’ve considered this possibility from the get-go, but, man, it never even occurred to me the remains were from different females.”
“Yeah. Me, either.”
“I’ll give you a call as soon as the rest of the results come in.”
He hung up, and I stared at the phone and tried to absorb the ramifications. The screen door slammed behind me, and I lurched up to my feet, almost guiltily.
“What’s wrong?” Black said. He stood a few feet away, the envelope in his hand. “Claire? Are you all right?”
He was calling me Claire again, and I wished he would stop it. It gave us a closeness I didn’t want, not right now. I kept visualizing the awful look on his face when I’d shocked him with the autopsy picture that night on his yacht. I didn’t want to see it again. I didn’t want to tell him this. This was a hundred times worse. I could keep it to myself. Make it confidential evidence that only the murderer would know.
“Claire, tell me. Is it about Sylvie?” He looked concerned. She was his niece, for God’s sake. Her head was missing. I had to tell him.
“Who was that on the phone?” His eyes were intense and never left my face. I swallowed hard and forced myself to return his gaze.
I took a deep breath, but my voice sounded hoarse. “The coroner. I’m sorry, but it’s very bad news.”
Black said nothing at first. Then he said, “Tell me. She’s already dead. I’ve seen all the pictures now. Nothing can be worse than that was.”
Oh, yes, it could. “He got back the DNA and dental records.” I kept trying to find the right words. There weren’t any good ones; I just had to say it. “The DNA for the head didn’t match the body. Neither did the dental records.”
“What?” he said. He gave a little confused shake of his head. “I don’t understand.”
“It was Sylvie’s body,” I said. “I’m so sorry, but the DNA and dental records from the head didn’t match up to hers.”
I saw comprehension dawn in his eyes, saw it turn to horror, saw blood drain out of his face. He staggered backward until he hit the door, then stopped, pain and disbelief suffusing his face until I could barely look at him.
“I’m so sorry, so very sorry to have to tell you something like this.” I felt helpless. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I didn’t have to do anything. He turned and went outside.
I followed, remaining on the porch as he stopped and braced both hands on the edge of the picnic table. For a few seconds there was no sound except the chattering of some squirrels in the woods behind my house and the low buzz of a faraway motorboat.
I jumped involuntarily when he suddenly exploded, swiping one arm across the top of the picnic table. Dishes and food flew everywhere in a shattering of glass and clanking of metal, and then he began to make the most horrible sound I could ever remember hearing, a keening so full of grief and fury that I felt a little sick as he overturned the table, sending it rolling down the small incline of my front yard to the rocky beach below. He turned away from me and walked jerkily across the grass about twenty yards before he sank to his hands and knees on the ground.
I turned away, unable to watch, unable to go to him. I wanted to, needed to, but knew I could not. He was still in shock. He wasn’t able to face me yet, but he would be eventually. I couldn’t help him now, anyway, couldn’t comfort him, no matter what I said or did. He wasn’t ready for that yet. I knew. I’d been in that awful, black, lonely, terrible place once. I’d do now what I wanted others to do for me when I went through what Black was suffering now. Leave me alone until I had worked through it on my own, give me some space before pressing emotional buttons and wanting to be let in.
So I tried not to look outside; I didn’t want to know what he was doing. I worked on my reports on my cantankerous old IBM computer, not knowing if he was still out there or if he had gone away somewhere by himself. When Black was ready to talk, he’d let me know. It was almost an hour later when I heard him come in the door. I looked up.
He looked terrible, pale, shaken. “I’m going to find the son of a bitch who did this to Sylvie, and I’m going to kill him.” Uttered very calmly, very collected, very determined, very vigilante. He meant it.
“That’s not the kind of thing you say to a police officer,” I said in a low voice. “So, I guess I didn’t hear it.”
“No matter how long it takes, I’ll get him.”
“Yes, and I’ll help you. Getting yourself thrown into prison isn’t going to bring Sylvie back.”
The way he looked at me spoke volumes, and I sensed then, despite all his polish and cultured sophistication, that just like his older brother, he might be capable of violence, of vengeance, whenever the need arose. Certainly not the kind of violence that Sylvie suffered, but I felt he could kill cold-bloodedly if he felt it necessary, if he needed to protect someone he loved. But I could, too. I had.
Somewhere in Nicholas Black’s past, he’d been pushed too hard, I suspected, and had pushed back. He was being pushed too hard now, and he was dangerous. Especially with his connections to the Montenegro family and organized crime. It was up to me to bring him down and back to his senses.
“You offered to work with me professionally. To help us solve Sylvie’s murder. Are you telling me now that you’re reneging on that offer and going out to play Rambo?”
Black didn’t answer. In this instance, noncommittal was not a good signal. He finally spoke, softly. “I want to help you investigate this. I’ve thought of little else since it happened.”
“Okay, good, because I want you to. Now listen up. I’ve got a good friend. Name’s Harve Lester. I trust him implicitly. He’s waiting for me at his house just down the road. He’s like a mentor to me, and he’s got one of the best detective minds that I’ve ever known. Come down there with me and meet him. If you’re as good as they say, the three of us working together might just come up with something significant. We might solve this and bring this guy in.”
His hesitation was a little too long to suit me, but he came up with the right answer. “Okay, let’s go.”
20
Black insisted that we take his Cobalt Cruiser down to Harve’s. Fine with me. It’d be faster. I’d sent Harve an e-mail while Black was pulling himself together, telling him I’d be over later, most likely with Nicholas Black in tow. I also explained about Buckeye’s discovery so we wouldn’t have to go into it in front of Black. He’d suffered enough, and more problematic, he was angry enough. Surprisingly, I no longer looked forward to slamming a steel door shut on him.
Tied up at my shabby little dock, in all its glory, bobbed one of Cedar Bend’s Cobalt 360s, the twin of the one sported about by the hunky Tyler. Designed for the whims of pampered guests, it was all long, clean lines, with the same global positioning system/radar unit, not to mention the main cabin outfitted with a table and berth, refrigerator/freezer, stove, and microwave, and the head compartment with a shower. Just in case you wanted to whip up a home-cooked meal or doll yourself up while catching a bass, I guess. Dottie would go ape over this rig.
Black was quiet and introspective, but man, who wouldn’t be? All the arrogance and self-confidence had been stripped from him. I hadn’t seen him act vulnerable before, and I liked him better for it. More importantly, I was 99 percent sure he wasn’t a murderer. I found myself wanting to eliminate him completely as a suspect. He wasn’t all bad, and there was still that attraction problem, but I was t
hrowing cold water on that spark, right here, right now. It was that strange chemistry between certain men and women that makes your heart pound when they walk into the room and your fingertips tingle when you touch them. Not that I planned to touch him, unless I had to frisk him again. No, ma’am, no tingling was going to happen, not while I was investigating this case.
“There’s Harve’s place. We’ll tie up at the end of the dock.”
Black maneuvered the boat in opposite Harve’s ancient bass boat with the expertise of a man who’d had lots of practice on the water. I glanced up at the house and waved to Harve, who was watching us from his desk in the sunroom. I jumped out and secured Black’s boat to the dock pilings. Black followed, glancing at Harve’s old boat, which looked pretty darn pitiful beside the Cobalt. The Cinderella story, before and after. Yep, Harve’s boat needed a fairy godmother to show up toting some kind of powerful wand.
Black said, “Your friend doesn’t still take that thing out on the lake, does he?”
My protective gene began to spin and vibrate. “You’re a little uppity when it comes to boats, you know that, Black? It floats. You can catch fish out of it. But to answer your question, Harve’s handicapped. He can’t go out anymore, so his nurse uses it. Dottie loves to fish more than anything.”
“Dottie of the knock-you-out-like-a-light hot toddy?”
I nodded. “She’s a lady of many talents. Nurse and companion, and angel as far as I’m concerned. She’s off on the weekends, or you’d get to meet her. Actually, you did meet her once, at a book signing.”
“Is that right?” He looked at the wheelchair ramp leading up to the back door. “How did your friend become disabled?” Black stepped back down in the boat and retrieved his dark glasses and a black Windbreaker. He already had the file folder in one hand.
Well, there was a question I didn’t want to answer. “He was a cop. Got hit in the line of duty.”
“So he’s a hero.”
“Yes.” More than you know, I thought, as we walked up the sidewalk, with me leading the way. I could tell him how it happened, I guess, but that would unnecessarily open doors into dreaded nightmares, and I wasn’t willing to do that. Tonight had been one heavy scene. We didn’t need another one.
