I had to laugh. Truly I hadn’t thought it, but he had a point. A definite point. “I’m sorry. Macabre cop humor.” I peered at Ken’s Everyman face and decided to prod him just a little more. “Maybe you should put me on your suspect list,” I said. “Feeb, depressed over loss of lover and job, goes berserk, creates her own personal art show at the Bellman Museum.” At the very strange look on his face—I swear his tan was turning purple, as if he were strangling—I added, very quietly, “Unless, of course, I’m already on your list.”
He wouldn’t look at me. My friend. My buddy. My macho cop, handpicked for Rory Travis by Hyacinth Van Horne and Martin Longstreet, had put me on his suspect list. Well, hot shit!
I threw two twenties on the table and thumped my way out of Mike’s Place. Quite a few people didn’t bother to veil their stares. I heard Ken’s chair scrape back, but, evidently, he thought better of it. He did not come after me.
Well, fuck! I hoped he choked on his suspicions.
I sat on the edge of my bed, quivering with a rage and hurt no amount of common sense seemed able to assuage. Ken was a cop. I was on his list for the same reason Billie was on mine. It was necessary.
It didn’t help.
After eyeing the phone for several minutes, almost as if it were a poisonous snake, I dug out the card with Josh’s cell phone number. Telling him about Billie and the alligator was my excuse.
His cell phone went to voice mail. I left no message. Caller ID would be enough.
Sure, I go over every night and prowl the grounds. How else does a spook amuse himself in this haven of senior citizens?
I must have sat there for half an hour, hoping he’d call back. Hoping he wasn’t the killer I was looking for. Hoping he and Martin weren’t playing at some deeper game than I’d been able to unearth. Hoping Josh was one of the Good Guys.
I undressed, put on my nightgown, brushed my teeth. Stared at my phone.
It didn’t ring.
I should take out the sketches and notes I’d made that morning, study them once again before bed. But I couldn’t. All I wanted was to talk to Josh. Try to mend our silent quarrel. Tell him about Billie, about my list of suspects.
Compare the Martin Longstreet he knew to the old, and possibly broken, man I had interviewed yesterday afternoon.
The phone never rang.
I went to bed, feeling more alone than I had at any time since Josh Thomas and Ken Parrish came into my life.
Monday was quiet. It’s possible I participated in rehab with a bit more cooperation that morning. My therapist, who had finally learned not to be so damned cheerful, merely rocked back on his heels, looked thoughtful and muttered, “Not bad, Travis. Not bad.”
After therapy, I stopped at the local newspaper and spent so long fighting my way through articles on old real estate developments, debts, scandals, and bankruptcies, with a few juicy bits of social gossip thrown in to keep me from terminal boredom, that my stomach was protesting loudly. Two-thirty, and I’d had nothing but coffee for breakfast.
Fortunately, I wasn’t too far from my favorite deli on Main Street, where I squeaked into a booth just shortly before their closing time at three. While I waited for my food, I realized that the only old news article that had really stuck in mind was one about Opal Bellman. She had carried a gun while walking her acres. Evidently, rattlesnakes had been enjoying the Bellman grounds since long before Richard Bellman began to build on it. I suppose I should have felt sorry for the snakes, now driven from their habitat, but a picture of those sixty-plus lush acres of heavy landscaping flashed before me, and I began to realize why there was so little low-growing greenery. I shuddered. And thought about my Glock, back in its case in the closet. Maybe it was time to start carrying it again.
With the marvel of a stomach filled with a Mufaletta and Amberbock, it was easier to face the fact that Josh had never returned my call. Evidently, I’d stepped on his toes big-time. It wasn’t just that I was female. No one pushed Josh Thomas aside. I’d also made it clear I didn’t completely trust him.
My energy restoked, if not my spirits, I went to visit Billie. He had a little more color. There was guarded optimism that he might regain full function in his alligator-torn arm. I smiled a lot and made assurances that had little logical basis. I was determined Billie Ball Hamlin wasn’t going to jail for murders he didn’t commit, but anyone crazy enough to dive, night after night, into alligator-infested ponds just might have a few other hidden quirks.
So what next? My instincts told me my research at the newspaper had been fruitless. Whatever was going on had nothing to do with Richard Bellman’s ancient history.
I wasn’t speaking to Ken Parrish. Josh Thomas wasn’t speaking to me. I feared prodding Martin Longstreet into a heart attack or stroke. So I went home and re-examined my sketches of the crime scenes, my list of suspects . . . and got absolutely nowhere. My much-vaunted intuition cried, “Parker St. Clair.” My common sense countered with, “But you want it to be Parker St. Clair.” I gathered, from what had been said, that Clairity teetered on the knife-edge of black ops; its client list, anyone with money. Martin didn’t like Parker. I didn’t like Parker’s wife.
Scarcely enough to hang a man.
Nor did I want it to be Billie or Josh or dear old Martin, who probably had a string of bodies behind him, going back fifty years or more.
And yet I didn’t want to be one of those cops who protected his friends, no matter what. Or ran with gut instincts, and to hell with the facts. Too many innocent people had ended up in jail, or the death chamber, that way.
Yet uncertainty, lack of decision, could be the death of me. Or someone else. As happened on that balcony in Philly. Once again, I ran down the list.
Billie. Billie was a gifted artist, and artists were notoriously given to eccentricities, if not madness itself. Billie was young, strong, and agile. Billie was smart. Billie’s work had not made its mark in the professional art community. As much as I liked Billie, he could well be staging a one-man show of protest. The Art of Murder.
Billie kill Lydia? Psychologists prated about love-hate relationships. I supposed, reluctantly, that it was possible.
Josh. Josh Thomas was as sane as any man who chose danger as a profession could be. No matter which side of the legal fence he was on, he was capable of killing. All he needed was a reason. Which made Lydia Hewitt’s death the stumbling block. I could not see Josh killing a girl who seemed to be truly innocent of any wrong-doing except a bit of sleeping-around.
Martin. I suspected Martin still had his hand in a few sticky pies. He might even have been involved in Clairity. An investor? Or had he not liked Parker St. Clair using his old CIA connections to create a hugely profitable private business? And if Martin had wanted St. Clair shut down—dead—on whom would he call?
His old friend’s armed and dangerous son, Josh Thomas.
Josh. Who would not kill Rob Varney if he were the good guy he appeared to be. Who would never stage artistic murders on the grounds of the Bellman. He’d shoot his victims and be done with it. Men like Josh Thomas left their victims lying where they fell, or, if absolutely necessary, dumped their bodies in the ocean. They did not fill them full of Rohypnol and slit their throats in lion cages and barber chairs.
Parker. Parker St. Clair ran a company that provided “services.” Swiftly, discreetly, with little regard to legality. Once helpful only to our side, Clairity had branched out, providing services to anyone with the money to pay for it. Which could lead to doing odd jobs for both sides of a situation. Tricky. Very tricky. It was possible a lot of different people wanted Parker St. Clair dead . . .
Good God! I sat up straight. (I’d been lounging on my bed with all my papers scattered around me.) Was it possible Parker was not the killer, but the next victim, instead?
Was Josh Thomas here because of Parker St. Clair? Was his vacation a sham? Were he and Martin putting together evidence against St. Clair?
As was Rob Varney, probably for a d
ifferent government alphabet agency?
But not Lydia. Never Lydia. She’d been born and raised here. Never went farther than graduating from the local performing arts high school.
I called Ken. (I may have been angry with him, but I was still a cop.)
Chapter 18
Ken Parrish listened with so much patience I could almost feel his long-suffering through the air waves. Parker St. Clair, prominent member of the Bellman Board, a possible serial killer? Pardon me, scratch that. It’s Parker St. Clair, potential victim.
“Rory, do you hear yourself?” Ken asked. “You’ve been deep-sixed by your obsession over Billie.”
“I am not—”
“Yes, you are! I’m not about to bring in a member of the Bellman Board for questioning, just because you think I should.”
“Then check his alibis for both times. You can do that, can’t you?”
“Believe me, Travis, his alibi’s gonna be his wife, or he was in a roomful of people at the Yacht Club, the University Club, some place old-boy and iron-clad.”
“His wife’s not iron-clad. And, besides, he’s got a mistress.”
Ken groaned. “That’s not a crime, Travis.”
“I told you—Lydia Hewitt saw him with her. At the museum. In flagrante.”
Pregnant pause. “Pretty thin, Rory, but I’ll check his alibis. Okay?”
“Thanks.”
Silence. “Look, Rory, I’m sorry—”
“It’s okay. I’m over it. You’re just doing your job.”
Longer silence. “Rory . . . do you want to talk to me about Josh Thomas? I mean, have you checked the man out?”
“My current clearance doesn’t run that high.”
“Neither does ours. He’s either exactly what he appears to be, an international businessman on vacation or—”
“He’s a crook or a spook. Most likely, a spook.”
“Uh . . . right.”
“It’s a problem,” I inserted an elaborate sigh. No way was I going to discuss Josh Thomas with Ken Parrish. “So promise you’ll check on Parker St. Clair.”
“I promise. Take care, Rory. Tell you the truth, I’m beginning to agree with you about Billie.” He hung up.
Well, I’ll be damned. I was still sitting there, staring at my cell phone, when Jody brought me a drink before she went home for the day. At supper Aunt Hy and Marian Edmundson were unusually quiet, each giving me surreptitious little glances before hastily turning back to Marian’s onion-laced meatloaf. It was a very good meatloaf, by the way, always served with mashed potatoes and gravy. But that night I didn’t taste it. My mind was firmly planted in the world of intrigue, my hands grabbing madly for elusive details that spun just out of reach, that refused to coalesce into even a single solid fact that could be laid at any one person’s feet.
We were so close.
We hadn’t a clue.
So who was We? Ken and I? Josh and I? The old Rory, the paralyzed Rory, the resurrected Rory? The Rory-to-be?
Thank God tomorrow was one of my tram days. I would be much too busy to think. Almost—for a moment or two—I thought longingly of the lost-in-limbo Rory who hadn’t given a damn about anything but feeling sorry for herself.
On this particular Tuesday, the loggia, which provided welcome shelter from Florida’s hot summer sun, was several shades too cool. As I laid my mini-cooler on the wooden bench before taking my usual peek at David, it finally occurred to me that lunches with my favorite hunk of bronze might have to go on hiatus for the winter. I clung to the terra cotta balustrade above the courtyard and took a good long look. I swear all seventeen feet of Michelangelo’s muscled marvel had goosebumps.
It wasn’t supposed to be that way, of course. Aunt Hy, Marian, Jody, and the old-timers among the tram drivers were all complaining about the weather. It looked as if, this year, Florida might actually have a Winter. Reluctantly, I picked up my cooler and hiked to the east end of the courtyard where I found a table in full sun. David, at the far end of the courtyard, was like a distant memory, the dark silhouette of someone I’d known in another lifetime. I unwrapped my grilled cheese with avocado and bacon on sourdough bread, custom-made at a restaurant I passed on the way to the museum, and tried not to think about the significance of my now-distant male surrogate. Yet the thought wouldn’t go away.
David, my stalwart bronze hero, was no longer the linchpin of my life. I didn’t have to cling to him for support. I even occasionally wondered what certain other bodies would look like in the buff. Starkers, as the Brits say. The visions (definitely plural) conjured by this aberrant notion were so delicious I nearly choked on a crisp chunk of bacon. Obviously, my mind wasn’t the only part of my anatomy that was coming back to life. Sternly, I chewed, swallowed, drank my soda, and tried not to think at all. I disposed of my trash and headed out to the tram run.
But turning off a reawakened mind is almost an impossibility. When, in the midst of all the recent chaos, had I started to live again? When had I decided that, no matter how vulnerable I was, I was going to rejoin the human race? That bronze statues, even driving a tram, weren’t enough?
The answer was multiple choice. Josh Thomas’s arrival on a clap of thunder had jolted me into forward motion. Then came Billie’s problems and the arrival of Detective Sergeant Ken Parrish on the scene. But it had taken the shock of the shattered mannequin to catapult my numbed emotions into anger, into cold determination mounting to burning fury. I would find out who did this. To the Bellman . . . and to me.
I waved goodbye to George, who didn’t mind walking to his car on such a cool day, and set off on Tram 3 with a full load of passengers. Four got off at the Circus Museum and restaurant stop; the remainder were going to the Casa Bellissima. Between the Circus and the Casa my tour guide routine is constant: rose garden, banyan trees, sausage tree, the swimming pool, the Bellman’s burial site, Sarasota Bay, and Pelican Key. I was so busy talking I almost missed it. Nearly every day there are fishermen in the bay just north of the Casa. The water is so shallow they walk, wearing hipwaders, to the sandbar about a hundred feet offshore. Occasionally, fishermen arrive by shallow-bottom boat. I was unloading my passengers, my view cut off by the bulk of the House, before I realized what I had just seen.
There was a larger boat than usual out there, perhaps as long as sixteen feet. It had a blue stripe just below the gunwale, a blue canvas canopy, and a powerful outboard engine. It looked, in fact, remarkably similar to the boat I had seen tied up at Josh Thomas’s dock. And it appeared to be empty. Nor was there a single fisherman anywhere in the vicinity. Fortunately, I had no passengers, so I circled around the Casa’s drive and took another look. I pulled to the side of the driveway to allow another tram to pass, then I dug out my cell phone. Fortunately, Josh was not doing one of his disappearing acts.
“Are you at home?” I demanded without preliminaries.
“Yeah. Computer digging,” he drawled. “Why?”
“Is your boat where it’s supposed to be?”
“Well, of course . . . Hang on . . .” Since he was such a fast-mover, the pause was short. “Fuck!” he breathed into the phone, probably more stunned that the great Josh Thomas could have missed something like that than by the actual loss of the boat. “Have you seen it?” he demanded, making the obvious leap.
When I told him about the empty boat in front of the Casa, Josh surprised me. He made a another leap, one that hadn’t yet occurred to me. “Call your boyfriend,” he snapped. “Right now. I doubt that boat’s really empty, and damned if I’m going to take the rap for this one. Play it by the book, Rory. No pussy-footing.”
“You think there’s a body—”
“Hell, yes. I’ll be there as fast as traffic will allow. Call Parrish now!”
He was right, of course. I’d let myself be distracted by personal issues, by the demands of my tram job. I was the one with the much-vaunted super intuition, and I’d missed it. Were Josh’s leaps truly faster than mine? Or did he know there was a body
in his boat?
But if Josh was guiltless, someone was trying to implicate him. Why . . . ?
Josh, himself, confirmed my speculation on that question, when he arrived ahead of Ken Parrish and yet another round of city patrol cars. “Want to bet our guy had a dead body on his hands before he discovered Billie Hamlin spent the last two nights in the hospital?”
“So he needed another patsy?”
“A reasonable guess. I’d go out there,” Josh added, “but Parrish would have my hide. Getting involved, even peripherally, isn’t good. I like to keep a low profile.”
I bet he did.
Ken’s silver SUV could be seen far up the long drive, wending its way through the usual crowd of visitors meandering down the middle of the road. Sure enough, by the time he parked and made his way to where Josh and I were standing on the grass north of the Casa Bellissima, Ken resembled a lightning bolt on the verge of piercing any great black cloud one could name, even one with The Sleeping Satyr’s name on it.
I had, of course, forgotten they’d never met. The two new men in my life stood four feet apart, bodies tense, and glared at each other, the air crackling with waves of hostility and belligerence. Darkness and Light, squaring off for confrontation on so many different levels I was momentarily speechless, wondering if I was going to have to step in and separate them.
“So you think there’s a body out there?” Ken challenged.
“Just a guess,” Josh shrugged and explained his conjecture about the killer not realizing Billie had been removed from the equation.
Ken turned to me. “Guess you’re happy,” he growled.
“It does seem to get Billie off the hook.”
“If there’s a body in there,” Ken said. “And if we’re sure the TOD wasn’t prior to Billie’s accident.”
“This is Tuesday,” I pointed out with exaggerated patience. “The boat wasn’t there yesterday. Therefore it can’t be Billie.”
“We’re all going to look foolish if the damn boat’s empty,” Josh pointed out.
Art of Evil Page 20
