Death In Paradise

by Carolyn G. Hart

  She shook her head, smiled. “Oh, I didn’t work here when Miss Burke was director. I knew Anders from animal-rights marches. He asked if I’d like to be his assistant. I’ve loved every minute of it. It’s so wonderful to help animals.”

  I gave her a sharp, demanding look. “Is anyone here now who worked for Miss Burke?”

  “Oh, no, ma’am.” She spoke without hesitation, sure that her answer would please. “Not a soul.”

  I left the Ericcson Foundation, my hands filled with brochures and exhortations. I also carried with me a good many questions. But not the ones I’d revealed to Ginger Cowan.

  The office was in a strip shopping center on a shabby stretch of Mockingbird Lane. Plate glass windows and a legend in bright gold letters: STANLEY JAMES DUGAN, ATTORNEY AT LAW.

  The secretary looked up briskly when I stepped inside. She was a thin, middle-aged woman with faded blond hair, quick, intelligent eyes, and a tired, lined face. She wore good makeup, lightly applied. But her nose was shiny and the lipstick had worn to the edges of her mouth. Yes, she got up, started the day, put on makeup, but she didn’t bother to freshen it up. Usually, I’d have wanted to know why. I’d have wanted to know all about her, what brought her to a solitary, high-stress job, what kind of home she lived in, whom she loved or hated, what her children were like, why her mouth drooped in repose.

  Not now. Now she was simply an impediment, a challenge to be bested. But I knew I must curb my desperate impatience, the ravening hunger to gouge from this man or that woman the information I had to have. I had to resist the force of that unending drumbeat—What happened to Richard? Why did Richard die?—and maintain my composure. A desperate, anxious woman frightens people, shuts them up. I kept my words even, my tone level.

  “No, I’m sorry. I don’t have an appointment. Please give my card to Mr. Dugan.”

  “He’s in conference. I doubt that he’ll see you.” The words were quick, bored, the patter of a well-trained gatekeeper.

  I had to get Dugan’s attention. I turned my card over, thought for a moment, knowing this was the only chance I might have. Quickly, I scrawled: “CeeCee Burke’s murderer is on Kauai. Now.” That was all.

  It was enough. One minute later, I entered Stanley Dugan’s office.

  He stood behind a battered oak desk, a huge, homely, rawboned man. About six-seven. Small on a basketball court, overpowering here. His face looked as if it had been hacked out of hardwood by a nearsighted sculptor, the features oversized and a bit askew. And tough as rawhide. Shiny, thick-lensed glasses magnified cold gray eyes. All of a piece, except for his exceptionally well-tailored light wool suit. I’d have expected a rumpled, cheap suit. But it was a signal to me to remember that no one is all of a piece.

  His big gray eyes scanned me like a laser. I saw the judgment: Money. Savvy. Doesn’t look like a nut.

  I wonder what he read in my eyes, because I wasn’t missing much either. I knew I was facing a tough opponent.

  Opponent. That’s what I felt in this room, that I was going to engage in a mind to mind struggle with a powerful, determined, unpredictable adversary.

  So it didn’t surprise me when he attacked before I could say a word. He held up my card and it looked tiny between his massive thumb and forefinger. “What the hell does this mean?” His eyes were hard, suspicious, combative. He came around the desk, walked close to me.

  I had to prove I wasn’t horning in on a notorious case for money or sensation or malice. “Right now everyone in Belle Ericcson’s family is at Ahiahi—and one of them killed your fiancée.”

  He took two big steps and was staring down at me, pressing so close I could see a tracery of tiny broken blood vessels in his ruddy face, smell talcum, feel the throbbing tension in his huge body. “Who? Damn you, who?”

  “One of them. I don’t know which. CeeCee Burke disappeared from Belle’s lakefront home. One year later my husband—Richard Collins—went to Kauai because he’d learned who killed CeeCee.” I knew this had to be true. Something that Johnnie Rodriguez told Richard revealed the kidnapper. If all went well, I’d have the same knowledge after I talked to Johnnie Rodriguez. “They said Richard fell to his death. I think he was pushed.”

  He flipped my card, glanced at the name. “Collins. The newspaper guy. Belle’s pal.” His eyes sought mine. “You got identification?”

  I did. Driver’s license. Social security card. Credit cards. Library card. Oh, yes, I had identification.

  He riffed through the cards, handed them back to me, glared at me. “What did your husband know?”

  “This last week, I looked through Richard’s daybooks.” That was true. But I didn’t owe this man anything. I had no intention of revealing Richard’s true entry, not until I talked to Johnnie Rodriguez. That had to come first. But I would say whatever I had to say to win information from Stan Dugan. “In his last entry, Richard wrote: ‘CeeCee’s killer will be at Ahiahi. I have to tell Belle.’” Yes, I made it up.

  “Christ.” It was an expletive. He grabbed my shoulders in a vise-tight grip. “Who? He must have said. Tell me who.”

  “I don’t know. That’s all Richard wrote. That was his last entry.”

  Dugan released me, turned away. “Someone at Ahiahi.” His voice was harsh, full of the kind of anger I understood. “Goddamn. So that’s why Collins came…”

  I felt a quick shock. I’d not expected this. “Were you at Ahiahi when Richard died?”

  “Yes.” But his thoughts clearly were not in this room. “Someone at Ahiahi.” His big hands clenched into fists.

  Yes, he sounded angry. And vengeful. But he was there when Richard was murdered. I couldn’t trust him. I couldn’t trust anyone. Yes, he had been CeeCee’s fiancé. But lovers can quarrel.

  “Why aren’t you at Ahiahi now?” I asked him. “They gather every year. To remember CeeCee.”

  For a moment, I didn’t think he was going to answer.

  Finally, his voice harsh, he said, “I don’t do pilgrimages.”

  “But you went the first year.” The year Richard died.

  He ignored that. Instead, his eyes were once again hard and suspicious. “Why have you come to me? What do you want?”

  “I want to talk to you about CeeCee.” What did I want? I wanted to peer into his mind and heart. I wanted to understand him and through him to understand who CeeCee Burke was and why someone wanted to kill her.

  I glanced swiftly around the office. I’ve been in a few law offices. Paneled walls. Hunting prints. Or drawings of barristers at the Inns of Court. Framed diplomas. Sometimes the Order of the Coif prominently displayed. Leather furniture. Fireplace. Oriental rug or two.

  Not this one. Gray tiled floor, bleak white walls. Except for one wall.

  My eyes widened. I saw more than I wanted to. My gaze jerked toward him.

  The big lawyer gave a grim smile. “Not for the squeamish. Juries can’t be squeamish about personal injury.” He pointed at the jumble of color prints, pictures with lots of bright red blood. “Before and after photos. Before, you see a man or woman or kid when life was good. Happy faces. Weddings. Babies. Walking. Or running.” He pointed at the snapshot of a smiling young woman holding a new baby. “Debbie Morales and Judy. Debbie was twenty-six, worked in the day-care center where her baby stayed. Single mother. Paid her rent on time. Damn proud to be off welfare. Rented a tiny apartment. Kept telling the landlord she was getting headaches and something was wrong with the heater. She and Judy had been dead for six days when they found them. Carbon monoxide. See that picture.” He pointed to the next photo.

  I didn’t look.

  “It was summer. Bloated and maggoty. Yeah, this wall tells it like it is. The happy pictures are before, before they got maimed or burned or crushed or killed. Juries see the pictures, they understand what happened. And, of course, there’s my old friend Bob. He’s a big help.” He reached out to touch a yellowed, bony shoulder.

  I stared at the bones. “Bob?”

  He ran hi
s fingers over the rib cage. “Bob goes to court with me. If you can show a jury—really show them—what got broke or burned or smashed and make them feel it in their bones or gut, the sky’s no limit.”

  “You make somebody pay.”

  “Every time.” His arrogance was startling. “It’s the greatest game in the world—and I always win.”

  I believed him. And I wondered what that kind of confidence might do to a young man. It could engender a dangerous egotism.

  Appraisal flickered in his eyes and I realized he was quick. Whip-quick.

  “Yeah, lady, I’m the best. But my clients deserve the best. I can’t give them back their health. Or their lives. But I can make the rich bastards pay.” He waved his hand, dismissing the wall. “But none of that matters to you.”

  It mattered. It told me a lot about Stan Dugan. And something about CeeCee Burke.

  “I want to know about CeeCee.” About this I could be honest. Maybe the sincerity reached him.

  “Why?” Now his glance was not so much suspicious as considering.

  “You make the bad guys pay for hurting people. Do you want to make somebody pay for CeeCee?”

  “Don’t play games with me, lady.”

  Once again I was aware of his size and strength. One swipe of that huge arm could disable me. I wondered if my awareness was triggered by a sudden rush of anger toward me.

  “My husband died at Ahiahi.” I held his gaze until his eyes dropped.

  He rubbed one cheek. “So how the hell will it catch CeeCee’s killer—and your husband’s, if you’re right—to tell you about her?”

  “If someone now at Ahiahi was responsible for her death, then it has to be because of who she was, what she was like, what she did and thought and felt. Not for the ransom, Mr. Dugan.”

  He looked across the room at another montage of photographs. I could just make them out, a motley collection of snapshots. Yes, these were pictures from his happy days. Before CeeCee Burke died.

  “I want to know CeeCee, Mr. Dugan. And no one should know her better than you. If you loved her, you will help me.”

  He didn’t change expression. His face was still harsh and forbidding. But he pointed to a worn leather chair. “Sit down, Mrs. Collins.”

  I slipped into the seat. I realized then that my hands were sweaty and my knees were weak.

  He walked over and picked up the montage of photos. Slowly, like sun breaking through clouds, his face softened. He stood that way for a long time. “CeeCee.” His voice was a caress. “Jesus, she was one of a kind. She was beautiful and sophisticated. Not in my world. I spend time with people who’ve had a raw deal. Nobody’s slick. Nobody’s rich. Nobody’s famous. CeeCee grew up in a world where everybody was somebody special, famous or rich or both. She wore perfumes that smelled like heaven and cost more than I spent on meals for a week. To CeeCee, fine food and expensive clothes and luxurious surroundings were simply to be expected, nothing to remark. I learned a lot from her. Purses that are considered works of art, carved out of fine wood. And china and crystal that exist just because they’re beautiful. Steuben glass. French tapestry. All kinds of beauty. And CeeCee”—he cleared his throat—“she was like a piece of fine china, elegant and beautiful. But she wasn’t just a pretty face. You know how tough good china is? That was CeeCee. Beautiful—and tough.”

  “How did you meet?” I knew there had to be a story here.

  “Oh, it was pretty simple. She came into my world. I was preparing a case. She came to my office.” For the first time since I’d arrived, his big, craggy face was alive with laughter and I realized how attractive he could be. “CeeCee looked around, looked it all over—the pictures, me, Bob. Then, straight-faced, she said, ‘You give ’em hell, don’t you?’ I said, ‘Damn right.’ She said, ‘Way to go.’”

  I laughed. “So you liked her right off the bat?”

  “I sure did. And I liked her even better after I took her depo. She was a passenger in a sports car that slammed into the side of one of those pickups with an exterior gas tank. Fried the pickup driver. The mother of two kids on her way to pick them up at school. You don’t want to see those autopsy shots.”

  No, I didn’t. But that comment was well calculated to evoke an emotional response. I must always remember in dealing with this man who he was and what he did.

  “Hell of it was”—now Dugan’s voice was harsh—“the driver of the sports car, Mr. Lance Whitney Cole the Third, ran a red light. He swore to the cops it was green. Another witness thought it was red. When CeeCee came to my office, I expected her to lie, to protect him. They’d been dating for about six months. So it blew me away when she told the truth. She was sorry she had to do it. But she did. He ran the red light. She saw it.” He gave me a cool, level look. “You don’t look impressed, Mrs. Collins. In most trials, liars are thicker than cottonmouths in a muddy creek in August. And here’s this rich girl telling the goddamn truth. She was tough. She was the difference in the decision. I called her the day after the jury came in, said I wanted to buy her a drink. That was a Friday afternoon. We took a plane to Cancún that night. It was the greatest weekend of my life.”

  They say opposites attract. But that’s rarely been true in my experience. If I now had a picture of CeeCee Burke, it was perhaps a reflection of this confident, assertive lawyer. He said CeeCee was tough. He was tough. He was also intelligent, aggressive, controlling, and impetuous. What did that tell me about CeeCee?

  “When did you get engaged?”

  He looked away and I knew he wasn’t seeing his office or me. “That weekend.”

  So, yes, I called it right when I decided he was impetuous. And so was CeeCee.

  “Do you know of any reason why anyone in the family would want her dead?” It was a bald, tough question.

  His face hardened. “If I knew”—his voice was low and thick—“I’d have done something long before now.”

  I stood, picked up my purse. “Thank you, Mr. Dugan, for your time.”

  He said nothing until I was almost to the door.

  “Mrs. Collins, are you going to Ahiahi?”

  I looked back. His face was grim, all traces of warmth gone.

  “Yes.”

  “If what you suspect is true”—he spoke slowly, emphatically—” you will be in great danger.”

  “I know.” I turned away. But as I closed his office door and hurried through the anteroom, I wondered if he was warning me…

  Or threatening me.

  four

  Ireached the outskirts of Pottsboro. I doubted the main street—a straggle of small stores, a barbecue restaurant and several gas stations—had changed much in decades. And certainly not in the short span of years since the kidnapping.

  I’d not found a phone listing for Johnnie Rodriguez. But I’d traced down an AP reporter in Dallas who had covered the kidnapping and learned that Rodriguez lived with his mother, Maria. I got her phone number and address. I debated calling. But I didn’t want to frighten Johnnie. No, I wasn’t going to take any chances. I was going to talk to him, whatever effort it took. And somehow, through threats or bribery or persuasion, I was going to find out what he told Richard.

  I got directions at a gas station. Ten minutes later the rental car jolted to a stop at the end of a rutted, red dirt road in front of a small frame house.

  There was no yard. Blackjack oaks crowded close to a dusty path. I slammed the car door and the sound seemed overloud in the country quiet. Crows cawed. Far above, a Mississippi kite, its huge wings spread wide, rode a thermal draft.

  Just for an instant I paused. Six years ago Richard heard the slam of a car door, felt a cool lake breeze, faced this empty path. It was as if he stood beside me, just for an instant. “Richard…”

  Then a crow flapped past and the sense of Richard’s presence was gone and I was left with a haunting feeling of unease. Richard walked this path and it led him to Kauai and his death.

  I felt the faint warmth of the March sun and knew I did
not want to die. Not now. Not yet. It’s hard to be frightened. It’s hard to find courage. “Richard…” I took a deep, ragged breath. I moved forward. Forced myself forward.

  The house had a slovenly, unkempt air—paint peeling from the walls, untrimmed hydrangeas bulking up against the windows. A bicycle missing a front wheel lay on the sloping porch, along with a rusted bucket and an old car battery.

  The sagging front steps creaked beneath my weight. Had this little frame house been so bedraggled, so forlorn when Richard came?

  A thin, gray-striped cat bolted from behind a pile of firewood on the porch to block my way, hissing, ears flattened, tail puffed.

  I heard a faint scrabbling sound and frightened meows.

  “It’s all right, little mother,” I said softly.

  I stepped around the cat.

  The door opened. Grudgingly, slowly, with a mournful creak, as if it were an unaccustomed act.

  There was no screen.

  I looked into eyes as dark as my own, at a face wrinkled by time, dark hair streaked with silver.

  We were probably close in age. But I’d been lucky, blessed with good health and excellent medical care. And she had not. Her skin had the waxen look of illness, pernicious and irreversible. Her arms had so little flesh, the bones protruded. Her blue cotton house dress hung in swaths.

  She was staring at me, her eyes puzzled. “I thought you were the district nurse.”

  “No. I’m Henrietta Collins. I know the Ericcson family.” That was not true. “I’m here to see Johnnie Rodriguez.” I tried hard to keep my voice even, undemanding, but I had traveled a long distance and all the way I kept thinking that if Richard had not come here, he might still be alive. And beneath my anger, fear pulsed. Yes, I was following in Richard’s footsteps.

  A claw-like hand moved to her throat. She opened her mouth, but no words came.