Thursday afternoon had been particularly busy in the Fratelli store on the upper level of the Aventura Mall, but despite the high volume of customers, every single one of Maria’s sales and fails remained clear in her memory; none more so than the one she’d instantly, privately, named The Freezer.
A strange one, for sure. Trying on jeans, a better than good fit, fine on the waist, snug but not too tight on the behind, excellent length.
Maria had looked at the customer and smiled. ‘You wear them well,’ she had said.
She would have said more, but for the customer’s eyes.
A look that could have frozen blood.
One sale Maria had not minded losing out on, that was for sure.
Usually – always – if Cathy wasn’t going to come home for the night, she telephoned to let Grace and Sam know they could lock up and go to bed without worrying about her.
Thursday night had been the exception. No show, no call. No sleep for Grace.
She’d told herself over and over that she was being absurd and neurotic, that Cathy was an adult, at liberty to stay out whenever she wanted, but it hadn’t helped because it was simply so unlike her considerate daughter.
Not that it was only Cathy keeping her awake. Nor was it the baby, who’d kicked around for a while at around one a.m., but had then gone off to sleep.
‘What’s up?’ Sam’s voice came out of the darkness at around three. ‘You OK?’
‘I’m fine,’ Grace told him, stroking his arm. ‘Go back to sleep.’
No point in them both lying awake.
She had told him before they’d left the Hoffman house that afternoon about her conversation with Ryan, and Sam had spoken briefly to the boy, learned that his surname was Harrison, had given him his card and told him to get in touch next day if he wanted to avoid Sam speaking to his parents first.
‘I’m sure as I can be that he was telling the truth about not being there with Gregory,’ Sam had said on the way home, ‘so I couldn’t see any sense hauling him in right away – I’d rather have him on side when we speak.’
Grace was silent.
‘What are you thinking?’ Sam had asked.
‘I keep remembering what Greg said to me.’
‘About being seen?’
‘ “Saw me.” ’ Grace had shivered. ‘Suddenly it makes more sense, doesn’t it?’
‘If Gregory saw Muller’s killer, you mean? If the killer saw him.’
‘Don’t you think that’s what he might have meant?’
‘It’s possible,’ Sam had said. ‘But it’s just as likely that “saw me” meant that someone saw Gregory doing coke on the beach.’
‘Would that have frightened him so much?’ Grace had asked.
‘Being arrested would probably have terrified him,’ Sam said, ‘and the prospect of going back into rehab. And don’t forget the kid was probably high as a kite.’ He had reached for her hand and squeezed it. ‘Don’t let this make you crazy, sweetheart.’
She’d tried her best not to, and they’d managed a peaceful enough evening, but now she was lying here with sleep still eluding her, and all her various stresses seemed to be contracting into a single tightly packed hard ball of anxiety focused on Cathy.
She gave it up finally, heaved herself as silently as possible from the bed, heard Sam stir but not wake, and padded out of the bedroom and down the stairs.
Woody came out of the kitchen, still half-asleep, tail wagging.
‘Sorry,’ Grace told him softly, bent with difficulty to stroke his head, and went to put the kettle on.
One of Lucia’s camomile-based teas might just help, though she doubted anything was going to soothe her. Speaking to Claudia might have eased things a little, but even on Seattle time it was out of the question, and anyway they’d only spoken a couple of days ago.
‘Where is she, Woody?’ she asked the dog as he settled by her feet.
The probability was, she realized, that Cathy was with Kez, and she wondered if that was part of what was so troubling her, then decided she’d have been equally concerned if Cathy had gone missing with a new boyfriend.
Not missing, she reminded herself. Just out.
She went across to the phone, put out her hand to pick it up.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Leave them be.’
Maybe this was the reason Cathy hadn’t called. Maybe she had been giving off some air of disquiet since she’d begun seeing Kez, and maybe Cathy was angry about that, or maybe she was uncertain herself. Or maybe there was, simply, nothing to talk about.
In her womb, the baby stirred.
‘It’s OK, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘Just your mom being a neurotic mess.’
Plenty more where that came from, she supposed, wondering for at least the hundredth time if she was up to this, if maybe she and Sam were too old, because there was just so much responsibility, so much potential for pain alongside the joy.
No going back now, she told herself.
‘Nor wanting to,’ she told the baby.
And made her tea.
Cathy telephoned at five after seven.
‘I feel bad,’ she said, ‘about not calling you last night.’
‘It was so unlike you.’ Grace managed to conceal her relief as well as her irritation. ‘We were worried.’
Cathy told her how sorry she was, then asked about the Hoffmans.
‘It must have been terrible.’
‘They’re being very strong,’ Grace said. ‘Plenty of people around them, helping.’
‘For now,’ Cathy said, perceptively.
Grace waited a moment. ‘Are you OK?’
She waited for Cathy to tell her where she had spent the night or, at least, where she was this morning. Managed not to pry. Fastest way to lose her.
‘I’m fine,’ Cathy answered.
No more than that.
Cathy and Kez had been book buying at B. Dalton in CocoWalk late the previous afternoon when Cathy had spotted Saul and Terri emerging from an exhibit of African wildlife sculptures in a gallery on Grand Avenue. They’d all chatted for a few moments and Saul had suggested they have a drink, and Cathy had been about to say yes when she’d caught Kez’s expression and quickly made an excuse. Saul had grinned understandingly and they’d all gone on their way.
‘Sorry about that,’ Kez had said a moment later. ‘I’d like to go home, and I just didn’t feel like company.’
Cathy had glanced swiftly at her. ‘Would you like me to go?’
‘I’d rather go home with you,’ Kez had said.
Banyan trees and palms were all around the property on Matilda Street, plenty of grass and stone paths – in need of weeding – leading from the sidewalk to an old white clapboard house with ramshackle looking wooden steps leading up to Kez’s home on the second floor.
Just a stone’s throw from some of the priciest gated houses in Coconut Grove and in walking distance from the commercial buzz of CocoWalk, yet thanks to a deal Kez had struck with its owner, an artist presently living in Europe, the two-roomed apartment was both affordable and hers for the foreseeable future.
‘I shot some photos of her work that she liked, and she said she’d be happy for me to live here and take care of the place while she’s away,’ Kez had told Cathy as they drank cold white wine out on the porch. ‘After Europe, she’s planning on some time in the Bahamas, so it could be months till I see her again.’
‘Don’t you miss her?’
Kez had caught the hesitation before the question, and smiled. ‘Cathy, I hardly know her.’
‘I didn’t mean . . .’ Cathy stopped.
‘I know what you meant,’ Kez had said.
That was when the awkwardness had really begun to drift away.
Cathy loved the apartment, the minimalist, almost spartan, feel of the decoration and furnishing sitting comfortably with the posters of Florence Griffith Joyner and other athletics heroines on the walls, with just one blown-up black-and-white photo of Kez triumphantly break
ing tape in a race.
‘Any of your own work?’ Cathy enquired.
‘Not worth hanging.’
‘I’ll bet you’re a great photographer,’ Cathy said. ‘You said you wouldn’t have got this place if the owner hadn’t loved your pictures.’
Kez shrugged. ‘I like this stuff better.’
‘Is that your dad?’ Cathy looked at the only other photo of Kez, aged four or five, standing beside a smiling fair-haired man with his arm around her.
‘That was Joey, yes.’
‘He was handsome.’ Cathy peered closer, saw Kez’s sharp arrow nose in the man’s face, saw that Kez’s natural hair colour was the same as her father’s. ‘Any pictures of your mom?’
‘No,’ Kez said.
Cathy remembered the grisly tale of Joey’s in flagrante heart attack, remembered Kez saying her mother had been out at the time – and she hadn’t mentioned her since, so heaven knew what had happened after that. Her mom must have been distraught, maybe she’d even resented her daughter witnessing the scene – people were complicated, after all, as she’d learned.
Better, Cathy decided, not to ask.
She had never known a night like it.
They’d eaten pizza – or rather, she had eaten several slices, Kez scarcely one sliver – but they’d both drunk plenty of white wine and smoked some weed, and Kez had painted Cathy’s nails for her – black and yellow, like tiny bees – and finally they’d fallen into bed together and slept.
And even when they’d woken for a while in the night, it had all been about companionship, warmth and comfort. Nothing more.
‘It’s OK, you know,’ Kez had told her. ‘I know you’re not sure.’
Cathy had been glad of the darkness, hadn’t known what to say.
‘I’d never push you into anything you didn’t want,’ Kez said.
Hearing her say that had been wonderful, had made Cathy even more relaxed and happy because it had seemed to her to confirm not only that Kez did want her, but also that she was considerate and patient and exactly the kind of person Cathy had believed her to be.
Except that now – just now – this Friday morning, when Cathy had phoned home and talked to Grace, Kez had been in the room. And perhaps she picked up on the touch of strain in the conversation, because the instant Cathy ended the call she saw that something was wrong, something had changed.
‘I think,’ Kez said, ‘maybe you should leave.’
‘Leave?’ Cathy was dismayed.
‘I think,’ Kez went on, ‘you need to take some time, think this over.’
‘I don’t need to think anything over,’ Cathy said.
‘I think you do.’ Kez was adamant. ‘You have issues to resolve.’
Cathy didn’t answer, was too afraid of saying the wrong thing.
‘When it comes to self-doubt, I wrote the book,’ Kez said. ‘But I do know who I am, Cathy, and I know that I’m gay, and I have no problems with that at all.’ Her smile was quirky. ‘And I know what and who I want.’
‘I think . . .’
‘What do you think, Cathy?’
‘I think I want you,’ Cathy said.
‘That’s fine,’ Kez said, ‘but it’s not enough. Not for me, not for you.’
‘So what do you want me to do?’
‘Take the time you need. Do your thinking – no pressure – decide how you feel, about me, about having a gay relationship.’ There was a new, flatter note in Kez’s voice. ‘I’m not interested in being an experiment.’
‘I would never—’ Again Cathy was dismayed.
‘I don’t suppose you would,’ Kez said. ‘Not deliberately.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Cathy wasn’t certain why she was apologizing, but Kez was upset, and that was bad enough.
‘Don’t be sorry,’ Kez told her. ‘Just be honest with me.’
‘I will,’ Cathy said.
‘And with yourself,’ Kez said.
Cathy looked at her, saw how calm she was, how steady, and felt a surge of admiration, wished for just a little of the same, wished for her own heart and mind not to be in such turmoil. Realized that Kez was right to want to wait.
Except that Kez had told her to leave, which was the last thing in the world she wanted to do. To walk away.
‘Couldn’t we just go on?’ Cathy asked.
‘Maybe we could,’ Kez said, ‘but then we might both get hurt.’
‘Isn’t that a risk worth taking?’ Cathy persisted.
‘Not for me.’ Kez’s smile was wry. ‘I don’t like that kind of pain.’
The word was in on what had killed Gregory Hoffman.
Rat poison. Strychnine, to be exact, as David Becket had suspected. Not so uncommon as a mix in itself, rodenticide being used on occasions to lace cocaine in the hope of a longer, more intense high; and the potential for serious health risks was always present, especially the risk of uncontrolled bleeding, often intracranial haemorrhage. That was when the mix was moderate.
In Gregory’s case, the ratio of strychnine to cocaine had been much higher. The almost indisputable intention, therefore, to kill.
No other similar deaths so far in the county, which indicated at least the possibility that the teenager had been targeted.
About the only thing Sam Becket was not entirely sorry about – when he went with Al Martinez to interview Ryan Harrison with regard to the Muller murder – was that despite the potential cross-over between cases, the Hoffman investigation was not in the hands of Miami Beach.
The Miami-Dade police had – in the immediate aftermath of Gregory’s death – gone through Gregory’s belongings, read his private journal and talked to all his friends in and out of school. Ryan Harrison had given no hint at that time of what he had later told Grace, but having since established a potential connection with the beach killing, the teenager had already been re-interviewed by Miami-Dade detectives before Sam and Martinez had arrived on his parents’ doorstep. And had left again, less than an hour later, no wiser.
Ryan and his parents had been keen to help; no prickliness, no wariness, just up-front, decent people, posing no problems.
Offering no real help either.
‘Kid doesn’t know zip,’ Martinez concluded after the interview.
‘He could be right, though,’ Sam said, ‘about Greg having seen something.’
‘But Ryan didn’t, so that gets us no place.’
‘It gets us talking to all of Gregory’s friends,’ Sam said, grim-faced. ‘Never know, he might have told one of them what he saw.’
‘Don’t hold your breath,’ Martinez said.
There were few things Sam disliked more than questioning young people in the line of his work. Bad enough when they were just witnesses to a violent crime; ugly and depressing when they were suspects. Right now, there was only one thing he hated the idea of more, and that was having to return to the Hoffman home and confront those grieving parents with another search of their dead son’s room and possessions – let alone having to ask them questions relating to Gregory as a possible suspect in a homicide inquiry.
Yet unthinkable – and improbable – as that was, with the teenager now conceivably placed at the Muller crime scene, and with nothing new discovered to link the Miami and Pompano Beach killings, it had become something he and Martinez had been forced to consider, even if just to eliminate the possibility from the inquiry.
‘Saw me.’ Still not a lot to go on, especially if all Greg had meant was that someone had seen him doing drugs.
‘Unless Muller was the one who saw him,’ Martinez hazarded over a cup of coffee in the office, ‘and the kid was so off his face, he killed him to keep him quiet.’
‘But then, if Greg was targeted with the strychnine mix, who wanted him dead?’ Sam countered. ‘And why?’
‘One of the other kids, maybe,’ Martinez theorized. ‘In over his head and figuring Greg was a loose cannon.’
‘I don’t buy it,’ Sam said.
‘Me neither,’ Martin
ez said. ‘We’re not the ones who have to, thank God.’
‘Sure we do,’ Sam said, ‘if the killings are linked.’
Chapter Thirteen
August 27
A body was found in Hallandale Beach early on Saturday morning.
Right on the beach, like Rudolph Muller and Carmelita Sanchez. Bludgeoned first, possibly, probably, with a bat – just like the other two.
Another female – not like the Miami Beach killing. No weird screaming sounds reported this time either, no screaming at all, even though that part of the beach was close to several high-rise residential buildings. And no cutting.
But the victim’s teeth had been smashed. And not, according to the ME’s initial findings, as a part of the primary bludgeoning. This demolition job had been done as a secondary assault, after death, just after death.
Hallandale Beach PD had responded to the first report, taken care of the preliminaries while waiting for the Broward County Sheriff’s office to take over the homicide investigation. With Broward already in charge of the Sanchez case, Detective Rowan was paying full heed, but Sam and Martinez had only gotten to hear about it through Elliot Sanders, who’d had a call from the Hallandale ME, a friend who knew about the other beach cases and figured Doc Sanders would be interested.
Not quite as interested as Sam Becket and his team.
Sam and Martinez drove up on Sunday afternoon to meet with Rowan again and learn a little more: victim’s name Maria Rivera, identified by the contents of the small purse still strung diagonally across her body, the way many women wore their bags for security and hands-free walking. Nothing apparently stolen again.
She had been a sales clerk working in Fratelli, one of the one hundred plus clothing stores in the Aventura Mall. An excellent saleswoman according to her supervisor, well-liked by her colleagues. Unmarried, thirty-two, no children, but parents, brothers and sisters who all seemed crazy about her, and several neighbours in her high-rise building close to Magnolia Terrace and Ocean Drive who all seemed to like her too.
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