by Tom Turner
Diana shook her head. “I can’t imagine a child of mine missing for two minutes, let alone two days,” she said. “So, you ended up moving down here.”
Jackie nodded. “I liked Savannah, couldn’t afford New York anymore, so I just packed my bags and moved down.” She shrugged. “Solving crimes seemed to be kind of, I don’t know, stimulating, I guess. So, I figured—what the hell—might as well make it my profession. Plus, I naively thought it would be easy.”
“Catching bad guys?”
“Yeah,” Jackie said. “So, to get my license I worked for a P.I. for a year. He had me do fun stuff like follow around cheating spouses to no-tell motels.”
“Eww,” Diana said, rolling her eyes as she scribbled notes on a pad.
Jackie nodded. “I hated it,” she said. “One time the guy I worked for actually broke down the door at a Motel 6 and I took what they call ‘the money shot.’”
“Of a couple—”
“Yup.”
“How creepy was that?”
“Big time.”
Diana looked up from her pad. “So, then you started your own agency?”
Jackie nodded.
“And then you solved that murder of that funeral director?”
Jackie smiled. “Yeah, the press dubbed him the, ‘Philandering Funeral Director’ or something lame like that. But that was after two years of really boring stuff. Paying my dues, learning the ropes, I guess.”
“But didn’t you have a few more high-profile cases?”
Jackie nodded. “A couple. And a few I never solved, which is frustrating.”
Diana nodded. “At what point do you give up?”
“Oh, I never give up,” Jackie said. “They’re in my ‘cold case file’. When it gets slow, which nowadays is rare, I go back to them, kick ‘em around a little more.”
“And how long have you been at it now?”
“Almost four years.” Jackie looked at her watch. “Oh, I hate to be rude, but I’ve got a potential client coming here in five minutes, so I’m gonna need to wrap it up.”
Diana nodded, stood. “I really appreciate your time,” she said. “This has been one of my best interviews in a long time. Should be in the paper in two or three days.”
“Thank you,” Jackie said, shaking Diana’s hand. “Probably get a few calls from it, I’d imagine.”
“Yeah, I should get a finder’s fee if you get a nice juicy murder,” Diana said with a laugh.
“Actually,” said Jackie, “that’s exactly what my next meeting is.”
3
A year before…
The four men walked off the 15th green and headed for their golf carts.
“Nice putt,” Ted said to his partner Rick.
“Yeah, but we’re still three down,” Rick said as they got in the cart.
“In ten minutes, you won’t give a damn.” Ted hit the gas and followed the other twosome in the cart ahead of them.
“Why’s that?” Rick asked, then, confused, pointed to the cart path disappearing to their right. “Hey, isn’t the tee the other way?”
“Yeah, it is,” Ted said, “but we’re going to take a little break before we play the last three holes.”
“O-kay,” Rick said with a puzzled shrug.
Rick, from nearby Palmetto Dunes, was playing as Ted’s guest. Ted and the men in the cart ahead had been members of the Mercer Island club for a total of seventy-one years between them.
The man driving the golf cart in the lead looked back at Ted and gave him a big smile and thumbs-up. Up in front of them loomed a large, two-story brick house, which was hidden by majestic live oak trees from the rest of the houses in the upscale development outside of Savannah. The house looked like a knockoff of Tara, with balconies on the first and second floors and a huge Canary Island date palm centered in front of it. Plump pink and lavender azaleas were in full bloom on either side; a boundless marsh and the Intracoastal Waterway stretched out beyond it.
Ted parked his golf cart next to another cart, which had just pulled up in front of the house.
“Okay,” Rick said with the same puzzled look. “I’ve got absolutely no clue what we’re doing at this place.”
Ted turned to him. “Have I ever led you astray?”
Rick thought for a second. “Well yeah, a couple of times.”
The four clattered down the path to the house in their golf shoes. Ted walked up to the front door and knocked four times, paused, then three more times. Like it was code.
A few moments later, a large-breasted woman in her late fifties with perfectly coiffed hair and a flowery caftan answered the door.
“Hello, gentlemen. Welcome to Casa Romantica,” she said in a whispery voice. Then she turned to Rick. “I don’t believe we’ve met before. I’m Miranda.”
“And I’m—”
Miranda’s hand shot up and she shook her head. “No names, please.”
Rick looked puzzled.
“You are what you drink,” Ted explained.
Rick was still puzzled.
“We go by what we drink,” Ted explained. “Which means I’m Johnnie.”
Rick nodded. His friend drank Johnnie Walker Black. “I guess that would make me Chivas.”
“Pleased to meet you, Chivas,” Miranda said. “Well, come on in,” she said, then stopped them by holding up her hand again. “Hold on. You boys know there are only two rules here.”
“Don’t worry,” Ted said, sitting down in an expensive-looking strap metal bench to the right of the front door and removing his shoes, “we were about to take ’em off.”
Charlie reached down, and standing first on one foot, then the other, took his golf shoes off and put them under the bench.
Rick sat down next to Ted and followed suit, as did the fourth man. “What’s the other rule?” Rick asked, looking up at Miranda.
Miranda smiled. “That you never say a word to anyone about this place.”
Rick nodded. “I’m a discreet guy.”
“You better be,” Miranda said with a smile. Then she led the four men through the foyer into the spacious living room. Though the furniture was of superior quality, nothing really matched. It was as though Miranda had gone to dozens of high-end tag sales at Mercer Island houses and picked up a chintz sofa here, a walnut coffee table there, a New England landscape painting somewhere else, until she filled the room.
But her bar was something else altogether. Fully stocked didn’t begin to describe it. It was located at the far corner of the living room. She’d had the fifteen-foot long mahogany bar built by a local carpenter: a talented craftsman who had built a similar one for Jim Williams, the flamboyant art collector whose murder had been the centerpiece of John Berendt’s book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
Stepping behind the bar, Miranda said, “You boys look as though you’ve had a long day at the office.”
“Oh, yeah, brutal,” Ted said with a throaty chuckle. “I’ve been craving a libation since the sixth hole.”
“Crave no more,” she said. “One Johnnie Walker Black coming right up.”
Ted nodded and smiled as she poured four fingers into a glass with ice cubes.
She handed the glass to him.
“Thanks, honey,” Ted said.
“And for the new sailor in town?” she asked. “Oh right, Chivas. On the rocks or how do you like it?”
“A little water, please,” Rick said. “And a twist.”
“Coming right up.”
“You’re going to have to rename me,” Charlie said with a smile. “I feel like a beer today.”
“No problem, I have four IPAs plus your standard German, Dutch, and American beers,” Miranda said, opening a cooler below the bar. She recited the names of the twelve brands she had.
“I’ll have that Sierra Nevada,” Charlie said.
Miranda handed the bottle across the bar. “Okay, so from now on you’ll be known as both Stoli and Sierra.”
The four men laughed.
>
After she poured a Jack Daniels for Ted, Miranda led the men over to two sofas that faced away from the marsh.
Rick pointed out the window. “Don’t we want to take in that beautiful view?” he asked Ted. “Bet there’s some amazing wildlife out there.”
“Sure is,” Miranda said, overhearing. “Wild boar, deer, minks, not to mention dolphins, egrets, you name it. But I think you’ll prefer this view.” She pointed at the grand staircase up to the second floor.
The other three men nodded eagerly and plopped onto the couch, backs to the spectacular marsh and water vista. Their expressions showed they could barely contain their anticipation as they looked up the wide staircase.
And, as if on cue, a stunning-looking woman in a short skirt, a bare midriff and a silver-sequined halter-top appeared. She strutted across the landing from the left and took a step down the staircase. Rick’s mouth dropped as Ted’s eyes lit up and Charlie rubbed his hands together like someone looking forward to a sumptuous meal.
Moments later, another woman appeared from the other side of the second-floor landing, as if on the runway of a fashion show. She was tall, blonde, elegant, and dressed in tight black silk pants and a white collared shirt with the collar popped. She started down the staircase with a demure smile and confident walk.
Rick turned to Ted and whispered, “What the hell is this?”
Ted whispered back, “Mercer Island’s version of heaven.”
Then a third woman came from the other side. She was dressed in a long beige skirt with a seafoam-green, breast-hugging tee shirt.
“Don’t even think about picking her,” Ted whispered to Rick and flicking his head. “She’s all mine.”
Rick grinned like a schoolboy as he walked down the staircase forty-five minutes later, tucking in his golf shirt. He looked down and saw Ted and Charlie with cocktails in hand on the side-by-side couches. Sitting in Ted’s lap was the woman who had been wearing the seafoam-green tee shirt. Except now, she was bare-breasted.
Miranda was at the bar making a drink—a quarter-inch stack of hundreds and twenties at the end of the bar.
“So, you ready to go finish up the last three holes?” Ted asked Rick.
“Reluctantly,” said Rick. “After we finish up, I want to go see a real-estate broker.”
“Sounds just like Jose Cuervo,” Charlie said to Ted.
“Who’s he?” Rick asked.
“A buddy of mine named after his favorite tequila: used to live in Hilton Head,” Charlie said. “Only took one visit to Casa Romantica. Now he’s got a big, ol’ house on the eighteenth fairway.”
“Yeah,” Ted said, “just a hop, skip, and a jump away.”
The four had to wait at the fourteenth tee for a twosome to come through. Then they teed off.
Rick’s drive flew long and straight.
“Nice one,” Ted said.
“Thanks,” Rick said. “Fifteen yards more than usual. I think our little break might do wonders for my game.”
“It does have a relaxing effect,” Ted said.
Rick and Ted got into their cart. Rick turned to him. “How long’s that place been around anyway?”
“Um, I’d say about three years,” Ted said.
“And word hasn’t gotten out?” Rick asked.
Ted shook his head. “Look at it this way, if it did, it’d be our loss. So only a small group of us know about it. Someone has one too many, starts blabbering, we shut him up fast.”
“And the local cops have no clue?” Rick asked.
Ted shrugged. “My guess is, if anyone ever found out, Miranda’d slip ‘em an envelope full of ‘keep your trap shut’ cash.”
4
The bearded man was paddling a kayak. Noiselessly, effortlessly, and without any splashing.
Not one light shone inside the large, two-story house. But why would it? It was three in the morning.
The man ran the kayak aground and got out, his weapon in a sheath. Then he reached into his pants pocket, pulled out milk-colored vinyl gloves and slipped them on.
He knew exactly where the woman’s bedroom was located on the second floor. Up the staircase, down a short hallway, last one at the end.
The man had experience at dismantling burglar alarms and knew where this one was located. He walked up onto the porch and went down to the living-room window, which had been deliberately left unlocked. He pushed the window up, slid first one leg into the living room, then the other. His eyes adjusted to the darkness and he could hear the ticking of the grandfather clock on the other side of the living room. Then he went over and disabled the alarm.
He turned around and saw the long bar and the four rows of shelves above it.
He walked around behind the bar and saw a bottle of Makers Mark, practically full. Don’t mind if I do, he thought, and reached for the bottle and a nearby rocks glass. He filled it halfway, then took a sip.
Glancing up at the majestic stairway, he killed what was left of the Makers Mark.
Time to go to work.
Stepping slowly and softly, he started up the stairs. At the top, he followed the short hallway, which led to two side-by-side mahogany doors.
When he got to the door, he unsheathed the Busse Battle Mistress. It was fifteen inches long, razor-sharp, and weighed two pounds. One thrust was all he’d need. He had read an article in Field & Stream about the knife. The writer had graphically extolled the knife’s virtues: Do you want to behead a hippo? Would you like to chop down a telephone pole? Perhaps you yearn to slice a redwood into sections? If you have the Mistress and a strong arm, you can.
He had no interest in beheading a hippo or chopping down a telephone pole, but he did have a strong arm.
He turned the doorknob of the mahogany door and slowly pushed the door open. He took two steps into the bedroom, then stopped. He could hear faint snoring. He took four more steps. The snoring remained steady. Then he walked up to the side of the bed. She was a large woman and was lying on her back. She snorted suddenly a few times, but didn’t wake up. He suspected she was having a dream. He raised the Battle Mistress high above his head and plunged it down between her breasts.
Her dream had just become a nightmare.
5
Jackie Farrell was in her office at Savannah Investigations sitting opposite Sarah Dunn, a woman in her early thirties wearing expensive clothes and a dead serious look on her face.
“So, tell me about your mother....”
Sarah Dunn was the daughter of Miranda Cato, the former madam of Casa Romantica on Mercer Island. She sighed, looked around the room, and thrummed her fingers on the arms of the wooden chair. “She was the best mother you could ask for. Supportive. Kind. Funny. Oh, God, you name it, she was it.”
“That’s what I remember reading in all the newspaper stories after her death. Just about a year ago, right?”
“Yes, exactly.”
Jackie nodded. “I have to ask: how did she get into that… line of work?”
Sarah laughed. “A madam, you mean?”
“Well, yes.”
Sarah curled a strand of hair behind her ear. “So, when I was about thirteen years old, my father lit out for—as they say—parts unknown. In other words, he abandoned us, and we never heard from him again. Cleaned out the check book and stock portfolio, modest though it was, and left my mother with a stack of bills and a big mortgage.”
Jackie shook her head. “Sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks. My mother was a fighter and a survivor, but working part-time at her friends’ antique shop on Barnard Street just wasn’t going to cut it anymore.” Sarah smiled. “Anyway, I don’t really know exactly how she got into the business, but she did and was pretty damned successful at it.”
“And just how long was Casa Romantica in business?”
Sarah cupped her chin. “Um, as I understand it, about four years. She had other places before it. One of her girls told me she had been with Mom since day one and she was pretty sure the Casa started i
n early 2015. February, she thought it was.”
Jackie, taking notes on a yellow pad, looked up. “You know what’s incredible to me?”
“What’s that?” Sarah asked.
“That people didn’t know about it,” Jackie said. “I mean, I live on Mercer Island, and, trust me, I hear gossip on every subject known to man, but I never heard a peep about it until what happened.”
“My mother was a very discreet woman.”
“She must have been.”
Sarah nodded. “What the girls told me—I met with three of them after Mom got killed—was that she made the men who came there swear not to tell a soul about the place. It was like a blood oath.”
“Yes, but still,” Jackie said, “it’s one thing to make a man swear he’s going to be discreet, another thing—”
“I know, I know,” Sarah said nodding. “But one of the girls told me about one man who disappeared.”
Jackie looked up from her notepad. “What do you mean… disappeared?”
Sarah shrugged. “That’s really all I know,” she said. “I guess he was at one of the bars on Mercer Island and started yapping about this place he had just come from. Which was the Casa. Couple guys came up to him, shut him up, walked him out of the bar. Supposedly he was never heard from again.”
“Really?”
Sarah nodded. “That’s what I heard.”
Jackie made a note in her pad. “Do you recall the man’s name?”
Sarah shook her head.
“By the way,” Jackie said. “I love that name, Casa Romantica.”
Sarah smiled. “Yeah, the old gal had a way with words.”
Jackie tapped her pen on her desk. “So, as I understand it, the two detectives on the case came up with nothing?”
“Actually, they came up with a lot, just nothing that was enough to convict anyone.”
Jackie nodded. “Can you give me a few of their theories. And suspects.”
Sarah leaned back in the chair. “Well, the first theory was that it was a burglary gone bad, because there were supposedly some things missing. But then why would someone stab Mom to death when she was sound asleep in bed. It’s not like she caught anybody in the act. And besides, she didn’t really have that much of value in the place. Another theory was that it was one of the girls who was pissed off about something. Thing is they never came up with what that ‘something’ might be. They also theorized that it was one of her customers. There was this guy who had been told never to come back ‘cause he got really drunk and assaulted one of the girls. But, turned out, the guy had an ironclad alibi.”
