Kay Scarpet - Cruel And Unusual Part 36

She sounded excited.

aWhat is it?"

aYouall never guess who just pulled up.a From the window over the sink; I watched the white Ford LTD park in front. The driveras door opened, and Marino climbed out. He hitched up his trousers and adjusted his tie, his eyes taking in everything around him. As I watched him follow the sidewalk to my porch, I was so powerfully touched that it startled me.

aIam not sure if I should be glad to see you or not,a I said when I opened the door.

aHey, donat worry. Iam not here to arrest you, Doc.a'

aPlease come in."

aHi, Pete,a Lucy said cheerfully.

aArenat you supposed to be in school or something?"

"No.?"

"What? Down there in South America they give you January off?"

aThatas right. Because of the bad weather,a my niece said. aWhen it drops below seventy degrees, everything shuts down."

Marino smiled. He looked about the worst I had ever seen him.

Moments later I had built a fire in the living room, and Lucy had left to run errands.

aHow have you been?" I asked.

aAre you going to make me smoke outside?"

I slid an ashtray closer to him.

aMarino, you have suitcases under your eyes, your face is flushed, and itas not warm enough in here for you to be perspiring."

aI can tell youave missed me."

He pulled a dingy handkerchief from his back pocket and mopped his brow. Then he lit a cigarette and stated into the fire. aPattersonas being an a.s.shole, Doc. He wants to scorch you."

aLet him try."

aHe will, and youad better be ready."

aHe has no case against me, Marino."

aHe has a fingerprint found on an envelope inside Susanas house."

"I can explain that:a aBut you canat prove it, and then thereas his little trump card. And I swear I shouldnat be telling you this, but Iam going to.

"What trump card?"

aYou remember Tom Lucero?"

a1 know who he is,a I said. aI donat know him."

aWell, he can be a charmer and heas a pretty d.a.m.n good cop, to be honest. Turns out heas been snooping around Signet Bank and talked up one of the tellers until she slipped him information about you. Now, he wasnat supposed to ask and she wasnat supposed to tell. But she told him she remembered you writing a big deck for cash sometime before Thanksgiving. According to her, it was for ten grand."

I stared stonily at him.

aI mean, you canat really blame Lucero. Heas just doing his job. But Patterson knows what to look for as he ages through your financial. Heas going to hammer you hard when you get before the special grand jury."

I did not say a word.

aDoc." He leaned forward and met my eyes. aDonat you think you ought to tally about it?"

aNo."

Getting up, he went to the fireplace and nudged the curtain open far enough to flick the cigarette inside.

as.h.i.+t, Doc, " he said quietly. aI donat want you indicted."

aI shouldnat drink coffee and I know you shouldnat, but I feel like having something. Do you like hot chocolate?"

"Iall drink some coffee."

I got up to fix it. My thoughts buzzed sluggishly like a housefly in the fall. My rage had nowhere to go. I made a pot of decaf and hoped Marino would not know the difference.

aHow is your blood pressure?" I asked him.

aYou want to know the truth? Some days if I was a kettle Ia'd be whistling."

aI donat know what Iam going to do with you."

He perched on the edge of the hearth. The fire sounded like the wind, and reflected flames danced in bra.s.s.

aFor one thing,a I went on, ayou probably shouldnat even be here. I donat want you having any problems."

aHey, f.u.c.k the CA, the city, the governor, and all of them, a he said with sudden anger.

aMarino; we canat give in. Someone knows who this killer is. Have you talked to the officer who showed us around the penitentiary? Officer Roberts?"

aYo. The conversation went exactly nowhere."

aWell, I didnat fare a whole lot better with your friend Helen Grimes."

aThat mustave been a treat."

aAre you aware that she no longer works for the pen?"

aShe never did any work there that I know of. Helen the Hun was lazy as h.e.l.l unless she was patting down one of the lady guests. Then she got industrious. Donahue liked her, donat ask me why. After he got whacked, she got rea.s.signed to guard tower duty in Greensville and suddenly developed a knee problem or something.

"I have a feeling she knows a lot more than she let ma I said aEspecially if she and Donahue were friendly with each other."

Marino sipped his coffee and looked out the sliding gla.s.s doors. The ground was frosted white, and snowflakes seemed to be falling faster. I thought of the snowy night I was summoned to Jennifer Deightonas house, and images flashed in my mind of an overweight woman in curlers sitting in a chair in tie middle of her living room. If the killer had interrogated her, he had done so for a reason. What was it he had been sent to find?

"Do you think the killer was after letters whena he appeared at Jennifer Deightonas house?" I asked Marino.

aI think he was after something that had to do with Waddell. Letters, poems. Things he may have mailed to her over the years."

aDo you think this person found what he was looking for?"

aLetas just put it this way, he may have looked around, but he was so tidy we couldnat tell."

aWell, I donat think he found a thing,a T said.

Marino looked skeptically at me as he lit another cigarette. aBased on what?"

aBased on the scene. She was in her nightgown and curlers. It appears she had been reading in bed. That doesnat sound like someone who is expecting company,a aIall go along with that."

aThen someone appears at her door and she must have let him in, because there was no sign of forcible entry and no sign of a struggle. I think what may have happened next is this person demanded that she turn over to him whatever it was he was looking for, and she wouldnat. He gets angry, gets a chair from the dining room, and sets it in the middle of her living room. He sits her in it and basically tortures her. He asks questions, and when she doesnat tell him what he wants to hear he tightens the choke hold. This goes on until it goes too far. He carries her out and puts her in her car."

aIf he was going in and out of the kitchen, that might explain why that door was unlocked when we arrived,a Marino considered.

aIt might. In summary, I donat think he intended for her to die when she did, and after he tried to disguise her death. He probably didnat hang around very long. Maybe he got scared, or maybe he simply lost interest in his a.s.signment. I doubt he rummaged through her house at all, and I also doubt that he would have found anything if he had."

aWe sure as h.e.l.l didnat,a Marino said.

aJennifer Deighton was paranoid,a I said. aShe indicated to Grueman in the fax she sent him that there was something wrong about what was being done to Waddell. Apparently, shead seen me on the news and had even tried to contact me, but continued to hang up when she got my machine."

aAre you thinking she might have had papers or something that would tell us what the h.e.l.l this is all about?"

aIf she had,a I said, athen she was probably sufficiently frightened to get them out of her house."

aAnd stash them where?"

aI donat, know, but maybe her ex-husband would. Didnat she visit him for two weeks the end of November?"

"Yeah." Marino looked interested. aAs n matter of fact, she did."

aWillie Travers had an energetic, pleasant voice over the phone when I finally reached him at the Pink Sh.e.l.l resort in Fort Myers Beach, Florida. But he was vague and noncommittal when I began to ask questions.

aMr. Travers, what can I do to make you trust me?" I finally asked in despair.

aCome down here."

aThatas going to be very difficult at moment.a aIad have to see you."

aExcuse me?a'

aThatas the way I am. If I can see you, I can read you and know if youare okay. Jenny was the same way."

aSo if I come down to Fort Myers Beach and let you read me, you will help me?"

aDepends on what I pick up."

I made airline reservations for six-fifty the following morning. Lucy and I would fly to Miami. I would leave her with Dorothy and drive to Fort Myers Beach, where there was a very good chance I would spend a night wondering if Iad lost my mind. Chances were overwhelming that Jennifer Deightonas holistic health nut of an ex would turn out to be a great big waste of time.

Sat.u.r.day, the snow had stopped when I got up at four A.M. and went into Lucyas bedroom to wake her. For a moment I listened to her breathe, then lightly touched her shoulder and whispered her name in the dark she stirred and sat straight up. On the plane, she slept to Charlotte, then wallowed in one of her unbearable moods the rest of the way to Miami.

aIad rather take a cab,a she said, staring out the window..

aYou canat take a cab, Lucy. Your mother and her friend will be looking for you."

aGood. Let them drive around the airport all day. Why canat I come with you?"

aYou need to go home, and I need to drive straight to Fort Myers Beach, and then Iam going to fly from there back to Richmond. Trust me. It wouldnat be any, fun."

aBeing with Mother and her latest idiot isnat any fun, either."

aYou donat know heas an idiot. Youave never met him. Why donat you give him a chance?"

aI wish Mother would get AIDS."

aLucy, donat say such a thing."

aShe deserves it I donat understand how she can sleep with every d.i.c.khead who takes her out to dinner and a movie. I donat understand how she can be your sister."

aLower your voice,a I whispered.

aIf she missed me so much, shead want to pick me up herself. She wouldnat want someone else around."

aThatas not necessarily true,a I told her. aWhen you fall in love someday, youall understand better."

aWhat makes you think Iave never been in love?" She looked furiously at me.

aBecause if you had been, you would know that being in love brings out both the best and the worst in us. One day weare generous and sensitive to a fault, and the next weare not fit to shoot. Our lives become lessons in extremes."

aI wish Mother would hurry up and go through menopause."

Mid-afternoon, as I drove the Tamiami Trail in and out of the shade, I patched up the holes guilt had chewed into my conscience. Whenever I dealt with my family, I felt irritated. and annoyed. Whenever I refused to deal with them, I felt the same way I had as a child, when I learned the art of running away without leaving home. In a sense, I had become my father after he died. I was the rational one who made Aas and knew how to cook and handle money. I was the one who rarely cried and whose reaction to the volatility in my disintegrating home was to cool down and disperse like a vapor. Consequently, my mother and sister accused me of indifference, and I grew up harboring a secret shame that what they said was true.

I arrived in Fort Myers Beach with the air-conditioning on and the visor down to s.h.i.+eld the sun. Water met the sky in a continuum of vibrant blue, and palms were bright green feathers atop trunks as st.u.r.dy as ostrich legs. The Pink Sh.e.l.l resort was the color of its name. It backed up to Estero Bay and threw its front balconies open wide to the Gulf of Mexico. Willie Travers lived in one of the cottages, but I was not due to meet him until eight P.M. Checking into a one bedroom apartment, I literally left a trail of clothes on the floor as I s.n.a.t.c.hed off my winter suit and grabbed shorts and a tennis s.h.i.+rt out of my bag. I was out the door and on the beach in seven minutes.

I did not know how many miles I walked, for I lost track of time, and each stretch of sand and water looked magnificently the same: I watched bobbing pelicans throw their heads back as they downed fish like shots of bourbon, and I deftly stepped around the flaccid blue balloons of beached Portuguese men-of-war. Most people I pa.s.sed were old. Occasionally, the high-pitched voice of a child lifted above the roar of waves like a bit of bright paper carried by the wind. I picked up sand dollars worn smooth by the surf and beached sh.e.l.ls reminiscent of peppermints sucked thin. I thought of Lucy and missed her again.

When most of the beach was in shade, I returned to my room.

Showering and changing, I got in my car and, cruised Estero Boulevard until hunger guided me like a divining rod into the parking lot of the Skipperas Galley., I ate red snapper and, drank white wine while the horizon faded to a dusky blue. Soon boat lights drifted low in the darkness and I could not see the water.

By the time I found cottage 182 near the bait shop and thing pier, I was as relaxed as I had been in a long time. When Willie Travers opened the door, it seemed we had been friends forever.