by P J Parrish
Louis took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. When he put them back on, the screen of the microfiche machine came back into focus. He had been at the Lee County Library for nearly two hours, tracking down anything he could find on Kitty Jagger’s murder.
“Excuse me.”
Louis looked up into the face of the librarian.
“We’re getting ready to close.”
Louis looked at his watch. It was only five.
“We close early the day before Thanksgiving,” she said.
Thanksgiving? Man, he had forgotten. He punched a button and the machine spit out a copy of the article on the screen.
Outside the library, he paused, then decided to go to the bar across the street. He ordered a Coke and arranged the clips in chronological order. He started with the earliest one, from the Fort Myers News-Press, dated April 11, 1966. The headline said, GIRL FOUND DEAD AT DUMP SITE.
It reported that the unidentified body of a young woman had been found at the city dump by two garbage men making an early-morning run. It was only a couple paragraphs on the bottom of the front page. Other news had taken precedence that day: Frank Sinatra had married Mia Farrow in Las Vegas.
Louis took a sip of the Coke.
He knew the dump site; he had passed it on the drive down to Bonita Springs. The locals called it Mount Trashmore. It was a giant landfill that had been sodded over to make it look nice for the new subdivision that was just a mile downwind. If it weren’t for the steady stream of garbage trucks and the gulls circling overhead, you could almost believe it was just a pretty hill. If South Florida had hills.
The next article was dated April 12th. Police had used a gold locket found on the body to help identify the girl as a local teenager named Kitty Jagger, age fifteen. The medical examiner’s report said she had been stabbed, beaten and raped. She had been dead about two days when found. Police had no suspects but had located a bloody garden tool that appeared to be the stabbing weapon.
He set the article aside and turned to the next one dated a week later.
It said Kitty Jagger had last been seen on April 9th, the day of her death, by her boss at Hamburger Heaven, a drive-in where she was a carhop. She had worked her usual five-to-eleven night shift and had left to walk to the bus stop as she always did. There was an interview with Kitty’s widowed father, Willard Jagger, an unemployed roofer on disability who said that when his daughter did not come home, he called the police to file a missing person’s report.
The article was illustrated with a small black and white picture of Kitty Jagger. It looked to be a yearbook photo, a blow-up from a group shot, probably Kitty’s freshman class. In it, Kitty Jagger was staring straight ahead, a small smile tipping her lips. From what Louis could tell, she looked like your average pretty high school girl, with long blond hair parted in the middle and hanging straight around her round face.
Louis moved on to the next article, heavy with a black headline: SUSPECT ARRESTED IN JAGGER MURDER.
This was the first mention of Jack Cade. There was a photo of Cade being led into the Lee County Courthouse. He was wearing a jumpsuit like the one Louis had seen him in yesterday, but his face was that of a very different and younger man.
Cade’s hair was flat and black, combed straight back away from a striking face. He was thinner, sinewy, the muscles in his upper arms tight against the grip of the deputy’s hands. The difference was the eyes. Cade’s eyes in this picture registered anger and bewilderment; they were nothing like the hard, flat eyes that stared back at him from behind the plexiglass.
Louis moved to the story. A bloody garden tool, recovered with the body, had been traced to Cade, who, like all lawn maintenance workers, regularly dumped his trash at the site where Kitty Jagger’s body had been found. The article also revealed that a pair of semen-stained panties had been found in Cade’s truck, and that the O blood-type, derived from the semen stain, matched Jack Cade’s type.
Louis sighed. Ronnie Cade hadn’t mentioned that.
The article finished up with a description of the damage done to Kitty’s body: blunt trauma to her head and twelve stab wounds to the chest and shoulders. Louis set the clip aside and looked down at his arm.
About halfway up his forearm was a long thin scar. He ran his fingertips over it, feeling the faint ridge. Then he turned his hand over and looked at the knife scar that marked the fatty part of his palm, cutting sideways to the center. His little finger was still numb at the tip, and sometimes when it was cold and wet, he could feel the muscles in his hand tightening beneath the skin.
He finished the Coke and took off his glasses. If he was going to start digging into this, he would be facing some tough opponents. Mobley and the prosecutor, Vern Sandusky, were sure to fight it.
And Susan. God, he wasn’t looking forward to telling her what he was thinking.
The bartender ambled over. “You want another one?”
“No thanks. Where’s your phone?”
“By the john. But it’s out of order.
Louis gathered up the clips. It was just as well. This was something he was going to have to do in person.
Louis pulled the Mustang to a stop in front of the yellow bungalow, double-checking the address he had written on a scrap of paper. It was a neat little house, tucked in the shadows of some swaying banana trees on Sereno Key. Susan Outlaw’s car, an old silver Mercedes sedan, was in the drive and a bicycle lay in the yard.
At the front door, he knocked and waited. The door opened and a small brown face with black-rimmed glasses appeared behind the screen.
“Hello,” the boy said.
Louis smiled down at him, but the boy did not smile back.
“Hi, is your mother home?”
“Benjamin, who is it?”
“Just some guy, Ma!” he hollered over his shoulder.
“I told you never to open the door—” Susan stopped, coming up behind him. Her face registered first surprise, then irritation.
“How’d you get my address?” she asked.
“I’m a PI.”
“He probably looked it up in the phone book, Ma,” Benjamin said.
“You should’ve called,” she said.
“Sorry. I took a chance. We need to talk.”
She nudged Benjamin aside and stepped to the screen. Her hair was pulled back in a tight knot and there was a white powder sprayed across the front of her red T-shirt. The front of the shirt read: A Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle.
“Is this a bad time?” Louis asked.
Susan pushed open the screen. “Come on in. But don’t look at the house. It’s a mess. I’m baking.”
Louis stepped inside, expecting to see a messy house, but the living room was neat, furnished with a trim blue sofa and a wooden rocking chair with a quilted seat pad. The pale yellow walls were bare except for a large, black-framed poster of the Eiffel Tower. There was a scattering of magazines on the coffee table along with a Clue board game. A small entertainment center with a TV took up one wall, flanked by bookcases overflowing with novels, law books, and a set of Encyclopedia Britannica. As Louis followed Susan through the small dining room, his eyes traveled over the table. It was covered with stacks of folders, yellow legal pads, books and an open briefcase—except for one end where an arithmetic book lay open next to a Star Wars looseleaf binder.
Nice house. Tidy, attractive, but all business. Just like the lady herself, Louis thought as he followed her into the kitchen.
The kitchen was painted a bright green in an attempt to match the ugly ’50s tile. There was a Winn-Dixie bag on the floor with some groceries still stacked on the counter—a box of Stove Top stuffing, a can of cranberries, some potatoes. Louis could see a frozen turkey sitting in one side of the double sink.
“You shouldn’t let that sit out,” he said.
Susan was standing at the counter and turned.
“What?”
“The turkey,” he said, nodding.
“It needs t
o defrost by tomorrow and it won’t fit in the refrigerator,” she said.
“Put it in some cold water.”
“What, you working for the Butterball hotline now?”
Louis shrugged.
She went back to ripping away at something sticky in a big bowl. The stuff vaguely resembled cookie dough.
“Looks too dry,” Louis said.
She threw him a look as she struggled to work the wooden spoon through the dough. “I followed the recipe,” she said.
“Recipes don’t always work,” Louis said. “Add some water.”
Susan grabbed a measuring cup, turning to the sink to fill it. She leaned down, watching the water carefully as it rose to the line.
“How much are you going to add?”
“Enough to make it look normal.”
“Then you don’t know how much you’re going to add?”
“No.”
“Then why bother to measure it?” Louis asked.
She turned. “Look, you came to talk, not cook. So talk.”
Louis watched her pour the water into the dough. She began to work it in, her hips swaying in sync with the rotations her hand made around the bowl.
“I went and saw Cade,” Louis said. “He knows now that we’re a package deal.”
She nodded slowly. “I talked to my boss. He said I can add you to the payroll as an investigator. You are now an agent of the PD’s office.”
Louis looked up at her, not comfortable with the title, especially with the name Jack Cade attached to it.
“Hold on,” Susan said. She left and returned a minute later. She held out a beeper.
“I’m not wearing that,” Louis said.
“Don’t be crazy. I have to be able to get ahold of you.” She slapped it down on the table and returned to the sink.
He picked up the beeper, turning it over in his hands. “Does this mean we’re going steady?”
She threw him a look and went back to the cookie dough. Louis saw something out of the corner of his eye and turned. Benjamin was leaning against the door jamb, watching them. He was a skinny little thing, huge brown eyes behind the big glasses, twig-brown arms poking out of a Star Wars T-shirt.
“You really a PI?” he asked.
“Kind of.”
“You track down murderers and stuff?”
Louis looked at Susan for help, but she was busy.
“What kind of gun you got?”
“I don’t carry a gun right now,” Louis said.
The boy made a face. “What kind of car you got? Sonny Crockett has a Ferrari Spider but it’s not really his—”
“Ben, go do your homework,” Susan said.
“I did it already.”
“Then go watch TV.”
The boy made a suffering face. “Oh man, I wanna stay in here.”
“No. Get.”
“Can I lick the bowl first?”
“I told you before it’s not good for you.”
Louis suddenly recalled something his foster mother Frances used to say to him, and he turned to Benjamin.
“It’ll give you worms,” he whispered.
Benjamin trudged off and fell to the floor in front of the television. Seconds later the Jeopardy theme song came on. Louis watched as Susan opened the oven door. The sweet scent of chocolate chip cookies filled the kitchen. He knew he needed to tread carefully. This was her case, after all, and he had to respect that. He had to find out what her plan was before he tried to force one of his own on her.
Susan started cleaning up the mess on the counter.
“Can I have the bowl?” Louis asked.
She turned. “What?”
“The bowl.”
She gave him a weird look, then brought the bowl over to the table, sitting across from him. He scraped the spoon around the rim and began to eat the dough.
“That junk’s not good for you,” she said.
“Yeah, I know, it gives you worms. I need to know what your trial strategy is going to be,” Louis said.
She swiped a finger in the bowl and nibbled at the dough, like she was afraid to experience it all at once. “My strategy is that Jack Cade didn’t shoot Duvall. Someone else did. A powerful man like Duvall had lots of enemies. My staff, such as it is, is working on his financials now to see if there was anything hinky there.”
“What about that witness who saw Cade at Duvall’s office?”
“A bum named Quince,” Susan said. “He hangs out at the bus stop across the street and he said he saw a man leave Duvall’s office just after nine-thirty. Never saw Cade’s face, just said he looked out of place. He described a black leather jacket. They never found a similar jacket when they searched Cade’s house. Quince doesn’t know what he saw. He’s a homeless drunk who served time.”
“Being an homeless ex-con makes him blind?” Louis asked.
“There you go, thinking like a cop again.”
“Okay, what about the fingerprints? Mobley said Cade’s prints were on the credenza, like he was looking for something.”
“Cade was in the office that morning. Says he leaned against things.”
“They find the weapon?”
“No, and Cade doesn’t own a gun. He can’t.”
“Not legally anyway.”
“Well, they don’t have anyone stepping forward to say they sold him one illegally either.”
“What caliber was the gun used on Duvall?”
Susan thought for a minute. “A seven-point-six-two by twenty-five.”
“A what?”
She chuckled at the puzzled look on his face. “It’s a Tokarev. It’s Chinese, an old semi-automatic. It shoots a 30-caliber bullet from a nine millimeter cartridge. It’s probably a collector’s gun.”
“Doesn’t sound like something Cade would have,” Louis said.
“My thought exactly. He’d be lucky to snare something off the street.”
“Alibi?”
“His son Ronnie. Says he was home watching Star Trek, the New Generation.”
“Next,” Louis said.
“What?”
“It’s called Next Generation, not New.”
She shrugged and took another swipe at the cookie dough.
“I take it the cops don’t believe Ronnie,” Louis said.
“They can’t disprove it. And even though Ronnie is the son, he’s pretty credible.”
“Did they find anything when they searched Cade’s trailer?”
“No.”
Louis put the spoon back in the bowl. He was silent, staring at the squiggles in the Formica surface of the table. He didn’t realize he was shaking his head. But Susan saw it and bristled.
“What?” she demanded.
He looked up. “What?”
“That look. If you’ve got something to say about how I’m handling this, say it.” She crossed her arms across her red T-shirt.
Louis drew in a slow breath. “I think you’ve got to reconsider the Jagger case as a motive in Duvall’s murder.”
Susan’s expression was stunned. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, listen to me,” Louis said. “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought since talking to Cade. He told me the only reason he wanted to sue Duvall was to get big money so he could put his life back together. Ronnie is broke. He owes money all over the place. The nursery business is about to go under. Cade was looking for money, that’s all.”
“So?” Susan said.
“So, he had everything to gain if the Jagger case was examined in the context of a civil suit.”
“He couldn’t have sued him anyway. The statute of—”
“Cade didn’t know that. His intent was to sue, not kill.”
“How do you know Cade didn’t know?”
“He told me.”
Susan gave a derisive laugh.
“You believe him when he said he didn’t shoot Duvall. Why can’t I believe him?”
“I never said I believed him. It’s just the story I have
to proceed with.”
Louis shook his head. “He wanted money, not revenge.”
“I don’t like it,” she said. “You’d have to be able to prove Cade really intended to file the suit and that he didn’t know it was futile.”
Louis nodded.
“And you’d have to be able to show someone else could have had something to lose if the Jagger case was reopened.”
“Well,” Louis said, “There’s always Bernhardt. If Cade brought suit, the practice would be liable to any claim.”
Susan said nothing.
“And there’s Candace,” Louis said. “She was the starter wife, remember. Maybe Duvall was looking to upgrade and she knew it.” He paused. “Spencer had a place in town. Maybe he had something going on the side, like Candace. And maybe Candace knew.” He took another lick of the cookie dough. “Even if Candace had a lover, she still had something to lose if Spencer divorced her.”
Susan was quiet. He thought she was probably angry. But maybe she was just tired. It occurred to him that her prickliness probably came from the stress of the case, not from any real part of her personality. He had asked around, trying to find out more about her and had been told by a source at the courthouse that she was just a couple years out of law school and was trying real hard to make an impression. She had landed a big case with Cade, but now she was treading water and she knew it. He took a breath. He had one more point to press.
“And of course, there’s the person who really killed Kitty Jagger.”
Susan shook her head. “Do you have any idea how long it would take to solve a twenty-year-old murder?”
“Yes, I do, in fact,” Louis said.
Susan held his gaze for a moment, then a sudden frown creased her face.
“Shit!” she blurted out. She spun to the oven and jerked open the door. Smoke filled the kitchen. Louis didn’t have to look to know the cookies were black. He knew the smell. Frances could never get the hang of cookies either.
Susan pulled out the cookie sheet and tossed it into the sink. “Dammit!”
“You burn ’em again, Ma?”
Susan and Louis both turned to see Benjamin standing at the door. She didn’t say anything. Benjamin came in and looked down into the sink. He gingerly picked out a cookie and bit into it. He was trying hard not to grimace and Susan was trying hard not to look upset.