by P J Parrish
“The law doesn’t care,” Scott said. “If Duvall had that report and didn’t use it, too bad. Having had a stupid lawyer won’t get you a new trial, either. Nor does the probability of innocence. We’ve got to find something new.”
For the first time since he had started talking to Scott, Louis felt a twinge of discouragement. “There isn’t anything, Scott,” he said. “Believe me, I’ve been over all the files, all the records. There isn’t anything we can dig up.”
Scott took a long, slow drink of his vodka. He leaned back in the booth and leveled his brown eyes at Louis.
“Oh yes, there is,” he said. “Kitty Jagger.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
The mechanical clamor stopped and the quiet rushed in. The hush stretched over the cemetery and then was broken by the chirp of a bird. Then came the beep-beep-beep drone as the backhoe crept away from the hole in the ground.
Louis watched as two men jumped down and secured the straps around the concrete vault. He looked up, his eyes traveling over the knot of people standing in the shade of a tree a few yards away. There were a couple of Lee County uniforms and a guy Louis assumed was the detective Mobley had just assigned to the case, all with the usual stone cop faces. There were also two men in suits. The shorter one, the cemetery administrator, wore the benign expression of a man used to watching the dead unearthed. The other was Scott Brenner. He was standing a few yards away, his eyes locked on the hole, his expression determinedly stoic.
Over by the road, a small group of reporters and rubberneckers were cordoned off by yellow crime tape. He saw someone standing off by himself away from the crowd, under a tree. It was Bob Ahnert.
The vault was hoisted out and carefully set down. Gray concrete, mottled with mud and mold. The workers took out crowbars.
Louis had never been to an exhumation before. It was all so . . . business-like. He had not expected that. There was something disturbingly commonplace about it, like the dead were routinely taken from their graves, like children rousted from sleep to get up for school.
The smell was terrible. Louis had not expected that either. He looked up, as if for relief. The tree’s canopy stretched for about fifty yards. The branches were heavy with flowers that looked like lilacs. It made a beautiful umbrella of lavender over Kitty’s grave site.
They lifted the casket out. The dark wood still had a sheen to it, but the brass handles had gone green. He thought of what Joyce had said about Willard. He spent a fortune on the coffin, mahogany with these beautiful brass handles. But then, he was so upset he didn’t even come to see her.
Louis was staring at the casket. Why wasn’t he feeling anything? He should feel something—sorrow, regret, at least a sense of propriety. But he was dry inside.
The thud of a car door made him look up. A green uniform ducked under the yellow tape. Mobley ignored the reporters’ questions and came up to Louis’s side.
“Thanks for coming, Sheriff,” Louis said.
“I had to get out of the office,” Mobley said. “They won’t leave me alone. Between the damn reporters and Sandusky, I don’t have enough ass left to take a shit.”
Louis nodded slightly, his eyes going back to Scott Brenner. He was staring at the casket now, his eyes narrowed, his hand clasped over his mouth like he was going to be sick. Suddenly, Scott turned away and walked off.
“Excuse me, Sheriff,” Louis said.
Louis went over a small rise and saw Scott standing, head bowed, hands in his pants pocket.
“You okay?” Louis asked, coming to his side.
Scott looked up. “What? Oh yeah . . . yeah.” His voice dropped off and he looked away.
Louis followed his gaze down to the large granite headstone in front of them.
BRENNER
Charles 1914–1981 Vivian 1919–1953
“Your parents?” Louis asked.
Scott nodded.
“Your mother was a young woman when she died,” Louis said.
“Yeah, I was seven,” Scott said quietly. “At least I remember her. Brian doesn’t at all.”
Louis looked back at the headstone. “But you had your dad.”
“It was just the three of us,” Scott said. “Dad was away most of the time in Tallahassee and we were raised by the housekeeper. I ended up watching over Brian.” Scott looked back down at the headstone. “But my father was there when it counted.”
They fell silent. Louis looked at the Brenner headstone. It was only then that he noticed the three small markers set down in the grass.
Geraldine Infant Baby Girl Infant Baby Boy
1942–1944 1945 Stillborn 1948 Stillborn
Scott noticed Louis looking at the small markers. “Dad always wanted a big family, but my mother—she had a difficult time with her pregnancies.” He paused, looking at the marker. “Dad always called them blue babies,” he said. “That’s what they called stillborns in those days.”
The sound of a car door made Louis look back toward the grave site. They were loading Kitty Jagger’s casket into a county van. Louis turned back to Scott.
“Thanks for getting this done so quickly.” He extended his hand and Scott shook it.
“No problem,” Scott said.
Louis looked over at the crowd behind the tape. Bob Ahnert had disappeared.
“Aren’t you going with her?” Scott asked.
Louis turned to Scott. The sympathy in his voice had surprised him.
“Yeah,” Louis said quietly. “I guess I better.”
The door to the autopsy room opened and Octavius walked out.
“She’s on the table, Vince,” he said. The diener went back into the office, leaving Vince and Louis standing at the door. Louis was looking at the window, but he couldn’t see the table.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Vince asked.
“Yes.”
Vince wasn’t wearing his Walkman or earphones. It was the first time Louis had seen him without them. But other things were different today too, like the whole place was muted somehow. No sounds, none of the usual numbing smells. Even the florescent lights seemed dimmer than usual.
“I don’t know what we’re going to get here, Louis,” Vince said. “If there was a lot of water damage or if the—”
“Her father bought her the best casket,” Louis interrupted.
Vince just looked at him for a moment, then pushed the door open. Louis followed.
A spot of pink. That was the first thing he saw. He moved closer.
She was wearing a dress. Pink, with a high white collar. White shoes. He hadn’t expected her to be dressed. He had expected . . .
It hit him now. He had been expecting decay, putrified flesh and bone, like the corpses he had seen pulled from mangroves, or at least a shattered shell, like the bodies lifted from car wrecks.
Not this . . .
Her skin was waxy and sunken, her long hair limp and bleached to ash from the decades of laying in darkness. But as she lay there, hands folded over her chest, Kitty Jagger looked almost as if she were asleep.
Louis felt a dullness in his chest, but he couldn’t look away.
“Man, whoever did this was a hell of an embalmer,” Vince said. “They don’t usually come out of the ground this well preserved.”
But Louis did not hear him. He was staring now at her hands. Small fingers, a silver ring on the right hand. She was holding a pink rose. It was shriveled but still intact, like a cherished prom corsage.
Louis realized he had been holding his breath. He let it out. Bones . . . if it had been just bones, he could have stood that. He had seen bones before, like Eugene Graham, the young black man whose skeleton he had found in a Mississippi swamp with a noose still wrapped around the vertebrae. Eugene had been violated and brutally murdered just like Kitty. But this was different. Kitty was still here. A ghost of herself, but she was still here.
He stared at the pink rose. Something so beautiful . . . so damaged. Something so alive . . . so wasted.
Something broke deep in his chest. He was hearing her, just like Ahnert. God, he was hearing a dead girl talk to him.
Oh Jesus, am I going crazy?
“Send me your report when you’re done, Vince,” Louis said. He turned quickly and left.
Chapter Thirty-Four
When he got back to the cottage, Louis got a beer and went out to sit on the porch. He watched the waves curl in from the gulf, letting his mind drift. Issy rubbed up against his leg and, without thinking, he reached down and scratched the cat’s head.
There was an emptiness in his chest, and he couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. He took a long, slow drink of the beer.
It was Kitty. She wasn’t just his anymore. Now that her case had been reopened, other people would be involved—Vince, Mobley, Scott Brenner and who knew who else. He would still be a part of it. He was officially working for Brenner, Brenner and Brenner now, hired to help find evidence against Spencer Duvall to reopen the Cade case. He had signed a contract this morning and Scott had given him a check for $2,500 as a retainer.
Louis finished off the beer. He needed the money. And the fact that Scott was going to pick up Jack Cade’s civil case made him feel like he had helped Ronnie and Eric put their lives back together. But he still felt an emptiness, like he had left something incomplete.
He rose and went inside. The table still held the mess of papers, photographs and files he had accumulated from Kitty’s case. He picked up the blurry black-and-white class picture of Kitty.
Give her some peace, Ahnert had said. But it wasn’t up to him anymore.
Setting the beer bottle down, he went to the bedroom and came back with a cardboard box. He began to pack everything up, taking down the photos and note cards he had taped to the walls and kitchen cabinets. He slipped the picture of Kitty in a folder and put it away.
When he got to the old copy of Gulfshore Life magazine, he paused. He opened it to the paper-clipped page, the one with the society picture of Spencer and Candace Duvall.
How different Duvall looked to him in light of what he now knew about the man. Duvall’s expression no longer looked merely dour; now it looked cold and calculated.
What had happened? Why had he done it? Who was Spencer Duvall? The sand-in-the-shoes crusader revered by Ellie Silvestri—or a status-seeking shyster who bargained away Jack Cade’s life?
Louis looked at the society picture again. This time he focused on Candace Duvall. Her expression looked different now too—almost predatory.
There were eight other people in the photograph. There was a man standing next to Duvall, a man whose face looked vaguely familiar. Louis read the names in the caption.
Shit . . . why hadn’t he noticed this before? He stared at the man’s face, and at the pained expression on Spencer Duvall’s face. He flipped over to the magazine’s cover to check the date: December, 1973. Maybe it was just a coincidence that the two of them were in the same picture. But his gut was telling him it wasn’t.
There was only one way to find out. He had to talk to Candace again. And Ellie Silvestri. If anyone knew if there was a connection between Spencer and this man, it was the two women in his life.
The maid opened the door and frowned at him.
“Tell Mrs. Duvall I want to see her, please,” Louis said before she had a chance to say anything.
The maid shut the door. A few minutes later, it opened and she nodded Louis into the cold, white foyer. “She’s out at the pool,” the maid said, pointing at the far glass doors.
Louis tucked the magazine under his arm and went out to the patio. Candace was lying in the shade. Hayley was sitting in a chair close by, her feet propped on the end of Candace’s chaise. Both women wore bathing suits and had wet hair, like they had just gotten out of the pool. Hayley had a big tan towel wrapped sarong-like around her. They both looked up as he came toward them.
Candace took off her tortoise-frame sunglasses. “Hayley says I should be nice to you.”
Louis glanced at the other woman, who gave him a small smile, then went back to flipping through her Vogue.
“I’d like to talk to you about your husband,” Louis said.
“We’ve already covered that.”
Louis pulled over one of the chairs. Candace looked at him like he was a reptile that had slithered into her yard, then slipped her sunglasses back on.
“I’d like to know about the early years,” Louis said.
“What do you mean?”
“You and your husband, what it was like. You met in college?”
Candace glanced at Hayley, then looked out over the glittering water of San Carlos Bay. “At a frat party,” she said with a bored sigh.
“I understand you were broke in the beginning.”
“Where’d you get that idea?”
“Spencer’s secretary, Ellie.”
“That old bag,” she said flatly. “Yeah, we were broke. I taught elementary school to put Spence through law school. Third grade. I hated every minute of it.”
“I take it things got easier after Spencer set up his practice?” Louis asked.
Candace gave a short laugh. “Oh yeah. Ten-thousand dollars in law school loans, start up costs for the practice, rent on that dump of an office downtown. A cozy little duplex overlooking the tracks. Yeah, it was peachy keen.”
“Not exactly what you dream about when they’re putting the Miss Quincy Cucumber Queen crown on your head, huh?” Hayley chuckled.
Candace shot her a look. Hayley went back to her magazine.
“When did things get better for you?” Louis asked.
Candace was twirling a strand of her hair, looking out over the bay again. “Years,” she said quietly.
Louis held out the Gulfshore Life magazine. “Did any of these people have anything to do with it getting better for you?”
Candace lowered her sunglasses and looked at the society picture. Then she raised them and looked back out at the water. “They all did. We scratched each other’s backs.”
Louis glanced at Hayley. She had put down the Vogue and her green eyes were fixed on Candace.
“You were the one who scratched, Candy,” Hayley said. “Tell him what you did for that man.”
“Yeah,” Louis said. “Tell me, Candy.”
Candace was quiet.
“Tell him,” Hayley prodded. “Tell him for the same reason you told me, hon. Deep down, you like this rags-to-riches shit. You’re proud of it.”
Candace looked at her, then smiled. “Maybe.”
“You’re proud of your achievement,” Hayley said, giving the last word a bite.
“Damn right I am,” Candace said. “Spencer never would have gotten anywhere without me.”
Louis’s eyes went between the two women, trying to understand the dynamic. It was obvious Hayley held some power here, maybe the threat of outing Candace to her society friends. Status—that was Candace’s button and Hayley knew it.
Suddenly, he understood that morose look on Duvall’s face in the society picture.
“You pushed him,” Louis said.
Candace shrugged. “Someone had to. Spence would have been happy wearing his Sears suits, defending those wetbacks in Immokalee for the rest of his life.”
Louis leaned forward on his elbows, letting his eyes drop to the patio stones. He pulled in a slow breath before he went on.
“Well, they say behind every successful man there’s a good woman,” he said.
Candace sat forward. “You got that right. I picked out his clothes, showed him what to eat and what to drink. He wouldn’t leave that dump office downtown, so I made him remodel it.” She waved a hand at the big white house. “I picked out every faucet and piece of tile in this house. Do you think he cared?”
She slumped back in the chaise. “That man was socially backward. I dragged him to parties, taught him how to schmooze. About the only thing I
didn’t do was manicure his damn toenails.”
Hayley laughed.
Louis drew in another slow breath. “So you got him into the right circles.”
“Yes. It wasn’t easy.”
Louis hesitated. He wasn’t sure where to go with this now. “What about his work, his clients?” he asked. “Did he talk to you about it?”
“He did in the beginning,” Candace said. “That’s why I knew I had to step in and get him on a better track. I told him he had to upgrade his clients, I told him to hire Lyle. Once the money started coming in, I didn’t really care. I had done my work, so I retired.”
She started twirling her hair again. “The law bores me to tears,” she said. “Spence bored me to tears.”
Louis was quiet for a moment. There was one last question and Candace was probably the only one now who might tell him the answer.
“I know your husband was gay,” Louis said. “Was Brian Brenner his lover?”
Candace looked at him, then laughed. “Brian? God no. Brian may not be a charmer like his brother, but he is definitely not gay.”
“Do you know who your husband was seeing?” Louis asked.
Candace shook her head slowly. “No one. I mean, there were guys in the beginning, but Spence just kind of . . . lost interest. He was depressed and I told him to get help. When he went on the Trazodone, it killed what was left of his sex drive.”
Candace gave a soft sigh. “Spence wasn’t a bad man. I mean, I liked him and we kind of took care of each other in the beginning. That was part of the deal. But then, it was like Spence just kind of . . . I don’t know, dried up.”
She was looking at Hayley and Louis followed her gaze.
“Like I told you,” Hayley said, “Spence was kind of sad.”
Candace wasn’t smiling. But Hayley had an amused smile tipping the corners of her lips. With her green eyes and sleek dark hair, she looked like a cat sitting there, a smug, pampered pet sitting by her mistress’s feet.
Louis rose. He had had enough.