“I’ll handle the tip,” I said when Drummond returned.
The sergeant smiled. “I think you’re going to want to handle the whole bill once I tell you about those last two phone calls.”
“How’s that?” I said.
“The first call was from the Belchers’ funeral home,” he said. “They handled your Paul Brown’s embalming and delivered his body in a pauper’s casket to a church that isn’t in Pahokee anymore. Closed fifteen years back.”
I frowned. “And the second call?”
“From the minister who used to run that church,” Drummond said. “The Belchers called her. She evidently knew Paul Brown and says she’s willing to meet you out in Pahokee tomorrow around six p.m. to tell you about him.”
I grinned and snatched the check off the table.
Chapter
59
Starksville, North Carolina
Bree flipped off the headlights and coasted the Taurus to a stop diagonally across the town square from Bell Beverages. The Bronco was parked in front. Finn Davis had gone inside. She was beginning to doubt her instincts.
When she’d seen Finn Davis leave Marvin Bell’s place in the slouchy clothes driving the beater four-by-four, she figured it as some kind of disguise, or at least a way of moving under the radar. She and Pinkie had made it to the rental car two minutes before Finn drove out of the compound.
Finn Davis had never seen Bree, to her knowledge. While Pinkie slouched down, she faked a cell phone conversation until Davis had driven by her, heading south toward town. She’d U-turned once he’d rounded a curve and had been following him at a distance ever since.
“Just looks like a man tending business, probably collecting the daily take, which explains the workman’s getup,” Pinkie said. “He doesn’t want attention.”
It did look a lot like that. Finn had stopped at the pawnshop, the dry cleaners, and both car washes before heading to the liquor store. Maybe her instincts had been wrong.
Bree checked her watch. Eight thirty. She’d texted Alex to see how his day had gone almost an hour ago but heard nothing back so far. And she was starting to get hungry. Nana Mama said she’d hold dinner for—
“You think Alex will find what he’s looking for down there?” Pinkie asked.
Bree glanced at the big man, who seemed sincerely concerned.
“I hope so,” she said. “But to be honest, Pinkie, I don’t think Alex knows exactly what he’s looking for. Closure, I guess.”
“Does that happen?” Pinkie asked. “I mean, I never really knew my dad. Died when I was pretty young. Still, I think about him, and there’s nothing closed about it.”
Sydney Fox’s ex came out of the liquor store. Bree started the Taurus. She let Davis get ahead of her in light traffic, then pulled out and followed as he headed south out of Starksville. Two miles beyond the town boundary, the Bronco took a right onto a dirt road that wound up into the forest.
“Takes you up to Stark Lake,” Pinkie said. “There won’t be much traffic to hide in.”
“But there will be people up there?” she asked.
“Sure, summer vacationers and all. Campers at the state park.”
“Colored folk?”
“That too.”
“Then we’ll take our chances,” Bree said. She waited until Finn’s taillights disappeared into the trees before turning in after him.
Stark Lake did not resemble its name. The forest was lush all around it. Cabins dotted the shore; they were nothing like Marvin Bell’s place, but they were nice, well maintained. Bree drove along slowly, as if she were following directions, and peered down every driveway looking for the Bronco.
The road ahead cut hard right into a hairpin around a narrow cove.
“Stop,” Pinkie said. “Back up and turn around as if you’re lost.”
“You see him?” Bree said, braking the car to a stop.
“Turning into a cottage on the other side of that cove,” Pinkie said as she threw the car in reverse, U-turned, and drove away around a bend. “Pull in ahead there and kill your lights.”
Bree backed into the driveway of a dark cabin. They got out and ran to a stand of trees opposite that hairpin around the narrow cove. The water was no more than forty yards across and she had a good look at the cottage and the Bronco. No movement. No sound.
The cottage was nice, newer and more modern than the other places she’d seen on the lake so far. It wasn’t as nice as Marvin Bell’s, but it was still a trophy house by most people’s standards, certainly Bree’s.
A girl of nine, maybe ten, came out onto a wraparound porch that faced the water. Finn Davis came out on the porch after her. He was followed by a second man that Bree couldn’t see well. She raised her binoculars as the man turned to shake Davis’s hand, and she recognized him.
“Sonofabitch,” Bree whispered.
“What?” Pinkie said.
“Wait,” Bree said, staring through the binoculars to be sure it wasn’t a trick of the light on the porch.
No trick. That was Detective Guy Pedelini smiling and taking an envelope from Finn Davis. He tucked it nonchalantly in his pants pocket before putting his arm around the girl, whom Bree took to be one of Pedelini’s daughters. Davis headed for the Bronco.
Bree kept her attention on Detective Pedelini, saw his smile evaporate the second Finn Davis climbed into his vehicle. The detective and his daughter went back inside the cottage.
“Jesus,” Bree said, turning to run back to their car.
“What’s going on?” Pinkie demanded, huffing along beside her.
“That expensive cottage belongs to Guy Pedelini, the one man in Starksville that Alex and I thought was straight, and now it looks like he’s on the take from Finn Davis and probably Marvin Bell,” Bree said. “He’s also the cop who found Rashawn Turnbull and the detective investigating the drugs Marvin Bell’s niece planted on Jannie.”
“Fuck. Some things never change about Starksville.” Pinkie panted as headlights flashed back along the cove. “You can’t trust anyone but family.”
Davis’s headlights were coming closer. Bree and Pinkie skidded to a stop behind a big pine tree fifty feet from the rental. Finn Davis drove on by.
They ran to the Taurus, jumped in. Bree fired up the car, kept the headlights off, and drove out of the driveway and after Davis.
They lost the Bronco until it was almost back to the state highway. They spotted taillights down there on the flat, turning back toward town. Bree put on the headlights and sped up. There were more cars on the road. She hung back three cars from the Bronco as it passed the crumbling brick factory where Alex’s mother had sewn sheets and pillowcases. She stayed in that position almost to the old Piggly Wiggly store.
Right before the railroad crossing, Finn Davis turned hard left, along the tracks, and disappeared from view.
“Where’s that go?” she demanded.
“It’s a maintenance road, I think.”
Train tracks. Hadn’t Stefan Tate said there were strange goings-on along the train tracks that he’d been unable to figure out?
Bree made a split-second decision, pulled into the Piggly Wiggly parking lot, and jumped out of the car. She ran along the sidewalk toward the train tracks. The crossing lights began to flash. Bells rang. The gates lowered and she could hear the rumble of an oncoming train.
Bree scanned the area as the train horn blew. An abandoned building to her left. An empty lot with trees that lined the far side, separating the lot from the tracks. She dashed at an angle across the empty lot into the trees and found herself on a small bluff above the tracks. She pushed vines aside.
The headlights of the train and the Bronco lit up Finn Davis, who stood on the maintenance road a hundred yards away and not ten feet from the tracks. Bree got the binoculars on him. He didn’t seem at all concerned about the engine. He was looking at the cars behind it, which were rolling into view from around the bend.
Bree moved the binoculars to the boxcars a
nd spotted the silhouettes of two men on top of one, two more four cars back, and another pair six cars beyond that. As they passed Davis, they raised their hands in some sort of salute that she couldn’t make out due to shadows.
But Marvin Bell’s adopted son was crisply visible when, in response to their salute, he raised his right hand and held three fingers high.
Chapter
60
West Palm Beach, Florida
An hour later, in my bed at the Hampton Inn, I came wide awake, sat up, and said into my cell phone: “Those guys riding the train on our way into Starksville that first day, they did that same salute.”
“Definitely,” Bree said, back in North Carolina.
I shook off the cobwebs in my mind. “How many did you see?”
“Six total.”
“Were they on specific cars or random?”
“They were all on freight cars, mixed in with tankers.”
“What did Davis do after the train had gone?”
“Got back in the Bronco, turned around, and headed north, probably back to Pleasant Lake,” Bree said. “I abandoned the surveillance at that point.”
“I’m still surprised about Guy Pedelini. I pegged him as a good guy.”
“I did too,” Bree said. “But I’m coming over to Pinkie’s point of view.”
“Which is?”
“Don’t trust anyone in Starksville who isn’t family.”
“Cynical, but probably a good idea for the time being.”
“Here I’ve been hogging the conversation. Any luck down there?”
“Nothing but luck,” I said and then filled her in on my day.
“Wow, that was fast,” Bree said when I was done. “Who’s this minister you’re going to see?”
“Her name’s Reverend Maya and supposedly she knew Paul Brown. The funeral guys remembered her.”
“Well, that’s good. You’ll be able to talk to someone who knew your dad.”
“I think so,” I said. “Then I can put this all behind me and come back and hold you, and together we’ll figure out that three-finger-salute thing.”
“Tomorrow night?”
“More like first thing the following morning.” There was a silence between us before I said, “You okay?”
“Just trying to figure out where to go next. Any advice?”
“Try to see Stefan if you can. Find out what specifically made him suspicious of the area around the train tracks. I don’t think he mentioned it.”
“I already talked to Naomi,” Bree said. “She’s seeing him in the morning. What are you doing tomorrow until you meet the minister?”
“I told Drummond and Johnson I was free to help them,” I said. “Least I could do, considering how much they’ve helped me.”
“I miss you, Alex,” she said softly.
“I miss you too,” I said. “And thanks.”
“For?”
“Sticking your neck out for family.”
“I’m Alex Cross’s wife,” she said teasingly. “What else would I do?”
“Very funny,” I said, grinning. “I love you, Bree.”
“I love you too, Alex,” she said. “Have a good night’s sleep.”
“You too,” I said, and clicked off.
It was nearly eleven by then and I’d been up since five. I should have been turning off the light, trying to get back to sleep. But I felt like I’d had a cup of espresso, jittery, wanting something to do. My focus finally fixed on that stack of three binders that held a copy of the murder book covering the investigations of the socialites and the maid.
Had I missed something on my first trip through them?
Figuring I’d be better off seeking the answer to that question instead of lying awake in the darkness wondering what this Reverend Maya might tell me about my father, I opened the first binder and started to read the records all over again.
Sometime after midnight, exhaustion overtook me, and I slipped off into darkness and dreams that were a mishmash of things I’d seen in Starksville and Palm Beach: Sydney Fox lying dead on her doorstep; the sugarcane burning, throwing smoke and bugs into the sky; Rashawn Turnbull’s body in the crime scene photos; and a dark-hooded and cloaked man standing with his back to me on a street in Belle Glade.
He raised his gloved right hand and held three fingers high.
Chapter
61
Starksville, North Carolina
Dear, sweet Lizzie, her grandfather thought as he dipped an oar into the calm water. Still dressed in her white nightgown and robe, his precious little girl knelt on the floor of the rowboat, forward of the bow seat, her arms flung over the gunnel, and her sleepy eyes trained on lily pads that glistened in the rising sun.
He pulled gently and rotated the oar handle with finesse, causing the flat-bottom skiff to spin in a slow circle across those lily pads. Lizzie held on tight to the sides of the boat and giggled before she let out a “Whee!”
“I told you it was fun,” he said.
“Is that really how you catch them, Grandfather? The fairies?” Lizzie asked as she pushed aside the ringlets of blond hair that fell across her innocent, ever-so-blue eyes.
The old man fell in love all over again and said, “I have it on the highest authority that a fine way to catch fairy princesses is to wait for a nice warm dawn when they will be out sunning on lily pads. You spin over them, confuse them, and then snatch them up.”
Lizzie turned wide-eyed. “But why?”
“Because if you catch a fairy princess, she must grant you three wishes.”
“Three?” the little girl said in wonder, gazing at the water and the lily pads drifting by. “What’s her name? What will I call her?”
“The princess?” He thought fast, said, “Guinevere.”
“Princess Guinevere,” she said, liking that. She lifted her head and looked back at him with a smile that broke away into fear and confusion.
“Who are they, Grandfather?” Lizzie asked.
He realized she was looking beyond him, back to shore. He looked over his shoulder and saw three men coming over the knoll from the house and down the lawn toward the water.
“Who are those men?” she asked again, agitated.
“Friends, Lizzie,” he replied as he turned the boat toward the dock. “Old friends. No one to worry about.”
“But what about Princess Guinevere?” she complained.
“She’ll be here tomorrow,” he said.
He pulled up to the dock and tossed a line to Starksville’s chief of police, Randy Sherman. Then he handed his granddaughter up to Stark County sheriff Nathan Bean and climbed onto the dock after her.
“Lizzie, run on up to the house, get you some breakfast,” he said.
Lizzie kissed her grandfather and ran barefoot up the lawn, adding in a few precious twirls to enchant him.
“Love that little girl,” he said, then he looked to the third man on the dock. “How’re the kidney stones treating you, Judge?”
“Shitty,” Erasmus Varney said with a pinched expression. “But I’ll survive.”
“Glad to hear that,” he said, “because survival is why I brought you all here this morning.”
Chief Sherman and Sheriff Bean studied the old man. Varney was trying, but the judge looked as if he wanted to pace against the pain.
“Been a good life for all of you, yes?” Lizzie’s grandfather asked.
The three men nodded without hesitation.
“Then it’s important to you that our good life goes on, yes?”
They nodded their heads vigorously.
“Good to hear,” he said, then sobered. “I have begun to fear that the survival of our good life is threatened.”
“By who?” Judge Varney asked.
“This Alex Cross and his family. All of them. His wife. His niece the attorney. His aunts and uncles and cousins too.”
“What do you want us to do?” Chief Sherman said.
“I have made arrangements through
a third party to bring in a lace maker that can never be traced to any of us,” he said. “She is to be given every opportunity to succeed as she’s passing through Starksville.”
“She?” Sheriff Bean said.
“Correct.”
“She been through town before?” Chief Sherman asked.
“Once.”
“When is her trip scheduled?” Sheriff Bean asked.
“She’s arriving today. Problems with any of that?”
Judge Varney said, “It has to be done delicately with someone like Cross. He has a reputation. Friends in high places.”
“We’re aware of that delicacy, Erasmus,” Lizzie’s grandfather said. “That’s why I’ve called in a lace maker. She’ll sew everything together so their deaths look like tragic twists of fate.”
Part Four
A Coast of Gold
Chapter
62
Palm Beach, Florida
“Such a tragic way to die, Maggie,” Coco cooed. “But really, it’s acceptable now in our social strata, isn’t it? Or at least, it’s not the shame it once was.”
Dressed in a pair of Stéphanie Coudert white linen pants, a pale tan jersey, and ballet slippers, Jeffrey Mize sat wigless at the foot of the bed. He was lost in his alter ego, Coco, analyzing the fetal position of Maggie’s body, noting how the sheets were tucked perfectly under her chin, as if the poor dear had sought out a cozy spot in which to expire.
The spent bottle of Patrón on the night table helped the overdose tableau. So did the empty vials that had once held the deceased’s notoriously abused prescriptions for pain, anxiety, and sleep.
One cocktail was all it took, Coco thought with satisfaction as he got up off the bed. Maggie never knew what hit her. Not like Lisa Martin, who’d gone all Frankenstein’s bride, bug-eyed and shrieking when the radio hit the bathwater. And very unlike Ruth Abrams, who’d fought the noose with surprising strength.
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