“Was she a sex worker before she slept with you, or is that what you turned her into?”
“This has nothing to do with me.” His voice was too loud. He lowered his voice. “It was long done between us. Whatever she became, however she died, it has nothing to do with me.”
“For god’s sake, you could have at least admitted you knew her. I wasn’t expecting you to tell anyone you screwed her. Instead you left it to a sick old woman to go to the morgue and identify her.”
“I’m sorry.”
He sounded like a petulant little boy, more worried about being in trouble than if he hurt someone.
“Tell it to Aunt Kay.”
We stayed silent for the length of time it took me to drink the second half of my beer and then I asked, “Was that how she was found? Did the escort service call the police?”
He looked down at the patio stones. “Maybe. I was only told an anonymous call was made. I was the patrol in the area so I was sent to check it out. The super let me in.”
“Wasn’t that an interesting fluke? Officer Raines was the uniform on duty, the cop called to check out Holly’s apartment.”
“Things like that happen. I’ve been sent twice to accidents where I knew people.”
“Yeah? Well, I stopped believing in coincidences when I found my Christmas presents under my mother’s bed, the same ones that were wrapped and under the tree from Santa on Christmas morning.”
The angry silence stretched between us. Finally, I said, “Was anyone else living in the apartment?”
“No sign of it.”
“So what’s the name of this escort service?”
“Why?” He straightened. “Stay out of this. It’s none of your business.” He was a cop again and taking control.
“Okay.” I changed the subject. “It’s hard to believe, hard to get your head around. Not only that Holly is dead, but that this is what she became. She was always so sweet, even with the nastiest, hardestto-please diners. Aunt Kay said she wanted to be an actress or a model from the time she was a little girl.”
He met my eyes now. “Maybe that’s why she killed herself. Maybe she quit believing in her dreams.”
“They showed Aunt Kay her note.”
“We always show the family the suicide note. It helps them understand, or maybe it’s just to convince them it happened, and we need them to identify the handwriting.”
I got a pen and a piece of paper out of my purse. “Write down her words, just like in the note.”
He started to argue. “I can always call and request it.”
“They won’t tell you.”
“Maybe not, but I’ve got such a big mouth, you never know what will slip out.”
His jaw hardened and tiny bulges jumped in his cheek. It was touch and go if he was going to throw me out or do as I asked. He picked up the pen and pulled the paper towards him and wrote quickly.
He shoved it back at me and I read,because my Angel is gone and I can’t live without my Angel. I have no home and no one to look after me. I have nothing left. This is the only way.
It was signed, “Love, Holly.”
“Was this what it said?”
“Exactly. It’s precisely the same as her note. You might not realize it, but I’m damn good at my job. I don’t make mistakes.”
I so wanted to point out the obvious exception.
“It’s just that it’s an odd note. The first word doesn’t begin with a capital letter. Don’t you think that’s strange?”
“It’s a suicide note, not an English essay.”
“Still . . . things like that are habits. Holly was always meticulous about taking orders.” Suddenly I was struck by a horrible idea. “Are you sure she committed suicide?”
His hand slammed on the glass table. “Don’t go turning this into some big mystery. It isn’t. She killed herself . . . end of story.”
I shoved the paper and pen back into my purse and said, “Holly was okay, nice really, but sometimes she got on my nerves, always wanting to hang out after work. I was past girls like her.”
Dan tilted back on his chair. “When we were kids we all wanted to be around you. You were always the one who started things, sometimes trouble but always fun.”
“Things change. I used to think I could handle anything. Not so much these days.”
His chair thudded onto the concrete and he nodded in agreement. “That’s how I felt until I found Holly. I thought I was immune to shock but seeing her . . .” He didn’t finish.
Somewhere down the row of houses a door slammed and a voice called out a name.
I watched Dan closely. “Aunt Kay is convinced that Holly had a baby.”
Dan’s mouth gaped open. His spine straightened and he pushed back against the chair where he’d been lounging. “What? No, no way, she didn’t have a baby.” If he was lying, it was a damn good act.
“Aunt Kay says she did. She wants to know what happened to the baby.”
“Well, she’s wrong. There was no baby. It never happened.”
I looked at the pile of wooden blocks sitting on the table. “How old is Hannah?”
He didn’t answer.
I peeled the label off the damp bottle. “She’s not a year yet, is she?” Still he didn’t respond, couldn’t even look at me.
“Holly must have got pregnant about the same time as Shelly.”
“Oh, shit,” he said.
“Did you know about Holly’s baby?”
“God, no!” I believed him, but he wouldn’t be the first liar I’d believed.
He ran his hand over his head. “What makes Aunt Kay think Holly had a baby?” You could see he was hungry for it all to be a stupid mix-up. “She’s old and she’s got it wrong.”
“Holly came by with the baby and wanted Aunt Kay to look after her.”
“There was no sign of a baby in that apartment. I followed procedure and looked through every room to make sure there was no one else there, alive or dead. There was no sign of a kid. The apartment was totally clean and neat, like a model suite ready for a showing.”
“Maybe someone should find out what happened to Holly’s baby. Will you help me, Dan?”
“Shit, no, it has nothing to do with me.” We both knew he was wrong there. “And you’re sure Holly’s death was a suicide?”
“You read the note. She’d lost her angels or something. You know what she was like. That’s why I thought . . .” He ran his hands over his head. “I thought she’d finally come face to face with the truth. She was never going to be rich and famous.”
Living without dreams, giving up on her dreams? It was possible. “The note was written on pink notepaper and it had an emptyhighball glass sitting on it. I figure she washed down some pills with a strong drink.”
“Was there an empty pill bottle?”
“Not that I saw, but I didn’t check the garbage. That’s up to the investigators. The autopsy will tell what she used.”
“Can you get the autopsy results?”
“Why?” He looked at me warily. “Why do you want to know how she died?”
“Idle curiosity.”
“Curiosity killed the cat.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Why would I threaten you?”
Why indeed? One more thing was worrying me. “Dan, if Holly called you before she died, if you made an anonymous call, knowing you’d be the one who would be sent to check her out, your cell phone number is on her phone. You can’t hide from that.”
He stared at me without answering.
“But of course you wouldn’t be that stupid. You’d have used a payphone. Or maybe you have a throwaway.”
He looked up at the sky that was alive with color from the dying sun. “Remember the
night we all went skinny dipping out at Rum Bay? Nights like that, when you wanted to stop time and just stay where you were forever—how come we don’t have nights like that anymore, Sherri? When did life get so serious?”
“Maybe that’s what happens when you grow up.”
CHAPTER 11
On the drive back to Jac, I tried to decide how honest Dan had been with me and what he had left out of the story. Dan was quick to anger, always had been; could that anger get out of control if his family was threatened? Holly and a baby could definitely stick a pin in his happy family bubble.
There were more questions bumping into each other in my brain. Had he known Holly was dead before he went to that apartment? I only thought of that one when I hit the ramp to the I-95 but I kept coming back to the biggest question of all. Did Dan know where Holly’s baby was? Hannah and Angel would be about the same age. Maybe Angel was hiding in plain sight. Maybe I’d already found Angel.
At the borrowed beach house I turned on an antiquated computer that the owners had left behind. Surfing the back alleys of the Internet and delving into the seedy side of paradise, I went through half a dozen Sarasota escort services before I found Holly at the Angel Escort Agency. On the screen she was no longer the woman I remembered, bubbling and alive. She’d been turned into a lifeless mannequin, a plaything for perverts.
The pictures were lewd but artful in their use of setting and lighting to create a mood and tell a story. Each woman on the site seemed to be speaking to a particular fantasy, from violence and domination to extreme vulnerability. That’s where Holly fit in. Pale and terrified, she was wearing a white thong and thigh-high white stockings with gold spiked heels. Sprawled on a bed with her wrists tied, a discarded girl-child, looking at least five or more years younger than her actual age, she was begging the camera for mercy while waiting for the blow that would end it all.
In another picture she was tied to a chair with her legs spread to the camera. The look on her face was one of sheer panic, a victim waiting to be violated.
“Oh, Holly, what happened to you?” This wasn’t the magentahaired laughing girl I’d known.
Holly had been turned into a victim. All of the shots of her were designed to appeal to the most base and depraved cravings of men. I felt sullied and corrupted just by looking at those images, complicit in her abuse. How do escort services get away with putting up these websites, advertising human flesh for sale with the prices laid right out there?
I searched for more information about Angel Escort Agency, but all I came up with was Angel Photography. According to the site, they did “Intimate pictures for the one you love.” The quality of the sample pictures showed the same talent as those on the escort website.
Angel Photography Studios also shot portfolios for models. Had Holly started out getting pictures taken for her modeling career and ended up in the escort trade? It bothered me that the name of Holly’s baby was the same as that of the escort service. That was just wrong, but maybe it would tell me something about Angel I needed to know.
I wrote down the telephone numbers for the photo studio and the escort agency and tucked them into my pocketbook. At least I would have something to show Aunt Kay before I asked her for money.
I checked my voicemail. At ten o’clock Clay had called to say goodnight. I tried his cell but it went directly to voicemail. I didn’t leave a message.
CHAPTER 12
Sleep was fleeting. By six o’clock on Monday morning I called it quits and went for a run on the beach. The crimson sky was opening like a flower above me and tiny birds ran ahead of me in the foam at the edge of the surf. Except for the brash call of gulls and the lap of waves, the beach was quiet, not another human in sight. The saltladen air was more of a caress than the heavy blanket of heat and humidity it would be later in the day.
The tide was out. The broad, hard-packed sand at the edge of the waves was perfect to run on, although it turned out to be a lot more like a bit of running with a lot of puffing and walking in between. It didn’t matter. I was in the place I loved best. I focused on the soft squish of my trainers in the sand, letting the rhythm hypnotize me into the moment.
By the time I got back to the cottage I was sweating and exhausted. I turned on the radio while I drank the last of the orange juice from the carton. The weatherman predicted another scorcher and talked about a tropical storm headed our way from Africa. It had the potential of becoming a hurricane.
Hurricanes need warm water to feed on. With the waters surrounding Florida hotter than normal, the hurricane season was going to extend far into November, another reason besides the economy for visitors to stay away. I switched off the radio.
There was no hurricane insurance on the Sunset. We call it selfinsuring down here in Florida, which really means, “I’ve got my ass hung out way over the line.”
In the drab bathroom, where mold grew and the blistered ceiling dropped paint flakes, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I was wearing a tee-shirt, oversized, graying and ugly, which likely went back to my days with Jimmy. The top was matched with a pair of men’s boxer shorts with golf balls on them that I’d given to Clay for Christmas. I thought they were cute, but he’d refused to wear them so I did. When had I started dressing like this? Not pretty and not enticing. Maybe it was my own fault that Clay didn’t come home.
I noticed something else. I pulled the tee-shirt up tight around my waist and chest, bunched it all up in back and held it in a knot. Those ten extra pounds that happiness and living with Clay had put on had been taken off by anxiety and loneliness, the upside to bankruptcy.
My hair was caught up in a twist and nailed to the top of my head by a clasp. I let it down and squeezed up my face in disgust. My hair was mousy. No other word for it. I’d noticed months ago that it wasn’t looking its best and I’d even bought a box of color. It was still there under the sink.
Before I went anywhere I was going to shine this girl up. As Ruth Ann always said, “There’s no use feeling bad and looking bad too.”
An hour later I checked myself out in that same mirror. “Welcome back.” In the mirror, the new Sherri’s hair shone darkly and her nails were gleaming China Red.
My cell rang.
“Hi, Clay.” And even before he could answer I asked, “Are you coming home?”
“Not yet. The meeting went well and we’re still talking.”
I tried real hard to believe that was the only reason he wasn’t speeding south towards me.
There was another option. The highway ran both ways. But Aunt Kay’s money was the difference between keeping the Sunset and losing it. Those three months’ worth of grace kept me from packing.
Aunt Kay had moved out east of Tamiami Trail into a nice subdivision full of entry-level computer programmers, retired folks and self-employed tradesmen. The two-bedroom ranchers were built of cement blocks set on a slab of concrete. Each lot had a solitary citrus tree set in a precision-cut front yard.
I’m still a trailer tramp at heart, and the suburbs throw me into a panic, set me gasping for breath and looking for a line of attack to smash my way out. The neatness and sameness of this neighborhood had me hungering to see a house painted pink with purple trim in a rugged show of individualism.
Aunt Kay answered her door and left it open for me while she went to get her handbag off the kitchen table. She took out an envelope and handed it to me. “This is for you.”
I opened the envelope and checked the date. Like she’d warned me, the check was postdated to Saturday. “Look, maybe we could make a deal. How be you pay me half now and the other half on Saturday.”
“Nope.”
“Well, maybe we should go day by day.”
“Nope.”
“Why?”
“I want you as interested in finding Angel as I am. Money is a great motivator.�
� She pointed a finger at me. “And trust me on this . . . If you don’t put your all into this, I’ll cancel the check.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but her locked-down face plus past experience told me to save my breath. I’d only make the situation worse. I put the check away.
“I talked to Dan Raines.”
Her face lit with excitement. “Tell me everything.” She pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table.
I did as ordered. Well, most of it. I told her that Dan likely was Angel’s father and that he was the one to find Holly. I didn’t tell her how Holly was earning her money, didn’t tell her about the pictures. I still had this feeling that I should shield her from such harsh realities. In truth, she needed protecting about as much as a rabid Rottweiler did.
Aunt Kay asked most of the questions I’d asked myself the night before. After I’d told her a half-dozen times that I didn’t know the answer to the questions she was asking, she got to her feet and said, “Okay, let’s go to Sarasota, go see where she died.” She slid the strap of her oversized handbag over her arm and waved me towards the door.
We weren’t even out the door before she stopped dead in her tracks. “I also need to see Dan’s baby. Maybe Hannah and Angel are the same child. Maybe Holly turned Angel over to her father.”
“People would know if Shelly was pregnant. Or do you think she faked a pregnancy?”
“If she did it would only be for a few months, or maybe it was handled like any adoption. It’s even possible that the adoption is no secret.”
She thought for a moment. “I’ll decide when I see the baby if it’s Angel.”
“Would you recognize Angel after all these months?”
“I’m not sure.”
I pulled my phone out and showed her the picture I’d taken the night before.
Aunt Kay studied the image a long time before she sighed and said, “I’m not sure. I have to see her in person.”
“Shelly and Hannah are in Orlando visiting her sister until Friday; besides, it’s been months and babies change. Let’s see if anything else turns up before we go bothering Dan’s family.”
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