“Yes, sir. He’s not that well, but he’s hanging in there. Even though sometimes he thinks he’s still commanding the ioist.”
There was a long stretch of silence and then Walmsey said, “Fighting John Puller is your father?”
“Yes, sir. I’m John Puller Jr.”
“That was not included in my briefing on this. I can’t imagine why the hell not.”
Puller could see a certain aide to Colonel Walmsey getting his or her ass reamed over that one.
“But my father being who he is should not impact this matter at all.”
“No, it shouldn’t,” said Walmsey in a halting voice.
“It’s just that my aunt was my father’s only sibling. He took it hard. He was her younger brother. You have siblings, sir?”
“Two older sisters. Special relationship, big sisters and little brothers.”
“Yes, sir, so I’ve heard.”
There was another long pause.
“Why don’t you carry on down there and we’ll revisit this issue later, Agent Puller.”
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir. And Ms. Craig?” “Don’t worry about her. I’ll take you at your word that she wasn’t involved in anything that was unauthorized. She’ll be back on duty today.” “Appreciate it, sir.”
“You tell your father I said hello and convey my best wishes for a speedy recovery.”
“I will do that, Colonel. Thank you. Uh, any chance on running that license plate down, sir?”
But the line went dead.
It didn’t look like the Army was going to be much help with this.
Puller headed to the Tahoe.
He needed to get his investigation duffel.
CHAPTER 37
The sweat trickled down his neck.
At eight in the morning he’d already been hard at work for an hour. It was eighty-two degrees with a projected high of nearly a hundred today.
He was at the same house. He had been told that the grounds here were so extensive that they required a landscaping crew every day. He had taken steps to make sure that he would get the assignment. It had involved payments and promises to people who didn’t give a damn why he wanted to be here. For them it was just an exchange of something for something else. And when you were dealing with folks who had little money, bartering became a way of life. For all they knew he was trying to case the mansion in hopes of robbing it. They did not care about folks stealing from the rich. The rich had everything. They would just print more money.
He was simply one man working for others. He was paid a wage that could barely keep him alive. And he was one injury away from being homeless.
As he looked around at the workers next to him, he was actually describing their state of affairs, not his. Money meant nothing to him. He was here for his own purposes and no other. When he was done he would leave.
Unless he was dead. Then he would stay in Paradise for eternity.
He rubbed the sweat from his eyes and commenced clipping a hedge for owners who demanded a precisely trimmed bush. But he also focused on what he had seen the previous night on the beach.
Those people were lost forever. As soon as they had been taken, it was over. On the boat. On the truck. It didn’t matter. Nothing could break the long chain of ownership, for that’s what it was.
Chattel.
The sixteenth century or the twenty-first century, it didn’t really matter. People with power and means would always take advantage of those without them.
He clipped and thought about his next move.
He ran his eye along the top of the hedge and at the same time skirted his gaze along the perimeter of the mansion. The same Maserati was parked in the front cobblestone circular drive. He assumed that the young couple had stayed over. Why leave this place if one didn’t have to? He had learned, by asking subtle questions of a house servant who had come out to retrieve the mail, that the interior staff consisted of ten people. These included maids, a chef, someone playing the role of a butler, and various others who worked cheap and were able to live in the servants’ quarters of the grandest home on the Emerald Coast.
The family who lived here consisted of four people:
The cash machine husband.
The pampered second wife.
The even more pampered son.
The mother-in-law.
The cash machine was in his mid-forties, relatively young for having amassed such great wealth. He had not asked the maid how the money had been made.
He already knew.
The second wife used to be a runway model, was in her early thirties, and spent most of her time shopping.
The cash machine’s son-the second wife’s stepson-was seventeen and attended a private boarding school in Connecticut. He had already been accepted at an Ivy League school based more on his father’s largesse to the university than his academic performance. He was now home for the summer playing polo, driving his Porsche, and sowing his wild oats among the available local young women, who were unabashedly competing to one day live in grand houses filled with servants. This he had also found out before coming here.
The second wife’s mother lived in the lavish guesthouse and was, at least by most accounts, a bitch of massive proportions.
As he watched, the same woman he had seen by the pool the day before strolled out of the mansion’s rear French doors. She had on a white skirt that showed off her bare, tanned legs, a light blue shirt, and spike backless heels. Her hair fell around her shoulders. Her appearance was quite dressy for this early in the morning. Perhaps she had an appointment.
He watched as she crossed over to the guesthouse and went inside, perhaps to pay her respects to the resident mother-in-law.
The rear door to the mansion opened once more and a man stepped out.
He studied him. About five-eleven, trim, fit, dressed in white shorts that showed off his tanned, muscular calves. He had on leather loafers that looked expensive and no doubt were, and a pale blue patterned long-sleeved Bugatchi shirt. He had left the shirt untucked, no doubt to show that despite his immense wealth he was a casual yet hip man. His hair was brown and wavy with just a touch of gray around the temples.
The man crossed the grounds and entered the guesthouse.
He knew who the man was. He was the cash machine. The man owned this estate and everything in it.
His name was Peter J. Lampert.
He’d made and lost most of a multibillion- dollar fortune as a hedge fund manager, along with most of the money entrusted to him by his clients. Then he had made another enormous fortune to pay for this place and other assorted toys of the rich. But he had not bothered to recoup his clients’ money.
That was what bankruptcy was for, he’d responded, when someone asked him if he felt remorse at all for destroying the lives of so many people.
Lampert, he knew, also had his own private jet, a Dassault Falcon 900LX that was parked at a private airport about thirty minutes from here. Its maximum cabin height was six feet two inches, which meant Lampert could stand up straight inside it, but he couldn’t. Yet he never expected to be on it. Private jets were not meant for the hired help.
At the end of the estate’s main dock, one hundred feet out to sea in deep water, sat Lampert’s mega-yacht, named Lady Lucky. Lampert had named that after his second wife, whose name was Lucille, but whom everyone called Lucky, because she apparently had been as the second wife of Peter J. Lampert.
Lucky was currently away, he had been told by the same maid. A shopping trip to Paris and London. Well, the rich had to spend their money on something.
As he thought about it, it was quite likely that her mother was traveling with her too. If so there would be no reason for anyone to visit the guesthouse.
Except perhaps for one.
He worked his way over to the left side of the structure. There were bushes there that required trimming. He managed to look like he was clipping but actually made no noise with his tool. He edged closer to the window. The drape
s were partially up. He heard it before he saw them.
Moans and groans.
He looked around for security. They did not seem to be in this sector.
He grew closer to the window, squatting down, trying to shrink his great height.
He took a peek through the window.
The woman was now wearing only her shirt. Her skirt was on the bed along with her spike heels. Her panties were down around her bare feet. On her tiptoes, she gripped one of the bed’s four posters, her body bent forward at a forty- five-degree angle.
Lampert was behind her. He had not bothered to take off his clothes. Apparently he could only be bothered to slide his zipper down. She arched her neck back and was making suitable noises designed to urge on her lover.
Lampert pushed into her violently, grunted heavily one last time, and then bent forward, supporting himself on her back, totally spent. Panting, he freed himself from her and zipped up his shorts. She turned and kissed him. He fondled and then slapped her bare buttocks.
Lampert said something that he couldn’t hear, but the woman laughed. A few moments later Lampert was gone. He apparently had other appointments.
He watched as the woman lay back on the bed, slipped a pill bottle from her shirt pocket, tongued a capsule, and swallowed it. She took off her shirt, walked naked into the bathroom, and emerged about a minute later, her face looking scrubbed.
He continued observing as she quickly dressed, smoothing out her shirt and zipping up her skirt before slipping on her heels. When she left the room, he came around the corner of the building, stooped down, and started to weed the lawn.
She stepped from the guesthouse, looked to the right and saw him there. Her features grew brighter when she saw him. She smiled. The smell of sex was all over her. He wondered if she realized that, despite her freshening up. He wondered what the young man she had driven up with in the Maserati would say if he detected evidence of the morning tryst.
“Hello,” she said.
He nodded at her, keeping his gaze partially downcast but still watching her.
“You were here yesterday. What’s your name?” she asked.
“Mecho.”
“Mecho? I’ve never heard that name before.”
“In my country it means ‘bear.’ I am as big as one, you see. I was a big baby, you see, so my father decided to make it official.” He stopped and smiled shyly.
His English was much better than that, and he was not by nature a shy man, but he did not want her to know that. Mecho was not his given name, but it had been his nickname, precisely because of his great size.
“What is your country?” she asked.
“Far away from here. But I like this place. My country is often too cold.”
She smiled and waved away a fly with her hand. Her smile was radiant, her cheeks slightly reddened.
Sex agreed with her, he thought.
“It’s always warm in Paradise,” she said.
“Hey!”
They both looked over to see a burly security guard heading their way. Mecho hastily stood and moved away from her.
“Hey!” the guard said again as he came up to Mecho. It was the same guard as yesterday. “You’re really trying my patience, bud.”
The woman said, “I was talking to him. He was doing his work. I asked him a question.”
The guard looked at her like she was on drugs. “You asked him a question. Why?”
“Because I wanted to hear his answer,” she said, scowling. “So you can just leave him alone.” The man was about to say something, but seemed to think better of it. “Right, Ms. Murdoch. I was just making sure everything was okay. Just doing my job.”
“Everything is very okay,” she said sternly. After the guard retreated Murdoch said, “My name is Christina, Mecho. My friends call me Chrissy. It was nice talking to you.”
As she walked away he watched her. She glanced back once, saw him, and smiled again, tacking on a little wave.
In that knowing smile he saw something interesting. He was almost certain that she knew he had been watching Lampert and her have sex. And she didn’t seem concerned by it in the least. In fact, she seemed uplifted by it.
A singularly remarkable woman of great beauty.
A part of him hoped he would not have to kill her.
CHAPTER 38
The trip to Eglin Air Force Base took about thirty minutes. The duffel was where it was supposed to be and Puller signed the necessary paperwork, loaded it into his rental, and drove back to Paradise. Along the way he passed through Destin and eyed Landry’s high-rise.
That made him remember he needed a new place to stay.
He arrived back in Paradise around noon.
He hadn’t missed it for even a minute.
He made a stop at Bailey’s Funeral Home, where he needed to see his aunt’s body again.
After he was finished there, he drove directly to his aunt’s house. The sun was high, the day was hot, and the humidity had crept so high that simply walking produced rivulets of sweat. But Puller had spent many years of his life in heat even worse than this and it had little effect on him.
He reentered his aunt’s house using the key that the lawyer Mason had given him. Now that he had his duffel he could make a proper investigation.
He unpacked his duffel and spent the next five hours going over the interior room by room.
The only remarkable thing he found was nothing.
The only fingerprints were his aunt’s. That was why he had stopped by the funeral home, to take a set of elimination prints from Betsy Simon.
There was no sign of forced entry, no indication of a struggle.
He found a box of photo albums stuffed in a closet next to the small laundry room. He looked through a few of them and then stuck the box into his duffel. He would look at them later.
He moved his investigation out to the backyard, where he followed his aunt’s presumed path from the house to the fountain area. He got down on his knees and examined the stone surround, the disturbed stones under the water, the holes in the lawn made from the walker. If his aunt’s body had still been here he might have seen something that was not right, but it wasn’t and thus he couldn’t.
He sensed someone watching him and turned and saw Cookie peering over the fence.
“Did you grow?” Puller asked.
“I’m standing on a box. What are you doing?” asked Cookie.
“Just satisfying my curiosity.”
“You really think she was murdered, don’t you?”
“What do you think?”
Cookie seemed alarmed by the question. “I don’t have an opinion. I thought it was an accident, but I wouldn’t know what to look for.”
“Well, I do know what to look for and I’m not finding much.”
“Did you speak to Mason?”
Puller rose and went over to the fence. On the box Cookie and he were close to eye to eye.
“I did. He was helpful. What do you know about him?”
“Like I said, good lawyer. He’s handling my estate too. He does the same for lots of people.” “You know him beyond that?”
“Some. But we’re not really friends socially.” “Did you hear about the bodies washing up on the beach?”
Cookie nodded sadly. “The Storrows. I knew them. Nice people. I wonder what the hell happened.”
“The police are checking it out.”
“The paper wasn’t very full of details. Do you know anything?”
“If I did, I wouldn’t be at liberty to say.”
“Are you working with the police?” asked Cookie.
“No. I tend to work solo. But I’m just naturally tight-lipped with details like that.”
Cookie glanced over his shoulder at the fountain. “Still gives me the creeps, thinking of her dying there.”
Puller said, “I guess I need to arrange for the funeral service and all.” He didn’t have a clue as to what this entailed.
“Betsy told me th
at she wanted to be cremated. It should be in her will.”
“Mason didn’t mention that.”
“Did he give you a copy of the will?”
“Yes.”
“You should read it. Betsy was very particular about her funeral arrangements. I’m sure she spelled them out to the letter.”
“Thanks. I guess I should have already done that.”
“You’re young. You don’t think about wills and funeral arrangements.”
“I’m also a soldier. We tend to think about them more than most people.”
Puller left Cookie, went back inside, and packed up his equipment. He took one last look around and hauled his duffel out to the Tahoe. He sat in the driver’s seat and pulled out his aunt’s last will and testament. After skimming over most of the legalese, including the part leaving the house to him, he arrived at the provisions about her final arrangements.
Betsy Simon did indeed want to be cremated. She had prefunded the service with Bailey’s Funeral Home. That included an urn for the ashes and a request that they be spread over the Pennsylvania countryside where she had grown up.
He tucked the will back into his pocket. He would speak with Bailey’s about this. He figured they were probably very experienced with cremating folks down here.
He was starving and he had no place to stay. He would take care of the food first, the lodgings next. He also had to check in at the police department. He figured Landry would soon require his sworn allegations to process the eight idiots who had come after him last night.
He checked his phone and was surprised that there was no text from her.
Or Bullock.
He wondered if the moron Hooper had stopped puking yet.
And then he stopped wondering about Hooper.
He put the keys in the ignition, pulled his Mu, and hit the gas, pointing the Tahoe straight at the car.
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