by Robert Lane
The scent of a man who was no longer there.
Combing the place for clues while not overstaying my welcome was a delicate task. Who knew what some neighbor had seen and whether he had already dialed the police? I hurriedly searched the mess that used to be the man’s home but came up empty. No computer. I scrounged through his pockets. No cell phone. The Guardian had taken Lambert’s electronics.
It was a crime scene, and I needed to exit. I opened the rear sliding door, and the great white egret stood waiting for me. It bent its neck in, took a step toward the body, but then stopped, one long stick-leg frozen in midair. It snapped its head toward me and lowered its leg like a low-geared motor. “Sorry, buddy.” I grabbed the picture of Lambert and his wife that hung on the outside wall. They were grinning, like we all do when we face the camera, clueless as to what the future will bring. Smile, we’re toast in two years. I’m not sure why I did that—swipe the picture—other than an impending sense of failure to protect Donald Lambert was already gathering within. Perhaps the picture would sharpen my focus.
When I left, the bird was peering into the house.
CHAPTER 15
Remember this: Beware the following sea.
When on the water, always check your rear so a wave doesn’t swamp the stern and send you to Davey Jones’s locker. I had bundles of things to do, but first I needed to protect myself.
At home, I started a small brush fire and burned the gloves and shoes I’d worn in Lambert’s house. I doused the fire with water and shoveled the ashes into the bay.
I retrieved a burner phone from the safe and called the police. I didn’t want Lambert’s body waiting for the cleaning lady. The phone went into the bay—after a thorough wipe down.
PC was next, and I told him to meet me at Riptide. We needed to scout out boat rentals and work the neighborhood to see if anyone saw anything that would help me find the Guardian. It was a safe assumption at this point that Paretsky did have a partner referred to as the Guardian, and that man was looking for Renée Lambert. He had killed her father, likely after Donald Lambert refused to give him any useful information, or maybe after he sang—there was no way of knowing. Furthermore, Cardinal Antinori somehow knew and was connected to both men. I didn’t even waste a wild guess on that one.
What had Antinori said? Beware the Pope; he has the Guardian? The Cardinal’s death would have to take a backseat. If Paretsky or his partner was near, I needed to double my efforts.
On the way to Riptide, I hit Garrett’s number.
“What?”
“Next flight.”
He hung up.
PC and Boyd were on high, wood stools that faced the gulf. The black man with dreadlocks who sold paintings was setting up for the day under his bright-blue canvas. We exchanged nods. A girl in a bikini and a pierced belly button, Riptide’s signature outfit, danced over to the table.
“SweeTarts?” she said, staring at Boyd, who had just taken a sleeve from his pocket.
“Want one?”
“Do I?” She placed her order pad on the table and held out her hand. Boyd dropped a few sugar tablets in it. “So,” she said, popping one in her mouth and cracking it. “What can I get you gentlemen?”
My appetite, which had taken a serious blow at the sight of Lambert, roared back. I ordered a grilled fish sandwich, fries, water, and a beer. PC and Boyd followed. Belly Button Ring didn’t bother to write anything down.
“He’s gone, isn’t he?” said PC.
I kicked off my new shoes—they were still stiff—and freed my toes. It was already steaming out. “Don’t blame yourselves. There’s nothing you could have—”
Boyd said, “We were paid to be his guarding angel and—”
“Guardian,” PC sliced in with a tone that conveyed his disgust with their efforts, not with Boyd. “And—”
“What the hell, man?” Boyd cut PC a look. “You always gotta—”
“—we failed.”
“—get on my case just because—”
“Enough,” I interjected. “If you failed it’s a damn good thing, otherwise…” Belly Ring came by and dropped three waters and three beers on the table. The water glasses were sweating like sieves. I took half of mine in one gulp. A chunk of ice went in my mouth, and I rolled it around with my tongue.
“Otherwise,” I bit down on the ice, “you’d be dead as well. Listen, boys.” I leaned in across the table. They were kids—the heck was I doing putting them in harm’s way? But, on their own, all they had managed to find the time for were prank tricks that had gotten them room and board in the slammer. That’s not where you want to be making friends. I wanted them off the street. Unfortunately, my line of business wasn’t stocking chips on shelves. “I told you up front. I decide what you do, and I’m the only judge of your conduct. You did fine.” I cracked the remnant of ice in my mouth. “Just fine.”
Belly Ring dropped off our lunches, and no one spoke as we consumed our food while our thoughts consumed us. A song came over the speaker stating that one was a lonely number. One’s a lonely act, I heard myself telling Kathleen on the floor of our London flat. Was there no element in the constellations that in some manner didn’t connect back to her?
“Who does that?” Boyd asked, and I was relieved for a conversational bridge to get the two of them back together and get my mind off the floor.
“Three Dog Night,” PC answered.
Boyd wiped a napkin across his mouth. “Never,” he said, and balled his hand, still clasping the napkin, into a fist and poked it into his stomach. He emitted a mild belch not worthy of the prelude and continued, “Heard of them. They new?”
PC shook his head. “Sixties, early seventies. They—”
“What’s their name again, Three…”
“Dog Night. A night so cold you need to sleep with three dogs to stay warm.” He pushed his plate away and looked at me. “What can we do?”
I finished an appreciative draw on my beer. “Whoever killed Lambert left a trace, a crumb. We need to find it. Check out the boat rental places within a mile of here. Tell them your buddy went out…hell, you figure it out.”
“You think he rented a boat, gave a card number, and then wasted a guy?” PC said. “Maybe provided a home address?”
“Do not blame yourself.” I picked up my empty plate and placed it on the table next to us. “He likely stole one, and with luck you might get a description. But luck isn’t free; you’ve got to sweat for it.”
“We’ll canvass door to door,” PC replied. “Boyd-o,” he turned to Boyd, who was nodding his head to the beat of the song and keeping his eye on the waitress’s belly button, “remember when we did our Bible thing to get into that house a year ago?”
“Mormons, man. Once,” he spread his hands out, “we were young and Mormons.” His head kept a steady beat. A solitary gull approached us by foot and blasted its plaintive cry. It was odd; they are usually tentative and quiet when working solo.
“We’ll conjure something new.” PC turned to me. “We hit the boat rentals and both streets, the one he lived on and the one on the other side of the canal. Anything else?”
“Want the standard lecture on being safe and not doing anything stupid?”
“Naw, in fact,” he rose and pushed the stool back toward the table, “safe begats boredom.”
Boyd got up and nodded at me. “Thanks for lunch.” He took two steps and turned back to me. “Sorry, Jake. PC was sleeping. It was my watch. I saw the boat and knew right away that it didn’t creep out on the other side of the house. I just figured that—”
I stood up, went to him, and put my hand on his shoulder. It felt more natural than when I had touched Donald Lambert’s arm. Maybe I just needed a little practice. “Forget it, hear me? There was nothing you could have done or foretold.”
He held my eyes for a second, turned, and trailed PC. I settled the tab and climbed into my truck just as a late-morning cloudburst dumped on it like it was in the middle of a car wash. I
sat but didn’t twist the key. The water cascaded down the windshield.
It was possible that the death of Donald Lambert would bring his daughter out of hiding, assuming she was still alive and not afraid to show her face. I doubted it, but that didn’t keep me from fantasizing about an easy break. I turned the key, and the wipers came on. I wondered if Lambert mopped his floor before he was killed.
CHAPTER 16
Remember this, too: Don’t be afraid to see what you see.
Credit goes to Ronald Reagan’s farewell address. Or maybe it was Daffy Duck arguing with Bugs about whether it was rabbit season or duck season. Does it really matter?
This does: I saw nothing.
Nothing that connected Cardinal Antinori to Paretsky. Nothing that connected Renée Lambert to Paretsky other than that she, at one time, had been his girlfriend. Why did Paretsky and the Guardian want to find Renée? Did they routinely erase all former girlfriends?
“What do we have?” Garrett demanded as he came in the side door. Monk parakeets, as if they sensed his presence, screamed from a palm tree. He carried no suitcase, having, I presumed, dropped it off at Morgan’s. He stayed there to allow Kathleen and me our privacy, not that it mattered anymore. Just as well—I was short a bed as my guest-bedroom suite hadn’t yet arrived.
I took my eyes off the diagram I’d been doodling and gazed up at Garrett. He wore jeans and a black T-shirt. About the only time he wore something different was when he and Morgan went kitesurfing. The whistling sea breeze swung my door open.
I said, “Donald Lambert took three bullets this morning.”
“I thought you had someone on him.” He walked around the perimeter of the screened porch. A wood sailboat came in from the gulf with only its main up and cleared my dock by about a hundred feet. Two couples sat in the cockpit.
There was no way of knowing if they were couples. Two men and two women; after that, my mind jumped to the convenient and logical conclusion, which was not necessarily the truth.
“I can’t find any connections,” I said, ignoring Garrett’s accusation. I reviewed with him the scene that morning and mentioned that PC and Boyd were working the neighborhood.
“You need to find Renée Lambert,” he said. “She’s—”
“I know that.”
“—our best lead. If she’s gone, or they beat us to her, we’ve got nothing. So far, we got zilch.”
“Nearly zilch.” I plagiarized Binelli’s words as I stood up.
I’d forgotten to look at Words Against People’s website to see who else was on the dais with Renée Lambert. Should have been on that sooner. I opened my laptop and in a few minutes had the itinerary for the conference. Renée shared the platform with two women and a man. By cross-referencing the three names, I found the two women lived within a couple hours, in opposite directions, of the greater Tampa area. The man, Joseph Vizcarrondo, was in Pompano Beach, north of Ft. Lauderdale. He was also the moderator of the panel. I printed out two sheets and handed one to Garrett. Within ten minutes, we secured addresses and phone numbers.
Morgan cut across my lawn and firmly closed the screen door behind him. He collapsed in a chair with his bare feet propped up on the glass table. I filled him in. I didn’t tell him about the great white egret peering down at the body of Donald Lambert. He would have insisted that the bird in some manner comprehended the situation, and I just wasn’t up for that.
“We should each visit one,” he instructed as I handed him my sheet with the three names on it. “Far more likely to get information in person than with a phone call. See what they know about Renée Lambert, what she might have said, where she might be staying.”
“We can do a face-to-face,” I said, “with all three and be back here by tomorrow evening. Find out everything they know about Renée. With a little luck, between PC and Boyd scouting for leads on the boat, and these three—who at least had some contact with Renée at the WAP conference—we should get a solid bite.”
“Call them first,” Garrett said. “Make sure they’re available.”
“I’ll take it. What’s my story?” Morgan asked me.
“Say we’ve been retained by the teachers’ organization to do a follow-up interview. Some spin about making next year’s conference even better, and can we have thirty minutes of your time. If we go in saying we’re assisting someone investigating a murder, they’ll clam up and have more questions than answers.”
“They’ll wonder why in person.”
“Tell them we’re in the neighborhood. Buy ’em lunch. Whatever. I’ll take the moderator, Vizcarrondo. There’s half a dozen flights a day from Tampa to Lauderdale.”
“I’ll take April Woltmann, in Rotunda West,” Garrett said. “That leaves you,” he nodded at Morgan, “with Tracy Leary in Winter Park.”
Morgan took the sheet into the living room. Fifteen minutes later, he emerged with the details. Joseph Vizcarrondo would meet me the next day at Brazenhead’s Pub on East Atlantic in Pompano Beach at half past noon.
“Upstairs,” Morgan instructed me. “Said you’d find him camping by a window.”
I booked a round trip. My return flight was the last in the day, and I hoped to make it back before then but wanted to give myself ample time with Vizcarrondo.
CHAPTER 17
If bad guys don’t wear shorts, then a representative of a firm retained by the teachers’ organization to elicit feedback from its conferences wouldn’t either. I wore summer khakis, a white shirt, and a blue blazer. I was six deep in the queue at the taxi stand at Lauderdale when I shed the coat and rolled up my sleeves. The stiff in front of me had on a dark suit and cuff links. He glanced over his shoulder. His suit was buttoned, and his knot was tight under a gold collar bar. A real corporate storm trooper. I thought they were extinct.
Pompano Beach was a short drive up I-95. The cabbie, a young, bearded man from Turkey, was glad that LeBron James had gone home to Cleveland, even though the cabbie himself had no intention of returning home. He took the East Atlantic exit and dropped me off in front of Brazen-head’s. Wherever you go on the surface of the globe, there is a piece of Ireland. Never have so few people spread so much joy to so many as the Irish. Brazenhead’s had Guinness on draft and a toboggan run of a bar that, according to the laminated sign, was from a shuttered hotel in Dublin.
Vizcarrondo was upstairs at a two-top that fronted a double-hung, open window at the far end of the room. I strode over to him. A framed picture of girls in psychedelic dresses and ringleted wigs, some in midair in a step dance, hung above his head next to the dark-stained window trim. He wore shorts and a green polo shirt. Lucky guy.
I shed my jacket and draped it over the back of my chair, which inconveniently faced north. Vizcarrondo was halfway through a beer so dark it would block the sun on a clear, bitterly cold January day. We exchanged pleasantries.
“Please, just Rondo,” he insisted. “That’s been my handle since my first group of junior high buds.” Rondo had an osprey nose and slivers of uncut hair that begged for scissors. The right hinge of his glasses was held together by tape.
The humidity climaxed in a downpour. I reached for the window. “We’ll be fine,” he said. “There’s a big overhang. Unless it goes horizontal on us, we’ll stay dry.”
How many times had he sat there in order to confidently make such an observation? The waiter dropped by. Rondo caught me checking out his beer.
“Think less of you if you don’t,” he said.
“I’ll have what he’s having.”
He flicked his eyes up at the waiter. “Don’t let me see the bottom.”
As the rain formed a liquid curtain a few feet to my right, I apologized to Rondo for realizing that I was out of business cards. I kept it short; I’d been told that I didn’t lie well. I explained that the Florida Teachers Association was soliciting suggestions on how to make the conference even better next year.
“You do that face-to-face? I already got an e-mail. Five pages of questions.”
“And what did you do with that?” The beers arrived, each with a one-inch head.
“Deleted it.”
I spread my hands. “As does nearly everyone. You, being the moderator—”
“But you’re sending someone to interview April as well.”
“April?” I feigned ignorance.
“Woltmann.”
“Guess I didn’t draw that name.”
News travels fast. I glanced at his hand. No ring. Were he and April Woltmann an item?
“We’re just an outsource firm hired by the FTA,” I said, forging ahead. “I won’t argue with you; that’s some budget they have. If you don’t mind.” I opened my notebook. On the jump across the interior scrubland, I’d jotted down some questions. I didn’t want to spend any more time than necessary on my fictitious assignment but wanted to ease into my questions regarding Renée Lambert.
I took Rondo through a litany of questions and had him rate a few items on a one-to-five scale. Standard trash about the accommodations, communications, what we could do better, and feedback he’d received from others. The rain stopped, and the noise with it. The sun illuminated our cozy upstairs alcove. I glanced at my pad and up at Rondo. His glasses were slightly crooked, as if the tape wasn’t quite up to the task. Time to dive in.
“We were unable to locate one of the individuals with whom you shared the table, a Renée…” I glanced down at my pad. “…Lambert.”
“Don’t know much about her.”
I felt my posture weaken. He finished his first beer and, in a continuous movement, picked up the second and took a sip.
“Do you know how we can contact her?”
“No. I’ve been with WAP for five years. She’s fairly new. You see her? I’m telling you,” he shook his head “she’s a beautiful woman. Smart, too. That’s the thing, you know. For some reason she kept to herself. Not married. No kids. Not that any of that’s a prerequisite for WAP; it’s just that the most common type we draw is someone whose kid’s been bullied and verbally abused.”