(5/10) Sea Change

by Robert B. Parker

  “Wasn’t she cold?” Jesse said.

  “Who, Missy Hot Bottom? I don’t know. Why?”

  “You said it was cool.”

  “Well, hell,” Coca said. “I’m not even sure what weekend. All my weekends are pretty lively. But I’m pretty sure nobody was swimming.”

  “So the bikini was for effect.”

  “Sure, those two assholes don’t do anything except for effect. For crissake, some of my important guests left because of them.”

  “And how do you know them?” Jesse said.

  “Their sister.”

  “Florence?”

  “Yeah. Now there was a babe. She was even wilder than the twins, but she had a little class. You know? She never offended any of my guests. And she could hold her booze.”

  “She brought her sisters to party with you?” Jesse said.

  “Not this year, they came on their own, but yeah, they used to come with her. Hell, they were still jailbait when they started coming here. The jailbait twins.”

  “They get along?”

  “Sure. It was like Florence was showing them the ropes. Like she was breaking them in.”

  “Lot of sex at your parties?” Jesse said.

  “Hey,” Coca said. “What about privacy here. I’m entitled to my privacy.”

  “I don’t care if your guests had carnal knowledge of a vending machine,” Jesse said. “I’m only interested in my case. Anything you tell me is off the record.”

  “Well, sure. There’s usually some sex at a big weekend party, you know? Why wouldn’t there be? I think it’s one reason Flo brought her sisters. Learn their way around, in a safe environment.”

  “Safe environment?” Jesse said.

  “Yeah. There’s always a good class of people at my parties. Good place for young girls to, you know, grow up.”

  “Even when they were jailbait?” Jesse said.

  “Not with me,” Coca said. “But yeah. There’s guys like them young. It wasn’t like anyone’s first time.”

  “Any idea where anyone might have lost her cherry?”

  “Got me,” Coca said. “Flo told me they weren’t virgins.”

  “Know where they were headed when you gave them the boot?” Jesse said.

  “Nope. They packed up, and my driver took them into the city and dropped them.”

  “Where?”

  “He said he took them to the Peninsula Hotel.”

  “And this would have been the beginning of June?”

  “Yeah, sure, first week or so for sure.”

  “And you haven’t heard from them since?”

  “No. What’s this all about, anyway? What’d they do?”

  “Just routine stuff, Mr. Coca, names came up in a case here.”

  “Flo involved?”

  “Indirectly,” Jesse said.

  “Well, Flo had more class, but they’re all crazy. Whole goddamned family was crazy, Flo said.”

  “Whole family?”

  “Yeah. That’s what she used to say.”

  “Any details?”

  “No, just that they were all crazy. That the money had ruined them all.”

  “You think she was including her parents?” Jesse said.

  “She never said. All of them seemed kind of hung up on the old man.”

  “How so?” Jesse said.

  “What am I, fucking Dr. Phil? They just talked about him a lot. Daddy this, Daddy that. Like he mattered.”

  “Parents do,” Jesse said.

  “Yeah. I’ve heard that.”

  “Can you think of anything they said about Daddy?”

  “You listen to those fucking twins for long, your brain fries,” Coca said. “You know what I’m saying? I worked my fucking ass off not to pay any attention to them. Mostly they fucking giggle.”

  “So you can’t remember an example.”

  “What’d I just say, for crissake.”

  “That you can’t remember an example,” Jesse said. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Coca. I may call back in a few days, see if anything has occurred to you.”

  “I hope not,” Coca said.

  After he had hung up the phone Jesse sat in his office and swiveled his chair aimlessly. Then he swiveled back and picked up the phone and called Kelly Cruz.

  48

  Kelly Cruz sat in the small living room of Kimmy Young’s apartment in Coconut Grove.

  “How’d you find me?” Kimmy said.

  “Vandersea alumnae office,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “God,” Kimmy said. “They never lose you, do they? CIA ought to use them.”

  Kelly Cruz smiled.

  “Let me tell you why I’m here,” she said.

  “Yes ma’am,” Kimmy said.

  “My name is Kelly Cruz, I hope you’ll call me Kelly.”

  “I’m Kimmy.”

  “Okay,” Kelly Cruz said. “We have that settled.”

  Kimmy was blond, of course. Everyone is blond, except Detective Cruz. She was pretty but overweight, and she had a cheerful manner.

  “You know Corliss and Claudia Plum,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “I went to school with them.”

  “And did you inform them of their sister’s death?”

  “Flo?”

  “Florence Horvath.”

  “She’s dead?” Kimmy said.

  “She is.”

  “My God!” Kimmy said.

  “I’m guessing that you didn’t inform them of Florence’s death.”

  “God, no.”

  “So how did they hear of it?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen them in years.”

  “Really?”

  “Years. Not since I was, like, fifteen.”

  “And you are?”

  “I’ll be twenty-one in August.”

  “And are you in school?”

  “I’m going into my senior year at U. Miami.”

  “Your family lives in Sarasota?”

  “Yes. That’s the last time I saw the Plums. Before we moved.”

  “And that was in?”

  “Ah…senior year at Vandersea. I was seventeen.”

  “So you haven’t seen them since you were seventeen,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “No.”

  “But you said fifteen.”

  “Well, I didn’t see much of them for a while before then.”

  “I understood that you were pretty good friends.”

  “Not really.”

  “I heard you used to sleep over sometimes. That seems like friends.”

  “I only did it a couple of times.”

  “When you were fifteen?”

  “Yes.”

  The room seemed very quiet. Kimmy didn’t look at Kelly Cruz. There was no longer any hint of cheerfulness. She suddenly seemed almost furtive. Kelly Cruz could feel a click inside, as if something had snapped into place, and a connection had been completed.

  “What happened when you were fifteen?” Kelly Cruz said.

  Kimmy looked at the floor and shook her head slowly.

  “Something happened,” Kelly Cruz said.

  Kimmy kept shaking her head. Kelly Cruz paid no attention. She knew she was right.

  “Florence Horvath died under suspicious circumstances,” Kelly Cruz said. “Up in a town outside of Boston. I’m helping out on this end of the investigation.”

  Kimmy neither looked up nor stopped the slow movement of her head.

  “Before I came over here, I talked on the phone with the police chief up there. He said that maybe I should be alert for things involving Mr. Plum.”

  Kimmy stopped shaking her head. Her shoulders hunched up as if to protect her neck. Kelly Cruz had seen abused children before. She knew at a level she didn’t understand that what happened had to do with sex.

  “Did anything happen involving Mr. Plum?”

  Kimmy stood and went to the bathroom and closed the door. Kelly Cruz heard the lock turn. She waited. Nothing happened. After a time she went to the bathroom door.
/>
  “Kimmy?” she said.

  “Go away.”

  “Can’t do that, Kimmy.”

  “I won’t come out,” Kimmy said.

  “Sooner or later you will,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “I won’t talk about it.”

  “You have to, Kimmy,” Kelly Cruz said. “You want to spend the rest of your life with the door locked?”

  Kelly Cruz waited. Kimmy didn’t speak. The door didn’t open.

  “Kimmy?” Kelly Cruz said. “Are you all right?”

  Silence.

  “Kimmy, I have to know you’re all right, and the only way I can know that is if you open the door and talk to me.”

  Silence.

  “I’m concerned for your welfare,” Kelly Cruz said. “Either you come out now, or I kick the door in. I’m a cop, I know how to do that.”

  Silence.

  Kelly Cruz backed off two steps and drove her heel into the door next to the handle. She could hear the jam tear. The door slammed open and she went in. She didn’t see Kimmy. She pulled the shower curtain aside. Kimmy was sitting in the tub with her knees up and her face pressed against them.

  “Come on, Kimmy,” Kelly Cruz said. “Get up.”

  Kimmy didn’t move. Kelly Cruz bent over and put her hands under Kimmy’s arms and tried to lift her.

  “Up you go,” Kelly Cruz said.

  Kimmy was dead weight.

  Kelly Cruz felt her neck. The pulse was okay. She was breathing. No sign that she had tried to hurt herself. She was just inert. Kelly Cruz tried again to lift her and failed.

  “Shit,” Kelly Cruz said.

  She went to the living room and picked up the phone and called for help.

  49

  Kimmy Young never told the Plum girls about Florence Horvath’s death,” Kelly Cruz said on the phone.

  “So how’d they know?” Jesse said.

  “I don’t know,” Kelly Cruz said. “But there’s more.”

  “Okay.”

  “Kimmy and the twins used to be pals, and Kimmy would go and spend the night and listen to records and giggle about boys.”

  “Un-huh.”

  “When I asked her more about that she freaked out. I had to get the paramedics. We took her to the hospital and the doctors got her tranqued enough to be calm but not asleep and I talked with her.”

  Jesse felt hollow.

  “Un-huh,” he said.

  “With drugs, she could talk about it. One night while she was there the old man molested them, and tried to include her.”

  “Shit,” Jesse said.

  “My thought exactly.”

  “She give you details?” Jesse said.

  “Yes.”

  Jesse waited. He could hear Kelly Cruz breathing.

  “I hate this,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “I don’t like it much, either,” Jesse said.

  “They were all lying on a bed in the twins’ bedroom, sideways, across it, you know. Looking at some snapshots, and he came in wearing his bathrobe and closed the door and sat on the bed with them and began to pat Kimmy and his bathrobe fell open and exposed him and Kimmy was like, paralyzed.”

  “How old?” Jesse said.

  “Fifteen,” Kelly Cruz said. “And he said he always kissed his girls good night and because she was a guest he’d kiss her, and he kissed the daughters and then her, with his tongue. And she started to cry and he put his hand under her skirt and she said no and clamped her legs and started to cry and he said maybe he could show her how easy it was, and he proceeded with the twins.”

  “Touching?” Jesse said.

  “Fucking,” Kelly Cruz said. “She wanted to run, she said, but she lived across town and she couldn’t get home without a ride. And the twins were telling her not to be a baby and…”

  “He did it,” Jesse said.

  “Yes.”

  “In front of his daughters,” Jesse said.

  “And when he got his rocks off, he got up and thanked her politely and left the room. She ran in and took a shower and got dressed, and called her father and he came and got her. She told him that she’d had a fight with the twins.”

  “How did the twins react to all of this?” Jesse said.

  “Kimmy says that’s part of what made it so awful. They seemed to take it in stride—so he banged you. He bangs us, too.”

  “She ever tell anyone?” Jesse said.

  “No.”

  “She know if he molested Florence?” Jesse said.

  “She doesn’t know.”

  “But it’s likely.”

  “Very,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “What happens to her now?”

  “She’ll spend the night,” Kelly Cruz said. “Talk to a shrink tomorrow afternoon, and they’ll decide.”

  “Notify her parents?”

  “She doesn’t want them to know.”

  “Maybe they should know anyway.”

  “This part of the case is mine, Jesse,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “And you are going to honor her wishes.”

  “I am.”

  Jesse was silent.

  “I’ll stay on it, and I’ll keep you informed,” Kelly Cruz said. “But I’m going to protect this kid as much as I can.”

  “It’s the right thing to do,” Jesse said.

  “Thanks.”

  Again they were both quiet.

  “There’s something wrong with that man,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “Mr. Plum?”

  “Yes. You haven’t seen him. He’s disconnected. You think maybe it’s Alzheimer’s or something, but he socializes. He plays tennis. He’s not suffering dementia that I can see. Drinks a ton. They both do.”

  “Mr. and Mrs.?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think she knows?”

  “Yes.”

  “But doesn’t know what to do?”

  “That’s my guess,” Kelly Cruz said. “She said to me the other day that they had been gutted by wealth. Her phrase, gutted.”

  “Money doesn’t ruin people,” Jesse said. “They ruin themselves. Money just helps them to spread the ruination around.”

  “I never had money,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “Me either, but I’ve seen it in action.”

  The soundless energy of the open phone line lingered between them as they sat silently for a long moment.

  “You stay on it,” Jesse said.

  “I will,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “I thought it couldn’t get worse,” Jesse said.

  “And now it has,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “Big time,” Jesse said.

  50

  Your problem,” Dix said, “is you’re scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of the relationship. You were burned pretty badly, and now you are leery.”

  “Once burned,” Jesse said.

  “What’s your biggest fear in the relationship?”

  “I’ll fuck up again, and lose her again.”

  Dix smiled.

  “And if she fucks up?” he said.

  Jesse frowned.

  “Molly said almost the same thing,” Jesse said. “For free.”

  “What did Molly say?”

  “She said maybe the breakup was Jenn’s fault.”

  Dix nodded.

  “Was it?” Dix said.

  “I guess in any breakup there’s two people at fault.”

  “That sounds good,” Dix said. “Do you believe it? Viscerally?”

  “No. I‘m pretty sure I drove her away.”

  Dix nodded and leaned his head back and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. Then he looked at Jesse.

  “You are co-opting the responsibility,” Dix said. “Bad things happen. If it’s your fault, then you can hope to prevent it in the future by not making the same mistake again. But if it is her fault, wholly, or partly, then you can’t prevent it. You have to depend on her, wholly, or partly, to prevent it.”

  Jesse didn’t say anything for a time. Dix wait
ed. Jesse nodded to himself. Dix was right.

  “It’s about control,” he said.

  “You could think of it that way.”

  “And trust.”

  “If warranted,” Dix said.

  “And the sexualization stuff?” Jesse said. “That would be part of the control thing?”

  Dix sighed.

  “I think that’s a paper tiger,” Dix said. “I think you’ve clung to it as a way of keeping the responsibility. If you are ever-alert, and don’t sexualize the relationship, then you won’t lose her.”

  “So why we been talking about it?”

  “I think you will be able to better integrate her past sexual indiscretions into your life,” Dix said, “if you spend less time thinking about her in exclusively sexual terms. It might bring you some peace. But I doubt that it was the cause of the breakup, or would cause one now. What you describe is mostly a healthy libido.”

  “It is?”

  “Sure,” Dix said, “and your fears have been exacerbated by the case you’re working on in which control and loveless sexual objectification is rampant.”

  “And that’s why the case matters so much.”

  “Probably,” Dix said.

  “So how do we fix this?”

  “You stop being the way you are,” Dix said.

  “Like that?”

  “Sure, like that. You think this is voodoo? If you’re doing something self-destructive, sooner or later you have to decide to stop.”

  “So what the hell do you do?” Jesse said.

  “I help get you to where you can stop.”

  “And you think I’m there?”

  “Hell, yes,” Dix said. “You are a tough guy. You can do what you decide you have to do. You’ll either trust Jenn, or accept that you don’t, and see what that brings.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “So all you’ve done is get me ready,” he said.

  Dix smiled at him.

  “Readiness is all,” he said.

  51

  Two uniformed state troopers, one of them female, brought the Plum sisters into Jesse’s office. Molly followed them in.

  “Captain says we should wait for instructions from you,” the male trooper said.