(5/10) Sea Change

by Robert B. Parker

  “That’s the other thing we thought,” Claudia said.

  “Which was?” Jesse said.

  “Maybe Daddy sent it,” Corliss said.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Daddy’s odd sometimes,” Claudia said.

  “We thought maybe he sent it to Harrison to embarrass Flo,” Corliss said.

  “He didn’t know that it wouldn’t?” Jesse said.

  “I think he thought Flo had a nice upper-class wealthy beau,” Claudia said.

  “He thought we did, too,” Corliss said.

  “What were you afraid Daddy would do if he found out you had hired a private detective to investigate him?” Jesse said.

  “We thought he’d kill us,” Claudia said.

  She looked at Corliss. They both nodded.

  “Who told you about your sister’s death?” Jesse said.

  “Mom,” Corliss said.

  “So why did you tell me Kimmy Young told you?”

  “Kimmy?” Claudia said.

  “We told you Kimmy?” Corliss said.

  “Yep.”

  “God, why would we do that?” Claudia said.

  “That was what sort of tore the cover off,” Jesse said.

  “We were scared,” Corliss said. “I guess we just said a name.”

  “We were afraid if we told you Mom, that would sort of lead you to Daddy,” Claudia said.

  “Because you didn’t want to get him in any trouble,” Jesse said.

  “Yes,” Corliss said.

  “We love him,” Claudia said.

  “And he loves us,” Corliss said.

  “And you were afraid he might kill you,” Jesse said.

  “Daddy gets so mad sometimes,” Claudia said.

  They looked at each other again and nodded.

  59

  Kelly Cruz met Jesse at the gate in the Miami airport. She had a short black haircut and a wide mouth and nice posture. Her ass was, in fact, perky. She was wearing white heels and white slacks and a blue linen jacket and holding a handmade sign that said STONE. Jesse was glad that she was good-looking. They shook hands and he followed her outside where they got into a maroon Crown Victoria parked under a no-parking sign in front of the terminal. Kelly Cruz got into the front beside the driver. Jesse got in back.

  “Jesse Stone,” Kelly Cruz said. “Raymond Ortiz.”

  The driver turned and said hello.

  “Raymond works Homicide,” she said. “Here in Miami.”

  “Nice to have an official presence,” Jesse said. “In case we want to arrest somebody.”

  “That’s me,” Ortiz said. “Official presence.”

  “How you want to handle this?” Kelly Cruz said as they headed east from the airport on the Dolphin Expressway.

  “My usual approach,” Jesse said, “is to blunder in and shake the sack and see what falls out.”

  “Works for me,” Ortiz said.

  “It’s your case,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “But you know the people,” Jesse said. “Got a suggestion?”

  “The wife’s ready to pop,” Kelly Cruz said. “The old man is buried so deep inside somewhere that I got no clue on him.”

  “And the help’s nowhere,” Jesse said.

  Kelly Cruz shook her head.

  “Nowhere,” she said. “Working for the Yankee dollar. Got no other interest.”

  “You’re Cuban,” Jesse said.

  “My mother is,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “And Raymond.”

  “Si,” Raymond said in a parody Latino accent.

  “And that doesn’t help.”

  “Not a bit,” Kelly Cruz said. “About as much as you being a gringo will help with the Plums.”

  “Gringo?” Jesse said.

  “I’m trying to sound authentic,” Kelly Cruz said. “I was you I’d go for the mother, and how the pervert killed her daughter.”

  Jesse nodded. Kelly Cruz glanced at her watch.

  “Eleven-fifty,” she said. “They’ll be drinking by the time we get there.”

  “Good or bad?” Jesse said.

  “Doesn’t seem to have much effect,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “We’re expected,” Jesse said.

  “We are, if they remember,” Kelly Cruz said.

  The valet service knew a cop when they saw one. Nobody offered to take the Crown Vic, and nobody objected when Ortiz parked it right in front of the main entrance and got out. In the lobby, Ortiz showed his badge to the concierge. She called upstairs, and when they got out of the elevator at the penthouse, the maid was waiting for them at the front door of the Plums’ vast condo. She led them through the unruffled living room to the terrace where the drink trolley had been wheeled into place, and a small buffet was set up.

  Mrs. Plum, in a frothy ankle-length turquoise dress, was reclining on a chaise. Mr. Plum, wearing a white shirt and white linen slacks, sat erect in his chair near her head. Both were drinking Manhattans. Jesse stared at the father. You son of a bitch.

  60

  Ortiz’s only duty was to add jurisdictional presence where Jesse and Kelly Cruz had none. They declined to eat. Ortiz accepted a large plateful of assorted tea sandwiches and ate them quietly, leaning his hips against the railing of the terrace, and sipping mango iced tea from a glass he balanced on the top rail. Kelly Cruz sat opposite the Plums in a white satin chair with no arms. Jesse remained standing.

  “Chief of police,” Willis Plum said. “That’s quite an achievement.”

  Jesse ignored him.

  “Mrs. Plum,” he said. “A while ago you told Detective Cruz your husband had taken a trip at the beginning of June, and it appeared that you were mistaken.”

  “I often am,” Mrs. Plum said, in a tone that didn’t mean it.

  “Good news,” Jesse said. “You were right. He didn’t go to Tallahassee. But he was in the Boston area the first week in June.”

  She looked quickly at her husband.

  “I knew I was right,” she said.

  Mr. Plum shook his head.

  “He’s wrong, Mommy,” Plum said gently, “just like you were.”

  “He has an E-ZPass transponder on his car,” Jesse said. “It’s compatible with the Fast Lane system in Massachusetts. He was driving on the Massachusetts Turnpike the first week in June.”

  “Transponder,” she said.

  “The car goes through the no-toll lane and is electronically recorded. Toll is charged to your credit card.”

  “The thing on the windshield,” Mrs. Plum said.

  “It is useful almost everywhere north of Washington,” Mr. Plum said. “I drive often to New York. It is a great timesaver.”

  Jesse showed no sign that Mr. Plum had spoken.

  “So when you thought he was off to Tallahassee to open the new store,” Jesse said to Mrs. Plum, “he was, in fact, driving up to Boston to see Florence.”

  Mr. Plum spoke in the same gentle voice.

  “What he’s saying is wrong, Mommy.”

  She stared at him for a moment. He sat very erect, his ankles together. He drank his Manhattan carefully and patted his lips with a napkin. Jesse thought he looked prim.

  “Mommy,” Mr. Plum said.

  “Do you have any theory, Mrs. Plum,” Jesse said, “why he went up there?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Do you have any theory on why he pretends he didn’t?”

  “I never went, Mommy.”

  Mrs. Plum didn’t look at her husband. She kept her gaze fixed on Jesse.

  “No,” Mrs. Plum said. “I don’t.”

  The room was silent. The sky was very blue above the terrace. The bay beyond the terrace looked clean and bright.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Mr. Plum said.

  Mrs. Plum stared at Jesse. Jesse walked over to the railing and leaned on it beside Ortiz. Mr. Plum poured himself a Manhattan from a silver shaker beaded with moisture. He offered the shaker to Mrs. Plum who shook her head. She sipped from her still-sufficie
nt glass.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Mr. Plum said.

  Ortiz ate his sandwiches. Kelly Cruz sat with her legs crossed, her hands clasped over her right knee. Jesse waited. No one spoke. Slowly Mrs. Plum shifted her gaze from Jesse to her husband. He smiled at her.

  He said, “It’s going to be all right, Mommy.”

  She continued to look at him. He sat calmly with his Manhattan delicately held with thumb and forefinger. His face was toward her, but he didn’t appear to be looking at anything.

  “You are a monstrous pig of a man,” Mrs. Plum said to him.

  Her voice was calm and the tone was simply the assertion of an obvious fact.

  “Mommy,” he said, “please. Not in front of guests.”

  “You killed her,” Mrs. Plum said. “Didn’t you.”

  “Mommy,” he said again in his pleasant detached way, “please let’s mind our manners.”

  “She sent you the tape and you went into a jealous frenzy and drove up there and killed her.”

  “Tape?” Mr. Plum said.

  “You think I don’t know about the tape? You think I didn’t recognize her handwriting when it came? You think I didn’t find it in your study while you were out? You think I didn’t play it? You think I don’t know about you?”

  Her voice went slowly, almost ploddingly, up the scale until she was almost screaming.

  “That tape was private,” Mr. Plum said.

  “Private?” Mrs. Plum’s voice was down into calm again. “That is my daughter.”

  “And mine,” Mr. Plum said. He seemed still to be looking at nothing. “It was private between me and my daughter.”

  “Whom you have been fucking since she was thirteen,” Mrs. Plum said.

  Mr. Plum suddenly looked at her.

  “Mommy,” he said firmly, “don’t be crude.”

  She stared at him and then looked at Jesse and Ortiz, then at Kelly Cruz.

  “He’s been doing it since they were little girls,” she said to Kelly Cruz. “All three of them. We never talked about it. Maybe he thought I didn’t know, but I knew.”

  “And did nothing?” Kelly Cruz said.

  “He had money and we were well situated,” Mrs. Plum said. “He made no demands on me. It was easier to drink.”

  “Not for the girls,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “I loved those girls,” Mr. Plum said. “And they loved me.”

  “And you destroyed them,” Mrs. Plum said. “And now you’ve killed Florence.”

  “Betsy,” Mr. Plum said. “Please. Can’t this wait until our guests have departed?”

  Mrs. Plum finished her Manhattan. With no apparent thought, Mr. Plum refilled her glass. She began to cry silently.

  “See him,” she gasped. “See him? That’s what he’s like. He’s like a reptile. He doesn’t hear. He doesn’t feel. He has no body warmth.”

  Kelly Cruz nodded.

  “I am not a reptile, Betsy,” Plum said. “I am a man with the feelings and impulses of my gender.”

  “And you killed Florence,” Mrs. Plum said.

  Her voice was beginning to soar again.

  “You killed Florence because you were jealous that she was having sex with other people.”

  “The tape was insulting,” Mr. Plum said.

  “And you killed her.”

  “She betrayed me, Betsy.”

  “And you killed her,” Mrs. Plum said. “Say it. Say you killed her. Say something for once in your weird reptilian existence, say something true. Say…you…killed…her!”

  “You can’t know,” Mr. Plum said. “None of you can know how I loved those girls.”

  “Which is…why you…killed her?”

  Mrs. Plum struggled to speak.

  “You…loved her so…much…you killed her?”

  “I killed her to keep her from becoming worse than she had become,” Mr. Plum said. “I really had no choice.”

  He picked up the silver shaker, found that it was empty, put it down and rang the little bell for the maid.

  61

  Kelly Cruz turned her drink slowly on the bar in front of her. She was drinking Jack Daniels on the rocks.

  “So what about Darnell and Ralston?” she said to Jesse.

  They were sitting at the bar in Jesse’s hotel. Jesse was drinking a Virgin Mary. Kelly Cruz had on a black dress with spaghetti straps and a skirt that stopped above her knees. She had a nice tan. A small black purse lay on the bar beside her drink.

  “We busted them yesterday, for statutory rape.”

  “Will it hold in court?”

  “We got Darnell on videotape.”

  “Righteous tape?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “How about Ralston?”

  “If our witness holds,” Jesse said.

  “She might not?”

  Jesse shrugged.

  “She’s a kid,” he said.

  “Think they’ll do time?”

  “Not my area,” Jesse said.

  “What do you think?” Kelly Cruz said. “Cop to cop.”

  Jesse smiled.

  “I don’t think about that,” he said. “Too many variables. How good is their lawyer? How good is the prosecutor? Will their sexual history be admitted? Will they plead out?”

  “Probably,” Kelly Cruz said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “No jail time,” Kelly Cruz said.

  Jesse shrugged.

  “I arrest, they prosecute,” he said.

  Kelly Cruz looked at Jesse’s Virgin Mary.

  “Drinking problem?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “How long you been sober?”

  “I haven’t had a drink going onto a year,” Jesse said.

  “Miss it?”

  “Yes.”

  “My husband was a drunk,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “You divorced?”

  Kelly Cruz nodded.

  “Know where he is now?”

  “No,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “How are the kids?”

  “Good,” she said. “Two boys. We live with my parents. My father’s a good father for all of us.”

  Jesse finished his Virgin Mary and gestured for another one.

  “No wonder you got a problem,” Kelly Cruz said. “You’ll drink a lot of anything.”

  “Vitamin C,” Jesse said as the bartender set the new drink in front of him.

  “Why do you suppose Willis Plum sent the videotape of his daughter to Darnell?”

  Jesse shook his head.

  “He’s way past anything I understand,” Jesse said.

  “Maybe he thought it would embarrass her,” Kelly Cruz said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “Maybe he was sending it to her, you know, dismissing it by returning it,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “Blondie Martin says it was addressed to Darnell.”

  “Maybe he did it because he’s a whack job,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “Not such a whack job that he flew up there and left a paper trail with the airlines,” Jesse said.

  Kelly Cruz drank some bourbon.

  “You going home tomorrow?” Kelly Cruz said.

  “Yeah. Paperwork’s done. I’m supposed to take him back with me.”

  “Got anyone waiting?” Kelly Cruz said.

  “My ex-wife,” Jesse said.

  “You have an ex-wife waiting for you?”

  “We’re trying to rework things,” Jesse said.

  “How’s that going?”

  “So far,” Jesse said, “so good.”

  “Plum girls are home, staying with their mother,” Kelly Cruz said.

  “Good,” Jesse said.

  “Think anything good will happen to them?” Kelly Cruz said.

  “Probably not,” Jesse said.

  “Father’s gone,” Kelly Cruz said. “They’re with their mother.”

  “Who is not a real lot better than their father,” Jesse said.

  “No,” Kelly Cruz said.

&nb
sp; “You did a hell of a job on this,” Jesse said.

  “I know.”

  “A lot of it on your own time, I suspect.”

  “Some,” Kelly Cruz said. “On the other hand, I met a nice marina manager, and a very fine private pilot.”

  “Good,” Jesse said. “I’m glad you profited from the experience.”

  Kelly Cruz finished her drink and stood.

  “Got a date with the pilot,” she said. “It’s his turn. The marina manager has already profited from the experience.”

  Jesse stood. He left his Virgin Mary half consumed on the bar.

  “Thanks, Kell,” he said. “You’re a hell of a cop.”

  She turned toward him and gave him a light kiss on the mouth.

  “You’re pretty good at the job yourself,” she said. “Good luck with the ex-wife.”

  “And you with the pilot,” Jesse said.

  Kelly Cruz stiffened her upper lip over her teeth and did an imitation of somebody. Bogart, Jesse thought. Maybe.

  “Ain’t a matter of luck, blue eyes,” she said, and picked up her purse.

  With her left hand she patted his cheek. He put his hand over hers for a moment. She was wearing a really nice perfume. They stood for a moment like that, then she took her hand away and he stood and watched her walk out of the bar.

  If there’s luck involved, it’ll be the pilot’s.

  62

  It was cool and rainy in Paradise. The boats were gone. The harbor was back to its normal maritime clutter. Jenn had made a meatloaf, and baked two potatoes. Jesse had tossed a salad. They sat now at the small table in the kitchen and ate supper together. Jenn opened a bottle of Riesling.

  “Aren’t you supposed to have red wine with meatloaf?” Jesse said.

  “I think with meatloaf you can have what you want,” Jenn said.

  “That’s one of the good things about meatloaf,” Jesse said.

  “Another being that I know how to make it,” Jenn said.

  The apartment was quiet. Through the open door to the balcony they could hear the rain fall.

  “I think we’re doing good,” Jenn said after a time.

  “Yes.”

  “How are you?” Jenn said.

  “Good.”

  “And that hideous case is over,” Jenn said.

  “For me,” Jesse said.