The Dark of Day

by Barbara Parker

  Beyond the window nothing moved. The streetlight put shadows across the yard. The lamp reflected in the window, and he could see a blonde woman watching him from the sofa. Rick had kept these things from her for too long, and it felt good to let them go.

  He turned around. “Do you believe me?”

  “Yes.” She nodded quickly. “Go on.”

  “Investigating a story like this takes time. Larry and I had patience, but Alana was worried Milo would find out. She was the only one who knew what Milo was doing. He used her to find other girls. I told her to calm down. I needed her. I’d paid her four thousand dollars, and she owed me. I should’ve stopped it.”

  “You couldn’t have predicted—”

  “I knew it was dicey. I would really like to find out who killed her. I would like that a lot.”

  “I talked to Harnell Robinson.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That Milo asked to park his car in the driveway that night. It would be safer there. That’s what Milo told Harnell. It makes sense,” C.J. said.

  “You can’t see Milo as our bad guy.”

  “No.”

  Coming away from the window, Rick sat on the other arm of the sofa, facing C.J. “I still say he had a reason.”

  C.J. shrugged. “So did Paul Shelby. Alana could have decided to blackmail him.”

  “I thought about that, but I had his car. He wouldn’t have left the party with a woman not his wife. There were too many people around. I know the potential for violence when I see it, and he doesn’t have it. He wouldn’t even hire it done.”

  “Anyone can turn violent if pushed.”

  “Alana wouldn’t have gone that far. She wouldn’t have blackmailed a United States congressman. That’s not an easy target. But yes, I did think of him. Milo wanted Alana to bring a girl that night, someone Shelby could check out and see if he liked. Alana hadn’t decided if she would or not. We had planned to meet, but she never showed. When I found that girl passed out in the backyard, I thought she might have been the one intended for Shelby. This girl was a runaway from Pensacola. I got her name and address off her driver’s license, but I didn’t tell you because first I wanted to see what she knew. There wasn’t enough evidence against me, so I took a chance on not using her for an alibi. I talked to her, and—” He shook his head. “She didn’t know anything about it.”

  C.J. stared at him for a while, then laughed and dropped her head to her knees. “Kylie Willis.”

  “Do you read minds?” he asked. “How do you know her name?”

  “Her parents are Fran and Bob Willis. Fran was a friend of my mother’s. Kylie isn’t a runaway. She came to Miami for a weekend and decided to stay. She met Alana Martin and got herself a fake ID and became Alana’s party pal. I wasn’t aware of this until Fran called me and asked me to send Kylie home. Kylie said she’d been at Billy’s that night. She never mentioned you.”

  “I asked her not to. I was undercover.” Rick tried for a smile, but C.J. gave him a look that would have cut steel. “I didn’t dump her out on the street. I never did that. The night I took her home, I walked her to the lobby of her building. I saw her twice after that. She wanted to be paid for information about Alana, but she didn’t know anything. I gave her a hundred and eighty dollars for her time. It was all I had on me. She comes off as a little tough, but I think it’s a front. She said she was adopted. One reason she came to Miami was to feel closer to her birth parents. They died in a car crash. She says she might be walking down the street and find a cousin. She wants to be a journalist. How about that?”

  “Yes, how about that. You’ve been quite an example.”

  “Give me a break, will you? Where is Kylie now? Is she all right?”

  “I hope so. She has an apartment and a job on South Beach. Her mother doesn’t want me to have anything to do with her, so I’m keeping my distance.”

  “Why?”

  C.J. reached for her water glass. “It’s complicated. Would you give me some water, please?” He walked over to fill her glass and hand it to her. She asked, “Do I look horrible?”

  “For a lady with a hangover, you’re not bad.”

  “It’s the last hangover I will ever have.” She glared at him as if he might say something. She held the glass on her knees. “Do you remember my asking you if Alana had ever talked about adult movies? Kylie told me something. She said Alana tried out for what she believed was a feature film, but she was too skinny for the part, so they asked her to try out for an adult movie, playing the role of an underage girl. It was never made, and Alana wanted to get her audition tapes and destroy them. She wanted the tapes because she thought if they turned up on the Internet when she got to Hollywood, she’d be ruined. Judy tracked down the producer, a man named Harold Vincent. Alana didn’t tell you any of this?”

  “Not a word of it.”

  “Vincent confirmed that his company was doing the DVD. The reason he wouldn’t give the tapes to Alana is that she didn’t ask him nicely enough. She threatened to go to the police, but she had signed a release, so she was stuck.” C.J. hesitated a moment, then said, “Billy Medina introduced Alana to Harold Vincent at a party in the Bahamas. Billy had taken the entire staff of Tropical Life to Paradise Island. Vincent owns a travel company in Miami, and they bought ad space, so he was invited. Billy asked Alana if she wanted to meet someone in the movie business. That’s how Alana hooked up with Vincent, through Billy.”

  “I wasn’t aware that Alana worked for Billy Medina.”

  “Not directly, and not for more than a few months,” C.J. said. “She was in advertising. He let her go because she wasn’t doing her job, that’s basically it. I only learned about this yesterday. I was expecting to find something pointing to Harold Vincent as the guilty party, but Judy is certain he had nothing to do with it. She knows him from Las Vegas. The man actually has a conscience. He’s going to destroy the tapes so her parents never find out.”

  C.J. leaned over to put the glass on the table. “Mr. Slater. Despite the fact that you lied to me—”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Pay attention. You are still my client. I should go over to the Miami Beach Police homicide department and tell them everything I just heard, but not yet, not until you are completely in the clear. Detective Fuentes wants to know about the boat. Will Carlos Moreno make a statement on your behalf?”

  “No problem.”

  “I need his phone number. Tell him that Judy Mazzio is going to call him to set something up. I believe this time it will work.” C.J. looked around. “Did she bring my robe down here?”

  “You need to get up?”

  “I have to go to the bathroom. Turn around. Please?”

  He turned to face the dining room and heard a shifting of blankets and sheets.

  “Are you still working on the story?” C.J. asked.

  “Yes. I have enough to make a good start. With what Larry Everts has, we can keep going, keep looking into it, even without Alana.”

  “Will you leave me out of it?”

  When he turned around, C.J. stood there with the sheet wrapped around her, holding the fabric to her breasts. Her bare feet showed where the fabric overlapped at the bottom, and the rest of the sheet trailed behind her. One of the straps of her nightgown had fallen off her shoulder. She said, “Rick? Will you?”

  “Will I what?”

  “Leave me out of the story. I have nothing to do with Alana, and you don’t need Kylie in it either.”

  “You’re right. There’s no reason to mention you at all.”

  She nodded and walked past him, moving for a moment into the lamp light. He wasn’t sure at first what he saw, but he reached out and stopped her. There were four purple ovals on the pale skin of her upper arm. “What is this? This. These bruises.”

  She tried to see. “I don’t know. I must have bumped into something.”

  “No, these are finger marks.” He looked more closely. “And a thumb print on the other
side.” He lined them up with his own fingers. “Smaller than mine, but definitely a man’s hand. Who was it?” She pulled, but he held on. “Who did this?”

  “I don’t know. I was drunk. Maybe I fell and someone grabbed me.”

  “Bullshit. Who is he, C.J.? Are you afraid I might break the guy’s neck?”

  “Stop being such a Neanderthal!”

  “Yeah, maybe you’d better not tell me.” He let her go. “Did Billy Medina do that to you?”

  “No.” She walked toward the hall, her sheet billowing behind her.

  Rick followed. “Were you over at his house drinking?”

  “Leave me alone, Rick.”

  “Was it Medina?”

  “I said no!”

  “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”

  She kept going, closing the bathroom door and turning the lock.

  chapter THIRTY-THREE

  C. J. swept up the glass from the broken headlight and emptied it into a heavy plastic bag. She collected the chunks of concrete and stucco that her BMW had knocked off the corner of the house. Judy Mazzio had just brought her home from taking the car to a body shop. Repairs were going to put a thousand-dollar dent in C.J.’s checking account. Edgar had said she could drive his car in the meantime.

  Rick had left at dawn, politely declining Edgar’s offer of pancakes and eggs. C.J. had gone back to bed, leaving only Judy to share breakfast with Edgar.

  At the moment, Judy was leaning against the old Buick’s fender in the relative cool of the carport, talking on her cell phone to Carlos Moreno, arranging a time to meet him. He would sign the statement that C.J. had drafted and printed in her office upstairs, in which he would swear that it was not unusual for Richard Slater to borrow his boat on a Sunday morning. With luck, this might put Slater in the clear. C.J. had already phoned George Fuentes, and he’d said he would look at it. He was working another homicide and expected to be around the Beach until God only knew when. Just fax it, he’d told her.

  C.J. tied the bag and carried it over to the trash can. She was sweating. Her sleeves were too long for this weather, but she wanted to hide the bruises on her left arm. Judy hadn’t asked, which meant she hadn’t seen them. C.J. adjusted the clip holding up her hair. The humidity was thick enough to suck through a straw. Rain was predicted for later in the evening. There was not the slightest breeze. It seemed that the earth was holding its breath, waiting.

  Judy slid her cell phone into the pocket of her capri pants. “We’re meeting at five-thirty at a Cuban restaurant on Southwest Eighth. Carlos said Rick would meet us there. Come with me, why don’t you?”

  “No, I want to give him a few more days to forget the sight of his attorney lying on the bathroom floor, smashed out of her mind.”

  “He took good care of you last night. All I had to do was get you into your nightie. I thought maybe I’d find you both tucked into bed when I woke up. Don’t give me that look. He’s a lot sexier than Señor Wonderful, in my humble opinion.”

  C.J. smiled. “I’ll let you know.” She was reaching for the handle on the side door when she saw a small brown car cruising by. She muttered a curse under her breath, and Judy turned around to look.

  The car stopped, and Nash Pettigrew leaned out the window. “C.J.! Is that where you crashed your BMW? The body shop says it looks like you ran into a wall. Were you drunk?”

  Judy started toward him, but C.J. grabbed her arm and pulled her back. “You don’t want your face on the cover of a tabloid.” C.J. yelled back at him, “Have a nice day, Mr. Pettigrew.”

  “I will!”

  Judy fumed, “I’m going to shoot that little bastard some day.”

  “No, you won’t.” C.J. held the door open for her.

  “You’re awfully mellow today.”

  “It’s the Xanax. I couldn’t bear the hangover.”

  “Yeah, well, when you’re on CNN, you can tell Nash Pettigrew and the rest of them to go straight to hell.”

  C.J. went inside and closed the door. “I’m not taking the job. I called CNN and said I couldn’t do it.”

  “You what?” Judy squinted as if she hadn’t heard.

  Walking ahead of her into the kitchen, C.J. said, “I had to make a choice. Be a lawyer or be a part of the info-tainment circus that I’ve come to despise. I refuse to sell out.”

  “Sell out? What the fuck?” Judy’s eyes pursued her. “Hosting that show was all you ever talked about. Are you running scared? Is that it? Have they finally gotten to you?”

  “It isn’t that.” C.J. took her hands, hesitated, then shook her head. “We’ll talk about it later. Please?”

  “Okay.”

  Opening the refrigerator, C.J. found a bottle of root beer. “You want this? I’ll share it with you.”

  “No, thanks.” Judy was still staring at her, waiting to hear an explanation.

  C.J. looked in a drawer for the bottle opener. “Judy, I’m going to accept your offer to find Kylie.”

  “You’re worried about her and Milo, aren’t you?”

  “I think she has more sense than that, but yes. God, I would love to go straight to the police. The girls are supposedly over eighteen, but it’s still prostitution, and if they were drugged, it’s rape.”

  “What do you use for proof?”

  “That is a problem.” C.J. opened one drawer after another for the bottle opener. Someone had done too good a job cleaning the place. A vase of freshly cut yellow croton leaves was on the table. The dishes had been washed and put away, and the floor mopped. Coming downstairs at noon, C.J. had nearly wept from gratitude.

  “Rick could tell the police what he knows,” Judy suggested.

  “No, I don’t want him saying anything until we get Fuentes off his back. I keep wavering between being a lawyer and wanting to forget my client so I can tear Milo’s throat out. Rick thinks Milo is guilty of murder. I can’t see it, but I just don’t know.” C.J. found the opener. The other end was a corkscrew. She stared at it for a while, then slowly unfolded it.

  Judy said, “I think you want to use the bottle opener part.”

  C.J. turned around. “Do you remember that photograph in the paper of the piece of metal found with Alana’s body? Do you have time to fax it to me? Now?”

  After Judy left, C.J. ran up to her office and went online to find every Mercedes dealer and upscale auto upholstery shop in the Miami area. She started calling and got a hit on the fourth one. The name of the shop was Wunder-Kar. Vunder. They specialized in luxury German makes.

  C.J. parked Edgar’s Buick across the street and walked through the gate in the high chain-link fence. One of the workers, a Hispanic man in his twenties, said there was no way he could let her into the shop. She tucked a fifty-dollar bill into his shirt pocket. After looking around to see who might be watching, he said he would have to stand by the car and make sure she didn’t damage anything.

  The garage smelled of leather and oil. The ceiling lights gleamed on chrome and expensive paint jobs. The other men barely nodded when her new friend said she owned the Mercedes limo and had to look for something. The front seats had been taken out, but the passenger area hadn’t yet been touched. The man told her to hurry up. In her white cotton slacks, C.J. slid across the backseat.

  From the ceiling hung the bizarre little lamp that Milo had bought in Berlin, made of antique doll’s heads and halogen lamps on metal rods that curled in long silver spirals. From her purse C.J. withdrew the fax that Judy had sent. She held up the page and compared the photograph to the lamp. The sharp point of a coil of metal had been embedded in the duct tape around Alana Martin’s headless torso, but the metal had not come from this lamp. The rods were too long and too shiny, and all six of them were still firmly screwed into the base.

  C.J. folded the page, put it back into her purse, and found the small but powerful flashlight she’d brought with her. Two weeks ago, there had been a blanket of fake leopard skin across the backseat. What could it have hidden? C.J. passed the beam
of the flashlight over every square inch of the backseat, the brown leather worn with age, the holes where some of the stitching had come loose.

  She crawled on the floor, picking at the carpet. She pulled down the jump seats. She opened the door in the bar and let down the shelf, finding a corkscrew. The shape in the photograph was more like this, but even this wasn’t right.

  Finally, exhausted, she sat in the middle of the floor, thinking.

  A tap came on the window. C.J. got out and asked the man to open the trunk. She saw a tire jack, a box of brochures for The Aquarius, and dust. She turned off her flashlight, thanked the man, and left.

  The fifty dollars would have been a waste except that she felt slightly better about Milo.

  Starting the Buick, she had to pump the gas to get it going. Sweat dripped down the side of her face, and she wiped it on her sleeve. Clouds completely hid the sun, but it didn’t matter. The air conditioner was as feeble as its owner. C.J. took her cell phone out of its pocket and hit the speed dial for Billy Medina, thinking as she did so that she needed to find some other person to correspond with button number five.

  “Hello, chica.” His smooth baritone filled her ear. “To tell you the truth, I’m a little surprised to hear from you.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, Billy. Last time we spoke I was pretty shaken up. Not every day you see a man who’s hanged himself. Thanks again for the rescue. So. Are you busy later on?”

  “No. What’s up?”

  “Could I come over?”

  “Oh, is this the ‘we need to talk’ talk?”

  “Not at all.” She didn’t want him to think he could take her to bed, but honesty would end the conversation. “Aren’t you leaving for Antigua tomorrow? Let me come say good-bye. Bring you some takeout?”

  “Well, actually, I have a meeting at the Delano for cocktails, but I’ll be home about eight o’clock. Is that too late?”