Season of Fear

by Brain Freeman

  ‘I like your music,’ Brent said.

  ‘Whatever,’ the girl replied. She replaced the earphone before Brent could say anything more. Walter smiled, and Brent looked deflated. The girl was good with a brush-off.

  The odd thing was, as the doors closed, Walter studied the girl and thought: I’ve seen you before.

  *

  Peach Piper tugged the black wig off her head and shoved it inside her satchel purse along with her iPod.

  Her real hair was blond, cut super-short in a page-boy style that barely swished across her freckled forehead. She whipped off her sunglasses. Her eyes were Atlantic blue. She yanked her tank top over her head – no bra – unzipped her short-shorts and shivered in the elevator in nothing but purple bikini panties. Eyeing the elevator buttons, she dug a Magic Kingdom T-shirt and loose white cargo pants out of her purse and practically jumped into them. She replaced her flip-flops with Crocs and her cross earring with a big gold hoop.

  When she was done, she grabbed a crushable nylon backpack from inside the purse, squeezed the purse and her clothes inside, and shrugged the backpack onto both shoulders just as the elevator doors opened on the tenth floor. A black woman and her young son boarded the elevator, and the boy looked at Peach and giggled and whispered to his mother. Peach realized that her cargo pants were unzipped, and she discreetly tugged the zipper up as she pushed the button to return to the lobby.

  The doors opened on the sixth floor again to let on two more convention delegates. She noticed with fleeting concern that Walter Fleming and Brent Reed remained in the hotel hallway. Fleming’s back was to her. That was good, because the old union boss was the one Peach was worried about. He was smart and observant. Brent Reed was just a moron. He looked right at her in the elevator, and Peach gave him a big toothy smile, and he was completely oblivious.

  He hadn’t recognized her from the bar the previous night, either, when she was a redhead in a little black dress. Or from the food truck near the riverfront, when she was a Marlins fan with a baseball cap and gold tracksuit.

  Peach rode the elevator down and wandered through the lobby. She exited into the hot June afternoon, jogged across the street through traffic, and made her way two blocks to a small park by the river. It was a perfect day, or as perfect as Tampa got during the sweaty summer, with a blue sky and Gulf breeze. She sat down on a bench between the palm trees, steps from the green water, and retrieved the Sony voice recorder from the side pocket of her satchel purse and plugged in her headphones. Rewinding, she listened to the elevator conversation between Fleming and Reed.

  Hey, sweetheart, rock me on the floor, okay? Man, that ass of yours could stop traffic.

  Moron.

  Peach ran through the recording three times and then dialed the office number for the Common Way Foundation. The foundation was headquartered in a high-rise bank building only a few blocks away, but Peach actually worked in the foundation’s opposition research department, which was squeezed into unmarked offices on the seedy end of downtown. The phone rang, and her brother Deacon answered on the second ring.

  ‘Hey, Fruity,’ he said.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Near the river. I’m coming back.’

  ‘How’d you do?’

  ‘Stalking Reed finally paid off.’

  ‘He didn’t make you, did he?’

  Peach didn’t answer.

  ‘Sorry, I know that’s an insult,’ Deacon said, and she could hear his smile. ‘So what did you find out?’

  ‘You better call Caprice and have her talk to Ms Fairmont.’

  ‘They’re already at the media schmooze-fest at Diane’s house. Is it important?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so. Walter Fleming is coming after us. I think he’s got some kind of spy inside Common Way.’

  ‘Well, we figured. Is that it?’

  ‘No, there’s more,’ Peach said. ‘Tell her the Governor is thinking about dropping out of the race.’

  2

  Cab Bolton watched from the second-floor balcony as Diane Fairmont put on her political face for the television interviewer. She looked at ease in the spotlight. Natural. Warm. Comfortable in her own skin. She sat in an ornate chair near the fringe of a pond in her Tampa mansion’s hilly gardens. Huge lily pads floated on the green water. A white swan lazily floated behind her and stirred ripples on the surface. Makeup people hovered around Diane like flies, making sure her skin didn’t sweat, making sure she had the right flush for the camera.

  The interviewer, an Asian man in his twenties, gestured at the swan and said something that made Diane laugh. Her smile looked sincere, and her dark eyes glittered with intelligence. She was in her mid-fifties now, like Cab’s mother. She wore her golden brown hair in a sensible bob, shiny but not showy. Simple pearl earrings, but no other jewelry. Her suit was dark – serious, reliable – but her blouse was light blue – friendly, inviting. She kept her hands neatly folded in her lap and her legs pressed together. The entire look had probably been poll-tested.

  Cab was surprised at how easily Diane had adopted a public image, because the woman he knew from his past had been a lonely introvert, hiding her emotional wounds. He wondered if her new persona was an act, but he was willing to believe that people didn’t always stay the same as they aged. It had been a long time since he’d seen her. Their paths hadn’t crossed since he spent a week at Birch Fairmont’s house in June ten years earlier, during the summer that changed everything.

  The summer that ended on Labor Day in death and blood.

  He leaned on the white stone balcony, which was framed by columns that graced the front of the estate. The gardens below were lush with palm trees, weeping willows, gnarled oaks, and overgrown saw palmettos. Bronze sculptures of herons and fish dotted the lawns, and fountains sprayed out of the ponds like canopies. Through the web of greenery, he could just see the asphalt of Bayshore Boulevard beyond the estate walls and the calm water of Hillsborough Bay. They were inside the urban boundary of the Tampa peninsula, but this was a private world, carefully secluded from outside view by a stone wall and thick, carefully pruned hedges.

  Even so, politics demanded that Diane invite the media to a meet-and-greet. Voters needed to size up their future governor. Hence the dark suit and sensible heels and understated appearance. Hence the softball questions from sympathetic talk-show hosts about her years as a single mother with a checkbook to balance. Yes, she was rich now, but she hadn’t always been rich, and her life had been marred by more than its share of tragedy.

  ‘Champagne, darling?’ a sparkling voice asked.

  His mother appeared on the balcony, surprising him. Tarla never gave any warning before she dropped into his life. She just appeared and disappeared. They’d arrived separately that evening at Diane’s gated estate. Cab had driven more than 150 miles along Florida’s west coast from his home in the beach town of Naples. Tarla lived much closer to Diane, on the top floor of a Gulf coast condominium in Clearwater half an hour away. He’d been looking for her since he got to the party, but Tarla was good at not being found until she wanted to be found.

  ‘Sure, why not?’ Cab said.

  He took a sip from the crystal flute that Tarla handed him. The champagne was superb: dry and effervescent. Diane could afford the best, and it didn’t hurt to make the media people a little drunk while they asked their questions.

  ‘Do you know why they call Florida the Sunshine State?’ Tarla asked, with a wicked little arch of her blond eyebrows.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because “Waiting to Die” looked like crap on the license plates.’

  Cab rolled his cornflower-blue eyes. ‘Do you really want to be making jokes like that when your best friend is running for governor? The eighty-five million senior citizens around here might not appreciate your sense of humor the way I do.’

  ‘I’m practically a senior citizen myself, darling.’

  ‘Please,’ Cab told her. ‘You’re fifty-five, and you
look like Naomi Watts.’

  ‘Well, aren’t you sweet.’

  He wasn’t lying. Tarla had retired from the movie business several years earlier, but she still looked like a Hollywood star. In truth, so did he. Anyone could see they were mother and son: matching eyes, matching sun-bleached blond hair, both with sharp, angular faces. Cab was six-foot-six with a long neck that emphasized his height. He had a gangly walk, not always graceful but easy to remember. He kept his short hair gelled, making spikes that sometimes resembled a sea urchin’s shell. His nose was shaped like a ski jump, and he had a baby-smooth complexion that always looked as if he’d just shaved. He wore a one-carat diamond in his left earlobe, and he was particular about his tailored suits even on the most humid Florida day.

  He could blend in on Rodeo Drive or South Beach, but he didn’t really fit in at most crime scenes. That didn’t bother him. If people wanted to underestimate him because of his looks, it made his job easier. The trouble was, he knew that he really didn’t belong in the police world, as many of his colleagues regularly reminded him. He wasn’t sure if he belonged anywhere. At thirty-five, he was still figuring out what he wanted to be when he grew up.

  ‘I appreciate your being my date tonight,’ Tarla said.

  Cab grinned. ‘I wouldn’t miss it. Politicians and reporters are my two favorite kinds of people after serial killers.’

  ‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, Cab.’

  ‘And yet I stick with it,’ he replied.

  ‘It’s only two and a half hours from Naples to Tampa. Not such a long drive.’

  ‘More like two in the Corvette,’ he admitted.

  ‘Well, see? I don’t feel guilty. Unless I’m stealing you away from a romantic weekend with Wawa.’

  ‘It’s Lala,’ Cab said, ‘and you’re not.’

  ‘Ah.’ Tarla sipped her champagne and fixed her son with knowing eyes. Her blond hair, which had never sported a gray root in her entire life, tumbled around her shoulders in curls that were casually messy. ‘Everything still rosy there?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re fine. Sorry to disappoint you.’

  ‘Did I say I didn’t like her?’

  ‘You didn’t have to. She’s Catholic, Cuban, and Republican.’

  ‘I have no problem with Cubans, darling,’ Tarla replied, smiling.

  ‘We’re fine,’ he repeated. ‘Lala got pulled into a special assignment. I haven’t seen much of her lately. We talk on the phone now and then.’

  ‘Oh well, phone sex has its place in the world.’

  Cab rubbed his forehead in exasperation. ‘Seriously, Mother?’

  ‘I’m teasing, darling. My, you really are crabby tonight.’

  He drank his champagne without replying. He wouldn’t have admitted it to Tarla, but his relationship with Lala had been strained for weeks. Lala Mosqueda was his sometimes partner on the Naples Police and his sometimes lover. They’d begun a relationship several months earlier. Lala was not a casual fling and not into casual sex, and that was a terrifying prospect for someone like Cab who had spent a dozen years not trusting any woman who came close to him. They were opposites in almost every way: Lala small, dark, and intense, fiercely religious and conservative; Cab absurdly tall and bird-like, blond, and generally unserious about everything except his work. Particularly religion and politics.

  Even so, the two felt an attraction like magnets and steel. In the spring, Cab had traveled to Door County, Wisconsin, for an ugly, difficult murder investigation, and he’d spent much of the time driving the remote dirt roads, talking to Lala on his cell phone and realizing how much he missed her. When he came back to Naples, they’d tried being a couple again, but their relationship had been one step forward, one step back. It didn’t help that she’d been away from Naples and mostly out of touch for several weeks. It also didn’t help that his liberal, Los Angeles mother couldn’t understand the attraction between her Hollywood son and a rightwing Cuban cop.

  ‘Do you really think I look like Naomi Watts?’ Tarla asked.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘My breasts are bigger than hers,’ his mother said. ‘Of course, mine have had a little help along the way.’

  ‘I try not to think about it,’ Cab said.

  ‘Give me your honest opinion. Which one’s perkier tonight?’

  ‘Pass,’ he replied.

  Tarla laughed, a throaty chuckle that had made moviegoers and co-stars go weak in the knees for thirty years. Her body was still pencil thin; she worked out with the same frenzy she had when she was on screen. She leaned in and whispered, ‘You realize I’m kidding, right?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Fine, give me your glass, I will find us more alcohol.’

  His mother disappeared with a swish of apricot satin. Cab shook his head, because Tarla was Tarla, and there was nothing he could do to change her. He was still getting used to the idea of having his mother back in his life. For years, she’d lived in Hollywood and then London, while he bounced from the FBI to the police to private investigative work and back to the police in locales from Barcelona to Rhode Island. His inability to stay put had earned him the nickname Catch-a-Cab Bolton. However, he’d endured the sweaty Gulf coast for more than two years now: partly because he was tired of running, partly because of Lala.

  Three months ago, Tarla had concluded that Cab was finally putting down roots. She’d moved from London to Florida without so much as a phone call to warn him of her arrival. He’d still been on his investigation in Door County when she showed up at his condo to find Lala, nude, stepping out of his shower. Things had gone downhill from there between the two women in his life.

  He liked having his mother close to him, but he was also glad that he had convinced her to buy a Gulf-shore condo not far from Diane, rather than her original plan, which was to locate herself in Cab’s building in Naples. Two hours along I-75 between them was just about right. He also couldn’t blame his mother for all the trouble between him and Lala. He’d done a good job of pushing her out of his life.

  Cab watched Diane’s television interviews going on in the garden below him. He couldn’t hear any of the back-and-forth, but he knew it was all about politics, which to Cab was nothing more than the art of helping voters decide which candidate was the better liar. The young Asian host had finished, and another reporter – a woman with coal hair who made him think of Lala – was settling in to take her turn. In the pause, Diane’s gaze wandered, and her eyes met his in the dusky space between the lawn and the balcony. Her composure broke for only a moment. Ten years – it had been ten years. She nodded at him and gave him the smallest smile. He returned the acknowledgment.

  That was all; that was the moment he’d dreaded for so long.

  ‘She’s born for this, isn’t she?’

  He turned toward the voice, actually grateful for the interruption. A man joined him on the balcony. ‘I’m sorry?’ Cab said.

  ‘Diane. She’s so smooth with the press. I told her she should have jumped into the race ten years ago. She would have won in a landslide. Who knows where she’d be now? Hell, maybe the White House.’

  ‘Her husband had just been murdered,’ Cab pointed out.

  ‘Well, sure, that’s my point. She was a shoo-in.’

  The man craned his neck to stare up at Cab. Most people did. The man on the balcony was smaller by a foot, and he was forty but trying hard not to look more than thirty. His jet-black hair was tied in a long ponytail. He bulged with muscles, and he had a saddle-brown Florida tan. He was dressed in a black T-shirt, pastel green sport coat, white pants, and Topsiders with no socks. The big red button on his coat read, ‘Governor Diane.’

  ‘I know you, right?’ the man said. ‘You’re Tarla’s son, the detective.’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Garth Oakes,’ the man told him, jutting out a hand. He had a rock-hard grip. ‘I’m an entrepreneur. Fitness videos. You’ve probably seen my ads on TV. Beat The Girth … With Garth!’

  Sometime
s, living in Florida, Cab found himself wandering into a Carl Hiaasen novel. ‘Sorry, I don’t watch a lot of television.’

  ‘Hey, well, never mind. If everybody looked like you, I wouldn’t have a business, right?’ Garth cradled a mug of herbal tea in his hand, with the string of the tea bag dribbling down the side. Cab smelled cinnamon and clove. ‘I remember you from the bad old days in Lake Wales. You visited Birch’s place that summer, right? You’re like a giraffe, who can forget that.’

  ‘Most people say I’m more like a heron,’ Cab replied.

  ‘A heron. Yeah, funny. I see it. Anyway, I was around there a lot back then. I did massages and workouts for Diane a few times a week. Part-exercise, part-therapy. Me and her, we’re close. She really needed someone to talk to, you know? First there was Birch, and then she lost Drew a year later. One-two punch. That was rough, huh?’

  ‘No doubt.’

  ‘Me, I think it was worse losing her son than it was when Birch died. She spent hours crying on my shoulder. When she wasn’t crying, she was talking about taking down the fucking drug dealers. Make ’em pay. You don’t want to see that lady angry, I’m telling you. Not like I’m saying she wasn’t upset about Birch. I mean, your husband gets murdered, that’s a terrible thing, but Diane and Birch – well …’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘I don’t think Diane would be too happy to hear you talking like this, Garth,’ Cab pointed out.

  ‘Oh, hey, just between us boys, right? Diane and Tarla are besties. I figure you’re in on all of this crap.’

  Cab put a hand on the man’s shoulder. The fabric of the green sport coat felt cheap, like a thirty-dollar knock-off from a big box store. If Garth was selling fitness videos, he wasn’t selling many of them. ‘Excuse me, I have to go find my mother.’

  ‘Yeah, sure, good talking to you.’

  Cab left Garth on the balcony, sipping his tea and standing with his legs spread apart, like he owned the mansion. Inside, he found himself in a marble-floored hallway that stretched the length of the house. Double-wide doors led to a master bedroom. Diane’s room. She had purchased the bayside mansion a few years earlier, when she moved from the small inland town of Lake Wales to the large coastal city of Tampa. There were too many memories in Lake Wales, she’d told Tarla. She associated the town with her childhood, with Birch’s murder, with Drew’s suicide. In Tampa, she could start fresh, in an estate a short drive from the Common Way Foundation headquarters. The foundation, launched with millions donated in the wake of Birch’s assassination, had been the center of her life for a decade.