He stood in the doorway, spying on her suite. The artwork, the bedding, the heavy red wallpaper, all showed tropical birds. An overhead skylight cast a circle of light on the bed. There was no clutter in the room and nothing personal except for a photograph on the baroque nightstand of Diane’s son Drew and another photo from childhood of Diane with Cab’s mother. He saw no photograph of Birch Fairmont.
Cab headed for the end of the hallway, where white-carpeted stairs led to the first floor. As he descended the steps, he found himself face to face with an attractive woman heading in the opposite direction. She had alabaster skin and long, highlighted chestnut hair. Her face brightened as she saw him.
‘Mr Bolton, there you are,’ she said.
‘Here I am.’
‘Your mother said you were upstairs. I’ve been looking for you.’
Cab smiled warily. ‘Oh?’
‘My name is Caprice Dean. I’m the executive director of the Common Way Foundation. Tarla probably mentioned that I wanted to speak to you tonight.’
‘Actually, she didn’t,’ Cab said, ‘but I’m usually the last to know when it comes to my mother.’
Caprice laughed. ‘I understand how that goes.’
‘What can I do for you, Ms Dean?’
‘As it happens,’ Caprice said, ‘I want to hire you.’
*
They sat in a gazebo in the gardens, where the foliage made a quiet grove. Cab had counted at least fifty people in and around the estate, but the trail that led here was hidden from prying eyes. They both had champagne, fizzing with bubbles. The octagonal shelter was open to the air and situated in the flow of a damp bay breeze. Fountain grass bowed between the pillars.
‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ Caprice said. ‘It’s so secluded here. That’s what Diane likes about it. You could believe the city doesn’t exist at all. Mind you, the barbarians are inside the gate tonight.’
‘You mean the media?’ Cab asked.
‘Obviously,’ she replied with a smirk.
‘Well, if Diane values her isolation so much, why did she run for governor?’ he asked. ‘Politicians don’t have a zone of privacy anymore. She knows that.’
Caprice nodded. ‘You’re right. It’s open season on candidates these days. Honestly, we argued about it for a long time. I didn’t think she should do it. I thought we should recruit someone else to be in the spotlight.’
‘So why did she?’ He smiled. ‘I assume it wasn’t solely the counsel of Garth Oakes.’
Caprice laughed. ‘You’ve met Garth, have you? I’m not a fan, but Diane likes him. No, the campaign was Diane’s call all the way. She felt it was her responsibility to lead the ticket.’
‘Why were you opposed?’ Cab asked.
‘Oh, don’t get me wrong. I thought we should be in the race, too. We’ve spent ten years at the foundation advancing our agenda from the outside. Influencing the debate. Supporting and opposing specific candidates. Now we’re ready to get into the game.’
‘In other words, the Governor is politically weak this year, and you hate the idea of a staunch conservative like Attorney General Cortes landing in Tallahassee.’
‘That’s true, too,’ she acknowledged.
‘Diane is ahead in the polls,’ Cab pointed out. ‘Isn’t that a good thing?’
‘It is, but there are also crazies who want to paint a target on her chest. Just like Birch.’
‘You think she’s at risk?’
‘I do. That’s why we’d like your help.’
‘Oh? What kind of help?’
Caprice didn’t answer right away. She pushed her champagne glass in a small circle on the marble table between them. A ringlet of lush brown hair fell across her forehead, and she brushed it back. Her eyes examined him curiously. ‘You know, Tarla warned me about you.’
‘Did she?’
‘Yes, she said you were the least ideological person on the face of the earth.’
‘Guilty,’ Cab said.
‘So you don’t understand.’
‘Understand what?’
‘Why all of this matters.’
She said it intensely, with a serious face. She was passionate, just like Lala. He wondered why he found himself drawn to women who were so different from himself. Women who wore their hearts on their sleeve. Women who followed a cause with flags held high. Cab was nothing like that, but Caprice was obviously a true believer, and the truth was, he found her very attractive.
It was partly her looks. Younger, she would have been pretty; mature, nearing forty, she was beautiful. She had a smooth, soft face and dark, inquisitive eyes. He liked the whiteness of her skin, which was so un-Floridian. She was obviously comfortable with her body, which was fleshy in an erotic way, not stick skinny. She wore a midnight-blue dress that afforded a view of her strong legs well above her knees and of the swelling curves of her full breasts. She had an open, unflinching stare, not at all shy, not girly or cute. Her directness was as appealing to him as her physical features.
‘It’s not that I don’t care,’ Cab said.
‘You just think all politicians are the same.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Well, we’re not.’ Caprice stood up and moved to the opposite side of the gazebo. Her movements had grace. She turned around, leaning back on the stone ledge. ‘I was a political science major at UCF. I hated both parties, and I still do. They’re all about ideology, not common sense. My boyfriend, Lyle, he felt the same way. We were both ambitious. We committed ourselves to the idea of an independent, centrist party that would truly compete against the Republicans and Democrats, not simply be a spoiler movement. With Birch’s campaign, we thought we had taken the first step.’
‘I’m sorry. I know what you lost that day.’
‘With all due respect, Mr Bolton, you don’t. I’m sure your mother told you what we went through on that dais, but you can’t understand what it’s really like to lose someone you love, to stand there covered in his blood and brains.’
Cab didn’t reply. This wasn’t a game of tit-for-tat, but in reality, he had lost someone he loved in a violent way, too. On a beach outside Barcelona, he had come face to face with a woman named Vivian Frost. He had never fallen so naively head-over-heels in love with anyone like Vivian, and he knew he never would again. He’d given up everything for her, including his job with the FBI, only to discover that she was partnered with a terrorist – that she’d been part of a conspiracy that led to the deaths of twenty-seven people in a bombing at a Spanish train station. She’d lied to him. Manipulated him.
There, on the beach, he’d shot her in the heart.
He knew what loss was like.
‘Something like that changes you,’ he said, joining her on the other side of the gazebo.
‘Yes, it does,’ Caprice agreed. ‘Diane and I started the Common Way Foundation that same year. The violence outraged people around the country, and they supported us financially. The assassination was an attempt to silence what Lyle and Birch tried to do, and the foundation honored them and their principles. We stayed outside the process, but we took sides. We put a thumb on the scale. We pushed candidates and policy, and we didn’t hesitate to rip both parties for their unwillingness to tell the truth. We learned our lesson.’
‘Which was?’
‘Play hardball,’ Caprice said.
‘Hardball. Is that why you hired a dirty tricks specialist like Ogden Bush for Diane’s campaign?’ Cab smiled and added: ‘I may not be political, but I do read the papers, you know.’
Caprice winced at the man’s name. ‘Ogden was Diane’s choice, not mine.’
‘Still, he’s a Democrat with a reputation for running fiercely negative campaigns, isn’t he? Doesn’t that fly in the face of your “we’re not all the same” speech?’
‘I suppose you could say that,’ she agreed. ‘Ogden fell out with the Dems a couple years ago, so he sells himself to the highest bidder. He was helpful to us on voting rights legislation last yea
r. I didn’t think we wanted him on the campaign, but Diane thought he could help her make inroads with liberal voters. In politics, we can’t always be particular about who we sleep with.’
She leaned closer to him. Their shoulders brushed together.
‘So what do you need me for?’ he asked.
‘I told you, Mr Bolton, I want to hire you.’
‘Call me Cab,’ he said.
Caprice’s face softened. ‘Okay. That’s an unusual name. Why Cab?’
‘Tarla was in a deli eating stuffed cabbage when her water broke.’
‘How cute. Is that true?’
Cab smiled but didn’t reply. He had no idea what was true. Tarla had never told him. Just like she had never told him who his father was. He’d made up stories over the years to fill in the gaps.
‘You don’t look much like any detective I’ve ever met,’ Caprice went on. ‘Do most Naples detectives have spiky hair like that?’
‘It’s a pomade from London.’
‘I like it. The diamond earring?’
‘A gift from a wealthy older woman.’
‘And how tall are you? Eight feet?’
‘About that.’
‘Your suit looks like it costs what I make in a month at the foundation.’
‘About that.’
‘You don’t apologize for having money, do you?’
‘No. It is what it is. Tarla’s wealthy, and she made me wealthy, which means I can do whatever I want. In my case, that usually means dealing with people doing ugly things.’
‘Which is why I want to hire you.’
‘I already have a job,’ Cab said.
‘Actually, I talked to your lieutenant in Naples. He didn’t seem too upset to let me borrow you for a while.’
‘I don’t imagine he would be. He doesn’t think I look much like a detective, either. Unfortunately, talking to my lieutenant behind my back makes me inclined to say no to whatever you have in mind. I don’t like being manipulated, Ms Dean. That may be how things work at the Common Way Foundation, but it doesn’t work with me.’
‘Hear me out,’ Caprice said, with a soft grip on his arm as he turned to leave. Her fingers were warm.
Cab shrugged. ‘What do you want?’
‘Diane’s in jeopardy. I’m worried someone’s planning another assassination attempt.’
‘Hire a bodyguard.’
‘I have.’
‘So why do you need me?’
‘I want you to find out what really happened ten years ago,’ Caprice said, ‘and whether it could happen again.’
‘The FBI concluded that a right-wing militia group was behind the assassination. Its leader, Hamilton Brock, is in prison.’
‘For tax fraud,’ Caprice said, ‘not for murder. No one talked, and they never determined exactly who pulled the trigger. The militia is alive and well even with Brock behind bars. You think he can’t direct things from inside his cell?’
‘Talk to the police. The FBI.’
‘I’ve done that, and they’re looking into it. However, one thing I’ve learned at the foundation is that we get better results when we do things ourselves. I don’t want third parties I can’t control. I want my own man.’
‘You think you can control me?’ Cab asked.
‘I’d like to try,’ Caprice replied, with a double entendre that neither of them missed.
Cab felt heat on the back of his dress shirt. ‘I don’t do security.’
‘Security’s not what I want. I want to know who wore that hood and pulled the trigger. Who killed Birch and Lyle? That’s the only way we can stop them.’
‘You’re talking about digging into a ten-year-old crime after a massive investigation turned up nothing,’ Cab said. ‘There were no witnesses. There was no gun, no DNA. The militia stonewalled. This man was a ghost. I’m not sure why you think I’d be able to make inroads where the FBI failed. Besides, you’re making a big leap. If there really is a credible threat against Diane today, chances are it has nothing to do with the past.’
‘Sometimes it takes fresh eyes to see clearly, Cab. And I’m not wrong about the threat.’ Caprice carried a satin clutch that matched her dress. She undid the clasp and reached inside. She withdrew a folded piece of paper and handed it to Cab. ‘This arrived at the foundation last week.’
Cab unfolded the paper. It was a copy of a newspaper article from ten years earlier, featuring a photograph taken at the Bok Sanctuary in the wake of the murders. He saw bodies prone on the dais. Police. Shell-shocked survivors, including his mother, Diane, and Caprice, all of them ten years younger and ten years more innocent.
Someone had written across the photograph in a blood-red marker.
I’m back. Miss me?
3
City of Tampa.
The mural, like an oversized picture postcard, was painted on the brick wall of an ad agency building across the alley between Franklin and Florida Avenues in the northwest corner of downtown. Peach saw it every day when she squeezed her two-tone 1980s-era Thunderbird into spot 52. Each block letter spelling out the city’s name featured a cartoon rendering of a different local tourist attraction. The Sulphur Springs Water Tower. The Plant Museum.
Places she’d never found time to visit.
The window was open, letting in the heavy evening air, making her clothes damp. Peach didn’t mind; she hated the cold and loved the heat, even during the ferocious summer days. She stared at the mural, wondering why she’d never visited the Plant Museum in the years she’d lived here. Justin had told her once that the bronze sculpture of the Spinning Girl inside the museum looked like her, with her hair cut way up her forehead, her far-away eyes, and her breasts as shallow as Florida hills. She figured she should go see the sculpture sometime and see if it spoke to her. Maybe, in another life, she’d been the artist’s model. Peach was a firm believer in reincarnation.
She left the engine running and turned on her radio. She hadn’t felt like listening to music these past two weeks, but she could go for some Train or Bruno Mars or even Adele, although she was pretty much over Adele now. She punched the channel for the satellite pop blend, but instead of her sad songs, she heard some awful, screechy opera in a language that was probably German or Russian, where the words needed a lot of spit.
Justin.
Justin with his Beethoven T-shirts. He’d switched the channels on her radio again, and she was only finding out now. I’m telling you, Peach, there’s not a note of music worth listening to that was written after 1849.
She shut off the radio and got out of the car. Next to her T-Bird, in spot 51, was a ten-year-old silver Mercedes SL convertible. For its age, it was in perfect condition, washed every week, sporty engine purring at eighty miles an hour on the back roads. Her brother Deacon babied it, just the way their older brother Lyle had. She ran the pad of her little finger along the chassis. Smooth. Lyle would have been pleased that the two of them still owned the car.
He’d only owned it for a month before …
Before.
Peach had been thinking about the past again. She’d been reminded two weeks ago how many people had been stripped out of her life. At age eight, she’d been orphaned when her parents died on a missionary trip in Colombia. At age twelve, she felt as if she’d been orphaned again when a soldier of the Liberty Empire Alliance gunned down her oldest brother Lyle, along with Birch Fairmont.
Now she was twenty-two, although people usually mistook her for a teenager. Now it had happened again. Another death. Another loss.
Peach felt numb.
She peered down the city streets. It was early evening, but it was June 29, a Friday, and it would still be light for hours. The streets weren’t busy. There wasn’t anything to bring out the after-work crowd in this sleepy section of the city. By habit, she checked the windows and balconies in the nearby apartment buildings to see if anyone was watching her. Deacon said she was paranoid, but she couldn’t stop. When she decided she was alone, she veered across
the parking lot to the office door.
The location of CWF Research was a drab, mostly windowless building with a brown metal roof. Half the building was vacant. The rest of the space was taken up by a cubicle farm owned by the foundation. She let herself in through double-wide doors on the side of the building facing Florida Street, only a block from the 275 freeway. The number was 1100, but the last zero had slipped sideways, making it look like an eye examining the traffic.
Peach hated being in the office. The space was claustrophobic, with dirty white paint on the walls. She didn’t like being inside, sitting at a desk, making phone calls, clicking keys on a laptop. She liked the old ways of doing things. Paper. Film. At home, she didn’t even use a computer or a tablet.
Once anything about you is digitized, you don’t own it anymore. Soon you don’t even own yourself. Justin.
She wanted to be where the people were. There was safety in numbers. She was desperately shy and had no real friends, but she liked watching people, studying them, analyzing them, listening to them. That was what she did best. Humint, Deacon called it. Human intelligence. Peach was their oppo girl. She was the one they sent when they needed someone who could blend into a crowd and come back with evidence of what their enemies were saying.
Peach didn’t like thinking of other people as enemies, but that was what they were. They had proven that over and over again.
Inside the office, she stared over the beige fabric walls of the cubicles. She heard the cacophony of voices and the rattle of keys. It was campaign season, and everyone worked late. She followed the building wall toward her brother’s office. The wall was taped over with news about politicians and policies. It was a low-tech bulletin board where researchers shared information that didn’t necessarily make it online. Gaffes. Issues. Photographs. Things they could use against people.
Season of Fear Page 4