Season of Fear

by Brain Freeman

  ‘What were they saying?’

  ‘Couldn’t hear that. All I heard were their voices thumping in the walls. Must have been, I don’t know, fifteen or twenty minutes. Then …’

  ‘Then what?’ Cab asked.

  Gladiola eyed him and gave a little shiver. ‘Screaming.’

  ‘What was going on?’ he asked.

  ‘Weren’t too hard to guess. Mr Birch was walloping on his wife. It was something bad.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I froze,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how long it lasted, but then it went god-awful quiet. Few minutes later, Mr Muscles came in, looking all white, told me to get the hell out, not to say a word to nobody. That’s what I did.’

  ‘Did you tell anyone?’ Cab asked.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘When were you next in the house?’

  ‘Couple days, I guess. There weren’t no brunch. They cancelled it. I came around my usual day, and it was like nothing had happened. Ms Fairmont went out of her way to say everything was fine. She didn’t look fine, though. I mean, she sat in a chair and didn’t get up once while I was there. In her bedroom, too, the sheets weren’t the same. I always changed the sheets, but this time, somebody else did. Like, I don’t know, maybe there was something on them they didn’t want nobody to see.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like blood maybe.’

  Cab frowned. ‘What about Drew?’

  ‘He stormed in while I was there. Practically foaming at the mouth. High as a kite, swearing up and down about what a bastard Mr Birch was, how he was gonna blow his fucking head off. They got me out of there fast, but I heard what I heard. Oh, yeah.’

  ‘Except later you said you didn’t,’ Cab said.

  Gladiola looked nervously at her bare feet. ‘Like I said, why make trouble for people?’

  ‘Did they pay you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did they pay you not to say anything?’

  Her lips scrunched up. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Who paid?’ Cab asked.

  ‘Ms Fairmont. After the murders, when all the police were nosing around.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Thousand bucks. I shut my mouth fast.’

  Cab thought about it. The bribe may have been an innocent mistake on Diane’s part. She was protecting her son from police scrutiny and a media frenzy. Even if Drew wasn’t involved in the murders, the suspicion would have destroyed him. She was probably thinking about her fundraising efforts for the Common Way Foundation, too. A wife-beater didn’t make much of a martyr.

  Diane was already becoming a very practical politician.

  ‘And yet here you are,’ Cab said.

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘You’re talking. Telling me what happened. Why?’

  ‘Rufus said you was a detective,’ Gladiola said. ‘Figured somebody should know about this.’

  ‘Ten years later, you suddenly decide to spill your guts? While Diane Fairmont is in the middle of a campaign for governor? I find the timing of your crisis of conscience very convenient, Gladiola. Did you go to Diane looking for more money? Did she say no?’

  Her face flashed with anger. ‘I didn’t do that!’

  ‘What about your uncle? Did Rufus give you money?’

  She slapped the aluminum frame of the lawn chair, and the fox terrier yelped and bolted. ‘So what if he did? Rufus helps me out sometimes when he can. I got nothing!’

  ‘So what will I find if I go inside? A new flat-screen? An Xbox?’

  Gladiola said nothing, but he knew he was right.

  ‘I like that brand new airboat your uncle had, too,’ Cab went on. ‘Did Rufus think I wouldn’t notice that?’

  He stood up and smoothed his tie and slipped sunglasses over his face again, although it was nearly dark. ‘I really don’t like people playing games with me, Gladiola. Rufus sent you after me like a drone strike. He and his friends are out to embarrass Diane Fairmont. Tell him I won’t do his dirty work for him.’

  He headed for his Corvette across the mostly dead lawn.

  ‘I wasn’t lying!’ Gladiola shouted after him, her voice a loud screech. ‘It happened just like I said.’

  He didn’t look back. He jangled his keys on his finger.

  ‘Ain’t no game either,’ she went on, even louder. ‘You watch yourself, huh? That first boy, they killed him.’

  Cab stopped in his tracks. He pulled off his sunglasses. He slid his keys in his pocket, spun on his heels, and marched back up to Gladiola. She was small but defiant, staring up at him from the lawn chair.

  ‘What did you say?’ he asked.

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘Did you tell your story to someone else?’

  ‘Sure did. ’Bout a month ago. Boy was asking questions about Mr Fairmont and that last summer, just like you. I told him ’bout that weekend and what happened. He was real excited, he was. Said it could be something important. Now he’s dead.’ She put a finger to her head and pulled the trigger.

  ‘Who was he? What was his name?’

  Gladiola folded her arms across her chest, and her jaw jutted out insolently on her face. ‘Twenty bucks. ’Cause you thought I was lying.’

  Cab took his wallet and retrieved a fifty-dollar bill. He opened her hand, put it inside, and closed her warm fingers over it. He didn’t say a word, but his eyebrows arched in anticipation.

  Gladiola smirked, looking pleased with herself.

  ‘Weird-looking boy,’ she said. ‘Funny little round hat and one of those curly mustaches. Said his name was Justin.’

  22

  Peach waited with Annalie while she recovered from the assault by Frank Macy. The fear eased, and so did the nausea. Annalie disinfected the cut on her forehead. She was still in pain – her muscles ached, and her head throbbed – but now that she was safe, she wanted to be alone. Annalie, who’d come back after spotting a man in a red Cutlass staking out the parking lot, offered to stay with her. It took Peach until it was almost dark to convince her that she was fine.

  When she headed north on Gulf Boulevard in her Thunderbird, she noticed Annalie following in her Corolla, all the way to the east-bound turn-off at Walshingham Road. Typically, Peach would have turned there, too, on her way back to Seminole Park, but she didn’t want to be followed anymore, and she wasn’t ready to go home.

  She kept driving through Indian Rocks Beach and finally turned east. She was still dizzy, and the pain got worse as she drove. Twenty minutes later, she found herself on the Frankenstein bridge headed back to Tampa. It was dark by the time she reached the city streets. The car, almost without her guiding it, took her to Diane Fairmont’s estate. The dark water of the bay was on her left. Across the street, the house was invisible behind the wall and the overgrown trees.

  She got out of the car. Her skin was bruised and tender. She crossed Bayshore, and it never even occurred to her to walk down the side street to the main gate. Instead, she pushed into the brush and found a gnarled oak whose branches hung over the wall. Like a monkey, she climbed, swinging her legs onto the lowest branch and pulling herself up, setting off a loud exodus of birds. Twelve feet above the ground, she found a limb sturdy enough to support her weight, and she inched along the bough with the wall below her. When she was clear, she let her body dangle, and then she dropped. The ground was soft.

  There were no sirens or alarms. No running feet. She beat away the mosquitoes and stamped through the bushes until she reached the open grass. Garden lights sparkled like fairies. She heard the splashing water of a fountain. Something loud snuffled near the ground – a raccoon, which watched her with glowing eyes and a hunched back. Everything else around her was pitch black. The estate was fifty yards away, and Peach headed for the marble steps.

  She rang the bell, hearing rich Westminster chimes inside. A minute passed, and someone opened the door cautiously. She recognized Garth Oakes, who had his hand inside a coat, as if reaching for a gun. His clothes barely contained h
is muscles. His eyes pored over her and then narrowed with recognition.

  ‘You’re Deacon’s sister, aren’t you? What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘I want to see Ms Fairmont.’

  ‘How’d you get inside?’

  She didn’t answer. Garth let her in, and she kicked off her shoes, rather than track mud along the hardwood floor. She felt small and dirty in her torn clothes. He led her to a corner room, brightly lit, with piano music playing softly from hidden speakers. A wall of windows looked out on the gardens, but the exterior was dark. Diane Fairmont was inside. So was Caprice. They sat on opposite sides of a round table with laptops in front of both of them.

  Caprice assessed her condition with a single glance and got to her feet.

  ‘Peach, what happened to you? Are you okay?’

  Diane remained seated. She had half-glasses on her face, and she studied Peach from over the tops of the frames as if she were looking at a homeless waif who had dropped into her parlor. Peach realized what she must look like in her bedraggled disguise. She tried to talk and couldn’t. She felt overwhelmed. It had seemed so important to be here, and now she had no idea what to say.

  ‘You’re hurt,’ Caprice went on. ‘What’s going on? Does Deacon know you’re here?’

  Peach shook her head mutely.

  Garth and Diane traded looks across the room. ‘You want me to get her out of here?’ he asked.

  Caprice interrupted sharply. ‘Don’t be stupid, Garth. This girl works for me. Peach, do you want to sit down?’

  ‘No,’ she said finally. Looking around the elegant room, she decided that she didn’t belong here. ‘No, he’s right. I’ll go. I don’t know why I came.’

  ‘Something happened to you. What is it?’

  ‘I just wanted to ask Ms Fairmont something,’ she stuttered. She looked at Diane and found the question spilling out of her. ‘I wanted to know if Justin was working on a project for you when he was killed.’

  Peach didn’t know what she expected. She didn’t know what Diane would say. She had no idea how much it would hurt when Diane looked at her blankly and said, ‘Who?’

  She didn’t know who Justin was. He’d worked for her, he’d lived, he’d died, and he was still a stranger to her. To Peach, it was as bad as a slap in the face.

  ‘Justin was part of our research group,’ Caprice explained softly. ‘He was killed recently. The police suspected drug trafficking was involved.’

  Diane’s face tightened, as if blood and air had been sucked from her cheeks, and her eyes grew hard. ‘If he sold drugs, he’s no loss to this world,’ she snapped, her voice bitter.

  ‘They’re wrong about him,’ Peach said. ‘I think his death had something to do with a man you know. Frank Macy.’

  Peach wasn’t prepared for Diane’s reaction. The woman shut the cover of her laptop so hard that it sounded like the crack of a gunshot. Her entire body shook with fury as she jabbed her finger at Peach. ‘Frank Macy? How dare you say that name to me? Do you know what that man did to me? To my son?’

  Peach felt staggered. She wanted to turn and run. ‘He said you should be afraid of him. I thought I needed to tell—’

  Diane slashed the air with her hand, cutting Peach off. Her face red, she stormed past Peach and left the room without a word. Like a servant, Garth followed on her heels. Peach and Caprice were alone. The piano music kept playing, oddly peaceful in the aftermath of Diane’s outburst.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Peach murmured.

  Caprice put an arm around her shoulder. ‘Frank Macy is a sensitive subject with Diane. You probably don’t know about her son—’

  ‘I do. I know.’

  ‘Then you can understand how she feels. And why drug dealers get no sympathy from her.’

  ‘Justin wasn’t a drug dealer,’ Peach said. ‘I don’t know what he had to do with Macy, but it wasn’t drugs.’

  ‘Well, regardless, Macy is someone to stay away from, Peach. It’s for your own safety, but it’s for the campaign, too. You know how the media works. They’ll grab things and turn them into stories. We can’t have that.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Should I call Deacon?’ Caprice asked. ‘He can come get you.’

  ‘No, I can drive.’

  ‘Are you sure? You don’t look good.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  Caprice kept a protective arm around Peach’s shoulder as she led her back to the hallway. At the door, Caprice followed her onto the porch. Peach stared into the gardens and found she was reluctant to go. Not yet. Not now. Reading her mind, Caprice gestured at a wrought-iron bench near the pond, and they both sat there, feeling the mist of the fountain. The breeze rustled Caprice’s hair. Peach thought she was one of the prettiest women she’d ever met. It was easy to understand why Lyle had wanted to marry her.

  ‘How are you, really, Peach?’ Caprice asked. ‘We don’t get much chance to talk anymore. I feel bad about that.’

  ‘I’m okay. Lonely sometimes.’

  ‘After the campaign, I’ll try to do better. I miss you. I see Deacon, but not you.’

  ‘I know you’re busy.’

  Peach knew that Caprice felt responsible for her. It wasn’t her job, but it was nice that she felt that way. If she and Lyle had married, Caprice would have been her sister-in-law, but Lyle had wanted Peach to think of Caprice as part-sister, part-mother, part-friend. She appreciated everything Caprice had done for her over the years, but she’d never felt quite that close to her. Deacon was the one who had drunk the Kool-Aid, signed on with Common Way, and devoted his life to the cause. Peach had simply been swept up in his wake.

  ‘How’s your work?’ Caprice asked.

  ‘Okay, I guess.’

  ‘Deacon tells me you’re very good at it.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I know it hasn’t been easy for you,’ Caprice said. ‘Do you get out much? Do you have friends?’

  ‘Not really. I’m too busy most of the time. It’s okay, I don’t mind being alone.’

  ‘It’s easy to tell yourself that even when it’s not true. You shouldn’t close yourself off. Lyle wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Deacon says you’ve been thinking a lot about Lyle.’

  ‘Yeah. Some.’

  ‘I did that for a long time, too,’ Caprice said, ‘but there comes a time when it’s not healthy to dwell on the past.’

  ‘Oh, I just – I just wish I’d been nicer to him at the end. Things were pretty rocky that summer for all of us. I feel bad about that.’

  ‘Don’t. Lyle wouldn’t want you to feel that way. You were just a girl.’

  Peach smiled, even though the memory didn’t cheer her up. ‘There was this one weekend. You probably don’t even remember. I was so sick. Pneumonia. I had to go back home early from Tampa. Lyle was afraid I was going to throw up in his Mercedes. Actually, I think I did. Deacon took me to Mr Fairmont’s house that night.’

  ‘I do remember,’ Caprice said.

  ‘Yeah. I was pretty delirious. It was really bad. All that blood.’

  Caprice cocked her head. ‘Blood?’

  Peach looked at her. ‘What?’

  ‘You said blood.’

  ‘Did I? That’s weird.’ She shook her head. ‘No, phlegm. Nasty green stuff. Yuck. I was coughing up phlegm for days. That’s what I meant to say.’

  23

  Walter Fleming took a huge bite of fish taco and grabbed a paper napkin to wipe his mouth. He always stopped at Taco Bus when he was in Tampa. He was parked under a tree at the back of the lot in his Chevy Tahoe, behind smoked windows. It was after midnight, but the Taco Bus – which literally dished out food from a renovated school bus – was open 24/7, and there was plenty of late-night traffic from urban kids lined up for carne asada.

  Walter wore jeans and a black polo shirt. The baseball cap on his dashboard had a union logo, which was why he wasn’t wearing it. He didn’t want people remembering him.

  Th
e three-day union meeting at the downtown convention center was over. He’d stayed an extra day in the city, but he needed to head back to Tallahassee by morning. He wanted to be in the office before Chayla made landfall across the central coast. Storms were unpredictable, and nobody in politics liked events they couldn’t control. That was how you lost elections.

  He heard rapping on the window and unlocked the truck. The passenger door of the Tahoe opened, and Ogden Bush climbed in beside him. Walter cast a jaundiced eye on the man’s two-thousand dollar suit and the gold watch hugging his slim wrist. The cloud of the man’s cologne made him want to crack the window. Bush looked dressed for a club in South Beach.

  ‘That’s what you wear, Ogden?’ he said. ‘We’re trying not to get noticed.’

  Bush shrugged. ‘I came straight from the Common Way office.’

  Walter grunted and took another big bite of swai fish, which was flaky and delicious. ‘Where’s Curtis?’ he asked, brushing crumbs out of his beard.

  ‘He’s in line. He wanted some camarones.’

  Walter eyed the mirror. He spotted the forty-something private detective at the food truck window, and he frowned, seeing the man chat up three teenage girls. Curtis Ritchie’s car, a red Cutlass, was parked nearby. Walter was paranoid about being seen – or, worse, taped or photographed – but as a rule, he insisted on in-person meetings when he needed to talk about political business. Phones, computers, e-mails, tablets, they all scared the hell out of him. You could never delete any of it. Sooner or later, someone would dig up the bits and bytes, and it would be all over the news. Besides, he liked seeing people’s faces. You could read a lot in faces about who was scared and who was lying.

  ‘How’s the Governor?’ Bush asked him.

  ‘Nervous.’

  ‘Yeah, he should be.’

  ‘Are there any surprises coming that I should know about?’ Walter asked.

  Bush shook his head. ‘No. They’re watching him and his people, but so far, there aren’t any new shitstorms.’ He added: ‘One of their spies caught you and Brent talking at the convention. That could have been bad. Good thing you covered for me.’

  Walter shrugged. He knew who it was. The girl in the elevator. Damn, those people were smart. He’d warned Reed about underestimating Common Way. ‘Don’t worry, nobody knows about our arrangement,’ he said. ‘Not even the Governor. Not yet.’