You Only Die Twice

by Edna Buchanan

  “You may be right to a degree,” I acknowledged bleakly, “a large degree. But not in my stories. Solving the murder is what’s important.”

  “Breaking promises won’t help,” she said.

  “Don’t you value justice?”

  “I do,” she said solemnly, and aimed a gnarled index finger at the cracked ceiling. “A greater justice.”

  “But you have to admit it would be a comfort to see some here on earth.”

  Her small smile conceded that much. “I dropped a hint,” she said, cocking her head, “when I told you some things can’t be forgiven.”

  “Sorry, I should have picked up on that sooner. So Reva took her revenge out on R. J. by refusing to reveal his son’s whereabouts.”

  “No!” she cried, taken aback, eyes wide in shock. “That’s not how it was at all! I thought giving up her only grandchild would kill her. It nearly did. But she made the sacrifice because he deserved two responsible adult parents. What chance would he have had with a teenage mother and a playboy who denied being his father?

  “She couldn’t bear to watch Kaithlin sacrifice everything to raise a child alone. She had tried it, did everything any woman could do, and failed. She spent hours with the priest, seeking the strength and courage to give him away. He said adoption was best.”

  “But she could have forced R. J. to pay child support. Hired a lawyer, called the Jordans…”

  Myrna shook her head as she poured steaming water over fresh tea bags in cups for us both. It was chamomile. “The law didn’t work for her, and she knew it wouldn’t for Kaithlin. The Jordans were too powerful. She tried to talk to R. J., but he was crude and humiliated her. She had her pride. She always made her own way and never asked for help. It broke her heart to lose him, but Reva said her grandson went to a wonderful home.”

  I stared down at my notebook. “But if it wasn’t revenge, why wouldn’t she help them find him?”

  “Because, by the time R. J. changed his mind, there was no baby anymore,” she said indignantly. “He would have been a little boy in school. Six years old. You don’t uproot a child, take him from the only family he knows. You don’t do that to the parents who love him. How could Reva let R. J. change his mind on a whim? What if he changed it again later? You can’t play with human life that way.”

  “So Reva was protecting the boy?”

  “Her grandson, at all costs,” she said solemnly. “She destroyed the paperwork on the adoption so it would never be found. If something happened to her, she didn’t want her grandson’s life ever disrupted by strangers with briefcases. Later, she suspected that was why R. J. killed Kaithlin, to take her child away, the way he accused her of taking his son. I can’t tell you all the times she sat right where you’re sitting, crying her eyes out.”

  I closed my eyes as the image evoked a shiver. “Do you remember Amy Hastings?” I asked. “She testified at the trial.”

  “Kaithlin’s little friend.” Myrna nodded. “Always had their heads together, whispers and giggles. Not as smart or as pretty as Kaithlin, but she promised she’d stay close to Reva afterward, even swore she’d be her surrogate daughter, because they’d both loved Kaithlin. I thought she might be a comfort, but after the trial Reva never heard from her again. Not a call, not so much as a Christmas card. She was a flighty little thing. Ditzy, if you ask me.”

  I drove along Biscayne Boulevard, bathed in the cozy glow of anti-crime lights, wondering why everyone but her own husband felt loyal to Kaithlin. Back at the office, I went to the trial transcript and found the address of the condo R. J. had bought for Dallas Suarez, the mistress who later testified against him. Beachfront, in Key Biscayne. No phone listed for her there, or anywhere else in Miami-Dade. The high-flying adventuress and flight instructor could be anywhere by now, I thought. Her public image at the time of the trial was that of a sensation seeker, an expert pilot, diver, and skier who also thrived on the thrills of illicit romance. I got out the trusty city directory. The building had only twenty-five units on five floors. I lied through my teeth, posing as an old friend in search of a long-lost chum.

  “She’s my neighbor!” trilled the first woman I spoke to. “She’s still here! Married now, to a lovely guy. Lives here with her husband. Want me to tell her you called?”

  “No, please don’t.” I checked the time. Too late to drop by tonight. “I want to surprise her.”

  I called Eunice, but her answering service picked up. I left messages for her and R. J., then addressed an envelope to Myrna Lewis. Before dropping the photo of little Kaithlin and her mother in the outgoing mail, I again studied Reva Warren’s solemn face and plain appearance, in contrast to Kaithlin’s lively beauty and mischievous charm. Who would believe they were mother and daughter? When had I thought that before?

  I checked my mailbox and found a copy of the art department’s sketch of Kaithlin, along with a glossy page torn from a catalog. The sketch was excellent. To my dismay, the salmon-pink bridesmaid dress on the catalog page appeared iridescent, with flounces, the bustle far larger than I had imagined.

  “Don’tcha love it?” Rooney startled me, peering over my shoulder.

  “Don’t ever sneak up on me like that again!” I protested.

  “Sorry,” he said, his expression wounded. “I thought you saw me.”

  I sighed. “How are Angel and the kids?”

  “Great,” he said, his grin returning. “We thought the baby was coming the other night, but—false alarm.” He focused on the page in my hand. “Misty already got her dress.”

  “This one?” I asked, hoping to be wrong.

  “She loves it. Angel says she looks adorable.”

  Damn, I thought, too late now to change Angel’s mind.

  “You might think it’s silly for us to be having a nice church wedding now. You know,” he said self-consciously, “with the kids and all. But it’s my first time and Angel never had one. Her parents signed for her to get married the first time and some clerk down at the marriage license bureau officiated. She was only a kid, didn’t even have a flower to hold.

  “This time,” he said, dreamy-eyed, “is special. It’s for good.” His smile wasn’t the usual goofy grin. It was almost appealing.

  I checked the library on the way out, surprised to find Onnie still working. The lenses in her computer glasses glowed green as she squinted at the screen.

  “Got involved,” she explained, her smile tight. “Called my sister to give Darryl his supper and put him to bed.”

  “Find anything promising?”

  “Lord have mercy.” She pushed away from the screen, her expression weary. “I never knew how many folks disappeared, or wanted to. Forget milk cartons. I’ve got enough right here to print them on toilet paper, a new face on every square. You ’member that big, fiery, high-speed rail crash in London a while back? The death toll started out high ’cause of all the passengers missing and presumed dead. It dwindled after they cut apart the molten wreckage and the bodies weren’t there.”

  I looked at her quizzically.

  “Where were they?” she asked, blinking up at me, her coal-black eyes intent. “I mean, if you narrowly escaped a deadly disaster, what would you do first?”

  “Have sex,” I said truthfully, “maybe a stiff drink, kiss the ground, hug loved ones, say a prayer, call the newspaper. Not necessarily in that order.”

  “Me too,” she agreed, nodding thoughtfully, “’cept maybe for the sex.”

  “Trust me,” I said.

  “Is that experience talking?” She coyly arched an eyebrow. “You’d think all of the above,” she went on, when I did not answer, “but noooooo. Weeks, months after the crash, there were sightings of people presumed dead and gone. Turns out dozens of commuters seized the moment and made a run for it, to disappear and launch new lives under new names.”

  I pulled up a chair and read the story on her screen. “Amazing,” I said, “how many people are willing to walk away from everything in a heartbeat.”
r />   When disaster struck, as fellow commuters died, survivors didn’t run for help, they just ran, to shed their pasts as snakes do their skin. They saw misfortune as an escape route. That crash was accidental. How many others deliberately create their own disaster? Maybe Kaithlin was ahead of her time.

  I drove home, the radio off, the windows open to the serenade of boat whistles, wind, and night birds on the causeway.

  The courtyard patio was dark, the exterior light burned out. A car door slammed somewhere on the street behind me, and I picked up my pace. I usually have house keys in hand before leaving the car, but this time, my mind cluttered, I wasn’t thinking. I groped hurriedly for the keys as quick footsteps gained on me.

  I had warned my landlady and fellow tenants about a recent rash of nighttime robberies, motorists followed home and accosted at their own front doors. I had urged caution, then failed to heed my own advice.

  I glanced fearfully over my shoulder. A man moved fast through the shadows, directly toward me. Too late to find the key. I flung my open purse into the thick shrubbery, scattering the contents, then whirled to face him, heart pounding.

  “You son-of-a-bitch! Don’t even think about it! Get the hell out of here!”

  He stopped short. “What’s wrong?” he said. “Britt? Are you mad at me?”

  Lights bloomed in other apartments. Inside mine, Bitsy yapped frantically, hurling herself at the door.

  He stepped closer.

  “Oh, jeez,” I said. “Help me find my keys before somebody calls the cops.”

  We were on all fours in the bushes retrieving my possessions when Mr. Goldstein appeared in pajamas, brandishing a baseball bat in his best Mark McGwire imitation. His wife, close behind him in her bathrobe, waved her broom.

  “Careful, Hy, he might have a gun! Britt, are you all right?”

  “He’s one of the good guys,” I said, embarrassed. Fitzgerald apologetically explained that he was delivering my overnight bag, which he had tracked down from the airline.

  We said good night, went inside, gazed at each other, and grinned. “So that’s how you welcome visitors. No wonder you’re not married.”

  “Sorry, I thought you were a robber.”

  “Well, you scared the bejesus out of me. I was ready to assume the position, spread my legs, and give you my wallet.”

  “Keep the wallet,” I said, and walked into his arms.

  “I know you have somebody,” he murmured, voice husky in my ear.

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  He stopped kissing me long enough for his lips to shape the word. “Emery.”

  “He’s got a big mouth.”

  We stayed stitched together at the lips for several minutes. “I’ll make some coffee,” I said, pushing him away as we came up for air.

  “Uh-oh,” he said. “Not exactly the words I hoped to hear.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that…what happened in Daytona was due to the intensity of the moment. We don’t even know each other.”

  He sighed. “That other guy?”

  “No. That’s over,” I said. The words sounded shockingly final to my ears. “It’s you and me, our jobs, this story, us both being involved in the case. It’s unprofessional.”

  “We could low-key it.”

  Where had I heard that before?

  “Just until the case is closed or pushed onto a back burner. Looks like that’s happening sooner than later. Emery’s not on the case full-time anymore,” he explained. “They’ve already got him shouldering a full workload again.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Hey, no new leads, nothing’s panned out. The department’s spread thin, the brass can’t justify the manpower. Lousy for the victim, good for us. No story, no problem.”

  “Right. But when that happens, you go home,” I said, “three hundred and fifty miles away. How romantic.”

  “That’s not so far.” He took my hand. “Why not just go for the ride and see where it takes us?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “You want decaf?”

  “Naw.” He sighed. “Gimme the hard stuff.”

  The crime lab, he said, tried using fiberoptic light sources to shadow, then photograph, the handwriting impressions on the bedside notebook from Kaithlin’s room. No luck. The legal pad had been sent on to the FBI lab in Washington in the hope that more sophisticated techniques could decipher something legible.

  “Those guys up there are good,” he said hopefully. “They’ve got a machine made in England, originally designed to detect fingerprints on paper. In some cases, they’ve successfully raised handwriting impressions from six sheets down.”

  Rychek had also run a check on Zachary Marsh. “Emery was pissed off at ’im. Wanted to see who the hell he was.”

  “What’s his story?”

  “Ran a Rolls dealership, like he said. Married for eighteen years. She dumped him when he got too sick to work. Ran off with an old high school boyfriend, taking most of his bank account and their two teenagers with ’er.”

  He and Rychek had talked to Kagan, the lawyer whose office number appeared repeatedly on Kaithlin’s hotel bill. He denied knowing her.

  “Lots of people call his office every day, he said. Swore he never met her, never talked to her.”

  “A guy like him would remember somebody like her,” I said.

  “Emery also ran the names of the hotel housekeepers and the bellmen by him, on the off chance they made the calls.”

  “They wouldn’t bill local calls to her room,” I said, “and any of the hotel employees who needed a lawyer would look for somebody bilingual who handles immigration cases. It wouldn’t be him.”

  “I agree.” Fitzgerald paused as we carried our coffee mugs into the living room. “What’s that? You hear something?”

  I stopped to listen, then heard it too: a low familiar singsong rumble accompanied by a faint grinding sound. Fitzgerald gingerly pushed open the bathroom door.

  Billy Boots sat in the sink, eyes closed, chewing contentedly on my toothbrush, still in its wall-mounted holder.

  He stopped the loud purring and opened his eyes to stare.

  “You let him do that?” Fitzgerald frowned.

  “Of course not.” I snatched my cat out of the sink, plucking bristles from his whiskers. “This can’t be good for him.”

  “Or you,” Fitzgerald said. “Or me.” He grimaced and licked his sexy lips, so recently pressed to mine.

  “Very funny,” I said, clinging to Billy, whose tail lashed fitfully as he fixed a baleful, yellow-eyed stare on Fitzgerald.

  “You plan on using that toothbrush again?”

  “Only before dates with you.”

  He kissed me good night gingerly and worked his mouth in the manner of a professional wine taster. “A hint of catnip,” he said. “That must be what turns me on.”

  “Either that,” I agreed, “or the hair-ball medication.”

  We made a date for dinner the next night. “See you then.” He gently ran his thumb along the line of my jaw the way he did the first time. Was it him I wanted, or a warm, friendly body next to mine? I searched his eyes for the answer, found none, and let him walk away, out into the night. I immediately regretted that he was gone.

  I called Rychek first thing in the morning.

  “I’m up to my ass in alligators here, kid.”

  “What’s this I hear about Jordan being pushed to the back burner?” I asked. “Isn’t this way too soon? It’s a big case.”

  He sighed. “That’s why the city commission and the chamber of commerce would be delighted to see it go away. It ain’t the only open homicide we got. Plus, we got teen curfew biting us on the ass.”

  Rowdy teens had recently invaded the South Beach club scene, fighting, drinking, crowding streets, damaging cars, and strong-arming adult customers. A curfew had been set but largely ignored.

  “The commission is pissed,” Rychek said. “They want enforcement, so the chief assigned a lotta the young detectives
to a special squad. They’re sweeping South Beach every night. Their caseloads are falling on us.”

  “Kagan must be lying about the phone calls. Can’t you lean on him, subpoena his files?”

  “There ain’t enough to get a subpoena and the man’s a lawyer, for chrissake. This ain’t the old days, kid.”

  “But you can’t just give up,” I argued.

  “Never said I did. Something new surfaces, I’ll be the first to run it down. But we got nothing right now, ’cept a lotta other cases we’re more likely to close.”

  Already running late, I had a stop to make first.

  “Has he been troubled about anything lately?” the doctor asked. “Changes or traumas at home?”

  Billy Boots crouched sullenly on the examining table, cranky and glaring.

  “I was out of town briefly, but that can’t be it. He’d already chewed through four toothbrushes before I left.”

  She listened to his heart with her stethoscope. “How’s his appetite?”

  “Fine. He steals the dog’s food and the dog steals his. Each one wants what the other has, just like people.”

  “Do they get along?”

  “I think they’re friends.”

  “It could be,” she said, studying his chart, “that he feels a lack of attention or just likes the minty taste left on the toothbrush. He may need to see a psychotherapist. I can give you the number of someone.”

  A shrink? If anybody in my household was in need of a shrink it wasn’t my cat, it was me.

  I held him all the way home, stroking his glossy fur, promising him more time, more toys, more treats. What kind of mother would I be? How could I expect to ever nurture a child when life with me had turned my own cat into an obsessive-compulsive toothbrush-gnawing neurotic?

  The temperature had suddenly soared back to 80 degrees, catching by surprise people now sweltering in sweaters and long sleeves. Bright, bare limbs and colorful sails flashed in foamy green water on either side of the Rickenbacker Causeway to Key Biscayne. Ponce de Leon sailed into the bay to claim the island for a Spanish king five hundred years ago. What would he think today, I wondered, of this towering, multi-laned toll bridge favored by cyclists, windsurfers, kayakers, and divers?