15
I drank the liquid fire otherwise known as café Cubano after a restless night disturbed by thoughts of little girls far away and the father who would soon return to them with bad news and worse memories.
My mother finally answered her phone.
“You knew about Kaithlin’s baby, didn’t you?” I asked.
“Britt, darling, isn’t this your day off?”
“No, Mom, I’m still working on the story.”
“The same story? When do you take time for yourself? No wonder you have so little personal life.”
“Thanks, Mom. You knew, right?”
“I’m weary of it, Britt.” Her voice shook. “I don’t want to hear any more about it, read about it, or even discuss it again. It’s ancient history. Nothing can change the past.”
“Mom, why is it, when all I ever ask is that you be honest and up front with me—?”
“Are there no other stories?” she asked sharply.
“Why does this one obsess you so?”
“Good question.”
“You sound exhausted, dear. Why not go back to bed, get some sleep, and we can talk later.”
I went to the morgue instead. The winter day was breezy, the sky a hard bright blue, and the golden air so alight with promise that, as I waited outside the medical examiner’s office on Bob Hope Road, I began to experience a heady unwarranted optimism. The coffee must have scalded my brain cells, but I began to wonder. What if? What if we were wrong and the woman inside was not Shannon Broussard? Real life and death are stranger than fiction. A sunny sense of well-being flooded my soul. Then they emerged. Broussard wore the same jacket. He was red-eyed and weeping.
“Hey, kid.” Rychek’s face was grim.
“It’s her,” Broussard blurted emotionally, his shield of false hope shattered. Tears streaked his face. “I should have known. I thought she’d been abducted or might be lying in a hospital somewhere, injured or ill, unable to speak, but the longer she was gone, the more my heart knew it would end this way.
“What can I tell our girls?” he pleaded, to no one and everyone, as he got into Rychek’s unmarked. I heard him sob as it pulled away.
The apologetic guard at the Williams Island security gate said that neither R. J. nor Eunice was “available.” I asked him to call and tell them that I knew where Kaithlin Jordan had been for the past ten years. He did, and the gate swung open.
R. J. lounged in shorts and an open cabana shirt at an umbrella table that held the remnants of a Bloody Mary and a leisurely breakfast. Immaculately groomed, his color was better, his skin aglisten with suntan oil. His table overlooked water that shimmered like shattered blue glass. Overhead, palm fronds shimmied in the breeze. His X-wing prison cell seemed a thousand light-years away. The young woman beside him wore a skimpy bikini and a deep and glorious tan she would probably regret in twenty years.
He turned triumphantly to her as I approached. “See? I told you, who needs to buy a paper? They deliver the news to me personally. So, Miss Reporter.” He leaned back in his chair. “What’s the latest?”
“While you were on death row,” I said evenly, “Kaithlin was happily married, with two more children.”
The color in his face faded, along with his smile.
“Go home,” he said dully to his companion, without even looking at her.
She did a double take, startled by her summary dismissal.
“Go home,” he repeated.
“But you—”
“Now! I’ll call you later.”
She arose reluctantly. The thin gold chain around her slim waist glittered cheerfully in the sun.
“Now!” he barked impatiently.
She quickly snatched up her things, glared daggers my way, and stalked off, her shapely buns an eye-popping sight from the rear in her high heels and thong bikini. R. J. didn’t notice. It was as though he had already forgotten her.
“Two more children?”
“In addition to your son, the boy Kaithlin gave up for adoption.”
“Where did you hear about him?”
“I’ve been working on the story, talking to people. Does Eunice know about her grandson?”
He gave a noncommittal shrug. “She wouldn’t care if she did.”
“Every woman yearns to be a doting grandmother,” I said.
“Not every woman. Not the bitch I had for a mother-in-law. So,” he said, “she won that battle. But the best revenge is living well. Isn’t that right? They’re dead and gone and look who’s living well. Moi.”
His gesture embraced the ambience surrounding him, the lush tropical landscaping, expensive yachts, and uniformed employees.
“As for my mother, it might have meant something when my father was alive, when the business was intact, when they wanted to keep it all in the family. But now there is no business, no dynasty to preserve, and the time for caring is past. There’d be no point. We all have lives of our own.”
He slipped his sunglasses off to inspect an oily smear on the lens. His words were casual, but the intensity in his eyes betrayed him. “What’s the so-called husband like?”
“A nice guy,” I said. “In the software business in Seattle, where they lived. He was clueless, thought she came from the Midwest.”
“He’s here?”
I nodded. “He’d been searching for her for weeks.” R. J.’s small laugh was sardonic. “The man had better luck than I did. I never found her, or anybody who believed me, so I wound up screwed, blued, and tattooed.”
“He identified her this morning. He’s heartbroken.”
“I’m sure he is.” His voice sounded hollow. “Kaithlin had a way about her, something genuine, even as a teenager. You could see it in the way she carried herself, her mannerisms, the way she looked at you. Whatever it was made her hard to forget. I had any woman I wanted but, to my misfortune, she was always the one on my mind. How old is he?”
“About forty, I’d say, maybe a little younger.”
“You see?” He nodded, as though age explained everything. “They were just four or five years apart. We had totally different backgrounds and a significant age difference; it doesn’t sound like much now, but she was a teenager and I was already thirty when we met.” He sighed. “Their children?”
“Two little girls,” I said.
“So,” R. J. mused, “she never had a son.”
“Only yours.”
He seemed pleased at that. “How long were they together?”
“Married nearly nine years.”
“No.” The word rolled like a bitter taste off his tongue. “She was married to me.” He jabbed a thumb to his hairy chest.
He motioned for another Bloody Mary and ordered iced tea for me.
“I see you’re readapting nicely to life outside,” I said pleasantly.
“Beats lights on at six A.M.” His eyes drifted to the baskets of flaky croissants, fresh fruit, and fluffy muffins. “Better than a metal meal cart rattling down a bare cement hallway and a tray shoved through a slot in the door. Yeahhh.” He gazed across the blue expanse of water. “My existence was gray, bleak, and controlled for too long a time. I plan to make up for it now.”
“I see you’re already socializing.” I indicated his companion’s empty chair.
“Sure,” he said. “I’ve been socializing nonstop, so much”—he patted his groin—“that I’m sore.”
Dallas Svenson had sworn the man had a sensitive side. Either she was mistaken or he was doing a mighty fine job of concealing it.
“Eunice must adore having you back,” I said mildly, sipping my iced tea.
“My sainted mother,” he said sardonically, “didn’t visit very often. The strip searches must have deterred her.”
“Why do you think Kaithlin came back?” I asked.
“Her husband says—”
“No, not husband.” He waggled a warning finger.
“Okay. Her significant other says she became troubled about eight months ago
, in June. She didn’t discuss the problem, denied she had one, but it apparently escalated just before she disappeared and turned up here.”
“No idea,” he said sharply. “As I’ve said before, for publication, her bad luck was my lucky break.”
He looked thoughtful, absently stirring his fresh Bloody Mary with a celery stalk.
“Eight months ago, in June,” he finally repeated, “my social calendar was rather limited. I had an appeal denied that month and a wire service ran a piece about me—actually about half a dozen of us—due to die on death rows around the country. I made the cut, I guess, because I’m white and well off, not your typical death-row inmate. The reporter quoted my lawyer, who was delighted. Sent me a tearsheet. Here I am about to fry, and he’s getting his rocks off over seeing his name in the national press.”
“Speaking of lawyers,” I said, “do you know Martin Kagan?”
He frowned, then seemed to place the name. “No, but I saw his name on a lot of old death-penalty pleadings, popular reading matter at my former place of residence.”
“This one is his son. He had a private detective working for him, Dan Rothman, the Digger.”
R. J. averted his gaze and slipped his shades back on, hiding his eyes behind the smoky lenses.
“You know him?”
He shook his head and checked the sailboats on the horizon. “You’d be surprised at the people popping out of the woodwork. I’ve had calls from 60 Minutes, 20/20, Dateline. Even the medical examiner’s office. Some clueless clerk actually asked when I planned to claim my wife’s body. Tried to talk me into it. For a decent burial, he said. As if she would have planned one for me. And some dickhead from the Volusia County prosecutor’s office even had the gall to show up here.”
“Dennis Fitzgerald?”
“I think that’s right. Know him?”
“We’ve met.”
“He never got past the gate. Never will. I’m not putting up with any harassment from those bastards now.”
“They’re doing a postmortem on the case,” I said, “trying to figure out where they went wrong.”
R. J. did not appear impressed.
“Is there anything else you’d like to say for publication about the latest development, Kaithlin’s…significant other showing up?”
“What do you want to hear, Miss Reporter? That I’m sorry for his loss?” His smile was ironic, his eyes hard.
“I’d like to see Eunice,” I said. “Is she home?”
“She’s having her hair done,” he said.
“Too bad, I hoped to catch her.”
“You can,” he said nonchalantly. “My mother has her own personal beauty salon.”
That she did. The maid at their penthouse apartment ushered me into a spacious room equipped with professional upscale salon fixtures, a hair dryer, black marble sinks with gold faucets, and full-size makeup, massage, and manicure tables. I found her relaxing under the dryer, feet soaking in a foamy bath, hands resting on velvet cushions as her platinum-color nail polish dried. She turned off the dryer and excused the uniformed manicurist so we could speak in private.
I admired the room, with its soft lighting and softer music. Her hair stylist and manicurist visited as needed, she said, several times a week. “I’m so busy. It’s so much more convenient than having to make appointments and go out to a salon.”
I agreed, as though every girl should have one, then mentioned that Catherine Montero, my mother, had been a Jordan’s employee for years.
“Oh, yes,” Eunice said coldly. “I think I remember her. Conrad, my husband, knew her far better.”
So much for breaking the ice.
“What’s it like,” I asked, smiling enthusiastically, “to have your son home again? It must be wonderful.”
“It’s what it was always like,” she said, voice brittle.
“People don’t change. You said you had news about my daughter-in-law.”
I briefly described Kaithlin’s West Coast life, then wondered aloud who might have killed her.
“Someone like her”—she shrugged scornfully—“it could be virtually anyone. She used sex, seduced my son, and ruined all our lives.”
“She was very young,” I said, startled, “and your son was a grown—”
“She was a little nobody from nowhere,” Eunice snapped. “I knew from the start she was a schemer, a social climber, a conniving gold digger.”
“The business stories indicated that she was dedicated, talented, and successful and that she made a lot of money for your stores. I thought you were fond of her.”
“Conrad liked her,” she said dismissively, “but he never was a good judge of women.” She paused to give me a meaningful once-over. “You are very much like your mother.”
Not what I needed to hear.
Eunice scrutinized her flawless manicure, then summoned the woman to begin her pedicure, making it clear our interview was over. “Kaithlin’s talent,” she said in closing, “was for getting what she wanted. She nearly killed us all.”
I passed sparkling fountains, sculptured hedges, and riotous flower beds in rainbow colors as I left, thinking, No wonder you ran, Kaithlin. Good for you. Your only mistake was coming back.
The killer tornado that savaged Stanley, Oklahoma, ten years earlier was all too real, the story true. Onnie and I tracked it down. Twenty-seven victims, including an entire family, the Sullivans, had perished. National news stories recounted the horror of one member killed by winds that tore her infant son from her arms. But the obits, published in the victims’ hometown newspaper, listed no surviving sister Shannon.
“How convenient,” Onnie said. “She just plucked a tragedy from the headlines and claimed it for herself. Wonder what she would have used had there been no twister?”
“She would have found something,” I said. “There’s always a fresh disaster somewhere.” Was she drawn to it? I wondered. Did she relate to the symbolism inherent in an infant son torn from his mother’s arms and in images of lives spinning out of control?
Onnie said she’d track down last summer’s wire-service piece on death-row inmates and check to see where it had been published. I called the Florida Bureau of Corrections with a question. Their spokes-woman said she’d get back to me with an answer as soon as possible.
As I scrolled through my story exposing Kaithlin Jordan’s second identity for a final read, a towering presence peered over my shoulder.
“What do you think? Does the lead work?” I glanced up, expecting Fred or Onnie.
“Works for me,” Fitzgerald said.
“How did you get up to the newsroom?” I asked.
“Security is supposed to announce visitors.”
“I told your buddy you were expecting me.”
“Swell,” I said, as Rooney waved happily from the hall.
I hit the SEND button and smiled up at Fitzgerald. He smiled back.
Onnie interrupted with a printout of the wire story. The News hadn’t used it, but it had been published by a number of subscribing papers nationwide, including the Seattle Times on June fourth. A paragraph devoted to R. J. identified him as a “wealthy Miami department-store heir facing death for the murder of his young wife nearly a decade ago.” His mug shot ran as well. I imagined Shannon Broussard, prominent Seattle socialite, devoted wife and mother, opening her newspaper. What happened when she saw the photo and read that he was about to die for her murder? Was that why she returned?
Gretchen eyed us suspiciously from the city desk as Fitzgerald and I headed to the cafeteria for coffee.
“Let’s take the stairs,” I said, as he punched the elevator button. “That thing’s too slow.”
“Saw that coming up,” he said. “Thought I’d need a shave by the time I reached your natural habitat. So this is where you disappear to.” His deep-set eyes scanned the newsroom. “It’s like a roach motel; once you come in here, you never come out.”
“Oh, I manage to skitter out and about,” I said, “her
e and there. Did you talk to R. J.?”
“No, that SOB isn’t talking to anybody.”
“Oh?” I feigned smug surprise. “I just left him over at Williams Island. We spent a little time together. He’s working on his tan, looks good, sends regards.”
“No shit,” Fitzgerald said. “What did he say?”
“The usual, that Kaithlin’s death was his big break. Claims he has no idea who did it or why. He’s still pissed off at your office. He was curious about Preston Broussard—jealous, actually. Have you met Broussard yet?”
Fitzgerald said he’d been present when Rychek interviewed him at the station after he’d identified the body. Broussard, still shaken, told them that Shannon had withdrawn large amounts of cash over the past seven or eight months, money still unaccounted for. He had been unaware of the transactions until after she disappeared.
I thought I knew where the money went, but I asked Fitzgerald anyway.
He shrugged. “Could be a lot of things. Blackmail, hidden vices, a boy toy on the side. Maybe she was gearing up to cut and run again.”
“And leave her kids? I doubt it. I think she saw this wire story in her local paper and decided to save R. J.”
“After all the pains she took to frame him?” Fitzgerald asked.
“It would explain the calls she made to Kagan,” I said. “Maybe she never expected R. J., with his rich parents and high-priced lawyers, to be sentenced to death. Maybe it was okay with her if he did time, but she couldn’t let him be executed.”
“A real sweetheart.” Fitzgerald frowned skeptically.
“But why would she risk it all to save that son-of-a-bitch?”
“Maybe she found religion, or a conscience. Maybe she still cared. R. J. was her first love.”
“Not the sort of first love people write poetry and songs about,” Fitzgerald said patiently. “The way I see it going down is Kaithlin’s afraid he’ll kill her, so she strikes first and makes a run for it.”
“Right,” I said. “She sees no other escape. She’s a casualty of the ever-escalating war between her husband and her mother. Even if she survives a divorce, she loses the only thing she has left—her career. The mystery of the missing money is not going to enhance her résumé. With nothing left here, she fakes her death, frames him, and puts as many miles as she can between her and Miami.
You Only Die Twice Page 19