by Ron Base
“I’m not all right because I hug you?”
“Because I’ve been married to you a long time and can sense certain things.”
“Such as?”
“Such as when you are not all right.”
“I’m fine.”
She gave him a look and then went back to tossing the salad. He had debated on the way home about what to tell Freddie and decided, for the moment, to say nothing. Despite what he had seen, he could be getting it wrong. He tried to imagine that kiss in the parking lot as an act of friendship. He doubted friendship had much to do with it.
“You haven’t heard from Chris, have you?” he said to Freddie.
“Nothing. Where do they both disappear to?”
Kendra could be found afternoons at the Lani Kai Hotel, Tree thought.
He heard Kendra finish her shower and then return to the guest bedroom. Twenty minutes later, there was the sound of the back door closing. Tree glanced out the kitchen window in time to see Kendra pulling out of the drive. Freddie stood beside him.
“I say again: where do they go?”
“Beats me,” Tree said.
Thirty minutes later, Chris arrived home. He’d been drinking again, a little uncertain on his feet, trying to pretend he was okay. He did not ask about Kendra.
They ate a tense dinner on the terrace, the salad accompanied by Freddie’s turkey burgers with fresh basil, sun-dried tomatoes and crumbled goat cheese. Or Tree and Freddie ate. Chris pushed his food around.
Tree strained to make conversation. Freddie strained right back. Chris didn’t even make the attempt. After dinner, he retreated to the guest room. Freddie looked at Tree but said nothing. Tree cleaned up the dishes and then joined Freddie in the TV room.
Tree and Freddie watched CNN. Tree said he couldn’t decide whether he liked Piers Morgan. They watched The Good Wife. Tree had no trouble deciding he liked the lawyer drama starring Julianna Margulies. Freddie liked it, too, but not enough to stop her dozing on the sofa.
At eleven, just as he was about to awaken Freddie so they could go to bed, the telephone rang. Freddie stirred. Tree went into the kitchen and picked up the phone.
When he said, “hello” there was nothing but the sound of someone breathing. He almost hung up before a voice said, “I don’t think I’m all right.”
“What?” Tree said. “Who is this?”
“Tree,” Elizabeth Traven said. “Tree, are you there?”
“Mrs. Traven?”
Silence on the line.
“Mrs. Traven?”
“I—”
The line went dead.
14
He replaced the receiver. Freddie sat up, yawning. “What’s wrong?”
“I just got a weird call from Elizabeth Traven,” Tree said. “I’m wondering whether to go over there.”
Freddie got to her feet, stretching. “Why don’t you call her back first?”
He dialed her number. The phone rang four times before the voice mail clicked on. Tree hung up. “No answer,” he said. “I’m going over.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“No, I’m sure it’s all right. I just want to make sure.”
“Be careful,” Freddie said.
He was turning onto Captiva Drive before he realized he had forgotten his cell phone. Never mind. He could phone Freddie from the Traven house. When he got there, he found the front gates wide open. He drove through and parked below the main staircase. He took the steps two at a time. At the top of the stairs, the muscles in his stomach began to tighten—the front door was ajar.
He pushed the door further open and stepped into the interior. The foyer was cast in shadow. He crossed, expecting to be accosted by Jorge, the house majordomo. But then he remembered Jorge had left. When you were no longer rich, the help was the first to go. He came down into the vast dimness of the living room.
“Mrs. Traven?” he called. “Mrs. Traven? Are you here?”
Through the floor-to-ceiling windows Tree could see moonlight reflected off the waves on San Carlos Bay. The moonlight captured the lump of a body sprawled across the white sofa. Except the sofa was no longer white but stained black. The black flowed out of the gashes in Brand Traven’s chest; it flowed away from the silver scissors protruding from the base of his throat.
Tree stood there in shock, staring at the black horror on the sofa. He took a step. “Mr. Traven,” he said.
Traven’s eyes were open, but there was no life in them. Lying there in a sea of black, Traven seemed a hollow husk of himself, his mouth yawning open, as though something had escaped—his soul perhaps?
Tree looked around. On the floor beside the sofa lay a scrunched-up ball of cardboard. Had Traven dropped it when he was attacked? Tree picked the ball off the floor and opened it. It was a business card.
There was nothing on it but a single red rose.
He heard movement coming from the back of the house.
Still holding the card, he got to his feet, head cocked at an angle.
Listening.
The sound of a door closing.
He went over to the window. Below, outlined in moonlight, a figure crossed the lawn, headed toward the ocean. Man or woman? He couldn’t tell.
Then, as abruptly it appeared in the moonlight, the figure evaporated into the darkness.
15
According to my partner, you do this a lot,” Detective Owen Markfield said.
“Do what?” Tree was sitting with Markfield at a dainty white table on the lawn at the rear of the Traven mansion. This was where not so long ago he had shared coffee with Elizabeth Traven. Where was she tonight? he wondered. The grieving wife should be here, weeping over the body of her fallen husband.
“You turn up at murder scenes,” Markfield said. “We keep finding you in the vicinity of dead bodies.”
Markfield did not sound happy about it. Tree could not blame him.
He glanced around, marveling once again at the sheer numbers of official-looking people who showed up at a crime scene: local uniformed police; members of the Crime Scene Investigation Unit of the Lee County Sheriff’s Department; a couple of assistant district attorneys sent over by the Lee County district attorney; a forensics team from Fort Myers, as well as half a dozen detectives from that department. A small army dedicated to discovering Brand Traven’s killer, and Tree Callister was momentarily at its epicenter.
“Where is Cee Jay, incidentally?” Tree asked.
“The department has decided that it’s better if Detective Boone concentrate on other cases,” Markfield said in a formal voice.
“Tell Cee Jay I miss her,” Tree said.
“Let’s just go over a few things.” Markfield brushed a hand over his gold-highlighted hair. Somehow it retained its perfection at one o’clock in the morning. “Mrs. Traven is a client. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” Tree said.
“You mean to tell me Elizabeth Traven engaged you?” Markfield sounded incredulous.
“Why is that so surprising?” Tree said.
Instead of answering, Markfield said, “Was there something going on between the two of you?”
“Between Mrs. Traven and myself? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“All right, Mrs. Traven hired you,” Markfield went on. “To do what, exactly?”
“She wanted me to follow her husband.”
“He was just out of prison,” Markfield said. “Why would she want him followed?”
“Why do most women want their husbands followed?” Tree sounding like the world-weary gumshoe who had seen it all.
“Fill me in, Tree,” Markfield said. “Why do women have their husbands followed?”
“Initially, she thought he was having an affair.”
“Did she say with whom?”
“That’s what she wanted me to find out.”
Markfield looked at him hard. “Initially?”
“Then it was because she thought he was going to kill her.”
“Was he trying to kill her?”
“Was he having an affair?”
“Not as far as I could see.”
“How about murder? Any evidence he was trying to kill her?”
“No,” Tree said.
“So when she called you tonight—”
“It sounded as though she was in trouble,” Tree said.
“Because of what she previously had told you.”
“That’s right.”
“Except that when you got here, it was Brand Traven who was dead, not his wife,” Markfield said.
“As it turned out.”
“Any idea where Mrs. Traven is at this moment?”
“No,” Tree said.
Markfield gave him a skeptical look. “You’re sure about that?”
“I don’t know where she is.”
“And you haven’t tried to get in touch with her?”
Funny, it had not even crossed his mind. He shook his head.
“Okay, you came in the house and found the body. What happened after that?”
“Like I told the other officers: I heard something. A door closing. Something, I’m not sure. I went to the window and saw a person running across the lawn. Toward the water.”
“But you couldn’t see who it was?”
“No.”
“Man or woman?”
“I couldn’t tell.”
“But it could have been a woman?”
“It could have been a man,” Tree answered.
Markfield said something about lots of press waiting outside. He said he didn’t want Tree speaking to anyone. Officers would drive him home. They would drop off his car later. He went along without complaint. He felt numb, without emotion.
A few minutes later he was in the back of a police cruiser making its way through the crush of reporters and cameramen outside the Traven house.
Faces flashed against the windows, mouths opening and closing, expelling words he could not make out. Lights exploded. Then the crowds and the lights were gone, and there was the sound of rushing air and an occasional blast of static from the police radio. The two officers in front said nothing. He stared at the backs of their heads. Then he fished the wrinkled business card out of his pocket—the card he should have shown Detective Owen Markfield but didn’t. Light shadows flicked across the red rose.
Where had he seen that before?
Kendra.
Her tramp stamp. Trying to keep his eyes off that tramp stamp. Was it the same? It certainly looked similar. Or did thousands of young women wear similar tattoos on their lower backs?
He put the card back in his pocket as the police cruiser pulled into the drive at Andy Rosse Lane. Freddie met him on the walkway. She embraced him, holding him tight. Dimly he was aware of the police car pulling out of the drive.
“Are you okay?” Freddie said.
“I’ve decided I don’t like finding dead bodies,” Tree said.
“I tried to reach you on your cell phone,” Freddie said. Her eyes searched his.
“I forgot to take it with me.”
“The thing is, it’s not over yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“Come inside.”
She led him through the house. Everything became blurred. Only Freddie held focus. Ambient sounds faded. They came out on the terrace. Elizabeth Traven in dark linen slacks and a scoop-necked black top was sitting in a chair close to the pool. She sat up straight, as though about to have her picture taken. Or give testimony.
16
Elizabeth said, “I didn’t know where else to go.”
“The police are looking for you,” was all Tree could say.
“I thought this would be the one place they wouldn’t look. At least, not immediately.”
“So you know what’s happened.”
“Yes, of course.”
“What do you mean, ‘of course.’” Tree’s voice rose in unexpected anger. “There is no ‘of course’ about it. I know your husband is dead because I was there.”
“So was I,” Elizabeth said quietly.
“You set me up,” Tree said. “You stabbed him with a pair of scissors and then you called me, made it sound as though you were in trouble so I would go over there—and what? Provide you with some sort of crazy alibi?”
“I didn’t kill Brand,” Elizabeth said in a preternaturally calm voice, as though she denied killing her husband every day. “I came into the house, found him on the sofa and called you.”
“He was dead?” Tree asked.
“He wasn’t moving, there was blood everywhere, so I presumed he was dead.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I thought I heard something—someone in the house. I panicked and ran out of the house, drove away. Eventually, I came here.”
“I don’t understand,” Freddie said. “Your husband was hurt. You could see that. Why would you run?”
“As I said, I panicked.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?” Tree said.
“I don’t know. I was scared, I suppose. You think you know how you will react in these situations, but in fact you don’t know. You act much differently than you ever imagined.”
Freddie stared at her. Elizabeth gave her a steady gaze right back. None of what she was saying sounded very convincing, Tree thought.
“I saw someone running away from the house,” Tree said.
“The killer no doubt,” Elizabeth said.
“It wasn’t you?”
“I told you, I drove away.”
“So you didn’t kill your husband?”
She made one of her typically dismissive gestures. “I thought he was going to kill me.”
“You also said you thought he was having an affair. None of what you tell me turns out to be true. Why should I believe you now?”
“Because I am going to go to the police in a few minutes and undoubtedly they will accuse me of my husband’s murder and probably arrest me, so I’m going to require your continued services, Mr. Callister, in order to prove my innocence.”
“I’m not so sure you’re innocent.”
“Good,” Elizabeth said. “If you can be convinced I didn’t do this terrible thing, then maybe I can convince others as well.”
“Who would have wanted to kill him?”
Tree never got the answer to that question because at that moment, someone kicked in the front door. The next thing, heavily-armed men in helmets and flak jackets and armadillo-like armor—science fiction samurai—burst onto the terrace, screaming orders: “Down! Get down. Down!”
Two armored samurai pushed Tree to his knees and then knocked him forward onto the pool deck. Other samurai screamed unintelligible commands, a cacophony of contradictory sounds drowning each other out.
Tree’s arms were yanked behind his back, handcuffs snapped around his wrists. He strained for a glimpse of Freddie, also face down on the deck, also being handcuffed. Then Owen Markfield entered his line of vision.
He smiled and said, “You really are as dumb as Cee Jay says you are. Did you think I believed one word out of your mouth?”
17
They didn’t hold Freddie long.
However, Elizabeth Traven and Tree were held overnight in the Lee County Justice Center at 1700 Monroe St., downtown Fort Myers. It was Tree’s first time in jail. The places you go when you’re a private detective, he reflected.
Throughout the night he had a great deal of time to think. He should have been able to come up with something, a clue, a plan, something. But there was nothing. A night in jail only made him more anxious and fearful.
The next morning Tree was finger printed and photographed before being brought in chains to one of the courtrooms in the justice building. From the prisoners’ box, Tree could see a pale, grim-faced Freddie seated in a public gallery otherwise filled with reporters present to cover the widow of an international media mogul ch
arged with killing her husband.
Chris was not with Freddie. Tree tried not to be disappointed. Just because a boy’s father was in jail, no reason for him to show up.
A few minutes later, Elizabeth Traven, clad in a formless prison smock that otherwise she would not have been seen dead in, was formally indicted for the murder of her husband. Bail was denied. She was represented by a Fort Myers attorney named T. Emmett Hawkins. With his wispy white hair, navy bow tie, and his beautifully cadenced drawl, Hawkins must have been sent by central casting when the call came for a typical Southern lawyer.
Tree was charged as an accessory to the murder as well as harboring a fugitive. What did they think? That he and Elizabeth had conspired to kill her husband?
The assistant district attorney, a stern young man named Lee Bixby, argued Tree should not be released on bail. Edith Goldman, the no-nonsense defense lawyer Freddie had managed to get hold of first thing that morning, convinced the judge that Tree was neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community. He was released on a twenty-five thousand dollar bond, which Freddie put up.
“You’re an expensive date,” she commented later.
“But worth it?”
Freddie didn’t say anything.
By the time Tree was released later that afternoon, most of the reporters and cameramen were gone. A nervous young reporter from one of the local stations tried to interview him as he and Freddie strode away from the Justice Center, but he was easily eluded. Tree by now was a minor part of the story; much more interesting was the cable TV talking heads debate as to Elizabeth Traven’s innocence or guilt.
They crossed the street to the old county courthouse. One imagined the likes of Atticus Finch holding forth eloquently here; good men bringing justice to the South. A northern view, Tree decided. He and Freddie sat on the courthouse steps.
He expected Freddie to give him hell for getting them into another mess. He said, “I wouldn’t blame you if you decide to give me hell for getting us into this mess.”
“I’m tempted, believe me,” she said. “However, that’s probably a waste of breath. Besides, it’s not how we got into the mess that counts, it’s how we get out. That’s why we have Edith.”