“Aren’t you supposed to read me my rights?” Deal said to Conrad, who glared back at him.
“Fuck you,” Conrad said. He turned to the deputy who had his hand on the light switch. “Put the cuffs on him, Stroud.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Deal said as Stroud holstered his weapon and came forward.
“You’re the one made a mistake, buddy,” Conrad said. “Keep him covered,” he said to the third deputy, who nodded uncertainly.
Conrad gave Deal the look he probably reserved for perpetrators being dragged from a courtroom after sentencing, then strode across the room to throw open the closet door. Deal was already imagining how he’d begin his next phone call to Rusty Malloy when he saw Conrad stop short, as if he’d taken a punch to the solar plexus.
“Sonofabitch,” the big deputy said, staring into the closet in disbelief.
“What is it, Marcus?” The cop who was supposed to be cuffing Deal glanced up.
“Sonofabitch,” Conrad repeated, swiping his arm across a row of empty hangers.
Deal stared over Conrad’s shoulder into the closet. No slacks, no jerseys, no boots, no rows of stacked boxes on the shelf that ran above the length of galvanized pipe where the hangers danced. Deal couldn’t tell whether the odor of marijuana might still be lingering there, but even if it was, that was the only thing the closet held.
“I don’t see anything,” the third deputy said.
Conrad turned a murderous gaze upon his partner, then strode to the painted dresser and began yanking open the drawers. He’d gotten to the last of them when a commotion sounded from the hallway.
“Get your hands off me,” Deal heard a woman’s voice cry, followed by a whacking sound and a yelp of pain.
“Put the club down, ma’am,” Deal heard a man call. Then came a louder thwack.
“Goddamn!” the man cried. “Somebody help!”
Conrad stared up from the empty drawers at his two companions, his face glowing with rage. “Why doesn’t he have cuffs on?” Conrad said, pointing at Deal. But Stroud was already on his way into the hallway, and the third deputy seemed paralyzed with indecision.
Seconds later, Stroud was backpedaling furiously into the room, followed by the woman from the sidewalk, who now brandished her cane like a rapier. There was a fourth deputy lurking in the hallway, but he seemed in no hurry to join the group inside the bedroom.
Conrad reached out and snatched the woman’s cane away, an eyeblink move Deal would not have thought the man capable of. “Just simmer down,” the big man said, holding up his free hand as if he were directing traffic to halt.
“You give me my cane,” the woman demanded, uncowed by Conrad’s looming presence.
“I’ll arrest you for assault, Auntie,” Conrad said. “Just cool your jets, right now.”
The woman hesitated, her cheeks glowing with fury. Conrad pointed to Stroud. “Get the cuffs on this man, now.”
Stroud, who had a circular red welt rising in the middle of his forehead like an outsized Buddhist’s beauty mark, nodded, then began to fumble at his belt, where a pair of handcuffs dangled.
“What are you arresting him for?” the woman demanded.
“How about breaking and entering?” Conrad countered. “Burglary in the night season. Possession of…”
He stopped, glancing back at the empty closet. Deal thought he could hear gears grinding beneath the dome of the man’s sheared skull. “Check his pockets,” he called to Stroud. “See what he’s got.”
Stroud paused, the cuffs finally unclipped from his belt. “You want me to cuff him or search him?” Deal thought he detected a bit of impatience in the deputy’s voice.
“Get out of my way,” Conrad said, snatching the cuffs from Stroud and advancing on Deal.
“I invited this man into my home,” the woman thundered. “How dare you be arresting him.”
Conrad stopped short, blinking up at her. “Your home?” He glanced around the room. “This is your house?”
“Of course it’s my house,” she said, “just like it says down at the courthouse. I’m Minerva Betts and it’s been my house for twenty-seven years now, bought and paid for by Mr. Marcus Betts himself, God rest his soul.”
“But, Ainsley Spencer lives here.”
Ms. Betts drew herself up, uncowed by Conrad. “Ainsley Spencer may spend time here, sir, but I don’t know that it’s any of your business. I demand to know what you and these—” she broke off to sweep a withering gaze over the three deputies “—these men are doing here.”
Conrad’s mouth opened and closed, then opened again. “We got a call there’d been a shooting,” he said, trying a new tack.
“And what time was that?” she demanded.
Conrad seemed to be calculating. “Midnight, or thereabouts,” he said, trying to regain his composure.
Her eyes widened. “And you show up five and a half hours later to investigate this so-called shooting?”
There was a tapping sound at the window of Dequarius’ room, and everyone turned to stare. “Miz Betts? You all right?” came a muffled voice from outside.
“What the hell is that?” Conrad said.
Stroud went to the window to peer out. When he turned back to Conrad, there was a concerned expression on his face. “There’s three or four people out there—”
“Tell them to go home,” Conrad said. “This is police business.”
He might have said something else, but the clapper on the front door was pounding now. “Miz Betts?” A woman’s voice this time. Deal heard the sound of footsteps, as if a crowd might be gathering on the front porch.
“Burt, maybe you ought to take a look at this,” the fourth deputy called from somewhere in the living room.
“I want you out of here this instant.” Minerva Betts had her jaw pointed at Conrad now. “There’s been no shooting in this house, and no one has called the sheriff. If you don’t get out of my house, I’ll see that harassment charges are filed on the lot of you.”
Conrad started to stay something, then broke off when a new pounding began at the back door. “You want me to call for backup?” Stroud asked, his expression one of woe. Sweat beaded on the forehead of the other deputy.
“With what?” Conrad demanded. “The goddamned phone’s tore out.”
Conrad sent Deal a glance intended to be withering. “You are getting to be a bad penny,” he said, then turned back to his men.
“Put that gun away before you hurt yourself,” he growled to the deputy cowering by the bedroom door. He tossed the handcuffs to Stroud, who managed to catch them as they bounced off his chest.
“You heard the lady,” Conrad said to the others, starting for the door. “Waste of time even coming down here.”
“She stabbed me with her cane,” Stroud grumbled, touching the welt between his eyes gingerly.
Conrad didn’t even pause. “Why don’t you put that down in your log, Stroud. ‘Old woman cleaned my clock.’”
Stroud gave him a wounded look but said nothing. The other deputy stumbled out of Conrad’s way.
“I’d like my cane back,” the woman called before Conrad had cleared the bedroom door. The big deputy stiffened as though he’d been hit in the back with a cattle prod. By the time he turned around, however, his face bore what passed for a smile. “Sorry,” he said, extending the knurled staff Minerva Betts’ way.
As she took it, he pointed a thick finger at her. “Better be careful how you use that thing,” he told her. Then he turned on his heel and led his party out.
***
“I’m sorry about all that,” Minerva Betts told Deal as the front door slammed behind Conrad and his men.
“Sorry?” Deal said. “You saved my skin.” The second time a woman had done so this night, he thought.
She waved a hand to dismiss such talk and went to the window where the tapping had come moments before. “It’s all right now, Jonsey. They’ll be going.
”
Deal heard mumbled conversation outside, followed by the sound of receding footsteps. Minerva Betts gave him a contemplative look. “Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked.
Deal might have smiled, save for the serious expression on her face. “I must have left it somewhere else, Ms. Betts,” he said.
“That happens,” she said, then added, “My name is Minnie to my friends.”
“Minnie,” he said. “I’m John Deal.”
“I know,” she said. She took a closer look at him then and her expression shifted. “What happened to your head?”
Deal thought she was talking about the injury the desktop had inflicted on him a few minutes before, then realized she couldn’t even see that knot. He raised a hand to his forehead and felt about gingerly. Still sore, but the lump seemed smaller. Not even twenty-four hours, and that skirmish seemed like old news. “I ran into Sergeant Conrad earlier,” he told her. “We just can’t seem to get along.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. It wasn’t a sound of agreement. “You got to be more careful down here, you understand what I mean, Mr. Deal?”
Sage advice, Deal thought. He gave her a nod as he pushed himself up from the bed. He felt himself reeling suddenly and had to steady himself with a hand at the doorjamb until his head settled back on its base.
“You sure you’re okay?” Minerva Betts asked.
He nodded, but carefully. “I need some rest, that’s all,” he told her. “Maybe a glass of water.”
She took his arm and helped him into the kitchen, flicking on the wall switch for the overhead light with an expert jab of her cane. While she went to the cupboard for a glass, Deal leaned a hip against the table where he’d sat earlier with Russell and Annie, talking with Ainsley Spencer about where Dequarius Noyes might be. Not six hours had passed, but it seemed like ages ago.
Minerva Betts opened the same cupboard where Annie had gone for the aspirin earlier and shook her head disapprovingly at something she found. “Might as well eat sugar right from the jar,” she said, pulling a box of candied cereal down from the cupboard.
She stepped over the tossed and tumbled telephone as if it weren’t there and tossed the cereal into a trash can, then went back to the cupboard to bring out a glass and the aspirin container. Deal saw that the bag of rice was still there, but the bottle of wine seemed to have disappeared. Gone to ground along with Ainsley Spencer, he supposed.
He shook four of the aspirins into his hand and downed them with the water she’d brought. “That’s Miamah water, you know,” she told him, as she watched him chug. She used the pronunciation characteristic of many old-timers when referring to the city. His own mother had grown up knowing better, but maintained the practice to her dying day. “If it wasn’t for that water, wouldn’t be a soul alive on this island,” Minerva Betts added.
True enough, he thought. There was no source of fresh water in the entire Florida Keys, for that matter. Early settlers survived on rainwater trapped in cisterns or depended on water brought by boat. Now a two-foot pipe ran down the archipelago all the way from Miami, keeping paradise from going dry. How many more mouths would Franklin Stone’s new project add to all those already sucking at the tap? he wondered idly. He could also imagine Stone’s rejoinder: “Hell, it’s Key West. Let ’em drink rum.” Or words to that effect.
“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” he asked when he’d drained the glass.
“You can ask.”
It got a smile out of him. “Is this really your house?”
She gave him a look that might have seemed disapproving if he hadn’t seen what she’d laid on Conrad. “You don’t think I would lie to the sheriff’s men, now, do you?”
“I guess what I mean is, do you live here?”
She fixed him with a stare, though it was still nothing to that megawatt glare she’d used on the deputies. “Just how much of my business do you need to know?” she asked.
Deal held up his hands in surrender. “Only idle curiosity,” he said, though it didn’t stop him from trying another question he didn’t expect an answer to. “You sure you don’t have any idea where Ainsley Spencer might be?”
“He’ll turn up when he needs to, that much I know,” she told him. Her glance turned more solicitous then. “You want me to have one of the boys drive you back to your hotel?”
He shook his head, happy to find that the movement didn’t turn his legs rubbery. “I’m fine,” he assured her. “Really. And thanks.”
He put his glass down on the counter, then turned and headed down the narrow hallway toward the front of the house.
“You remember what I said, Mr. Deal,” she called as he pulled open the front door and moved out into the soft gray light. “Man from Miamah needs to be careful down here.”
Indeed, Deal thought. He glanced around the porch, then checked the surrounding yards and streets, as empty now as they had been when he’d first arrived. If there had been crowds surrounding this bungalow just moments before, they had become invisible spirits now.
And, Deal couldn’t help thinking, had Dequarius Noyes stayed here in the quarter among them, he might have found a way to survive. He was at the sidewalk’s gate now, and turned to find Minerva Betts at the door of the bungalow with her hand held high in a gesture of goodwill. He gave her what he hoped was a suitable wave in response, then turned and moved blearily toward the dew-shrouded Hog.
Chapter Twenty-one
When Deal woke, he found himself blinking stupidly at the numbers on the bedside clock: 100, he thought. What does that mean?
By the time he had managed to swing his feet to the side of the bed, reason had begun to return. He had slept into Saturday afternoon, he managed to understand, and at the same time also began to process the avalanche of recollection concerning the preceding thirty-six hours or so. There seemed to be enough experience there to make up a fairly eventful lifetime, though he suspected there was plenty more on the way.
His forehead was still sore from where Conrad had pounded it into the side of the squad car the morning before, and a low-grade ache oozed up from his kidneys. Nothing a few dozen Advil couldn’t handle, he thought, pushing himself up from the bed.
The suite they’d given him hummed with quietude—no shouts from any rummy poolside crew, no sounds of housekeepers banging down the hallways. Somewhere in this vast, somnolent space, he thought, there would surely be a bathroom. Somewhere.
He stayed in the shower until the hot water gave out, a not inconsiderable time, then pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of running shorts and made his way out through the living area to the bar, where Malloy had been pouring drinks the night before. He rummaged around in the tiny refrigerator beneath the counter until he found a can of Bloody Mary mix and hauled it out, along with a tray of ice cubes. He had filled the glass halfway before his gaze strayed to the bottle of Ketel One that some thoughtful minion of Stone’s had provided. It wasn’t like him to drink until the sun had cleared the yardarm, but what the hell, somewhere in the world it was well past five o’clock.
Besides, this was more like the practice of medicine than drinking. He added a generous splash of the vodka and stirred the drink with his index finger. He had a tentative sip and then another. By the third, the pain in the small of his back was already beginning to fade.
It took him a moment to locate the pull cord for the long bank of drapes, and another minute or two until his eyes could stand the afternoon glare, but finally he could see well enough to unclasp the locks on the sliding glass doors and make his way out into the sultry afternoon. He’d stumbled out onto a portion of the balcony that faced the water, he realized, gazing out at a glassy-calm expanse reflecting a sky so blue it was painful to look at.
A sailboat was making its way out through the channel between the mainland and a mangrove island where an open fisherman puttered in the shallows, searching for snapper that had taken refuge from the midday sun. An admirable stra
tegy, Deal thought, carrying his drink around the corner of the balcony into the shadows overlooking the pool.
There was only one woman lounging elegantly in a poolside chaise, he noted, but she had presence enough to stand in for a crowd. She wore a broad-brimmed straw hat wrapped with a colorful band, the same patterned fabric as that which made up her suit, though there might have been more fabric circling the crown of the hat than there was on her tanned body.
Deal realized he was staring, but she seemed engrossed in a magazine she was holding, and besides, he thought, taking a sip from his drink, this was a body that deserved to be stared at. It was not until she crossed one bronzed ankle atop another and put her magazine down to gaze up at him from behind a pair of oversized sunglasses that he realized it was Annie. The realization made his knees weaken.
“Are you just going to stand up there and look?” she called to him.
“Just for another hour or so,” he said. He thought his voice had a strangled quality.
“Too bad,” she said. “I was hoping you’d bring me one of those.” Deal glanced down at the drink in his hand. He supposed that was what she was pointing at; surely she couldn’t mean the swelling that he felt in his blousy shorts.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he said. He saluted her with his glass, then turned deftly, to bounce his forehead off the closed glass door behind him. He steadied himself as smoothly as he could, then made his way around the corner of the balcony and through the doorway where he’d come out. He freshened his own drink and made another for her and was about to head for the door when he remembered he’d need his key to get back in.
He took a deep breath, put the drinks on the bar, and walked into the bedroom to find his key. “She is not going anywhere,” he said to the sleep-puffed image he saw in the mirror above the enormous dresser where he’d tossed his pants the night before. “You can walk. She will be right there when you get outside.”
He found his key card and gave himself a nod of agreement, but the image of Annie in her two-handkerchief bathing suit still had him stepping smartly as he made his way out.
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