“So Dale should be home early. Since it’s not too far away.”
“Yes. I hope so.” Missy leaned against the arm of the end chair and faced us, her back to the screen. It lit her from behind and gave her an aura.
“It must be hard,” Danielle said. “With Dale being away so much.”
“It’s our life. You learn to live with it.”
“Do you go to many races?” Danielle asked.
“Not these days. I did, back in the day. Went to most of them.” She smiled. Then she dropped it. “But then Angela Jean had to go to school, and we wanted her to have a sense of place, you know?”
Danielle nodded. “Of course.”
They both sipped their wine. I watched the screen over Missy’s shoulder. Every picture was either Missy and Dale, or the three of them. I didn’t recognize Palm Beach in any.
“But now she’s grown,” said Danielle. “Angela Jean.”
“She is that,” said Missy. “Her own woman.”
“You must be proud.”
“Isn’t every parent? But she’s a good girl. Smart, caring. Pretty, too. I just wish she’d work a little less so she could find a fella.”
“These things happen when they’re supposed to,” said Danielle.
Missy nodded like she agreed, but she didn’t say as much. “You just want them to be happy, don’t you?”
Missy sipped her wine. As she did, the picture behind her changed from color to black-and-white. I focused on it because I knew it. I had seen it before. It was a digital version of the photograph Missy had shown me the first time we had met. She had said it was from the night she had met Dale. When Ansel Brasher had taken her to the race track in Alabama and she had met the love of her life. The photo on the screen was more vivid than the one in the frame. The effect of the projector, I assumed. The faces in it glowed. They were young and vibrant and the floodlights above made them sparkle with energy. An old race car and a group of young kids. Some looking away. Dale Beadman looking at the camera, already aware of the responsibilities of a team driver. And Missy, eyes for nothing but Dale Beadman.
Then the picture dissolved and another reappeared in its place. Another black-and-white. The same glow, the flare from the same camera lens. The same race car in the background. Clearly the same night. But a different shot. Dale Beadman spraying a beer bottle into the air, a substitute for the champagne bottles on the podium that were years in the future. The people around him were laughing and recoiling from the spray. Except one. The same one. Missy. Her eyes were firmly fixed on Dale. The same look in her eyes. A look that said she had never met a man like Dale and never would again. He was young and indestructible and a winner, and he wore confidence like a greatcoat. She was a planet all of her own, but she was ready to be swept up into his galaxy. Her eyes told the story.
As I looked at her face, I realized that she had an arm around her. An embrace. The man next to her was holding her tight like maybe he was aware she was a planet and he was too, but his gravity was never going to be enough to keep her in near orbit. She was leaning into him. Her body said she was comfortable with the hug, but her face and its laser focus on Dale said she was indifferent to it. I looked at the boy holding her. The boy who had taken her to the race track the night she had met Dale Beadman. I looked at his face. He was younger, much younger. He was flawless and full of hopes and dreams that made him look alive. I had to look again to realize what I was seeing, because I had met the man. After life had revealed the flaws and dashed the hopes and tempered the dreams. I knew who it was. And I knew who it wasn’t.
It wasn’t Ansel Brasher.
The picture dissolved and was replaced by another. I don’t know what the next photograph was. I wasn’t looking anymore. I was standing in the dark, reassessing everything. Danielle and Missy were chatting about something, but I couldn’t make sense of it. All the blood had rushed to one specific part of my brain. I had no idea which part, but I knew all other senses had become dulled because I was focused on thinking back. On what people had said and what they had done. On the lines they had emphasized and those they had thrown away. I pulled apart the puzzle I had been putting together, and then I started putting it back together. The same pieces in a different order. The picture was going to be a very different picture. If I was seeing it right this time. Which I didn’t know for sure.
Missy offered us another glass of wine, but I begged off. I hadn’t touched the one I had in my hand. I put it on the cabinet that held the bar fridge and thanked Missy for her hospitality. She said we were welcome anytime. I felt dizzy as we descended the stairs.
We got to the front door when the door to Angie’s office opened at the other end of the corridor.
“Miami?” she asked.
“Angie,” I said, distracted.
She walked over us and didn’t wait for me to introduce her.
“Angie Beadman,” she said to Danielle.
“Danielle Castle.”
“A pleasure.” Angie looked at me. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“We were in the neighborhood.”
“How did you get in?”
“Your mother,” I lied.
“Oh.” She glanced up in the direction of the cinema room. “Can I help you with something?”
“No,” I said. “I think we’re good right now.”
I opened the door. I wanted to be gone. I needed to think so badly I couldn’t stand properly.
“Are you getting somewhere?” Angie asked.
“Possibly.”
“I mean really getting somewhere. Do you know who did it?”
“Crystalizing some thoughts.”
“Good.”
I made to step out, and Angie grabbed my arm. “Miami, can I ask a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Once you know—once you’re sure—can you come to me first?”
“You?”
“Not my dad. I don’t think this would be good for him to deal with.”
“He’ll need to know.”
“Of course. But it would be better if it came from me. Will you do that for me?”
“Sure, Angie. Sure.”
We bade her goodnight and I stumbled to my vehicle.
“What was that about?” asked Danielle as I started the SUV and headed for the gate.
“Not sure.”
“Are you okay?”
“No. Not okay. I’m an idiot.”
“No argument from me.” She smiled. “But why this time?”
“Did you see the photo?”
“I saw lots of photos.”
“The one from the night Missy met Dale.”
“I have no idea which one that would be. A black-and-white one, I suppose.”
“Yeah, black-and-white. The night they met. She showed it to me before, the original in a frame. I saw it again, on the screen.”
“So?”
I pulled out onto North Ocean Drive and headed for home. I wished I had autopilot. Then I wished I had asked Danielle to drive.
“So there was a second shot. Same night. A guy with his arm around Missy. The guy who took her to the race track the night she met Dale.”
“Ansel Brasher.”
“No. It wasn’t Brasher.”
“It wasn’t? Who was it?”
I watched the tunnel of light against the hedges either side of the road. I felt like my vision had been that way for too long.
“It was Rex Jennings. The truck driver.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
We headed off the island across Bingham Island. I rolled my window down to get some breeze on my face. The night air was cool and gave a hint of the season turning.
“So the guy who brought the cars from Michigan was Missy’s old flame?” asked Danielle.
I nodded. I had told her about the delivery but left out the bit about there being only one car coming in because of the uncertain provenance.
“So you think he took them away again?”
&nbs
p; “I don’t see how. But it’s a motive. He told me his own wife and kids had left him. He blamed his job. But maybe he never got over Missy.”
“Another one.”
“Maybe not. I might be wrong about Brasher. Or they both could be in on it.”
“Both?”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
“You’ll need something better than Sun Tzu.”
“I know.”
“And what was that with Angie? Don’t tell her dad?”
“I don’t know what that was. A daughter protecting her father from something?”
“Or a guilty person watching their story fall apart,” said Danielle.
“You think it’s an inside job?”
“Why would she say that otherwise?”
I had no idea. “The daughter who can’t get the top job because her father won’t relinquish the position, and the jilted lover of her mother.”
“It’s not a great movie, but it is a plausible conclusion. You should call Ronzoni.”
“Why?”
“They’ve committed a crime.”
“Someone has. I don’t know who yet.”
“Ronzoni can investigate.”
“Ronzoni is investigating, sort of. He can come to his own conclusions. Right now I don’t know anything for sure. But there’s still a big hole in the story.”
“The how.”
“Exactly.”
We got onto I-95 and headed for home. Or the condo that was playing the part of home right now. I wondered if a condo somewhere was going to become a permanent fixture in my life. I wondered if Missy Beadman would be sitting alone watching old photographs play if she had made that kind of a decision. I wondered if she’d even had that option.
We drove past the offramp for Blue Heron, and I resisted the urge to follow it back to Singer Island. Danielle and I both turned and looked east toward the home that wasn’t. I kept going until we got to PGA Boulevard, and I pulled off the freeway and cut back under the overpass toward the golf courses and Lucas’s condo.
And then I saw the sign.
A big red sign in the night with the word Fuelex on it. High up on a pole so it could be seen from the freeway above. I had been focused on the other side of the freeway, on the exit. Now all I could see was the sign. My Cadillac pulled itself into the gas station.
“We need gas?” Danielle asked.
“No,” I said, getting out. Danielle followed me out.
“Why are we stopping? You have a hankering for a bad hot dog?”
“Rex Jennings filled his truck up here.”
“When?”
“After leaving the Beadman estate. Before the hurricane.”
“How do you know?”
“The woman who does the accounts looked it up. He uses a company gas card.”
“So?”
“So gas stations have video. I want to see it.”
“What do you think you’ll see?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, let’s go see, then.”
Danielle led the way in. It wasn’t late, so there were a few customers around. We waited our turn and then approached the girl behind the counter. She smelled like bubble gum.
“Is there a manager on duty?” Danielle asked.
“Yeah. Why?” She chomped on her gum.
Danielle took her FDLE ID out. She was technically only at the academy, but the girl behind the counter didn’t know or didn’t care. Or both. She picked up a phone and said, “Todd, can you come to the front? Police are here.” It wasn’t a phone call. The announcement went across the loudspeakers in the store and everyone stared at Danielle and me. Mostly at Danielle.
A kid with pimples came out through a plain door in the back. “Is there a problem?” he asked Danielle.
“No, sir. No problem. Can we talk in the back?”
Todd looked around at the customers, who were all now looking at him. “Yeah, sure.”
He led us through the door in the back into a corridor stacked with brown boxes of chips and paper towels and pallets of soda. He led us into a small room that had a desk with a single chair on either side. There was a Fuelex calendar on the wall. The picture was of a green race car. Number 29.
“What’s up?” asked Todd.
Danielle explained our need to see the video from the forecourt cameras on the day of the hurricane.
“After eleven a.m.,” I said.
The guy hesitated. “Am I going to be in trouble for this?”
“No, sir,” said Danielle. “The investigation has nothing to do with you or Fuelex. But what we see might help us with our investigation.”
Todd nodded like this was what he wanted to hear, and he pulled his chair around to a console where a small screen sat on a table. It was the kind of screen that comes with a security system, small and with poor resolution. But we weren’t trying to spot a man on the moon, so it would do. Todd took a device with a large squash ball-like thing in it and used it to navigate the text menu on the screen. He pulled up a video that was coming from the top of the canopy over the forecourt. We saw the gas pumps and the freeway overpass in the background.
He got the video going, and we watched for a few minutes. Then the big rig pulled into the forecourt at the pumps furthest from the door. The entire truck and trailer didn’t fit in the shot. But we saw Rex Jennings step from the cab.
“Diesel pumps,” said Todd.
That made sense for a big rig. But something didn’t make sense.
“Do you have that from the other side? Looking back the other way?” I asked.
Todd nodded and got to work. It took a bit of doing because the system was old and the interface was clunky, but eventually he got it. The same forecourt looking away from the freeway, west toward PGA National and Lucas’s condo. Each camera covered part of the forecourt so the pumps closest to the camera weren’t in shot. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t looking at the pumps. I was looking at the semitrailer coming down PGA Boulevard. As before, it slowed and pulled into the gas station. This time we couldn’t see the cabin. We didn’t see Rex get out. We waited for a while until the trailer shuddered and then pulled away and rolled out of view.
I asked Todd to go back to the first angle. I should have just watched the video through when he’d had it up the first time, but I was confused. It took him forever to get it back again, but he did so without complaint. We saw the truck appear in the forecourt and stop. We watched as Rex Jennings stepped from the cab and filled the big tank on the truck. We kept watching. He wandered into the store and came out with a soda and then replaced the pump and got in the cab and drove away.
“Keep it going.”
The picture wasn’t great. At a distance it was pretty grainy. But not that grainy. It showed the truck pull onto PGA Boulevard and then its turn signal came on as it moved under the overpass, and it turned left onto I-95. Headed for Charlotte, North Carolina.
Danielle thanked Todd for valuable assistance and we walked back to the Caddy. We didn’t speak until we were in the car.
“So why did the truck come from the west along PGA Boulevard when Palm Beach is east of here?” Danielle asked.
“Good question.”
“You said the other day you saw video showing him getting on the freeway at Okeechobee Boulevard. Didn’t you?”
“I did,” I said. “Leo showed it to me. Rex got on I-95 at Okeechobee. From the east, coming straight from Palm Beach over the bridge at Southern Boulevard.”
“So why is he getting back on I-95, this time from the west, only a few miles north of where he got on?”
“That’s the thirty-million-dollar question.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
We drove the short journey along PGA Boulevard to Lucas’s condo. I was looking out past the headlights, out toward the horizon. Wondering. I would have put money on the fact that Danielle was doing the same. We didn’t talk until we got back into the townhouse. I dropped my keys on the counter and wa
ndered out onto the small patio. The evening was fresh, and it helped clear my head. Danielle slipped a well-worn Oakland A’s sweater on and joined me.
“Let’s think this through logically,” she said. “Why would he get off?”
“For fuel.”
“Right, which he did. But why was he coming from the wrong direction?”
“Maybe he got off early.”
“Why?”
“Mistake?”
“You’ve met him, MJ. Would he make a mistake like that?”
“No.”
“Could he have gotten off for fuel and then found himself on the wrong side of the road. Maybe cut up Military Trail?”
“Anything’s possible. He knows the family, so he’s been here before, but he doesn’t live here, so he might have made that mistake.”
“Those gas station signs on the poles, they don’t really tell you which side they’re on. And I imagine pulling a U-turn in a semitrailer is no picnic. So what are the exits he could have gotten off at?”
I said, “He got on at Okeechobee. North from there, it’s Palm Beach Gardens, Forty-Fifth, Blue Heron, Northlake and PGA Boulevard.”
“Which ones have gas stations?”
“All of them. But he couldn’t go to any old gas station. It’s in the sponsor agreement that he has to fuel up at a Fuelex station.”
“Okay. Where are they?”
“Before PGA? There’s one on Blue Heron.”
“Is that where you go?”
“Not regularly. Fuelex is expensive.”
“So he might have gone there by mistake.”
“It feels like we’re clutching at straws.”
“Why don’t we go check?” she asked.
“Check what?”
“The video, dummy. Maybe if he got off at Blue Heron, the Fuelex station will show him doing it.”
“And then what?”
“Then you take one more step.”
I sighed. “Okay. It’s worth a look. Let’s do it first thing.”
“Let’s do it now.” Suddenly Danielle seemed to have her second wind.
I didn’t. I was exhausted. Physically I was tired from all the driving. Mentally I was tired from the case and being kicked out of my house.
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