Suitable for Framing

by Edna Buchanan

“We belong together, Britt.”

  “You mean you’ll come see me every visiting day?”

  “Jesus, Britt, I’m serious here. When I thought of you over at the jail—” Our kisses interrupted.

  “Aren’t you afraid to be alone with me?” I murmured.

  “I’ll chance it.” He changed position, pulling away as he unbuckled his leather shoulder holster. He placed the gun on the floor beside our chair. “See,” he said, as we reentwined, “I’m an unarmed man.”

  “I mean the department, if somebody finds out you’re here.”

  “I don’t care. This night is ours.” He pressed me closer.

  “Do you have a license to carry that, lieutenant?” I asked.

  I didn’t sleep alone after all.

  Not only did I wake up in my own bed but there was a bonus prize. The aroma of coffee was in the air and the warm spot next to me had been left by McDonald, who was now in my kitchen. I padded barefoot to the door and watched him.

  “We’ve gotta get some groceries in here,” he said, caught peering into the cupboard. “I found some coffee cake, but what’s that smell in the refrigerator?”

  “A hamburger I put in there to thaw, just before I got busted.” I pulled on a bathrobe and joined him.

  He kissed my mouth, my forehead, my nose.

  “You lost weight,” he said, hands around my waist. “You need to put on a few pounds. You also did something new to your hair. I like it.”

  I laughed. “I must admit, you are an improvement over my last roommates.”

  “How bad was it? I was going nuts. I felt so helpless.”

  I pulled away and sat down at the table. “It certainly increases your appreciation of the little things in life. It was an eye-opening experience, one I’d rather not repeat.”

  He poured coffee and placed a piece of cake in front of me. I attacked it with my fork.

  “You wouldn’t believe how good it feels to use one of these again.” I held it up and admired the tines. “It’s not easy maintaining your dignity and your table manners when all you’re allowed is a plastic spoon.”

  “My poor sweetheart.”

  “Spaghetti night was a trip.”

  Our bare feet did sexy things to each other under the table.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” he said, wiping crumbs off the sensual mouth I suddenly hungered for more than food. “The latest on Gilberto Sanchez, aka FMJ.”

  “They’ve got him?” My foot froze in midair.

  “No such luck. He stole a car.”

  “Oh, that’s new?” My toes resumed stroking his instep under the table. “Stealing a car is as natural to him as living and breathing.”

  “But now I think we’re not the only ones looking for him.”

  “The FBI?”

  “People who may be slightly more determined and a damn sight more lethal. He hit the jackpot this time. We had a tip that he was seen in Allapattah, nearly got ’im. Found the car he was reported driving. Prints inside were his. Something must have spooked him into ditching the car. Slipped through our fingers again like soap in the shower. But here’s the interesting part. The car he got away in was a Mercedes. The driver had stopped to use a pay phone and left the keys. He turns around and this kid is driving away in his Benz. The guy reports the car stolen, but he’s real upset, really nervous.”

  “You should have told him he was lucky he didn’t get shot in the leg.”

  “Next day we get a call from a salesman at the Jaguar dealership on Seventy-first Street. Kid fitting FMJ’s description came in to buy a new sixty-two-thousand-dollar Jag, for cash. Had the money in a shopping bag. But he had no ID, no driver’s license, no nothing, and they couldn’t sell it to him. Broke the salesman’s heart.”

  “He called you?”

  “Nope. The kid comes back half an hour later with a homeless guy…”

  “You mean a constant outdoorsman.”

  “… who hangs in the neighborhood. The homeless guy, who has ID, buys the car, and they drive out in it.”

  “Then the salesman called?”

  “No way. It was another salesman who was jealous. He calls and reports it. Sour grapes. We find the homeless guy drunk as a skunk, pockets stuffed with cash. The kid paid him three thousand to buy the car for him.”

  “Where did all the money come from?”

  “We run the guy who reported the Mercedes stolen. DEA says he’s a money launderer for the cartel. Must have had a suitcase full of cash stashed in the trunk. Word on the street is that it might have been as much as two million. Rakestraw is beside himself.”

  “With a car like that, FMJ should be easy to spot.”

  “Everybody was looking last night.”

  “God, I hope I’m back to work when that story breaks.”

  “Better hurry.”

  “I know how much your career means to you,” I said slowly. “And I want to protect you, to keep you out of this. But I need your help. I have to know if IA found the leak in the Zachary Linwood case.”

  “Why?”

  “I just need to know.”

  “How does it tie in with your case, Britt?”

  “I’m trying to find the real killer. I don’t want to lay it all out yet, or put you in the middle, until I can piece it together. Can you just do that for me?”

  He studied me. “Sure.”

  “Think you can find out today?”

  “I’ll try, but be careful, Britt. I wish you would trust me.”

  “If it doesn’t work out, I don’t want to take you down with me.”

  We splashed in the shower and washed each other’s hair, but my heart wasn’t in it. I was preoccupied, mind racing. I was fighting the most important deadline of my life.

  For the first time, I couldn’t wait for McDonald to leave. “You’ll call me right away?”

  He nodded.

  “One other thing,” I said. “The detectives on my case never even bothered to take a look at the contents of Trish’s desk at the office. I think it’s important that they do before it disappears.” He agreed.

  Two minutes after he left, I was on the phone, the taste of his kiss lingering on my lips.

  Clayton Daniels was eighty-eight years old and living in a retirement village in South Miami. After the death of his wife five years earlier, he had rented out their apartment. Trish, the latest tenant, had an eighteen-month lease. Distressed by the death of the lovely young woman who had lived in his apartment, he was relieved that at least it didn’t happen there. Would have made it much more difficult to rent.

  Miguel still languished in the prison ward, nearly well enough to be moved to the jail.

  Marty was next. “Britt, thank God! Where are you?”

  “Home, released on bond. Trying to find out who killed her.” My voice sounded small, and surprisingly his concern made me want to sob. Was the afterglow from McDonald wearing off faster these days, or had the caffeine reached my brain, awakening me to the enormity of my problem?

  “I left a message for you before I heard about Trish. You didn’t kill her, right?”

  That’s what I always liked about Marty. Always to the point.

  “Right.”

  “That’s what I figured. The reason I called was that I learned more about Trish’s departure from the Beacon. She was a star there for a while. Came up with great stories. Had a sixth sense, a natural reporter. Always in the right place at the right time. It’s a small paper, and she won them first place from the Oklahoma State Press Association for deadline reporting. First time the paper was ever even nominated.

  “Her first big story for them was about the disappearance of a two-year-old, the only child of a couple in her neighborhood. Was missing for days: search parties, cops, bloodhounds, choppers, park rangers, the whole enchilada. Starting to sound familiar?”

  “You’re not saying…?”

  “Yes indeedy. Trish found the missing child tr
apped in the storm cellar of a cabin already searched once. He was unconscious, but she revived him.

  “Then she was assigned a feach on a day-care center, but while reporting it she uncovered evidence of abuse, apparently while interviewing the children. The center’s operator was later convicted. This was the prizewinner. But the case was later reopened and the woman’s guilt questioned. There seemed to be a possibility that the molestation stories were planted in the children’s minds. Meanwhile, her editors began asking themselves, Was she always there, in the right place at the right time, because she had a street reporter’s instincts or because she made something happen at that time and place?”

  I shuddered as I listened.

  “Britt, you still there?”

  “Yes, go on. Please.”

  “They became uncomfortable. Nothing could be proven and the consensus among some people who worked there was that nobody at the top was eager to prove anything. A scandal would have ruined the paper’s credibility and tainted their big-time award. She was just quietly told to find another job.”

  “So they turned her loose on us.” I remembered how in the beginning I had warned Trish about Miami. Miami should have been warned about her.

  “That’s what it looks like. If push came to shove, though, with the current situation, I’m sure they would talk candidly to detectives rather than face the scrutiny of two investigative reporters from big-city newspapers in Chicago and Miami.”

  “I think I love you, Marty.”

  “’Bout time you realized it.”

  “What about her family? Her body was sent home for burial. From what I’ve heard, they didn’t come here. The landlord said they’ve asked him to have someone pack up and ship her personal possessions and give the rest to charity. Think they’d talk?”

  “One way to find out. Do I call them or do you want to do it?”

  “I guess it should be me. I’d much rather knock on their door in person, but I’m not allowed to leave the county, much less the state.”

  “You ever need a hideout, Britt, mi casa es su casa.”

  I took down the phone number, fortified myself with a cup of coffee, and sat at the kitchen table with a notebook and the phone.

  The mother answered.

  “Mrs. Tierney. I’m calling from Miami. My name is Britt Montero, and they say I killed your daughter. I didn’t, and I need your help.”

  There was a pause, the connection was broken, and a dial tone followed. She had hung up.

  I took several deep breaths, said a prayer, and dialed again.

  “Mrs. Tierney? We were cut off. This is Britt Montero again. I need your help.”

  “We just buried our daughter,” she said, after a moment.

  “I know, and I deeply regret your heartbreak, but I am charged with a crime I didn’t commit. I need to find out everything I can so we can identify the real killer.”

  “How can you call us at a time like this?”

  “Mrs. Tierney, I understand your pain. But what about my mother? She is a widow and I am her only child. She just mortgaged her home to help me bond out of jail. I am innocent. Please help me.”

  She sighed hopelessly. “We knew nothing of her life there. We haven’t been very close to Trish in recent years. There isn’t anything I can tell you.” Her voice was flat, as though numbed by old pain.

  “So you wouldn’t know who she was seeing here in Miami? She didn’t mention anyone?”

  “We didn’t even know she had moved to Miami until clippings of her stories began to arrive in the mail.”

  “No phone calls? No letters?”

  “Just the clippings. Her bylines. I guess she wanted to show us her work, what she was doing. She was such a lovely child.”

  “She was a beautiful woman.”

  “She was. Trish had a strong need for attention, and I’m afraid it was our fault. She has a younger brother, a wonderful boy, who has been terribly ill all his life. We never knew how long he would be with us. It was touch and go so many times. Of course his needs consumed all our resources and attention. She felt neglected, I suppose. How ironic. He is still with us, and she is gone.”

  “When did you first realize that she had this—need for attention?”

  “Looking back, I think the first time was when Markie was just a baby. We had gotten him a puppy, and one day it disappeared. Trish was only six or so, but she went out and found the dog. We were all so thrilled, we praised her to the skies.

  “One day weeks later, her brother stopped breathing; she ran to tell us and we barely saved him. We thanked God she was there. Our little heroine.

  “Then other things began to happen to Mark over the years. Only when he was with Trish. I didn’t want to admit it, but I became afraid to leave her alone with him. Things, accidents, kept happening. When she was twelve, there was an incident with another child. We sent her away to school when she was fourteen. She hasn’t lived at home since. We continued to deposit checks to her bank account every month, to assure that she would never be in need.

  “She wants and needs attention and will do anything to get it—she did, that is,” she said, catching herself. “Forgive me. I have not yet become accustomed to referring to my daughter in the past tense.”

  “I understand. You will be as honest and candid with investigators if they should contact you?”

  “Of course. You read her stories, didn’t you? She did have a talent, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, she did. A real talent.”

  I hung up and rested my head on my arms, on the table, suddenly very weary. Everybody, I thought, is somebody’s child.

  The phone rang, startling me.

  “It was Tully Snow,” McDonald said.

  “It was Tully Snow!” I told Lottie and Onnie, who had arrived for more brainstorming and a quick lunch. They brought sandwiches from the News cafeteria. On a par with jail food, they still made me homesick for the paper.

  “Tully Snow? I remember when we did stories about his poor little baby sick with leukemia. He was the one barking and snapping at us at the vice mayor’s office that day, yelling at me not to make pictures,” Lottie said.

  “Ever strike you that he might have been protesting too much?”

  “An Oscar-winning performance,” she said, dipping into the bowl of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies. Sinking her teeth into one, she rolled her eyes and sighed. “This is why I came, Britt. Speaking of sweet, sinful stuff, you had yourself a little company last night, didn’t you?” She cut her eyes at me.

  Was I that transparent?

  “Thought I spotted his Cherokee turning the corner as we pulled onto Alton.”

  My face reddened, giving me away.

  “Told you!” she said to Onnie, and they both grinned.

  “He was here,” I said. “He’s great. Let’s get back to business. According to McDonald, Snow admitted he was the leak when IA called him in. Told them it was an accident, a big mistake. That he didn’t know Trish was a reporter, that she was in the office, sitting on the other side of a partition and overheard him discuss the case on the phone. He was reprimanded for not reporting it to his supervisors.

  “He lied. She knew more than one side of some mythical telephone conversation. She had every detail, chapter and verse.”

  “True.” Lottie nodded.

  “What do we do?” asked Onnie.

  “I called his office and left messages. Tully was in, but he isn’t returning my calls.”

  “What would you say to him?” Onnie asked.

  “I’m not even sure. I was gonna play it by ear. If only we had a physical link.”

  “They sure did. Why did they have sex in the car?” Lottie said. “The sun’s already setting at that hour this time of year, but it’s still risky. She had an apartment; there’s motels and hotels everywhere.”

  “Had to be spur-of-the-moment,” I said. “Maybe she called him after our fight at the station and
they arranged to meet there for a few minutes. Wasn’t so spur-of-the-moment that they didn’t use a condom. If only they hadn’t, DNA testing could have proved he’s the one.”

  “We know they didn’t at least once.”

  We stared at one another, all wondering the same thing.

  “You think they keep specimens?” I asked aloud.

  After they left I called Dr. Sandra Lowe at the medical examiner’s office. She had the information I wanted. I knew then what I had to do.

  My appointment with J.T. was at four o’clock. He was renting office space in the penthouse suite of a prestigious Coral Gables law firm.

  It was exhilarating to be back behind the wheel, master of my fate. I wondered if the other drivers on the expressway appreciated the joys of freedom. Judging from their performance, they didn’t. Most seemed bent on being locked up or engaged in a gunfight before reaching their destination. I reached for the dashboard scanner out of habit but didn’t turn it on. What if I heard a great story go out? What would I do? The only story for me to focus on now was mine.

  The drive took only twenty minutes. I boarded the elevator with several people and hit the penthouse button.

  “Penthouse. Sounds very fancy,” commented a passenger to my right, a friendly man in his fifties.

  “I don’t know,” I murmured. “I’ve never been there before.”

  “That’s where all the lawyers are,” he said. “When you get the bill, you’ll want to jump.”

  He was probably right. J.T. had to pay the rent somehow. Whatever happened to lawyers who start out modestly in little storefronts?

  At least there was no waiting. His office was actually a desk, a telephone, and a filing cabinet tucked into a small windowless alcove in the spacious suite. His cheap suit didn’t fit the high-end environment, but he was sure to be better dressed soon.

  “J.T.,” I said. “I want you to make a deal for me.”

  My words jolted him back in his chair, stunned.

  “Not that kind of deal,” I said quickly. “I think a cop killed Trish. I want you to get the state to let me wear a wire and go talk to him.”

  He let out his breath in a whoosh and shook his head. “The state would never ever wire a homicide defendant, especially against a police officer. No way would they agree.”