by PJ Parrish
“You’ll be all right, Reg,” Louis said.
Reggie went quiet, his hand tucked under his chin as he stared out at the blue sky beyond the archways. When he turned back to Louis, his eyes were moist.
“That’s the first time you called me by my first name,” he said.
“It is?”
Reggie nodded.
The lone pug that had stayed with Reggie laid its head on his leg. Reggie stroked its ear.
“I know you think I’m ridiculous,” Reggie said.
“I don’t—”
Reggie silenced him with a hand. “That’s okay. You get used to it, you know.”
Louis’s eyes wandered to the archway, hoping Margery would appear and save him. But from what? Truth was, he had thought Reggie Kent was ridiculous. And from the start, he had wanted to distance himself from this man, like shaking his hand or just saying his first name would somehow suck him into a world he didn’t understand and wanted no part of. But this week, a lot of little worlds had been turned upside down within his larger one.
“You shouldn’t get used to it,” Louis said.
Reggie had been looking out at the ocean again and turned back. “What?”
“You should never get used to people treating you like shit because you’re maybe a little—”
Reggie smiled. “Queer?”
“I was going to say different.”
They were quiet again. A phone was ringing somewhere deep in the house. Louis and Reggie both looked at the mute extension phone, but neither made a move to pick it up.
Louis saw a shadow pass over Reggie’s bruised face and wondered again what he had endured in jail. A part of him didn’t want to know, no matter how much he figured Reggie might need to talk about it.
“I was in jail once,” Louis said.
Reggie looked at him in surprise.
“Eight years ago, I had to go back to the town where I was born in Mississippi,” Louis said.
“You’re from Mississippi?”
Louis nodded. “Some shit happened there, and I ended up in jail. One of the guards put a noose around my neck and tried to hang me.”
“Good Lord,” Reggie whispered.
“Yeah, he was a real piece of work.”
They were quiet again.
“Do you think about it a lot?” Reggie asked.
Louis hesitated. “It left a scar around my neck, but it’s faded a lot. Now I only think about it every time I shave.”
Reggie gave a wry smile and stroked the pug.
“You’ll be okay, Reg,” Louis said.
He gave Louis a long look and heaved a big sigh. “That’s not my real name, you know.”
Louis nodded. “Andrew told me you changed it.”
“Ronald Barnabas Kaczmarek, that’s my real name. How can a person be taken seriously with a name like that?”
“Sounds like a perfectly good name to me.”
“Not in this town.”
The pug jumped off the lounge and trotted off. Reggie picked up the Shiny Sheet and held it out to Louis. “It’s all here, you know, every sordid detail. Tink Lyons’s funeral is today. The jackals are having a field day picking at the carcasses.”
“Why don’t you leave?” Louis said.
Reggie folded up the Shiny Sheet and set it on the table. “Where would I go? Back to Buffalo? Please.”
Louis was quiet.
“I know this is a horrible place in many ways,” Reggie said. “But it is also quite lovely, and it is my home. There’s no way you’ll ever understand, but I feel safe here. I don’t think I can survive anywhere else anymore.”
Louis understood perfectly. With Margery at his side, Reggie Kent would resume his place on the island. His phone would ring again. His ladies would embrace him again. He would return to the ballet, to caviar on his patio, and to his coveted table by the fireplace in Ta-boo.
The snorting of pugs made them both look to the archway. Margery came in, her Pucci caftan a floating rainbow cloud.
“I just got off the phone with Harvey,” she said. “You would not believe what that man is charging me for all this.”
Reggie looked away, embarrassed.
“He got the charges dropped against Reggie,” Louis said.
Margery grimaced. “Okay, he hit on all sixes, but he still cost me some heavy sugar. Lawyers… the world would spin so much better without them.”
“Can’t say I disagree with that,” Louis said. He rose. “Well, I have to get going.”
Margery stared at him. “Going? Going where?”
“It’s time for me to go home.”
“Is Marvin going with you?”
Louis nodded.
“But I thought he was canoodling with that lovely bartender at Ta-boo?”
Louis had ceased to wonder how word got around the island so fast. “Marvin’s leaving, too.”
Margery let out a big sigh and looked down at Reggie. “Well, say your goodbyes, dear. I’m going to walk him out.”
Reggie looked up at Louis. “How can I thank you?” he said softly.
“Just be happy, Reg.”
Reggie nodded.
“Let’s ankle, Louis,” Margery said.
Louis followed Margery out of the loggia and into the hallway. The pugs followed them outdoors. Louis watched them as they rolled and snorted in the grass. Louis spotted Franklin over by the coral fountain, ladling out leaves with a small aquarium net. A van pulled up to the mansion across the street and dislodged a crew of three women in uniforms who disappeared behind a servants’ entrance gate. Two brown-faced Hispanic men in long-sleeved shirts and wide-brimmed hats were perched on ladders, trimming the twelve-foot hedges.
Margery was watching the blue swells rolling in from the Atlantic. She pulled in a deep breath and closed her eyes.
“Things are changing,” she said softly.
Louis was quiet.
“When I got here, there were rules, and everyone knew how to act,” she said. “But now… the world is too much with us on our little island.”
She turned to Louis. “I was reading the papers today,” she said. “About Mark Durand and everything. But there was nothing about Emilio.” She paused. “Did you ever find out what happened to him?”
Louis didn’t feel like going into any of it now, but he knew Margery would find out everything eventually. “He was murdered,” he said.
Margery looked back toward the ocean. “He was a nice boy,” she said softly. “I had this little fantasy about him.”
She sensed Louis staring at her but kept her eyes on the ocean. “Not like you might think. It’s just that, well, I couldn’t have any babies, you see, and my Lou did so want a son.”
She was quiet for a long time before she turned back to Louis. “Didn’t you tell me that Emilio had a family?”
Louis nodded. “He has a sister in Immokalee.”
“A sister. What is her name?”
“Rosa. Rosa Díaz.”
Margery hesitated, then dug into the pocket of her caftan. She came out with her pink leather checkbook. “Oh, futz, do you have a pen, dear?”
Louis padded his jacket and produced a Bic.
“Turn around, love.”
Louis did as instructed, and Margery used his back to write. She ripped out a check, and he turned back around.
“Give this to her, would you?” Margery said.
Louis looked at the check. It was for $50,000.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said.
“Of course I don’t, ducky. But it makes me feel good.”
She dug into her caftan again and pulled out a second check. “This is for you.”
Louis unfolded the check. It was for $250,000.
“Margery, this is too much,” he said.
“Half is for Marvin, you foolish boy,” Margery said.
Louis folded the check and put it in his pocket. “Margery, you’re a right gee,” he said.
She grabbed him and planted a hug
e kiss on his lips.
When she pulled back, her red slash of a mouth was a smudged smile. “Now you’re on the trolley, Lou-EE.”
Chapter Forty-four
When Louis got back to Reggie’s house, he found Mel in the living room packing up the pigpen. Mel had scrounged up some file boxes and already had them labeled with the victims’ names and the contents.
Keys still in his hand, Louis stood in the middle of the room watching Mel as he stuffed reports into manila envelopes. Mel finally noticed him.
“What’s wrong?” Mel asked.
“Do me a favor,” Louis said. “Before we drop this stuff off with Major Cryer, make copies for us.”
“I already did.”
Louis just stared at him.
“I know you,” Mel said. “If Kavanagh croaks, I know you aren’t going to let that bitch go free.”
“Kavanagh’s going to live,” Louis said.
“Is he talking?”
Louis shook his head. “Carolyn Osborn bought him off.”
Mel rose to his feet. “When? How?”
“This morning.”
“He admitted it outright?”
Louis shook his head. “No, but there was an orchid in the room. I asked the cop on my way out why he let anyone in there, and he told me the only person who went in was a redheaded delivery guy.”
“Greg.”
“Right.”
Mel looked around at his boxes, then back at Louis. “Well, hell, maybe Kavanagh looked at it like this,” he said. “He could put Carolyn Osborn in jail and go back to being a poor guy with an ugly scar, or he could keep quiet and be a rich guy with an ugly scar.”
“I get that,” Louis said. “But I’m not going to let this drop.” He looked at Mel. “Thanks for making the copies.”
Mel tossed the envelope into a box and gestured to the sliding glass doors that looked out over the beach. “Andrew stopped by to bid us farewell,” he said. “Better go tell him the news. He’s outside with Queenie.”
“Queenie?”
“His dog.”
Louis looked out the window. Against a blended blue backdrop of ocean and sky, Louis saw Swann. He was wearing baggy denim shorts, a lemon-yellow T-shirt, and, on his thigh, a thick white bandage that contrasted sharply with his tan. Queenie was an Irish setter, the same dog Louis had seen in a picture on Swann’s desk.
“Give him this for me,” Mel said.
Mel was holding a comic book. The cover showed a Frankenstein face looming over a puffed-chest Superman. The title was Escape from Bizarro World.
“I don’t think he’ll appreciate the joke,” Louis said.
“Yes, he will,” Mel said.
Louis took the comic book and walked out to the beach. Queenie was in full gallop after a stick, Swann watching her with pride. Queenie snagged the stick and started back to them, her body lithe and graceful as she bounded across the beach. In the slanting afternoon sun, her copper fur shone like wavy silk threads against the canvas of white sand.
“She’s a beautiful animal,” Louis said.
Swann heaved the stick again and faced Louis. “Yeah. I fell in love with her the first time I saw her.”
“Where’d you get her?”
“She found me,” Swann said. “I was sitting in a park reading, and she just wandered up. No tag, no collar. I put ads in the paper, but when no one claimed her, I kept her.”
Louis nodded and looked at the two crutches in the sand, then at the second bandage on Swann’s left shoulder.
“You’re crazy to be up on that leg so soon,” Louis said.
“I know, but I wanted to come over and say goodbye to you and Mel.”
Queenie came back and dropped the stick at Swann’s feet, then started a dance around his legs. Swann gave her another throw and looked at Louis. His eyes paused for a second at the thin scar on Louis’s cheek.
“So, when do we arrest the senator?” Swann asked.
“We don’t.”
“Why not?”
Louis told him the story, including the face-to-face outside the Osborn home. Swann listened but in the end seemed less surprised than Mel, if that was possible. Maybe that’s what happened to normal people who stayed there too long, Louis thought. They became shock-proof.
“You know,” Swann said, “the worst part is that without a prosecution of Carolyn Osborn, we’ll never find out why they did it.”
“Samantha Norris was a psychopath,” Louis said softly.
“That’s a legal label for a very complicated personality,” Swann said. “What about Tink Lyons and Carolyn Osborn? What was going on in their heads that made them vulnerable to someone like Samantha Norris in the first place?”
Louis was quiet, watching Queenie.
“Did you know there’s not been one documented case of a female serial killer using the level of violence we saw here?” Swann said.
Louis sighed.
“And what few female serials there have been have almost always used poison or some other impersonal method of murder. They don’t kill for lust or thrill,” he said. “That’s what makes Samantha Norris so fascinating. I mean, think of how much we could learn if—”
Louis looked down at the sand.
Immediately, Swann felt silent. Queenie was back, nuzzling his leg, but he didn’t seem to notice her.
“Christ, I’m sorry,” Swann said.
“Forget it.”
Swann finally noticed Queenie and gave her another run with the stick.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about Burke Aubry,” Swann said after a long silence. “I was thinking how lucky he is.”
“Lucky?”
“Yeah, the guy hasn’t got anything, no money, no family, lives in that broken-down house with only a dog for company.”
Louis didn’t say what he was thinking, that Burke Aubry still had a woman he had loved for decades, and the memory of their son.
“But that man loves what he does.” Swann paused, squinting out at the ocean. “My dad is like that. I used to hate him for it. Now I think I envy him.”
They were both quiet, watching Queenie chase a flock of gulls.
“I sent away for an FBI application,” Swann said.
Louis turned to face him. “The FBI?”
Swann nodded. “I got the idea when I was reading about the serial killers. I speak four languages and have a degree in psychology. Maybe I can be useful there.”
Louis nodded. “I know someone up there in the Behavioral Science Unit,” he said. “I can give her a call and try to open some doors for you.”
Swann smiled. “That would be great. I’ll need some help explaining why I got fired here.”
“You were fired for the right reason, trying to do your job. Sometimes they like hearing that kind of honesty.”
Queenie came back, and Swann tossed the stick again.
“Did you tell your father yet?” Louis asked.
“I’m going to wait until I’m accepted. That way, it’ll be easier to finally thank him for cleaning up my record all those years ago.”
“I think he’d appreciate that.”
The silence flowed in again.
“So, what about you?” Swann asked.
“I’m going home, sit on my beach with a beer, and wait for the next case to come along,” Louis said.
When Swann didn’t say anything, Louis looked over at him. Swann opened his mouth to say something, then looked out over the water.
“What?” Louis asked.
“Nothing.”
“You want to bust my chops one last time about how PIs are just pieces of shit?”
“Are you kidding?”
“What then?”
Swann shook his head. “I just don’t get it. You’re really good at this stuff. Why’d you give up the badge, man?”
“I didn’t have a choice,” Louis said. “I was run out of Michigan.”
“Why not try again here?”
Louis kicked at the sand, wishing this
rusty box hadn’t been opened. When Queenie returned with her stick, Louis picked it up and gave it a hard throw. He watched the dog lope down the sand.
“Hey, I know how hard it is to start over,” Swann said. “But you can’t just sit on the beach waiting for shit to come to you.”
Louis couldn’t look at Swann. Queenie brought the stick back and dropped it in front of Louis. He picked it up and held it out to Swann. “I’ve got to get going,” he said.
Swann took the stick. “Well, listen,” he said, “it’s been great working with you. I mean that.”
“Same here, Andrew.”
“And thanks for getting me fired.”
Swann stuck out his hand. Louis shook it. “Good luck, Andrew.”
“Say goodbye to Mel for me.”
“Oh, that reminds me.” Louis pulled the comic book from his back pocket. “Mel wanted me to give this to you.”
Swann unrolled it and chuckled. “I looked it up, you know.”
“What?”
“Batzarro. I know he was a fuckup.”
“Mel has a warped sense of humor.”
Swann rolled up the comic book and smiled. “Tell him I’m going to frame this and hang it on my wall at Quantico. It’ll be something to help me remember you two assholes.”
Chapter Forty-five
When Louis came back in from the beach, Mel was finished with the pigpen. He handed Louis the black Social Register.
“You want this?”
“Toss it.”
Mel put it in the plastic garbage bag at his feet. He put the lid on the file box that held all of the case information they had accumulated in the last eleven days.
Mel picked up the box and set it by his suitcase at the front door. Louis’s own duffel was there, his rumpled blue blazer draped across.
“You okay?”
Louis nodded. “Is there any beer left?”
“Might be one still in there.”
Louis went into the kitchen. It was spotless, burnished to a gleam by the invisible Eppie. Louis yanked open the refrigerator and peered in. Someone had stocked it with Perrier, two bottles of Veuve Clicquot, and a fifth of Rodnik vodka. There were fresh eggs, orange juice, and two tins of osetra caviar.
But no beer.
Louis went back to the living room. “Where’d the groceries come from?”