I looked from the TV to her. “Do you think that means there’s been some kind of break in the case?”
“What? Just because they’re talking about it on TV?
They’ve been talking about it every hour. Seychelle, what have you got a TV for if you never turn it on?”
“Poor Molly,” B. J. said. “I wasn’t even thinking. I mean, I had been thinking about her—often actually— but I didn’t want to intrude. I thought she needed time alone. I didn’t realize that she was being hounded by the press and this other business with Janet. She could probably use a shoulder to lean on. Tomorrow. I’ll go over there first thing.”
“Well, tomorrow I’m expecting both of you to come with me to Nick’s funeral.”
Before she could say any more, the newscaster came back on the screen, and Jeannie turned off the muting. “And here at home, while the Fort Lauderdale police are reporting no new leads in Monday’s gangland-style shooting death of maverick businessman Nikolas Pontus, a one-hundred-thousand-dollar reward has been established with the Crime Stoppers of Broward County for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for Pontus’s death.”
When they flashed the Crime Stoppers number on the screen, Jeannie said, “Boy, that’s gonna bring the wackos out of the woodwork now.”
The reporter continued, “Pontus had recently been involved in a series of lawsuits involving, among other things, his sale of the TropiCruz Casino gambling boat empire, a hotel and condo development project in Fort Lauderdale, and the alimony and child support in his messy divorce.”
“Low blow!” Jeannie shouted as the announcer read the information that was displayed on the screen about the date and time of the funeral. She raised the remote and clicked off the tube. “That wasn’t recent. His divorce was like over two years ago.”
“I didn’t know you’d had to sue him,” I said.
“Oh yeah. Cheap bastard didn’t want to give her anything. He claims to be worth over forty million! Course, Molly didn’t want to ask for anything, either. I eventually got it all sorted out, but it took a while. She didn’t get big bucks, but she doesn’t have to go to work, either. She can stay home and work on her art, and the old family homestead is paid off. What we did get from Nick, however, was an agreed-upon prenuptial agreement that guaranteed that the remainder of his estate would eventually go to Zale instead of the new wife. The fiancee wasn’t thrilled, but that’s what they get for negotiating a divorce during their engagement. Molly didn’t mind giving up most of her portion of that dough, but she didn’t feel she could make that decision for Zale.”
“I hope the reward they mentioned brings in some new information,” B. J. said. “It must be hard hanging in limbo, knowing somebody killed him, but not knowing who. Molly and her son will need closure. I can’t believe I’ve let her get to this point of feeling so alone.” He turned to me and continued. “I can see why the two of you would have been such good friends. Even though you appear very different, there is something at the core that is similar. Something I haven’t found in very many people.”
Jeannie was smiling. “Yeah,” she said, “the two of them can’t even see it. Keep insisting that after all these years they got nothing in common. All the rest of us can see they’re more like sisters.”
“Not anymore,” I said, although I was barely listening to what they were saying. I was still trying to comprehend the figure Jeannie had mentioned. Forty million dollars! Holy shit. Now that’s an amount to kill for. And according to what Jeannie meant about the prenup and Molly wanting to protect the kid’s interests, what the newspapers had reported was true—Zale was now the owner of that fortune.
“Whatever,” Jeannie said. “The main point is, I expect to see the two of you at St. George’s down in Hollywood tomorrow for the funeral.”
I caught that last comment of hers and I had to object. “Ah, come on, Jeannie. You know how I feel about funerals. And in a Greek Orthodox church? I don’t think so.”
Jeannie ignored me, faced B. J., looked him square on, and raised her eyebrows.
“No problem,” he said. “And I’ll make sure she’s there, too. Don’t worry.”
When B. J. pulled his El Camino into the driveway at the Larsens’ place, I could tell he was trying to gauge my mood, to see if there was a chance he would be invited to stay. When we had first started our relationship, it was intense, and we were together so continuously that after several months I started to back away. I was afraid of losing my independence, my sense of who I was, my comfortable life alone. After trying to swear off sex and relationships, which didn’t work for me at all, I finally found this compromise that I could live with. B. J. had his place and I had mine, and when we felt like it, one or the other of us slept over. One day at a time. So far it was working.
So tonight B. J. was trying to figure out if an invitation was coming his way. He was well aware of how I usually reacted when he promised he would get me to do something like he had tonight with the funeral. And there was a part of me that was angry—angry with Molly for abandoning me years ago and with Jeannie for making me get involved now. Tonight I had started directing some of that anger and frustration at B. J. every time he spoke about how great Molly was. That part of me that was angry wanted to pick a fight with him and make him feel hurt like I did. Luckily, there was another part of me that knew that passionate, athletic, sweaty sex was another great cure for the kind of frustration I felt. I walked around to the driver’s side door and leaned down as though to say good night. Instead, I opened the car door, took his hand, and without a word led him back to my cottage.
IX
I was standing in my tiny bedroom wearing only panties and bra, my hair still wet from the shower, staring with unfocused eyes at the clothes hanging in my closet when I heard a familiar double rap on the door, the sound of the front door opening, and B. J.’s voice calling out, “Hey, you ready to go?”
I didn’t answer him. I’m not really big on dressing up—I don’t have much occasion in my life when I need to. Most of the time I wear jeans or shorts and T-shirts or tank tops. I had a couple of bright, tropical-print pareus that I sometimes tied around me Polynesian-style if I wanted to dress up and look more like a girl. I owned only one regular dress, a simple black shift with a short-sleeved jacket, and I had worn it only once before—to my father’s memorial service at the Neptune Society.
“I guess not,” he said. I turned and saw him leaning against the doorjamb, looking unbelievably sexy in his dark slacks, white shirt, and tie, his sleek hair pulled back into a ponytail. “Unless, of course, you’re planning on going like that. That would cheer up most of the male mourners, I guess.”
After we’d made love the night before, B. J. had spent the night and then disappeared early in the morning, leaving me to sleep in for another hour or so. I’d spent the day puttering around the estate, willing the clock to slow, to postpone the moment when I would have to go into that church.
“I don’t know what to wear. I hate funerals. I—” My voice quit on me as my throat closed up.
B. J. walked over to the closet and pulled out the black dress. “What’s wrong with this one?”
“That one’s the one I wore, you know.” He had been there that day in that small room filled with flowers as the hundreds of people who’d known Red filed through and wished me well. That was back before B. J. and I were lovers, before he knew me better than I know myself.
“Seychelle, it’s only a dress.” He held it up to his own body as though modeling it for me. It was an effort to make me smile, and I worked hard to keep the corners of my mouth from pulling down and giving me away. I felt stupid for making such a big deal out of this, but the loss of my father still felt so raw sometimes that I didn’t have control over it.
He sighed, shaking his head. “Arms up,” he said, and he slid the dress over my head. After he’d zipped it up, he turned me around and pulled me to him, wrapping me in his arms and pressing my wet
head against his neck.
I could hear the low thudding of his pulse and I felt like I could have stood there like that all day. I inhaled his familiar clean smell and felt my breath hitch a few times in my chest. Forget the funeral, I wanted to say. Let’s crawl back into my bed.
“It’s okay,” he whispered, stroking my hair. “I know this is going to be tough for you, but because you remember what it’s like, you know how important it is for you to be there today. For Molly.”
Much as I didn’t want it to be so, I knew he was right.
We ended up having to park over two blocks away from the little church located in an older, struggling neighborhood down in Hollywood. There were hundreds of cars parked along the swale, in the median, and on a weedy lot across the street from the church. St. George’s was built on a pie-shaped lot just off a traffic circle, and the iron fence that surrounded the round-shaped sanctuary was lined with groups of people stopping to talk and greet one another before entering the black gates along the side of the church.
Parked on the median just opposite the front door of the church was Detective Rich Amoretti’s bright red Corvette. Both he and Mabry were leaning against the car, arms crossed, eyes hidden behind identical shades. I wondered if the glasses were police-issue. I nodded to them, but only Mabry showed any indication that he had seen me when he dipped his head and said, “Ma’am.”
Unlike me, B. J. was one of those people who is never late to anything. In spite of his having to help me dress, we arrived fifteen minutes before the 3:00 p.m. service was set to start. I didn’t know what to expect as we threaded our way through the crowd, and I reached for the iron handle on the heavy wood door. My experiences in church had been few and far between. Red had been indifferent about religion, but my mother had complained loud and long about what she considered to be the evil ways of the Methodist church she had been forced to attend with her mother. When I was little, I’d heard her rants from the point of view of a ten-year-old, and I’d believed all she said. Now, looking back, I think she never escaped that adolescent rebellion that turned her against anything her mother valued. My mother’s mother had died before I was born, when my mom was still in college—about the time she met Red—and I think her feelings about her mother got kind of frozen. I never heard her utter a single positive word about my grandmother. The end result, however, was that the first time I entered a church was a few months after my mother’s memorial service at the funeral home. I sneaked into a church on a Saturday morning just out of curiosity. I’d ridden my bicycle over the Davie Bridge, and when I saw all the people flowing into the Seventh-Day Adventist church, I parked my bike and followed them inside.
I tried to make sense of what the guy in front was saying, but I didn’t really understand a word. So I squirmed and fidgeted and played with the fringe on my cutoff jeans. Finally, the lady sitting next to me in her fancy dress and hat shot me one more look of disgust, and I got up and ran out of there wondering what on earth could make anybody want to go to church.
Even fifteen minutes before the service was due to start, St. George’s was crowded with people milling about wearing muted-colored clothing, speaking to one another in low voices. The way Nick had been killed, the way he had so clearly been targeted, had made many of these people afraid. You could see it in their faces, the way they looked around to see who was listening before they spoke. This funeral would be bringing out all the players, and no one really knew who was friend and who was foe.
St. George’s was nothing like the ultramodern chapel I had visited as a kid. I felt inside this Greek Orthodox church that we had been transported across oceans and back in time. The domed ceiling featured a round painting of bearded saints in flowing blue-and-gold robes and rustic Greek lettering that looked as though it had been painted by a child’s hand. A small choir of about a dozen women stood on a raised platform at the back of the round room, half singing, half chanting in a language I guessed was either Greek or Latin. The open coffin, I could see through the crowd, was resting in front of the ornately carved wood screen that was across the hall, in what seemed to be the front of the church. I couldn’t help thinking about the makeup job that Nick must have required to make the open casket possible. What did they use, putty?
People were carrying candles in red glass jars and placing them on the tables on either side of the church front. You couldn’t really call it an altar. The wide carved screen had three doorways, and through the open center doorway, we could see an elderly priest in white robes standing next to a high table. He bent down and spoke to a young boy wearing a pale blue robe. The bearded priest would have been a hands-down winner in the Annual Key West Hemingway Look-Alike Contest.
B. J. reached back and took my hand and began threading his way through the crowd to a spot down front and off to the right, where Jeannie was waving with what appeared to be rather inappropriate enthusiasm. Given the fact that she was wearing another of her tropical print muumuus, it would have been difficult to miss her in that somber crowd.
“I saved you two seats,” she said, scooping up her large handbag and sweater and sliding across the wood pew to make room for us. “I wanted to be able to see what was going on.” She was in the third row, right side, and once we’d settled ourselves, we had a perfect line of sight to the coffin. And to the family in the front row.
My stomach tensed when I realized I was looking at the backs of Molly and Zale’s heads. The boy was seated at the end of the pew, perched on the edge, back stiff and poised as if he were ready to flee at any moment. He looked uncomfortable in the suit jacket that was clearly a size too small in the shoulders. His head was bowed as though he couldn’t look at the coffin, which rested on a stand barely ten feet in front of him. Next to him, Molly’s dark hair was piled high on her head, showing her slender white neck. Her head kept bobbing as she nodded to the people parading past in front of them, murmuring condolences as they carried little red candles to the corners of the church. On the far side of Molly was a group of people standing. I recognized Leon Quinn. I figured the woman beside him in the expensive-looking jeweled earrings must be Janet Pontus. Her white-blond hair was cut in a perfect pageboy that just screamed expensive hair salon. I leaned in close to Jeannie’s ear.
“I’m guessing that’s the missus.”
“Yup. Could you picture her rummaging in the bushes outside Molly’s window?”
“I see what you mean.” The black suit she was wearing hugged her curves, accentuating her tiny waist, which flared into a heart-shaped ass. She probably never lifted a finger to do anything for herself as long as there were men around slobbering for her attention.
“Who’s the guy next to her?” The man I was referring to looked odd, even from the rear. He was tall and had an extraordinarily large head. His hairstyle really didn’t help the matter much, either, as his wiry gray tight curls were longish and looked almost like an afro. The narrow shoulders and thin neck didn’t look strong enough to support that huge Brillo Pad head. When he turned to shake hands with an elderly man, I saw that the suit he was wearing had a Western cut, complete with string tie.
“That’s Janet’s brother, Richard Hunter. The one Nick gave a job to as captain of the TropiCruz IV. He stayed with the new owners when the company was sold. He’s like ten years older than Janet, but they’re very close. It seems he raised her after their parents died, or something like that. Since Nick married Janet, he’s over at the house too much. Molly doesn’t like it.”
A sort of reception line was passing along the front row and Janet was the center of all the attention. Leon Quinn’s obsequious mannerisms toward her went unrewarded, as she smiled and nodded at all the passing mourners. God, she looked like a queen accepting the attention of her court. Her brother attempted to put his arm around her, and when his fingers touched the back of that elegant white neck, she reached back and flicked them off as though an insect had just landed on her skin.
“It must have been so hard on Molly to get
dumped for that,” I whispered to Jeannie.
When Janet turned her head aside to accept the cheek-to-cheek kiss from a gray-haired gentleman, the brilliance of her red shiny lip-gloss looked out of place for a funeral.
“Nick was a prick,” Jeannie said, a little too loudly under the circumstances. “Molly should have felt lucky to be rid of him.” I slid a little lower in my seat and hoped none of the folks around us had heard her.
I watched Janet greet the mourners and I tried to see what Molly saw. I consider myself a pretty good judge of character, and I watched how Janet interacted with the people around her. She thanked those who offered condolences, presented her cheek to close friends, and genuinely seemed to be struggling to put on a good front. It all looked like normal funeral stuff. But the more I watched her, the more I began to notice the little gestures from Leon Quinn. He kept touching her, and it probably wasn’t something he was conscious of doing. He touched her elbow, the small of her back, her shoulder. It was more than just a touchy Greek thing. He even moved his body closer to hers whenever other men approached. It’s a thing men do when they feel possessive about a woman. I’d be willing to bet that Leon Quinn and Janet were lovers, I thought.
Most of the mourners, when passing by Molly and Zale, nodded politely or shook hands. Their coolness toward the ex-wife was apparent. There was one woman, though, an artsy type in a shawl and long skirt, for whom Molly stood. The two women embraced with a familiarity I had once enjoyed. It had never occurred to me before that Molly might have a new best friend.
At that moment the priest came out and started chanting, and most of the crowd realized the service had begun. They either found a seat or pressed back against the walls in the rear of the church. The family settled into the front pew. I looked around and saw a few people I recognized. The mayor of the city of Hollywood was there, along with many of the corporate kings of Broward County. Standing next to political and financial bigwigs were several boat captains and bartenders I recognized from around town. The majority of the crowd, though, looked like this was their home church. There were families with dark-moustached men and well-made-up women, people who looked like they would have fit in just as well during the 1960s. They looked like working people, and some of the men still wore dark pants and white shirts with company names sewn over the pockets, shirts they had worn to work that morning.
Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3) Page 8