Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3)

by Kling, Christine

  Mabry continued. “I wanted to let you know that we’re going to be transferring her over to county in a little bit. Already told me they’re going for no bail. Her boy is down in the break room with a service aide. Gonna need to figure out what to do with him.”

  “Can I see my client now?” Jeannie asked.

  Mabry swung his fleshy hand and pointed to the door with a flourish. “After you, ma’am.”

  Back in the interrogation room, I let Jeannie take the only chair, and I rested my shoulder against the wall, trying to look nonchalant and unconcerned, as though getting arrested for murder wasn’t any big deal, happened all the time.

  Mabry closed the door, leaving the three of us alone in the room.

  “How are you doing?” Jeannie asked.

  Molly coughed out what was supposed to be a laugh. “About as well as can be expected after burying my ex-husband and then getting arrested for his murder.”

  Jeannie nodded once. “So tell me what happened.”

  Molly sighed, and when she started to speak her voice sounded more tired than scared. I admired her for that. I would have been scared to death.

  “Leon drove us home from the cemetery. I guess the cops were outside waiting then, but they were parked down the street, and we didn’t notice the car. Zale and I weren’t inside two minutes before the doorbell rang. It was that big one, by himself. He said they had some more questions to ask us and they wanted us to look at some photos. He wanted to see if we could identify them or something. Said it wouldn’t take long. I don’t know. I was barely listening. I asked him if it couldn’t wait until tomorrow, and he said no, we really needed to go now.” She looked up at Jeannie and the dark hollows under her eyes looked sharp and deep, as though carved in white stone. “I don’t know how to explain it, Jeannie, but I feel as though I have lost all will. I’m just floating. I’m going through the motions, doing what people tell me to do, but it doesn’t feel real.”

  “Molly, you listen to me. This is very real,” Jeannie said. “If you keep talking to the cops without a lawyer, you could really be hurting yourself. They wouldn’t have charged you unless they thought they could make it stick.”

  She nodded and waved her hand in the air as though to ward off a bad odor. “When they asked me to go, I said yes because I just didn’t have the energy to say no. I brought Zale with me, too. I don’t want to leave him alone right now. He’s too fragile.” Her hands fiddled with the gold chain that disappeared into the neckline of her dress. “Last night I fell asleep in the hammock in the backyard. I’ve been doing a lot of that the last couple of days. Sleeping. Zale looked for me all over the house and by the time he found me in the hammock, he was crying. He said he was afraid he was going to lose me, too.” She bit her lower lip. “And now this.”

  “Hey, we’re going to deal with things one at a time,” Jeannie said. She glanced over at me as though to ask me to chime in anytime, to help her out, but Molly had not even so much as glanced at me since we’d walked in. I didn’t know why she had asked for me to be there.

  Jeannie continued. “He’s a strong kid. He’ll be all right. This is not going to stick. This is just temporary. So what happened when they brought you in?”

  “A nice young woman offered to take Zale to go get a Coke. I didn’t even tell her he doesn’t drink soda.”

  “And they brought you here?” Jeannie prodded her, trying to keep her on subject.

  “Yeah. When we got here, the short one joined the fat one—I can’t seem to remember their names—and they both came in here and started asking me questions about guns.” She tried to laugh again, and it sounded more strangled than it had the first time. “As if I know anything about guns. I told them that, and that Nick had been a collector. No matter how much I had protested. I’d never wanted those guns in the house, and I insisted that he keep them locked up. I was always afraid Zale would get into them. When he was little, he was fascinated. I think Nick and I argued over those guns more than anything else over the years. And that’s saying something.”

  “Can you be more specific? What exactly were they asking you?”

  “Huh?” She looked up as though she was surprised to find Jeannie there. “I’m sorry, Jeannie.” She rubbed her eyes with the heels of both hands. “They went on and on about my car and the garage, but mostly it was about guns. They were asking me about a bunch of different makes of guns. It’s all Greek to me. Ha!” Her face started to crumple and she put her head down on her arms on the table.

  Jeannie looked over at me. I shrugged. I wanted to help her, but she didn’t seem to want my help. I kept thinking that we were over it, beyond the hurt of all those years, and then the wall would go right back up again, and I didn’t know how to bring it down.

  “Molly.” Jeannie reached over and rubbed her shoulder. “We can talk about this later. I’m not a criminal attorney, and right now you need one. I’ve got a friend who is excellent at this kind of thing. If you give the okay, I’m going to call him, and we are going to try to get you released on bail. It’s late, though, and I think you have to prepare yourself to spend at least tonight in jail.”

  She nodded without lifting her head.

  “If you have any jewelry or anything of value on you right now, I want you to give it to Seychelle.”

  Slowly, she sat up and turned to look at me. She reached behind her neck and undid the clasp on the gold chain that hung inside her dress. When she lifted the necklace, I saw hanging from the chain the tiny gold dolphin I had given her for her sixteenth birthday. I’d bought it with money I’d saved from my summer job lifeguarding at the city pool. She held it out. When I stepped forward to take it, she spoke to me at last.

  “Sey, I need to ask you for another favor. That’s why I asked Jeannie to bring you.” She rubbed at her nose with the back of her hand. “I was pretty sure they weren’t going to cut me loose once Jeannie got here. It’s Zale. I don’t want my son to be scared. I don’t want him to be here watching this on the news and having to fend off reporters. Remember my grandmother? Gramma Tigertail? You met her at my house when she came by sometimes.”

  “Yeah, sure. I remember her. Zale was just talking about her the other day.”

  “Okay. She still lives out on the reservation at Big Cypress. Zale knows the family out there. He’s spent weekends and holidays out there before. He needs to be away from all this, among people who love him.”

  “Hey, no problem. I’ll take him out there. He can spend the night tonight with me in the cottage, and we’ll go out first thing in the morning.”

  “And you’ll make it fun for him, okay? Make him laugh?”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said, remembering the somber boy who had sat in front of his father’s coffin that afternoon, and who now sat with a policewoman while they arrested his mother for murder. The kid didn’t have much to laugh about these days.

  Molly stood up and shook my hand like we had just concluded some kind of business arrangement.

  At that moment the door opened and Detective Mabry’s bulk filled the frame. “Ladies, I’m afraid we are going to have to ask you to leave now.”

  I tucked the necklace in a side pocket of my shoulder bag and followed Jeannie out of the room.

  XI

  Zale sat straight-backed in a plastic chair, holding a can of Hawaiian Punch and watching the latest incarnation of the TV show Survivor with the young woman who had greeted us and shown us back to the interrogation room. Her blue uniform looked very much like those of the other officers, but she didn’t wear a gun. Jeannie and Mabry waited out in the hall as I went in.

  “Hey, Zale,” I started, not knowing what words were going to come out of my mouth, but knowing that if I just kept talking I would at some point figure out how to tell him that his mother was going to jail. I nodded at the can in his hand. “Hawaiian Punch, huh? I can just hear what your mom would say about all the chemicals in that. Right?”

  His mouth stretched wide and thin, but the corner
s turned down. “Where is my mom? Did you talk to her?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I did.” I pulled back a chair, scraping it across the linoleum, and sat down next to him. “And she asked a favor of me. See, the cops have really got this screwed up.” The young woman looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Sorry, miss, but it’s true. See, Zale, they’ve got it in their heads that your mom is somehow involved with your dad’s murder. You and I both know they’re nuts, but Jeannie is going to have to go through all kinds of red tape here to get her released, and your mom really doesn’t want you sitting here all night drinking Hawaiian Punch, so I’m going to take you over to spend the night at my place.”

  “They’ve arrested her?”

  Damn. The kid was sharp. Young as he was, he knew exactly what was going on. “Yeah, they have. There’s no way they can make it stick, though.”

  “Is she going to jail?”

  “Yeah, I’m afraid she is. Just for a little while, though.” I watched the people on the television earnestly discussing one another’s fate by candlelight. “They are going to take her over to the jail for the night. There will be a hearing first thing in the morning and hopefully they’ll let her out then.”

  “Can I see her before we leave?”

  I glanced back over my shoulder at the door. Detective Mabry was leaning on the doorjamb and he shook his head.

  “I’m afraid not. Not tonight. We need to get you back to my place and into bed. It’s late. Abaco will sure be glad to see you.”

  “Okay,” he said, his voice a monotone. He stood and handed me the can of punch, which, by the feel of it, he had not touched.

  Jeannie drove us by Molly’s house so Zale could pack some clothes and things in a bag, then back to my place in Rio Vista. The night was not as cold as it had been the night before, as the Gulf Stream was once again carrying up the warm water and air from southern climes. The kid sat in the back of her van, his sweatshirt hood pulled up on his head, and didn’t say a word the entire trip. When I asked him a question, he’d nod or shake his head, but that was all I could get out of him. When Jeannie pulled up to the curb, I jumped out first and slid the side door open for him. He slung his backpack over his shoulder before I dragged him around to the driver’s side so he could say good-bye to Jeannie with me.

  She reached out her window, got his head in the crook of her arm, and pulled him to her. The peak of his sweatshirt hood poked out above her ample biceps, and it looked a little like she’d captured herself a lawn gnome. “Son, I am not going to insult your intelligence by telling you not to worry,” she said. “We’re all worried. But notice I said we. You and your momma are not alone. You’ve got friends. Lots of ’em. We are gonna fight this thing with a fierceness like they’ve never seen. You hear me?”

  Zale tried to nod, but his head was clenched in the mass of pink flesh.

  “Okay,” she said, releasing him. He stumbled back and his hood slid down his back. I could see he was fighting the urge to reach up and massage the back of his neck. “I’ll call you two soon as I hear anything,” she said, then put the van in gear and drove off up the dark street.

  Zale put a hand to the side of his neck and said, “Man, she’s strong.”

  I patted him on the back and directed him toward the path along the side of the Larsens’ house. “Yup. And that’s just the kind of woman you want fighting for you when you go to battle.”

  We were halfway across the Larsens’ backyard before I realized there were lights on in my cottage where there shouldn’t have been. B. J. knew where I hid the spare key, but he’d never just let himself into my place on his own. That would imply a level of what? Connectedness? Some level that we hadn’t reached, anyway. Abaco was nowhere to be seen, either. Was she inside?

  “Wait here a minute.” I put my hand on the center of Zale’s chest and pushed him into the shadows along the path. “I want to check something.” I crossed to the window behind the bougainvillea bush on the side of the cottage and peered through gaps in the miniblinds. I couldn’t see anyone in the middle of the living room, but my rustling the bushes set Abaco to barking inside. I heard a man’s voice say, “What the heck are you barking at?” That was a very familiar voice.

  The door swung inward just as I reached for the knob, and there stood my brother wearing my Fort Lauderdale Lifeguard sweatshirt.

  “Pit!” I yelled and threw my arms around his neck. “Hey, Sis.”

  I let go and looked up at him. “It is great to see you.”

  “Yeah,” he said, rubbing at the spot where I’d planted a kiss on his cheek. “Hasn’t even been a year. I seem to be making this visiting thing into a regular habit.”

  I stepped back outside the door and called into the darkness. “Come on, Zale. It’s okay.” When the boy got to the doorway, he stood there blinking at the interior lights through his wire-rimmed glasses, the straps of his backpack making his shoulders look even more thin and narrow. “Hey, come here. I want you to meet my brother. Pitcairn Sullivan, I’d like you to meet Zale Pontus.”

  Pit’s eyes widened at the name, and he glanced at me with a look so quick our eyes never really connected. Then he stepped up to the boy and with a broad smile shook his hand. “Man, and I thought I had it bad in the name department. What excuse does your mom give for saddling you with Zale?”

  “She says it means ‘sea strength’ in Greek.”

  Pit cocked his head to the side as though tasting the idea. “That’s cool. That sounds like Molly. I’d rather have that than be named after some island in Mutiny on the Bounty.”

  “You know my mom?”

  “Know her?” He spun the boy around and started helping Zale take the backpack off. “Man, once upon a time we were practically like family. We grew up together, me, Sey, and your mom. I could tell you some stories about her that she’s probably never told you. Like about the time we let loose all the baby hopper frogs in Mrs. Vannostrand’s fourth-grade class? Remember that, Sis? All the girls went screaming out of the room, and Miz V was running around trying to collect the little guys by sticking them in her coffee mug.” He laughed, and I could see the hint of a smile on Zale’s face.

  “Molly’s going to be furious with you, Pit, if you tell him all those old stories.”

  Pit threw the kid’s backpack on the couch and motioned for him to sit. “Well, hell, I’d guess after all these years of her not talking to me, I really have to be careful not to get her mad.”

  Zale was still standing in the middle of what passed for a combined living room and dining room in my cottage. He was staring at Pit, slack-jawed, as though he were looking at some exotic creature he had never seen before. Pit walked around the bar into the tiny kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. “The first thing you’ve got to learn about my sister over there is that you can’t expect to eat much at her house.” He bent lower and peered onto the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. “Well, I can offer you a Coke, a glass of milk, or a cold beer.” He stood up. “What’ll it be?”

  “Pit! He’s a kid,” I said.

  Pit squinted across the room. “Looks old enough to drink beer to me.”

  “Milk,” Zale blurted out. “I’d like milk.”

  Pit winked at him as he reached for a glass, and I figured I was happy to be the butt of their teasing if it made Zale feel better. Abaco hopped up on the couch and began to nuzzle at Zale’s hand.

  “She likes you,” I told him.

  That earned me a look that might have been a smile on another day. Zale scratched the dog’s ears. “I’m always asking my mom if we can have a dog. I’d like one just like Abaco.”

  “Good choice, kid. Labs are great,” Pit said, pouring the milk into a frosted beer mug.

  “So, Bro,” I asked, “what brings you to Lauderdale this time?”

  “Got a delivery on a very cool go-fast sailboat. They’re taking it down to Antigua for Race Week. Got an appointment in the morning to meet the owner and the captain over at the Marriott where they’re tied up.
” He handed Zale his milk, flopped down on the opposite end of the couch, and chinked his bottle against the boy’s mug. “After that I should be able to bunk on the boat.”

  “Zale’s got dibs on the couch for tonight, but you can bunk out on Gorda if you want.”

  “That’ll be great.”

  After a long drink that left him with a little white moustache, Zale said, “Are you talking about that red hull named Firestorm?”

  Pit grinned at the boy. “That’s right, you’re a sailor, aren’t you? Optimists at the Lauderdale Yacht Club, right?”

  “Yeah,” Zale said and shrugged. “Saturday I was racing with the Lasers, though. I’m trying to move up. Anyway, I watched as they brought that boat in and docked over there. She sure looks fast.”

  “You ever do much big-boat sailing?”

  He shook his head. “My dad was into fishing.”

  I noticed that he had started using the past tense when referring to Nick.

  “Yeah, I remember that,” Pit said. “Even back before your old man could afford the fancy boats and gear, he always used to win the local tournaments. Heck, I bet they’ve got a whole room dedicated to him over at that new game-fishing museum.”

  Zale shrugged again, but I could see that he was pleased to hear his dad complimented. Probably didn’t hear it very often.

  “Hey,” Pit said, “we’re going to be doing some sea trials to check out the new sails the owner’s buying here. I’m sure I could convince them to let you come along.”

  Zale’s face looked more alive than I had ever seen it. “That would be awesome. What kind of sail inventory has she got?”