“Yeah? What?”
“While I was talking to her, the TropiCruz IV came into view and the captain, Richard Hunter, you know, Janet’s brother? He saw us talking. LaShon got pretty worked up about it. I guess these Russians are pretty scary guys. I called Detective Amoretti, and he came over and took her under his wing. He said he’d find a safe place for her to stay for a while. So I guess, thanks to me, she’s finished with TropiCruz and may have to go into hiding for a while.”
“Just so long as she’s safe. Listen, don’t try to take the blame for everything. You didn’t make that girl meet you. I’ll get hold of the detectives and make sure they follow through.”
“Thanks, Jeannie. I also think I might have found another witness to Nick’s shooting.” I went on to tell her about my conversations with the elusive Mrs. Wheeler. Jeannie had heard of her, too. I guess everybody in the legal or law enforcement community knew about the local activist. Jeannie promised to pass on that information to the detectives as well. She’d ask them to pick her up, bring her in for questioning.
“I’ll call that Mabry fella,” she said. “I think he’d be more successful with a mature woman than that other detective. So what do you plan to do now?”
“I was thinking that I need to see Molly. I have some questions I want to ask her.”
“It just so happens you’re in luck.”
“What do you mean?”
“Seychelle, you can’t just go walking into the jail and visit people whenever the hell you feel like it.”
“You can’t?”
“I consider it a good sign that you don’t know that. The inmates in the county jail system only get one visiting day per week. Used to be all female inmates were kept up at the North Broward Bureau, but they just opened a unit for female offenders here at the main jail. As long as she’s still going in and out of court, they’re holding her down here. Today happens to be Molly’s day. From 2:00 to 4:00 this afternoon.”
“It’s already 1:30.”
“Yes’m. You’d better get your butt in gear if you expect to see her.”
Back in the early eighties, when downtown Fort Lauderdale had fallen into disrepair and disrepute, like many city centers, there were more closed stores than open and more homeless people than customers. The city fathers decided it would be a good idea to build the new jail next door to the county courthouse in the heart of the old downtown.
Fast-forward to the twenty-first century and urban renewal, and today inmates in the jail, located just behind the Downtowner, look across the river into the condo tower windows of units that start at half a million dollars. Frequently, when walking from the parking lot into my favorite watering hole, I would hear strange pounding and clicking sounds from the jail and turn around to see the black silhouettes of figures in the slitted windows, waving their hands or holding papers with messages I couldn’t read. It sounded as though they were pounding on the glass with keys or some other metallic object, and I’ve wondered what they’re allowed to keep in their cells that’s metal. In all my nearly thirty years of living in this town, I had never before had occasion to visit this local landmark. Today would be a first.
After locking the Whaler to a piling in front of the Downtowner, I ran inside to tell Pete that I’d left my dinghy out front. I asked him to keep an eye on it. Pete nodded while drawing a draft beer. I didn’t dare tell him where I was going. Pete had a thing against cops and law enforcement of all kinds. Years ago, as a singlehander, he’d driven his boat right up onto Miami Beach after sleeping through his alarm, and when the local cops just stood by and watched as a horde of local bums swarmed aboard and stripped the boat, Pete developed a lifelong hatred of the boys in blue.
I followed the signs to the stairs that led up to the jail entrance, but stopped in my tracks when I saw the metal detector. I hadn’t really been thinking about all the ramifications of visiting a jail, and I realized I still had my rigging knife in my shoulder bag, my radio on my waistband. The sheriff’s deputy on duty saw my consternation and pointed me in the direction of the lockers. Once my gear was safely locked away, I merely had to drop the little key into one of the plastic bins, and then I breezed through security.
I would not have thought a person could change as much as Molly had in the past few days. She was wearing a drab brown outfit, square-cut cotton top and bottoms that looked like the scrubs hospital orderlies wear. At the neckline, the fabric hung from her angular collarbones, and her once shiny dark hair fell in strings around her face.
She attempted a smile when the guard brought her into the room. We sat on opposite sides of a long table. There were other women prisoners on either side of us meeting with relatives and friends. No one had any privacy. I found it interesting that all of the visitors were women, and I wondered if there was some legal or social convention that prevented men from visiting women in jail.
“How are you doing?” I asked, knowing as soon as the words were out of my mouth that it was a stupid question.
She pursed her lips and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “I’m getting by.”
“Is there anything I can do for you, get for you?”
“Can you get me out of here?” She spoke slowly, her dark eyes looking straight at me, shining.
“I’m trying. God, I’m trying. But—”
“I know.” She lowered her head and looked at her hands, at the handcuffs around her wrists. “I didn’t mean to say that you weren’t.”
“I may have found out a few things. I can’t really talk about it yet, though.” I looked at the women around us and the guards standing at the perimeter of the room. “And not here.”
“Tell me about Zale. You got him out to B.C.?”
“Yeah. I turned him over to Gramma Josie. She’ll take care of him. But, Molly, I don’t trust your uncles. Here the kid just lost his dad, and already they’re putting pressure on him to close down the gambling boats. As if he even could.”
“Sounds like Jimmie. He thinks of himself as the tribe’s financial whiz kid.”
“Molly, don’t take this wrong, but you don’t think it’s possible they killed Nick, do you? To get control of the boats through Zale?”
In the old days, when we disagreed, Molly was a fiery fighter. But the jail had taken all the fight out of her. She merely shook her head, sighed, and said, “No way.”
“I’m just trying to explore all possibilities.”
She nodded.
“I met somebody who was there, at the river Monday morning. I think she may have seen the shooter in his car before he went up on the bridge.”
“Yeah?” She sat up a little straighter, the hope so bald in her eyes.
“Yeah. I’m working on it. I’m hoping that if I can get her to swear it was a man, they might spring you.”
She slumped over again. “In court,” she said, “the prosecutor told the judge that he doubted I did it myself. They’re claiming I hired someone to kill Nick so that my son and I would inherit all his money. I would never touch that money, though. I have all the money I need.” Molly never had been into stuff. Her room, even as a teenager, had been much more minimalist than the rooms of most teenage girls. She didn’t like clutter, and there were no dust-collecting gadgets on her dresser or posters of teen heartthrobs on her walls.
“Yeah,” I said, “I remember that about you.”
A smile danced on her lips all too briefly. I was ready to do just about anything to bring it back.
“Remember that time I slept over at your place and we dragged the phone on its long extension cord into your room? We had a flashlight and that phone inside the tent we’d made of your bedcovers. God, we stayed up all night trying to be the fourth caller or something like that into HOT 105.”
There it was again. Her eyes creased and her mouth stretched wide. “You wanted to win tickets on a cruise or something? What was it?”
“The Bahamas. It was a three-day cruise to the Bahamas, and I thought if we won, our parents would let
us go. How old were we?”
“Maybe thirteen?” she said.
I shook my head and we both fell silent. We could hear the conversations going on along both sides of us, but my mind filtered them out. I was back there when we were young and hopeful.
“Pit’s in town,” I said, but I was looking at my hands, pretending interest in my own thumb. “He met your son before I took Zale out to Big Cypress. They were cute together, you know, talking boats. They seemed to hit it off.” I glanced up to see how she was taking it. She was leaning back in her chair, her fists clenched so tight the tendons made deep ridges in her forearms, her face contorted with an emotion that looked like fear. “Molly, Pit still cares about you. He said to tell you that if you need anything, all you have to do is ask.”
She didn’t move. It was as though she had turned to stone.
“Why?” I asked her finally, after several minutes of silence.
She knew what I meant. She knew I was not talking about the events of the last couple of days, the shooting, or any of that.
“I can’t—” she began, but her voice faltered. She coughed and began again in a voice barely more than a whisper. “I can’t explain it to you, Sey. I couldn’t back then, and I can’t now.”
“I just don’t get it. That’s what hurts so much. We always said we could tell each other everything, that we were best friends. And when I said it, I meant it. How could you just walk away like that? What did I do to deserve that?”
Her voice was so low, I could barely hear her over the conversations going on around us. “You didn’t do anything.”
“Did you love him? I mean, I could almost understand you throwing our friendship aside if you loved him that much, but I can’t see that. Nick Pontus?”
“Sey, stop, please? ”
“I mean, you used to laugh about him. You used to say things about him behind his back. Don’t tell me you were cheating on my brother with Nick back then. You know some of the kids said that back in school, but I always stuck up for you. Molly, you had Pit, and we both loved you, and then, then, you just threw us away.”
She signaled for the guard, stood, and turned her back to me.
“Molly? Molly?” I called out as the guard led her through the door and out of the room.
XX
Before I’d fully rounded the curve in the river, I could hear Abaco’s joyous yelps echoing across the water. When the Larsens’ yard finally came into view, I saw B. J. running across the grass, followed by a leaping Lab. He twisted sideways and sent a Frisbee spinning for the dog. Abaco jumped into the air like a hooked marlin and snagged the plastic disk. You’d think she was totally attention-starved the way she wiggled and squirmed with joy when he patted her and told her she was a good dog for catching the thing. Hell, speaking of attention-starved, I wondered if he would pet me if I jumped out of the dinghy and caught the damn thing in my teeth.
When he noticed the Whaler cruising toward the dock, he trotted over to help me crank the dinghy up in the davits. Handing me the lines, he said, “That kid Zale has called twice. He won’t tell me what’s bothering him, but he seems pretty worked up. He sounds scared, actually. I’ll take care of the boat if you want to go on inside and call him.”
“Thanks, B. J.,” I said, stepping onto the dock and hurrying past him.
The young woman who worked for Gramma Josie picked up the phone, but by the sound of it, Zale must have been standing right next to her when it rang. He came on just seconds after I identified myself.
“Hang on a minute,” he said. I heard footsteps, then the sound of a door closing in the background. His voice was low and secretive when he spoke again. “You’ve got to come get me,” he said.
“Zale, your mom thinks—”
“No, listen. I’m scared. Somebody tried to kill me today.”
B. J. offered to drive Lightnin’, and I gladly took him up on it. I preferred to take my Jeep for going out to Big Cypress, but I’d already driven out to the Glades once that week and, besides, I wanted his company. My phone conversation with the boy had been cut short when someone on his end wandered into the room. He didn’t want to say any more. It was clear he no longer trusted anyone out there. Concerned as I was about Zale’s safety, I really wanted to talk to B. J. about Molly. I was worried about her health, both physical and mental. The way she had just walked away from that visiting table scared me. It was possible that whatever chance we had of reconciliation had already died.
I was climbing into the Jeep’s passenger seat out in the Larsens’ driveway when I heard the rumble of a powerful engine driving too fast on the quiet Rio Vista street. When I turned around, I saw Amoretti pull his Corvette to the curb with a flashy spray of gravel. I closed the door to the Jeep and walked out to meet him.
“Hey, Amoretti, what’s up?”
The door flew open and he leaped out. “What the devil did you send that lawyer of yours downtown for?”
To my surprise, LaShon climbed out of the passenger-side door. I would not have thought it possible for anyone to have teeth whiter than Amoretti’s, but the smile on that girl’s face definitely put her in the running. “What are you talking about?”
“Rich took me down to the station,” LaShon said, “and your friend Jeannie was there. She was kinda hard on him.” Again she laughed up and down the scale.
“Rich?” I said to LaShon. “Well, well.”
“That woman’s a menace,” Amoretti said. “She’s got no taste in men, either.”
“That’s just because she likes that other detective more than you,” LaShon said. “I think he’s kinda cute, too.”
“That hippo? That uncouth, uncultured behemoth?”
“Come on, guys,” I said. They were obviously having a good time playing these little verbal jousts that had become part of whatever relationship was starting up here, but I had to get out to the Big Cypress to get Zale. “I know you didn’t come out here to discuss Detective Mabry’s social skills.”
“No,” Amoretti said, “you’re right. After talking to LaShon here, and hearing from your lawyer friend, I realized you’ve been running around playing Nancy Drew. I’m here to tell you to stop.”
“I’d be more than happy to stop if you guys would start looking at some other suspect besides Molly Pontus. There’s no way she killed Nick.”
“Give us cops a little more credit than that, Ms. Sullivan. We never stopped looking. I never liked that woman for the crime in the first place. But we gotta go through the motions, do the job. Now, based on the information from Ms. Thompson here, we’ve set up an appointment this afternoon to meet with Kagan over at TropiCruz. We’re going to use this slots information. He may or may not be aware of this enterprise, and we don’t know what repercussions our conversation will create. One thing I do know, and it’s why I came over here personally. I don’t want you going anywhere near those ships or anyone involved with TropiCruz. Do you understand?”
“Sure. No problem, Detective. My friend and I are just on our way out to the Everglades—about as far from the ocean as you can get in Florida.” At that point I realized I hadn’t even introduced B. J. He’d been patiently sitting in the driver’s seat of the Jeep. “B. J., I’d like to introduce you to these friends of mine.”
He climbed out and shook hands with the detective and LaShon. “We need to get moving,” he said to me.
“Yeah, I know. If there’s nothing more, Detective, we need to get out there before dark.”
LaShon said, “Can I talk to you for a minute?” She motioned for me to walk aside onto the grass in front of the Larsens’ house.
“LaShon, I’m so sorry that I dragged you into all this.” She wasn’t even looking at me. Her eyes were focused on B. J., where he was leaning against the side of the Jeep.
“He is so hot,” she said.
I grabbed my head. “LaShon, we don’t have time.”
“I know. I just didn’t know if I’d ever see you again, and I wanted to thank you.”
“I’d been wanting to leave TropiCruz for a long time. It had started to feel dirty working there. But to tell the truth, I was afraid to leave. Rich assures me that he’ll keep me safe over the next few days, and once things blow over, maybe I will go find a job consulting. Maybe it’s time to try that out.”
“That’s a really good idea, LaShon. And, hey, what’s this about you and Rich?”
She glanced over her shoulder. “Him? I just like to flirt. Day may come when I find the one man, but until then, flirting’s all I do.”
I embraced her. “Listen, you be safe,” I said.
“You, too.”
As we drove out the interstate through the western suburbs, I kept replaying my conversation with Molly at the jail. I wanted to rewind time and take back the words I’d said. I didn’t know why I’d pushed her like that. She’d been married to the man for over ten years, he’d just died, and there I was questioning her love for him. Way to go, Miss Sensitivity. I went there to try to help her, cheer her up, console her, and I ended up insulting her.
Right after we’d exited onto 1-75, when the strip malls and look-alike subdivisions were starting to retreat behind us, B. J. spoke for the first time. He startled me. “What?”
“I asked you how Molly was doing. You said you went by the jail, but you didn’t really say much about it.”
A chain-link fence separated the mown berm along the side of the road from the canal running parallel to the highway. I watched as a blue heron came gliding in over the sawgrass, his legs dropping behind him like landing gear as he neared the shallows.
“What’s to say? She’s in jail.”
Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3) Page 20