“I got me a Co-Cola from the drink cooler, and Bitty got her a Nutty Buddy. That’s a chocolate-covered cone, and it’s got nuts all over it. That’s her favorite. Anyway, while I was getting my Co-Cola, Bitty unwrapped her Nutty Buddy. We were walking up to the counter so I could pay, and Bitty was licking her ice cream, and the ice cream part, it just slid off the cone and fell on the floor. Then Anna started fussing at her a little bit, because I hadn’t paid yet, and that got me mad. That woman knew I was gonna pay! I had the money right there in my hand!”
“What happened next?” Drue asked.
“Bitty got her feelings hurt, and she started crying about that ice cream, and I told her I’d pay for another one. Right around that time, that white lady and that man came in the store. I wasn’t paying much attention to them, because Bitty was really having a fit. So I went over to the ice cream box to get another Nutty Buddy.”
“About the clerk, Anna, did she do anything to clean up the ice cream?”
“Uh-uh,” Mrs. Estes said. “She stayed right where she was at, behind the counter. I was gonna ask her for a paper towel to wipe up the mess, but before I could, that woman come up front to pay. I believe she had a Slurpee in her hand. And right then, that man she come in with, he started walking real fast up to the front too, acting like he was gonna leave the store. Anna hollered at him, told him he needed to pay, and that’s when he kind of took off. He had a bottle stuck down in his pants, and it fell out and smashed on the floor.”
“And then what?” Drue prompted.
“All hell broke loose. Bitty was crying, because she was scared and mad at the same time, and Anna, she went chasing after the man, and then that poor lady, her feet come right out from under her and she slammed backwards, hit her head hard on that concrete floor. That Slurpee went flying too. I was afraid to touch her, ’cause she looked bad hurt. That’s when I dialed nine-one-one. We stayed right there with that lady until the ambulance and the police came, and then I paid for two ice cream cones for Bitty and we left and we ain’t been back.”
Drue thought for a moment. “Did the lady fall before or after the man dropped the bottle?”
Mrs. Estes closed her eyes and pondered the question. Finally, she nodded. “Right before.”
Drue glanced over at Zee, noticing that he’d quietly placed his phone on his lap and had been recording the interview. He nodded silently.
“Did anybody else come into the store while all that was happening?” Drue asked, hoping she’d tied up all the loose ends in Delores Estes’s witness account.
Mrs. Estes dabbed at her neck. “No. It was just me and Bitty until that white lady and the man come in. And Anna, but she works there.”
“You didn’t see the white lady try to take anything, did you?”
“What? No, I didn’t see nuthin’ like that. She had a wallet in her hand, I think, getting ready to pay for her drink.”
“Fine,” Drue said, feeling grateful and encouraged. “That’s good to know.”
Zee cleared his throat. “If it’s all right with you, we’re gonna type up our notes about our conversation today. Like an affidavit. Would you be willing to sign that?”
“I reckon so. If it’s the truth like I told you.”
Drue smiled broadly. “Okay, I think that’s all the questions I have for now, Mrs. Estes. I want to thank you so much for talking to us today.”
“That’s okay. I try to be a good Christian, you know?”
Mrs. Estes pushed the screen door open to let her visitors pass. “Which law firm did y’all say you work for again?”
Zee passed her a business card. The older woman pushed her glasses down on her nose and studied it. “Oh yes. Campbell, Coxe and Kramner. You told me that earlier. I seen y’all’s billboards and television commercials. Let me ask you something. That man on the billboards, Brice Campbell, is he really a lawyer? Or just some actor?”
“He’s really a lawyer,” Drue assured her.
“Well, he’s got some real pretty hair on him,” Delores Estes said. “You think that’s a wig?”
“It’s absolutely a wig,” Zee said, his face solemn.
* * *
“High five,” Zee said, when they were both inside the pickup truck. He held his hand up, palm out, and Drue slapped it.
“The client didn’t even slip on the Smirnoff,” Drue exclaimed. “It was the ice cream. And the clerk should have cleaned it up. That’s negligence, right?”
“Should be,” Zee said. “Good work back there. I’d be very surprised if the insurance company doesn’t make us a very nice offer once they hear what Delores Estes has to say.”
“Really?” Drue’s face flushed with excitement. “Wow. I had no idea things could happen so fast. I mean, the Gulf Vista case, it took nearly two years to settle, and in that one the victim was murdered.”
Zee frowned. “You’re comparing apples to oranges. We had no witnesses to the hotel murder. No evidence that could show the victim wasn’t on the clock. This 7-Eleven thing is totally different. We should hear something back today about the client from our neurologist.” He picked up his phone and examined it.
“I’m kind of surprised Brice hasn’t already texted or called to fill me in.”
“You two really work closely together, don’t you?”
“We make a damn good team,” Zee said. He pulled the pickup into traffic and headed south, toward downtown. “Been like that since before you were born. We went through the police academy together, you know.”
“I didn’t know that,” Drue admitted.
“I was best man when he married your mom. He stood up for me when I got married.”
“Was that to…?”
“Frannie,” Zee said. His face softened. “She was a piece of work, my Frannie. I used to call her Big Red. She had a temper to go along with the hair.”
Drue had foggy memories of a diminutive redhead sitting at the kitchen table with Zee and her parents, doling spaghetti out of an enormous pot. She remembered the table littered with beer bottles and overflowing ashtrays, and the sounds of raucous laughter after she’d been put to bed and the adults started one of their marathon card games.
“I remember Frannie,” she said now. “She used to bring me these little Italian cookies with powdered sugar.”
“Wedding cookies. They were her specialty.”
Drue glanced over at Zee. “I take it you guys split up?”
“Years and years ago. I was too damn dumb to know a good thing when I had it.” He ran a hand through his thinning gray hair. “Geez, I haven’t thought about Frannie in years. Funny, I just realized, your dad and me, we’ve been together longer than any of our marriages.”
“What’s the secret?”
“To the partnership? We don’t sleep with each other.” He laughed at his own joke. “Your old man knows how to make things happen. Always has. That’s the secret to his success.”
“And what’s the secret to yours?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Always sweat the small shit. The nitpicky details. Ask the extra questions. Make that last phone call. And that’s why Brice and me work so well together. He’s the big-picture guy. Always had a vision of what success looks like. Like going to law school. He was only a beat cop for maybe five or six years, and he already knew he wanted something bigger. Then he was in a general practice with old man Coxe for a few years, until he figured out personal injury was where the big paydays were. He went looking for those cases, and eventually, when he started getting big settlements, I went ahead and retired from the force and came to work for him as an investigator. That’s been, what? Twelve years? I lose track.”
Drue studied her father’s friend’s profile. He was jowly, with ruddy skin that already showed five-o’clock shadow. “Dad said he never made detective when he was on the force. But you did, right?”
“Sure. I retired as a captain.”
“Did you ever work on the case involving that missing woman? Colleen Boardman Hicks
?”
Zee’s jaws worked furiously at the gum but he kept his eyes on the road. “What makes you ask about her? You weren’t even born when all that happened.”
“When I was moving into the cottage on Sunset Beach, I found some old newspaper clippings about the case, in a box of my mom’s things,” Drue said, carefully omitting the fact that she’d actually found what looked like the official Colleen Hicks police file.
“It was a big mystery, back in the day,” Zee said. “On the news every night.”
“Dad told me he went to high school with Colleen Boardman Hicks,” Drue said. “Did you know that?”
“Yeah, now that you say it, I do remember they went to school together. But I don’t think they were really friends.”
“Since you were a detective back then, did you work on the investigation?”
“It wasn’t my case, but I did some legwork. That’s been more than forty years ago.”
“Did you have a theory back then about what happened to Colleen Hicks?”
The truck stopped at a traffic light. Zee turned in his seat and stared.
“Why do you care?”
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I mean, it’s fascinating, isn’t it? Colleen Hicks had dinner with a friend one evening, what—less than a mile from where we work? And then she vanished.”
The light turned green and they were moving again. “Who knows? At the time, the theory was that she was mixed up in something shady.”
“What kind of shady stuff could she have been involved with? She was a dental hygienist, right?”
“Oh, little girl, you don’t want to know what all that gal was into. There were drugs missing from that dentist’s office she worked at. Maybe she was selling them, but we never could prove it. And we talked to people who said she and the husband were into some kinky stuff. You know what I mean?”
Drue felt herself blushing. “You mean they were swingers?”
“That was the rumor going around. Back then, that kind of stuff wasn’t talked about out in the open, like it is now. You couldn’t turn on the television and watch ten different porn channels in the privacy of your own home like you can now.”
“Do you think there’s a chance she’s still alive?” Drue asked.
“Maybe. Maybe she’s living the good life in Mexico. Don’t really care, to tell you the truth.”
Zee pulled the pickup alongside the curb outside the green stucco offices of Campbell, Coxe and Kramner. “Okay, kid. End of the line. Good luck with Wendy.”
30
July 1976
Sherri Campbell knew Brice was cheating on her again. She always knew, because for a cop, he really wasn’t that good at hiding the signs.
Which were the late-night phone calls, supposedly from his partner, Jimmy Zee; the hang-ups; and of course, duh! the nights he came home way after shift, smelling of scotch and the other woman’s perfume.
She’d met this particular woman once, when she’d had the nerve to walk into the real estate office where Sherri worked, ostensibly to ask about renting a beach cottage for her family’s vacation.
“Two-bedroom, Gulf-front, with a kitchen, because I like to cook, and a pool for the kids,” the woman said.
“No pets, right?” Sherri asked, studying the woman, who was Brice’s type for sure: petite, blond, big boobs, good legs. The blond was out of a bottle, but it was a good dye job, probably professional. She wore a lot of makeup, but somehow it didn’t make her look cheap. Nice clothes too. And a big, flashy engagement ring.
“No, no pets,” the woman assured her, in a baby-doll kind of voice.
Sherri took her time looking through the rental listings, glancing up occasionally to study the woman, who coolly returned her stare.
“How about this one?” Sherri handed over a color brochure for a cottage on Treasure Island. “It’s just a couple blocks from John’s Pass. Close to restaurants. And it has a patio and grill area.”
The woman pretended to study the listing. Sherri looked past her, at the orange Camaro parked outside at the curb.
She’d seen it—how many times? Three or four times, for sure, as it cruised slowly past the house on Brice’s bowling night, or afternoons he was out fishing with Jimmy Zee.
And she’d seen the Camaro up close too, the first time she’d followed Brice. She borrowed her cousin’s car that night, waited across the street from police headquarters, then followed him to that motel on Thirty-fourth Street North. She’d parked at a coffee shop beside the place and watched while Brice got out of his cruiser, whistling, walked into the office and came back out minutes later with a key, which he used on a unit at the end of the U-shaped complex. Ten minutes later, the orange Camaro pulled in and parked a discreet four cars away. That night, the woman wore spike heels and a short, tight black dress that looked like it had been spray-painted onto her. It was the kind of dress a woman wore when she was fucking another woman’s husband in a shitty motel room that rented by the hour. Not that Sherri had any experience in that kind of thing.
“Hmm,” the other woman was saying now. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take this and see what my husband thinks. It looks cute, though.”
“It’s very cute,” Sherri said. “And it’s one of our most popular properties. If you think you might be interested, you should really put down a deposit today, Mrs.…?”
“McCarthy,” the woman said, after a moment’s hesitation. “Karen McCarthy. I’m not ready to commit today, but I’ll certainly keep that in mind, and be back in touch if my husband approves.”
“Okay,” Sherri said. She held out her hand. “By the way, Karen, I’m Sherri Campbell. But you already know that, since you’re the woman my husband has been running around with for the past few months.”
The blonde’s face paled all the way to her roots, but she recovered quickly. Obviously she was way better at lying than Brice was. “You must have me mixed up with somebody else. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Sherri pointed out the real estate office’s big plate-glass window. “Sure you do. I’ve seen that Camaro of yours several times driving past our house late at night. What’s wrong? Don’t you believe him when he tells you he’s going bowling with the guys?”
That got her flustered, Sherri noted.
“You’re crazy,” the woman said, turning to leave, hurrying toward the door, not bothering to take the brochure she hadn’t really wanted anyway.
“Not as crazy as you.” Sherri got up from her desk, for some reason grabbing a letter opener from the desktop. It had been a gift from the title insurance company, at their annual Christmas party.
She followed the woman outside to the parking lot, and as she opened the Camaro’s door, Sherri grabbed her arm and pressed the letter opener to a spot right between her big, flashy boobs.
“Don’t touch me,” the woman screeched. “Let me go.”
“Brice doesn’t care about you. You’re just another easy lay as far as he’s concerned,” Sherri said matter-of-factly. “So if I were you, Karen, or whatever your real name is, I’d drop him. If I were you, I’d stick to my own husband. You know, the one who gave you that nice big diamond you’re wearing.”
Sherri held up her left hand, flashing the tiny diamond chip on her own engagement ring. “This is the best a cop can afford.”
The other woman wrenched her arm away and hopped in the driver’s seat, making a show of locking the door. As she pulled out of the parking space, Sherri ran the letter opener along the side of the Camaro, leaving a long, thin scrape in its shiny orange paint job.
31
Ben and Drue were barely settled in their booth at a newly opened Mexican café on newly trendy Central Avenue. It was Tuesday, and the lunch was her payback to Ben for fixing OJ’s starter.
“I heard you did a ride-along with Zee yesterday,” Ben said. “How was it?”
“Interesting,” Drue said. “Once I got past him addressing me as ‘little girl’ and referring to himself
as ‘Uncle Zee.’”
The waitress brought a bowl of chips and guacamole and their drinks, a craft beer for Ben and an iced tea for Drue.
“Yeah, Zee’s pretty old-school. But I bet it was cool as hell anyway.” He gulped his beer and scooped into the guac. “Where did you go?”
“You know that 7-Eleven slip-and-fall you guys told me was bogus? Well, somehow, the prospective client called back, and Jonah ended up referring the case to Brice, who kicked it over to Zee, who found a witness! It was this old lady who lives over in a pretty sketchy part of town. Long story short, Zee says he thinks Dad can get a fat settlement from the insurance company.”
“What was it like, riding shotgun with Jimmy Zee?”
“It was actually kind of amazing. I was scared, but once I got talking to the witness, I just started asking questions and things fell together.” She dug in her purse and held up the can of Mace. “Zee gave me this. Did you know he carries a gun in a holster under his shirt?”
“So? His work takes him to some pretty sketchy places. Our clients don’t exactly all live in waterfront mansions like your dad’s.”
“I get that, but it kind of unnerved me.”
Drue gingerly returned the Mace to an inside pocket of her purse.
“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
Ben pointed his finger like a gun. “Shoot.”
“Funny. Only not.”
She leaned across the table, her voice lowered. “There’s something that’s been bothering me. About the Jazmin Mayes thing.”
He rolled his eyes. “Not that again.”
“No. Listen. There’s something there, I know there is. And I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”
“Oh shit, Drue. Do you realize how crazy all this sounds? I get that you feel sorry for the girl who was murdered, and her family. I get that you want some kind of justice, but you can’t just go around sticking your nose in an active police investigation. You’re not a cop. You’re not even an investigator. You’re like me. We’re cube rats. We answer the phone and try to get people to hire us to sue somebody. That’s it! We don’t go poking around the scene of a friggin’ murder!”
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