by Shirl Henke
“Yeah, I can tell. Say, you ever see this woman? She’s a friend of Farley’s and we think maybe she might know where he is.”
“You mean he ain’t with that Elvis fellow?” he asked as she handed him a photo of Leila Satterwaite.
“Naw, he and Farley split in St. Louis. Musta drunk too much Klingoff blood milk or something,” she said with a snicker that he echoed. She watched as he looked at Leila’s stripper photo.
He let out a low whistle. “Never seen this one. She’s not the kind I’d forget, believe you me. Some kinda hot! She a friend of Mr. W’s kid?” he asked, incredulously.
“Yeah. A Spacer like him.”
“No kiddin’? Too bad. Anybody who’d watch that crap oughta be locked in a loony bin, you ask me—don’t tell Mr. W. I said that,” he added quickly. “Farley’s a nice kid in a weird sort of way. Real smart,” he said earnestly.
“Don’t worry. Mr. W. doesn’t exactly talk to the hired help, even if I was the type to blab, which I’m not. Between you and me, I think he’s a first-class jerk.”
That elicited a big grin as Rogers took a long gulp of his Scotch and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Sam wondered how he could drink this much and stay straight enough to keep his chauffeur’s license. He replied, “Couldn’t agree more. He ain’t easy to work for. Have to take a lot of crap.”
On a hunch, she asked, “Was his wife as big a pain in the ass? I heard she came from a filthy rich family.”
He shook his head. “She was too stoned most of the time to give anyone around here much grief.” A big lascivious grin spread across his mouth. “She was a lot nicer to some of us than others, if you get my drift.”
Sensing a juicy bit of gossip was forthcoming, Sam leaned forward conspiratorially and smiled back. “She had a lover?”
“Big blond type. You know, a muscle-bound pretty boy, Kenny Brio. He was supposed to be a yardman, but the only hedge he ever pruned wasn’t green…if you get my drift.” He smirked knowingly. “You want a refill?”
“No thanks. Like I said, I gotta drive home and I can’t hold my liquor like you. Sure wish I could,” she said in an admiring tone. “This stuff about Mrs. Winchester and Brio, was it just gossip?”
Rogers shook his head. “I caught ’em once in the pool house when I went looking for extra towels. They was so busy goin’ at it, they never seen me. Figgered it wasn’t none of my business, so I just slipped out. They never knew I was there.”
Sam would have bet the price of bodywork on the Econoline that he’d stayed and gotten an eyeful, but she didn’t interrupt as he refilled his glass. “I never told Mr. W. He don’t know how to treat a woman, anyway. Rather sit lookin’ at account ledgers. Man’s a fool.”
“Yeah, I saw pictures of Susan Winchester. She was a real looker. How’d she treat Farley?”
“Okay, I guess. When she wasn’t on drugs. But by the time the kid was in junior high, she was pretty far gone. Mr. W. had her seeing a shrink—that same fellow that Farley goes to now.”
“Dr. Reicht?”
“Yep. She seemed to be doin’ okay for a while, but then she really went off the deep end. We could hear her yellin’ and breakin’ stuff all the way from the big house.”
“Seeing his mother like that wouldn’t have made Farley happy,” she said softly.
“No, reckon it didn’t. Then Brio up and left. After a little while, she took that OD and that was the end of her.”
“Any idea what happened to Brio?” Sam asked.
He shrugged. “One day he was here mowing the grass like nothin’ was wrong. Next day, adios. Funny, though…”
“Yeah?” she prompted.
“He left his stuff in his room. You know, like he didn’t plan on bein’ gone long, but a couple of days later, Mrs. Wachter, the housekeeper, she come up here and packed everything up. Said he’d quit and taken a job in the Tampa Bay area. She was supposed to ship his stuff there. Really pissed her off,” he added with a grin.
“She’s pretty tight with the boss man,” Sam commented. The hatchet-faced harridan fit right in with Ms. Ettinger and the whole hardware-faced crew at Winchester’s office. All sharp angles with refrigeration coolant in their veins. Poor Farley never had a chance with a family and people like those around him. “When Susan Winchester died, did Brio show for the funeral or anything? You know, being her lover and all, it just sort of figured that he might at least send flowers or something.”
“Never heard nothing from him. Not a peep. Like he dropped off the earth, know what I mean?”
“Kenny Brio.” Sam spelled the name for Ethan Frobisher, then gave him everything she knew about Susan Mallory Winchester’s lover, which wasn’t much. But then Fro didn’t need much to trace someone.
After signing off, she poured herself a tall glass of iced tea to sober up from the Scotch she’d been forced to consume to be sociable and keep Rogers talking. The unhappy wife had a torrid affair with a lowly gardener who happened to be a big blond hunk. On a sudden, wild hunch, she called Fro back and gave him another tip.
Chapter 22
Sam walked through the entry of the big Metro-Dade headquarters building on NW 25th Street late that afternoon and waved at the uniform seated behind the high counter. “Need to talk to Patowski, Max. He said he’d be here.”
The tall, thin sergeant had a fringe of silver hair cut regulation short, circling his head like a halo. He gave Sam a wide smile. “Where else he got to go unless he’s out bird-dogging?”
She knew her way to the homicide department blindfolded. Pat slumped over the metal desk in his cubicle, puffing on a cigarette as he read from a sheaf of papers on top of the messy pile that was his “filing system.” “It’s against regs to smoke in the building. A guy could get arrested,” she said, slipping into the only chair that wasn’t overflowing with folders and other debris.
“So, call a cop,” he said, taking the last possible drag on the end of the smoke, then stubbing it out in an overflowing ashtray. Patowski’s weathered face was dominated by a perpetually downturned mouth and narrowed eyes that missed nothing. Thinning red hair liberally streaked with gray emphasized his fair complexion. “You look like you want something. I’m fresh out of favors.”
“What if I want to do you one?” she asked.
“I’d sooner have the clap, Sam. No, thanks,” he said, returning to the report in his hand.
“What if I could link the Satterwaite murder to Upton Winchester?” she asked.
Her old mentor put down the papers and leaned back, his rounded shoulders collapsing with deceptive ease against the worn fabric of the cheap office chair. “I know you didn’t get this info legally, don’t I?” he asked rhetorically, waiting. “Probably isn’t worth squat.”
She knew he was interested but refused to show it. “Wrong. It all ties to Winchester’s dead wife…whose cold case files you’ve been riffling through,” she said, snatching one of the documents from the top of a pile that she knew contained files he was currently working on.
“You’re not a cop anymore, Sam. Give it back,” he demanded.
She handed them to him with a tight little smile. “I don’t need to read about Susan Mallory Winchester’s suspicious death, or her unhappy marriage…or that the shrink treating her at the time she supposedly OD’d was Reese Reicht.” That got his attention, although only someone who’d worked with him as long as she had would have recognized the imperceptible stiffening of his hand, the tighter squint of his eyes.
He placed Susan’s file out of Sam’s reach and leaned back again, waiting. “So, you’ve been checking up on her brief, unhappy life because you were hired to retrieve her son. By the way, I know Montoya has him.”
“You share that with Agent Scruggs of the DEA?”
Patowski snorted. “He said you weren’t exactly cooperating with a federal investigation. Neither am I. Talked to Bill Montoya. The kid’s safer with him than with the feds.” Over the years Patowski had conducted several joint task f
orce investigations with the FBI and DEA, but local law enforcement and feds of any stripe always rubbed each other the wrong way.
“Glad to hear it. The captain has a great family. They’re treating Farley better than his own ever did.” She waited a beat, then said, “By the way, did Scruggs tell you what Farley told me?” At his blank look, she went on, “Elvis doesn’t share, either. Farley witnessed Leila and the good doc struggling in the Seascape Building elevator.” She gave him the same details she’d furnished the DEA agent the preceding night, omitting their mutual breaking and entering encounter.
Patowski wasn’t surprised that Scruggs had not burned up the phone lines to give him the information. “The Winchester kid’s not a credible witness, but it sure would give Reicht reason to want him dead.”
“And might just cause some friction between him and his partner Upton, who needs his son alive,” she said.
“Okay, I can use that, but how do you connect Leila Satterwaite to Winchester?”
“It say anywhere in that file that Winchester’s wife was boffing a yardman at the family manse?”
“The marriage sucked. Wouldn’t surprise me if Susan Winchester was boffing the whole landscape company,” he said noncommittally. “That wouldn’t necessarily give Winchester motive to off her.”
“Upton hates scandal. Bad enough she’s a drunk and a druggie, but having an affair with a lowly yardman. All the servants knew about it. If she’d really been between the sheets with her shrink, like you were speculating earlier, I don’t think Winchester would’ve found that quite so appalling—if she kept it discreet. At least he’s a professional man. But a north Florida cracker?”
“Okay, I get the picture. Maybe you tagged Winchester with a motive,” he conceded. “What’s the guy’s name? I’ll haul him in for questioning.”
“Only if you hold a séance,” she replied. “Kenny Brio’s body was ID’d in Jacksonville five years ago, shortly before Susan had her fatal encounter with booze and pills.”
“Cause of death?”
“Funny coincidence. My source just located his death records with the Jacksonville M.E. Kenny was drinking, then OD’d, too. He was a real hunk.” She handed the portfolio photos that Fro had found on the Net to Patowski. “Big, good-looking, a professional model. Into bodybuilding. Doing booze and pills doesn’t quite fit. He was a transient according to the upstate report. Not identified for several days. When he ran his junker car into a shipping canal at midnight, nobody thought it was anything to bother with.”
“A blond pretty boy. Bet all the ladies liked him,” Pat said, looking at the picture.
“Especially Susan Winchester.”
“I’m waiting for the tie-in to Satterwaite,” he said.
“See any family resemblance?” she replied, handing him the grainy photo that had run in the Herald along with the story of Leila’s murder. “I played a hunch and came up with aces.”
Patowski started rooting through his desk piles and finally extracted a dog-eared folder filled with photos. “Dammit! I knew the minute you showed me that picture that I’d seen him before, but he was only a skinny kid back then.” He handed her the snapshot, a candid obviously taken by another kid or maybe a teacher. It was of a teenage boy and girl on a playground. “We took this from Satterwaite’s apartment. No ID on it, but one of her friends said it might be her brother. Wasn’t sure. Didn’t know his name.”
“He changed his name from Satterwaite to Brio when he tried modeling,” Sam explained. “Leila was Reicht’s patient. Didn’t that ring any bells?” she asked suspiciously.
“We questioned the SOB. His alibi sucks but we couldn’t sweat him. That’s when the IRS stuck their bazoo in, then the DEA.” Patowski looked as if he’d just swallowed a palmetto bug. “Both have ongoing investigations into Reicht and Winchester for tax and drug scams,” he said.
Pat knew she’d tangled with Scruggs but probably didn’t know about Matt’s contact with Kleb. She decided to keep it that way for now. Like the rest of law enforcement, he was paranoid as hell about reporters. Grinning, she asked, “How do you like working with Elvis?”
“As far as I’m concerned, he can leave the building anytime,” he said. “But I got my orders straight from the top. We lay back, let the alphabet soup bastards work their computers until they nail down the evidence on the offshore accounts and drug connections.”
“And they don’t want police help with local drug dealers?” Sam suspected the answer.
“Oh, we’re supposed to play second fiddle and give up every snitch and source we have from Palm Beach to Key Largo.” He coughed and took another drag. “Our narcs gave ’em what they felt like without compromising their own work. But now…” His voice trailed away in a haze of cigarette smoke.
“Now, you have my fresh leads in two murder investigations. You owe me, Patty.”
“Whenever you start with that ‘Patty’ crap, you’re after something. And knowing you so well, it always involves the long green.”
“Okay, here’s the deal,” she said, getting down to business. “I spent a fortune—not to mention nearly getting killed half a dozen times—sneaking into a Spacer con to snatch Farley from Scruggs and return him to Miami. Yeah, I wanna get paid. It’s only fair and Roman Numeral can afford it.”
“Roman Numeral?” Then he smirked. “The fourth. Go on.”
“I work with you on the investigation.” She put up her hand when he started to protest. “You know I have sources that’ll be useful to you. If I can find out why Reicht killed Leila Satterwaite, and how that’s related to her brother’s affair with Winchester’s wife, you gotta help me collect my legit fees before the alphabet soup guys put both of them away.”
“Why not just turn the kid over to daddy now and collect your cash before the government closes in?”
“While I was bringing Farley back I learned that handing him over to daddy’s loving care meant Reicht would drug him until the kid was a vegetable. Can’t do that. Matt knew Captain Montoya was a Spacer. That’s why we took him there. But Scruggs still wants to pick the kid’s brains about the offshore accounts. El’s one smart hillbilly. He’ll figure out where Farley is and try to push the envelope. Can’t let him.”
Patowski leaned back and studied her. “You’re taking a chance on losing a big fee. Not like you, Sam. Kid musta got to you.”
“You know why I went into the retrieval business, Pat,” Sam said, all traces of humor and bargaining gone.
Patowski sighed. “Your twin cousins died in a mass suicide pact after they ran off to join some nut cult in Pennsylvania. The leader said the group was launching itself onto a higher astral plane or some crap like that.”
“Within a year my aunt Betty died of a broken heart and Uncle Joe took a stroll on a Boston freeway in the middle of the night a week after her funeral. Farley’s an innocent kid, just like Linda and Rhonda were. And he hasn’t even got a family to mourn for him.” She waited.
He shoved the pile of folders across his desk. “Here’s what we got so far. You keep me posted and I’ll let you know what I dig up—and whatever Scruggs and Kleb choose to share.” He gave her a hard look. “But none of these documents leave this office and if you so much as breathe a word about our deal, you won’t collect a red cent. I’ll lift your license quicker than a hurricane lifts a tin roof off a shed.”
“It went good with Patty,” Sam said to Matt over her cell as she drove the ancient Charger east on I-395, heading to the Herald to pick him up. “Yeah, he’ll work with me—note I stress me, not you…so… You know he hates reporters, especially you. Matt, you broke the story about the Russian mob… Okay, so it wasn’t your fault the boat ran aground after I chased it down the Intracoastal… I saved your ass, sweet thing that it is….”
By the time they’d finished arguing over the case on which they’d met, he strolled out of the glass doors onto the newspaper parking lot. She pulled to a smooth stop and he folded his big frame into the passenger seat.
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“How the hell do you manage to shift this wreck without a second gear?” he asked again as she took off as easily as she’d stopped.
“You gotta have a feel for the transmission, Matt. I keep telling you—”
“I know, I know, take a course in mechanics at a vo-tech.” He knew he sounded grumpy, but he hated being shown up as a driver by a woman, especially his own wife.
“Uncle Dec might come down for Christmas this year,” she said with a gleam in her eye. “He could teach you a lot.”
Matt’s expression changed to a grin. “You still matchmaking between him and my aunt?” His eccentric great-aunt Claudia Witherspoon, descended from generations of Boston Brahmins, had taken one of her bizarre fancies to Sam’s truck-driver uncle at their wedding. She, too, was supposed to visit them over the holidays.
“You gotta admit, it’s fun to watch them together.”
“Can’t deny that,” he said with a chuckle. “They sneaked out of the reception to smoke a couple of her expensive Cuban cigars. She’ll give him champagne taste on a beer income.”
Sam snorted, turning onto the MacArthur Causeway. “Not a chance. He told me after trying her triangalo that a good Swisher Sweet was still his favorite, but he didn’t want to hurt her feelings.”
Matt whooped with laughter, then looked over at her. “Where are we headed now? You were rather mysterious when you called me away from my desk.”
“Pat got a complete report from the Beach police on the tan Mustang. I know they did a cursory canvas of the neighborhood, but lots of people won’t talk to cops. I figure if we give it a try and explain that those two gunsels were trying to kill us and an innocent seventeen-year-old kid, we might have better luck. Pat says it’ll be a couple of days before the prints on the car are run through all the databases.”
He shrugged. “Right now, they’re the only connection to Reicht and Winchester. Why not?”
The area around Flamingo Park was in the heart of the Art Deco District, a showcase of turquoise, fuchsia, chartreuse and lavender stucco buildings sporting rounded corners, flat roofs and porthole windows. The small lots were overgrown with lush multicolored flowering vines and shrubbery, lending an aura of privacy to the condos and apartments. Starting from the place where the car had been found, they first canvassed the park, but no one had been dog-walking in the middle of the night.