“Nice kids,” I said softly.
“At least they’re not trying to poke my eye out with a picket sign,” he murmured. “Not at the moment.”
They stood in the driveway and waved, all three of them, as I drove out. I watched wistfully in the rearview as the family turned to reenter the house together, Lance in the middle, holding his daughter’s hand, his other arm around his son.
I was mellow and relaxed from the champagne. The evening had been a huge success. This was a good time in my life, and they don’t come often. So why did I still have bad dreams and trouble sleeping?
I analyzed my problem, lying beneath my feather comforter in the dark, as Billy Boots purred at my side. Something had gone wrong with my slumber switch, I decided. Turn it on and the lights in the brain go out so it can sleep. Turn it off and the awareness and arousal cells wake up. Hard as I tried, all I could find was the dimmer switch, which kept me drowsy and dopey but awake.
I finally gave up and watched Island of the Dead, starring Lance Westfell. I groaned, smiling and not really surprised, when in a tense moment Lance’s character refused to abandon a companion, saying, “We go down, we go down together.”
Lottie called from the photo department the next morning, as I drank coffee and read the paper at my kitchen table, headachy and bleary-eyed.
“I’m dead,” she announced grimly. “I dug myself a shallow grave.”
“Good morning to you too. What’s wrong?”
“That cold-weather picture, that’s what’s wrong. Hell all Friday, Britt. Everything, my whole career, is down the tube.”
The paper was in front of me. The weather story had made the front page. So did her picture. It had been shot on South Beach.
A man, bundled up in a dark coat, stood at the sea wall, his thinning hair lifted by the ocean breeze. Hands jammed in his pockets, collar turned up, he was watching the seagulls. The caption read: “Winter visitor Solomon Maxwell, 71, braces against the chill, weathering Miami’s coldest day of the season Thursday, as the eastern seaboard shivers in a frigid blast. (Lottie Dane/News Staff)”
“Nothing wrong with it,” I said. “It’s fine.”
“He’s dead,” Lottie said. “The man is spitting up dirt. So am I.”
I stared at the photo. Solomon Maxwell smiled at the antics of the gulls. Hale and hearty, he had a twinkle in his eye. It was hard to believe that overnight he was gone.
“What happened? Was it natural causes?”
“How the hell would I know?”
“But I thought you said—”
“Stiff city. Dead since May.”
“How—?” I began to suspect what had happened and hoped I was wrong. “You didn’t shoot this picture yesterday?”
“No. You know I didn’t wanna be late to the benefit. Gretchen foisted the damn assignment on me at the last minute. I was supposed to be off.”
“When was it taken, Lottie?” My voice sounded stern.
“Last winter, February. You know how the desk always plays gimme, gimme, gimme; wants dozens a different pictures, then only uses one. I shot it for the weather story on the coldest day last season. Didn’t get used. I remembered that box a unused pictures when we talked yesterday. Perfectly good shot. Why let it go to waste? The man was from New York, a snowbird. I figured if he was back in town this year, he’d get a hoot out of it; if not, who was to know?”
“Who knew?”
“The widow. She wakes up this morning, opens her paper, and there’s her dead husband, like a ghost, all smiles on page one. The caption says he was strolling around South Beach yesterday. She called the desk, hysterical.”
“You’re dead.”
“Just drive a railroad spike into the base of my skull, right into the medulla oblongata.”
“Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Don’t panic. Take a chill pill.” I got up and paced the kitchen as we talked. “What’s happened so far?”
“When she called, she got Gretchen, who told me. She can’t wait to spring it at the eleven o’clock budget meeting. I swear, Britt, this is the murkiest water that’s ever been under my bridge.”
“Okay. You need to apologize to the widow and keep her from suing for mental anguish, or whatever. Go see her, for Pete’s sake, and make nice, woman to woman. Bring her some good prints of the picture. Maybe it’s the last one taken of him. Say you made a horrible mistake. But first, go talk to Gretchen. She owes us big, remember?” We had surprised her and a colleague in a compromising position last year, and when it all hit the fan, we kept our mouths shut and saved her job.
“It’s payback time. Tell her we all do things we regret sometimes, but us women in the newsroom have to stick together. She’ll know what you mean.”
“That crossed my mind.”
“Remind her about all the big awards you’ve won, all the hours you work, how you never call in sick, and that your Colombian earthquake pictures made it into the Pulitzer finals. If all else fails, plead temporary insanity.”
“Gotcha.”
Good grief, I thought, after we hung up. It was as though the curse stalking Margin of Error had rubbed off on her. Ridiculous, of course.
I called McDonald. “Hear you picked up Stephanie last night.”
“Right,” he said.
“What have you charged her with?”
“Nothing.”
“Why not?”
“We talked to the woman. We have no evidence, no proof of any crime she’s committed. She’s an over-zealous fan, but the woods are full of them.”
I perched on the arm of my favorite chair. “So where is she now, the hospital?”
“That woman is perfectly lucid.”
I stood up. “What are you saying?” My voice shook. “Where is she now?”
“Don’t ask me. She walked outa here hours ago.”
19
“How could you?”
“I’m investigating a homicide. That woman is not a prime suspect at this point. On what grounds would you have me put her in jail? What would your newspaper say if I violated her rights?”
I wanted to scream. “What about our rights? To be able to live without looking over our shoulders? We almost got killed; my car was vandalized, my locker.”
“Did you see Stephanie Carrollton do any of those things?” He sounded tired.
“No.”
“Do you have any physical evidence or any eyeball witnesses who can place her there?”
“You know we don’t.”
“The homicide is my prime concern,” he said.
“But we—”
“We. That’s you and Westfell, right?”
“Yes,” I said hesitantly.
“I would think that when somebody chooses a career in show business they have to expect to deal with some loss of privacy. You do have legal recourse; there are steps you can take if you feel personally threatened.”
I huffed and puffed impatiently. “Did you at least get an address on her?”
“Sure.”
I heard him shuffle papers.
“She’s subleasing an apartment on Hibiscus Island. Has a rental car with proper papers, a bank account. This is not a street person.”
No wonder she never missed anything. Hibiscus and Palm are twin islands just west of Star, where Lance was staying. How convenient. I jotted down the address.
“How’d she get a ticket to the benefit?”
“Said she was invited by her fiancée, the host.”
“What was she driving?” I demanded, my fury rising. “What the hell was she driving?”
“Britt, listen to yourself. What do you—?”
“Oh, so she gets to know everything about us, but—” There was that us again. I knew it annoyed him when I said it.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “She’s got an Olds, a silver Aurora.” He read me the tag number, and I repeated it after him. “Britt, I’m worried about you.”
&
nbsp; “So am I,” I snapped. “Far be it from you to do anything until it’s too late, until there’s a tragedy.” I slammed the phone down.
My beeper, in its charger on my bedroom dresser, began to chirp. I was off today; what the hell was this? I ignored it.
I called Star Island. Niko answered.
“Went great last night, didn’t it?” He sounded relaxed.
“I know where Stephanie is.”
“In jail?”
I laid it on him.
“Shit,” he said. “Those bastards. McDonald is a—”
“I’m going over to her place,” I said.
“Wait,” he insisted. “I’ll go with you. You can’t go alone.”
He was right.
“What about Lance?”
“Definitely not. It would play right into her hands. That’s exactly what she wants, attention from him. She’d love it.”
He was right.
“I’ll pick you up at the guardhouse on Star.” It was on my way. “I’m leaving now.”
“Okay. I’ll call her family’s lawyer in Boston. So they know where she is.”
I dashed into the bedroom. The beeper began to chirp again. Muttering curses, I rang the office. Gloria said Angel Oliver was trying to reach me. An emergency.
Damn, I thought, punching in the numbers with a vengeance. They probably turned Darnell loose too, so he could stalk Angel and steal their kids.
The truth was not quite that dramatic. She had called a friend from her old neighborhood.
“You’re not supposed to do that,” I snarled. “Did you tell anyone where you were?”
“Not actually.”
Oh, shit, what did that mean?
“They broke into my old apartment there, trashed it.”
“Think it was the people who shot at us?”
“There’s gang graffiti all over the walls.”
“Have any of them been arrested yet?” That was something I had neglected to ask McDonald.
“I thought you could find out.”
Swell. I had just slammed the phone down on the man who could tell me.
I called McDonald back. His secretary knew my voice but coolly asked who was calling, a bad sign. She put me on hold, came back, and said I should call the Public Information Office.
The man thought I was calling back to quarrel. Who could blame him? “Tell him it’s about Angel Oliver,” I pleaded.
She came back again. “You have to call PIO,” she said firmly. I pictured McDonald pouting at his desk. I quickly called Bliss, but he wasn’t in.
Sergeant Menendez in PIO said he would have to check with Lieutenant McDonald in homicide to find out if any of the shooting suspects had been arrested and if the detectives were aware of the break-in at Angel Oliver’s apartment.
He left me excruciatingly on hold, when all I wanted to do at that moment was jump in my car and race over to Stephanie’s apartment to straighten her out once and for all.
He finally came back. There had been no arrests, and the break-in was news to them. Somebody would look into it. I dialed Angel back.
“Do not go over there. Don’t even talk to anybody from that neighborhood. Stay away. Looks like all the shooters are still loose. They must know by now that the deal is off and Darnell is in jail, but I wouldn’t take any chances.”
She began to grumble, but I cut her off.
“Angel, this is not a game. Too many people depend on you.”
I pulled on a sweat suit, socks, and sneakers, ran a comb through my hair, and was out the door. The weather was still cold but clear. Niko was waiting when I pulled up to the guardhouse.
He trotted over to my car, wearing sweat pants and a bulky sweater. “I was beginning to get worried,” he said.
“Angel had a problem.”
“Let’s take the Town Car.”
I wanted to snarl about men too insecure to let women drive, but parked and climbed into his car instead. I was in no mood to waste more time arguing.
“What a difference,” he said, smiling. “You were so glamorous last night.”
“I’m afraid this is the real me, unfortunately.”
“Nothing wrong with it. Just a big contrast, glamour puss to tomboy. Jeez,” he said, turning onto the Palm-Hibiscus bridge. “She’s been right around the corner all along.”
“Basically,” I said, as he slowed down, looking for South Hibiscus Drive, “I just want to set her straight and get her off our backs.”
“Know how many times cops, lawyers, doctors, her family, and all the rest of us have tried to do that?” he said grimly.
“If we have to,” I said, “I was thinking that maybe we could scare her, put the fear into her—”
“Been there, tried that. Nothing anybody threatened could scare her off.”
“Well, what do you suggest we do?”
“If it was up to me I’d dump her in the drink, but that’s against the law. We can try to reason, but that’s hopeless. Our best bet is to just hang onto her, not let her out of our sight until her family gets somebody out here. They’ve got a local law firm, and her father was on the phone to them while I was still on the line.”
He slowed down, searching out the address. The residential islands off the MacArthur are all single-family private homes except for a few small apartment houses on Hibiscus.
The building was surrounded by old trees and colorful tropical foliage. The silver Olds was parked out front. “She’s here,” I said, heart pounding. The tag number matched the one McDonald had given me. Niko parked, blocking it in. I was glad now that he was driving. I had seen Stephanie in action. If she rammed a car today, better his than mine.
“What if she wants to leave?” I said, before we got out of the car. “We can’t just tie her up and lock her in a closet.”
“Can’t we?” He cut his eyes at me. “I’m up for it, if you are.” He was dead serious.
“It’s probably a crime,” I said. “But hey, at this point, I’ll try anything. The cops won’t violate her rights. We’re the only people who can protect ours.
“Too bad they stopped her last night,” I went on, dunking aloud. “If she had actually shown up at the house, they could have charged her with trespassing.”
“You kidding? How long do you think they would have held her?”
“You’re right.”
We found her name on the mailbox, first initial only. A pleasant, shady walk to a private entrance. A cozy second-floor hideaway with a view, through trees, of the bay. No more shadowy wraith, appearing at will, then disappearing, leaving us frustrated and helpless. We had her cornered where she lived. I liked that feeling of power.
The stairs were stone with Italian tile inserts. We stood on either side of the door so she couldn’t see us; then Niko rang the bell. We heard its melodic chimes inside. No answer. He rang again, and a third time, as we stood there in the chilly shadow of a huge ficus tree.
“Think she saw us coming?” I whispered.
“Could be,” he muttered, looking around. Then he knocked loudly. He leaned over the railing, eyes searching the yard below and the property next door. “She’s gotta be around here someplace.”
No movement inside, only silence.
“Maybe she’s out jogging, or taking a walk.”
We went back downstairs. Nobody around. The inside of the Olds looked like a rental. Clean, nothing unusual. Niko squatted, removed the valve stem, and let the air hiss out of the right front tire.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t want her to take off while we’re driving around the island to see if she’s on foot. She could be watching us from in there right now. If I was her, I wouldn’t be answering my door either.”
We cruised both islands, scanning up and down every cross street. No sign of Stephanie. Back at the apartment the Olds was undisturbed.
“Maybe she was so upset about the cops picking her up that
she cut her wrists or hung herself.” I began to feel apprehensive.
“I doubt it. If she did something dramatic, it would be on Lance’s doorstep.”
We stared at each other. “She could have gone there on foot,” I said. “It’s quite a walk, but doable.”
He called the Star Island guardhouse, then the house, on his cellular. Pauli answered. No sign of Stephanie.
“She must be inside.” We went to the door and rang again.
A car pulled up downstairs. Two men. The passenger, a tall skinny young guy, got out, looked around, then spotted us.
“That your Lincoln?” he called. “You’ve got us blocked in here.”
“Hey, Pete,” the other man called. “The damn thing’s got a flat. Nobody said anything about that.”
They were from Holiday Rent-a-Car. Stephanie had called to turn in her car and had asked them to pick it up at the apartment. Said the keys would be under the fender, which they were.
Niko moved the Lincoln and helped them change the flat. When they left, we went back up the stairs and began searching for a key. Under the mat, in the flower pot, on the ledge over the door. Nothing. Then I ran back downstairs, fished in her mailbox and came up with two keys on a metal ring. She must have left them for the landlord.
“We’re not breaking and entering,” Niko said as he unlocked her door. “We have a key.” A man after my own heart.
The apartment was pin neat. Wicker, bamboo, and flower prints. Sunny kitchen, neatly made bed. The closets were pretty much empty, most personal items gone from the bathroom cabinet. Nobody home. In the trash, lots of tabloids, magazines and newspapers with pages cut out. It was obvious whose picture had been on those pages. She must have quite a scrapbook, I thought. A half-full coffeepot still sat on the stove. She left in a hurry, forgot her toothbrush and hairspray. No clue where she had gone.
A elderly woman, emerging from a downstairs apartment with her dog, said her upstairs neighbor had left earlier in a taxi. She did not recall what cab company.
If only I had called McDonald sooner. If only I had not wasted time on the phone with Angel. If only, if only—we might have caught her.
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