“The evidence couldn’t have been cooked, by somebody who wanted to frame Lessor?”
“Highly unlikely. The CIA doesn’t have the tools to fake that kind of crime scene evidence.”
He sighed. “You better bring me up to speed.”
“Scratches on his face, skin under her nails. The last DNA sample was from under her toenail. Scrappy little girl was really fighting. And our new evidence: her toenail matched the scratch in Lessor’s chest.”
With each tidbit, Caine became that much more disappointed. “Then I take it you did interview Daniel Boyle?”
“Oh yeah. Is he your new Erica Hardy suspect?”
Almost embarrassed, Caine said, “Afraid so.”
“Well, Boyle’s not much of a human being—and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was dirty somehow. Maybe he did do your murder, his stepfather, I mean…but our murder—Erica Hardy? He’s innocent…. How good is he looking for yours?”
“He just feels right, and there’s some circumstantial stuff…but, really, Catherine, I’ve got no evidence that would catch any self-respecting DA’s eye.”
“Too bad. Wanna talk about it?”
Caine wondered if Willows was fishing, or actually trying to help. Either way, he just didn’t have time.
“Maybe later. Right now, I have to get back to my interview. I left Boyle alone with a fairly pissed-off cop.”
“Ha. Happy hunting, Horatio.”
“Thanks, Catherine.”
They rang off.
Back in Boyle’s office, Sevilla was sitting in tense silence, her eyes boring into Boyle, whose nervousness was palpable.
To Sevilla, Caine said, “That was my contact in Las Vegas. Mr. Boyle is in the clear there.”
“What did I tell you?” Boyle said.
Caine twitched a non-smile and sat back down. “That doesn’t clear you in Miami, Daniel. Not hardly.”
Boyle’s face fell. “What in the hell do I have to do to convince you that I had nothing to do with Tom’s death?”
“Be truthful, Daniel. Don’t withhold key information.” Caine settled. “For example—did you know about your stepfather and Erica Hardy?”
The hotel manager shook his head. “No…. That is, not until after she turned up dead.”
Caine’s eyes frowned. “But you had a detective following Lessor.”
Boyle shrugged open-handedly. “I suspected Tom was screwing around, only I couldn’t catch him at it…. Neither could the private eye I hired.” His smile was tired, defeated. “But no matter what I thought of Tom, he was a clever son of a bitch. I really had no idea about Erica.”
“Were there other women?”
With a little shrug, Boyle said, “Not that I could prove. I thought there were a couple of possibilities—showgirls—out there, rumors…but, end of the day…a handful of air.”
Caine shifted in his chair. “Did you know about Lessor and Maria Chacon?”
Boyle laughed. “What? Are you high, Lieutenant?”
“I get a natural high whenever I put a murderer away, Daniel. Lessor and Maria. Did you know they were having an affair? Simple question.”
Now Boyle crossed his arms, his manner suddenly smug. “Let’s just say I knew she was having an affair.”
“But not who she was having it with, you mean.”
“Lieutenant, I knew who she was having it with. Let me assure you”—he chuckled—“I knew.”
Caine had the thought first, but it was Sevilla who blurted it: “You’re having an affair with Maria Chacon?”
He gave a little shrug, smiled smugly, and lifted his eyebrows up and down; it was just a little less subtle than Groucho Marx making a suggestive remark.
“If that is what you mean,” the detective said, her voice glacial, “then say it, Mr. Boyle—out loud.”
He shrugged, and said, lightly, “I am having an affair with Maria Chacon. And—not that it’s any of your business—I’m having a wonderful time.”
Boyle glanced at Caine, in an I’m-a-luckier-guy-than-you-aren’t-I manner; but the CSI supervisor was not impressed.
“Well, then,” Caine said, in apparent good humor, “I guess this is one of those rare cases…”
“What rare cases?” Boyle asked.
“Like stepfather,” Caine said, “like stepson.”
“What…?”
“Think about it, Daniel.”
Boyle’s eyes went wide and empty; and then those eyes began to fill up with realization. He sat back as if Caine had slapped him, his chin dropping to his chest. “You’re…you’re shitting me.”
“Not a bit,” Caine said.
“No way. Maria—she and Tom—no fucking way!”
“Way,” Sevilla said quietly.
Boyle lurched forward in his chair. “Who the hell told you?”
“She did,” Caine said.
The hotel man froze. Then he flopped back in his chair. His mouth hung open like a trapdoor he’d just fallen through.
“Let me ask you a question, Daniel,” Caine said, filling the stunned silence. “Have you ever been to Maria’s apartment?”
“No. We always go to the house, or…just use a room here.”
“Never to her apartment. Why is that?”
He swallowed; shrugged halfheartedly. “She has a roommate.”
“That’s right, Daniel,” Caine said. “And her roommate’s name is—or was—Thomas Lessor.”
Shaking his head slowly, Boyle said, “I can’t believe it.”
“He was paying for the apartment, Daniel…or anyway, a holding company was.”
“I just…can’t.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Daniel—she admitted it.”
His face reddened, his eyes flared. “That lying bitch! The dirty little—”
“Don’t say it, Daniel,” Sevilla said.
He was raving, though. “I asked her! Asked her point-blank if she’d done Tom to get this gig, and she swore up and down she didn’t!”
Caine couldn’t stop the smile. “And you really thought she’d give you a straight answer?”
Boyle began to pull on his dark hair and Caine wondered if he was getting some insight into how the hotel manager had developed the several cowlicks that plagued him.
“What a fool I am…I should have known—God! What a fucking fool!” Boyle’s voice was raspy. He was holding back tears. “And you call me a liar! That little bitch—she lies about everything. Lies through her teeth!”
Interested, Caine asked, “For example?”
“Well, hell—about Tom! About me being the only man in her life—Jesus, every damn thing!”
Caine cut in between rants. “Do you think your stepfather knew about you and Maria?”
Boyle blanched. “Oh, my God!”
“That wasn’t a statement, Daniel,” Caine said coolly, “it was a question. Do you think he knew?”
The man’s eyes were wild. “And if he did, what then? You’ll have me killing Tom to have her to myself, or to keep him from telling my mother that I was screwing my own lounge singer! Maria was probably lying to him the way she was lying to me.”
“Then, you don’t think he knew?”
Boyle threw his hands in the air. “Christ, how the hell should I know? Ask the lying bitch yourself!” He stole a look at Sevilla, who was glaring at him. “Ask Maria!”
“Oh we will,” Caine said.
Pulling at his hair again, Boyle said, “I should have known! Should’ve figured it out—I mean, after all, she lied from day one!”
Caine cocked his head. “Did she? How so?”
“Well, for starters—she lied to get the job.”
“In what way?”
“The Latina thing! Oh, sure, we go along with it, it’s good business.”
“I’m not following you, Daniel.”
“Oh yeah, sure, we advertise her as Maria Chacon, play up the Cubano angle…have her do lots of salsa music—the tourists go batty for that meringue shit.”
Caine rais
ed a palm; the guy was ranting again. “Daniel, I still am not following you.”
Boyle grunted a laugh. “She’s no more Cuban than you are, Lieutenant. Or Puerto Rican or even Mexican, for that matter.”
“She mentioned being Cuban to us,” Caine said, with a glance at Sevilla.
“Well, more lies.” Boyle grinned rather crazily. “I didn’t find out till we signed the contract, with her legal name. Hell—she’s from Jersey! She’s a goddamn wop!”
Sevilla leapt half out of the chair in outrage but visibly held herself in check.
Caine asked, softly, “Chacon—it’s not her real name?”
Shaking his head, Boyle said, “No, it’s…I don’t know, I don’t remember…it’s Chiaverini or Chic-anini or some such shit.”
A wave of adrenaline swept through Caine, immediately replaced by the numbing calm that allowed him to control the situation, no matter what his emotions wanted him to do.
“Would it be…Ciccolini?” he asked.
“Yeah, yeah, that’s it,” Boyle said, nodding vigorously. “Ciccolini. It only came up at contract time, and then we had a little chat about it—she laughed and said, hey, it’s just show biz. Cary Grant was really Archie Leach, she says. Hey, she’s even got a bank account as Maria Chacon now—that’s how she wants to be paid.” Another shrug. “Latin thing’s workin’ for her.”
Caine threw Sevilla a look and they stood.
“No trips to Vegas or anywhere else, Daniel,” Caine said, “without checking in with us, first.”
“No problem. So you’re gonna go see Maria again?”
Sevilla said, “What we do next really doesn’t have a thing to do with you, Mr. Boyle.”
This was meant to be a put-down, obviously, but Boyle’s reply only sounded relieved: “Good. That is good to hear.”
As they drove to Vincent Ciccolini’s home in Coral Gables, Sevilla said, “So Maria Chacon shares a last name with one of our elderly hit men…so what do we have? A family thing, or a contract kill?”
“Yes,” Caine said.
As before, there was no answer when they rang Ciccolini’s doorbell; and—once again—they drove around the corner to the Rosselli home.
Rebecca Rosselli answered the door, wearing jeans and a light blue Polo shirt, a little big for her, her husband’s maybe. She had a smile that vanished quickly enough to indicate she’d been waiting for someone else.
“Oh—it’s you,” she said. “I suppose you want to know if Anthony can come out to play.”
“Something like that,” Caine said. “Is he home?”
“No—and I’m expecting a friend, and would rather not be embarrassed by you people being around.”
“I can understand that. We’ll make it brief.”
She shook her head. “This is starting to feel like harassment.”
Sevilla said, “You’ll know when it’s harassment, Mrs. Rosselli.”
Caine shot the detective a look, then said to Mrs. Rosselli, “I’m sure this is an inconvenience…but two men have suffered the larger inconvenience of being murdered.”
Mrs. Rosselli just looked at him, her big brown showgirl eyes cold as the big diamond on her wedding-ring finger.
Caine continued: “We have some new information that makes it necessary for us to talk to your husband again.”
Worry tightened her eyes, just a little. “I said Anthony wasn’t here.”
“Then we’ll talk to you. May we come in?”
Reluctantly, she moved aside so Caine and Sevilla could enter.
The home had a comfortable, lived-in feel, the living room spacious—a matching floral sofa and loveseat making a pit group in the corner to Caine’s right. An end table squatted on either side, with a low, square coffee table in the middle; a dark green leather recliner perched at the other end, all of them facing a big-screen television on the wall to his left. A large oil painting of some venerable Italian city hung on the wall over the sofa. Family photos filled the space between the door and the picture window, immediately to his right, with more framed photos scattered on the tables and atop the TV.
“Won’t you sit down,” Mrs. Rosselli asked flatly—no politeness in the words but no sarcasm, either—as she moved to the far end of the sofa and perched on it, seeming to barely touch the fabric. Sevilla and Caine shared the loveseat.
Caine got right to it. “Do you know if Vincent Ciccolini has any relatives in the city?”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
“Such as?”
“His niece.”
“Maria?” he prodded.
“Yes, Maria—she’s a singer. Doing very well. We went to one of her shows but left early—much too loud. Why must modern music be so loud?” Another shrug. “I’ve only met her once or twice.”
“Are Maria and Vincent close?”
“Far as it goes. I mean, they’re generations apart. Guess they see more of each other than the average uncle and niece, ’cause each other is all the family they got down here.”
“That’s understandable.”
“Of course you know how these young kids are—not much time for us dinosaurs. She’s got her career and everything.”
“You know much about her?”
“Just what I gather from Vinnie. She come down here from Jersey, what—maybe a year, year and a half ago?” Mrs. Rosselli’s eyes narrowed. “Why so curious about Maria?”
Figuring he had to trade something to get something, Caine said, “Maria was acquainted with one of the men who was murdered.”
Mrs. Rosselli frowned and she made a tsk-tsk sound that seemed more perfunctory than caring. “That’s a shame for her. Is she doing all right with it? She was close to this man?”
“They dated.” Treading carefully now, he said, “She’s upset, naturally.”
“Just a shame. You know, we’ve seen crime down here get worse and worse, over these fifteen years. Drugs and murder and perversion on every street corner—and then you police come bother harmless retirees like us.”
“Don’t you think Vinnie would be interested in helping his niece get through this painful experience?”
She didn’t know how to respond to that; finally she said, “Wanna know that, you should talk to Vinnie. Anthony and I have nothing to do with Maria whatever-her-new-name-is.”
“I’m sure. But I do need to ask him—and of course Mr. Ciccolini—a few more questions.”
She glared at Caine and Sevilla. “Wasn’t nagging them at the funeral home bad enough? Disgraceful. You people should be ashamed.”
“We have to ask questions based on new information that’s come up since we first spoke to your husband and his friend.”
“What new information?”
“It’s really nothing that concerns you, Mrs. Rosselli. As you rightly said, you have nothing to do with it.”
She frowned, deep, her lip curling a tiny sneer. “You’re trying to pin this thing on the fellas, aren’t you? What a crock!”
Caine took in a breath and let it out slowly. “Mrs. Rosselli, I don’t pin anything on anyone. My job is following evidence. Evidence led me here. Once I’ve spoken to your husband again, it may lead me away, down some other avenue.”
Now she seemed pouty. “Just the same,” she said, “I can’t think of why you should bother Anthony with this.”
“Please tell us where we can find him.”
Slowly, she shook her head. “We have a right to our privacy. To our own law-abiding lives.”
Caine turned casually to Sevilla. “Call in a squad car, would you?”
The detective said, “Certainly…. Shall I have them approach with the siren on?”
“That’s a fine idea. Then we’ll know right when they get here.”
Sevilla withdrew her cell phone and punched in dispatch. She identified herself, continuing, “I’m with Lieutenant Caine—we need a squad car at our location. Lights and siren.”
She listened for a moment, then gave the person on the other end her badge nu
mber and the address. After another few seconds of listening, she said, “Thanks,” and hung up. To Caine she said, “Ten minutes, tops.”
“Fine.” He returned his gaze to their wide-eyed hostess, giving her a blandly benign smile. “Now, Mrs. Rosselli, here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to keep that squad car right in front of your house, and the moment your husband comes home, the officers will let me know, and we’ll be back—with our siren on.”
“Why would you—”
“And in the meantime, that police car will sit right outside and I only hope you have a good relationship with your neighbors, that they’re nice people who think well of you. We’d hate for them to get the wrong idea, in an upstanding neighborhood like this.”
Rebecca Rosselli began to wring her hands. “You’re bluffing. You wouldn’t do that. You can’t do that.”
“I can and we just did.”
“I’ll file a complaint!”
“You can do that. And Detective Sevilla and I might receive a mild reprimand. But any damage to your reputation, here in Coral Gables, well…that will be done, won’t it?”
She looked stricken. “Our neighbors…they’ll never talk to us again.”
“Very shallow of them,” Caine said.
“Coral Gables can be a little snooty,” Sevilla said.
Mrs. Rosselli sat forward. “I’m telling you the truth, Lieutenant—my Anthony left all that behind in New Jersey, Vincent and Abraham too. How can you be so cruel? Isn’t it enough that we buried our best friend yesterday?”
“There’s another option,” Caine said.
“What?”
“Tell us where Anthony and Vinnie are. Where we can find them right this minute…. We only want to talk to them.”
“Will you call off the car?”
“No.”
“How about…just the siren?”
“Yes.”
She swallowed, stiffened, chin out. “Do it, then.”
Caine nodded to Sevilla, who made the call.
Struggling to keep her composure, Mrs. Rosselli finally said, “They’ve gone fishing.”
“Where?”
“They have a place they always go on the river—the parks on the south side between Seventh and Twelfth.”
“That’s a good-size area.”
She nodded. “Sorry I can’t be more specific. They’ll be along there somewhere, though.”
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