‘Feel like doing it again?’ Kez asked after they’d downed water and rested for a while beneath the jacaranda where they’d first spoken the previous week.
‘God, yes,’ Cathy said. ‘If you’re sure.’
‘Why not?’ Kez said. ‘I had fun. Makes a change from training solo.’
She was running, she said, in the 800 and 1500 meter events at the Trio Club meet up in West Palm Beach next weekend.
‘Must be a bunch of guys you could train with,’ Cathy said, casually.
‘I already told you I don’t want to train with them,’ Kez said.
Cathy liked the compliment. ‘Beach OK?’ she suggested. ‘Next time?’
‘Good for me,’ Kez said.
Chapter Seven
August 15
‘I see Gregory Hoffman’s been back,’ Lucia Busseto said on Monday morning, bringing Grace a cup of one of the homegrown herbal teas that were her particular speciality.
Lucia called this one ‘pregnancy tea’, and Grace had long since forgotten much of what was in it; recalled, vaguely, camomile and nettle and alfalfa, had checked with Barbara Walden before trying it and had grown accustomed to its taste.
‘Is he doing OK?’ Lucia knew that although she had access to some patient files, whatever Gregory Hoffman and Grace had talked about on Saturday was not up for discussion.
Forty-one years old, widowed for a decade, a petite, slim, physically fit and attractive brunette with just a few strands of silver in her curly short hair, Lucia lived alone in the Key Biscayne home she had formerly shared with her husband, Phil. Her greatest regret, Lucia had once told Grace, was not having had children of her own – though she spoke animatedly about Phil’s niece, Tina, a trainee nurse over in Naples and the apple of her eye, and told Grace regularly that working for a person whose raison d’être was helping troubled youngsters had made all the difference to her life.
‘It’s been a while,’ Grace answered now, ‘since I last saw Gregory.’
‘Sip your tea, doctor,’ Lucia told her, and sat down at her own desk, with the pretty miniature herb pots she’d brought from home over time. ‘I’m not asking questions as such – I know better – but I’d so hoped he was doing better, and I just want to say that if you think it appropriate at any time, please would you send him my love.’
‘Of course I will,’ Grace said.
‘Damned drugs,’ Lucia said, darkly. ‘Lovely boy like that, nice family.’
‘Yes,’ Grace said.
Lucia changed the subject. ‘I thought you’d promised to stop working weekends.’
Grace smiled. ‘You’re very like Dora at times.’
‘Because we both care about you.’
‘And I’m grateful,’ Grace assured her, ‘but I’ve already had Sam and Cathy on my case about Saturday, and the only person who doesn’t drive me just a little nuts on a daily basis is my father-in-law, and he’s the doctor.’
‘Maybe he doesn’t see you overdoing things on a daily basis,’ Lucia pointed out, then changed topics again. ‘So how are things going for Detective Becket with the new murder?’
‘You know I couldn’t talk about that either,’ Grace said, ‘even if I knew anything.’
‘I know it,’ Lucia said easily. ‘But I can’t help being interested. We’re all going to rest a whole lot more comfortably in our beds when the killer’s behind bars.’
‘Mr Muller wasn’t killed in his bed,’ Grace said, knowing that wasn’t the point.
‘On the beach. Just as bad.’ Lucia put on her spectacles to commence some work, then took them off again. ‘Cathy runs on the beach a lot, doesn’t she?’
‘In daylight,’ Grace said, though she’d worried about that too since the murder.
‘She often runs at sunset,’ Lucia said.
‘Plenty of people around at sunset,’ Grace said. ‘I thought you were trying to lower my stress levels.’
‘Yes,’ Lucia agreed. ‘I’m sorry, doctor.’
‘No problem,’ Grace said. ‘And are you ever going to start calling me Grace?’
‘Professional women should be respected,’ Lucia said.
Grace smiled, knew it was true that Lucia – who did not, so far as she knew, need to work for a living – had a fondness for the idea of working for a doctor, even if she was just a psychologist.
The spectacles were raised halfway to Lucia’s curved nose. ‘Does Detective Becket still think there’s no connection with Trent?’
‘Lucia,’ Grace reproached.
‘All right,’ Lucia said. ‘Sorry.’
Grace relented. ‘I’m sure the police are checking things out at Trent,’ she said, ‘but that poor man’s just as likely to have been killed by a stranger as by anyone who knew him, at work or anyplace else.’
‘God rest his soul,’ Lucia said.
No murderous strangers coming out of the woodwork.
No witnesses making themselves known, despite the televised re-enactments on TV. No calls, anonymous or otherwise, to the police tips hotline or to the Herald or any of the local radio stations.
Not an inch more common ground between the Pompano Beach and Muller killings. Carmelita Sanchez had been a homely mother of four, dressmaking when she hadn’t been cleaning or taking care of her family. No new information about the janitor’s past or private life to nudge Miami Beach’s investigation in any specific direction. No convictions or arrest record. No evidence of drug-taking – though with the usual backlog, it was going to take a long while till the full toxicology report was in. No recent or even distant relationships, straight or gay, that anyone appeared to know of; and although it was generally agreed at his gym and at Trent that Muller had liked taking care of his body, no one seemed of the opinion that he had been obsessive.
The ransacking of a murder victim’s life was an aspect of his work that Sam had never become comfortable with. The sifting through of everything from bank statements to dirty underwear was distasteful to him, however vital it was to an investigation.
‘Victim’s past caring,’ Martinez regularly reminded him, but Sam felt that made it worse, particularly when, as in this case, the deceased seemed to have been beyond reproach.
Not that anyone deserved to have most of the bones in his face smashed and his throat cut, no matter what they’d done. Unless maybe they were child killers, Sam had to allow –privately, as a man, not a cop.
Rudolph Muller appeared to have been something of a loner, appeared to have hurt no one, angered no one, stolen from no one, had never committed a crime. Yet someone had done that to him, and maybe it had been a random killing, a psycho’s fuse lit and ready to blow the next person they encountered, but Sam doubted that. It was too personal and angry a crime, he thought, though probably not a crime passionel because most lovers who killed in the heat of the moment balked at facial destruction precisely because of the feelings left in them.
This killing had been intensely violent.
‘Rage-fuelled,’ Sam said to Martinez.
‘Lotta fruitcakes about,’ the other man maintained.
Whole lotta fruitcakes, if Carmelita Sanchez had been slain by a separate killer. The thought made Sam feel no better.
Gregory Hoffman came for another session on Wednesday afternoon, half an hour after Lucia had left for the day.
When he had first been brought to Grace, he had come burdened by undiagnosed dyslexia and an accompanying lack of self-confidence, all his problems magnified – though it had taken him months to admit to that – by his marijuana habit.
‘But he’s just a child,’ Annie Hoffman had protested when Grace had, with Gregory’s agreement, broken the news to her.
Gregory and thousands of others, Grace had told the distraught mother, tens of thousands, probably more. Maybe in big cities, Annie had argued – meaning not in Sunny Isles Beach, not in an affluent, loving, Jewish home from which a twelve-year-old boy got driven to school by his dad and collected by his mom and taken to temple Sunday mornings
so he could study for his bar mitzvah.
Grace had never found out when Greg’s habit had begun or who had sold him his marijuana; she was his psychologist, not a police officer, and all she had cared about was getting through to him, helping him, and she had helped, they all had.
But here he was again, back down in the dark. Yet it was not, she felt, the same.
This was different, seriously so. Annie thought so, and Greg had said as much himself at the weekend.
He looked a little less freaked out, less haunted, this afternoon, but he was still patently disturbed and also physically worn, indefinably damaged. It would be easy, Grace realized, to pin this sudden downturn on some new chemical being pumped into his system, and she knew that a bad acid trip, for instance, might still be affecting him long after the stuff was out of his bloodstream – but still, all her instincts warned her that something else was at work here.
She had wondered, ever since Gregory had left on Saturday, what he had meant when he had said that he could cope with his nightmares, but that it was the ‘waking stuff’ he couldn’t take.
‘What did you mean by that, Greg?’ she asked him now, out on the deck again.
He closed his eyes, and shuddered.
‘Take your time,’ Grace said.
The eyes remained shut, and his mouth worked for a moment.
‘Saw me,’ he said, so softly she had to strain to hear.
‘Who saw you, Gregory?’ Grace leaned forward as far as the baby would allow.
He said it again, the same two words.
‘Saw me.’
He opened his eyes, and seemed, for a second, startled, disoriented.
‘Greg?’ Grace was gentle. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I can’t do this.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, doc’
‘You said someone saw you,’ Grace persevered. ‘Did someone see you doing something, Greg? Is that what you’ve been dreaming about?’
‘I can’t tell you,’ he said.
‘I just want to help,’ Grace said. ‘You know it would be in confidence.’
He shook his head again. ‘Uh-uh,’ he said. ‘Sorry, doc’
There was an air of regretful finality about those last words, a sense of giving up.
The thought made Grace shiver.
She had just watched him climb into his mother’s car, having agreed to speak with Annie and Jay later that evening, when Cathy’s Mazda pulled up.
Grace guessed, the instant she saw the stranger climbing out of the passenger seat, that this was Kez Flanagan. Not just because of the short, vibrantly red hair that Cathy had described to her, but because of the way she moved.
An athlete, definitely, a runner like Cathy, but tougher, leaner, less feminine.
‘Hi, there,’ she said to them both from the doorway.
‘Hi, Grace.’ Cathy’s cheeks were flushed. ‘This is Kez Flanagan.’ She smiled at the young woman. ‘Kez, this is my mom, Grace.’
‘Hello, Dr Becket.’ Kez put out her hand.
‘It’s Dr Lucca,’ Cathy said a little awkwardly.
‘Grace is fine,’ her mother said easily, and looked down at Kez’s hands. ‘Love the nails,’ she said.
They all came inside and Cathy shut the door. ‘She paints them herself.’
‘That’s amazing,’ Grace said. ‘I can barely manage to get basic colour on without smudging.’
‘Woody shut in?’ Cathy asked.
Right on cue, the little dog came flying out from the back, leaping up at Cathy in greeting, then turning to check out the visitor.
‘Don’t.’ Kez backed up against the wall, knocking against the small Spanish tile-framed mirror. ‘Please,’ she said sharply, her voice hoarser. ‘I’m not good with dogs.’
‘It’s OK.’ Cathy lifted the mongrel off the stone floor, held him close, let him lick her face. ‘Woody’s cool,’ she told Kez, ‘and really gentle.’
‘I’m sure.’ Kez stayed close to the wall. ‘Maybe we should go.’
‘We’re going for a run on the beach,’ Cathy explained to Grace. ‘Thought we’d come by for a quick juice first.’
‘Put Woody in the den,’ Grace told Cathy.
‘No need,’ Kez said. ‘We can just go—’
‘It’s no problem at all.’ Grace felt for her.
They went through to the kitchen, collecting juice and water, taking the drinks out on to the deck.
‘I got bitten as a kid.’ Kez was clearly embarrassed. ‘Badly enough to need stitches and shots. I’ve never been able to get past it.’
‘I don’t blame you,’ Cathy said.
‘It’s very natural,’ Grace said.
‘Doesn’t stop people laughing at me, especially when the dogs are cute.’
‘I wouldn’t laugh,’ Cathy said. Kez smiled at her. ‘No,’ she said.
The connection between them struck Grace quite forcibly.
The beginnings of something more than friendship, she felt, at least from Kez’s standpoint; she thought she’d glimpsed a distinct strength of feeling in the young woman’s interesting eyes.
They had all noticed Cathy’s high excitement last Friday evening when she’d talked about her meeting with the college athlete, and Grace had been aware of a degree of hero-worship in that excitement, but nothing more. More than that now, she realized as the two young women finished their drinks, then sat with her a while longer, exchanging questions and answers about running and their respective majors, Kez seeming genuinely interested in Grace’s and Sam’s disparate professions.
‘Isn’t she great?’ Cathy whispered to Grace as they were leaving, Kez ahead of them and out of earshot. ‘Don’t you think?’
Grace looked into Cathy’s blue eyes – so like her own that, together with their similarly straight blonde hair, strangers often took them for biological mother and daughter – and realized she’d never seen them sparkle that way before. And then, hard on the heels of that thought sprang another: that Cathy, still quite naïve despite all her experiences, seemed to be in Kez Flanagan’s thrall.
The idea disturbed Grace, and not just, she thought, because she felt it probable that Kez was gay – would she mind, she asked herself sharply, almost accusingly, if Cathy was lesbian or even bisexual?
So many thoughts in the blink of an eye.
‘She’s very nice,’ she answered.
She waved them off, then closed the door, still feeling troubled.
There had been, it was true, surprisingly few boyfriends in Cathy’s life so far. One spell during which Cathy had come to Grace to share with her the fact that she was dating a guy called Nick Cohen and had decided to take the pill; but that relationship had ended soon after, and since then men seemed – so far as Grace and Sam knew – to have been a little thin on the ground.
It had not appeared to have bothered Cathy.
Certainly no indications at any time – Grace reflected on her way back to her office to commence writing up her notes on Gregory Hoffman’s appointment – that Cathy might be harbouring doubts about her sexual orientation. Though then again, Grace knew better than some the myriad conundrums buried in the human psyche. And in some ways, of course, ceasing to be Cathy’s therapist and becoming her mother had almost automatically restricted her access to her daughter’s innermost secrets.
There was a possibility, Grace considered, that if Cathy had ever been physically attracted to another woman she might – perhaps keeping faith with her late, devoutly Catholic mother – have felt uneasy with that. And if Cathy had feared that either coming out or even confiding any confusion might have caused her new family the slightest discomfort – surely not, Grace hoped – then she might have chosen to suppress the truth altogether, to keep it buried, perhaps even from herself.
Something about Kez Flanagan had touched Grace. The way she had reacted to Woody, the sudden exposing of a fear some might translate as weakness. In a tough-shelled young athlete, that kind of sensitivity might create insecurities.
Good match for Cathy, then, perhaps.
So long as Kez didn’t hurt her.
Getting way ahead of yourself, Grace.
It was her day for unexpected visitors.
Less than five minutes later, Terri Suarez arrived – so swiftly after the other two had left that Grace wondered for an instant if she might have been waiting for them to go.
‘What a lovely surprise,’ Grace told her. ‘Though you just missed Cathy and her friend. You probably saw them, heading off for a run.’
Terri shook her head. ‘I should have called first, but I was nearby and I wanted to talk to you, if that’s OK.’
‘Of course it is.’ Grace led the way to the kitchen, releasing Woody from the den as they passed, watching Terri enjoying his exuberant greeting. ‘So long as I’m not with a patient, it’s open house here.’
She asked if Terri wanted to go out back, but the younger woman said she’d be glad to stay inside in the cool, so Grace poured them both some iced tea and they went into the den, made themselves comfortable in the tranquil room – its walls covered with children’s paintings – that sometimes doubled as her consulting room.
Terri wasted no time.
‘I want to talk about the way Sam feels about me.’
‘In what way?’ Grace hid her dismay, had hoped their South Beach lunch might have eased the situation.
‘Sunday was fine,’ Terri said. ‘Nice food, getting to know each other.’
‘We enjoyed it,’ Grace said.
‘And you were great and kind, and everyone was cool. Sam, too, on the face of it.’
‘Sam tends not to hide his feelings.’ Grace tried not to sound prickly. ‘Especially with family and close friends.’
‘Thanks for that,’ Terri went on frankly. ‘I just feel that he still has reservations about me, or maybe just about Saul and me as a couple.’
‘Sam’s very much a big brother, Terri,’ Grace said. ‘Perhaps even more of a second dad, in some ways, because of the age difference. You’ll have worked all that out for yourself.’
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