Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3) (12 page)

When our food arrived, I was glad to get busy with shelling the shrimp just to have something to do. Soon my fingernails were stained red from the Old Bay Seasoning, and I was concentrating on getting the last little bit of shrimp out of each tail. B. J. had been right about one thing—I had needed to get some food in my belly. As I washed down the garlic bread with a second beer and reached for another shrimp I felt the edge of my uneasiness evaporate.

B. J., who always ate with tiny methodical bites, still had another half hour to go before he would finish his raw fish salad, and between bites he had started telling me a story about the job he had begun that morning remodeling the galley cabinets on a Shannon 50. The owner was six-foot-six, and B. J. couldn’t talk him out of having forty-five-inch-high countertops installed, in spite of the fact that it would seriously impact the resale value of the boat. The average woman would be chopping parsley under her chin.

“Not me,” I said. At five-foot-ten, I usually found boat galleys far too small, the counters too low.

“No one ever called you average, Sey,” he said.

“Damn right.”

So, we were comfortable together, and if he could still look at me like he did at that moment when I was up to my elbows in shrimp shells, what did I have to worry about?

By the time B. J. had ordered hot tea for both of us, I reckoned I smelled like I’d spent a week working on board a Gulf Coast shrimper. I was sliding out of the booth, ready to head back to the washroom, when I saw Jeannie step into the bar and look around, the worry lines etched deep in her forehead. I waved my hand and she hurried over to our booth.

“I hoped I’d find you here,” she said, panting, leaning on the table with one hand, the other holding her side.

“What’s the matter?” As a single mom, Jeannie almost never went out in the evening. I knew that something serious must have happened to bring her out searching for me. I immediately thought of her kids. “Are the boys okay?”

“Yeah, I called my mother. She came right over as soon as I heard.”

“Heard what? What are you talking about?”

“It’s Molly.”

“Molly?” I asked. “Oh my God, is she all right?”
 

“She’s not hurt,” she said.

“We saw some of the footage from the cemetery on the tube. Couldn’t hear what they were saying, though.” B. J. put his hand on my forearm. “Sey, let her talk. What’s happened, Jeannie?”

Jeannie pulled a chair over and sat on the outside of our booth. She was panting, but then a brisk walk could make her short of breath. “When she and Zale got back to the house, the cops were there. They asked her to go down to the station with them for more questions. They both went. And like some other people I know,” she said, looking directly at me, “she didn’t have the good sense to call me first. When they got there, they put Molly in an interrogation room, asked a few more questions, and then arrested her. For Nick’s murder.”
 

“What? Molly?”

B. J. said, “They really think Molly did it?”

Jeannie dipped her head in a fast nod. “Yup. That’s when she finally called me. Told me to bring you, too, Seychelle. She didn’t sound good—kind of like she was out of it. I told her it might take me a while to find you, but she said it didn’t matter. She insisted. So that’s why I’m here. Let’s go.”

“I’ve got to go wash up,” I said, holding up my reddish, greasy, smelly hands.

“There’s no time,” she said, tossing me a paper napkin and picking my purse up off the booth.

I looked at B. J. and shrugged as I wiped my fingers. “I guess I’ll see you later.”

“Go on,” he said. “She needs you. Tell her that if I can do anything for her, anything, she just needs to call.”
 

“Yeah,” I said as I chased Jeannie out the door, wondering just how far that meant he would go.

X

At the Fort Lauderdale police station, Jeannie spoke to the lady in the glass booth, explaining that we were there to see Detectives Amoretti and Mabry, and she told us to sit on the plastic chairs and wait. Finally, the door next to the booth opened, and a young, dark-haired, uniformed policewoman told us to follow her.

I expected her to lead us up to the detectives’ office cubicles on the second floor, but instead we wound around on the ground floor until she came to a door, where she motioned for us to go inside.

Molly was there, sitting at a table in the center of the small room, still wearing her dark funeral clothes. Mabry was sitting on the only other chair in the room, and Amoretti was slouching against the wall looking like he’d just come in off the golf course in snug-fitting khaki Dockers and a lime-green Polo shirt.

“D’ya mind if we speak to your friends outside for a minute, Miz Pontus?” Mabry asked.

Molly nodded without making eye contact with us. She had her head turned to face the far wall. She looked as though she had been slapped, but I knew that wasn’t possible. Was it?

Detective Mabry braced his hands on his knees to help lift his body to a stand in a way that reminded me of Jeannie. He led us to what looked like the police briefing room, a big hall with lots of chairs and bulletin boards covered with notices bearing sketches of unsmiling, mean-looking men. Mabry wore a wrinkled piss-colored short-sleeved shirt and a Looney Tunes tie that he had pulled loose at the knot. I assumed that it was the same tie he’d worn at the funeral that afternoon, but he’d been too far away for me to notice. Odd choice for a funeral, I thought.

“Ladies, this’ll just take a minute, so I guess this is as good a spot as any.” Mabry stopped alongside the last row of chairs and attempted to tighten his tie. “Pardon my lack of manners. How are you ladies doing this evening?”

Amoretti rolled his eyes and smirked as Mabry attempted to pull back a chair for Jeannie, and she yanked it out of his hand.

“This isn’t a social call, Detective,” she said. “I’m not looking to settle in for a visit. We’re here to find out what the hell’s going on and to talk to Molly Pontus. What’s this bullshit about your charging her with murder?”

Mabry ducked his head a little when Jeannie let the curse words fly. But he examined her, hungry-looking, as though he were looking at a sumptuous banquet. “Well, Ms. Black, I’m sorry to see you’re so upset, but I’m afraid things aren’t looking too good for your friend. The evidence is there. We didn’t have to do any fancy footwork to get the arrest warrant. Prosecutor told us to bring her in for questioning, and that was that.”

“What evidence?” Jeannie asked.

“Well, ma’am, right now I’m not at liberty to say. That’s up to the D.A. But suffice it to say you’ll need to get busy ’cuz the case against her is pretty tight. I wish it wadn’t. I like the lady, but it’s not up to us, you see, to decide who’s guilty and who isn’t.”

I wanted to bury my fist in that watermelon-sized gut of his. “Mabry, you are out of your friggin’ mind if you think Molly could have killed anybody. This is insane.”
 

Jeannie put her hand on my forearm. “Seychelle, enough. They’re just doing their jobs.”

He looked at Jeannie and his face split into a broad smile. “Glad you see it that way, ma’am.” He reached back and pulled a box of Good & Plenty out of his back pants pocket, shook a couple of candies into his open palm, and then held up the crushed box, offering us some. I shook my head, but Jeannie refused to acknowledge him. That surprised me. It was the first time I’d ever seen her turn down sweets.

Mabry continued. “I wanted to let you know that we’re going to be transferring her over to county in a little bit. Already told me they’re going for no bail. Her boy is down in the break room with a service aide. Gonna need to figure out what to do with him.”

“Can I see my client now?” Jeannie asked.

Mabry swung his fleshy hand and pointed to the door with a flourish. “After you, ma’am.”

Back in the interrogation room, I let Jeannie take the only chair, and I rested my shoulder against the wall, trying to look nonchalant and unconcerned, as though getting arrested for murder wasn’t any big deal, happened all the time.
 

Mabry closed the door, leaving the three of us alone in the room.

“How are you doing?” Jeannie asked.

Molly coughed out what was supposed to be a laugh. “About as well as can be expected after burying my ex-husband and then getting arrested for his murder.”
 

Jeannie nodded once. “So tell me what happened.”
 

Molly sighed, and when she started to speak her voice sounded more tired than scared. I admired her for that. I would have been scared to death.

“Leon drove us home from the cemetery. I guess the cops were outside waiting then, but they were parked down the street, and we didn’t notice the car. Zale and I weren’t inside two minutes before the doorbell rang. It was that big one, by himself. He said they had some more questions to ask us and they wanted us to look at some photos. He wanted to see if we could identify them or something. Said it wouldn’t take long. I don’t know. I was barely listening. I asked him if it couldn’t wait until tomorrow, and he said no, we really needed to go now.” She looked up at Jeannie and the dark hollows under her eyes looked sharp and deep, as though carved in white stone. “I don’t know how to explain it, Jeannie, but I feel as though I have lost all will. I’m just floating. I’m going through the motions, doing what people tell me to do, but it doesn’t feel real.”

“Molly, you listen to me. This is very real,” Jeannie said. “If you keep talking to the cops without a lawyer, you could really be hurting yourself. They wouldn’t have charged you unless they thought they could make it stick.”

She nodded and waved her hand in the air as though to ward off a bad odor. “When they asked me to go, I said yes because I just didn’t have the energy to say no. I brought Zale with me, too. I don’t want to leave him alone right now. He’s too fragile.” Her hands fiddled with the gold chain that disappeared into the neckline of her dress. “Last night I fell asleep in the hammock in the backyard. I’ve been doing a lot of that the last couple of days. Sleeping. Zale looked for me all over the house and by the time he found me in the hammock, he was crying. He said he was afraid he was going to lose me, too.” She bit her lower lip. “And now this.”

“Hey, we’re going to deal with things one at a time,” Jeannie said. She glanced over at me as though to ask me to chime in anytime, to help her out, but Molly had not even so much as glanced at me since we’d walked in. I didn’t know why she had asked for me to be there.

Jeannie continued. “He’s a strong kid. He’ll be all right. This is not going to stick. This is just temporary. So what happened when they brought you in?”

“A nice young woman offered to take Zale to go get a Coke. I didn’t even tell her he doesn’t drink soda.”

“And they brought you here?” Jeannie prodded her, trying to keep her on subject.

“Yeah. When we got here, the short one joined the fat one—I can’t seem to remember their names—and they both came in here and started asking me questions about guns.” She tried to laugh again, and it sounded more strangled than it had the first time. “As if I know anything about guns. I told them that, and that Nick had been a collector. No matter how much I had protested. I’d never wanted those guns in the house, and I insisted that he keep them locked up. I was always afraid Zale would get into them. When he was little, he was fascinated. I think Nick and I argued over those guns more than anything else over the years. And that’s saying something.”

“Can you be more specific? What exactly were they asking you?”

“Huh?” She looked up as though she was surprised to find Jeannie there. “I’m sorry, Jeannie.” She rubbed her eyes with the heels of both hands. “They went on and on about my car and the garage, but mostly it was about guns. They were asking me about a bunch of different makes of guns. It’s all Greek to me. Ha!” Her face started to crumple and she put her head down on her arms on the table.

Jeannie looked over at me. I shrugged. I wanted to help her, but she didn’t seem to want my help. I kept thinking that we were over it, beyond the hurt of all those years, and then the wall would go right back up again, and I didn’t know how to bring it down.

“Molly.” Jeannie reached over and rubbed her shoulder. “We can talk about this later. I’m not a criminal attorney, and right now you need one. I’ve got a friend who is excellent at this kind of thing. If you give the okay, I’m going to call him, and we are going to try to get you released on bail. It’s late, though, and I think you have to prepare yourself to spend at least tonight in jail.”

She nodded without lifting her head.

“If you have any jewelry or anything of value on you right now, I want you to give it to Seychelle.”

Slowly, she sat up and turned to look at me. She reached behind her neck and undid the clasp on the gold chain that hung inside her dress. When she lifted the necklace, I saw hanging from the chain the tiny gold dolphin I had given her for her sixteenth birthday. I’d bought it with money I’d saved from my summer job lifeguarding at the city pool. She held it out. When I stepped forward to take it, she spoke to me at last.

“Sey, I need to ask you for another favor. That’s why I asked Jeannie to bring you.” She rubbed at her nose with the back of her hand. “I was pretty sure they weren’t going to cut me loose once Jeannie got here. It’s Zale. I don’t want my son to be scared. I don’t want him to be here watching this on the news and having to fend off reporters. Remember my grandmother? Gramma Tigertail? You met her at my house when she came by sometimes.”

“Yeah, sure. I remember her. Zale was just talking about her the other day.”

“Okay. She still lives out on the reservation at Big Cypress. Zale knows the family out there. He’s spent weekends and holidays out there before. He needs to be away from all this, among people who love him.”

“Hey, no problem. I’ll take him out there. He can spend the night tonight with me in the cottage, and we’ll go out first thing in the morning.”

“And you’ll make it fun for him, okay? Make him laugh?”