Break and Enter (24 page)

The lieutenant was writing things in his notebook and didn’t respond right away, so I said, “How is the victim, by the way?”

“In recovery, last I heard,” Barker said. “He came to in the ambulance long enough to say his attacker was a young guy named Jack, and that’s about it.”

“Any luck finding his address?” I said.

“Not yet,” Barker said. “Juan Lopez is an extremely common name.”

“Have you looked beyond Orlando?” I said.

“No, why?”

“Older man-younger man rings a bell,” I said, “and it is gay day at Disney World. This may be a stretch, because I don’t know if the victim was gay, but you might want to contact Lieutenant Sanchez in my office. She’s working on a series of burglaries and one burglary-related murder, all of which involved young guys preying on older gay males. She has a driver’s license photo of a guy who was selling some of the victim’s collectibles on eBay. He was living in Tampa at the time, which was just a short while ago, and I’d like very much to know if you found any prints that match the ones we found at our crime scene.”

“Oh, Lord,” Barker said. “If our victim is from the Tampa area, there will be ten times as many guys named Juan Lopez to track down.”

“Why?” Philip said.

“Ever hear of Ybor City?” Barker said. “There were dozens of Cuban cigar manufacturing plants in Tampa in the late nineteenth century. Most of them were in the Ybor City section. I believe they even out-produced Havana in terms of cigars and were known as the cigar capital of the world around 1900. There is a huge population of folks with Cuban ancestry in Tampa, and Lopez is as common a surname as Smith.”

“Are you a history buff?” I said.

“Not really,” Barker said, “but I grew up in Tampa, and you can’t help learning things like that when you live there.”

“Do you have any contacts within the Tampa Police Department?” I said.

“I don’t,” Barker said, “but surely someone in my office will.”

“I worked a serial murder case last year,” I said, “involving Orlando, Tampa, and St. Petersburg, in addition to Jacksonville. Lieutenant Ivory with the OPD has at least one contact in the Tampa Police Department.”

Robbie pulled on my sleeve, so I looked at him and said, “What?”

“I’m hungry,” Robbie said.

“We’ll go have an early dinner just as soon as I finish talking to the lieutenant,” I said, “okay?”

“Yes, Sir.”

The lieutenant and I discussed the investigation for a few more minutes, and I gave him the necessary contact information for Janet Sanchez. He thanked us for our help, promised to keep in touch, and left.

“Okay, big guy,” I said to Robbie, “we can go get you fed now.”

“Can we go to McDonald’s?” Robbie said.

“That would be a bit complicated considering where we are,” I said. “We’d have to go get the car, leave the park, and drive quite a way to do that, so I think we’ll have to settle for what they have in one of the hotel restaurants.”

“Okay,” he said.

“I’ll call the boys,” Philip said, “and see if they’re back and want to join us.”

He dialed their suite with no results, so he tried Steve’s cell phone, with better luck. “They’re still in the park,” Philip said as he hung up, “so we won’t wait for them.”

“If you guys want to eat dinner later,” I said, “feel free to do so.”

“That’s okay, George,” Philip said. “We thought we might eat early and then go back to the park and look at the lights.”

“Why don’t you join us?” Charles said. “That would be a sure way to wear you-know-who out for the evening.”

“Sure,” I said. “That sounds like a plan.”

We had a light supper in the hotel café, and I once again managed to out-maneuver Charles in the matter of picking up the check. Since he and Philip had insisted on taking care of the rooms, Mike and I felt that paying for the food was the least we could do. It had almost become a game, and so far it was George and Mike four, Charles and Philip zero. After we ate, we went to the Magic Kingdom and explored Main Street for an hour or so, but when Robbie started to get tired from all the walking, we returned to the hotel, leaving Charles and Philip to their own devices.

We got Robbie bathed and in his bed, and then we retired to the living room. There was a movie available on the hotel cable that was on our “want to see” list, so we opened a bottle of Shiraz—we had brought several bottles of wine with us—and settled down to watch it.

By the time Charles and Philip turned up with the boys in tow, the movie was half over and we were nodding. The boys were exuberant in their enthusiasm for all things Disney, and all of them were wearing caps with mouse ears. There wasn’t enough wine left in the bottle for eight more people, so we opened another bottle. When the movie ended, Mike and I retired to our room, having agreed to meet downstairs for breakfast the next morning an hour before the park was scheduled to open.

Robbie was out cold in his bed, so we stripped, crawled in our bed, and spent some quality time together. The next morning we were among the first fifty people to enter the Magic Kingdom, which enabled us to enjoy Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and a couple of other rides that Robbie found especially thrilling. We had an early lunch in the park and made it back to the hotel just in time to beat the checkout deadline. Charles and Philip left for the general aviation airport where their plane had been left, the boys opted to return to the park for the afternoon, and we went to the car and headed toward I-4 and home.

The boys turned up at the house around nine Sunday evening. Robbie was sleeping with us so his room would be available for our guests. Steve and Roger were planning to leave for Atlanta as soon as they awakened, the twins had to be at work by noon, and the other two had classes, so Mike and I resumed our normal schedule Monday morning, leaving our guests to fend for themselves—the twins had promised to come by the house to see their friends off, and they would secure the house for us.

When my lieutenants arrived for our Monday staff meeting, I was hoping that there would be good news from Orlando. Janet dashed that hope almost immediately when she reported that the fingerprints on the knife used in the Disney attack did not match those of our suspect. We were, in fact, back to square one on the burglary cases.

The twins came to see us later in the week, and we cut a deal with them on the truck. We then traded Mike’s car in on a new Explorer. It wasn’t as sexy as the truck had been, but it was certainly more practical.

We were able to paint the new rooms in early June and moved into them a few days later. The shower in the master bathroom was absolutely wonderful. We really enjoyed the multiple showerheads, as well as the tiled bench in our new shower. We had also installed a faucet at waist height to which we attached a detachable showerhead on a long hose for use on Thor.

I came home early one day a couple of weeks later and when I went upstairs to change, I heard sounds coming from the bathroom, so I went to investigate and found Mike and Robbie in the shower. They were both wearing their underwear, and Thor was with them. Mike was sitting on the bench holding Thor, and Robbie was in the process of hosing him down with the detachable showerhead. Soapy water was flowing down Thor’s legs, and I noted that a folding chair had been placed just outside the shower doors.

“Having fun?” I said.

“You bet,” Mike said. “By the time you shed your clothes, we’ll be ready to send Thor to you. There’s a stack of towels on the floor beside the chair.”

“Two ticks,” I said.

I went into our bedroom and stripped, leaving my shorts in place for the same reason that Robbie and Mike were wearing theirs—if Thor got to jumping around, his paws might accidentally come into painful contact with our more sensitive parts. I went back into the bathroom, and closed the door behind me, because the first place Thor headed for after a bath was our bed—he loved to roll around on the comforter until he dried off. Mike had already spread a couple of layers of old quilts on top of the comforter in anticipation of this.

Settling down on the chair, I said, “Ready when you guys are.”

The glass door opened, and a soaking wet Thor bounded out into the bathroom. I went through four or five towels getting as much water as possible out of his long hair. When I was satisfied that I had done all that I could, I opened the bathroom door, and Thor headed straight to the bed and began to roll around on it. Then I slipped out of my shorts and stepped into the shower just as Robbie and Mike left it.

“I hope you guys left some hot water for me,” I said.

“There should be plenty,” Mike said.

Mike and Robbie had finished toweling themselves dry by the time I stepped out of the shower and did so myself. I went into our bedroom to pull on shorts and a T-shirt while Mike, similarly dressed, went to take care of mopping up the now very wet bathroom floor and dropping the towels down the laundry chute we’d installed as part of the remodeling project. Thor was still rolling around on our bed, and I sat down on the edge of the bed to pet him. Robbie came into the room carrying a couple of doggy brushes, and we spent some time combing Thor’s fur coat into some semblance of order. During the process of grooming Thor, I listened to a long monologue of the day’s exciting events from the perspective of a six-year-old. When his grooming was completed, I shooed Thor out of the bedroom and gathered up the damp quilts.

“Want me to put them in the laundry chute?” Robbie said.

“I think they’re probably a bit too bulky for the chute—they might get stuck. I’ll just carry them downstairs.”

I set the quilts down for a minute and said, “I didn’t get a hug when I came home.”

He extended his arms, and I picked him up for a hug, after which I retrieved the quilts and carried them downstairs.

We left for our annual June vacation in the mountains a few days later, and while we were there, we went to see our Waynesville lawyer at his request.

As we settled into chairs across from his desk, I said, “What’s up, Ernest?”

“Where’s the boy?” Ernest said.

“In your outer office under the watchful eye of your secretary.”

“Good, because he doesn’t need to hear this. I had a call from his grandmother, Mrs. Pickens, and because she can’t get out, your friend Lucinda Hawkins took me to see her.”

“And?” Mike said.

“She wants to deed her property to the two of you as trustees for Robbie, and she will reserve only a life estate for herself.”

“Okay,” I said. “What does she want in return?”

“Only your guarantee that you will take care of the real estate taxes and any major repairs on the house.”

“Why not?” I said. “We paid her back taxes last year—they weren’t much—and as best I can recall, the house is in pretty good shape.”

“What brought this on, Ernest?” Mike said.

“She didn’t spell it out to me, but according to your friend Lucinda, Mrs. Pickens has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.”

“How long does she have?” I said.

“A year, maybe a bit more, it’s one of the really slow-growing kind. In a way I think she’s relieved, given that she’s been suffering from a number of ailments for quite a while.”

“What do we need to do?” I said.

“Nothing. All I needed to hear was your verbal acceptance, and I’m authorized to record the deed she executed.”

“Wow,” Mike said.

“We still do things on a handshake around here, at times,” Ernest said. “Add to that the fact that she is pleased as punch with the changes in her grandson since you boys adopted him and that’s it.”

“One thing’s for sure,” I said. “This property, added to the income from the property in Robbie’s parents’ estate, will ensure his college education one day.”

“Not that we wouldn’t have seen to it anyway,” Mike said.

We cut our stay in the mountains short by a couple of days so we could stop by Atlanta on the way home to once again participate in the Peachtree Road Race. We enjoyed visiting the Barnett family, as always, and the race was a lot of fun. While we were there, we had a long conversation with Lydia about Robbie’s progress, during which we also told her about his grandmother’s terminal condition.

“Is there anything we should do,” I said, “to help prepare him for her death?”

“Not really,” she said. “On the other hand, at some point when you take him to visit her, he’s certainly going to notice that she is getting worse. Answer his questions truthfully and as completely as you can. The worst thing you could do would be to tell him things are all right when it will be obvious to him that they’re anything but.”

We took Robbie to the beach for his seventh birthday in lieu of another party. His teacher had organized a party at the end of the school term for all of her students whose birthdays fell in the summer months. She explained that many parents found it difficult to round up enough classmates who were in town to have a proper birthday party when school was out, so we celebrated the birthdays of Robbie and two of his classmates.

Things were fairly quiet at work during most of July and August. My people dealt with the usual stuff—armed robberies and a couple of murders—but there was no progress on the gay burglaries/murder case. On the last Monday of August, I got a call from an excited Janet.

“Guess what?” she said.

“I’ve no idea.”

“Our boy Wallis Mayhew was arrested in St. Petersburg over the weekend.”

“Our boy?”

“You know, the gay burglary/murder case suspect.”

“Gotcha. How did they catch him?”

“Would you believe a routine traffic stop?”

“Stranger things have happened, Lieutenant. Please tell me they still have him on ice.”

“Yes, Sir, they do. He’s not going anywhere unless it’s in one of our cruisers carrying him back to Jacksonville.”

“Make it so, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, Sir. I’ve already turned it over to the fugitive-apprehension department.”

“Plan your interrogation of him very carefully.”

“More so than usual?”

“Absolutely. Think about how many cases you guys can probably close if you can get him to talking like Chatty Cathy.”