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Authors: Stuart M. Kaminsky

Denial: A Lew Fonesca Mystery (Lew Fonesca Novels) (11 page)

BOOK: Denial: A Lew Fonesca Mystery (Lew Fonesca Novels)

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“What kind of car?”

“Taurus. Blue. Late model. No more than a year old. He saw us, came flying over the speed bumps. We ran through the lot and went over the fence on Fruitville. Ran across the street, almost got hit by a pickup. Then we went down the first street. I don’t know what it was.”

“He was still following you?”

“He must have seen us go down the street. We were half a block down, running, when we heard the car turning behind us. We didn’t know where we were. I followed Kyle between two houses. A couple of guys, Mexicans, yelled at us, asking us where the hell we thought we were going.”

“The guy in the car?”

“Didn’t look back,” he said. “Went through a yard full of old tires and stuff and ran around down 301 and into the Walgreens on the corner. We went to the toilet in the back and locked ourselves in. I’m telling you, that guy was nuts.”

“You decided to separate,” I said.

“Yeah, but not until we got out of the toilet and saw the guy running out of the store. The girl at the
checkout counter said she thought a guy who just left was looking for us. She said we could catch him if we hurried.”

“That’s when you decided to separate?”

He nodded.

“We looked through the window and saw him pulling out of the lot,” Andy said. “He wasn’t going to give up. So we split up. I went back toward the 20. Kyle went back around the drugstore. That’s it. Who’d ever think someone would kill a kid because he spit on his wife or daughter? Have to be nuts.”

“You’d recognize him again if you saw him?”

“I’m pretty sure, yeah. White hair, little beard. Pretty big guy.”

“Old?”

“Yeah, like your age, maybe.”

“Anything else?”

“He had a bumper sticker,” Andy said, looking at the
Lord of the Rings
poster. “Saw it when he pulled out of the drugstore lot. Manatee Community College parking sticker.”

“How do you know that?”

“My mom has one, blue and white. She teaches a course there Thursday nights.”

I got up. So did Andrew Goines.

“You’re going to tell the police, aren’t you?”

“Soon,” I said.

“You have to tell my mom?”

He had quickly gone from being a cocky fifteen-year-old to a frightened ten-year-old.

“She wouldn’t understand,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t say anything to the police. Kyle was dead and I wasn’t sure it wasn’t just an accident. But now …”

“Now?”

“He called you. You said he called you, right?”

“He did,” I said.

“My mom thinks I’m some kind of perfect kid,” he said. “She’s all the time telling people how much I’m like my dad. I’m not like my dad. She’s going to find out, isn’t she?”

“About the spitting?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know. Maybe not for a while. Maybe not any time.”

Andy Goines looked at his watch.

“Almost fifteen minutes,” he said. “I told you I’d give you five. You done?”

“I’m done.”

“You’re going to find him, right?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Thanks.”

He awkwardly held out his hand. I shook it. His palm was wet. He walked with me to the front door. His mother was in another room talking on the phone and tapping something out on the computer at the same time. I didn’t wait to say good-bye.

“I should have stayed with Kyle,” the boy said. “I should have been there to help him. My dad would have.”

“He might have run you down too,” I said. “Then your mother would have to go on without your dad and you. It’s hard to go on alone.”

I was going to add, “Trust me,” but I didn’t trust people who said that. It almost always meant that I had just heard something I definitely should not trust.

He closed the door behind me.

I stopped to report to Marie Knot that I had handed out the two summonses and to pick up a check for my work. Then I drove to the DQ lot and parked. It was a little before six. I got a double burger and a large chocolate cherry Blizzard, went up to my office and turned on the light.

The phone was ringing.

“Fonesca,” I said.

“I was watching you. I could have killed you,” he said. “You didn’t see me.”

“Thanks for not killing me,” I said, sitting behind my desk, Blizzard and burger in front of me.

I took off my cap and waited. He was sitting out there no more than a few hundred feet away. He had seen me go through the door.

“Can’t you understand?” he pleaded.

“Explain it to me,” I said. “Come on up to my office. I’ll split a burger and a Blizzard with you.”

“It’s useless, isn’t it?” he asked.

“You mean trying to get me to stop looking for you? Yes, but it doesn’t hurt for us to talk. Call whenever you like.”

He started the car he was in. I heard it over the phone and out the window.

“How’s your knee?”

“Never hurt much,” I said, moving to the window to see if I could spot the car. I didn’t. “Well, maybe for a minute or two.”

“Your shoulder?”

“Seems all right. Don’t you have a philosopher to quote?”

“You’re joking,” he said. “You’re mocking me.”

“No,” I said. “I’m interested.”

“Do you believe in God?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Depends on when you ask me.”

“God,” he said, “is a concept by which we measure our pain.”

“Which philosopher said that?”

“John Lennon.”

He hung up before I could ask him if he had ever heard of a poet named Gregory Cgnozik who was another admirer of the dead Beatle. I walked out the
door. At the railing, which rattled when I leaned on it, I looked up at the clouds, fluffy billows, reddish in the reflection of the sun. I watched them drift south. I don’t know what I wanted from the clouds, from the moment. Peace? A minute, five minutes of peace?

I could have started visiting the people who had been released from the Seaside the night Dorothy Cgnozic had supposedly witnessed a murder, but it wasn’t in me.

I went back inside and made two calls while I finished eating.

Call one was to Nancy Root. She wasn’t there. I told her machine I was making progress and would report to her soon. Call two was to the Texas Bar & Grille. Ed Fairing answered after three rings and said, “Texas,” over the rumble of voices. I could almost smell the beer. I asked for Ames, who came on a few seconds later.

“What have you got planned for the next two or so days?” I asked.

“Working on my models, reading, breathing easy,” he answered.

“Think you can make a trip in the morning and maybe one in the afternoon to Manatee Community College?”

“I can,” he said.

“Paying job,” I said. “Go through the parking lot looking for a late-model Ford Taurus, blue with an MCC parking sticker. Check the front of the car for dents, blood or some repair or paint touch-up in the last few days. If there’s more than one Taurus that matches, write down the license tag number. Tell Ed it’s important.”

“Ed’s no problem,” Ames said. “I’ll start in the morning.”

That was it. Enough for one day. Too much for one
day. I wanted to lie down and watch a VHS of Joan Crawford in
Possessed
, followed by
Seven Keys to Baldpate
, the version with Richard Dix. I wanted to sleep for about eight or nine days.

But it wasn’t to be. The knock at my door came at the point in
Possessed
where Joan Crawford was about to shoot Van Heflin.

I went to the door half expecting that the guy who killed Kyle McClory would be there ready either to talk or shoot me or both.

I didn’t recognize him for a second or two, but he was familiar.

I didn’t recognize Detective Etienne Viviase because he was wearing sneakers, brown slacks with a big buckle shaped like an Indian-head nickel and a University of Florida baseball cap and sweatshirt. The gator on the shirt grinned at me. The detective did not.

“Detective,” I said.

“Process server,” he said. “I’ll make this quick. My wife and kids are parked out there and my Peanut Buster bar is probably melting.”

“Want to come in?”

He looked over my shoulder at my office and said, “No thanks. Know a man named Maxwell Root?”

“Hardware store in Bradenton,” I said. “Father of Nancy Root. Grandfather of Kyle McClory.”

“And,” said Viviase, “grandfather of Yolanda Root. He says you harassed his granddaughter.”

“Just asked her some questions,” I said.

“How about Dr. Richard McClory and Andrew Goines? You ask them questions too?”

“Yes, but—”

“Anonymous caller,” he said. “Call transferred to me because Mike Ransom has the day off and Lichtner on the desk knew I’d dealt with you a few times in
the past. The caller, a very nervous man, said you were harassing the friends and family of Kyle McClory.”

“You check with McClory and Goines’s mother?”

“They have no complaints.”

“Yolanda Root?”

“She says you were, quote, an asshole, but that you weren’t harassing her. Don’t feel too upset about the ‘asshole’ comment. She had equally unoriginal insults for McClory.”

“So what brings you to my door with a Buster bar melting below? Just Nancy Root’s father’s harassment claim?”

“Who made that call with all that bullshit about your harassing people?”

“The guy who ran down Kyle McClory,” I said. “He tried to run me down too.”

“Really? When was this?”

“Yesterday. Mall on Fruitville and Lime. Good Mexican restaurant there.”

“The one where Robles works. Have any plans for telling Ransom?”

“Not until I know the name of the caller,” I said.

“And you know this guy who called killed the McClory boy?”

Someone called, “Dad,” from the parking lot beyond the railing. Viviase looked over his shoulder and shouted, “Be right there.”

“He told me,” I said. “He practically told me.”

“When?”

“He calls me a couple of times a day,” I said. “Wants me to stop looking for him. Said he’ll have to kill me too if I don’t stop.”

“You’re a suitable case for treatment,” Viviase said.

“I’m in treatment,” I said.

“You getting close to finding the guy?”

“Yes.”

He thought for a few seconds.

“When you do, if you do, let me know,” he said. “Remember the case is Mike Ransom’s and he’d get more than a little pissed off if a process server came up with his hit-and-run killer.”

“It was murder,” I said.

“Great,” said Viviase with a sigh. “Better and better.”

“Ed,” came the voice of a woman from the DQ lot.

“Your ice cream is now cold chocolate peanut soup.”

“Dump it and I’ll come down and get another one,” he called.

I was half afraid he was going to ask me to meet his family. He didn’t. He just turned and walked toward the steps. I closed the door and went back to my bed. The pause button froze Joan Crawford, gun in hand, wild look on her face. I pressed her into action. She fired six bullets and the scene faded to black.

DAWN CAME DULL GRAY.
Fog. I could have and would have stayed in bed another hour or two or three if the phone hadn’t been ringing.

I considered permanently disconnecting it but then there would be even more people coming to my door.

I looked at my watch. Eight-thirty. The phone kept ringing. It could be him, Taurus the Philosopher with more threats, pleas and warnings. I slowly took out my soap and shaving gear and put them in my gym bag. The phone kept ringing.

I pulled a clean gray pullover polo shirt over my head and went into the office.

“Fonesca,” I said, picking up the phone.

“Nancy Root,” she said. “When you called last night, I was in a show. Then, this morning I found out that my father called the police and said you were harassing Yola. I just got off the phone with him. I was furious. Please don’t let him stop you from finding whoever … I find it so damn hard to say it.”

“I won’t let it stop me,” I said. “You didn’t tell me you had a daughter.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was important.”

I didn’t say it, but I thought it. Not important that she had a daughter? Not important that I talk to her? Both?

When I didn’t say anything, she asked, “Was it?” Yolanda Root had told me about her brother’s and Andy Goines’s vandalism. I had used what she told me to get Andy Goines to open up. In the scheme of things, yes, it was important.

“I may have something for you in the next few days,” I said. “No promises.”

“You know who did it?”

“Give me a few more days.”

“But … yes, all right. Richard called me. He said you’d seen him.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

I wondered what she was sorry for. For going to see her ex-husband? For how he might have behaved?

“It’s okay. I’ll call you when I have something.”

“Can you meet us later?” she said. “Richard and me.”

“I’ve got—”

Someone took the phone from her and said, “Fonesca, how soon can you get to my office?”

It was Richard Tycinker.

“One-thirty,” I said.

“Good.” He hung up.

I took my list of names and forwarding addresses of those four escapees from Seaside, went down the stairs with my gym bag, picked up a coffee to go and an Egg McMuffin from McDonald’s and drove down Bahia Vista to the YMCA, where I did four miles on the treadmill, did the round of machines, nodded to a few of the regulars, who nodded back at me. We
didn’t know one another’s names. I didn’t want to know their names.

When I finished, I showered, shaved, used the rollon deodorant, got dressed and went back out into the fog. I had coaxed and sweated myself back into a state resembling life.

I drove up Lockwood Ridge to University Parkway, turned right and found University Gardens, beflowered, gated and nowhere near a university.

The sheet on the seat next to me said Ellen Gallagher now lived here with her grandson and his wife, Ralph and Julie Church.

I told the guard at the gate, a woman of more than average weight and less than average height, that I was there to see the Churches.

“Sorry, no churches in University Gardens,” she said. “You must be looking for St. Thomas’s a few miles east.”

“No,” I said, “I mean Julie and Ralph Church.”

“Ah,” she said with a smile.

Her brown eyes met mine.

“I knew that,” she said. “Couldn’t resist. You can go nuts here alone and I’ve been on since five this morning.”

“It was a good joke,” I said.

“You’re not smiling.”

“I don’t smile.”

“Your name?”

I told her and she checked the list on her clipboard.

“Don’t see your name here. They expecting you, the Churches?”

“Tell them I’m from Seaside.”

“Check,” she said, moving back into the shack and picking up the phone. I couldn’t hear what she was saying but she was back out again in a few seconds.

“You know how to get there?” she asked.

I said I didn’t so she gave me directions to 4851 Tangerine Drive Circle. The gate went up and I passed Tangerine Drive, Tangerine Parkway, Tangerine Drive Street, Tangerine Drive Avenue and made a right turn onto Tangerine Drive Circle.

The house was small with a finely manicured lawn of something that resembled but wasn’t grass. There were no cars in the driveway so I pulled in and walked up the narrow brick path to the front door, which opened before I could push the button.

An old woman in a flowery dress and a necklace of colorful beads stood before me. Her hair was white, neatly frizzled, her skin unblemished but slightly wrinkled.

“Ellen Gallagher?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“You were at Seaside Assisted Living?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask why you left?”

“Who are you?”

“Miles Archer,” I said. “Assisted Living Quality of Care Office.”

She pursed her lips, thought for a moment and said, “Let’s see. The food is mediocre. The conversation inane. The staff patronizing. The lure of twice-a-week bingo resistible. The complaints of my fellow inmates repetitious. I doubt if I was much better but I didn’t have to listen to me. Reasons enough?”

“Why now? I mean, why did you pick that day to leave?”

“Because my grandson and his wife invited me, as my own children had not,” she said. “They just moved here from Buffalo. Want a sandwich? Some coffee? My grandson and his wife are at work.”

“No, thank you,” I said.

“Foggy,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I was a high school English teacher for more years than you’ve been on earth,” she said. “Now I have the run of the house, my own television with cable.”

“That’s great.”

“I told you that because I thought I was beginning to see the I-feel-sorry-for-the-old-lady look on your face.”

“No,” I said. “I always look like this.”

“Any more questions?”

“No,” I said.

“Then have a foggy day. I’ve got an Ann Rule book I want to get back to.”

She closed the door. I turned and took a few steps. The door opened behind me.

“Here,” she said. “Take this.”

She handed me a very large chocolate chip cookie and went back into the house, closing the door.

I ate the cookie as I drove east on University to 1-75 and then went south, getting off about ten minutes later at the first exit to Venice. The new address of Mark Anthony Katz, the second name on my list, was a low-rise apartment complex in Osprey, which was still under construction; piles of dirt dotted the landscape. There was no gate. There were no guards. There were plenty of trucks rumbling in and out.

Mark Anthony Katz’s name was on Apartment 4, Building 2, first floor. I knocked. The building smelled like fresh wood and concrete. I knocked again and was about to give up when the door opened.

A lean old man with a wisp of hair on his speckled head stood in front of me. He wore a long-sleeved orange cardigan buttoned to the neck and held on to a walker. Across the walker was a bumper sticker that read: I CAN’T REMEMBER SHIT!

“Mr. Katz?”

“No soliciting,” he said. “You see the signs?”

“I’m not selling anything,” I said.

“Not insurance?”

“No,” I said.

“Cemetery plots, subscriptions to
Things to Do When You’re Nearing Death
magazine?”

“No.”

“You don’t want me to sign some petition to save the manatees, whales, seals or sea grass?”

“No,” I said.

“I miss anything?” he asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“So what the hell do you want? And who the hell are you?”

“Archie Goodwin, Consumer Advocates for the Retired,” I said.

“Bullshit,” he said. “I watch Nero Wolfe on television. I can’t remember shit, but I do remember names.”

“My mother was a Wolfe fan,” I said. “Father’s name was George Goodwin.”

He regarded me with prune-faced distrust.

“I want to know why you left Seaside.”

“Why? You want to talk me into going to the Assisted Living Home for Retired Housepainters or to join Geriatrics Anonymous?”

“Can I come in?”

“No,” he said. “No offense. I just don’t want you knocking me down, stealing whatever I’ve got and leaving me to crawl to the phone.”

“Fine. Why did you leave Seaside?”

“Don’t need it. Drove me nuts. I don’t like people much. Winn-Dixie’s right over there.” He pointed. “I can take a taxi anywhere I want to go, including the movies at …”

“Sarasota Square,” I supplied.

“Right. I can’t remember shit.”

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s written on your walker.”

“It’s been a nice visit, Goodwin,” he said and closed the door.

I checked him off my list, got in the Saturn and headed toward escapee number three. Her address was on Orchid, the east side of 41 where the houses were smaller, the costs were lower and the lawns not all kept neat and trim.

Finding the house was easy. It was a one-story white frame that needed a coat of paint. I parked on the street. Next to the house was a weed-filled lot with a sign on a stick saying the lot was for sale.

The woman who opened the door was big, probably about fifty. She was built like an SUV and wearing a business suit. She looked like she was on the way out or had just come in.

“Yes?” she said.

“I’m looking for Vivian Pastor,” I said.

“Why?”

“Just have a few questions.”

“About?”

“Why she left Seaside,” I said. “I’m with the Florida Assisted Living and Nursing Home Board of Review. It’s routine. Is she here?”

“Yes.”

The woman blocked the door.

“Can I talk to her?”

“You can, but I don’t think you’ll get your answer from her,” she said. “I’ll tell you what you need to know, but it will have to be reasonably fast. I’ve got to get to work.”

“I’d like to talk to Ms. Pastor,” I said. “Actually, I have to. Board rules.”

She looked at her watch, sighed and said, “Come in. Vivian is my mother-in-law. I didn’t think they were taking proper care of her. I’m Alberta Pastor.”

She held out her hand. I took it. She had a grip that could crack walnuts.

“My name is Lew Fonesca.”

I followed her into the small dark living room filled with a 1950s padded couch and two matching chairs with indentations where people had plopped for decades. There wasn’t much light coming through the windows, whose curtains were closed, and the single standing lamp in the corner was vainly trying to hold back the darkness with a sixty-watt bulb.

“I promised my husband, David, God rest his soul, that I’d take care of his mother.”

She opened a door and we stepped into a small dining room with a round wooden table for four. At the table sat a very small old woman with bent shoulders and large glasses that made her eyes look enormous. She was wearing flannel pajamas with red and blue stripes against a white background. In her hand she held an advertising insert.

“Mother,” Alberta Pastor said. “This man wants to ask you a few questions about Seaside.”

“See what?” the old woman said, bewildered.

“The place I got you out of,” the younger woman said patiently. “Where you were living. Remember?”

“Haven’t I always lived here?” the old woman asked.

“No, Mother,” Alberta said.

“Ma’am,” I said. “Why did you leave Seaside?” The old woman looked at the younger woman in confusion.

“The place you were staying,” I tried.

“I don’t understand,” the old woman said with a smile.

“Dementia,” Alberta Pastor said to me. “It’s been getting worse. They said they could take care of her, but she belongs in a nursing home or here with me. I don’t break my promises. For David’s sake, I’ll keep her with me as long as I can. I’ve got a woman who comes in to look after her while I work. She should be here any minute. She’s late. Vivian used to watch game shows, read, but now …”

“I had breakfast,” the old woman said. “Didn’t I?”

“Yes, Mother,” Alberta said patiently.

“Am I hungry?”

BOOK: Denial: A Lew Fonesca Mystery (Lew Fonesca Novels)

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