Frenzy (19 page)

41

W
hen Helen had left Q&A, Quinn thought about what she'd said. Thought about the letters Ida Tucker had mentioned.

He phoned the Ohio number she'd given him, not knowing if there had been time for her to return home and deliver her daughters to a local mortuary.

The phone in Ohio rang five times, then Ida did pick up.

“Nice to hear from you, Detective Quinn. I hope the air conditioner in your office is working better today. And that you don't lean so far back in your desk chair that you actually fall.”

Quinn thought she sounded much younger over the phone. And was something of a smart mouth for a mature and dignified woman.

“Caller ID,” he said.

“So everything up to date isn't in Kansas City,” she said. “Have you learned anything more about the murders?”

“That's why I called. You mentioned some envelopes that were in the crate that came from England. Are these letters that might have been taken from Jeanine's safe?”

“I suppose it's possible. I don't know how much they might help you. They might be letters I wrote.”

“
You
wrote them?”

“Yes. I don't mean the original letters. The ones that were found with the bricks and straw in the box. They seem to have disappeared years ago. The letters we're talking about now are my letters, describing what was in the originals. How Henry Tucker and Betsy Douglass met, how love bloomed in the hospital, and then poor Henry's death from his wounds. Then they tell how a German bomb killed Betsy, but not before she'd shipped the crate to her sister Willa, all the way across the ocean to the United States.” Ida Tucker paused as if to catch her breath. “It must have been horrible, that war.”

“Horrible,” Quinn agreed.
Letters describing what was in letters. How would that kind of evidence hold up in court?

But he knew how.

The information Ida's letters contained might reveal something that could lead somewhere interesting. If it was true. Or maybe what was in the letters would simply be a rehash about what was already known: that Henry Tucker was given a marble bust that he passed on to Nurse Betsy Douglass, and that she shipped it from England to her sister, and then was killed in an air raid. Somewhere along the way, the bust, if it ever existed, disappeared.

And how could Quinn find out how, with the truth concealed among layers and layers of lies? It might be impossible to find because there was no truth.

No,
he told himself.
There's always a truth. Don't doubt that.

“Detective Quinn,” Ida said. “I do hate to cut this conversation short, but there are preparations still to be made for a double funeral.” Serious now. This woman could playact.

“Of course,” Quinn said. “I shouldn't have called so soon.” He added, “Where might we send flowers?”

“Oh, that really isn't necessary. The girls will be buried in the cemetery behind a church they attended. It will be brief. A simple family ceremony.”

“Of course. Family.”

“So if you'll excuse me . . .”

“Of course. I'm sorry for your loss, dear.”

Ida Tucker thanked him and hung up.

Quinn sat thinking about a cemetery behind a small church, a family standing before two open graves and mourning its loss. There would be sobs and quiet tears and bowed heads. A somber minister clad in black, like the mourners. Rows of aged and crooked tombstones. Like a somber but picturesque Norman Rockwell painting.

But Quinn knew this was all his imagination. It might not look like a Norman Rockwell painting at all. Things were seldom as they seemed, or as we wanted to see them.

He reminded himself never to forget that.

Still, the rows of crooked tombstones, the trembling lips and reddened eyes, the lugubrious minister gripping his Bible tight to his breast.

The two open graves.

It was a scene firmly lodged in Quinn's memory, though he had never seen it and never would.

42

 

S
nowbirds. That's what native Floridians called the swarms of people who headed to Florida to escape winter up north. They were from everywhere. New York, Minnesota, Canada . . . all frigid places on the continent. And more than a few snowbirds were European.

Sarasota, because of its charms and beautiful white beach, became more crowded every year. Dwayne Aikin didn't hate the snowbirds, like some Floridians. On the other hand, he didn't like them.

Except for the women. So many women. Lounging on the beach, picking at salads in restaurants, laughing in bars and other night spots. The women, talking, shopping. Tempting, many of them.

There was a higher class of woman at Pike's, on the beach, just off Highway 41, the Tamiami Trail. Pike's had a driftwood look about it, as if it had weathered the worst of the hurricanes. It was also an art gallery, sometimes showing work by some of Sarasota's more well known artists, who regarded Sarasota as an art mecca. The paintings here weren't priced, but deals were made, and for considerable amounts of money.

Canapés and wine were served inside. A smaller version of the inside bar, and several tables, were outside, beneath a roof fashioned to look as if it was thatched with palm fronds. When the weather was good, which was almost always, there were more people outside than inside at Pike's. Wine and mixed dinks were served there, and art was discussed.

And Dwayne listened. He was fascinated by art and the art world. And he'd learned enough about art to recognize that he had little talent, but a powerful yearning to possess.

Dwayne was still too young to drink there legally, but Peter Pike, the owner and curator of Pike's, would secretly serve him wine inside, and limited amounts of alcohol outside. And why shouldn't he? Dwayne's father had helped to make Pike rich. Now Pike was aware that when Dwayne turned twenty-five, Dwayne would be wealthy. It might be said that Pike was nurturing a future wealthy patron of the arts. Whispered, anyway.

Dwayne wasn't hurting financially now. That was thanks to his father, not his slut of a mother.

Dwayne liked to sit at one of the small tables near the end of the outside bar, which was very near to where the beach began. Close enough, anyway, to get sand between your bare toes. At night soft breezes wafted in off the Gulf. If the breeze turned cool, large kerosene heaters would provide warmth, and transparent plastic and mesh curtains would be lowered to contain it. The heaters and curtains were seldom needed. Women would come to Pike's to watch the colorful sunsets, and Dwayne would observe them while he sipped his Coca-Cola spiked with Maker's Mark bourbon.

The women were considerably older than Dwayne, and many of them knew about art. Not the spring breakers. They not only tended to be college age, but also were gibbering fools. That was how Dwayne saw them, anyway. The older women, some of them widows on the hunt, were not only smarter and more discerning, but seemed quieter. Their conversations had a softer, more confiding tone. Sometimes urgent. All women, it seemed to Dwayne, talked too much about too little. Though there were notable exceptions.

Like the quiet blond woman with a model's cheekbones who drank alone, and sat on the peripheries like Dwayne and observed. She was probably into her twenties, and had a lean, taut body that was tan from the sun so that when she wore a skimpy blouse the lighter marks from the straps of her swimming suit were visible. Maude used to have vertical strap lines like that on her back and above her breasts.

Occasionally men would approach the blond woman, but she seemed to have a way of rebuffing them without making them angry or embarrassing them. Wayne liked that about her. It was what some people called class.

Sometimes, when she was sending away a sad suitor, she'd glance over at Dwayne. Was she wondering why he hadn't approached her? Did she think, as he did, that they might be kindred spirits?

Dwayne wasn't long on friends, especially since the trial. At first he'd been something of a celebrity, but that had worn away fast. Then he realized some of the friends he had left were in his orbit simply because he was a rich kid—or was soon to be rich. He didn't tell them he was living on a stipend until he came of age. At least it was a stipend compared to what he was worth. He made sure that they knew he wasn't going to throw money around, and they, too, fell away as friends. That was okay. In fact, Dwayne used his temporary not-yet-rich status to drive away his most annoying hangers-on. Especially the girls.

He would obtain what he wanted from them, and then he was finished with them and would let them know it. They were used goods. He always made sure that they understood that. That they
felt
it. They were like his mother. Only she'd been smart. And evil. Using her wiles to be a user of others.

Maybe that was in the genes, being a user of people. Or maybe she'd learned it from those who'd used her. We embrace what we can't escape. What was the alternative, but winding up on the scrap heap with ninety-nine percent of the rest of humanity? Most people didn't have what it took to be users. Dwayne knew he did. Ask Bill Phoenix. Ask Maude. He smiled. No, it was no good asking Maude.

Or his mother.

 

 

As he sat at his outside table at Pike's, listening to the rush of the surf and watching the blond woman, he admired the way she lifted and lowered her glass. There was a special grace to it, little finger extended, her movements measured. It was the grace of tigers.

Sometimes she would go into the gallery alone and move slowly from painting to painting, as if she were judging them in a contest.

More and more Dwayne saw in her something he'd observed in Maude, and in his mother. A worldly, dangerous exterior that was no act, yet still didn't quite conceal a vulnerability. They were both users, like most women, but they understood their power and knew its limits. They could also be used.

The night air was warm. The moon was almost full. You could stare at its pocked surface and make of it what you would. A cloudless sky glowed sequined with stars, and Dwayne had gone heavy on the illegal booze component of his drink that Pike allowed.

Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe it was the moon. Something caused him to decide that this was the night he should approach the blond woman. She hadn't changed her attitude. Dwayne knew that. He was the one who had become more entranced, the one who needed to know the other's soul.

Drink in hand, he stood up unsteadily and walked the fifty feet or so to where she sat alone at her outside table. She was gazing out to sea, and seemed not to notice him.

After standing for a few seconds at her table, he said, “I've been watching you.”

She didn't bother turning her head to look at him. “And I've been watching you.”

He could see by the curve of her cheek that she was smiling slightly. He amused her. Her thinking he was funny—that would change.

“Want to talk?” he asked, thinking immediately that he sounded like what he was, an inexperienced kid struck almost dumb by graceful shoulders, generous tanned breasts, upswept blond hair only slightly ruffled by the breeze. That same breeze brought to him the faint scent of her lotion, and of the ocean.

“That's what we're doing,” she said. “They call it talking.”

He wasn't sure what to say.

She turned around in her chair and looked straight at him with those blue-green eyes. A lump formed in his throat.

“Sit down,” she said. Her voice was soft but there was command in it as well as invitation. She wasn't someone to be disobeyed, even slightly.

He thought about his mother as he sat down. He wondered if the blond woman somehow knew that. And for the first time, he wondered if they had met before. Had she been a friend of his mother or father? Or of Maude?

“You're here . . . often,” he said, simply for words to speak.

“So are you.”

“I'm Dwayne.” He offered his hand to shake.

She ignored it and said. “Linda.” She lifted her glass in a brief toast to him, or to both of them. “Why have you been watching me, Dwayne?”

He was gaining his equilibrium now. “For the same reason other men watch you.”

“Which men are those?”

“The ones who come to your table and get sent away.”

“I didn't send you away.”

He felt himself blush. “I didn't think you would.”

“And why not?”

“You'll laugh.”

She simply stared at him, unblinking.

“I think we're kindred spirits,” he said.

She smiled with just her lips, then opened her mouth wide and laughed.

“Gee,” she said, “I don't think I've ever heard that one.”

Dwayne felt small enough to climb down out of his sandals.

Linda quit laughing and gazed at him with something like contempt. He couldn't help it; he began to squirm.

Linda said, “Let's walk.” She stood up, but not before leaning over and giving him a good look at her cleavage. He glimpsed where tan flesh turned pink in a place mysterious. He was surprised by how tall she was. As he stood up from his chair, he glimpsed down to see if she was wearing heels. She wasn't, but the rubber soles of her sandals were thick. He thought that if they were both barefoot she and he would be almost the same height, which made her tall for a woman.

They left the island of light that was Pike's and walked side by side south along the shore. Neither spoke, but the waves applauded again and again. When the beach narrowed, Dwayne leaned down and rolled up the cuffs of his pants. Linda removed her sandals so that her legs were bare below her shorts. They walked in the packed wet sand, among tiny broken shells, where every once in a while the surf would reach them and swirl about their feet.

“Tell me you're not an artist,” she said.

“I can honestly say that. What about you?”

“I dabble.”

“I bet you dabble great.”

“I've seen enough paintings of sunsets, leaping marlins, and squinting old men with faces marked by the sea.”

“Me too,” he lied.

“There,” she said suddenly, and pointed.

To their right, beyond the curved beach and a stretch of sandy soil, were the lights from a string of condos and rented beach cottages. Linda was pointing at a rectangle of yellow light that was a large window or sliding-glass door in a two-story hotel, kept low by building ordinance and the slightly taller hotel across the street from it.

“That's the Tipton Hotel,” he said.

They'd stopped walking. His back was to the ocean. Because of the moon he could see her glowing face as she smiled. “How do you know that?” she asked.

“I'm from around here. I've driven back and forth on the beach road.”

She widened her eyes in a way he knew was an act. “You're old enough to have a driver's license?”

“You know I am,” he lied. She was making fun of him and he couldn't keep the anger from his voice. A rage she didn't yet know.

Or knew all too well.

She surprised him by taking his hand. Her own hand was dry and surprisingly strong. She took a few steps, pulling him along until he began to walk.

“I'll show you,” she said.

“Show me what?” His heart was banging away.

“Where I'm staying,” she said. “Ever been inside the Tipton?”

“Couple of times,” he said
. Once. In the lobby.

She was smiling again, amused by him again.

He realized he was smiling on the inside.

She didn't know that.