Pulse (15 page)

Rory hugged him at the door and watched him drive away.

Exhausted, he was relieved to make the turn onto the island. It was after two a.m. Kathleen and the girls would be asleep by now. He yawned, eager to join them. He prayed not to dream that night. He rounded the curve, beneath the overhanging royal poinciana, and hit the brakes, startled. The gate stood open, the house ablaze in lights, strange cars in the driveway.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

T
he babble of voices broke off as he entered the foyer.

“Frank!” Kathleen sprang to her feet and rushed toward him. He opened his arms, expecting a hug. But she stopped short, in a confrontational stance. For a moment he thought she would rush him to pound his chest with her fists. The look in her eyes was wild.

“Kath, what’s wrong? Are the girls all right?”

“What’s wrong?” She turned to the others. “He’s asking what’s wrong!”

Sue Ann sat at the dining room table, a steno pad in front of her, a pencil in her hand. She looked embarrassed. Shandi sat next to her. A squat greasy-haired stranger wearing a black leather jacket and stubble on his chin was lounging in Frank’s favorite armchair, a briefcase at his feet. Phillip Gray-son, an attorney he had never liked and whose law firm he no longer dealt with, was on the telephone. He was in his shirtsleeves, tie loosened, as though commanding a war room.

“Never mind,” Grayson barked into the phone. “He just walked in the door.” He hung up and stared at Frank like the others, waiting.

“What?” He turned his palms to the ceiling. “What’s going on?”

There was a squeal, and Casey raced downstairs in her pajamas. “Daddy! Daddy!” She hit him like a football tackle, hugging him around the waist, nearly knocking him off balance. He hadn’t realized how weary he was.

Casey, still clinging to him, turned triumphantly to the others. “See, I told you he wasn’t in jail!”

Uh-oh, he thought.

“Back upstairs!” Kathleen ordered. “You’re supposed to be in bed!”

He quickly kissed Casey, who retreated to the stairs but then sat down halfway up to watch.

“Where have you been?” Kathleen nearly shrieked. “We’ve been beside ourselves! And you stroll in here like nothing’s happened?”

“Hey, sport.” Grayson feigned a relieved grin and stepped forward to pump his hand. “Good to see you. You had everybody worried.”

The man in the armchair checked his watch and looked cheated. His eyes reminded Frank of the bill collector he had met at Rory’s that first day.

Grayson looked cheerfully expectant. “Well, old man.” He glanced around the room. “I guess you’ve got some explaining to do.”

“No, you do. What the hell are you doing in my houseat this hour and who’s that?” He jerked his head toward the stranger in his chair.

“Sorry,” Grayson said smoothly. “This is Billy Marker from E-Z Bail Bonds. He was nice enough to come out at this hour.”

“What is all this?”

Kathleen’s voice had the brittle metallic edge of too much coffee, too little sleep and high drama. “How do you think I felt when I heard Casey screaming that Daddy was on television—in handcuffs?”

“Oh, good grief. That was all a misunderstanding. I handled it.”

“A misunderstanding?” She clasped a hand over her heart, her rings winking in the light. “Are you saying that no one was murdered, that no one is dead, that you weren’t thrown in a police car like some common criminal?”

“I don’t think ‘thrown’ is the right word. I had a business meeting with a man. I got there and found him murdered. The police were only following standard procedure since I was the one who found the body. It was a rotten experience, all right? It’d be nice if I got a little warmth and sympathy at home.”

“What was the nature of the business you had with the victim?” Grayson asked.

“Nobody has answered my question.” Frank pointed at Grayson. “What is he doing in my house?”

“I didn’t know where to turn.” Kathleen’s voice quavered. “I’ve never experienced anything like this. I called Phil and he came right over. He’s been absolutely wonderful.”

“We’ve been calling the jail and the police department, trying to track you down, Frank,” Grayson said. “They said you walked outa there hours ago. When you didn’t surface and nobody heard anything, we figured the cops were lying. I was about to try to get a writ. We had Billy here to get you out of jail as soon as possible, if it was a bondable offense.”

“Thank you all for the vote of confidence.” He nodded to the group. “I’ve had a long day.” He headed for the stairs. He wanted them to go home. He wanted to make amends with Kathleen in private.

“This doesn’t sound good,” Grayson said solemnly, “with all that’s been happening and that incident over on DiLido the other night.”

What had she been telling him? Frank stopped at the foot of the stairs, his hand on the banister. “Of course it doesn’t sound good. But this is Miami, for God’s sake. Things happen.”

“Not to people like us,” Kathleen shot back.

“This is really embarrassing, Dad. You were on every TV station,” Shandi said. “Everybody we know saw it.”

“Woulda been nice of you to call home, old man.” Grayson shook his head sadly that anyone could be so thoughtless.

Frank fantasized about decking the man right there. Had his daughters not been present, he might have tried it.

“You really oughta come down to my office in the morning.”

“You are not my lawyer.” He continued up the stairs.

“Where were you?” Kathleen demanded.

“There were things I had to take care of. All right?”

“This all has to do with that Alexander woman, doesn’t it?”

“We can discuss that later, Kath.”

She exchanged “I told you” glances with Grayson.

Frank looked at his watch. “Thank you all for coming, the bar is closed, the party’s over.”

Sue Ann was already out the door. Frank stood, arms folded, staring down the others. Grayson picked up his jacket.

Billy the bondsman lurched out of the chair. He detoured on the way to the door and handed Frank his business card. “Just in case,” he said.

Grayson draped a protective arm around Kathleen in the foyer. Frank heard him ask if she would be all right and to call him in the morning. She tearfully thanked him.

As the door closed behind the lawyer, Frank turned and climbed the stairs, his arm around Casey’s shoulders. “Thanks, punkin,” he said. “Sounds like you were the only one around here with her head on straight.”

“Did you see the body, Dad?” she asked eagerly.

“Yeah,” he said. “I did.”

Kathleen never came to bed.

In the dream that woke him, he was struggling to hold a door closed against a storm. On the other side somebody shouted, pleaded and pounded. Above the storm and the cries, he heard something else. His mother weeping.

Realizing he was alone, he padded barefoot down the hall to the guest room. The door was locked. He knocked, then knocked again. “Kath,” he called softly, “open the door.”

No response from inside. This was the first time in twenty-one years that either of them had chosen to sleep alone. He felt eyes watching. Daisy, curled up outside Casey’s room, had raised her head. The dog stared mournfully at him, as though he were a stranger in his own home. He went to his study, called to leave a message for Lucca, then returned to bed. Another woman’s erotic embrace haunted his dreams. Together they writhed in passion. He stretched toward the light to see her face, but recoiled. Their naked bodies, wet and slippery, were not drenched in perspiration. It was blood.

*   *   *

Sue Ann was at the office bright and early, chipper and cheerful as usual.

“Sorry about last night,” he said. “Kathleen shouldn’t have bothered you.”

“No bother. I’m just glad everything’s okay.” She paused. “It is, isn’t it?”

He assured her it was, as Lucca appeared on the TV monitor entering the outer office.

“Glad to see you, boss.” Framed in the doorway, larger than life, he was tanned and tieless, crisp white shirt open at the neck. “Caught your TV debut last night.”

Sue Ann stood rooted, listening, so Frank said he was hungry and asked her to pick up some bagels from the shop down on the mall.

“Whatsamatter, boss, you don’t trust your secretary?” Lucca asked after her reluctant departure.

Frank shrugged. “Just wanted a little privacy.” He told the detective everything that happened at the Tree Tavern and asked his professional opinion.

“Big Red is at the bottom of this somewhere, right?”

“I wanted to talk to him about her finances.”

“Figured it was something like that when I heard the name of the restaurant. He was the partner, huh? You are ruled out,” he said, slouching in a leather chair, “or soon will be, I presume. I mean you wouldn’t give up your gun and submit to a GSR test unless they’d come up clean. Right?” The question in his eyes was real.

“Of course. I just wish”—Frank clenched his fist—“that I’d gotten there sooner.”

“Oh sure, you’da walked into it and I’d be sending condolences to your widow. You were lucky. Twice now, huh? Must be nice to lead a charmed life. I wouldn’t try for three if I was you. Everybody’s luck runs out sometime.”

“I want to know what the hell is going on.”

“The homeless guy who blew the whistle sounds interesting.” Lucca looked thoughtful. “Wonder if he mighta noticed you because he’d seen something else going on there earlier. The detectives are buying robbery, huh? That location is off the beaten path for most of our busy inner-city robbers. And his pockets were turned out, but the killer missed a wallet loaded with cash. No medics had been there, right?”

“No.” Frank looked puzzled. “I found him first.”

“Sometimes paramedics are so damn efficient,” Lucca explained, “that they go through a victim’s pockets looking for a name to complete their paperwork. They leave, detectives show up, see turned-out pockets and jump to the conclusion that it’s a robbery-homicide when what they’ve really got is something else.

“You say his hand was in his jacket pocket, and somebody had covered his face with a throw rug. Humph. I’d hafta see the scene photos, but it don’t sound like robbery to me.”

Frank leaned forward. “What makes you say that?”

“Hand in his pocket sounds casual, not like a guy uptight, in a panic, staring down the muzzle of some holdup man’s gun. Sounds more like somebody he was comfortable with took ‘im by surprise. And the throw rug. In my experience that’s usually somebody who had some kinda relationship with the victim and doesn’t like the dead guy looking at ‘im. Then there’s the overkill. He’s shot, what, four, five times in the head? Your typical robber shoots a victim once or twice, then splits, but to shoot somebody in the head that many times … Whoever it was was either mad as hell, making an example or determined to be absolutely sure.

“Were the weekend receipts on the premises, or had he made his bank deposit?”

“Don’t know, but he may have had a lot of cash around. Rory said he liked to flash it. And he had just collected a million-dollar insurance payoff on Alexander.”

“The plot thickens. Who knew about it?”

“We did, and whoever he told.”

“It’ll be interesting to see what the city comes up with, if anything.”

“There is something I need you to check out.”

“Sure, boss. Want me to give the detectives a call?”

“Not on this case.”

Lucca’s dark eyes flickered in surprise.

“It’s Alexander. I want you to check out his death.”

“We did that.”

“He liquidated everything, every last dime, in the six months or so before he died. I can’t trace the money so far. He took it all in cash. We went to his safety deposit box. Nothing. Except that an antique watch, a family heirloom that he prized, is missing. I don’t think he’s dead.”

“Ain’t you living proof of that, boss?”

“A gut feeling keeps telling me that somehow, he’s alive.”

“Then whose heart you got, boss?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, you wanna know? Go ask your buddy, Big Red. Say you’re right. Say they fake his death in an insurance scam. Say his partner is in on the deal. Then she’s gotta be an accessory. The wife knows, she’s gotta be in on it.”

“I don’t see how she could be.”

“How much money is missing?”

“Maybe two, two and a half million. Could be more, no way of knowing how much he had in the ground. The restaurant business is notorious for secreting money, manipulating cash register tapes. Many successful restaurants don’t report a lot of their profits to the federal government. The money stays in the ground.”

Lucca raised a shaggy eyebrow. “One way or the other, Red’s lying. Guy doesn’t blow that kinda dough on wine, women and song in less than a year without the little woman getting some clue that everything ain’t right.

“If he didn’t blow the money, why would people with that kind of dough commit murder and fraud for only a million?”

Sue Ann appeared on the monitor, reentering her office, a paper sack in hand. She must have broken all existing speed records, Frank thought, to and from the bagel shop.

“I want you to take a new hard look into Alexander’s death, with an open mind, no preconceived notions. Then you tell me if he’s dead or alive.”

“She cremated him, huh? That’s convenient. At least that’s what the suicide note asked for. Did she do it?”

“I’ll find out.”

“Only way to know for sure, boss, would be to dig up the son of a bitch. You must have better things to do with your time and your money. I thought you were gonna take a little vacation with the wife and kids. Ain’t that a better way to spend your money? But if you’re really determined to throw it away, I won’t argue. I’ll take it.” Sue Ann rapped at the office door, then opened it.

“Whaddya think about them fish, boss?” Lucca smoothly shifted gears. “Danny boy goes down with a bad knee and it’s bye-bye, Super Bowl.”

“Didn’t know you were a Dolphin fan,” Sue Ann said.

She popped back in after Lucca left.

“I’m supposed to remind you about the appointment with your cardiologist at one-thirty.”

“What appointment?”

“He’s expecting you.”

He was not really surprised to find Kathleen in the waiting room outside Dr. Lassiter’s office. She coolly kissed his cheek.

The receptionist ushered them in quickly. Frank decided they must have been hastily squeezed in between appointments or that Lassiter had given up lunch to see them. He thought it odd that nobody asked him to disrobe or seemed to be planning any tests.