The Black Palmetto (29 page)

Sam tuned out the sarcasm. He’d felt bad about losing that connection to Knox, but he felt even worse about Lora Diamond. She had played him, zeroed in on him that first night, and he’d never had a clue. Too busy trying to play her. Though she hadn’t done anything harmful to him, that he knew of, she had probably fed Knox information about what they were doing and maybe caused them to take some wrong turns. Thinking back, though, he didn’t think he’d given her much, primarily so it wouldn’t hit the news. He couldn’t help but remember the morning on his boat when he had almost kissed her. How good she looked. The attraction.

“Hey, wake up,” Simone said, “the cars are moving again.”

Horns honked behind him. He pressed the accelerator and closed the distance to the next bumper.

It had been a surprise when Knox said he didn’t have the money with him. They thought he was making his getaway. If he knew they were following, maybe he wanted to lead them away from the money, and double back later when the coast cleared.

Simone turned in her seat and said to Harpo, “Did you see another man back there, before you got on the boat?”

Harpo told her what had happened with the machete. “He was unconscious in his car when I came through there again, and I took him to one of the ambulances back there.” He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb in the direction of the wreckage behind them.

She said to Sam, “We can probably find him in one of the hospitals.”

J.T. spoke up from the back seat. “There’s a note in Knox’s wallet with two sets of numbers on it. One looks like a combination to a safe. The other might be a security system code. If only we knew where to go.”

Same sarcastic tone
. Sam had had about enough of the attitude. He turned and glanced at J.T. in the back seat. One more remark and he would be on the street. Sam’s frown must have said it all. J.T.’s eyes got large for a split second then he averted his gaze to the computer and started clicking keys.

When they reached the I-95 interchange, Sam took the on-ramp leading to South Dixie Highway.

“Where are you headed?” Simone asked.

“Iguana Key. We can drop Harpo off and get the cars, but I also have an idea about where Knox might have stashed the money.”

“What about Benetti?”

“He’ll be there when we get back. ER always takes a while, and they might admit him if he’s lost a lot of blood.”

****

Two hours later they rolled onto Big Pine Key and headed toward the house owned by Knox’s mother, Eva Crowne, the movie star. It had appeared vacant at the time, and Sam hoped Eva would still be away, maybe sunning herself in the south of France.

Sam turned into the driveway of the house with the For Sale sign in the yard, where they had parked before. J.T. got latex gloves from Sam’s bag and they put them on. Leaving Harpo in the car, they got out, hurried past shrubs to the back yard, and crossed the next property to Eva’s place.

When they reached the rear door, J.T. took out Knox’s keys. There were four of them, and two fit the deadbolt and the knob.

J.T. turned to Sam. “Good guess, buddy. This is the place.” His eyes took on a glow that Sam had seen before.

They pushed through to a small utility room and closed the door behind them. An alarm system hung from the wall. The digital display flashed the words “Enter Security Code.”

“I’ll try the code on the note,” J.T. whispered. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and began punching numbers on the keypad. When he finished, the display stopped flashing and changed to “System Armed.”

They split up. J.T. thought a safe might be in the den and headed toward the rear of the house. Simone said she’d check the bedrooms, and Sam took the living room.

Paintings hung from the walls. They looked like originals, primarily Gaugins and Van Goghs, but other classics, as well. Sam thought he would check behind the paintings for the safe, but he noticed an entryway to a library off the east side of the room. He decided to check in there first and eased over to the door, but heard a noise before entering and stopped. It sounded like rats scratching through newspaper, but he didn’t think it was rats at all. In the back of his mind he knew what might be there.

Sam turned into the room, leading with his 9mm. The woman he knew as Lora Diamond crouched on one knee in front of a safe. She grabbed a handgun and jerked it around toward him. Dark circles framed her eyes, but she still looked beautiful. A large attaché case lay open next to her knee.

Something gnawed inside Sam’s chest. “You planning to shoot me?” Sam asked.

“Of course not. I wouldn’t shoot you.” Her eyes widened.

Sure she wouldn’t. “Then, drop the gun.”

She hesitated for a moment. “Sorry, I can’t do that. I worked on this job for months. I can’t just walk away from the money.”

“Hard to picture you as an assassin with the Black Palmetto.” He didn’t know why he had said that. She had a gun pointed at him, and she probably knew how to use it.

“I wasn’t. They recruited me because I killed a man. But I had a good reason, and I got out of the program as soon as I could. Check the records. Knox found me and asked me to help set up a con. I didn’t know he was going on a killing spree. I had nothing to do with that. You have to believe me.”

“What about Jake Bell? You had dinner with him right before he died.”

“Knox gave Jake a hard time a few weeks ago when he got in a scrape over a girl. Then, the night before you arrived, he saw Knox beating up Benetti in Chopin’s parking lot. When you showed up, he told me he was going to do something to get Knox in trouble. He didn’t realize Knox saw him that night, too, and was following him. I didn’t know he was going to kill him.”

Sam wanted to believe her, but in the back of his mind he knew he couldn’t. She had helped Knox and probably needed to die, too.

Something in his eyes must have told her what he was thinking.

“I tried to protect you,” she blurted. “I made sure Ford kept you out of jail. Knox would’ve killed you in there.”

“Maybe.”

“Look, I only have half the money here. Let me leave and you take the rest.”

“How much is there?”

She turned her case so he could see inside. “I counted five-hundred-and-ten thousand as I took it out. There’s at least that much left in the safe.”

The volume of the stacks in both places did appear to be about the same. “That would be only a million. It should be two.”

“Yeah, that’s what Knox thought. Boozler must have spent the rest.”

“Knox give you the combination?”

A hint of a smile leaked into her eyes. “No. I got it from his wallet while he slept. He’d planned to give me a cut, but I saw what happened to him on the boat and figured I’d better get down here.”

She closed the case, snapped the locks, and stood. “Maybe we can talk about this sometime, but right now I’m leaving, and I hope you won’t try to stop me.” Still pointing her handgun at Sam, she backed toward a door at the other end of the room.

Sam’s heart raced as his finger tightened on the trigger. He said, “You’re not going anywhere.”

She just dropped the gun to her side, gave him a beautiful smile, and sidestepped through the door.

Chapter Thirty-Five

J.T. peered inside the safe, turned to Sam, and frowned. “You let her go?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, I wasn’t going to shoot her for the money.”

Simone didn’t say anything. She just stared at him, a wan smile on her face.

“She helped Knox, though,” J.T. said, “and maybe killed some of those people.”

“I don’t think so.”

Shaking his head, J.T. said, “She gave you a sob story, and you believed it. Man, you’ll never learn.”

The house phone rang. Sam stepped over to it and saw the name of a security company on the display. The security system had sent an alarm when Lora went out.

“We need to deactivate the security system.” He turned to Simone. “Answer the phone and tell them you forgot about the system when you stepped outside. Say you’re entering the code now.”

J.T. thrust his hand in his pocket and pulled out the note with the code.

“She went out this way,” Sam said, heading toward the door. It led to a small hallway that exited to a garden on the side. The alarm box hung next to the door.

J.T. punched in the code as he had done before.

Back in the library, Simone hung up the phone. “They might’ve believed me, but I bet they’ll come by here anyway. We have to get going.”

“Get a bag,” J.T. said as he turned to the safe.

Sam got two plastic trash bags from the kitchen and lined one with the other. When he returned, J.T. had put the cash on the floor in a neat pile and closed the safe.

“There’s almost six-hundred thousand.”

They stuffed the money into the bag and headed for the back door.

Outside, Sam peeked around the corner of the house to the street. A security car slowed and turned into the driveway. A lone officer got out, pulled a key from his pocket, and headed toward the front door. When he got past their view, the three ran across to the next yard and retraced their steps from before.

Back in the car, they didn’t see Harpo. J.T. opened the back door and the homeless man awoke and sat up.

Sam started the engine and backed out. As they rode away, Sam glanced at his rear view mirror and saw the security man getting back in his vehicle. He might have been surprised that the woman who answered the phone had already left, but he wouldn’t have found anything out of order inside.

About thirty minutes later, Sam turned onto Iguana Key and headed toward the place Harpo had left the hearse. He had been quiet since they’d questioned him about Benetti, but when they pulled in beside the maroon behemoth, he said, “Guess I’ll have to turn the hearse in, now. Mr. Tim wouldn’t want me to keep it, if he was alive. Have to respect the dead.”

Before he got out, Simone said, “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to get another job. There’s a woman I want to go back to when I get some money to pay my way. She saved my life.”

She gave Sam a pained expression, then reached over the seat into the bag next to J.T. and pulled out two stacks of the cash. “Here you go. This should last you for a while.”

Harpo’s eyes lit up even brighter than the night before when he’d retrieved the gallon of homemade wine from the cabin. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice breaking. “Is that real money?”

“Yes, it’s real. Take it.”

He hesitated, glanced down at his clothes. “I’ll need to go to the funeral home and clean up, maybe borrow a burial suit from Mr. Tim’s stock. If I try to spend hundred dollar bills looking like this, they’ll haul me off for sure.”

Harpo took the cash and thanked her profusely. He got out and hurried to the hearse, a skip in his step.

Sam drove on to Ford’s cabin. When he finished loading the car and was about to get into the driver’s seat, a man stepped out of the woods. He pointed a handgun at Sam’s head. Simone stood on the passenger side. J.T. had just come out of the house with his bags, lagging behind. Everyone froze.

“Going somewhere?” the man asked.

He seemed familiar in his suit and tie. Then it came to Sam: the guy with the pet iguana. Edison.

J.T. started moving to the side, and the man in the suit turned the gun on him.

“Stop where you are. I won’t hesitate to shoot.”

J.T. stopped and dropped his bags on the ground. Sam’s gun was stowed under the driver’s seat. He wondered if J.T. had his with him. Simone usually had hers in a holster at the small of her back, but since they thought everything was smooth sailing, they had all relaxed.

“I didn’t know prosecutors carried guns,” Sam said.

“So you know who I am.”

“How did you find us?”

Edison shrugged. “Wasn’t too difficult. I figured your lawyer might be hiding you, and found this place in the court records. When I came out here, I saw the car. I knew it wasn’t Ford’s, so I expected you’d be back. You were here for the money. What did you do with the chief?”

“I don’t know what happened to him. I heard he ran off when they found his fingerprints on that knife.”

The prosecutor flicked his nose with his free hand and sniffed. A trace of white powder dotted his upper lip beneath his nostril. “Boozler’s no killer. He’s a dirty cop, but I don’t think he ever murdered anybody. Did you plant that knife with his prints on it?”

“I’ve never even been to the place where they found it,” Sam said.

Edison wagged the barrel of the gun back and forth. “No matter. Let’s take a look inside your car. You two,” he said to J.T. and Simone, “get over here so I can keep an eye on you.” When they came around the car and stood close by, he said to Sam, “Open the doors and stand back.”

Sam did as asked, and the prosecutor moved so he could see in the back seat first. They had put the bag of money in the back floorboard behind the passenger seat, and Simone had laid her overnighter on top of it. But the articles on the floor behind the driver’s seat seemed to catch the man’s eye first.

“That cap looks familiar. Morton Bell wore one just like it, and I’ll bet that one has his DNA on it. And what’s that beside it? Rubber gloves?
Tsk, tsk
. Doesn’t look good, Mackenzie. You must have committed all these murders.”

Simone touched his arm. He had told her he’d ditch the cap later, and had forgotten. His head throbbed, pulse pounding. The sun’s rays felt like fire on the back of his neck.
There might not be a way out of this
, he thought. Could he get to his gun before Edison could fire? Killing a DA didn’t fit in his bag of tricks, but death row didn’t seem too appealing, either, especially for something he hadn’t done.

“Let’s see what’s inside those bags. Get them out of there,” Edison said.

Sam leaned in and pulled them out and onto the ground.

“Open the trash bag.”

When Sam complied, Edison said, “Well, well, the evidence just keeps piling up.”

The hum of an engine droned in the distance. Then it got louder, and Edison peered in the direction of the driveway. Sam smacked his gun hand to the side and tried to grab the weapon, but Edison moved surprisingly fast. He jerked the gun away and stepped back.