You Only Die Twice (7 page)

“You know,” he said enthusiastically, “Detective Rychek said a new academy class starts in April. I never thought of being a cop, but when he told me about all the benefits…”

Thank you, Jesus, I thought.

Back at my desk, I dialed a number.

“Get outa that bed!” I shouted repeatedly into the machine.

“Who the hell is this?” Janowitz finally mumbled, his voice groggy.

“It's Britt. I'm in the newsroom and I've been working all night. Why aren't you here?”

“What the fuck time is it? Shit, it's not even seven
A.M
. I'm not due in till ten. What the hell's going on? Somethin' I should know about?”

“Remember R. J. Jordan?”

“That murdering bastard. Hell, yes. I covered his trial.”

“He didn't kill her. His wife was alive until two weeks ago. She was that unidentified murder victim who washed up on the beach.”

“You're shittin' me.” The groggy mumble gone, he sounded awake and alert.

I filled him in. “Think her mother was in on it?”

“Not a chance,” he said, without hesitation. “If she was, she deserved an Oscar. No way that frail little old lady could work up so much emotion and anger day after day unless she really believed her daughter was murdered. All that pain was no act.”

“But how could they convict him when she wasn't even dead?”

“I'da voted guilty myself, on general principles. You shoulda heard 'im. The son-of-a-bitch came across as an arrogant rich bastard from Miami and a bully to boot. Hell, that jury couldn't wait to fry 'im. And shit, no, he wasn't railroaded; the prosecution had a helluva strong case. Look at the clips.”

“I did. Your trial coverage was great. Only problem, the crime didn't happen.”

“Shit. Not only will that son-of-a-bitch walk, he'll
be a martyr, patron saint of every anti–death-penalty group. They'll jump all over this one. Jesus Christ, if Kaithlin Jordan put the whole thing together, she oughta be charged with attempted murder. His. Hard to believe she'd do that to her own mother. You sure she wasn't on ice somewhere all this time?”

“The M.E. said the body was fresh. They could tell if her blood had been frozen.”

“Damn. Need a hand on the story?”

“Nope, I've been working all night, got it all under control.”

“Yeah.” He sounded disappointed. I pitied him, but not enough to share. This story was mine.

 

A computer search of the Bureau of Vital Statistics data base showed a death certificate for Reva Warren but, of course, one had been issued for her undead daughter as well. I wondered how state bureaucrats would cope with the process of issuing a second death certificate for Kaithlin Jordan. Did they have an official policy to cover those who die twice? Or is it only one to a customer?

I reread Reva Warren's obit and called the funeral home. The woman on duty pulled up the file. Services were conducted at St. Patrick's Church, with burial at Woodlawn Park. “Says here she collapsed on the street. A stroke,” the woman said cheerfully. “Had a history. Hypertension.”

I asked for the name of her next of kin.

“Looks like she didn't have family. Predeceased by a daughter.”

“By a husband too, right? She was a widow.”

“No husband mentioned here. She had prearranged.” The contact in the file was listed as Myrna Lewis, a family friend. I took down her address and the plot number at the cemetery.

A happy yodel echoed in the hall, and I waved. Lottie must have had an early assignment.

“How'd it go last night?” Wide awake, she was eager for details.

“Amazing! Lottie, you won't believe this!”

“Hell-all-Friday! The man proposed?”

She took in my blank stare, the files and notes strewn across my desk, the blocks of copy glowing on my computer screen, and rolled her eyes.

“Uh-oh. We ain't at the same address, are we? Not even the same zip code.” Her expression changed to one of alarm. “Don't tell me you got stuck here on a story and didn't git to go?”

My ill-fated evening and the baby pictures came back to me.

“I went,” I said. “Bummer. But wait till you hear the story I'm working on! Let's go for breakfast and I'll tell you about it.”

She dropped off her film, art of an out-of-control brush fire on the fringe of the Everglades. I left the city desk a detailed memo on my story, and we went to a Cuban coffee shop a few blocks away.

I filled her in on the story between bites of flaky cheese-filled
pastelitos
and thick hot black coffee that resuscitated my brain cells and set my blood on fire, “Now I need to go find a grave.” I put down my cup and checked my watch. “It shouldn't take long.”

“Is it in a cemetery?” she asked, daintily patting
crumbs from her mouth with a paper napkin. “Or do we need a shovel?”

“Woodlawn,” I said. “I have to see it, to make sure it's really there.”

“You don't need me for that. But I want in on this one, Britt. Call me when there's something to shoot. Helluva story.”

“Damn straight.”

 

Pink and mauve streaks lit the sky as a fiery orange sun burned its way through banks of purple and a misty haze rose off the lush green grass at Woodlawn Park Cemetery.

Noisy traffic streamed in every direction. There was gridlock on the Palmetto Expressway after a tractor-trailer rollover. Motorists were trapped by construction on I-95, and wheezing Metro buses exhaled poisonous fumes at every stop, but here the grass smelled fresh and clean, insects buzzed, and flowers bloomed. In this place of death, I felt overwhelmed by life. Birds sang, water trickled merrily in a stone fountain, and time stood still. Nobody who slept here was in a hurry.

I found no one at the caretaker's cottage, so I studied the map posted outside, drove to the designated section, and set out on foot.

Mounds of fragrant fresh-dug earth piled high with damp and dewy floral arrangements marked a burial site less than twenty-four hours old. I stopped nearby to study the heartbreaking beauty of a stone angel that had been weeping over a child's grave since 1946.

If she's here at all, this must be the place, I thought, reading the lettering on stone markers and bronze
plaques. Then I found it and saw why I had missed it at first. I was not expecting a freshly tended, recently visited gravesite. Somebody had neatly cleared away the weeds and tangled vines and placed a bouquet of long-stemmed white roses in the bronze flower holder. The double plaque bore two names.

 

MOTHER

Reva Rae Warren

April 25, 1926–May 11, 1996

 

BELOVED DAUGHTER

Kaithlin Ann Warren Jordan

January 27, 1965–February 17, 1991

 

The roses had withered and shriveled, crisped by the sun. Dried blossoms and buds had fallen away from the thorny stems. The weathered bouquet looked as though it had been there for about two weeks, since just before Kaithlin Jordan arrived unclaimed at the morgue.

What was it like, I wondered, to kneel at your own grave?

I found the groundskeeper back at the cottage, pointing out a section on the map for a middle-aged couple to whom he was giving directions. A stooped, slightly built man in his fifties, he nodded, eyes curious behind the tinted lenses of his eyeglasses when I told him the name and plot number.

“That one's had a lotta company all of a sudden,” he said, his look quizzical.

“Oh?” I said.

“Never had any action, any visitors, far as I know,” he said, self-consciously covering his mouth with his hand to mask ill-fitting dentures that clicked as he spoke. “Then, maybe six weeks or so ago, some fella came by looking for her.”

“A man? What did he look like?”

He shrugged. “Shortish, Anglo, dark hair, late thir
ties, early forties. Had a sly way of looking atcha. In a big hurry, wanted help to find 'er. Didn't stay long. He came back right quick, wanting to know if anybody else had been asking 'bout 'er or visiting that plot lately.”

“Did he leave his name or a card?”

“Nope.” He readjusted his baseball cap over wispy hair.

“Did you see his car?”

“Looked like a rental.”

“Who brought the flowers?”

“Must have been the woman. I seen her out there a coupla weeks ago. She'd been tidying it up. Didn't speak. When I rode the mower acrost that strip between the front row and the fountain, saw 'er just kneeling there, real quiet. Didn't really see her face, hidden by sunglasses and a scarf, but she looked young. It's funny,” he said from behind his hand. “Nobody all these years till now. What's the sudden interest in that one?”

“I hoped you could tell me,” I said. I gave him my card and asked that he call me if anyone else came looking for Reva Warren.

Across the street, within a block or two of the cemetery entrance, were three small florists' shops. White roses, I asked at each one, sold about two weeks ago? The first two shook their heads when I showed them a glossy
News
file photo of Kaithlin Jordan.

“Tal vez,
maybe,” said the third, a flower importer from Colombia. He set down the sharp cutting tool he'd been using to snip the thick stems of a bird of paradise, wiped his hands on his apron, and picked up the photo in an exaggerated, almost theatrical gesture. Lips
pursed, he studied it thoughtfully, the air around us moist, cool, and fragrant.

“Un poco mayor,
a little bit older.” He raised huge, sad eyes from the photo. “When was this taken?”

“More than ten years ago.” I held my breath.
“Más de diez años.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” He studied it again, shrugged dramatically, and stroked his sleek mustache.
La cliente,
if she was the one, wore a scarf, he explained. He never saw her eyes. She never removed her large dark glasses. He suspected at first that she might be a celebrity but he couldn't place her face, and a celebrity would not be alone.
“¿Sí?
There would be a bodyguard, an entourage.
¿No?
”

American and well dressed, she had come by taxi and paid in cash. His red roses were beautiful, a fresh shipment that morning, full, lush, and passionate. But she had insisted on white.
“Una dama muy bonita, pero triste. ¿Sabe?”
He gestured expansively. A pretty lady, but sad. She said little, but left the impression that she had come from a distance to pay her respects to a loved one. After she left, he watched from his front window and saw her cab swing through the cemetery's wide wrought-iron gates. He could not remember the name on the cab but thought it was yellow. Yes, yellow.

Something clandestine about her, he confided, made him suspect
el muerto
was an old lover, a former husband, perhaps someone else's husband. Of course, he confessed, he was dedicated to
amor
. He wished he had seen her eyes, he said. They always tell the story.

I left his tiny shop, full of fragrance and romantic fantasies, and called Rychek. “The mother is definitely
dead,” I told him. “I'm at the cemetery. Guess who was here?”

 

Rychek told me that Fuller G. Stockton, R. J.'s lawyer, was already en route to Florida State Prison to inform Jordan. Stunned by the revelation that his client was actually innocent, he had hastily regained enough presence of mind to schedule a 6
P.M
. press conference. He'd be back by then from the prison, in Starke, a small north-Florida town surrounded by pinewoods. Motions were already being filed for R. J.'s immediate release. The timing was good for me. TV reporters would have scant time to report and fill in background. They might air the news flash first, but only we would have the complete story.

 

As I drove north, I called the city desk and Lottie to alert them to the press conference and asked that she photograph the flowers at the gravesite. Twenty minutes later I found the address I sought.

Miami's skyline changes constantly, as do the names of streets, banks, and businesses. It is not uncommon for locals to find themselves confused and disoriented on suddenly unfamiliar street corners, their intended destinations, stores, shops, or restaurants vanished like missing persons, without a trace.

My adrenaline spiked at my good fortune. What a surprise. The Southwind Apartments, an aging three-story structure, was still standing.

Among the names on a rusting bank of mailboxes in the crumbling foyer I found
LEWIS
.

I buzzed the apartment.

“Who's there?” A woman's voice rasped from the squawk box.

“Mrs. Lewis? Myrna Lewis?”

“Who is it?” Another voice, speaking nonstop in the background, sounded oddly familiar.

“Britt Montero, from the
Miami News
. I'm a reporter. I understand Reva Warren was a friend of yours.”

“She passed away some years ago.”

“I know. I need to talk to you about her daughter.”

“Kaithlin's dead too.”

“I didn't mean to interrupt. It's important. I won't take much of your time.”

“Well,” she said reluctantly, “only a few minutes.”

In her late sixties, or even older, her face was worn and deeply lined. She had attitude and a certain dignity, despite her shapeless housedress and arthritic limp, as she showed me into her small and scrupulously clean kitchen. Neatly pressed curtains, the color nearly washed out of them, framed the single window, which overlooked a parking lot. Her companion, the other voice I'd heard, continued to speak from a radio on the kitchen counter, a woman talk-show host dispensing life-changing personal advice to callers.

“I know why you came,” Myrna Lewis said, and gestured to a chair at the wooden table. An empty cup sat on the scarred tabletop. A used tea bag sat puddled in a saucer on the stove. She switched off the radio as the host admonished a caller: “Without a ring and a date, you don't have a commitment.”

“You do?” I said.

She nodded solemnly. “Because they're going to ex
ecute the man who murdered Reva's daughter.” She struck a match to light the gas burner beneath the kettle. “Would you like some tea?”

I'd already had too much coffee, I said.

“I wish Reva was alive to see it,” she said wistfully. She extinguished the match at the water faucet and dropped it into the trash. “She planned to go, you know. She wanted to be there. I think that's what kept her alive in the last years, when she wasn't well. She hung on to see that man pay for what he did. But all those appeals.” Shaking her head, she limped to the table and slowly lowered herself into the chair opposite me. “The system is so slow that the son-of-a-bitch outlived her. It wore her down and he won again. There'll be no real justice the day he dies because she didn't live to see it.”

“It's even more unfair than you think.” I opened my notebook.

Her pale, faded eyes widened as I explained. Her mouth opened. Her lips moved, but she made no sound.

“Impossible,” she finally whispered. “You say she wasn't dead?”

“Mrs. Lewis, do you think there's any possibility that Mrs. Warren knew that? That she and her daughter might have been in contact through the years?”

“How could you even think such a thing?” She rose painfully to pace the length of her tiny kitchen, murmuring as though to herself. “Reva was religious, a good Catholic. That little girl was her life. She worked so hard, two jobs, to put that child in a good school, give her dance lessons and pretty things.” She eased herself back into the chair, shoulders slumped, as though my questions were a heavy burden.

“You were good friends?”

Her stricken eyes focused on mine. “We worked together when we were young, years ago, piecework in a dress factory in Hialeah. New owners came in, Cubans, who only wanted to hire Cubans, so we got laid off. Reva found another job, on her feet all day in a bakery. She also helped out part-time at Discount Office Supply, where I worked, over on One Hundred Twenty-third Street. At night she sewed and did calligraphy—you know, that elegant old-fashioned penmanship? She was an artistic woman. People paid her to address their invitations—to weddings, parties, bar mitzvahs. She did birth announcements, even Christmas cards.”

The teakettle's shrill whistle interrupted and she rose to silence it. Hands shaking, she poured boiling water over the used bag.

“Sure you won't have some?” she offered. “I would give you a fresh bag, of course. I only reuse them because it's less caffeine that way and they go further.”

I shook my head as she stirred.

“Can you imagine,” she went on, “that some people don't even write their own Christmas cards? Reva would work all night at her dining-room table, addressing envelopes to strangers, and then go to her day job. As she raised a daughter, took her to church and to music and ballet lessons. She made all Kaithlin's clothes herself, beautiful things, handmade and embroidered.”

“It had to be difficult,” I said, scribbling notes. “When did Reva's husband die?”

She averted her eyes and hesitated. “The bum didn't die. He left when she was six months pregnant. Saw the
baby once, maybe twice, then left town with his latest girlfriend. Last Reva heard, maybe twenty-five, thirty years ago, somebody saw him in New Orleans. He's probably still alive. People like him, they lead charmed lives, do as they please…. Never paid a nickel in child support, all those years. These days they chase them down, call them deadbeat dads, and make them pay. You see it on TV all the time. Back then, nobody cared.”

“But when Kaithlin married R. J.,” I protested, “the stories said she'd been raised by her widowed mother.”

She snorted in derision. “You of all people should know better than to believe everything you read in the newspaper. Jordan's mother told that story, said
widowed
sounded better than
divorced.
She was concerned about what her friends would think. For Kaithlin's sake, Reva didn't argue, but she swore she'd tell the truth if anybody asked. Reva wouldn't lie for anybody.”

I stared as she sipped her weak tea, her eyes unfathomable. Were any of these people what they pretended to be? How did they keep track of the truth about who was really dead and who wasn't?

“Reva's divorce embarrassed Mrs. Jordan,” Myrna Lewis continued. “Well, what goes around comes around.” She smiled in grim triumph. “I wonder what her friends think about her son on death row?”

“But he didn't do it,” I said quietly. “He'll be released.”

“He shouldn't be.” She rubbed her swollen knuckles. “It's not right.”

Reva, she said, had remained unmarried until she was forty. Eric Warren, a handsome charmer, swept
into her life abruptly. He left the same way, after depleting her modest savings and impregnating her. When her only child arrived late in life, she was all alone.

“Wait here.” Myrna hobbled into the next room. “I have something to show you.” She returned with the framed photo of a tiny blond posed gracefully in a pink tutu and ballet slippers. Her mother sat stiffly in a straight-backed chair behind her, graying hair pulled tightly into a severe bun, her eyes on her daughter, palms together in silent applause. Kaithlin looked about nine, which made her mother at least fifty in the photo.

“Look at them,” Myrna Lewis demanded. Her eyes watered. “They're both gone now, and he did it. He's responsible, whether he killed them with his own hands or not.”

I studied the strong lines of the mother's face. “Was she a strict parent?”

“Maybe, but she had to be. She was a religious woman. Saw only right and wrong, with not much in between. Reva wanted Kaithlin to concentrate on her schoolwork, but she wasn't well and Kaithlin insisted on helping. She said she didn't want her mother to work so hard. So Reva let her take a part-time Christmas job at Jordan's. They put her on the cosmetics counter, because she was beautiful, I guess. But she didn't need paint and powder to stand out from the crowd. Everybody who saw her knew she had something special. Reva most of all.

“She sent Kaithlin white roses on her sixteenth birthday. She admitted it was extravagant, but she said her daughter deserved it. Later, Kaithlin would send white
roses to her mother on her birthday and every Mother's Day.”

So it
had
been Kaithlin at the cemetery.

“Kaithlin changed after she took that job and met him. She became defiant and ungrateful. She broke her mother's heart, but it was him; he was the one responsible.”

“R. J?”

She nodded, fingers wrapped around her empty cup as though for warmth. “He was a grown man twice her age, with a bad reputation. He changed her, turned her head. She started to stay out and come home late. Reva never had another peaceful day. She was able to stop it for a time, when Kaithlin was still underage. But they started up again as soon as she was eighteen. That man knew how to manipulate a young girl. Reva worried, she cried, she prayed to St. Jude. She begged me to pray with her—but all the prayers in the world couldn't save Kaithlin. That girl was all she had.”