Criminal Intent (MIRA) (9 page)

An hour later, groceries tucked away and Sophie mollified with a can of Franco-American and a watery blue Popsicle, Annie picked up the phone and called Sonny Gaudette.

“Ayuh,” he said. “I checked her out and she definitely needs a new radiator.”

“How much will that cost?”

“Depends on how hard it is to find one.”

“Find one?” She didn’t like the ominous sound of his words. “Are you telling me you don’t have one in stock?”

“Don’t see too many Volvos around here. I’ll have to call around. Thing is, they never die. Just like that little pink rabbit with the drum, they just keep going, and going, and—”

“So you have no idea when I can get my car back?”

“Once I find one, it won’t take any time at all to put it in. I’ll start calling Friday morning, and—”

“Friday? But that’s three days away!”

“Yup. I got a ring job that’ll take all day tomorrow and most of Thursday. I’m closed on the weekend, but if I can find a radiator sometime Friday, you should have your car back by Tuesday. Wednesday at the latest.”

Tuesday or Wednesday. A whole week away. How was she supposed to get around in the meantime? “You’re kidding,” she said. “I don’t suppose you have a loaner available until then?”

He
chuckled, as though what she’d said was somehow humorous. “’Fraid not. You could probably rent a car in Lewiston.” Cheerfully, he added, “’Course, you’d have to get there first.”

She knew she wasn’t going to like the answer, but she had to ask the question anyway. “Where’s Lewiston?”

“About forty miles downriver. Give me a call on Monday. I should know more by then.”

Florida was a shithole.

The instant he left the air-conditioned comfort of Miami International Airport, the steaming, smothering wall of heat smacked Louis Farley directly in the face. His lungs struggled to draw in the soupy thickness. Ten seconds in the Florida heat, and already he needed a shower. The single carry-on bag he’d packed felt like it weighed eighty pounds. No wonder they called this place God’s waiting room. If old age didn’t get you, the climate would. Why the hell anybody would choose to live in this earthbound version of hell, he couldn’t imagine. It was like traveling to a foreign country. He hadn’t dealt with a single person for whom English was a native language since he stepped off the plane. With all those Julios and Miguels and Jorges running around, he might easily have landed in Havana. Louis reached into his jacket pocket, withdrew a clean white handkerchief, and mopped his face. The next time he had to travel to southern Florida on a job, he was asking for more money.

He found the rental car easily, a plain white compact sedan as he’d requested. Unobtrusive, and less susceptible to the oppressive heat. Louis unlocked the door, set his bags on the passenger seat, then took off his jacket and hung it carefully from the hook over the back door. The interior was spotless, also as requested. He slid into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and cranked the air-conditioning.

As
the A/C began to drive the unbearable humidity from the car, he pulled out the street map he’d brought with him and studied the route that he’d marked with a yellow highlighter. He’d been here before, just a couple of weeks ago, but with Miami traffic being what it was, it couldn’t hurt to refresh his memory. When he was satisfied that he knew where he was going, Louis maneuvered the little car out of airport parking and into a sea of slow-moving traffic. He still hadn’t gotten used to how flat Florida was. He’d grown up in the mountains of Vermont, and all this flatness seemed foreign to him. Not to mention the congestion, block after block of small, flat-roofed houses on tiny lots crammed hip to hip to allow room for more and more snowbirds to land.

Ahead of him, a white-haired granny in a 1970s-era Oldsmobile Toronado drove like death had already come and claimed her. She stopped for a red light, and Louis tapped his fingertips impatiently against the steering wheel. The light took forever. When it turned green, he raced the engine of the little rental car, hoping that Granny would take the hint. But she pulled away from the intersection with all the haste of a hearse at the head of a funeral procession.

Louis loosened his tie and opened the top button of his shirt. Impatience would get him nowhere. He had to keep a cool head. Haste would only lead to mistakes, and he couldn’t afford a mistake. He was a professional, and Brogan was expecting him to act like one.

It was just this damn heat. It was enough to drive a man crazy.

After a series of red lights, he finally lost Granny and her Toronado. A few blocks later, he saw the motel ahead, the same place he’d stayed the first time he’d come down here. Inexpensive, but clean. No cockroaches hiding in the bathroom, no recent knifings in the parking lot. Long and low, the two-story building was fashioned of white stucco, with a small
pool encircled by a chain-link fence sitting out front, next to a narrow strip of lawn decorated with pink flamingos. Southern Florida at its tacky best.

The desk clerk’s name was Rosalita. Louis paid for two nights and carried his bag to a room on the second floor. Outside the door, an orange plastic deck chair perched on the balcony, giving him a bird’s-eye view of the pool area, just in case he wanted to ogle the sweet young things in their bikinis. Except that there weren’t any sweet young things to ogle. Right now, the only bodies he saw around the pool were a five-year-old kid playing with a pair of blow-up water wings and a pudgy middle-aged woman—probably the kid’s grandmother—who’d tried unsuccessfully to hide her crepey thighs beneath the ruffled skirt of her flowered one-piece bathing suit.

Like everything else in southern Florida, the motel room was air-conditioned. Louis stripped out of his limp traveling clothes, took a tepid shower, and changed into the tan Bermudas and tropical-print shirt he’d bought in the airport gift shop. Flip-flops, a white cotton sun hat, and mirrored sunglasses completed the ensemble. Louis studied his reflection in the bathroom mirror and decided he looked like an idiot. But Florida was overrun with idiots dressed just like him. Nobody would give him a second look.

When he went back out, the woman and the kid were gone. Nobody stayed out in this kind of heat for long, not if they had a choice about it. He got back into the rental car and drove to the condominium complex that Bill Wyatt called home. It looked just like every other senior-citizen complex he’d seen down here. The damn things were everywhere. This one was painted a soft shade of pink. Why did it seem as though everything in Miami that wasn’t white was pink? It was one of life’s little mysteries, one he’d probably never solve.

Louis squeezed the rental car into a tiny slot across the street
from the complex, pulled out his cell phone and a clipboard filled with papers, and pretended to be conducting business. Just a regular guy on vacation who’d brought work from the office—poor sucker—and didn’t want to endanger anyone by using his cell and driving at the same time.

At precisely 3:21 p.m., Bill Wyatt drove into the complex. He parked in his usual spot and got out of the car, dressed in tennis whites and carrying a racket. Right on time. It never ceased to amaze Louis what creatures of habit humans were. Every weekday at two o’clock, Bill Wyatt took tennis lessons at the nearby Dade Highlands Country Club. Wyatt stopped to talk to a neighbor who was out walking his shih tzu, then he disappeared into the complex. Building C, first floor, unit 1.

Twenty minutes later, right on schedule, Wyatt reappeared, dressed for his nightly dinner date with Lottie Trent. He would pick up his lady friend and they’d go to dinner at Clem’s Clams. It would take them approximately ninety minutes from appetizer to dessert. After dinner, they’d return to her condo a few blocks away, where they’d draw the curtains and spend another forty minutes doing God only knew what. Louis didn’t even want to go there.

He had Wyatt’s schedule down pat. During the week he’d spent surveilling Bill Wyatt during his last trip to Miami, the man had never deviated from his routine. Wyatt was as predictable as the tides. So tonight, while Bill Wyatt was eating dinner and probably getting his pipes cleaned, Louis Farley would be searching his condo in pursuit of something, anything, that might lead him to Wyatt’s daughter.

The water damage to her number-three guest room started just above the bathroom door and stretched halfway across the room. The discolored ceiling tiles sagged like an old woman’s breasts, and the mildew smell was so strong that Sophie
had stuck her head in, looked around, and immediately remembered somewhere else she needed to be.

Annie was standing in the middle of the room, studying the damage, when a voice from the open doorway behind her drawled, “Honey, you have got your work cut out for you.”

With a startled gasp, Annie spun around. The woman who stood in the doorway was in her late thirties, with a pretty face, a devilish twinkle in her eye, and a head of dark, wavy hair that tumbled around her shoulders. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Jolene Crowley. Jo for short. Jackson and I live across the street.”

Breathing hard, Annie rested a hand over her heart. “You scared the stuffing right out of me.”

Wryly, Jo said, “I do that to a lot of people, I’m afraid.”

“It’s all right. I just didn’t realize anyone was there.” Recovering, she stepped forward and offered her hand. “Annie Kendall,” she said. “I’m the proud owner of this lovely establishment.”

Jo’s handshake was firm and brisk. “So I’ve heard.” Her gaze made a sweeping assessment of the room. “People are already laying odds on how soon you’ll run away screaming.”

“Are they now? What was your bet?”

“My money’s on you, hon. You look tough as nails to me. Although I can’t imagine why anybody would want to move here if they didn’t have to.”

Annie turned her attention back to the ceiling. “I’m just a single mother,” she said, parroting Uncle Bobby’s words, “starting out someplace new.”

Jo came to stand beside her. Folding her arms across her chest, she studied the huge water stain overhead. “Well, you sure picked a lulu of a place to start out. Hard to believe something as innocuous as a little water could do that much damage.”

“Do you suppose the roof’s gone, or can it be patched?”

“Damned
if I can tell. It’s one hell of a mess, that’s for sure. But the place has sat empty for a dozen years at least. In that amount of time, even a small leak could do some pretty substantial damage.”

“Especially in this climate,” Annie agreed.

“I could ask Jack to come over, climb up on the roof and check it out. He’s used to heights. He works as a lineman for CMP.”

“CMP?”

“The electric company. He spends half his life up in the air. Good God, this place is a mess.”

They turned in unison and critically examined the ruined mattress, the moldy carpet, the limp curtains of a hideous faded yellow that hung in the windows. “If I was Catholic,” Jo said with cheerful repugnance, “I’d cross myself.”

“Maybe I should consider renovating with a lit torch.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t give up on it just yet. You’d be surprised what a carpenter could do with the place. If you’re willing to put the money into it, of course. Which reminds me, I see you’ve met Davy.”

Annie glanced over at her. “Davy?”

“Hunter. Police chief. I saw him drop you off earlier. You having car trouble?”

“A broken radiator. So Hunter’s the chief of police?”

“Interim chief, actually. Among other things.” Jolene wandered around the room, drew a slender forefinger through the thick layer of dust that covered the bed stand, and made a face. “My brother Ty is the police chief, but he’s on a leave of absence. His wife’s carrying twins. High-risk pregnancy. Her obstetrician’s in New York and he wants her off her feet for the next little while, so they’re staying at her town house in Manhattan until the babies are born. Davy’s filling in here until Ty gets back.”

“He seems a little…grim, for lack of a better word.”

“That’s
just Davy. He keeps to himself. Doesn’t have a lot to say to anyone. But he’s an okay guy. I’ve known him all my life. And just for the record, he’s not married.”

“I don’t remember asking.”

“But you were wondering,” Jolene said. “Anyway, that’s not why I came over. You have a teenage daughter?”

“Sophie.”

“I have to teach summer school. Starting next Tuesday. Four days a week, six hours a day, for four weeks, I’m going to be shoehorned into a classroom bursting at the seams with obnoxious little heathens. The girl who usually babysits for me got a real job this summer. Wouldn’t you know it? I thought maybe your daughter would be interested.”

It would be the ideal solution to Annie’s dilemma. Sophie would stop whining about being bored, and she’d be working right across the street, where Annie could keep an eye on her. Soph would make a little money to pay for school clothes, and wouldn’t have to wander far from home to do it. It was a win-win situation, one that included payoffs for both of them.

“She’d probably be very interested,” Annie said. “She’s already hounding me about getting a job. How old are your kids?”

“Nine-year-old twins. Sam and Jake. They’re good kids. A little rambunctious. You know how boys can be. But they’re good kids.”

Annie beamed at Jolene Crowley, who might just be her new best friend. “I don’t know about you,” she told Jo, “but I’ve had enough of breathing mold spores. Sophie’s probably in the shop with Estelle, comparing favorite horror movies. We might as well go talk to her about it.” She hesitated. “There is one thing I have to warn you about. You know how Picasso had a blue period?”

“Sure. Why?”

“Well—” Annie
scraped back a fistful of hair from her face “—Sophie’s currently going through a Marilyn Manson period. She looks a little like a corpse in its funeral shroud, but she’s really nowhere near as scary as she seems.”

“Honey,” Jolene said, patting her on the shoulder, “I teach high school. When it comes to teenagers, I have no fear.”

He usually made a point of avoiding the Big Apple when Dee’s copper-colored ’78 Cougar was parked in one of the employee parking spots, but tonight, Davy wheeled the Crown Victoria into the empty space next to hers and turned off the engine. It had been a terrible day, and he was wiped out, but he’d made a promise to Gram, and he was obligated to keep it. Family obligations had never been his strong suit, and some days, he wondered why he stayed here in this god-forsaken place. Wondered why he didn’t just pack his bags and head back down to D.C. He’d left the agency on shaky terms after Chelsea died, but if he came crawling back on his knees and groveled, he probably had a pretty good shot at convincing Covington to give him his old job back. Or at least a reasonable facsimile of his old job. After the way he blew that last case, they’d probably never send him back into the field, but right about now, a desk job in D.C. looked pretty damn good.