Miami Noir (26 page)

He shakes his head. “What would be in there?”

“Diamonds?”

“You’re teasing me, Ray.”

“Somewhat,” I say. “Anyway, everything Sharon had was from the bedroom. And you’d been through that.”

“Yes, and then Sharon handled it all, and she says she didn’t find anything concealed. Did you?”

“Well, I haven’t gone through every page of every book. She could have used a thousand-dollar bill as a bookmark. I’ll be sure to check.”

“If I overlooked something, you know,” he shrugs, “that’s the way it is. What I don’t like is the idea that it could be one of the people who was there yesterday, who spotted something and then burgled Sharon to get it.”

“Wouldn’t be me. I was in the bedroom alone enough, I could have taken anything then.”

“I know,” he says. “And you were a policeman.” Alex always says
policeman
, as in,
Say hi to the nice policeman.
“Couldn’t you maybe figure out what it was and who took it? If it was someone on our team?”

“Tall order.” I finish my Nublado. I want a cigarette but I had one an hour ago.

“Yes,” he says. “But you could try, Ray, couldn’t you?”

“Well, let’s go see,” I say.

He pulls out his cell phone and calls her to tell her we’re on our way

So I drive us over to Sharon’s place, also not far from Café Nublado. We people with a taste for old things are clustered in the neighborhoods of Miami’s Upper Eastside, where the houses were built in the ’30s of cinderblock and stucco, in styles they’re now calling Mediterranean Revival and Masonry Vernacular. I’m in Belle Meade, Sharon in Bayside, which is an historic district. Alex used to live there, but recently he cashed in and moved into a fixer-upper in Palm Grove, west of Biscayne Boulevard, for a long time the western frontier on realtors’ maps. Lately, people good at restoration like Alex—that is to say, the gay guys—have hopped the line in search of fun and profit there.

On the way he tells me he keeps nothing of value in his house. He has safe deposit boxes at several banks. He adds that Mrs. Dorsett’s daughter made it clear that her mother’s real jewelry had been in
her
safe deposit box. All that remained was costume, and even that the daughter had gone through carefully. I ask what the daughter was like.

“Like a respectable woman from Connecticut,” he says. “She was organized and I think she knew the status of her mother’s estate in advance. No nonsense. I just don’t see what it could be,” he muses.

Sharon is out the back door to meet us as we pull up. Unadorned, wearing a white T-shirt and leggings, with her hair pulled back, she is a smaller woman than I’d thought. Perhaps she puffs herself up and puts on beads when she’s working with us guys to hold her own.

She shows us where they came in. They simply bashed in window glass by the back door to the Florida room, reached in, and twisted the lock—no deadbolt. The alarm went off, of course, as soon as the door opened, but—as I’m telling her—there’s a limit to alarm systems.

“The noise is useless. Neighbors won’t stir to take a look. The important factor is the signal through your phone line to the alarm company, who then call your house in case you set it off yourself and can give them the secret code to revoke the alarm. If you don’t answer,
then
they call the cops. And then the cops have to get here, so altogether your thief has a good ten to fifteen minutes. A real pro will take out your phone line, do a thorough job. What you have here is someone looking to smash and grab and run, usually kids wanting something to hock for drugs.”

“Right,” says Sharon. “But if so, why didn’t they take the portable TV right here in the Florida room, six feet from the door?”

She leads us through folding doors to her dining room and down a hall to the back bedroom she runs her business from. He definitely went out of his way to get to this room.

“Forgive the mess in here,” she says.

Of course, it looks far better than my place on a good day. Garments fill a chrome clothing rack, each hanger tagged with notes. Along the opposite wall, a long table holds a computer, scanner, postal scale, packing materials, and a piece of blue velvet with a desk lamp aimed at it, set up for photographing smaller objects. The open trash bags piled on and around an old couch under the windows are the only disorderly note. Heavy shades darken the room. I look behind them—jalousie windows, old thick glass, hard to break.

“Did you have your digital camera here?” says Alex.

“I’d been using it to shoot clothes outside, in sunlight—I hang them from my grapefruit tree. Afterward, I put it in the bedroom. It’s still there.”

“So what did they take?” I ask. Like Sharon, I say “they,” even though I’m assuming it’s a “he.” It helps to keep it less vivid, I figure.

“I’ve been making a list. The police want one and my insurance will too, but I don’t think it’s going to be enough for my deductible.” She picks up a pad. “Shoes, clothes, linens.”

“Which?” asks Alex.

“Not the nicest ones, really.” She opens the closet’s pocket door and reveals shoe racks. “I’d put the best away in here. I guess they never opened this. So they just got a couple of pairs of day shoes, some blouses that were here on the arm of the couch—things I was setting aside to take to the women’s shelter. The women always need clothes, especially for job interviews, work. Well, they took that whole pile. Oddly, they took the satin pillowcases but not the bedspread. I think some of the makeup and perfume is gone. They spilled some powder, see?”

“Young transvestites in the neighborhood?” I say.

Alex gives me an amused look. “Yes, probably.”

I say, “They most likely used the pillowcases to carry the other items. That’s common.”

“Well, it breaks up the set,” Sharon says, pointing to the spread, which looks much less glamourous in here, I notice.

“Had you gone through everything from the estate before the break-in?” I ask.

“Not really. I hung up all the finest clothes when I got home—that was the most important thing, to keep them nice. And then I was tired and my daughter and her family took me out for sushi. In the morning, I went out to the post office to ship things—I try to go early every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, so I don’t get behind.”

“Someone seeing you leave with packages would probably assume you’d be gone awhile.”

“I suppose. I was gone about forty-five minutes. When I came back the police were here, and I turned the alarm off.”

“Wasn’t there some costume jewelry?” asks Alex.

“Yes. I put it in here.” Sharon pulls out a vanity case from the closet floor. “It’s mainly brooches. Substantial ones that look good on her suits.” She opens a jewelry roll on the blue velvet piece and snaps on the light and they shine: fake pinwheels and starbursts.

“She wore the pearl one on Sundays,” I say.

“That’s the best,” says Sharon. “Miriam Haskell.”

“There was a decent coral one,” says Alex, “set in fourteen-carat gold, which I have. The rest was costume, which is Sharon’s territory.”

“Any missing?”

They both shake their heads.

“Well,” I say, “first thing to do is fix the window. And I think you need a deadbolt on that door—no reason to make things easy for them. I can do that for you, if you’d like.”

“Thank you,” she says, and gives me a big smile. She takes us into the living room, a quiet space in greens and beiges. One end is nearly empty. A low table holds candles and a mat is unrolled in front of it on the pickled pine floor. She sees my glance. “I do meditation,” she says, “to calm down.”

“Does it help?” I ask.

“Yes. You should try it sometime. It’s good for your blood pressure. You tune in to yourself and just notice what there is: the light and little sounds.”

“I think I’ve done it,” I say. “On stakeout.” I’m looking at her, recognizing that after—what, three years?—I don’t know her at all. We’re all such strangers.

Driving home, I tell Alex it’s impossible to say what the burglary was all about. It might be something to do with the Dorsett estate or completely random. I drop him at his house in Palm Grove and tell him I’ll stay in touch with Sharon, in case she notices anything else. And otherwise keep my eyes open.

And for the next few days I do, with no particular idea what I’m getting at. I go back to help Sharon out, but she hasn’t made any further discoveries. At home, I work through all of Helena Dorsett’s books and papers. The only thing of real interest is a vintage book on how to dress, from 1939; she was still a girl, if she got it new. There are pencilled tick marks next to various tips.
A strawberry blonde should not wear orange-reds, but blue-reds and true violets
. There is a chapter about shopping that tells what kind of coat to have if you can only afford one, and then what to buy when you can purchase a second.

I have many pictures of Hialeah Park, postcards, programs. I went to closing day, back in 2001, and bought up a few future collectibles. It was a sad occasion. Even the pink flamingoes on their little island looked faded. I take a drive over there on Friday and circle around behind to see the area of extensive decaying stables where people used to board horses for the season. I forget what I last read about plans to reopen the track.

Then I drive on down to Coral Gables and tour Leucadendra Drive and spot the house. It’s certainly worth a million now. But whatever it was worth in 1962 was plenty.

I think I hear someone scrabbling outside my sun porch, late Friday night, but I’ve had problems with possums there, getting in under the house, and anyway it might just have been palmettos chipping at the window as they do. You have to prune here constantly. I get up, turn on some lights, patrol, see nothing, and go back to bed. I take out the phone book and look her up: an
H. Dorsett
is listed at the right address.

Now I’m fully awake, so I go into my linen closet which is full of reference books. I have a half dozen assorted Social Registers I’ve picked up. In the one for Greater Miami 1955, I find,
DORSETT, MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM ELSFORD (Helena M.H.),
listed at the address on Leucadendra Drive, Coral Gables. Then:

Summer: Little Chestnut Farm, Ligonier, PA

Miss Diana Hogarth

Clubs: Riviera (CG); Princeton (Miami); Rod and Reel

(MB); Jockey. Clubs, Mrs.: Opera Guild.

Coll., Mr:. Princeton

Yacht:
Sea Lark

I note that she chose the initial of her stage name, and then Hogarth’s—which was needed to indicate where Miss Diana came from. No
Coll
. for the Mrs. was not all that unusual in those days. I presume the Opera Guild interested her due to her musical background.

I look up Dr. Pryor, but I don’t suppose veterinarians were society people. Nor is there any Roy Robineau. I don’t have a register from the early ’50s, but I know the Hogarths wouldn’t be in there—they were staying at a hotel, not a home or a club. I’ve put Mr. Billy Hogarth down as a young guy with a little family money, not in Mr. William Dorsett’s league.

I think about money and Florida. When I first came down here, years ago, after I got divorced, looking to have some fun and cheer up, I was amazed to see how much money was here, filtering in from all over America as people cashed in their piles. I cannot completely explain the fascination of discovering where they all went. In my old town when I was growing up, there were some rich people. You knew who they were; you worked for them. Then they deserted, and a lot of the people in the middle left. After they made me chief, I put in a few years at my best salary and then deserted too. I bought myself a little house down here in a neighborhood that was turning around and added my bit to the comeback. Here, I got interested in life’s cast-off paper, and started to buy and sell and learn the worth of the worthless.

Sunday morning early, I’m at the Lincoln Road Antiques & Collectibles Market. The humidity has lifted and it’s cool, in the fifties at 8 a.m., though it promises to warm up later. I’m in my usual spot on Drexel just off Lincoln near the community church—the side street gets morning shade. I have set up my tent with plastic side flaps. Rain—even a stiff breeze—can do a lot of damage to my stuff. But it doesn’t look a bit like bad weather today, so I leave them rolled up. I get to work, unpacking the rubberized tubs of pages organized by subject, and the display rack for the intact magazines. I never dismantle anything that’s perfect. Boxes of books go on the ground, and my best stuff under glass on the back table.

Other dealers pass by, circulating—we check out each other’s stuff early. Sometimes an item has changed hands twice before the average buyer comes out looking. There’s interest in my 1934
Vanity Fair
with the Albert Einstein paper doll page: mint. I have the whole thing encased in plastic, but dealers know better than to touch. No one buys. I don’t expect it; I’ve set the price high because I don’t really want to let it go. When I have things laid out, I stand and stretch and look around. The Kussrows, as usual, have the corner of Drexel and Lincoln, across from where the SPCA has its table and pen of dogs up for adoption. Jeff and Hank are angling their stuff to best advantage: a bunch of HeywoodWakefield chairs, a dresser, and there’s Helena’s dressing table with the circular mirror, catching and reflecting the morning sun like a fat full moon.

Sharon arrives, as promised, bringing me coffee, the Starbucks version of Nublado decaf skim, lacking the Cuban depth. While I was putting in her deadbolt on Thursday she said she’d take me up on sharing my space and see how she did selling some things, as a start on the Noir Boudoir idea. She covers one side table with a vintage cloth and lays out an assortment of compacts, old lipstick cases, evening bags, and so on. I have the other side table and the back table—a U so the customer can walk in and browse. We’ll sit at the outer ends in lawnchairs I brought. She’s not only got on all her amber, which I now think of as her chest guard, she is wearing some heavy tortoiseshell vintage shades. “You look invincible,” I tell her, but she shakes her head.

The old guy comes by with his doggie on a leash. The pooch is wearing an argyle vest this morning, though the old guy himself is his usual shambles. He nods at us and heads for the Kussrows.