Shadows (3 page)

“Absolutely. The docs give me a clean bill of health.”

Her look remained questioning.

“What?” he asked, nettled. “Is Corso so attached to my desk that he wants it permanently?”

“Sure, he's willing.” She looked amused. “But far as I know, he has yet to pass the sergeant's test.”

“Thank God for small favors.”

He lumbered back out into the squad room, where a stranger was distracting his detectives.

Though petite, she had a larger-than-life presence. Attitude, he thought. She wore shades and crinkly white cotton under a blue linen suit, had tanned bare legs in high-heeled sandals. She knew how to dress for a Miami summer. Masses of curly light-brown hair had been captured by tortoiseshell combs and piled up on the back of her head. Late twenties, early thirties.

The plastic card issued at the front desk and clipped to her blouse identified her as a visitor.

“I want to report a crime.” Her voice was low-pitched and earthy. Her name, she said, was Kiki Courtelis.

“This is Homicide,” Burch said. “I think you're on the wrong floor.”

“No.” The word was brisk, her tone assertive. “You're the Cold Case Squad. I read about you in the Sunday
News
magazine months ago. I have the article right here. Someplace.” She fumbled in her bulging soft-sided briefcase, then withdrew a manila folder. She replaced the shades with little gold-rimmed granny glasses.

“See?” She displayed the clipping. “It even has your pictures.”

“That's us,” Nazario said agreeably.

Was this broad about to cop to an old homicide? Burch wondered. He brightened. Maybe she bludgeoned a bad boyfriend with a baseball bat or blew away a cheating spouse. Walk-in confessions are rare but occur often enough to keep hope alive. Like lightning, they do happen from time to time. He smiled expectantly.

She returned his smile with a grateful expression that lit up her brown eyes.

Yes! She found Jesus, he thought, and wants to confess. Feels the need to come clean, unburden herself of secrets, and face the music. His eyes roved the room discreetly. No lawyer in sight. She hadn't brought one with her. A good sign.

Nazario invited her to sit down. She crossed her ankles, daintily tucked them beneath the chair, and stood her briefcase on the floor beside her.

She might be copping to a still-unreported homicide, Burch thought. A missing person whose body remains undiscovered. Catching Stone's eye, he recognized the same hopeful gaze. Both were thinking dirty.

Her attitude was cool, her brown eyes honest. She didn't look the type. But do they ever? He thought of Betty Newsome, the wholesome-looking Miami housewife who, with the help of her apple-cheeked fourteen-year-old daughter, dismembered her husband, the girl's father, in their garage. With faces that could be on Ivory Snow boxes, they might have been mother and daughter of the year, except for the black plastic garbage bags they left in Dumpsters all over Miami. Piecing that body back together at the morgue had been a chore. He wondered wistfully where mother and daughter were now. Damn shame they'd been freed on a technicality. Thank God it wasn't his case.

“What kind of crime?” he inquired, voice friendly.

“Where did it happen?” Nazario asked.

“The crime scene is in your jurisdiction, if that's what you're asking. I can show you,” she offered.

Will we need a backhoe? Burch wondered, thinking ahead. He knew where to rent one.

Even Corso, checking out the woman's legs from his desk across the aisle, had perked up.

“Actually,” she said somberly, “it hasn't happened yet. But it will if you don't stop them.”

Burch averted his eyes and stared past her. So often, he thought with a sigh, the deranged don't look disturbed. Off their medication, they are not readily apparent until they begin to talk to garbage cans and bark like dogs.

“You need to step in. Now,” she said urgently, pausing to scrutinize each face in turn. “We have no time left.”

Corso smirked.

“You,” she said, her voice growing louder, “are our last hope.”

She could have walked in here yesterday, two weeks or a month ago, Burch thought. Why now? Why me? Does anybody screen visitors at the front desk anymore or do they just wave them through the metal detectors and send them here?

“What sort of crime we talking about?” Stone gnawed his lower lip.

“Murder,” she said succinctly. “Miami's most famous unsolved murder. Bulldozers are poised to level the scene of the crime. Isn't tampering with a murder scene and destroying evidence a criminal matter? Doesn't it compound the felony?”

“What case?” Burch said, dubious.

“The shotgun murder of Pierce Nolan. The most notorious unsolved homicide in the entire state. As well known as the Chillingsworth case in Palm Beach and the Von Maxcy murder in Central Florida. They were solved, ours wasn't. Nolan was a former mayor, the son of a prominent and colorful pioneer family. If you let them bulldoze the Shadows, his murder will never be solved. Isn't it vital to preserve a crime scene?”

“Why don't I know about it?” Stone asked, puzzled.

“You weren't born yet,” Burch said. “None of us were. I've heard stories. It happened way back. He was a popular one-term mayor in the fifties, then bowed out of politics to spend more time with his family.”

“Shot down outside his own front door, at the Shadows,” Kiki Courtelis said, “the historic house built by his father, the notorious rum-runner Captain Cliff Nolan, back in the twenties, during Prohibition. The night of August twenty-fifth, 1961, a killer ambushed Pierce Nolan as he arrived home from a Miami civic association meeting.”

Kiki Courtelis had done her homework.

“How do you know so much about it?” Stone asked, arms crossed.

“I'm a Miami native. My family's been here forever. I heard a lot about the case growing up. My thesis was on Miami history and I'm on the board of the Historic Preservation Society. The Shadows, on three waterfront acres, was somehow overlooked and never placed on the registry of historic houses, which would have protected it. It stayed in the Nolan family, but they haven't occupied it since shortly after the murder. Recently, before anyone realized what was happening, out-of-state family members sold the property to a high-rise developer. The new owner had the house declared unsafe, and despite our protests, the city has issued him a permit for demolition. We've done all we can to save it, but they intend to bulldoze it later this week.” Her look was pleading. “You can stop them.”

“I sympathize,” Burch said. “I'm no fan of what developers have done to this town, either. But we investigate cold cases, not ancient history.”

“But,” she protested, “in this article written by that reporter…” She reopened her carefully labeled file folder. “Right here.” She indicated a paragraph highlighted in yellow and read aloud: “‘There is no statute of limitations on first-degree murder,' said Sergeant Craig Burch.” She peered meaningfully over her glasses at him. “‘No homicide case is too old, too cold to pursue.' Aren't those your words, Sergeant?”

“Yes, ma'am. But—”

“What makes you think the case could be solved now?” Nazario asked.

“As the story says, ‘New high-tech forensics undreamed of when the crime occurred can now be applied to old, cold cases.'”

“Don't believe everything ya read in the newspaper,” Corso said.

She paused for a beat or two, then asked politely, “May I speak to your lieutenant?”

“She ain't gonna tell ya anything different,” Corso warned.

“You're clever and creative,” Stone said, “but you can't use us to fight your battle. We have other cases that might really be solved.”

“A brief stay of execution is all we ask. We're seeking legal support from the National Heritage Trust, an injunction to block the developer, but that takes time and we have none. Once the house is gone, it's gone forever.”

“Sorry, we've got a meeting.” Burch checked his watch. “Wish we could have helped. Good luck.”

“I'd like to speak to Lieutenant Riley,” she said, making no move to leave.

“Somebody mention my name?”

Burch sighed. Timing, again.

Kiki Courtelis's eyes lit up as she scrutinized the lieutenant's face.

“You're one of the Allapattah Rileys. I can see that. I thought you were.”

K. C. Riley did a double take and cut her eyes at Burch. “Well, yeah, way back. My—”

“Grandmother,” Courtelis finished. “Of course. Our families were close.”

“Excuse me?”

“Wasn't her name Margarite?”

K. C. Riley did another double take.

“Here.” Courtelis fumbled in the briefcase again.

What the hell is she about to pull outta there now? Burch wondered.

Courtelis came up with an old sepia-toned photo, an eight-by-ten, a dozen women wearing big hats, seated around a wooden table in the shade of a huge banyan tree.

“The Lemon City Garden Club, 1934.” She handed the photograph to Riley, who studied it for a moment, frowning.

“That's Memaw!” Riley's jaw dropped. “I've never seen this picture before. Where did you get it?”

“See the woman on her right?” Courtelis asked. “That's Lilly Pinder, my grandmother. They were best friends.”

Oh shit, Burch thought.

“I'm Kiki Courtelis. I would have recognized you anywhere. You have the Riley jaw and your grandmother's eyes.”

Riley gazed fondly at the photo. “She was a tough lady. Came from a little town in Georgia. Was a teacher at eighteen when the Miami school superintendent wrote to offer her twice her Georgia salary. She boarded the train to Miami the day after the 1926 hurricane.

“They had to stop dozens of times along the way to clear trees, debris, and dead cows off the tracks. When she stepped off the train, it was into water above her knees. She waded to a Miami boardinghouse carrying her little bag. The owner said, ‘Grab a broom and start sweeping.' She helped sweep out the storm water and started to teach the next day.

“Her first classroom was outdoors under a stand of palm trees. She propped a blackboard up against a tree and taught the alphabet and numbers to three dozen children.

“She met my grandfather at a dance. The night he proposed, they drove over to the Congregational Church in Miami Beach.”

Kiki Courtelis nodded. “The city's first place of worship, built in 1920. Carl Fisher donated the land. That old mission-style church is still on Lincoln Road, beautifully restored.”

Riley nodded. “That's the one. She told me about how they found the Reverend Elijah King at work in his study. He married them in the little chapel that night. They were married for fifty-two years.

“Memaw become an elementary-school principal and then a school board member. Stayed sharp as a tack till the day she died. Did you ever meet her?”

“Sure, she taught my Sunday school class when I was little. I remember how sad she was when your uncle was killed in Vietnam.”

“Do you have time for a cup of coffee, Ms. Courtelis?”

“Sure, Katherine. Please call me Kiki.”

The two women went off to the coffee room chatting animatedly.

“Who'da thought Riley even
had
a grandmother?” Corso said.

This can't be good, Burch thought.

The women returned a short time later, laughing and talking.

“I've explained to Ms. Courtelis,” Riley told them, “that we can't officially intervene in a legal demolition, but since the scene is about to be lost, you can go out there, shoot photos and video, do some diagrams, and see if you find anything that might have been missed. There's a good possibility since, according to Kiki, the place hasn't been occupied since the shooting. It's smart to augment the file, in the event anything ever comes up. Take a metal detector. See what you find.”

Riley arranged for Kiki to join the investigators at the Shadows the next day and then Kiki receded like a wave gliding back out to sea.

“She just sold you a used car,” Burch told Riley.

“Do it anyway.” Riley shrugged. “Why not? It's an open case.”

“The shooter is doing the big dirt sleep or drooling in his soup at some nursing home by now.”

“But how good would it look if we closed it? It might even persuade the chief to keep this unit in next year's budget.”

 

“It'll take less than a day,” Burch reassured his detectives. “No muss, no fuss.”

“I have a bad feeling about it.” Nazario shook his head.

“Did your built-in shit detector kick in?” Stone asked. “Did little Kiki lie to us?”