Tango Key (30 page)

He touched his fingertips to his temples and closed his eyes. "I'm lusting, Al. Get your buns over here." He opened his eyes and grinned. "How's that?"

She leaned forward and reached under the table, sliding her hand over his thigh, inching her fingers toward his groin. "How bad are you lusting, Kincaid?"

"Bad. Let's get a room," he replied with a straight face as her fingers slid over the bulge in his jeans. "You're going to get us thrown outa here, Al."

"Not to mention that I'll get stuck with the bill," said Carlos Ortiz, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

Blood rushed into Aline's cheeks, and she sat back with an embarrassed laugh. "Hi, Carlos."

Kincaid muttered, "Can't take her anywhere in public."

"Amigo, that we should all have such problems."

"I've got some news. First, Lilly the Mentalist—"

"—has a room reservation here for Friday night," Kincaid finished. "I just found out a while ago. The manager has been trying to get in touch with you, Al. To let you know."

"And Ryan has already signed up for a reading," Ortiz said. "Perhaps she will do the two of you for the price of one, eh?"

"Signed up where?"

"At the desk."

"Okay, I bet you don't know this," she said, and told them what had happened on Eve's sloop. "According to Cavello, every one of those artifacts in the safe-deposit box was smuggled into the country. Cooper was working with someone here who helped him get the stuff in. Code name, Cracker."

"Real spy shit," Kincaid drolled. "I don't suppose Cavello had any idea who Cracker is."

"He claims he doesn't. But he threw out a couple of maybes." She glanced at Ortiz. "You among them, Carlos."

He poked his aviator glasses back on his nose. "I'm a natural. I had access to the safe-deposit box."

"You sure Eve didn't have access?"

"Let me put it this way. She never had a key and, to my knowledge, didn't even know it existed. But it's possible that she found the key and pieced things together. It's also possible that the frog never made it as far as the safe-deposit box."

"Wouldn't Alan have had access to the box, considering his reconciliation with Doug?"

"Sure. It's possible. And that's exactly the problem. At this point, Aline, everything is possible."

Even Murphy planning an escape with Eve
, she thought, but didn't say it. She wouldn't say it, not unless she was absolutely sure. "Carlos, until the estate has gone through probate, what's Eve living on?"

"She had money in her own account. Their prenuptial agreement entitled her to about five thousand a month for household expenses, clothing, and whatnot. I imagine she saved quite a bit of that. She also has some valuable pieces of jewelry, and perhaps she has sold a few."

"The Mercedes is in her name, right?"

"Yes."

"And the Porsche?"

"No, in Doug's name. It's part of the estate."

"The boat?"

"Dual ownership. She can still use it until the estate is settled, since she's inheriting it. Why?"

"Just wondering," she replied, and changed the subject.

T
he manager of the Flamingo Hotel was a man named Ben Vickers, who'd been a friend of Aline's father. He had thick white hair and wore bifocals that rode low on the bridge of his nose. He bussed Aline on the cheek as he greeted her.

"She made the reservation last night," Ben said, referring to Lilly. "Our social director is the person who's been booking her for the last two seasons, so I've never dealt with the woman personally. But I understand she's something of an eccentric. Anyway, I thought you might be interested in the list of people who've signed up to see her. The sheet's arranged in half-hour time slots from eight to midnight Friday evening and eight to four on Saturday. All but two slots are filled."

"How'd all these people know she was going to be here?"

"The social director says Lilly always takes out an ad in the
Tango Tribune
about a week before her arrival. She charges a hundred the half hour."

Then the woman was doing a far sight better as a psychic than
she
was doing as a cop, Aline thought.

She perused the names on the sheet. Ed Waite had the 8:30 PM slot on Friday evening. "You have any PR material on her?"

Vickers smiled, whipped a folder off his desk, handed it to her. "You bet. Frankly, I think it's just hype, Aline. Even Uri Geller never sounded this good."

The packet contained the usual PR stuff—newspaper and magazine clippings, a brief bio sheet, and a professional black-and-white photo of Lilly. According to the bio sheet, she divided her time between South Florida and the Big Apple, where her clients included "some of the biggest names in show business."
 
Whatever that meant. The clippings were glowing, of course, and ranged from publications like the
L.A. Times
and
The Miami Herald
to obscure metaphysical magazines that were undoubtedly published in someone's basement. But an article from
The Tampa Tribune
, dated a little more than two years ago, was particularly illuminating.

According to the
Tribune
, Lilly Monroe had been hired by several anthropologists who were excavating a bog called Little Salt Springs just north of Tampa. She was credited with having pinpointed the location of a human skull said to be over 12,000 years old. In an article from a Phoenix paper, she was mentioned in connection with the excavation of an Indian burial ground.
Fate
magazine called her "one of the most impressive psychic archaeologists of the decade."

"Ben, may I have copies of these three articles?"

"Sure."

A few minutes later, Aline hurried out of the hotel, a file tucked under her arm.

E
d Waite was hunched over his table of artifacts, just as he had been the first time Aline had been here. It was as if this particular frame of his life had been frozen in the cosmic movie projector and it was only now, with her arrival, that it whirred forward again. He glanced up and said, "I'm really very busy, Detective Scott." He took a bite of the half-eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a paper plate to his left and washed it down with a sip of Diet Coke.

"I won't take up much of your time. I just need a couple of answers."

He sighed heavily, patted his abdomen, eased himself back onto a stool, and gazed at her. The medical medallion looked like a big smudge of dirt against his shirt.

"Okay, what?"

She gestured toward the medallion. "You allergic to something?"

"Penicillin. I'm also a diabetic. But I'm sure you didn't come here to discuss my medical problems." Then, as though this had reminded him about his medication, he removed a plastic vial from his pocket and tapped a pill into the palm of his hand. He washed it down with a gulp from his can of Diet Coke, set the vial on the table, and folded his plump hands together. "So?"

"You neglected to tell me a few things, Mr. Waite."

"Like what?"

Such innocence
, she thought.

"An eighty-thousand-dollar consulting fee that Cooper paid you to travel to the Lost City to appraise a gold frog. That's just for starters. There was also no mention of a two-day trek into the mountains with Doug and Juan Plano to see the frog, Mr. Waite. And on top of it, you didn't bother telling me that Plano was seeking bids for the frog and that Doug set the floor at seven million. What else did you forget to mention?"

For the first time, his hubris deserted him. His skin turned the color of powdered sugar. She could see him weighing various answers in terms of their consequences to him. He rubbed the side of his face. He looked down at his artifacts, stroked one, then glanced up again. "I'd like to know who took my appointment book, Detective Scott. It disappeared the same day you paid me a visit."

He smiled a little; she felt like rubbing it out, and leaned toward him. "I don't give a good goddamn who took your appointment book, Mr. Waite. I want some answers or I'm taking you in. Those are your choices."

His cheeks puffed out. "Look here. From the beginning, I've been guilty by association. That's why I didn't say anything. Okay, Doug paid me a consulting fee. So what? That's not against the law."

"Who's Lilly?"

"I don't know."

 
"Really? You have an appointment with her on Friday night, but you don't know?"

His mouth fell open.

"Okay, let's try something else. How was the frog smuggled into the States?"

"I don't know."

"Who's Cracker?"

"A cracker, Detective Scott, is what you eat."

"Cracker, Mr. Waite, is your code name, isn't it? You're the guy who's been helping Cooper smuggle his artifacts in on this end. How'd you do it? Through some arrangement with customs because of your archaeological work? Is that it?"

He patted at his damp face with a hanky.

"You were helping him get the stuff in here, figuring it would eventually finance your foundation from now into the twenty-first century, right, Mr. Waite?"

"Detective, if you're making a formal charge, I'd like to call my attorney before I say anything else."

"Go right ahead, Mr. Waite."

"Then I'm under arrest?"

"I didn't say anything about arrest. Yet."

"Then I don't have anything else to say."

"You have twenty-four hours to think things over, Mr. Waite. I'll be back tomorrow with a warrant for your arrest unless I hear from you before then."

She got as far as the front door before a shriek from Waite's office jerked her around again. Freckle Face, who was sitting at the computer out front, had already leaped up and flown toward the hall. By the time Aline reached his office, Waite was in convulsions on the floor, Freckle Face on one side of him and another woman on the other side, and a third woman on the phone.

Waite's arms flailed, his skin turned blue. Freckle Face reached into his mouth and grabbed his tongue. He continued to buck against the floor as Aline stood paralyzed in the doorway, watching. She heard the woman on the phone say, "Anaphylactic shock." The word didn't connect with anything until a few minutes later when the paramedics had cleared the other women from the room and one of them was injecting Waite with epinephrine.

She picked up the vial. Acetohexamide (Insulin): Take one capsule three times a day with meals.

She was betting at least some of these capsules had been doctored with penicillin.

D
usk. The Saab sped north along the Old Post Road, three cars between it and Murphy's red Scirocco. Lightning sutured the sky to the east, and the warm air spilling through the sunroof smelled of rain.

The dead don't smell rain.

Not Cooper, not Plano, not Ed Waite.

Waite had died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and within an hour of his death, Bill Prentiss had the test results on the capsules: fourteen of them contained insulin and two of them, slivers of penicillin. The luck of the draw. So whoever had added the penicillin hadn't been too concerned about when Waite died, only that he would.

Kincaid pulled out to the left of the truck in front of them, then fell back. "They're still there. You want to keep following, Al?"

She shrugged. She didn't know. There was nothing out here except Eve's private little beach and the old Pleskin farmhouse. Maybe Murphy and Eve were just taking a leisurely drive. But if that was true, then what had they loaded into the trunk of Murphy's car? A picnic dinner?

She and Kincaid had been parked in the trees across the street from Eve's house for an hour before Murphy had arrived. They'd watched as Eve and Murphy had carted bags of stuff out to his car, then they'd gotten in and had headed east along the Old Post Road toward the wilderness at the northeast tip of the island. "My instinct is that we see where they're going."

"Mine says the same thing." Kincaid looked over at her. "You might be right, you know. Maybe they are planning to split. What do either of them have to lose? She has enough assets to carry them awhile, especially if they're living on the boat. And why should she stick around for a paltry fifteen grand from the estate?"

"She's still a suspect, Kincaid. She'd better stick around."

Kincaid shook his head. "You still don't get it, do you? Eve has one set of rules. Her own. That's it. If she's decided to split, she will, and the ironic thing about it is that she'll probably get away with it. I'm betting that at this point, Murphy's thinking is so muddled he's bought her plan from A to Z."

Kincaid was making it sound as if Murphy's brain was mush, that he was some sort of spineless, semi-retarded idiot whom Eve completely controlled. She said as much. Kincaid shrugged. "Everyone has a special talent, and Eve's happens to be the ability to intuit what a man's deepest need is and then meet it—at least for a while."