The Ice Maiden (21 page)

“Fine.” I lied through my teeth. “Couldn't be better.”

“When do you think we'll get to see it?”

“Soon,” I promised, digging myself in deeper.

“Got a complaint.” He looked perplexed.

Uh-oh. Had Connie Burch visited him too?

“The woman,” he said, confirming my fears.

Oh, shit, I thought, why me? “I'm taking out all references to him as a family man,” I said quickly.

Morganstern regarded me quizzically, big dark eyes sad.

“C. J., K. C., something like that,” he mumbled into his mustache. “The one with the initials, the lieutenant. Said you interfered with an investigation, got in the way, created a problem.”

“Oh, her,” I said.

“I promised to handle it.”

“Oh?” I gazed up at him, heart sinking.

“You must be doing one hell of a job.” He smiled. “Keep up the good work. I can't wait to see it.” He started to meander away, then turned. “She'll still go along with the cover shot at the ice house, won't she?”

“No problem,” I assured him. “You know how cops are.”

He smiled again and nodded.

 

“I tell you, Lottie, Burch's wife was homicidal,” I said later, at the hospital. “If I were him, I'd leave my gun at the office.”

“Has to be hormones,” she said, nodding, as we chatted across Ryan's bed. “Raging hormones. Poor thang. I've been there. I surge right outa PMS into cycle syndrome, then crash into postmenstrual syndrome. My hormones only operate on normal for about three hours a month.

“The power surges and the rage? You've seen me. Did I tell you what I did to that guy in traffic the other day? Didn't even try to cut me off, but I suspected he mighta been thinking about it. Sometimes I think I'm gonna explode, and I need chocolate, lots of chocolate, or I will die. Then I see a warm and fuzzy telephone company commercial about reaching out to touch someone, and it makes me cry—”

“I love listening to women talk,” Ryan murmured weakly.

“We love to have you listen.” I kissed his feverish cheek. His medication had made him queasy.

“We can break you outa here tonight,” Lottie whispered conspiratorially, “smuggle you to Sunny's opening. We can stuff pillows under your blanket. Sneak you back in later. Betcha they'll never even miss you.”

He shook his head, eyes serious. “Nurse Nancy keeps tabs. She's coming back with a pizza when her shift ends.

“It's great about you and McDonald, Britt,” he said, as we left. “I'm happy for you.”

“Me too,” I said, blowing him a kiss. “It's the real deal this time.”

 

McDonald, immersed in budget hell, had promised to meet me at the opening. The gallery was crowded. Ele
gantly dressed and well-heeled members of the cultural community mingled with South Beach's colorful and flamboyant creatures of the night, all drinking champagne and sampling hors d'oeuvres. Sunny looked beautiful. No one would ever suspect she'd had cold feet and considered not even showing up. She wore a gauzy long-sleeved white tunic over silk slacks, her blond hair swept up and back from her classic face. The gallery operator and another local art critic had her in tow, introducing her to the right people.

Nazario mingled as well, eyes rarely off her. Stone, dapper in a three-button suit and mock turtleneck, was chatting up the arts with guests who never suspected he was a cop. Burch stood alone in a corner, watching. I glimpsed what he was watching for when Sunny's parents arrived. The detective and Maureen focused on each other instantly, despite the crowd, their glances guarded. It's true, I thought. Surely her husband must know or suspect.

Perhaps that's why the doctor looked uncomfortable. He greeted me warmly, clasped my hand, and asked if I'd seen Tyler. I hadn't, and began to worry. Was Sunny's kid brother lurking out there somewhere in the vicinity of my car?

Maureen and Sunny embraced. Dr. Hartley pumped Nazario's hand as Tyler suddenly did appear, a flashy young girl on his arm. A photographer snapped the happy group together, freezing their images in time.

“How lovely,” the gallery owner crowed, the ever-present little dog under her arm, as she, Lottie, and I watched. “You'd never know he was so against it.”

“Who?” I said.

“Sunny's father, the doctor,” she said. “After the invitations went out, he called to object. He was unhappy about the show and the publicity. Can you imagine?”

“I guess he's very protective,” I said. “Worried about his daughter's privacy.”

“He'd better get used to it,” Lottie drawled. “Everybody seems to love her work.”

As Sunny was spirited away to meet more VIPs, I encountered Tyler in the crowd. He looked flushed, as though he'd been drinking. “Last time I saw you,” he said, “you were waiting for a tow truck.”

“Thanks to you,” I said.

He did a double take. “Me?”

“Yes. My tire was slashed.”

“And you think that I…?” He looked truly startled and offended. “Hey, I may be a prick, but I'm no son-of-a-bitch.”

I was about to pursue the distinction when his date—who had pouty lips and a short cropped top that exposed her navel—found him, caught his hand, and dragged him off.

McDonald showed up and we gravitated across the crowded room to each other like heat-seeking missiles. If the other detectives were surprised to see us together in a social setting, they didn't show it. The enthusiastic crowd eventually dwindled, departing for dinner or local nightspots. Sunny's mother hugged her goodbye, their two blond heads close together.

“I'm sure you want to spend time with your friends tonight,” I heard her say. “And Daddy has an early surgery.”

I glanced around as they left, but Burch was gone.

The glowing gallery operator pronounced the evening “an absolute triumph, a huge success!” To celebrate, six of us—Nazario and Sunny, McDonald and me, and Lottie with a
Vanity Fair
magazine writer she met at the opening—repaired to the nearby South Beach club where Sunny's neighbor, Jimmy, played in the band.

Sunny actually got a drum roll on arrival. Excited and elated, she was more talkative than I'd seen before. “It was good to see Craig Burch again,” she said, sipping more champagne. “He's aged. I almost didn't recognize him.”

“I think he has a crush on your mother,” I said. “Did you see how he looked at her tonight?”

“Old news,” she murmured. “It's mutual. My parents used to fight about it. I even fantasized about her dumping my father and Craig Burch being my stepdad someday. I think she did, too. But she never had the guts.”

“Wow. She actually considered divorce?”

She nodded. “She even left once, but dad got her back. He's a control freak, a manipulator. He controls her, controls Tyler; he'd control me if I let him. That's one reason I escaped to Italy and then never moved back home. He never liked any of my friends or any choice I made. He didn't even like poor Ricky, whom everybody really loved. He was such a neat kid.”

Nazario took her to the dance floor. Her arms around his neck, slow dancing, they were oblivious when McDonald whispered something that made my pupils dilate and took my hand, and we left.

 

“Won't it be nice,” he said, buttoning his shirt before dawn, “when I don't have to leave, because when we wake up together, we'll be home.”

“Our home.” I smiled and nodded back to sleep. The dream overtook my bliss like a horror movie scenario. Terrified people fleeing a deadly dark cloud of smoke and debris from a collapsing tower. Hellish blackness accelerating behind them as they ran for their lives. Then that face in the crowd. The young woman who walked as others ran. More and more slowly as screaming people streamed around her, until they were gone. And the blackness was no longer smoke, but a towering dark and angry sea. Alone, hair whipping in the fierce wind, she stopped to turn, about to embrace the evil gaining on her. Run! Run! I tried to scream. She haunted me still. But in this dream the woman who walked into the dark sea was Sunny.

Too much champagne, I thought, my visions of disaster now accompanied by a throbbing headache. I pulled on shorts and a T-shirt and jogged to the boardwalk. Running on the boards bounced my brain against my aching skull, so I ran beside the sea instead, on hard-packed sand at surf's edge. Laughing seagulls gliding overhead, the dramatic pink and gold morning sky, and a lilting breeze off the water all lifted my spirits as I bobbed and weaved to thwart the incoming waves in foamy pursuit of my running shoes. I stopped to snatch up a shiny shell tumbling in the surf. A perfect cowrie, speckled and exotic. My Aunt Odalys used them to divine the future. I thought of calling her but dismissed the idea. I knew my future. Sighing with happiness, I yearned to immerse myself in the
warm salt water. Mornings like this recharged the batteries of my soul. I wished McDonald were there to share it.

 

I showered and then scanned the morning paper over coffee. In a follow-up to his story on the state's early-prison-release program, Janowitz had listed the names, crimes, and original sentences of released convicts from Miami.

I spotted Edgar's name, Onnie's husband, along with a few others I recognized, then gasped aloud. Ronald Stokes. Mad Dog. Free! He must have known when I was there. That accounted for his smug, arrogant attitude.

I lunged for the phone, hit star 67 to keep my name and number off her caller ID, and asked for Shelby when a man answered.

“She's not here,” he said gruffly, children crying in the background.

“When do you expect her?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Alice Courtney. I'm a guidance counselor at Banyan Elementary,” I lied.

“Don't know where she's at,” he said, and hung up abruptly.

I dialed the squad. Stone answered.

“Did you hear?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said grimly. “Got a copy of the report this morning.”

“What report? You mean the story in the newspaper?”

“Let's start over,” he said patiently. “You first. Tell
me what you're talking about, then I'll tell you what I'm talking about.”

“Mad Dog got early release. He's out! Probably here in Miami, God knows where. The last thing he said to me was to tell Sunny he'd see her again, soon.”

“Why do you think we were all there last night? The art world isn't exactly our milieu.”

“You knew? Why didn't you tell me?”

“Excuse me. Who said we had to brief you on everything? We're actively looking for him, to have a chat. Keep missing him by minutes. Helluva thing, they're all scot free, with no supervision, no control, no nothing.”

“Did Sunny know that's why you were all there?”

“No. She doesn't want protection, thinks she has nothing to fear because she's not working with us. Maybe she's right.”

“Now,” I said. “Your turn. What were you talking about?”

“Shelby Fountain, Mad Dog's sister. She's missing.”

“Missing?”

“Walked to church for choir practice night before last. Hasn't been seen since, her husband says. When she didn't come home, he found out she never showed at the church. Filed the report last night. Missing Persons copies them to Homicide. I saw it this morning.”

Dread curdled the coffee in my stomach. “That was only a few hours after I talked to her. She had to get off the phone in a hurry. She'd never leave her kids without a damn good reason,” I said, truly alarmed. “You think her own brother would hurt her? Or Reverend Wright?”

“Not a clue. Let me know ASAP if you hear from her,” he said.

While I'd been happily drinking champagne at Sunny's reception, Shelby was alone in the dark somewhere, like that scared little girl so many years ago.

I checked the office for messages. Two from Abby Wells.

“My husband's been very upset, because you keep leaving messages,” she said.

“Has Cubby heard from Mad Dog?” I asked.

She hesitated. “I think Charles has been talking to him.”

“And what about his sister, Shelby?”

“I think I met her at the funeral home,” she said.

“That's her,” I said. “She's missing. Disappeared the night before last, on her way to church. She has children.”

“That's terrible, she seemed so nice. What could have happened to her?”

“Maybe Cubby has a clue.”

“I doubt that. He's been upset. Two detectives came up here to talk to him. He hasn't gone to work since. What's going on?”

“Do you know what he told the detectives?”

“The same thing he told you. He didn't—they didn't—kill or rape anybody. He finally refused to speak with them anymore. My God, this is all so horrible! He drove down to Miami to talk to his old friends and came back even more upset.”

“What about the Reverend Wright?”

“He's been calling as well. Was with them the other day. What's going on?” she pleaded.

“You love him, Abby. You're the only one with his best interests at heart. It's time to convince him to tell everything he knows.”

“He was so young then, Ms. Montero. I'm sure that if anyone got hurt it wasn't intended; he wouldn't, he couldn't have—”

“Somebody did.”

“I'll talk to him. I promise.”

 

Lottie, Onnie, Janowitz, and I visited Ryan. The news was good: The doctors had balanced his medication and he felt better. Onnie had her restraining order and had pleaded with her former mother-in-law to intercede with Edgar. So far so good.

I left the hospital and drove toward home, listening to music, Kendall McDonald on my mind, telling myself that someday soon all would again be right with the world. A flock of night birds flew in a darkening sky, my spirit soaring with them.

Flashing red lights ahead, on the Boulevard, brought me back to Planet Earth with a thud. I killed the music and switched on my dashboard scanner. A minor accident, no serious injuries. Headed home, I locked in on the Beach frequency. The usual: a brawl spilling out of a South Beach club into the street, shoplifters on Lincoln Road, and a pedestrian hit on Collins Avenue. A hazardous-materials squad reported that it had identified the contents of a suspicious envelope reported by a jittery homeowner as a free soap-powder sample. The first officer at the scene of a 45, a dead body, came on the air excited, to change the signal to a 31, a homicide. The address, an old hotel in North Beach.

I took my foot off the gas reflexively and swerved north, my mind racing.

The twenty-minute drive took ten, while garbled radio transmissions confirmed my worst fears. Homicide was en route. One victim: an apparent tenant in the building. No next of kin was present.

Three patrol cars and a growing knot of curious neighbors and passersby out front. I abandoned the T-Bird in a loading zone and ran into the building.

The door to Sunny's apartment stood wide open. A young police officer stopped me.

“Hey, Britt, you can't go in there.”

I turned to argue and saw the corpse on the stairs.