The sergeant said, “I know the guys who own that funeral home. The Belchers. They run an ambulance service there too. When I was on patrol in the west part of the county, they’d show up at all the fatalities. I’ll make a call.”
“I’d appreciate that, Sergeant Drummond.”
Drummond nodded, gestured to the books. “There’s the murders we’re working on. We’d appreciate the third eyeball if you have the time.”
The sergeant returned to his office. I started scanning the files on the deaths of the socialites Lisa Martin and Ruth Abrams and their maid Francie Letourneau. Two hours later, I was almost finished and flipping my way through the appendix of reports on the cleaning woman when Drummond returned.
“Took a bit to get in touch with him, but Ramon Belcher is working night duty and he said he’d go through the files for you,” the sergeant said.
“Thanks,” I said.
Johnson returned to the cubicle with more coffee. I waved it off, said, “Any more of that without something to eat and I’ll get an ulcer.”
Drummond said, “You find anything in there?”
“I saw a few things.”
“What do you like to eat?”
“Anything. Seafood.”
The sergeant nodded. “Got just the place down in Lake Worth. Johnson, are you in? We can talk about our case over dinner.”
“Absolutely,” Johnson said. “My wife’s pregnant. Let me just call her.”
“Pregnant?” Drummond said. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“Still early, Sarge,” Johnson said, digging out his phone and walking away. “End of the first trimester. Twins.”
The sergeant frowned, looked at me. “I would have liked to have learned that sooner.”
“It matter?” I asked.
“Course it matters,” Drummond grumbled. “As it stands now, I will do everything I can to keep Detective Johnson from screwing himself into harm’s way and depriving those babies of their father.”
“You’re a man of hidden virtues, Sergeant,” I said.
He looked at me with that slack, scarred face, said, “That’s not virtue, just common sense. It’s just me and my wife, and she’s got a good job that pays better than mine. But Johnson’s got three people depending on him now. Do the math. Tell me where my priorities should be when the shit hits the fan.”
Crusty as he was, Sergeant Drummond was beginning to grow on me.
Chapter
56
Pleasant Lake, North Carolina
Pinkie Parks gestured through the windshield to a gravel lane ahead that cut off the highway and dropped steeply to the lake. “There it is.”
Bree pulled the blue Ford Taurus she’d rented that morning over onto the shoulder and put it in park.
“Not much to see from here,” Pinkie said. “You’d want to be in the woods.”
Bree picked up a pair of binoculars and said, “Then let’s go into the woods.”
Once Pinkie learned that Alex had gone to Florida and that Bree was focusing on Marvin Bell and Finn Davis, he’d insisted on helping her. But now he raised his eyebrow, said, “You looking to kick a hornet’s nest?”
She frowned. “These woods are known for hornets?”
“These woods are known for Marvin Bell and Finn Davis, which is the same thing, way I see it.”
“Suit yourself,” Bree said, opening the door. “I’ll be back.”
Pinkie groaned but got out as well. It was hazy, hot, and humid. They waited until traffic died and then cut down the steep embankment and entered a thorny raspberry thicket. Pinkie led the way, clawing through it until they emerged into piney woods where crickets were sawing.
Below them and out several hundred yards, Bree could see the clean waters of Pleasant Lake. She heard outboard motors and kids laughing.
Pinkie went down a game path that led through the trees growing on the slope above the lake’s eastern shore. Bree followed, her brain going back to everything they’d learned that morning about Marvin Bell and Finn Davis.
After renting the car, she and Pinkie had gone to the Stark County Recorder’s Office and gotten online with the North Carolina secretary of state’s office, looking into the two men’s business interests. Together and individually, Bell and Davis owned five businesses in and around Starksville: a liquor store, a dry-cleaning shop, two automated car washes, and a pawn-and-loan operation.
Pinkie smartly noted that all five businesses would generate and bring in a lot of cash. Convenient if you’re also involved in some sort of illegal cash-intensive business.
But Bree had zero jurisdiction here. She couldn’t get to databases that might give her a look at the businesses’ bank accounts.
On a whim, Bree accessed public databases in Nevada and Delaware because both states had incorporation and tax laws that made them attractive for people interested in creating shell companies. Though there was nothing in Nevada, she was pleased to find that Marvin Bell and Finn Davis were listed as registered agents of six Delaware companies, three apiece. All six corporations had been organized for the purpose of “real estate acquisition and development.”
Which, in a roundabout way, led Bree to look up their real estate holdings in Stark County. To her and Pinkie’s surprise, neither man appeared to own any property in the area.
Pinkie said that simply wasn’t true, that Bell owned all sorts of property in Stark County, beginning with an estate on Pleasant Lake. When they looked up the lakefront property, they found it was owned by one of Marvin Bell’s Delaware companies and carried an assessed value of $3.1 million, which made Bree want to see the place.
Alex had told her to hang back, to stay to the outside, but Bree wasn’t planning to climb over the fence Marvin Bell had around his compound. She just wanted to look over it, get a sense of how the man lived.
Pinkie motioned to Bree to stop. She did, next to a young, fat pine tree that smelled of sap and blocked her view of the lake.
Looking over his shoulder, Pinkie whispered, “If you get low, slide around in front of me, and stay in the shadows, you should get a good look at it without being seen.”
Bree got down on her hands and knees. Pinkie pressed into the wall of pines there and let her pass. She twisted into a sitting position and used her feet to scoot herself sideways out into a shadowy slot in the trees.
A hundred vertical feet below Bree and one hundred yards closer to the lake was the gravel lane and the gate, which was tall, ten feet, anyway, and the chain-link fence was shrink-wrapped in green vinyl. Bree swept the binoculars along the top of the fence, making out coiled razor wire that had also been shrink-wrapped green.
Tiny cameras were mounted on posts to either side of the gate. There were other cameras on posts every forty yards or so before the fence was swallowed by dense vegetation. She assumed the cameras continued on around the six-acre perimeter and turned her attention to the compound.
Rhododendrons had been planted along the interior of the fence, no doubt to block the view from the gravel lane. But this high above the fence and the bushes, Bree had close to a bird’s-eye view of Marvin Bell’s domain, which featured a small lagoon at her left and a blunt point of flat land that jutted out into the main lake. Set back from the point on a knoll to the right of the lagoon and facing the lake stood the main house, a ten-thousand-square-foot log mansion with a red steel roof and matching shutters.
A beautiful stone terrace with gardens above the lagoon complemented the house. Three stone walkways flared out from a second terrace in front of the mansion, one going to the point, one to a boathouse to the left of the point, and one to a six-bay dock system to the right with lifts that held a fleet of Sea-Doos, motorboats, canoes, and sailboats. There was a bar and a huge barbecue built right into the dock along with lounge chairs and umbrellas.
Out on the point itself stood a miniature version of the main house from which, Bree imagined, the views must be incredible. She could see through several of the large and dramat
ic windows into the main building and could tell no expense had been spared on the interior. And there was art everywhere—paintings, sculptures, and mobiles.
The place looked like it was worth $3.1 million, no doubt, which raised her suspicions even further. In Bree’s mind, owning some small businesses in Starksville, North Carolina, did not get you a home worth upwards of three million dollars. She supposed Bell could have been successful in the stock market, or maybe one of those Delaware real estate investment companies had gone large.
But if so, why would Marvin Bell stay here? The property looked like a little piece of heaven, she admitted, but didn’t people who hit big money like to show it off in more trendy places?
Maybe Marvin Bell was just a homebody, like Warren Buffett. Or maybe he had a reason to stay here despite the wealth. Maybe he had crucial business to attend to.
Before she could weigh those options, Bree caught motion and swung the binoculars to see Finn Davis exiting the mansion. The rest of the estate was quiet and empty. The only sounds—kids laughing, a distant outboard motor—came from well down the shore.
Wearing dark sunglasses, a dirty ball cap, a green work shirt, jeans, and heavy boots, Finn Davis moved in an easy saunter around the circular driveway to a five-bay log garage. He pressed a remote control. A door raised, revealing an old orange-and-white Ford Bronco.
Where was he going in that heap? Looked totally out of place on…
Bree rolled out of her sitting position, scooted back behind the pines, and jumped up.
“We have to get back to the car,” she whispered to Pinkie. “Fast!”
Chapter
57
Lake Worth, Florida
Detective Sergeant Drummond parked outside the Kersmon Caribbean Restaurant, and the three of us went in. Althea, the owner and cook, saw Drummond and rushed out from behind a counter to hug him, laughing.
“You leave your old lady for me yet, Drummond?” Althea asked in a Jamaican accent.
“You know she’s one in a million,” the sergeant replied.
“I do,” Althea said. “Just checking to see if you’d lost your mind since I last saw you.”
Drummond introduced us, and she found us a seat in the small restaurant.
“Something to drink?” Althea asked. “Red Stripe?”
Johnson looked at Drummond, who said, “You’re off duty. Don’t mind me.”
“Red Stripe,” Johnson said.
“Make it two,” I said.
Drummond said, “Don’t bother with menus, Althea. Just bring us what you think we should be eating. Some of it should be fish.”
That seemed to make her happy, and she went off.
“You’ll be ruined for Jamaican food for life,” Drummond said. “I’m not kidding. Half the customers are from the Caribbean.”
“I won’t be able to tell my wife,” I said. “She loves Jamaica. Me too.”
“Yeah?” Drummond said. “I’m fond of it myself.”
I looked at Johnson, wanting to include him. “You ready to be a dad, Detective?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were you?” Drummond asked me. “Ready?”
“No,” I said. “All I knew was I didn’t want to be like my father.”
“That work out?”
“Pretty much,” I said, and turned back to Johnson. “Don’t worry. You just sort of grow into the job, day by day.”
The beers came. So did small bowls of what Althea called fish tea, which was delicious, along with a basket of fresh zucchini bread, which was also delicious. No way I was telling Bree about this place.
“So, did you see anything we missed, Dr. Cross?” Johnson asked.
“Call me Alex,” I said. “And I don’t think you missed anything, but there are a few things I’m not clear on and a few things you might consider.”
“Okay…” Drummond said.
“Just to make sure we’re all on the same page,” I said. “You’ve got Lisa Martin and Ruth Abrams, wealthy socialites killed within a week of each other and made to look like suicides.”
“That’s right,” Johnson said.
“Friends?”
“Apparently so,” the sergeant said.
“Beyond that, they shared the same maid, Francie Letourneau, who stole jewelry from both women before being murdered herself.”
“Correct,” Johnson said. “We got confirmation from the husbands on pictures we showed them of several jewelry pieces found at Francie’s apartment.”
“Francie told the bar owner in Belle Glade—”
Althea returned with a tray. Fried plantains. Rice and black beans. Oxtail stew. And a whole steamed and spiced grouper. Definitely not telling Bree.
We dug in. The oxtail was simply incredible. So was the grouper. So were the second and third Red Stripes. I’d forgotten how easily they go down.
Once we were into second helpings, I said, “Francie told the bar owner in the Glade she was coming to Palm Beach for a job interview the day she died.”
“That’s right,” Drummond said. “Only we haven’t found a damn thing to say she ever made it to Palm. She just disappears.”
“No phone calls?”
“Her cell phone’s missing, but we found the account,” Johnson said. “I made a request yesterday for all calls in the last three months. We’ll probably hear tomorrow sometime.”
“Other thoughts?” Drummond asked.
“Yes. I think you should focus on the links and chains between the victims, and extrapolate from there.”
Johnson looked confused, so I said, “You want to isolate each thing that connects them. So, say, focus first on Francie as the common-denominator link in what we’ll call the socialites chain. Under this scenario, the maid could have killed them both to rip off their jewelry and then was killed herself by a third party who got wind of the jewels she was holding.”
“I could see that,” Drummond said, dishing a third helping of oxtail onto his plate.
“What’s the second link?” Johnson asked. “Or chain?”
“The socialite friendship,” I said. “Maybe Francie was working for a third socialite, was in the process of robbing her, and someone caught her, killed her, dumped her.”
Johnson shook his head. “From the files I went through at her apartment, Francie had been on hard times, lost all of her cleaning jobs.”
“Before she hit the Lotto?”
“Correct.”
“So maybe there was no Lotto hit,” I said. “Maybe the jewels were the explanation behind her newfound money. And maybe she wasn’t going to Palm Beach for an interview on the day she died; maybe she was going to kill someone and steal more jewels.”
Chapter
58
Sergeant Drummond thought about that, said, “We’ll call the Lotto.”
“I’d be calling past clients too,” I said. “See if any of them are missing jewelry. I mean, there were jewelry pieces the Abramses and Martins couldn’t identify in your photographs, right?”
“True,” Johnson said between mouthfuls.
Drummond’s cell phone rang. He pulled it out, looked at it, said, “Sorry, gentlemen, but I have to take this.”
He got up, leaving me with Johnson, who said, “There’s another possibility, you know.”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Maybe Francie was the jewel thief, but she wasn’t the killer,” the young detective said. “Maybe she went to rob someone and surprised the killer.”
“You mean in the act of trying to murder a third socialite?”
“Why not?”
“Any reports of assaulted socialites?”
“Not that I know of,” Johnson said.
“Dessert?” Althea came over and said.
“I’m stuffed,” I said.
She frowned at me, said, “I make it from scratch.”
I held up my hands. “I’ll make room.”
“Sweet potato pudding,” she said, smiling. “Coffee? Tea?”
> “I’ll take a coffee,” I said.
“I will too, Althea,” said Drummond, sliding back into his chair.
“I have to be going,” Johnson said. “Can we get the check?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Drummond said. “I’ve got you both covered.”
“Let me take my part of it,” I said.
“Visiting dignitary, I don’t think so,” the sergeant sniffed.
Johnson got up, said, “Again, it was great meeting you, Alex.”
“Likewise,” I said, getting to my feet and shaking his hand.
“See you in the morning, Sarge.”
“Bright and early,” Drummond grumbled.
Our coffee and pudding came. I didn’t know sweet potato pudding could be decadent, but it was.
The sergeant took a sip of coffee, said, “So all we’ve been doing is talking about our case. What is someone like you working on these days?”
I hesitated, then started telling him about my cousin Stefan, and Starksville, and all the strange twists the case had taken in the few days we’d been there. Through it all, Drummond listened intently and quietly, sipping his coffee and eating pudding.
It took me the better part of an hour to tell it all, and with the beers in me, I probably said more than I should have. But Drummond was a good listener, and it just seemed natural.
“And that’s where we are,” I said.
After several beats, the sergeant said, “You like this guy Marvin Bell for killing that kid, but I don’t hear anything that says you got him involved.”
“Because we don’t have him involved,” I said. “Like everyone in Starksville says, he’s a slippery guy.”
Drummond shifted his jaw left and nodded, lost in thought. Then he said, “I’ve known my share of slippery guys. Trick is to let them get so slippery they get overconfident and they—”
His cell phone rang. He looked at it, shook his head, said, “Sorry again.”
The sergeant got up and walked away, and I finished my coffee, thinking that I’d better find a place to stay the evening. Althea brought the check, which was incredibly reasonable considering the quality of the meal.