Coco paused in front of Maggie’s mirror and admired the new clothes, the makeup, indeed the whole new look, before turning to the red box. He opened it, lifted out the wig. Copper-blond and shoulder-length, the hair fell easily about his shoulders.
A few adjustments and there was the effect he was going for: Faye Dunaway in The Thomas Crown Affair, the casual look, not the one in the chess scenes with Steve McQueen where Faye was sheer elegance and glamour.
At least, that’s how Mother had always described this wig. Casual yet intriguing, sporty and strong. A woman who was a match for McQueen.
Coco laughed because he’d seen the movie and Mother was dead-on. Putting on tortoiseshell sunglasses to complete the Dunaway effect, he felt adventurous and naughty and very sexy when he pouted in the mirror. Coco left the mirror at last, took the canvas bag, and sauntered out of the bedroom and through the library. He paused where a portrait hung.
Maggie had been painted sitting barefoot on a sand dune at sunset. She wore jeans and a collared pink blouse, and she looked out to sea in three-quarter profile with windswept hair and an expression that suggested an awareness of her fading beauty. That’s how you’ll always be, he thought. Sitting on a coast of gold and thinking about loss.
Coco turned, leaving Maggie behind and yet forever with him in the memory of that painting. Beyond the kitchen, he checked the security system in a little room off the garage and was pleased to see it still down.
What had Maggie said? Something about a fifteen-minute reset?
Much more than I need, Coco thought, and flipped a switch that rebooted the system. Moving quicker, he went out into the garage and opened the door behind his beloved Aston Martin.
Coco got in, tied a blue scarf loosely over the wig, just as Faye had done in the famous dune-buggy scene in The Thomas Crown Affair with McQueen driving. He threw the Aston in gear and backed out into the first light of day.
The gate swung open. Coco drove out onto South Ocean Boulevard and headed north with the Aston’s top down. Salt spiced the air. The wind caused the scarf to flicker in his peripheral vision. The gathering day. The warming light.
It was like being in a movie, with Coco as the star, channeling Faye Dunaway as he drove past mansion after mansion bathed in the rising sun. He thought dreamily, You’ll all be mine someday. Mother always said so. You just have to dream it, Coco, and the whole world can be yours.
In town, he stopped for breakfast and played the Coco role to the hilt, feeding on the attention, enjoying how it made him and his audience glow. True glamour was always like that, Mother said. Beauty was a shared experience.
Getting back into the Aston Martin, Coco was confused for a moment, unsure where to go next. Then, like a homing pigeon, he relied on instincts to guide him. He drove for a while, parked the car, then walked to the door of Mize Fine Arts.
He’d spent a full night deep in the trance that was Coco, and it was only in front of the gallery that Mize realized who and where he was. Feeling suddenly weak, he fumbled with the lock before finally getting the shop door open.
Inside, he turned the dead bolt and shut down the alarm. He started through the gallery toward his office but felt so dizzy he had to stop and sit down on a stack of fine Oriental rugs in one of the alcoves. When was the last time he’d slept? A day? A day and a half? Had Coco taken all that time away?
Mize lay down, rolled slowly over onto his side, and passed out.
He had no idea how long he’d been there asleep when the sharp sound of knocking woke him. Mize looked around, dazed, then glanced in a mirror on the wall of the shop and saw the Dunaway look with nary a hair out of place.
More knocking.
Mize’s head began to pound, but he got up and walked around a corner to the front door, where a muscular guy in a white button-down shirt and a tie was peering in and pressing a police badge to the window.
Chapter
63
Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office detective Richard S. Johnson saw the woman coming to the door of Mize Fine Arts and stepped back.
The lock was thrown. The door swung open, revealing a stunningly attractive woman with flawless hair that looked copper, strawberry, and blond.
She smiled, said in a soft Southern accent, “Can I help you?”
Detective Johnson had never backed down from a fight in his life. He had been in combat six times in Afghanistan and never flinched. But he had also never done well around women in this class of beauty.
“I’m, uh, Detective Johnson, uh, Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.”
“Yes?” she asked, seeming to sense the effect she was having on him, sliding her hand up the doorjamb like some movie star.
“I’m looking for Jeffrey Mize,” Johnson said.
“He’s not here. He usually doesn’t come in for another hour or so.”
“Oh,” Johnson said. “I went by his house and he wasn’t there either.”
“He goes out for breakfast. Come back in an hour and I’m sure he’ll see you. Can I tell him what it’s about, Detective?”
“Routine, follow-up stuff on a case I’m working. And you are?”
“Coco,” she said. “I consult and appraise for Mr. Mize.”
“Can I come in and wait, Coco?”
Coco gave him an uncomfortable sigh. “Detective, I’m not an employee. I work for Mr. Mize on contract and I come in early so I can do my job when it’s quiet. Could you give me an hour? There’s a nice coffee shop down the street.”
“I’ll see you in an hour,” Johnson said.
“Unfortunately, I’ll be off by then,” Coco cooed. “But thanks, Detective.”
“You’re welcome, Coco,” he said, and walked down the sidewalk feeling like he’d been mildly hypnotized by the woman.
Johnson shook his head as he went to the coffee shop. He’d grown up in a tough part of Miami. He’d joined the Marines and done two tours in Afghanistan, and he still fell apart around certain women. He laughed when he thought of the first time he’d met his wife, Angela, how tongue-tied he’d been.
His phone rang. Detective Sergeant Drummond.
“Anything?” Drummond asked.
“I’m supposed to talk to Mize in an hour,” Johnson said. “You?”
“I chatted with Marie Purcell’s chief of staff,” the sergeant said. “She fired Francie four months ago. Suspicion of stealing rare coins.”
“Were we notified?”
“No,” Drummond said. “People like the Purcells don’t like to get police involved. They have their own security people and take care of things quietly.”
“Lot of that up here?” Johnson asked as he stood in line for coffee in a shop that had a nice vibe to it.
“I’d say so.”
“You hear from Cross?”
“On my way to pick him up,” Drummond said.
Johnson was kind of annoyed. He’d hoped to have more time with Dr. Alex Cross, pick his brain about things.
“Who’s next on your list?” the sergeant asked.
Johnson dug in his pocket for a piece of paper, studied the names, and said, “Crawford.”
“I’ll take Schultz.”
Johnson agreed and clicked off. He got an espresso shot and a mug of robust Kenyan coffee black and poured them together over ice. He read the Palm Beach Post cover to cover and made calls to the Crawford mansion and several others on the list but got nothing other than the opportunity to leave messages.
Johnson walked up to the gallery fifteen minutes early and rapped on the door. A man soon appeared. Tall, stoop-shouldered, and completely bald, he wore white slippers, baggy black trousers, a loose black shirt, and white cotton gloves.
“Detective Johnson?” he said in a deep voice. “Coco said you’d come by. Please, come in. Sorry I wasn’t here earlier, and sorry about the gloves, I’ve had a nasty allergic reaction to some lacquer remover I was experimenting with the other day.”
Johnson walked into the shop, gazed all around, sa
id, “Lot of nice stuff in here. What is it you do, sir?”
“I buy and sell things of beauty,” Mize said. “Fine art, jewelry, rugs, and furniture. What can I do for you?”
“I’m here about Francie Letourneau.”
He frowned, and Johnson noticed he had no eyebrows. No hair of any kind. What did they call that condition?
“What about Francie?” Mize asked.
“She’s dead,” Johnson said.
Mize straightened, moved a white-gloved hand toward his slack mouth, said, “Dead?”
“Murdered,” Johnson said. “Her body was found out past Belle Glade.”
“My God, that’s awful,” Mize said. “I always liked her. Well, at least until I had to fire her.”
“Over?”
“She wasn’t showing up on time and she was doing a half-assed job,” Mize replied. “And though I could never prove it, I think she was stealing things.”
“You think?”
Mize gestured all around. “Keeping track of my inventory is more an art than a science. I can’t begin to remember every piece of jewelry, for example.”
“That what you think she stole?” Johnson said. “Jewelry?”
“Yes,” Mize said. “Several pieces that were my mother’s that just weren’t anywhere one day.”
“How’d you come to hire Francie?”
“Through a service,” he sniffed. “I was told she was highly recommended.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Saw? I don’t know, five months ago, but I heard from her a few days back. She left a message on my machine at home. Can you imagine the gall?”
“What was the message?”
“She said she was sorry about any misunderstanding we’d had and was looking for her job back.”
“You return her call?”
“Certainly not, and I erased the message.”
“What day was that?”
“Saturday? Sunday?”
“Where were you Sunday?”
Mize thought about that. “Worked here the whole afternoon. Had early sushi with Coco and her sister, went home around eight, watched old movies on Netflix for a bit. The Thomas Crown Affair, have you seen it?”
“No.”
“You should. It’s very good. The original, not the remake. But anyway, after drooling over Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen, I went to sleep around ten. I like to go to bed early and get up early. You?”
“Same,” Johnson said. “Do you know Ruth Abrams or Lisa Martin?”
“After I saw the stories in the paper, I racked my brain. I’m sure I’ve met them both at one social function or another. Terrible, though.”
“Francie Letourneau worked for both women.”
“Really? Do you think she was somehow involved in their deaths? And then, what, got killed herself?”
“It’s possible,” Johnson said, and he felt his cell phone buzz.
It was Drummond again.
“Get your ass to the Crawford place,” the sergeant growled. “The missus is dead.”
Chapter
64
Detective Johnson was climbing out of his car when Sergeant Drummond pulled us up beside him and parked on Ocean Boulevard between two patrol cars flashing their blue lights.
The heat had been stupefying when I joined Drummond in the parking lot of the Hampton Inn over in West Palm, but here, so close to the beach and water, there was a beautiful shore breeze. No wonder this had been the winter spot for the super-rich for, what, more than a century? Isn’t that what the sergeant had said last night?
Before I could make sure the three beers hadn’t addled my memory, Johnson started telling Drummond about his trip to Mize Fine Arts as they walked onto the grounds of the Crawford residence, a rambling white Mediterranean with a red-tile roof. The gardens inside the gate were stunning and gave way to a waterfall in a Zen-like setting.
The house was…well, I’d never been in one like it. Then again, I don’t get the chance to roam around in Palm Beach mansions a lot. Let’s just say that every room was designed for Architectural Digest.
The kitchen was over the top, with Swedish and Finnish appliances that gleamed like they’d been installed the day before and gorgeous Italian tile work. The library looked stolen from some abbey in southern France. And the bedroom where Maggie Crawford lay was as bright as a Florida day.
I scanned the room, saw the pills, the Patrón bottle, and the tumbler on the bed stand by the blowsy woman tucked under the covers. She must have been stunning once. She could have been sleeping there had her skin not been blue.
“Let’s not be touching anything,” Drummond said. “This will be a forensics case through and through.”
I couldn’t argue with him. There was no sign of struggle. It would be up to the lab people to tell us how she died.
A deputy appeared at the door, said, “The deceased’s personal assistant is downstairs. She called it in.”
We found Candace Layne in a miserable state in that beautiful library.
“This was what everyone feared would happen,” Layne said. “It’s why John, her soon-to-be ex, left. He couldn’t watch her self-destruct anymore.”
“Drug and alcohol problems?” I asked.
Layne nodded sadly. “Deep down, despite all the money, all the beauty and good fortune, she was an insecure, anxiety-ridden person.”
“When did you last see her?” Johnson asked.
“Yesterday around five thirty,” she said.
“Would you have been the last person to see her alive?”
“I would think so,” Layne said. “She had no plans for the evening. She was going to read and watch a movie.”
Drummond asked Layne if she knew the other three dead women, the two socialites and Francie Letourneau. When Layne responded by asking the sergeant if he thought Maggie Crawford had been murdered, he told her he was just covering all the bases. Layne said she’d fired Letourneau after Maggie caught her stealing silver. She’d e-mailed the personal assistants of Ruth Abrams and Lisa Martin but never met them.
“Did Mrs. Crawford run in their circle?” Drummond asked.
“Same fund-raisers, that kind of thing,” Layne said, nodding.
Even though we had no conclusive evidence that Maggie Crawford had been murdered, in my mind the four killings were linked. Three socialites, all using the same Haitian maid at some point. Three socialites and the maid now dead. This was no coincidence, which meant that there was a missing link, some factor that tied them all together.
“How long have you worked for her?” I asked.
“Five years next month,” Layne said sadly.
“Would you know if some of her things were missing?” Johnson said. “Like jewelry? Clothes?”
Layne nodded. “I think so. Do you want me to look?”
“We’ll wait until the forensics folks do their thing,” Drummond said. “Tell me about her.”
“Maggie?” Layne said, then thought. “Most of the time she was the kindest, funniest, most generous person you could ever meet, a real joy to work for. But sometimes, when her mind was altered, she was a tyrant, a little rich girl who wanted what she wanted right now. And even when she was sober, she often had this kind of…I don’t know…melancholy or wanting about her. There, you can see it in her expression in that painting over there.”
Layne gestured toward an oil painting of Maggie Crawford, barefoot, dressed in jeans and a pink blouse. She was sitting on a sand dune with sea grass around her, caught in three-quarter profile as she looked out toward the ocean. I walked over to study it, saw the expression the personal assistant had been talking about.
“That’s a big thing among the super-rich, right?” Johnson said behind me. “You know, getting your portrait painted?”
“I don’t know; I suppose so,” Layne said.
“Ruth Abrams and Lisa Martin had portraits done of them,” Drummond said, coming over to examine the painting. “Coco.”
&nbs
p; “What?” Johnson said.
“Right here in the corner,” the sergeant said. “It’s signed Coco.”
“I have no idea who that is,” Layne said.
“Oh, I think I might,” Johnson said. “I met a Coco just this morning.”
Chapter
65
Starksville, North Carolina
Around four o’clock that afternoon, Bree walked along the railroad tracks where she’d seen Finn Davis give a three-finger salute to six young men riding freight cars on a train heading north.
“What are we looking for?” Naomi said.
“I don’t know,” Bree said. “And unfortunately, neither did your client.”
She and Naomi had come to the tracks in a long roundabout way from the jail, where they’d been able to talk with Stefan Tate for roughly thirty minutes. When she asked him about his suspicions regarding the trains, he said he’d overheard a couple of stoners at the high school talking about drugs and the track. He decided to follow one of them.
“Lester Michaels, a senior, one of those kids who lived to get high. I saw him jump a freight train. He didn’t come back to school for two days. When I asked him about the absence, he said he’d been sick, but I talked with his mother. She’d been ready to file a missing-person report on him.”
“You ever see any other people riding on the trains?” Bree had asked.
“No,” Stefan admitted. “I sat down there a few nights, watching, but trains come through Starksville twenty-four/seven.”
“I’ve been lucky, then,” Bree said. “I’ve seen guys on boxcars twice since I’ve been here, and both times they gave somebody on the ground a three-finger salute. You know anything about that?”
Stefan thought a moment, then nodded. “I’ve seen a few kids at the school use something like that, I think.”
“Names?” Naomi asked.
“I don’t know,” Stefan said. “I think they were Patty’s students. Where is she? She hasn’t come to see me or answered my calls.”