Cross Justice (25 page)

“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.”

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.”

“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.”

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.”

Bree said nothing.

Naomi said, “I’m sure she’s just under a lot of stress.”

“Or bailing on me,” Stefan said in a fretful tone.

Bree and Naomi had tried to assure him otherwise. But after they’d left the jail, they’d gone by Patty Converse’s place. Her car was gone, but from what they’d been able to see through the window, her stuff was still inside. Naomi had tried Patty’s phone number several times, but got voice mail.

So they’d come back to the railroad tracks around four that afternoon.

A train rumbled at them out of the south. Bree and Naomi walked well back from the tracks in order to see the tops of the freight cars. But they were all bare of riders, even the caboose. Another train came a few minutes later out of the north. It too was riderless.

“I’m thinking this is a little bit like the needle in the haystack,” Naomi said. “I mean, we can’t watch all day.”

Bree thought about that, looked around, and then back toward the thicket of trees between the tracks and the Piggly Wiggly parking lot. The trees overlooking the tracks triggered a memory of Ali watching some show on the Outdoor Channel the other day.

“Is there a store here that carries hunting and fishing gear?” Bree asked.

“There’s an army-surplus place that does, I think.”

They were soon back in the car, driving west of town to P and J’s Surplus. They went in and were greeted with several Confederate flags on the wall.

Bree ignored them and found the only salesperson, a heavyset white girl in her midteens named Sandrine. She looked at Bree suspiciously and at Naomi with mild interest.

“I seen you in the papers and on TV,” Sandrine said to her. “You’re defending that kid killer, right?”

“I’m Mr. Tate’s attorney,” Naomi said.

“You’re following the case?” Bree asked.

She shrugged. “Papa says I shouldn’t pay attention to any of it.”

“Why’s that?”

“Just niggers killing niggers, he says. No offense. I’m just quoting.”

Sandrine said this offhandedly. Bree swallowed her reaction by wondering how many people in and around Starksville thought about the case like that.

Naomi managed to stay composed as well, said, “We’re here looking for something to buy.”

“Yeah?” Sandrine said, perking up. “What’re you looking for?”

Bree told her, and the girl came waddling and smiling right out from behind her little counter. “We got it all at P and J’s! Got six of them in just the other day. How many you want?”

Bree thought and then said, “We’ll start with two.”

BURNING CANE FILLED
the air with smoke again as I drove toward Belle Glade, wanting to be there and in Palm Beach and in Starksville all at once.

It was five twenty in the evening. I’d spent the day with Drummond and Johnson, who’d quickly reached staff at both the Abrams and Martin residences and confirmed that Coco had painted the women’s portraits. None of the staff knew who Coco was, however, much less where she lived.

Maggie Crawford’s estranged husband, John, was fishing in Alaska. The Boob King had been in surgery all day and was unreachable. So was Elliot Martin, Lisa Martin’s billionaire husband, who was in Shanghai on business.

They’d left messages with all their aides. On the way to Mize Fine Arts on Worth Avenue, Johnson called up the Internet on his phone and ran a search for a Coco in Palm Beach and the surrounding areas. There was no such listing.

Then we’d found Mize Fine Arts closed during prime shopping hours, and no one answered our knocking.

“I’d like to go in there and look around,” Johnson said as we turned away.

“I’m sure you would,” Drummond said. “But I don’t think a name on three paintings gives us a search warrant. And that looks like a serious alarm system. You wouldn’t be able to explain yourself if you were somehow caught inside.”

When I looked at Drummond, he winked at me.

We went to Mize’s home. It must have been a grand place once, not huge like the megamansions out on Ocean Boulevard, but an impressive structure. The front yard and gardens were nicely maintained. But the manor itself needed painting. And up close, you could see the front door required varnishing, and the stucco siding was in minor disrepair.

Drummond rang the bell. There was no answer. He rang it again.

I wandered around the side and into the shadows between the house and a bamboo hedge that separated it from the place next door. The walkway was busted concrete overgrown with weeds. The backyard was worse, looked like it hadn’t been tended in months. A gutter downspout was disconnected halfway down from the roof. The lower part hung by a bracket.

“If he’s in there, he’s not answering,” Drummond said when I returned.

“I’d check the tax rolls on this guy,” I said.

“Why’s that?”

“He’s not taking care of his property, which means he’s under financial stress of some sort.”

Drummond called in a request for all information on Jeffrey Mize as we returned to the car.

“We’ll have to sit on the place,” Johnson said.

“And the art gallery,” I said. “Sooner or later, Mize or Coco will show up.”

Because Johnson was the only one who had seen Coco in person, he went to watch the shop. Drummond and I sat on the house until it was time for me to go learn what had become of my father.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for,” the sergeant said before I left.

Driving north out of Belle Glade an hour later, there was a bug hatch, and so many insects smashed into the windshield that it stayed smeared no matter how much wiper fluid I used. Near the Pahokee city limits, I stopped to fill up with gas and clean off the windshield, then I drove into town, seeing signs about the high school football team.

Drummond said the high school teams at Pahokee and Belle Glade always ranked among the top teams in the state and together had put almost sixty players in the NFL. Pretty impressive when you consider the economic devastation. There were fewer businesses in Pahokee than there’d been in Belle Glade.