Eclipse (7 page)

‘Really?'

She heard the startled note in Sam's voice.

‘Young enough to be my son,' she reassured him, even if it was not strictly true. ‘He'd had a shock, needed a drink. I needed food. He's a photographer, keen to be a photojournalist, and he was very interested in your occupation. I told him nothing, obviously, except that I wanted to get back to my hotel to talk to you.'

‘OK, I'm convinced,' Sam said. ‘Though he must have thought his birthday had come early, having his life saved by a sexy blonde.'

‘I told you, he's young.'

‘Young men have eyes too.'

‘So they do,' she agreed, and tried not to think about poor Mildred.

‘As a matter of fact, you'll recall that I have a young and rather beautiful woman coming to spend the evening with me,' Sam said, staying upbeat.

‘So you do,' Grace said. ‘Your gorgeous young diva.'

‘To be honest,' Sam said, ‘I could do without it.'

‘It'll be fun,' Grace said. ‘And good for the production.'

‘I'll think of you,' he told her, ‘asleep in your Swiss bed.'

‘And I'll think of you,' she said, ‘coaching Carmen.'

Magda had finished work for the evening when her appointments line rang.

She let it go to voicemail, screening.

It was Beatriz Delgado, calling to make another appointment for her daughter.

Magda picked up. ‘Doctor Shrike here. How's Felicia doing?'

‘Not so good,' Mrs Delgado said.

‘Do you think our short session upset her?' Magda asked.

‘Everything upsets her.'

‘It's too soon even to say “early days”, Mrs Delgado.' Magda walked into her office and opened her datebook. ‘We haven't really begun.'

‘Do you think you can help her, Doctor?'

‘I'm certainly going to do my best,' Magda said.

‘I have to go,' the other woman said suddenly.

‘The appointment,' Magda said.

But Beatriz Delgado had already gone.

Billie Smith looked a treat, reminding Sam, a little, of a very young Halle Berry.

‘This is so kind of you.' She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, held out a bottle of red wine.

‘Hey,' Sam said lightly. ‘This is a rehearsal. No alcohol allowed, orders of La Morrison.'

‘Who's not here,' Billie said, ‘and I need to relax into the singing a little more, which is part of the point of tonight.'

‘Extra practice is the point of tonight,' Sam said, like a schoolteacher.

Claudia came out of the kitchen into the hallway, the dogs behind her: Woody, the Becket's ageing mini dachshund-schnauzer cross, and her own three-legged spaniel, Ludo.

‘Hi there,' she said warmly. ‘I'm Claudia Brownley, Sam's sister-in-law.'

Billie shook her hand. ‘Good to meet you. I'm Billie Smith.'

‘Sam tells me your father's an old school friend of his.'

‘Uh-huh,' Billie said.

‘And you're playing Carmen,' Claudia said. ‘I'm incredibly impressed.'

‘I wish I was,' Billie said.

‘You have a beautiful voice,' Sam told her. ‘And nerves are just part of the whole process.'

‘Do you suffer from stage fright?' Claudia asked her.

‘God, yes,' Billie says. ‘That's why I'm here, because Sam's so much kinder than our director, so I'm hoping he's going to give me a boost.'

Sam thought he almost saw his sister-in-law's brows rise.

‘Well, let's hope,' Claudia said. ‘It was good of you to bring wine, Billie, though I gather alcohol isn't good for the singing voice.' She took the bottle. ‘A few sips will go nicely with our supper, though. I made a lasagna. I hope that's OK for you, Billie. I made it vegetarian, in case.'

‘It sounds wonderful,' Billie said.

‘You didn't need to do that,' Sam told Claudia. ‘You're doing far too much for us already.'

‘I'm enjoying it,' she said. ‘You know that.'

The supper was delicious, if a little strained. Sam and Claudia asked Billie a few questions about her life, her job, her classes, about Larry and Jill, her parents; both trying to draw her out, relax her, but she seemed reluctant to give up much about herself, and Sam wondered if there were family issues.

Though it was later, while he and Billie were working through their Act Four scene –
‘If you love me, Carmen' –
that the really awkward moment of the evening occurred.

Not a pass, exactly.

Just Billie brushing up against Sam.

In a way that felt more than merely accidental.

Enough to put him on alert.

Definitely not what he wanted.

‘You guys want some coffee?'

Claudia again, right on cue, making Sam wonder if she'd been on patrol, and in other circumstances that might have been irritating, but right now it just felt welcome.

‘I'll get it,' Sam told her. ‘I want to look in on Joshua anyway.'

‘Can I come?' Billie asked.

‘He's been a little restless,' Claudia said. ‘Better if it's just his dad.'

Before long they were back to rehearsing, and it was a real pleasure listening to Billie and good giving his own voice an extra airing. And a little later, Joshua came down and brought the dogs in with him, and Billie was sweet and natural with them all, so Sam let Joshua hang with them for about fifteen minutes until Claudia coerced him back upstairs with a promise of an extra story.

‘You're a lucky man,' Billie told Sam.

‘You don't have to tell me.'

‘When's Grace due back?'

‘Day after tomorrow,' Sam said.

For an instant, he thought he saw wistfulness in her eyes, and she'd spoken briefly about her parents' move up to Jacksonville a few years back, and he guessed she missed them. And for all Billie's natural beauty and talent and sweetness, Sam found himself feeling sorry for her.

You could never tell just by looking who were the lonely ones.

The call came in to Violent Crimes just after eleven on Thursday morning.

Bay Drive in North Beach.

Woman shot to death in the bedroom of a single-story house.

‘Sounds like Black Hole finally hit the Beach,' Beth Riley, their sergeant, informed them, and appointed Sam lead investigator on the case.

Sam said little, Amelia Newton's deathbed still vivid in his mind.

‘We got a name?' Martinez asked Riley.

‘Beatriz Delgado,' she said.

Nice little house with a small, well-maintained driveway, pretty backyard, plenty of neat palms and flowers. Wood flooring inside, vaulted ceilings, marble in the bathrooms, granite and steel in the kitchen. Expensive.

No signs of struggle or forced entry.

Patrol officers put the detectives in the picture, fast and somber.

The man presently slumped on the couch in the living room, his face in his hands, had reported the crime. Carlos Delgado, the victim's ex-husband, whose cries when he'd found Mrs Delgado had been – according to a female neighbor – enough to ice her blood.

Even Dr Elliot Sanders, the Chief Medical Examiner, was grim-faced when he joined the party. ‘I gather you saw Fort Lauderdale,' he said to Sam.

‘Bad scene,' Sam said. ‘Lot of similarities.'

As in that previous case, the victim was in the bedroom. The late Mrs Delgado looking even worse, or maybe just more bizarre, than Amelia Newton had.

No sunglasses this time.

A pair of small, old-fashioned white lace doilies covering her wounds.

Sanders took his first look beneath them.

‘Gauze again, stuffed into the sockets under those things.'

‘Holy Mother,' Martinez said quietly.

Sam stayed silent, pushing through these first tough moments so he could get straight to work.

The parallels with Fort Lauderdale were unmistakable. The victim tidily positioned on her own king-size bed. Fully clothed in an olive-colored linen dress, her underwear in place.

Same kind of latex sheeting over three stacked pillows.

‘Why three pillows?' Martinez asked.

‘Makes them easier targets, maybe?' Sam hazarded. ‘But why bother with the rubber sheet if they're leaving it behind?'

‘Maybe a thing about dirty laundry,' Martinez said. ‘Not that it worked.'

‘Seems almost theatrical,' Sam said.

Sanders went on working. ‘I heard you're singing again.'

Sam didn't respond, knew no answer was expected, went on focusing hard.

The time frame here was obviously the biggest difference between this and the last scene, this crime perpetrated more recently, perhaps just an hour or two ago.

Not the only timing difference. The first three killings had been approximately a month apart, then nothing in April – now
two
in less than a week, and did that mean the killer was growing more frenzied (though there was nothing here, in this carefully set scene, to suggest frenzy) or making up for lost time? And if the hiatus had been in March, coinciding with spring break, they might have been considering a teacher or other school employee, but . . .

He quit trawling, and came back to what was in front of them.

Ballistics would probably confirm that the wounds had been created by the same weapon.

Just those weird little lacy coverlets seeming to make it a little worse.

And that
smell
again, Sam realized as it reached him through the rest. Past the smell of burned feathers from the pillow probably used as a silencer – feather pillow rather than foam this time, though more than likely that was simply because it had been available.

This time, though, he identified the other smell.

‘Anyone else smell acetone?' he asked.

Elliot Sanders nodded toward the victim's feet, toenails polished bright pink.

‘Recently applied?' Sam asked, trying to recall if Amelia Newton's toe or fingernails had been painted.

‘Not this morning,' the ME answered.

‘That smell always hangs about,' Martinez said. ‘I've never liked it.'

‘So no chance the killer applied that polish?' Sam asked the ME.

Sanders took another look at the victim's toes. ‘Too hard to have been painted that recently. Unless the killer was here all night or longer.' He paused, added ironically: ‘She certainly didn't die of inhalant abuse.'

‘Drugged again?' Sam said.

‘You'll find out when I do,' Sanders said. ‘No sign of her being forced to swallow anything.'

Joe Duval, who'd arrived soon after the Miami Beach detectives, came into the room. Different kind of worry etched on his forehead.

‘The daughter's missing,' he said.

Carlos Delgado had only just started making sense, was still a mess.

As anyone finding that scene, let alone his wife, would be.

Ex-wife.

Looking at him closely now, Sam had to ask himself how
much
of a mess. Anyone could yell loud enough for the neighbors to hear, work themselves up, bury their face in their hands.

This man was a whole lot calmer now than he had been.

No tears, no look of devastation.

Still,
ex
-wife, so who knew what had gone on?

Nothing so bad, so
terminal
, apparently, that he hadn't been able to come into her home and find her body.

Sam glanced at Martinez, knew they were browsing the same page.

They knew that everyone reacted differently to tragedy.

Certainly ex-husbands, especially after a lousy marriage.

Though it would have to have been a real bitch of a marriage for a guy not to be genuinely distraught on finding his ex, the mother of his child – presumably – so brutally and grotesquely slain.

Delgado's account was straightforward, so far as it went.

When his fourteen-year-old daughter, Felicia, had been a no-show at St Thomas Aquinas Middle School – less than two miles away – this morning, someone in the school office had called her home and, receiving no answer, had contacted her father at his office.

That part of the story had already been corroborated. Felicia had missed school time twice in the previous two days, taken by her mother to doctors' appointments, but Mrs Delgado was always correct, they said, about seeking permission or informing the school if Felicia was sick.

‘You have a key to this house, sir?' Sam asked.

‘I do,' Delgado said. ‘It's my property, for one thing, but my wife likes – liked – me to keep a key.' The shake of his head was disbelieving. ‘I tried calling Beatriz, and then I came to see what was up, and . . .' His mouth trembled. ‘You know the rest.'

‘And you have no idea where your daughter might be?' Sam asked.

‘If I knew . . .' He shook his head again. ‘I'm scared to death for her.'

The haunted look now in his dark eyes looked real enough to Sam, except that killers got
haunted
too, because of what they'd done.

Especially in crimes of passion.

And he felt that this man was holding back something.

It made no sense to figure him for Black Hole. Serial killers seldom spilt blood on their own doorstep, unless, of course, they were in a real tight corner.

If, say, their ex-wife had found out what they'd been doing.

Though after a thing like that, they were more likely to flee the scene or maybe commit suicide.

A killer calling in the crime and sticking around for questioning seemed more than improbable to Sam and Martinez.

The house was busy now, Crime Scene techs all over, Duval on the phone ensuring that teams in Orlando, Jupiter, Naples and Fort Lauderdale were being kept in the loop.

This case, though, belonged to Miami Beach.

Goddamned poison chalice.

Martinez was asking Delgado about his movements the previous evening and night, and early that morning.

‘You have to be kidding me,' Delgado said, comprehending what he was being asked.