Last to Know (9 page)

A few weeks ago a local family had lost their dog, combing the woods, calling its name, but Len had spotted it first and thought it would be the making of his collection. The lost dog had come eagerly to him when he whistled; it had no reason to fear humans. Except this one. Len had slit its throat, carefully because he did not want to ruin the pelt, carried the dead dog back to his shed, and shut him up in there for a few days until the hue and cry died down, dousing him in an insecticide, the use of which was normally against his principles but he had to prevent flies and maggots.

He had enjoyed skinning the animal, enjoyed burning the entrails, the tissue, the detritus of a body, in his homemade barbecue oven, its stones glowing hot, smoke streaming straight up into a flawless sky. If anybody noticed, they assumed Len was burning off his plant waste, getting his crops in order for the next season. Anyhow, nobody ever bothered to go up there to see what was what; Len had become enough of a background creature to warrant no attention, an oddball of no importance, a bit crazy maybe but harmless.

Len was lying when he said he did not know Lacey Havnel. Of course he knew her. He’d met her years ago when he was around thirty and she was in her twenties and called by some other name, in Miami, Florida, where he was working at a marina, servicing boats and drinking a lot, and she was a bar girl living in a studio apartment that qualified in squalor as well as in glitter, because “Lacey” adored sequins and rhinestones, though she would have preferred diamonds. There was no kid then. Later Lacey had attempted to palm off the paternity of her daughter on Len, but he was sure the kid was not his. No way. He was too careful a man for that. That was many years ago now, long enough to be forgotten. It was because of their old connection, though, that Lacey Havnel had found him again.

She traced him, via old bar acquaintances, and newspaper ads. She called him, told him she was in trouble and it was his duty, for old times’ sake, to help her. “Don’t have no money,” was what he told her.

“Don’t need none,” was her reply. “All I need is to hide.”

The name she’d gone by when Len first met her was Carrie Murphy. She’d gone through various marriages and aliases since then and had finally taken the name of a dead woman, Lacey Havnel, she told Len, because she had been able to get her hands on her social security number and driving license. The daughter, she also told him, was the remnant of a marriage gone wrong. Len did not believe this.

Their encounter, when all this had been discussed, had taken place in Miami a few months ago. Lured by Lacey’s promise of money from a big “business deal” she was about to be involved in, Len drove there in his woodie, carefully of course, because it was an antique car that caused a few admiring comments en route. When he saw her again for the first time in more than thirty years—he was in his sixties now, she, he guessed, in her fifties—he told her she had not aged one bit. And thanks to plastic surgery she appeared not to have.

“You don’t know it, Len, but I’ve already been to Evening Lake, inspected the area with an eye to my business.”

Lacey told him this, sitting in a bar over glasses of his favorite Jameson, something she’d remembered he liked, which kinda pleased him.

He was wearing his cleaner summer pants and had bought a new T-shirt for the occasion. He’d also taken a shower at the Dade County motel Lacey had recommended. Len had not been out of his own environment, mixing with real folks, in years. He felt wary as a stray cat, felt like everybody was looking at him, hated the cars, the noisy streets, the endless flatness of the Florida he had driven through.

“Why am I here?” he asked finally. She sat opposite him at a corner table in the dark bar. It was late afternoon and the place was practically empty. The bartender wiped down his counter with a slick cloth, and rearranged his bottles, disinterested. A fan smeared the thick air around them. Len felt sweat trickle down his neck. He wiped it with his hand, then wiped his hand on his pants. Lacey’s chin lifted, her mouth pulled in distaste.

“I have a package for you to deliver,” she said. “It must be at this address by five tomorrow morning. You are to leave it in the mailbox at the front gate of the house.” She showed him a piece of paper with an address in Boca Raton. “You do this for me, Len, and I will pay you five hundred dollars.”

He looked at her, still silent.

“Cash,” she added. “And if you get this right, there’ll be more where that came from.”

“It’s illegal,” Len said flatly. The fact that what he did himself, in the privacy of his own shed, was actually criminal, was different.

“Of course it’s illegal. Why the fuck else would I pay you to deliver something practically round the corner. You take the risk, you get paid, and I am in the clear.”

“Drugs,” Len said.

Lacey patted the blond ponytail pulled through her white visor, fluffed her bangs, looked away.

“You don’t need to know what it is. None of your business. You are simply a messenger, a delivery man. And nobody knows you. That’s why you’re perfect for the job.” She sat back and gave him the kind of smile he remembered from when they were both young. “You owe me, Len,” she said. “You had my best years and you know it.”

Len didn’t know about that but still, she was the closest to a human relationship he had ever had. “I’ll do it,” he said. “Gettin’ older, could use a little money for my retirement years.”

Lacey said, “I also thought I could use a new house in a location like Evening Lake, out of sight for a while, from people who might be after me, people who might want my neck in their noose.”

Len said nothing.

“I’ve managed to come into some money lately,” Lacey was saying. “I already bought a house on your lake. A ‘hideout,’ you might call it.” She paused, thinking about what she had just said. “Well, something different anyway, I’ll still be in business, just a smaller kind of business, enough to keep a girl busy.”

She pushed a heavy plastic bag across the table at Len, then she counted out five hundred, in tens, and pushed them over to him too. Len pocketed the money, picked up the plastic bag, put the paper with the address in Boca in his pocket, drained his glass, nodded abruptly at her, and walked to the door.

“Hey,” she called after him.

He turned and looked.

“See you in Evening Lake,” she said with a grin. “Me and my daughter.”

In the three months since Lacey moved to Evening Lake, Len had been “helping her out” with small transactions, such as hiding the packets of drugs, cocaine or heroin or whatever, he supposed, in plastic bags on the island where Lacey told him the people who were after her would never find them. A couple of times she’d have him deliver stuff out of state.

And now Lacey was dead and blown up in that house and Len was afraid he would be caught and charged with her murder.

16

Rose Osborne, barefoot, in old cut-off jeans and an even older soft white cotton gypsy blouse, was in her kitchen when she got the call from Harry Jordan asking if they could meet: he needed to talk to her about the young woman rescued from the fire at the lake house. He told Rose the girl was alone in the world and that both he and she needed Rose’s advice.

“Your advice as a mother of course,” Harry said, an hour later, sitting opposite Rose at her kitchen table piled with several days’ worth of newspapers as well as a jumble of flowery fabric samples. Rose was thinking of redoing the living room, but then she was always thinking of redoing the living room while never quite getting around to it. Also on the table were several half-empty mugs of cold coffee, a quart of milk in a paper carton, a pair of grubby sneakers (Diz’s), and a few old pages of typed manuscript (Wally’s).

“Make yourself comfortable, Detective,” Rose said cheerfully. “I’ll give your dog a bowl of water.” Squeeze was in his good-boy “waiting” pose on the terrace. “And as a mom I’ll tell you what little I know. For a start, there’s not a lot to know about mothering. It’s a craft, not a talent. We simply learn on the job as we go along, so to speak.”

“So to speak.” Harry nodded. Rose was a chatterer. He said, “Actually what I’ve come here to talk to you about is a girl without a mother.”

“Of course. The lake house girl.”

Rose went to put another capsule into the Nespresso espresso machine. “It’s stronger,” she explained. “I like it better than regular filtered for tough moments, like for instance what you are about to tell me. I get the feeling it’s not good,” she added, pouring the espresso and shoving a small cup across the table and sitting opposite him again.

Actually, though she did not appear to be, Rose was uncomfortable with Harry Jordan. She sort-of knew him, sort-of didn’t, sort-of liked him—well, anyway liked the interesting way he looked, hard-edged and keen-eyed and with abs to die for. She was not beyond admiring a man’s abs, that was for sure, though she no longer had much chance to admire her husband’s since he was gone so much.

Rose wished now she had at least brushed her hair instead of leaving it slopping messily around her shoulders. Besides, the twins had told her the color needed re-revitalizing, whatever that meant, more “golden” than “brown” they’d said, but never “copper.” Jeez. At thirty-eight she had to learn to reinvent herself and now she wanted to, all because suddenly she was looking at a man who was, she admitted, very fanciable. But he was here on business. About the girl rescued from the inferno.

“So, what’s happening with her anyhow?” She clutched her coffee cup in both hands and sat back, large brown eyes alert. “Poor child,” she added, “though I suppose she’s not really a child. How old is she anyway?”

“Twenty-one,” Harry said. “Good coffee, by the way.” He drained his cup and put it on the table in front of him. Rose took a sip from hers then put hers down too, suddenly nervous. She asked herself why she was behaving like a silly girl while somehow, inside, knowing the answer. Which anyway she was not going to acknowledge, even to herself. “What’s to become of her?” she asked instead.

“Her name is Beatrice Havnel. She’s a college dropout. She left to look after the mother.”

Rose sat back, astounded. “She left college to look after that harridan? I’ll tell you something, Detective, I’ve never met a woman like that, she dressed like a slut, trailing that daughter along behind her like some kind of slave, to carry her bags I suppose. Oh, I know I shouldn’t make quick judgments, after all I didn’t know her, but then nobody around here did. A woman like that, well, you know, she would not be popular with the wives.”

“The daughter is very different,” Harry said. “Whatever her mother was, she seems well brought up, good manners, a gentle quality about her. The fact is, Mrs. Osborne…”

“Oh, please.” Rose pushed a self-conscious hand through her hair. “Rose.”

Harry’s eyes met hers across the table. He said, “Rose, I have a favor to ask of you. Bea has no family at all. She has nowhere to live. In fact one of the most tragic things I’ve ever heard was when I asked the girl where she would go and she said simply to book her into the Ritz-Carlton.” He spread his hands wide, amazed. “There seems to be no one she can turn to, nowhere to go after her home burned to the ground, no woman she knows to offer advice or help. In fact it was then she told me how much she admired you, how she envied your family, merely glimpsed from across the lake. ‘Like real people,’ Bea said.” Harry’s eyes were linked with Rose’s now. “It was,” he added softly, “one of the saddest statements I ever heard.”

Rose sat back in her chair. She stared down at her empty coffee cup. A silence fell. Harry did not break it.

After a few minutes, Rose met his eyes again. “Why do I have the feeling I know what you are going to ask? But before you do, I want to ask you why? Why me?”

“Not just you, Rose. It’s your family. Bea needs a family, if only for a short while. Someplace she can feel safe, maybe for the first time in her life. All she’s ever done is look after her mother, instead of the other way around.”

“Did she ask you to ask me?”

Harry shook his head. “Bea did not ask me to ask you. Not directly anyhow. It was simply the way she talked of you, a woman she scarcely knows, but it’s the image of you as the mother she would liked to have had, of your family, doing what families do. It’s something she never had, and perhaps never will. She’s a damaged young woman, Rose, I won’t pretend otherwise. She needs help and I’ve come to you to ask for it, instead of simply turning her over to therapists and doctors.”

“And the Ritz-Carlton,” Rose added, making him smile. “It sounds as though money is no problem. Ritz-Carltons do not come cheap.”

“I’m sure we could make some financial arrangement…”

“Oh God, really, Harry Jordan!” Rose flounced, irritated, over to the stove where she gave the perennial pot of soup into which all leftovers were tossed another stir. “I’m not asking for money. Of course we’ll take the girl in, but she’ll have to get it straight about how things work in this family.”

Rose was flustered, her cheeks were pink, her eyes flashed, and her gypsyish blouse had slipped from one rounded, lightly golden-tanned shoulder.

“So?” Harry had noticed the blouse. “How do things work around here?”

“Er, well…” Rose was thinking of Roman and of what effect having an attractive, sexy young woman about the house might have. Because there
was
an aura of sex about Bea, and “vulnerable waifs” could be very appealing. “Everybody’s supposed to do their bit to keep the place running. Wally likes the quiet—for his writing you know.”

Harry nodded. He was remembering Wally Osborne rowing back home across the lake immediately before the explosion. He said, “I’m sure Bea would be happy to help any way she could. What I’m wondering now is about your husband. He already has four kids around the house.”

“So? Another one?” Rose shrugged and the gypsy blouse slipped a little lower. “Actually, I like the idea. Give the twins a role model, that kind of thing. So I’m saying yes, but only for one week. Just to get her over the hump, so to speak.”

“So to speak,” Harry agreed again, relieved. “Right now, I’ve left her in the care of social services, I could not allow her to be alone in a hotel, after what happened.”