The Ocean Vista condos were completely booked. Most of the parking spaces were occupied by SUVs and minivans stuffed to the roof racks with pool floats, boogie boards, and beach toys. There were convertibles and pricey sedans here and there, but Olivia sensed the Ocean Vista properties catered primarily to families.
As she walked around the perimeter of the rectangular structure, searching for number two-twelve, Olivia could hear the joyful screeches and splashes of children playing in a pool nearby. The strains of Bob Marley floated from the same direction. The combined sounds formed a jubilant and carefree melody, yet Olivia remained unaffected by the atmosphere, her mouth set in a firm, determined line.
She walked quickly over the well-maintained property, noticing the drought-resistant annuals and the close-cropped beds of Bermuda grass. The condos were built of pristine white stucco that gleamed in the sunlight, providing an aesthetically pleasing contrast to the terra-cotta-style roof shingles. Taking note of the signs pointing vacationers to bike paths, tennis courts, pools, hot tubs, a miniature golf course, laundry room, fitness area, snack bar, as well as an arrow pointing to even-numbered rooms, Olivia climbed the next set of stairs and paused as she came to number two-twelve.
“Ready, Captain?”
Haviland shifted his weight from one leg to the other, inhaled, and faced the door. Olivia knocked. She listened for sounds from inside the condo but heard nothing. She knocked again.
“His car is here.” Olivia knocked a third time, impatiently calling out Max’s name. She sighed in exasperation and turned to her poodle. “Is he inside?”
Dipping his black nose to the floor, Haviland’s snout connected with the cement in front of the door. Breathing rapidly, the poodle absorbed the fresh scents and then pressed his nostrils as far into the crack under the door as he could. He growled and took several small steps backward. Olivia watched him carefully.
“He is in there! Your nose is never wrong. Let’s get Bert.”
Olivia hastened to the management office, pausing only to grab the shopping bag containing Bert’s treats from the Range Rover. Olivia felt the food and wine would immediately smooth her way with the manager.
Bert must have seen Olivia coming up the sidewalk, for he met her at the receptionist’s desk, pumping her hand and smiling as though he were running for political office. He glanced nervously at Haviland but was too polite to question the poodle’s presence.
“From my chef,” Olivia said, handing him the bag. “And though it was my intention to discuss business with you right away, I’m afraid I am too distracted over my concern for Mr. Warfield to do so.”
Bert ran a hand over his pink, bald head. “Oh? What seems to be the trouble?”
“I don’t know,” Olivia answered truthfully. “I knocked on his door several times, but he didn’t respond.” Seeing that Bert was unaffected by this statement, she decided to embellish. “I also tried his cell phone. Normally, I’d say he was merely in the shower or taking a nap, but I’m aware that he has a heart condition. In this heat...” She waved toward the wall of windows facing the parking lot and lowered her voice. “Sometimes these northerners don’t take proper precautions.”
“Isn’t that the truth? You’d think they’d never heard of sunscreen,” Bert agreed and then fell silent, considering a course of action.
“I’d feel
so
much better if you’d try to reach him.” Olivia touched Bert’s shoulder. “What if he required medical attention and we didn’t respond?”
That pushed the right button. Bert grabbed a set of keys and gestured for Olivia to follow his lead. Together, they marched to unit two-twelve without speaking. Bert gave an authoritative knock on Max’s door and then dialed a number on his cell phone. They could hear Max’s phone ringing from somewhere inside the condo.
Haviland growled again. Bert did a little sideways hop as though the poodle’s teeth were aiming for his meaty calf.
“He’s not directing that threat at you, Mr. Long,” Olivia said soothingly. “Haviland senses something amiss on the other side of this door.”
Paling, Bert knocked once more and then announced he was coming in. He turned the key and tentatively pushed the door open. Assaulted by a blast of air-conditioning, he and Olivia stepped into the disheveled living room. Crumpled clothes and towels were strewn on the peach-colored sectional. The surface of every table was littered with empty soda and beer bottles, newspapers, magazines, and deflated potato chip bags.
Frowning, Bert called Max’s name again, but this time his voice carried an edge of disapproval.
“You’d better wait here,” Bert cautioned as he took a quick glance around the equally untidy kitchen.
Ignoring the manager, Olivia made a gesture with her right hand. “Search, Haviland.”
The poodle darted in front of Bert and as the two humans waited, they heard a deep-throated growl echo from the back rooms. Instinctively, Bert and Olivia froze, only resuming their wary gait once Haviland’s growl changed into an urgent, high-pitched bark.
Haviland was pacing anxiously in the doorway to one of the bedrooms. Olivia looked over his head toward the bed. The rumpled covers had been shoved into a wrinkled mass toward the middle and the white cotton sheets were covered by at least six pillows, all tossed about as though the bed’s occupant had spent a restless night. Max had smoothed out a section of the comforter, however, upon which he’d laid out a gray suit still encased within a dry cleaner’s bag.
Olivia’s eyes continued to sweep the room and came to an abrupt stop at the pair of club chairs positioned beneath the double windows overlooking the ocean. Max Warfield was in the chair nearest the bathroom. His held was tilted backward at an awkward angle. The rest of his body was unnaturally still.
“You were right! He’s had a heart attack!” Bert lurched forward in Max’s direction, but Olivia clamped both hands onto his arm, nearly forcing him off balance.
“We mustn’t touch him,” she stated firmly. “See that thing wrapped around his neck? That’s a dog collar.
Haviland’s
dog collar. And I doubt Mr. Warfield is wearing it voluntarily. Call 911. Mr. Warfield’s been murdered.”
Mutely, Bert retreated several feet, his eyes bulging with shock and fear. Unblinking, as though he suspected the corpse of making a sudden movement, the property manager punched the digits into his cell phone with trembling fingertips.
Haviland sniffed Max’s hand and then growled again.
“Get his scent, Captain,” Olivia told the poodle, feeling a fresh surge of rage course through her. “He was
just
here. The man who hurt you. He did this. Smell him, Haviland,” she whispered fiercely over Bert’s shaky conversation with the emergency operator.
As Haviland disappeared into the bathroom, Olivia absorbed as much of the scene as she could without approaching the club chair where Max had been killed.
Her eyes were immediately drawn to Max’s face, for his tongue lolled from between his slack lips. Swollen and blue tinged, it looked like some grotesque alien insect, and Olivia felt momentarily overcome by repulsion. She forced her gaze downward, seeing the slumped shoulders against the cushioned back of the chair, the limp arms, and the casual outfit of shorts and a T-shirt.
Finally, she stared at Haviland’s blue collar, which was fastened around the dead man’s neck. The skin above and below the collar was a purplish red and marred with scratches, illustrating the desperation with which Max had fought against the object robbing him of oxygen.
The most unsettling detail of all was the reflection of the windows in the dead man’s unblinking eyes. A halo of soft, white light fell across the glassy surface of his corneas, giving the impression that an otherworldly radiance was being released from within Max Warfield’s body.
Bert was repeating the condo address in a much steadier voice when Olivia spotted the sheet of paper. It was a standard-sized sheet of white paper that had been neatly positioned on the table in front of Max’s torso. Olivia wondered if those were the last words Max Warfield had seen before he died or if the murderer had placed the paper on the table afterward.
She walked forward four steps, leaning over the table as she removed her notebook from her purse. “The summer haiku,” she murmured and read the three lines upside down.
The summer air is so
thick its almost too hard to breathe—
so don’t bother to try.
“What are you doing?” Bert hissed, but Olivia didn’t hear him.
Backing away from the table, she copied down the words of the poem, silently counting syllables as her pen recorded them.
“This is wrong.” She reread what she’d written. “The lines are too long, the hyphen doesn’t divide the poem into two parts, the nature imagery is overly simplistic, there are grammatical errors ...”
Olivia sank down on the edge of the bed, causing Max’s suit to slide into the depression created by her weight. “This poem was not written by the same person. Are there now two poets?” Chilled, she shoved the plastic bag away from her leg, stood up, and walked quickly out of the room. Haviland growled once more and followed.
“Ms. Limoges? Are you all right?” Bert called after her.
Olivia didn’t stop until she was outside. She needed to breathe real air, as though her lungs weren’t capable of processing the chilled, Freon-tinged air within the condo. Stepping away from the shade of the overhang, Olivia lifted her chin and closed her eyes, letting the sun bathe her head and neck and burn away the gooseflesh on her arms.
Bert touched her lightly on the shoulder, repeating his query.
Mechanically, she pivoted to face him, her eyes wide and unfocused. “He’s off the leash. That’s what the dog collar means. The killer’s not following someone else’s agenda anymore. Yet he likes the poems, the progression of the seasons, the orderliness of it all. And he’s got one more season to go.” She reached out for Haviland.
Bert dropped his hand from her shoulder, frightened by Olivia’s incoherence.
“Who is meant for autumn?” she asked, turning her gaze toward the blinding ocean.
Chapter 16
There’s always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down
.
—DON DELILLO
O
livia waited for Chief Rawlings in Bert’s office. After turning Max’s condo over to the pair of officers responding to the 911 call, Bert had retreated to the only restroom, unscrewing the cap to a flask as he slipped inside. His secretary paced around the front sidewalk, her lips moving double-time as she enthusiastically shared the news of Max Warfield’s death into her headset phone. Meanwhile, her unattended office phone rang with such noisy insistence that Olivia felt like knocking on the restroom door and demanding Bert share the contents of his flask.
Instead, she sat in the chair facing Bert’s impressive mahogany desk, stroking the back of Haviland’s head and trying to ignore the ringing phone. She fixed her gaze on a promotional poster showing a sunset over the Ocean Vista condos. Staring at the green palmetto fronds, which had been painted into a slight curl in order to give the feeling they were being caressed by a gentle sea breeze beneath a mango- and raspberry-colored sky, Olivia tried to still her agitated mind.
Several thoughts vied for attention and Olivia began to record each one in her notebook. She became so engrossed that she didn’t hear Rawlings enter the office. “Ms. Limoges.” He spoke softly, trying not to startle her.
Arresting the motion of her pen, she looked up at him. “I’m sorry, Chief. I didn’t come here today expecting to find Max Warfield’s body. I know it seems like I’ve done my best to insert myself into your investigation ...”
“Then what were your expectations? Why were you here?” Rawlings took a seat in Bert’s chair, instantly asserting his position of authority.
Olivia felt it was the chief’s prerogative to treat her with professional formality considering the circumstances. “Honestly, I believed Max Warfield knew more about the previous murders than he pretended. I simply couldn’t get the phone call he placed at The Boot Top out of my mind. Max has played second fiddle to Dean for a
long
time. It seemed logical that a man his age and status might grow tired of being treated like a servant. I felt strongly that he must be involved at some level.”
“Mr. Warfield’s alibis were airtight for both murders,” the chief argued. “Trust me, I checked and rechecked his movements, as he fit the suspect bill quite nicely. We’ve also been monitoring his financial statements very closely. There hasn’t been a suspicious dime deposited to his accounts. On paper, Mr. Warfield is clean. And before you start pointing a finger at Blake Talbot as your next suspect of choice, allow me to inform you that we’ve had a tail on him all day. He never came near this location.”
Olivia nodded in approval. “That’s good, because someone seems intent on bringing down Talbot Fine Properties and Blake is now the new face of the company.” She held up her notebook. “And even though I don’t know the identity of Max Warfield’s killer, I can tell you that he did not write all three haiku.”
Rawlings shook his head slightly. “Today’s poem is clearly amateurish, yet the writer still got his point across. ‘The summer air chokes,’ just as
he
choked the life out of his victim.”
“And the dog collar implies Max was someone’s pet. He followed orders. If the killer obeyed another’s command, then he’s not willing to any longer.” Olivia touched the place on Haviland’s neck where the blue collar used to rest and the poodle looked up at her with inquisitive eyes.
“I’ve called in some help,” Rawlings said. “Officers from the New Bern Police Department are on the way. They’re going to go over every inch of that crime scene with some of my best men, leaving me available to attend tonight’s meeting. The question is, will I be free to concentrate on identifying the killer or will
you
be conducting a personal investigation from the podium?”