Bob Morris_Zack Chasteen 02 (29 page)

Barbara put up a hand. Then she gave them a dismissive wave.

“Bye-bye,” she said.

Darlene and Lynette turned away and headed down the road, Rex dragging his leash behind them. If he’d had a tail to tuck between his legs he would have done it.

I got the collar off my neck, tossed it and the leash aside. I walked to Barbara and put out my arms. She put up her hand again.

“Not just yet,” she said. “You really do need to explain.”

She walked past me to the cottage. I grabbed her luggage and took it inside while she checked out the place. She wasn’t impressed. I couldn’t blame her.

She sat down in a chair on the porch. I sat down beside her.

“OK,” she said. “Start talking.”

I dispensed with Darlene and Lynette right away, starting with how I’d been trying to walk off the effects of the Ama Aji. Then I told her about everything that had happened since we’d last spoken. It had been three days, since before I’d returned to Florida for Monk’s funeral. So much to tell.

And then it was Barbara’s turn. For starters, the deal was off with Aaron Hockelmann. At least for the time being.

“The money was dazzling, but beyond that it all seemed rather hollow,” Barbara said. “I think he wanted to buy
Tropics
just for window dressing, another pretty mare in his big stable. He would have taken the heart out of it. And then probably turned around and sold it to someone else.”

“So how did he react to you jilting him?”

“Oh, he was quite the gentleman about it. I mean, he did make use of his private jet so that I might fly directly here.”

“Helluva guy,” I said. “Look, I’m sorry the accommodations aren’t any better. I mean, they’ve been fine for me, but I know they aren’t much, so tomorrow I’ll see about getting us one of the villas.”

“Oh, Zack, that’s sweet, but don’t bother. You have far more important matters to deal with tomorrow. Besides, I’ve already booked a place down in Negril, at Tensing Pen. You remember the last time we stayed there.”

“The smoked marlin and ackee quesadilla,” I said. “Hard to
forget a place that serves something like that. Ranks among the top-ten best things I’ve ever eaten.”

“And might I ask what’s number one?”

I didn’t bother to answer. I got out of my chair. I knelt on the porch in front of her. I took her hand.

“I’ve missed hell out of you,” I said.

Her gaze drifted downward to my shorts.

“So it appears,” she said. “And I know the cure for that.”

Yes, there are many reasons why I love Barbara Pickering.

Barbara was up long before me the next morning, her clock still running on European time. When I stepped onto the porch of the cottage, I found her sitting at the table with a pot of tea and a tray of fruit that she had brought back from the resort’s breakfast buffet.

I came up from behind, leaned over, and kissed her on the forehead, then helped myself to a slice of mango. Then I tried some of the pineapple. I felt the self-righteous glow that comes from eating fresh fruit first thing in the morning. When this is all over, I told myself, I will be a paragon of healthy living. I will cut out the drinking. Stay away from heavy foods. Knock off the pounds and get back to my old playing weight. I had another slice of mango. I wondered: Didn’t the breakfast buffet have bacon?

Barbara said, “I’ve called for a car to take me to Negril.”

“Already?”

She nodded.

Before finally falling asleep—note to pharmacologists: Rigorous, gleeful, it’s-been-a-long-time sex reduces the effects of Ama Aji—we had talked some more about the delicate matters that lay ahead that day. It had put a bit of a damper on the afterglow.

“You sure you don’t want to hang out here until . . .”

“Until what? Until word comes that there’s been another bomb and this time it was marked for you? Or another shooting? No, Zack, I flew here hoping that this mess would be straightened out and that we might spend some time together. I don’t want to hang out here, just waiting and dreading.”

“So you’ll hang out somewhere else, waiting and dreading.”

“I prefer Tensing Pen. It’s quiet. The yoga pavilion is perched right above the sea. I’ll be staying in Cove Cottage,” she said. “Should you survive.”

“Nothing like cutting to the quick,” I said.

She shrugged.

I said, “Everything’s going to be OK, baby.”

She finished her tea. She folded her napkin. She squared it on the table.

She said, “I cannot tell you not to do this.”

“No,” I said. “You cannot.”

“Even if it is tearing at me, tearing at me worse than anything has ever torn at me before?”

“Even if.”

“And if I were to insist that you not do it?”

“That would change things.”

“Between us?”

“Yes,” I said. “Between us.”

“Because neither of us has ever made demands?”

“Because that,” I said.

“Is that what it is then, what makes it work, the never-demanding, the always-trusting, the ever-hopeful?”

“I think so, yes. That and the fact that you’re great in the sack.”

Barbara smiled.

She said, “‘A madness most discreet, a choking gall and a preserving sweet . . .’”

“Shakespeare?” I said.

“Someone,” she said. “Someone who knew.”

She stood. We kissed. We went inside.

Later, after the car came and took Barbara away, I tidied the cottage and tried to figure out what I should wear. Big decision. It was Game Day.

I went through my suitcase, put on shorts, put on pants, nothing worked. Everything was too tight and made me feel constricted.

Back when I was playing ball, tight was good when it came to a uniform. Made you look sleek and cool. Unless, of course, you were a lineman, in which case it just made you look even more overgrown and thuggish.

I needed something loose, something that would give me freedom of movement. Just in case. Just in case of what, I wasn’t sure. But if I was going down, then I was going down in comfort.

I stepped next door to Monk’s cottage, rummaged through his closet. A pair of khakis hung from a knob on the door. I put them on. Baggy but not too baggy. I could wear them and look semi-presentable. Or, if things got bad, I could run in them. I am brave when I need to be brave, but I am not stupid. Running should always be an option.

I put on running shoes and a polo, an orange one. Got the keys to the Mercedes. Put them in a pocket of the khakis. Felt
something else in the pocket—a slip of paper. Pulled it out. A rumpled receipt. I unfolded it and looked at it.

The receipt was handwritten and it was from Darwin’s Stationery in Mo Bay. There had been a single purchase—one Ideal Executive Daybook. Cost—440 Jamaican dollars. I noted the date at the top of the receipt—September 4th. The day before I arrived in Jamaica.

The green backpack was sitting on the kitchen counter. I unzipped it and pulled out Monk’s Ideal Executive Daybook. I flipped back to the earliest entry, June 14, about the time Monk started working for Darcy Whitehall. It was written in neat block letters: “D.W. 11 a.m.”

The rest of the entries were written in the same neat hand and were just as innocuous, noting other meetings with Whitehall, through June, July, and August. Nothing really stood out until the two last entries—September 4th, the one that ultimately led me to Martha Brae and the home of Ida Freeman, Kenya Oompong’s mother; and the entry on September 4th that listed the Dover Street address of Equinox Properties.

But according to the receipt I was holding, Monk hadn’t bought the daybook until September 4th. Had he faked the earlier entries? Apparently. But why?

I was still mulling it over when I arrived at Darcy Whitehall’s house. Alan was sitting in the kitchen with Otee, drinking coffee and watching the news on TV.

I said, “Anything about Kenya Oompong?”

“She turned herself in early this morning,” said Alan. “She’s in jail with her mother.”

“She make a statement?”

Alan shook his head.

“Police haven’t let her,” he said. “Must be driving her crazy.”

Otee said, “Where is Boggy?”

“He stayed in Camp Hill,” I said, then told them about seeing Scotty Connigan leaving Cuddy Banks’ house and finding the bodies on the floor.

“You a damn fool, go up Camp Hill without no gun, mon,” said Otee. “You lucky you be standing here alive. When you going back dere to get Boggy?”

“Well, I was hoping you might do me a favor and go get him for me. I want to be here if there’s any phone calls.”

“Yah, dat be alright, mon. I go now,” said Otee, standing from the table. “We gonna need all us together when dis shit start to fly.”

I looked at Alan.

“Where’s your father?”

“Still a little early for him yet,” said Alan. “He’ll make a showing soon.”

I said, “They told him they’d call first thing in the morning.”

“Only call come in so far be from dat JCP man,” said Otee. “Dunwood his name.”

“Dunwood called here?”

“Yah, mon. Maybe ten minutes ago.” Otee grabbed a notepad from the table and handed it to me. “Said you to call him at dis numbah. He sound vexed.”

“Vexed?”

“Yah, he agitated, mon.”

I stepped to the phone and dialed Dunwood’s number. He answered on the first ring. And yes, he did sound vexed.

“I want you to meet me at the Bird’s Nest,” he said. “Now.”

“Sorry, I really don’t have time to sit down and eat,” I said, realizing as I said them that such words had never before spilled from my mouth.

“This isn’t about sitting down and eating,” he said. “It’s about a murder. Two of them, as a matter of fact.”

I said, “Look, if you’re talking about what happened up in Camp Hill, I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

There was a long silence on Dunwood’s end.

I said, “Is that what you’re talking about?”

“No,” said Dunwood. “What happened in Camp Hill?”

This time the long silence was on my end. I didn’t want to tell Dunwood what had happened because I didn’t want the police to come swooping down on Scotty Connigan. At least not yet, or at least not until I needed them. Which I was hoping I wouldn’t because that would throw a big wrench in everything—especially in everything having to do with money—and likely bring down the roof on Darcy Whitehall.
But if Dunwood didn’t know about the murders in Camp Hill, then what murders was he talking about?

“Chasteen?”

“Yeah.”

“Get down here,” he said, and hung up.

The bodies had already been removed from the car and hauled away by the time I arrived at the Bird’s Nest. The parking lot swarmed with police, along with a contingent of guys in suits and shades who looked like Americans and fit the Fed profile.

Most of the activity centered around the car—a white BMW.

Eustace Dunwood spotted me as I pulled in and waved me to a parking spot away from the crowd. I got out and leaned against the Mercedes as he approached.

“Thanks for coming,” he said.

“You didn’t make it sound as if I had a choice,” I said. “Mind telling me what’s going on?”

“Manager noticed the car when he came to open up, about two hours ago,” said Dunwood. “Best guess is it happened just after midnight. That’s when a waitress saw them leaving.”

“Saw who leaving?”

Dunwood took a moment to answer, studying me. He pulled out a notepad and read from it: “James C. Skingle and Laurance S. Connigan.”

“Holy shit,” I said.

Dunwood didn’t say anything. He kept studying me.

I said, “Why didn’t you tell me that over the phone?”

“Hasn’t been released to the public yet. Didn’t want it getting out,” he said. “But mostly I wanted to see how you took the news.”

“Read my face,” I said. “I’m surprised. Shocked is more like it. How did it happen?”

Dunwood didn’t answer. He flipped through his notepad.

“According to a Mrs. Janeese Simmes—Mr. Skingle’s secretary—you threatened Mr. Skingle with bodily injury three or four days ago. Is that right?”

“Oh, jeez. Is that what this is about?”

“She also said you came to his office and she overheard what sounded like an argument between the two of you. Is this true?”

“No, I didn’t threaten Skingle. All I did was mention to his secretary . . . what’s her name?”

“Mrs. Simmes.”

“I told Mrs. Simmes that if Skingle wouldn’t make time to see me then I was going to whack him in the head with a two-by-four, but . . .” I stopped. It did kinda sound like a threat. “That’s not how he died, is it?”

“No,” said Dunwood. “It was a pistol shot to the back of the head. A .22 caliber.”

“Same with Connigan?”

“Side of the head. We think the shooter must have gone for Mr. Skingle first and Mr. Connigan was turning around when he was shot. We suspect the shooter must have gained entry to the car and surprised them.”

“You don’t honestly think I was the shooter, do you?”

“No, but I am interested in why you and Mr. Skingle might have had an argument. I’m interested in anything that might shed some more light on this.”

I didn’t say anything. The fact that Skingle and Connigan were dead was coming at me from so far out of the blue that I didn’t want to blurt out something that I’d later regret. Such as telling Dunwood that the two of them had been trying to extort five million dollars from Darcy Whitehall.

Part of me was relieved. I no longer had to worry about how I was going to deliver the money, pull some kind of double cross on Skingle and Connigan so Cumbaa could nab them and
lock them up, and then get the money back. And getting the money back had been essential, since it would have been Freddie Arzghanian’s money and that was not something to lose. There were only a zillion details about the whole thing that we hadn’t worked out, and that had made it dangerous. I was relieved that the danger side of it was now gone.

The other part of me was confounded.

“Any idea who killed them?”

“Couple of thoughts on that front,” said Dunwood. “Connigan was DEA so there’s the possibility it could be drug-related. The other thought is that it was the NPU.”