For the next forty-five minutes, everybody methodically signed documents, stacks of documents. Money, in the form of cashier’s checks, changed hands. There was some quibbling about a couple of contingencies in the sales document, and Jackson made small changes, making everybody happy.
Finally, when everything was signed, everybody left, the sellers with a large check and the buyers with the deed to a very fine beach house.
Jackson went into his office, and Fred Ames and two secretaries followed him.
“You know the drill,” Fred said, setting the documents on his desk. “Does this document accurately reflect your wishes?”
“It does,” Jackson said, and started to sign.
When he was done, and the document had been properly witnessed, Ames set two plastic document wallets on the desk. “The policies came this morning; everything is in order.”
“Put them in the safe,” he said to his secretary, handing her the wallets. “Everything else, too.” They complied, and he shooed them out of his office. He picked up the little recorder, found his notes and began to dictate. He went rapidly, knowing his secretary could follow his rapid speech. An hour and a half later, he stood up, straightened his desk, and left his office. He laid the cassette on his secretary’s desk.
Fred stuck his head through the door of his office. “You’re really going to do this, huh? After all these years as a bachelor?”
“Looks that way,” Jackson said, grinning. “You know, at the closing, nobody said a word about me being in a white suit with a carnation in my lapel?”
“I explained to them,” his secretary said.
“Oh. All right, I’m out of here. See you all at the courthouse, and after that, in three weeks.”
Everybody waved goodbye.
Jackson drove to the travel agent’s office in the shopping center near his office. He had to wait a minute for a parking place outside their door, and as he waited, he noticed a van drive by. “Environmental Services,” he muttered aloud to himself, chuck-ling. “Janitors, I’ll bet. The further inflation of the English language. One day, it will explode.”
A woman left a parking space and he pulled in. Inside, the receptionist smiled. “You look sensational,” she said.
“I know,” he replied, giving her a smile.
She handed him a fat envelope. “There you are: tickets, itinerary, reservation confirmations, the works. And a little gift from us: a guide to the best restaurants.”
“You’re an angel,” he said.
“Have a wonderful honeymoon!”
He left the agency and went back to his car. He spent five minutes going through everything in the envelope, making sure that the tickets, reservations and itinerary were perfectly accurate. Satisfied, he started the car and headed up the boulevard. He crossed the south bridge over the Intracoastal Wa terway, also known as the Indian River, and in another five minutes reached the bank.
He parked the car and got out. An armored car was unloading at the front door, and the guards gave him a look. He laughed. What bank robber would be wearing a white linen suit?
Only two tellers were open, and there was a line of half a dozen people at each. He got into line behind a blond man of his own height—well over six feet—wearing Bermuda shorts, Top-Siders and a yellow Polo shirt.
The man glanced over his shoulder and grinned. “You look as though you’re dressed for a wedding,” he said, smiling.
“Guilty,” Jackson said, raising his hands.
“Your own?”
“Guilty again. You a local or a foreigner?”
The man laughed. “A foreigner, I guess. I’m down here to buy an airplane from Piper, in Vero Beach.”
“Which airplane?”
“The Malibu Mirage.”
“Not the turboprop, the Meridian?”
“I’ll have to make some more money before I get one of those.”
“I fly myself, but I rent. Couple more years, I might spring for something nice. Where you from?”
“New York.”
“What do you do up there?”
“I practice law.”
“I do the same down here, when I’m not getting married. Have you done your flight training yet?”
“Finished this morning; I’m just picking up a cashier’s check, so we can close on the airplane.”
The line moved forward, and the man became engaged with the teller.
Something made Jackson look toward the door. Four men were standing there, wearing blue jumpsuits, yellow hard hats, masks and goggles. Each of them was holding a shotgun at port arms. One of the men racked his shotgun, and everybody turned and looked at him.
“Everybody be real calm,” the man said from behind his mask, “and we’ll be out of your way in just a minute.” He turned to the men beside him. “Get started,” he said. The three men walked rapidly toward an area of desks, where the bank’s officers worked. Immediately behind the desk was a large vault, open.
Jackson noticed the blond man standing beside him. “Looks like we’re witnesses to a bank robbery,” Jackson said softly, without moving his lips.
“Just do as they say,” the man said.
“You bet,” Jackson said. He looked to his left to see the men in jumpsuits returning from the vault. Two of them stood guard as the third pushed a hand truck laden with canvas bags. They were going to pass within three feet of him. Jackson concentrated on trying to remember what the men looked like. He could hardly tell Holly he had witnessed a bank robbery and not noticed what they looked like. They ranged from about five-seven to six-feet-four and were identically dressed. What with the masks and the goggles, he could tell nothing about them but their height and weight. The tallest one had some gray hair visible at the nape of his neck. Holly was going to be pissed when he told her about this, and that wouldn’t be until they were on the airplane. He wasn’t going to have his wedding day ruined by a bank robbery.
As the men approached, one of them backed into Jackson, then whirled around to point the shotgun at him. “Watch it, you stupid sonofabitch!” the man said.
“
You
watch it,” Jackson said, fairly pleasantly. “
You
bumped into
me.
”
The man made a sort of snarling noise and swung the butt of the shotgun at Jackson’s head.
Jackson saw it coming and leaned backward. The shotgun butt brushed against his chin as it passed, and the man, having missed his mark, lost his balance and fell against Jackson.
Jackson pushed him away, hard. “Get off me!” he said.
The man recovered his balance and brought the shotgun to bear on Jackson.
Jackson heard two things, nearly simultaneously. The blond man to his right yelled,
“No!”
and the shotgun must have gone off, because his head filled with the noise and something huge and heavy seemed to strike him in the chest.
As he flew backward he saw only a stretch of ceiling. He didn’t feel it when he hit the floor.
Five
HOLLY PARKED HER CAR AT THE COURTHOUSE, checked herself in the mirror one last time and walked across the parking lot. Daisy trotted by her side, carrying the bouquet.
Helen, her secretary, and Hurd Wallace, her deputy chief, were waiting by the side entrance for her.
“Everybody’s here,” Helen said. “Except the groom, of course.”
“Oh, he’ll be along, eventually,” Holly said. “He had a closing this morning, and he had to go to the travel agent’s and the bank.” They walked through the courthouse doors and started down the hallway. “He still won’t tell me where we’re going on our honeymoon.”
“Gosh,” Helen said, “everybody else knows.”
“Even Hurd?”
“Yep,” Hurd replied, with a straight face. Hurd spoke only when necessary, and with an economy of words. Holly had never seen him laugh, or even smile.
“It’s outrageous,” Holly said. “Everybody knows but me. If I have the wrong clothes, I’m going to murder Jackson as soon as we get there.”
“I’d hate to have to extradite you,” Hurd said.
“Aha! It’s out of the country!”
“That’s why you needed a passport,” Helen said. “It’s not as though we’re giving anything away.”
They reached the courtroom and walked through the big double doors. Virtually the whole of the Orchid Beach Police Department was present, most in uniform.
“My God,” Holly said, “I hope the criminals are taking the day off, too.”
Everybody laughed, a little too heartily.
Her father, Hamilton Barker, a retired army master sergeant wearing an unaccustomed blue suit, stepped forward, took her shoulders and looked her up and down. “You look just like a girl,” he said.
“Thanks, Ham,” Holly replied, with a touch of sarcasm.
“Well, I can’t remember the last time I saw you in a dress. Was it your senior prom?”
“If my father says anything like that again,” she said to the assembly, “shoot to kill.”
“She doesn’t appreciate compliments,” Ham said to Helen.
The judge appeared from her chambers, wearing her robes. “All present?” she asked, looking at her watch. She was a sturdily built woman in her fifties, with a mound of snow-white hair.
“Everybody but the groom,” Helen told her.
She peered over the bench at Daisy. “I don’t usually allow dogs in my courtroom,” she said.
“She’s not a dog,” Holly replied, “she’s the maid of honor.”
“Oh,” the judge said. “In that case, I’ll make an exception.”
Ham looked at his watch. “Looks like he’s going to jilt you,” he said, grinning.
“What time is it?” Holly asked. She didn’t have a dressy watch, and she wasn’t going to wear her steel Rolex with her wedding dress.
“Two minutes to go,” Ham said.
Across the courtroom, somebody’s portable radio barked something.
Hurd Wallace leveled his gaze at the cop. “Turn that thing off.”
But the officer instead began speaking into the microphone clipped to his shirt, then he turned and walked toward an unpopulated corner of the courtroom.
Dammit, Holly thought, I’m not going to have this day ruined by some teenager in a stolen car.
Hurd walked across the room and stood next to the officer, cocking an ear toward the radio. He listened for a moment, then walked back to where Holly stood.
Holly put up her hands, as if to ward him off. “Not today, Hurd,” she said.
He leaned close to her. “It’s Jackson,” he said quietly. “He’s been hurt; he’s on the way to the hospital.”
Holly jerked her head back as if she had been slapped. “How bad?”
“Bad, but he’s alive. Come on, I’ll drive you.”
Holly started for the door, and Hurd turned to the crowd, motioning for Ham Barker to follow him. “Sorry, folks, the wedding is postponed. Everybody back on duty. Jenkins, get your crime-scene team and get over to the Southern Trust Bank on Ocean Boulevard, and be quick about it. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
Holly sat rigidly in the front seat of Hurd’s unmarked patrol car, willing Hurd to go faster.
“Any details?” Ham asked from the rear seat. Daisy sat quietly in the back, as if she knew something was wrong.
“There was a robbery at Southern Trust,” Hurd said. “Apparently, Jackson got in the way.”
Holly turned and looked at him. “Gunshot?”
Hurd nodded. “We’ll know more in a couple of minutes.” He whipped the car into the emergency entrance of the hospital. Everybody got out and ran inside.
A doctor stood just inside the doorway, wearing a white coat, its right sleeve smeared with blood. “This way, Chief,” he said, ushering her toward an examination room. Just outside the door, he stopped her. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but he died three or four minutes ago. There was nothing we could do to save him.”
Holly turned to face the doctor. “
Nothing
you could do?”
“It was a shotgun blast to the chest; massive damage.”
Holly sucked in a big breath and put a hand on the door for balance. “I want to see him,” she said.
“All right,” the doctor replied. He opened the door.
Holly stepped into the room. An examination table was before her, and the body, draped with a sheet.
The doctor walked to the head of the table and took hold of a corner of the sheet, waiting for Holly.
Holly stepped forward, and her toe caught on something. She looked down to see a yellow knit shirt, covered in blood, at her feet. What? she thought. Jackson wasn’t wearing a yellow shirt; it’s the wrong man! She rushed to the head of the table.
The doctor pulled back the sheet, revealing only the head.
Holly felt as if someone had struck her in the chest. The tanned face was without color, the mouth slightly open, the eyes closed. It was not the wrong man. She reached out to pull the sheet back farther.
The doctor put his hand on hers. “You don’t want to do that,” he said kindly.
Holly placed her hand on Jackson’s cool cheek and began to sob.
Six
HOLLY GOT INTO HURD’S CAR AND SLAMMED the door. Ham got into the backseat. “Take me to the station,” she said.
Hurd turned and looked at her, his usually placid visage showing astonishment. “Holly, you ought to go home and rest.”
Ham, who was sitting in the rear seat with Daisy, spoke up. “God, you’re not thinking of going to work, are you?”
“What else am I supposed to do, Ham? Go home and bounce off the walls? Make keening noises and curse God? Right now, work is all I’ve got, and there’s work to be done.”
Hurd recovered himself, started the car and drove off toward the station.
Holly sat mute, collecting her thoughts. She couldn’t think about Jackson on a slab in the hospital morgue; plenty of time for that later. She had an investigation to organize, witnesses to question, bank robbers—no,
murderers
—to catch.
First things first. She fished her cell phone out of her purse and dialed a number she knew by heart.
“FBI,” a man’s voice said.
“Harry Crisp,” she replied.
“Mr. Crisp’s office,” a secretary said.
“This is Chief Holly Barker of the Orchid Beach Police Department,” Holly said. “I need him.”
“One moment, Chief.”
“Holly, how are you?” Harry said cheerfully.
The year before, she had worked a huge case with him on her home turf, and they had become friends.