Warren whispered the plan to her.
Fatback Key is in Calusa County, but it is not within the city limits of Calusa itself. Instead, it falls within the boundaries of Manakawa to the south. It is the wildest and narrowest of the county’s several keys, flanked on east and west by the Gulf and the bay, two bodies of water that during the hurricane season sometimes join over Westview Road, the two-lane blacktop that skewers Fatback north to south. The bridge connecting Fatback to the mainland is a humpback that can accommodate only one car at a time. Directly over the bridge is a large wooden signpost with two dozen arrows pointing off either left or right, the names of the key’s residents carved into the wooden arrows and then painted in with white. The name DEMMING was on one of those arrows; Patricia lived on Fatback. The name TOLAND was on another arrow.
Bobby Diaz had estimated that it was a forty-five minute drive from Sheila’s condo on Whisper to the Toland house on Fatback. Driving fast, in light off-season traffic, I made it from Diaz’s condo on Sabal in an hour and ten. I had not called ahead. I was hoping Etta Toland, a recent widow, would be home and not out dancing. There were lights on in the house, a sumptuous, architecturally pristine bayside mansion that opened westward past gulfside dunes to yet another glorious Calusa sunset. A greenish-black Infiniti was parked on the driveway’s white gravel. I parked the Acura alongside it. It was twenty minutes past seven.
I walked through the evengloam stillness of a lush tropical garden flanking the path to the front door. Somewhere a cardinal called. The light was fading fast. I rang a doorbell over the discreet brass escutcheon with the name Toland etched upon it in black script lettering. The cardinal fell silent. The sky over the Gulf turned purple and deep blue and blue-black and black. A single star appeared.
“Who is it?”
Etta’s voice behind the door.
“Matthew Hope. May I come in?”
There was a moment’s hesitation. Then:
“Is this allowed?”
“I believe so.”
“Just a minute.”
Silence.
At last the door opened.
Etta Toland was wearing a clay-spattered blue smock over jeans and sandals. Her sleek black hair was pulled to the back of her head, tied there with a short red ribbon. She had a towel in her hands, and she was still wiping the left hand clean when she opened the door. Rumor had it that she was a sculptor. Then again, in Calusa every other person you tripped over either sculpted or painted or wrote plays or...
“What is it, Mr. Hope?”
“I’m sorry if I’m inter—”
“You are.”
“May I come in?”
“Why?”
“There are some things we need to discuss.”
“I’m sure this isn’t permitted.”
Dark eyes angry and suspicious. Standing there in the doorway, head erect, shoulders back, barring entrance.
“I can come back with a subpoena for a deposition,” I said.
“Then maybe you ought to do that.”
“I’d prefer we talked informally.”
“All right,” she said, “come in.”
I stepped into the foyer. She closed and locked the door behind me. I was in a tiled entry that seemed an extension of the lush garden outside, tubbed flowering plants and trees everywhere, many of them taller than I was, some of them squatting low on the earth-colored floor. I followed her past a shallow pool in which golden carp swam, moved with her through wide windowed corridors toward where a light showed in the otherwise dim interior of the house.
Her studio — a huge room skylighted and windowed to show a star-drenched sky — faced eastward toward the bay. There were clay models of female nudes of various heights on stands and tables and platforms. The one she’d apparently been working on when I arrived was a life-size nude captured in midstride, arms swinging, left leg stepping out, right leg back. She began draping it with wet cloths. I had the sudden image of someone covering a birdcage at nightfall.
“Mrs. Toland,” I said, “Bobby Diaz told me he was here on the night Brett was killed. Is that correct?”
“Is it correct that he told you? Or is it correct that he was here?”
“Etta,” I said, “let’s not play games. I think you killed your husband.”
“Do you?”
One eyebrow arching over a dark, almond-shaped eye. The Dragon Lady. Calm and cool and spattered with clay, her hands deftly draping rags over the clay figure that stood almost as tall as she did.
“Diaz came here looking for a videocassette, didn’t he?”
“Did he?”
Same cool look. Hands working as busily as Lainie’s had on the tape in question.
“Which you found in an upstairs safe.”
“Did I?”
Infuriatingly cool. Hands wrapping the clay in the wet cloths. Wrapping the arms of the nascent torso, and the legs, and the breasts, and the head. Wrapping. Studiously wrapping. Studiously ignoring me. Icily ignoring me.
“You watched the tape together,” I said.
No answer now. Her entire attention focused on the clay model, wrapping it like a mummy, wet cloths enveloping it, enclosing it, smothering it.
“You confirmed that one of the women on the tape was Lainie Commins.”
Still no answer. Still working. She dipped her hands into a basin of muddy clay water on a table beside the platform. Rinsed them. Dried them on a clay-smeared towel. Folded the towel neatly. Placed it on the table beside the platform bearing the mummy-wrapped woman in full stride. Turned away from basin and towel and mummy and me. Began walking out of the studio.
“Etta,” I said.
“I think we’re finished here, Mr. Hope.”
“It was Matthew once.”
“When we were friends.”
“Etta, what did you do after Diaz left here that night?”
No answer. Still walking toward the studio’s open entrance frame, a woman in full stride, like the piece she’d been sculpting.
“Etta, he left here at about ten to eleven. What did you do then?”
“I went to sleep.”
“I don’t think so.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think.”
“It does if I can prove you were on that boat the night your husband was killed.”
“I was on the boat that night. After he was killed. I found his body, remember, Mr. Hope?”
“Did you go back to the boat after that night?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Then how did the cassette get there?”
She stopped just inside the doorless frame. Thought it over for a moment or two. Turned to me.
“Bobby took it with him,” she said.
“No, he didn’t.”
“That’s his word against mine.”
“Not if he wasn’t on the boat that night.”
“Then he must have been.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Still his word against mine,” she said again, and shrugged airily, and was turning toward the open door frame again when I said, “The cassette holder was empty at eleven-thirty.”
She hesitated again.
Stopped in midmotion, partially turned toward me, partially turned toward the door frame and the immense house beyond.
“So?” she said.
“Bobby was on his way back to Whisper Key at that time. He got there shortly before midnight. I have a witness to that effect. He couldn’t have been on the boat after Lainie left it. And the cassette holder was empty at that time.”
“Who says?”
“Lainie says.”
“Lainie killed him.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No. The cassette was here in this house at ten minutes to eleven. Lainie never had it in her possession. Eight days after the murder, I found it on the boat. You just told me you never went back to the boat. So how...?”
“I also told you Bobby took the cassette with him when he left here that night.”
“I don’t think so, Etta. I think you carried that cassette to the boat. I don’t know why you did that. Maybe you’d like to tell me.”
“Please, this is absurd.”
“No, Etta. I think you went to the boat to confront your husband. I think you...”
“I think you should leave.”
“I have a witness who saw you,” I said.
She looked at me.
“Going aboard at a quarter past eleven.”
She kept looking at me.
“Do I have to get a court order for a lineup?” I asked.
And suddenly she was weeping.