He blinks at me. “She didn’t,” he says. And sighs. He picks up his flashlight and nods to me and leaves. I bolt the door after him. On close inspection, his gun’s in even worse shape than I thought. I put it into a bag. I’ll drop it out to sea. I listen to the sound the palmettos make chattering against my windows and treat myself to a cigarette.
Three weeks later, on a Friday, I’m getting spruced up to go out. Two days after our long discussion, Cash was found dead in his apartment He had a needle beside him containing nothing but air. In a note he left his worldly goods to Alex and asked that I take care of his dog Archie. He left no explanation for his suicide other than to say, I’m very tired
Our team cleared out his place. He had many old books, those of most interest with illustrated plates of birds and animals. He owned a complete medical bag and a collection of antique vet instruments that Guillermo says might be worth something. He’s researching it. These things might possibly realize enough to repay Alex for the cremation. None of us could start the van, but Alex located some of Cash’s buddies from the flea market in Fort Lauderdale and they came down and towed it away. The Kussrows declared his furniture of no resale value and we put it all out on the street for pickers to take. The building itself will soon be gutted.
Alex is looking for another trustworthy clean-up man. I haven’t told him about Cash. The morning after my talk with him, Sharon found the stolen clothing tossed behind her hibiscus bushes. Alex and Sharon like the theory that the burglar was a boy seeking women’s clothes who found them too dowdy.
Archie came to me with a list of what he eats and his ailments and a wardrobe of waistcoats and sweaters. I think Cash underestimated him. There’s a nip in the November air this evening, but I’m making Archie tough it out. We’ll walk down to Sharon’s to pick her up and have dinner at a new restaurant on Biscayne that Alex recommends. We’ll go on afterward to Café Nublado, and beyond that, who knows? She’s a warm woman, as I’m coming to appreciate.
On my way out I stop in the dining room — as I often do — to look at the portrait of Helena Dorsett. What was it she had? Beauty enough to kill for, any way you look at it. I strain to recapture the woman I met. Quite a lady, I remember thinking. Her face is a pattern of shadow and light. Now, just paper.
Machete
by Barbara Parker
Biscayne Bay
The Miami PD had beaten us to the scene. Yellow tape already circled the yard from one royal palm tree to the next. An officer in a rain poncho held up a hand and I waited, wipers flapping, while the fire-rescue truck pulled out of the driveway. No emergency lights, no siren. The bodies would be taken out later in the ME’s unmarked van.
I drove past the police vehicles and parked at the end of the block. The house was in Coconut Grove in a wealthy enclave of narrow streets that deadended at Biscayne Bay. Confined by the downpour, neighbors watched from their porches or second-floor windows.
The only thing I could find to keep myself dry was a plastic bag from Target in the backseat. I dumped out the jeans to be returned, grabbed my camera bag, and shoved the door open just as a silver BMW sedan lurched around me and skidded on wet leaves. Its brake lights went off, and through the misted rear window I could see Charlene on her cell phone. She disconnected and struggled out of the car with an umbrella as thunder rattled the sky.
I called out, “Did you reach her?”
“No. Doesn’t matter, we’re here. Come on, let’s go.” I could hear Brooklyn in her voice, though she’d practiced law in Miami longer than I’d been alive.
Charlene held the umbrella for both of us, but I told her to go ahead, and she clattered along beside me in her high heels and tight skirt. An officer stopped us at the end of the driveway.
“I’m Charlene Marks, Mrs. Zaden’s attorney. Would you kindly tell the lead investigator I want to see my client? Who’s in charge, by the way?”
Ignoring the question, the officer lifted a radio to his lips. Water dripped off the hood of his poncho. I looked at the house from under my white plastic bag. Standard South Florida mansion: red barrel-tile roof, a portico over the circular driveway, double doors with beveled glass, a chandelier in the foyer. The builder had probably bulldozed the little three-bedroom-with-carport that used to sit on this lot. What can I say? I don’t like bling.
My name is Sara Morales. I do private investigations, and Charlene’s firm is one of my accounts. I used to work for the Miami Police Department until I slid down some stairs while chasing a supposedly docile suspect and broke two vertebrae. I’ve recovered from the injury; I run five miles a day, when the weather isn’t so hot it melts my shoes to the asphalt, but I won’t go back to police work. I’ve come to enjoy my freedom.
I rent a two-room office in a commercial strip on South Dixie Highway, walking distance to my apartment if I had to. My parents still live in Little Havana in the first house they bought after coming to the U.S. on a raft. Literally a raft: inner tubes and a wooden platform that broke up halfway across the straits. Three of the people who started out, including my grandfather, didn’t make it. Till the day she died, my nena claimed she could talk to him in the other world. Of course she could. She was into Santería big time. I moved out after high school, a sacrilege for a Cuban girl.
Twenty minutes ago I’d been at my desk writing invoices when the phone rang. I picked up and heard tires screaming down the ramp of a parking garage. Charlene had told me whatever the hell I was doing, drop it and meet her at Kathy Zaden’s house. She said a woman had come in and slashed Dr. Zaden with a machete. Kathy heard him yelling for help, and ran downstairs with a pistol. She killed the woman, but not soon enough.
“The idiot called 911 before she called me. Damn it!” Charlene wanted to get there before her client said anything stupid to the cops. She told me to bring my camera.
I was out the door in less than thirty seconds.
The uniformed officer lifted the tape. “You want to speak to Sergeant Bill Nance.”
“Thanks.” Charlene headed up the driveway. Water sheeted over the interlocking pavers.
Bill Nance. He’d been my supervisor in the detective bureau. I’d been promoted to homicide after only five years on the force, so to him I was a minority cutting in line. When I left, he didn’t send me a goodbye card.
We ran under the portico, where the mist was blowing in sideways. One of the front doors was wide open, and Nance stood there, feet spread, leaning back a little to balance his gut. Short white hair, gray slacks, gun on hip, silver shield clipped to the holster. He dismissed me with a glance and nodded at Charlene. They go back to her days at the prosecutor’s office. They’d been close, but damned if I can see why.
She propped her folded umbrella against a poured-concrete lion, one of a set flanking the entrance. The humidity had frizzed her curly gray hair. “Hello, Bill. Crummy day for this, isn’t it?”
“It’ll blow over.”
“What have you got so far?”
“Two dead downstairs in the study. Dr. Howard Zaden and a black female, early fifties. Mrs. Zaden ID’d her as Carmen Sánchez. She’s from the Dominican Republic. It appears she attacked Dr. Zaden with a machete, and Mrs. Zaden shot her. I’d like a few more details, but your client won’t talk to me.”
“It’s my fault. When she called, I told her to sit tight. Where is she?”
“Sitting tight.” Nance looked at me, at my camera. “No photos, Morales.”
“Nonsense,” Charlene said. “We have a right to record the scene, and if you make me call a judge, he’ll tell you so. You’ve got the gun, and Kathy Zaden admitted firing it. How could we possibly impede your investigation?”