"Are you all right?" Rolvaag asked.
"Soon as I make some coffee."
Rolvaag noticed at least half a dozen empty beer bottles in the trash, and no sign of company. He said, "I'm investigating a missing-person case. I believe you know her-Joey Perrone."
Ricca appeared to wobble. Rolvaag helped her navigate toward an armchair.
"I wasn't even there," she said.
"Where?"
"On that cruise."
"I know you weren't," said Rolvaag, perplexed.
"Why are you here?" She laughed abjectly. "Somebody put my face on a milk carton, or what? Suddenly I'm Miss Popularity."
The detective said that he'd watched Charles Perrone make a call from a pay phone in a Fort Lauderdale hotel. "It was Saturday evening, the day after Mrs. Perrone disappeared. The number that Mr. Perrone called was yours. When I asked him who he was talking to, he gave the name Ricca."
She sagged. "What else did he say? No, wait, I want to call a lawyer."
Rolvaag pulled up another chair. "You don't need a lawyer, Miss Spillman. I just want to ask a few questions about Mr. Perrone's relationship with his wife. Your personal impressions and observations."
"Observations?"
"You know-did they seem happy? Did they argue a lot?"
Ricca eyed him sullenly. "Mr. Perrone and I didn't spend a whole lotta time talking about Mrs. Perrone."
"But did you notice anything… any unusual signs of tension when the two of them were together?"
"I was never with the two of them together" Ricca said sharply. "I was only with Chaz."
"Joey wasn't ever home when you were there?"
Ricca seemed genuinely insulted. "I don't know what Chaz told you, but I'm not into threesomes, okay? Not my scene."
The detective frowned. "I'm very sorry. I believe Mr. Perrone might've misrepresented the nature of your association."
"You're damn right he did."
"He said you were their cleaning lady."
"Come again?" Ricca sat forward.
"That night in the hotel lobby, he told me he was calling to give you the alarm code so you could get in to do the house."
"The cleaning lady." Ricca's voice was like wet gravel.
Rolvaag flipped through the back pages of his notebook. "Here it is-Mr. Perrone said you were the cleaning lady and I could check it out myself. He said your first name was Ricca, but he couldn't remember your last name."
Ricca swallowed hard, working her jaw.
"So I got it off the toll records from the phone company," the detective said.
Ricca rose, rubbing her eyes with a wrinkled pajama sleeve. "Listen, I gotta get ready for work."
"Is there anything else you can tell me?" Rolvaag asked.
"Yeah. I don't do houses, I do hair," she said. "And Chaz's burglar alarm was broke, so the code didn't matter anyway. You can check it out."
Not exactly a smoking gun, Rolvaag thought, but it's better than nothing.
Back at the office, he rushed to tell Captain Gallo everything that Ricca Spillman had said. Gallo shrugged.
"So, Perrone lied."
"Again," Rolvaag said.
"So, he had a secret squeeze. Doesn't make him a killer," the captain said. "Of course he lied about the phone call. What'd you expect him to say-'Yes, Officer, I was just chatting with my girlfriend. She was all broken up to hear about my wife falling overboard and drowning on our anniversary cruise.' Come on, Karl. Sometimes a lie isn't a clue to anything. It's just a reflex."
On that subject, Rolvaag could not dispute Gallo's insight. The detective pleaded for a few more days to lean on Ricca. "She's highly pissed off at Perrone. She might give us something useful."
Gallo shook his head. "If she's not wearin' a diamond engagement ring from your prime suspect, I ain't interested. We need a motive, Karl. Something more reliable than the word of a sulking bimbo- unless she was in on it, too."
"Not likely," Rolvaag said.
A courier appeared with a plain cardboard envelope zippered in plastic. Gallo automatically reached for it, but the courier said it was addressed to Rolvaag. Surprised, the detective opened the envelope and removed a legal-size document.
Gallo cracked, "What's that, a paternity suit?"
Rolvaag was so engrossed in the contents that he wasn't listening.
"What?" Gallo pressed. "And don't tell me it's another job offer."
The detective continued reading, turning the pages. "I'll be damned," he murmured to himself.
Gallo exhaled impatiently. "Karl, don't make me pull rank. What the hell is it?"
Rolvaag glanced up with bemusement. "The last will and testament of Joey Perrone," he said, "leaving thirteen million dollars to her loving, devoted husband."
Seventeen
A tow truck dragging a rust-pocked Cordoba nearly clipped Karl Rolvaag's unmarked sedan as he turned into West Boca Dunes Phase II. The detective noticed the battered old car on the hook, figuring that kids from across the tracks must have stolen the thing and ditched it in Charles Perrone's neighborhood. Nobody who lived there would be caught dead driving a heap like that.
Rolvaag parked next to Perrone's yellow Humvee, its leering chrome grille speckled with bug splats. Parked crookedly in the swale was a second car, a spotless new Grand Marquis. The bar-code sticker on a side window pegged it as a rental. Rolvaag touched the hood, which was cold. He heard someone hammering behind the house and walked around to the backyard, where a man he recognized as Earl Edward O'Toole was pounding a white wooden cross into the lawn.
The detective set down his briefcase and identified himself. He said, "Were you a friend of Mrs. Perrone's?"
Earl Edward O'Toole seemed thrown by the question. He shook his head negatively and went on hammering.
"Is the cross for her?" Rolvaag asked.
Earl Edward O'Toole mumbled something indecipherable. Rolvaag stepped closer in order to read the hand-lettered inscription on the cross:
Randolph Claude Gunther Born 2-24-57
Returned to the Forgiving Arms of
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on 8-17-02
Please Don't Drink and Drive!
"Friend of yours?" Rolvaag asked.
"My dog," said Earl Edward O'Toole, avoiding eye contact.
"That's quite a name for a dog. Randolph Claude Gunther."
"We called him 'Rex' for short."
"I never heard of one living forty-five years," the detective remarked. "Parrots can. Tortoises, too. But I'm not so sure about dogs."
Earl Edward O'Toole took another hard swing with the hammer. "Well, he come from good stock."
"What's that on your back?" Rolvaag said. "Those stickers."
Earl Edward O'Toole hesitated. "Medicine," he replied guardedly.
"For what?"
"I get seasick."
The detective counted five patches and whistled.
Earl Edward O'Toole said, "I'm takin' a sea cruise."
"Yeah? Whereabouts?"
Again Earl Edward O'Toole paused. "Haiti," he said after a moment. "Me and my ma."
"That's a fine idea. Take your mind off poor old Randolph." Rolvaag was enjoying himself. Interludes with such entertaining freaks would be rare once he got back to Minnesota.
"Can I ask why you're planting the cross here? I don't see a grave."
" 'Cause he… he died in a plane crash," Earl Edward O'Toole said, "and there wasn't nuthin' left to bury."
"But it says 'don't drink and drive.' "
"On account of the pilot was trashed at the time."
"Ah. And these other crosses?" The detective pointed toward three more, stacked flat on the grass. "Who are they for, Earl?"
"Rex's puppies. They was all on the same plane," Earl Edward O'Toole answered peevishly. "How the hell'd you know my name anyway?"
"Nice chatting with you." Rolvaag picked up his briefcase and headed toward the house, where Charles Regis Perrone was waiting cheerlessly at the back door.
The white crosses had been erected along Glades Road, west of the turnpike; four of them in a cluster, memorializing a terrible head-on. With numb resignation Chaz had watched Red Hammernut's goon uprooting the crosses, until a car screeched to a halt on the shoulder of the highway. Two young men identifying themselves as brothers of the late Randolph Claude Gunther had leapt out of the car and angrily confronted Tool about stealing the markers. The men had brought fresh-cut sunflowers to hang on their brother's cross, and a volume of Bible verses from which to read. With Tool ignoring their remonstra-tions, the men had begun preaching loudly at him, invoking Satan and other Biblical scoundrels. Tool had responded by heaving the two brothers into a roadside canal, shredding their book of verses and eating the flowers. Chaz had looked on with the shivers.