“MD plates, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you get the number?”
“Of course.”
“Let me have it. I’ll ask one of my cop friends to run it past Motor Vehicles. Did you check the motel register?”
“How could I do that?”
“I’ll teach you sometime. Because maybe this doctor was Wade Livingston, hmm? Though I’m sure he wouldn’t have registered under his own name.”
“Who’s Wade Livingston?”
“An OB-GYN with offices at the Bayou Professional Building, 837 West Bayou Boulevard. Leona visited him on Monday.”
“He makes motel calls?” loots said.
Warren chuckled.
“But today’s Friday,” he said. “And on…”
“The twelfth of February, in fact,” Toots said.
“Correct. Lincoln’s birthday, in fact.”
“Very early on Lincoln’s birthday, in fact,” Toots said.
“In any event,” Warren said, “on Fridays, the lady has a two o’clock aerobics class at The Body Works on Magnolia, two blocks west of the Cockatoo Restaurant on Forty-one. Please be there.”
“I planned to be outside her house at eight.”
“Fine.”
“That was before I got a call at four in the morning.”
Warren looked at his watch.
“It’s only five to four,” he said.
“Better yet,” she said, and hung up.
At ten o’clock that Friday morning, Matthew went back to the Brechtmann house. A fine mist was rising from the water. The mist obscured the sky so that the house seemed rooted not on the ground but instead appeared a part of the mist itself, cloud-borne, ephemeral.
The security guard at the gate recognized Matthew.
Karl Hitler, jug ears, a little black mustache, black hair trimmed close to his head, brown eyes spaced too closely together.
“Yes, sir,” he said, “how can I help you?”
He made it sound sarcastic.
“Would you tell Miss Brechtmann that Matthew Hope is here to see her?”
“Why, certainly.”
Still sounding sarcastic.
He pressed the button on his intercom.
“Yes?”
The old woman’s voice. Sophie Brechtmann.
“Mrs. Brechtmann, there’s a Matthew Hope here to see your daughter, ma’am.”
“Miss Brechtmann has already left for the brewery,” Sophie said.
“Mrs. Brechtmann?” Matthew said to the intercom.
Silence.
“Mrs. Brechtmann?” he said again.
“Yes, Mr. Hope?”
“Mrs. Brechtmann, I had an appointment with your daughter yesterday afternoon, but we…”
“My daughter’s affairs are her own,” Sophie said. “She is not here, Mr. Hope. She left for the brewery at a little past…”
“I called the brewery before coming here, Mrs. Brechtmann. They told me your daughter wasn’t expected today.”
Silence.
“Mrs. Brechtmann?”
“Yes?”
“I’d like to talk to your daughter.”
“Good day, Mr. Hope.”
And a click on the speaker.
“Beat it, pal,” Karl said.
“I’ll be back,” Matthew said.
At twenty minutes to eleven that Friday morning, Leona placed a call from the telephone in the master bedroom. She did not know that there was an FM transmitter behind the night table not three feet from where she sat on the edge of the bed. The transmitter batteries were extremely weak by then, but there must have been at least enough power left to activate the tape recorder in the closet across the room; its reels began moving the moment she spoke.
“Dr. Livingston, please,” she said.
A pause.
“Mrs. Summerville.”
Another pause.
“Wade, it’s me.”
This sentence alone, in a court of law, would have been enough to convince a judge that Leona Summerville and Dr. Wade Livingston were intimately involved.
“Wade, have you given any further…?”
A long silence. Then:
“I’m sorry. Wade, but…”
Another silence.
“Yes, Wade.”
Silence.
“Wade, I have to see you again. I know, but… uh-huh. Uh-huh. But I have to talk to you. Uh-huh. Wade… uh-huh. Wade, I’ll come by at noon. When your nurse goes to lunch. I’ll be waiting outside for you. Wade, all you have to… Wade, please listen to me. After all this time, you can at least… no. Wade, please don’t! If you hang up, I’ll only call back. Listen to me, okay? Please listen to me. I’ll be parked outside the office, all you have to do is walk to the… I just want to talk to you. Ten minutes. Can you spare me ten minutes? That’s all I ask of you, ten minutes. Thank you, Wade. Thank you very much, darling. I’ll see you at a little after twelve. Thank you. And Wade…?”
Silence.
“Wade?”
More silence.
Leona put the receiver back on the cradle.
At eleven o’clock sharp that morning, an unmarked sedan belonging to the Calusa Police Department pulled up to the gate outside the Brechtmann mansion. Detective Morris Bloom was driving the automobile. Matthew Hope was sitting beside him.
The security guard locked at Bloom’s shield.
“Tell Elise Brechtmann the police are here,” he said.
Karl got on the pipe.
Sophie Brechtmann answered.
“Send gentlemen in,” she said.
Mother and daughter was waiting in the living room.
Charles Abbott had described Elise Brechtmann a beautiful woman.
His description was almost on the money — but not quite.
A woman in her late thirties, Elise wore her blonde hair in a virtual crew cut that emphasized high cheekbones and intensely green, luminous eyes. Her full-lipped mouth seemed set in a perpetual pout that added a hint of turbulent sexuality to a face spoiled only by its subversive nose. Despite Elise’s German ancestry the nose could have been American Indian in origin, a trifle too large for her face, its cleaving tomahawk edge destroying the image of an otherwise pale and sudden beauty. It was, Matthew realized, the same nose that imparted a sense of obstinate strength to the face of her grandfather, Jacob Brechtmann, whose portrait glared down at them from the chimney wall.
“I’m sorry” we missed each other yesterday.” she said.
“Yes, so am I,” Matthew said.
“Apparently,” she said, and smiled. “But surely, Mr Hope, a broken appointment needn’t have prompted call to the police.”
Eyes twinkling. She was making a joke. But there was nothing funny about Matthew’s visit here today.
“Miss Brechtmann,” he said, “I wonder if you’d mind answering some questions for me and Detective Bloom.”
“Does this have to do with the Parrish case? Mother told me you were here the other…”
“Yes, it has to do with the Parrish case,” Matthew said. “Did you know him?”
“Who? Your client?”
“No. The victim. Jonathan Parrish.”
“No.”
“You did not know him,” Matthew said.
“I did not know him.”
Matthew looked at Bloom.
“Miss Brechtmann,” Bloom said, “according to what Mr. Hope has told me, there seems reasonable cause to believe that you did know Jonathan Parrish.”
“Oh?”
Pouting mouth forming the single word.
“Yes,” Bloom said.
“And what has Mr. Hope told you!’”
“Miss Brechtmann,” Matthew said, “I spoke to a man named Anthony Holden… you do know Anthony Holden?”
“That rodent, yes, I know him.”
“Who claims that the reason you fired him…”
“I fired him because he was a thief!”
“Not according to him.”