The Bone House (12 page)

    It
wasn't a big leap from Glory to Vivian, not that they looked alike or had
anything in common about their lives. What they shared was the similarity of
their deaths.

    Glory,
a dead body on a beach in Florida. Vivian, a dead body on a beach north of
Barcelona.

    A
dozen years later, he could still picture her face, vivid both in life and
death. He'd always assumed that the memory would fade, but it didn't work out
that way, no matter how much he tried to outrun her. She followed him as he
moved from place to place and job to job. Whenever he felt the urge to let down
his guard, Vivian was there, reminding him that trust was a dangerous thing.
Lala and the other women in his life since then had paid the price.

    That
was another reason he hated beach bodies. They came with a lot of baggage.

    Vivian
Frost. His mother had warned him that he was falling too hard and too fast.
Tarla Bolton was a Hollywood actress, which meant by definition that everyone
was trying to screw her. She'd tried to protect her son with an emotional suit
of armor, but back then, in his early twenties, Cab was still young enough and
naive enough to reject her view of the world. He hadn't been burned as a cop or
as a man, and he didn't want to end up as disillusioned as his mother. Vivian
changed all that.

    He'd
gone to Barcelona as a newly minted special agent with the FBI, dispatched to
Spain to liaise with local authorities in the search for an American fugitive
named Diego Martin, who'd been caught on videotape in a bar on Las Ramblas. The
waitress he'd interviewed at the bar, a divorced woman ten years older than he
was, languid and sensual, was Vivian Frost. She was a British expat who'd
married a Spanish computer executive and been kicked out of his estate after
she got tired of his cheating. Like most Londoners who moved to Spain, she had
no interest in going home, even after she'd found herself alone and mostly
penniless in the city. She worked long hours. She smoked incessantly, the way
everyone smoked there, and it gave her a husky voice. She had bone-white skin
in a city of golden faces. She glided where everyone else walked.

    After
an interview in which Cab decided that Vivian knew nothing about the man he was
chasing, he went back to the bar that same night and sought her out again for
his own purposes. She professed to be utterly uninterested in men, and the more
she rejected him, the more he returned to the bar like a moth to a flame. He
became obsessed with Vivian. He fell completely under her spell.

    The
fruitless investigation dragged on for weeks, then months. There were no more
leads. The American fugitive, Diego Martin, had gone underground or left the
city entirely. Cab's superiors in the Bureau wanted him back home if the trail
was cold, but he gave them hope where there was mostly no hope at all. What he
wanted was more time with Vivian. His lies bought him three more months, and
slowly, cold indifference on her part gave way to a few casual dates and then to
their first night of sex in her cramped, smoky apartment, with the neighbors
listening on the other side of the thin walls. He found her to be uninhibited,
making love with abandon, unlike any other woman he'd known. After that night,
they were inseparable.

    When
the Bureau finally ran out of patience with his delays, he quit. He walked away
from the job he'd sought from his earliest days out of college. His mother told
him he was insane and that he didn't understand women or how manipulative they
could be. He told her he was in love. Madly in love, and that was the truth. He
told her he was staying in Spain and getting married. Looking back, he
remembered those days as the one time in his life when he'd been innocent
enough to be happy.

    Vivian
Frost. Beautiful, funny, intense, wicked, graceful, faithless, and treacherous.
Vivian Frost, who'd wound up dead with a bullet in her brain on a deserted
beach north of the city.

    Unlike
Glory Fischer, though, there was no mystery for Cab about who had killed her.

    He'd
done it himself.

    'Someone
she knew?' Lala Mosqueda asked as she sat down next to Cab's desk. 'Troy said
that Glory recognized someone?'

    Cab
sat with his hands cupped over his nose and mouth. He didn't hear her. Instead,
he heard a roaring noise that sounded like the Spanish surf, and he saw
Vivian's face again, eyes open, entry wound in her forehead.

    'Hey,
Cab?'

    He
blinked as Lala said his name and heard concern in her voice. He rocked back in
his chair and reached for the bag of plantain chips, but it was empty. He
forced a smile on to his face. 'Moh-skee-toh,' he said, drawing out her
nickname, talking loudly enough to cause others in the department to turn and
watch them.

    Lala
shook her head in disgust, then leaned closer and hissed under her breath, 'Why
do you do that?'

    'What?'

    'Push
people away.'

    'Is
that what I'm doing?' he asked.

    'You
know damn well it is.'

    She was
right. He'd become an expert at keeping women on the far side of his safety
zone. Those he liked, like Lala, were the ones he worked hardest to alienate.

    'Fine,'
she said, when he didn't reply. 'Be an ass. I don't care.'

    Cab
wanted to apologize, but he swallowed it down. 'Yes, Glory saw someone she
knew,' he said. 'That's the story. Troy thinks she was talking about Mark
Bradley, but he's just guessing. Glory didn't say who it was.'

    Lala
waited before she said anything else. When she spoke again, the softness in her
tone was gone, replaced by cool detachment. She'd opened the door; he'd slammed
it shut. That was his pattern.

    'Do
you think Troy is telling the truth?' she asked calmly. 'Did Glory really say
anything like that, or is he simply trying to point us toward Bradley?'

    Cab
shrugged. 'I don't believe Troy is enough of a deep thinker to come up with a
plan like that. He says he's certain that Bradley killed her. If he was going
to lie, I think he'd just say that Glory said she saw Bradley on Friday night.'

    'What
about Tresa? Did Glory say anything to her about recognizing someone?'

    'Apparently
not.'

    'Well,
Troy backs up what Ronnie Trask told us,' Lala pointed out. 'Glory saw someone
she knew, and for some reason she freaked and ran.'

    'Too
bad, I was hoping Trask made the whole thing up,' Cab said. 'The question is
who Glory saw.'

    'Could
it be Mark Bradley?'

    'Sure
it could. Troy's guessing, but he may be right. What did you find out about
Bradley and the Fischers?'

    'I
called the sheriff's department in Sturgeon Bay, which is the county seat for
Door County,' Lala told him. 'I talked to the sheriff himself, tough old goat
named Felix Reich. He said that pretty much everyone in the department believed
Bradley was having sex with the girl. That would have been a misdemeanor
assault in Wisconsin given their ages, but Tresa was adamant in denying the
affair. No witness, no charges. Even so, Bradley wound up losing his teaching
job. Tresa's mother, Delia, kept calling for his head. The district called it
budgetary, but no one expected the school to keep him on. He hasn't found
another job.'

    'So
he's got reason to be pissed off.'

    'Yes,
but I'm not seeing any motive for him to kill Glory,' Lala pointed out. 'No one
accused them of having an affair.'

    'That
doesn't mean they weren't.'

    'You're
pretty cynical, Cab. For what it's worth, the sheriff had some things to tell
me about Glory, too.'

    Cab
raised an eyebrow. 'Such as?'

    'She
was a troubled kid. Multiple arrests going back several years.' 'Several years?
She's only sixteen.'

    'Yeah,
her first drug possession bust was at age twelve, and it wasn't her last. The
local cops think she may have done some selling, too, although she was never
actually charged. She was involved in vandalism, shoplifting, breaking and
entering. It's not a happy picture.'

    'Have
there been any problems reported at the hotel this week?'

    'The
usual minor stuff. Glory's name didn't come up.'

    'If
we can pin this on someone, the defense is going to say Glory got involved with
the local drug scene or hooked up with the wrong crowd.'

    'That
may be what happened,' Lala told him.

    'Yeah,
I know. Maybe. Let's keep talking to everyone we can, but put an emphasis on
girls who were at the event center on Friday. I want to see if we can find
someone who saw Glory before she went running toward Ronnie Trask. I want to
know who she recognized.'

    'The Bradleys
are the only other people in the hotel from Door County,' Lala said.

    'I
know, but it sounds like Door County is a tourist area in Wisconsin. If Glory
saw someone who
visited
the area but doesn't live there, that opens up a
lot more possibilities. Particularly with a bunch of college kids staying at
the hotel.'

    'We're
looking for a needle, and the haystack just got a lot bigger,' Lala said.

    'There
were a lot of people at that competition. Someone other than Ronnie Trask is
bound to remember a girl running through the hall crying.'

    Lala
shrugged. 'Teenage girls do that all the time.'

    'Yeah?
I don't picture you doing that, Mosquito.'

    'I
was tougher than most,' she replied. After a moment, she added, 'You have a nickname,
too, you know.'

    'Catch-a-Cab
Bolton,' he said, nodding.

    'You
know about it?'

    'Sure.
I know about the betting pool, too. When will Cab quit and move on? It's been
two years. The welcome mat is wearing thin.'

    'It's
nothing to be proud of, Cab.'

    'Did
I say I was?' he asked.

    'You
never say anything.'

    Cab
opened his mouth to fire off a sarcastic reply, but for once he let it go. Then
he asked, 'So what week do you have in the pool?'

    'Next
week, actually,' she said, without smiling.

    'That
soon?'

    'I
know you better than the others.'

    It
was as if she'd given him a terminal diagnosis. 'Well, if anyone's going to
make money on me, I'd like it to be you.'

    Lala
didn't answer. Behind Cab's shoulder, someone gestured to her, and she climbed
out of the chair and chatted with a uniformed officer in the doorway of the
investigation division. When she returned, she was all business again. There
wasn't time for anything personal between them, and he wondered if she was relieved
by the interruption.

    'You've
got a visitor in the interview room,' Lala told him.

    'Delia
Fischer?' Cab asked, checking his watch. 'She's right on time.'

    Lala
shook her head. 'It's not her. It's Mark Bradley. And his attorney. They want to
talk.'

    Hilary
Bradley emerged out of the Naples Police headquarters building into the bright
sunshine. She slipped sunglasses on to her face. She stopped on the circular
brick walkway and hesitated, unsure where to go. Mark was upstairs, and she
assumed the police would interview him for an hour or more. At least he wasn't
alone in facing their questions. She liked the attorney they'd hired; he was a
bulldog, according to her father. It was the smart thing to do to get help, but
she knew Mark was right about perceptions. The police would see him with a
lawyer, and one word would jump into their heads.

    Guilty.

    She'd
heard it in her father's voice, too. Her parents had stood behind Mark last
year, because Hilary had convinced them he was innocent. Now she'd gone back to
the well, and this time, there was an unspoken doubt in their reactions. They
didn't know what to believe anymore. They probably wondered what
she
believed and whether she was being honest about her suspicions. But they had
stayed silent.