The Bone House (5 page)

    'Good.'
Cab eyed the narrow strip of Gulf Coast sand, which stretched along the water
like a ribbon for several miles in both directions. Even in the early morning,
there were already bathers sunning themselves up and down the beach. 'If you
strangled someone in the surf, what would you do next?' he asked Lala.

    'I'd
walk along the water and head up the beach where there are a ton of footprints
in the sand,' she said.

    'Exactly.
I hate beach bodies.' He replaced his sunglasses on his face, covering up his
sky-blue eyes. 'OK, Mosquito, what do we know so far?'

    Cab
saw her dark eyes flash with annoyance. He knew she hated it when he used her
nickname, but he couldn't resist pushing her buttons. He'd never been a master
of social graces; his mouth was always getting him into trouble. That was one
of the reasons he'd gone from the FBI to the police to private investigative
work and back to the police in half a dozen cities over the past twelve years.
His colleagues also resented his born-in-LA style. Unlike most cops working for
a pension, he had a bulging trust fund thanks to his Hollywood mother, and he
did what he did because he enjoyed it, not because he needed a paycheck. That
didn't fly with most cops, and particularly not in Naples, which was a
sun-soaked resort town of rich snowbirds and spoiled spring break college
students. If you had money, you were supposed to be on the other side of the
social divide.

    He
wasn't fooling Lala with his jokes, though. He was deliberately keeping her at
a distance, and she knew it. They'd had a brief affair not long ago that was
the equivalent of a supernova: super-charged, blindingly bright, collapsing
with a big bang. Their attraction hadn't gone away, but what was left between
them was a black hole, with both of them fighting against the pull of gravity.

    'OK,
Ms Mosqueda,
what do we know so far?' he asked her.

    She
had a very pretty Cuban face, but there was definitely no light escaping from
it now. Black hole.

    'A
jogger found the body before sunrise,' she told him. 'She was face down in the
water, topless, with her bikini top wrapped around her neck. He pulled her out of
the water and tried mouth-to-mouth, but she'd been dead for a while.
Preliminary estimate on time of death is between two and four o'clock. From the
ligature marks on the neck and bruising on the backs of the shoulders, it looks
like someone held her down and strangled her in the water. The ME isn't sure
yet whether asphyxiation resulted from the rope of the bikini top or the water
itself.'

    'But
she didn't just get drunk and do a bellyflop in the surf?' Cab asked.

    'No,
she definitely had help. The girl had been drinking, though. We found an empty
bottle of Yellow Tail near the body, and her teeth and tongue show
discoloration from red wine. We won't know how much she had until we get the
blood analysis back. Maybe she was drunk, maybe she wasn't.'

    'Did
she have sex?' Cab asked.

    'She
was still wearing her bikini bottom,' Lala replied in a monotone, 'and the
fabric wasn't ripped or otherwise disturbed. There was no bruising, blood, or
external injury consistent with vaginal or anal rape, at least based on a
visual inspection.'

    Cab
wasn't convinced. 'You're talking about a teenage girl who's drinking and
topless on the beach. That sure smells like sex was involved.'

    'I'm
not saying she didn't have sex, but there isn't any evidence yet of sexual
assault.'

    'Fair
enough. I get it. Did you find anything else near the body?'

    Lala
gestured up and down the beach with frustration. 'We're combing the sand, but
you've got a few thousand people along here every day. We'll bag and test what we
find, but don't get your hopes up.'

    'How
about the body itself?' Cab asked.

    'We're
checking for DNA under her fingernails, but her hands were lying in the water.
Even if she fought back, I'm not sure what we're going to find.'

    'See,
this is why I hate beach bodies,' Cab repeated.

    Lala
opened her mouth as if she had more to tell him, but he held up a hand to stop
her as he let the details soak into his mind. His way of approaching an
investigation was to add layers of fact to his brain like coats of paint. He
liked to let one coat dry before slapping on the next one. Lala was different.
She preferred to blurt out her whole report at once and sort through the puzzle
pieces.

    Lala
was dressed all in black. Black T-shirt, black jeans, black sandals, all of it
matching her shoulder-length black hair. She was in her mid- thirties, like
Cab, and had spent her entire career with the Naples Police. She was intense
about everything that Cab wasn't. Her Cuban family. Her Cuban politics. Her
Catholic heritage. Her job. Her temper. She was fire; he was water, always
flowing downhill, always running away. Still, she was about the only cop in
Florida he considered a friend.

    Not
that he would ever say so to her face.

    'Cab?'
Lala asked impatiently.

    'Yeah,
OK, keep going. Do we know who this girl is?'

    'We
got lucky about that. Her name's Glory Fischer. Sixteen years old.'

    Cab
exhaled in dismay. 'She's just a kid.'

    'Sixteen's
older than you think these days.'

    'Yeah,
yeah, thirteen is the new eighteen, sixteen's the new twenty- one. How'd we
make the ID?'

    'Her
sister and Glory's boyfriend were looking for her in the hotel grounds when we
showed up. The sister said Glory wasn't in their room, and when they heard
about the body, they both freaked. The sister confirmed Glory's ID from a
photograph. We've got them with a policewoman now. A counselor's on the way.'

    'What
about a parent?'

    Lala
shook her head. 'The girls are from rural Wisconsin, an area called Door County.
Mom's back home, Dad's deceased. The sister already called the mother and gave
her the news. She's flying down here today.'

    'Wisconsin,'
Cab said. 'Remind me, that's north of Michigan, right?'

    'No,
the place north of Michigan is called Canada, Cab.'

    'Same
difference. What were these girls doing here anyway?'

    'The
hotel is crawling with college dancers,' Lala told him. 'There was some kind of
competition this week with student teams from all over the country. The sister
- her name is Tresa, T-r-e-s-a - she goes to school at the University of
Wisconsin at River Falls. She came down here on a bus with her teammates. Her
mother couldn't come, so it sounds like Glory and her boyfriend - his name's
Troy Geier - drove down here separately to cheer for Tresa during the program.
They were all supposed to be heading back home today.'

    'The
victim, Glory, she wasn't part of the competition?'

    Lala
shook her head. 'Nope.'

    'Did you
get any more info about Glory out of the sister or the boyfriend? Do they have
any idea what she was doing on the beach last night?'

    'They
say no.'

    'Do
you believe them?' Cab asked.

    'If
one of them was involved, they put on a good act. Most of the time, you can see
through kids if they're lying.'

    'I
pretty much assume everybody's lying,' Cab said.

    That
was part of his legacy growing up with a mother who worked as an actress. If
someone was moving their lips in LA, they were probably lying. Being a cop had
done nothing to change his conviction that people were dishonest at heart. He'd
learned that lesson the hard way.

    'How
old is the sister Tresa?' he added.

    'Nineteen.
She's a freshman at River Falls.'

    'How
about the boyfriend? Did you pick up anything about his relationship with
Glory?'

    'Nothing
about Glory,' Lala said. He saw a self-satisfied smirk on her golden face. She
knew something. She'd been aching to tell him from the beginning.

    'Spill
it, Mosquito,' Cab said. 'What did the boyfriend tell you?'

    Lala
didn't blink at the nickname this time. 'Troy followed me so we could talk in
private. He didn't want Tresa to hear what he had to say, because she wouldn't
let him talk about it.'

    'About
what?'

    'Apparently
there's another couple from the same part of Wisconsin staying at the resort
this week. Their names are Mark and Hilary Bradley. I checked, and he's right.
They have a room that opens right on to the beach. It's not even two hundred
yards from where the murder took place.'

    'OK,'
Cab said, waiting for more.

    'Troy
told me that we needed to talk to the husband before he skipped town. He
claimed that if there's anyone in the hotel who might have done this to Glory,
it's Mark Bradley.'

    Cab
raised an eyebrow. 'Yeah? Based on what? Does this guy have some kind of
connection to Glory?'

    'Not
to Glory,' Lala told him, 'but to her sister. According to Troy, everyone in
Door County knows Mark Bradley. He was a teacher at the high school until he was
let go under a cloud last year. The police couldn't bring statutory rape
charges, because Tresa wouldn't say a word against him on the record. But the
story is, he was having sex with her.'

    Hilary
Bradley sat motionless on the sofa in their hotel room as Mark paced in and out
of the dusty stream of light through the patio door. They hadn't spoken. She
studied the stricken expression on her husband's face. His breathing was fast
and loud through his nose; he was scared. It was like a rerun of the previous
year, when they'd sat together in their Washington Island home and confronted
the rumors about Mark and Tresa.

    Not
again.

    They
didn't need to talk to each other to know what was going to happen. Hilary
could see it all too clearly. Accusations were about to rain down on Mark like
a storm. There would be a knock on the door. Questions. Suspicion. This one
would be even worse than the previous year because Mark's name was already
linked to teenage girls and sex - and because there was no doubt this time
about whether anything bad had really happened. There would be no he-said, she-
said this year.

    A
girl was dead on the beach. Someone killed her.

    Mark
stopped in the middle of the carpet. He'd closed the glass door to the beach,
and the air in the room was cold and sterile. Their eyes met. She saw anger and
anxiety fighting in his face. He took two steps in his long stride and knelt in
front of her. He took both of her hands and squeezed them hard. 'I need to say
something.'

    Hilary
was calm. 'Go ahead.'

    'I didn't
do this,' Mark said. 'I never thought I'd have to ask this again, but I need
you to have faith in me. You have to believe me.'

    'I
do.'

    He
stood up again, relieved, and she hoped he didn't doubt her sincerity or wonder
if she was hiding something behind her face. She wasn't lying.

    A
year ago, her friends had called her naive when she told them that she didn't
think that Mark had slept with Tresa Fischer. He denied it; she believed him.
They'd both been foolish in letting Tresa get closer to them than their other
students, which was a mistake Hilary had always sworn to herself she'd avoid as
a teacher. But she and Mark were new to Door County and anxious to fit into
small-town life. Tresa was sincere, smart, quiet; she was pretty, but she wasn't
wild or sexual like her younger sister Glory. They'd paid attention to her, and
Tresa, who didn't get much attention at home, thrived on it.

    Hilary
had realized quickly that Tresa was developing a schoolgirl crush on her
husband. It wasn't the first time. Women young and old were drawn to Mark, but
he'd never shown any inclination to cheat. She hadn't seen Tresa's emotions as
a threat, because she knew the girl too well and didn't believe Tresa would
ever try to act on her feelings. Her affection for Tresa made her forget her
first rule of teenagers, which was that they weren't girls growing up to be
women; they were women in girl's clothes. She also never expected that Tresa's
fantasies alone could get her husband into trouble.