The Dark of Day (44 page)

Opening the refrigerator, C.J. found a bottle of root beer. “You want this? I'll share it with you.”

“No, thanks.” Judy was still staring at her, waiting to hear an explanation.

C.J. looked in a drawer for the bottle opener. “Judy, I'm going to accept your offer to find Kylie.”

“You're worried about her and Milo, aren't you?”

“I think she has more sense than that, but yes. God, I would love to go straight to the police. The girls are supposedly over eighteen, but it's still prostitution, and if they were drugged, it's rape.”

“What do you use for proof?”

“That is a problem.” C.J. opened one drawer after another for the bottle opener. Someone had done too good a job cleaning the place. A vase of freshly cut yellow croton leaves was on the table. The dishes had been washed and put away, and the floor mopped. Coming downstairs at noon, C.J. had nearly wept from gratitude.

“Rick could tell the police what he knows,” Judy suggested.

“No, I don't want him saying anything until we get Fuentes off his back. I keep wavering between being a lawyer and wanting to forget my client so I can tear Milo's throat out. Rick thinks Milo is guilty of murder. I can't see it, but I just don't know.” C.J. found the opener. The other end was a corkscrew. She stared at it for a while, then slowly unfolded it.

Judy said, “I think you want to use the bottle opener part.”

C.J. turned around. “Do you remember that photograph in the paper of the piece of metal found with Alana's body? Do you have time to fax it to me? Now?”

After Judy left, C.J. ran up to her office and went online to find every Mercedes dealer and upscale auto upholstery shop in the Miami area. She started calling and got a hit on the fourth one. The name of the shop was Wunder-Kar.
Vunder.
They specialized in luxury German makes.

 

 

C.J. parked Edgar's Buick across the street and walked through the gate in the high chain-link fence. One of the workers, a Hispanic man in his twenties, said there was no way he could let her into the shop. She tucked a fifty-dollar bill into his shirt pocket. After looking around to see who might be watching, he said he would have to stand by the car and make sure she didn't damage anything.

The garage smelled of leather and oil. The ceiling lights gleamed on chrome and expensive paint jobs. The other men barely nodded when her new friend said she owned the Mercedes limo and had to look for something. The front seats had been taken out, but the passenger area hadn't yet been touched. The man told her to hurry up. In her white cotton slacks, C.J. slid across the backseat.

From the ceiling hung the bizarre little lamp that Milo had bought in Berlin, made of antique doll's heads and halogen lamps on metal rods that curled in long silver spirals. From her purse C.J. withdrew the fax that Judy had sent. She held up the page and compared the photograph to the lamp. The sharp point of a coil of metal had been embedded in the duct tape around Alana Martin's headless torso, but the metal had not come from this lamp. The rods were too long and too shiny, and all six of them were still firmly screwed into the base.

C.J. folded the page, put it back into her purse, and found the small but powerful flashlight she'd brought with her. Two weeks ago, there had been a blanket of fake leopard skin across the backseat. What could it have hidden? C.J. passed the beam of the flashlight over every square inch of the backseat, the brown leather worn with age, the holes where some of the stitching had come loose.

She crawled on the floor, picking at the carpet. She pulled down the jump seats. She opened the door in the bar and let down the shelf, finding
a corkscrew. The shape in the photograph was more like this, but even this wasn't right.

Finally, exhausted, she sat in the middle of the floor, thinking.

A tap came on the window. C.J. got out and asked the man to open the trunk. She saw a tire jack, a box of brochures for The Aquarius, and dust. She turned off her flashlight, thanked the man, and left.

The fifty dollars would have been a waste except that she felt slightly better about Milo.

Starting the Buick, she had to pump the gas to get it going. Sweat dripped down the side of her face, and she wiped it on her sleeve. Clouds completely hid the sun, but it didn't matter. The air conditioner was as feeble as its owner. C.J. took her cell phone out of its pocket and hit the speed dial for Billy Medina, thinking as she did so that she needed to find some other person to correspond with button number five.

“Hello,
chica.
” His smooth baritone filled her ear. “To tell you the truth, I'm a little surprised to hear from you.”

“I know. I'm sorry, Billy. Last time we spoke I was pretty shaken up. Not every day you see a man who's hanged himself. Thanks again for the rescue. So. Are you busy later on?”

“No. What's up?”

“Could I come over?”

“Oh, is this the ‘we need to talk' talk?”

“Not at all.” She didn't want him to think he could take her to bed, but honesty would end the conversation. “Aren't you leaving for Antigua tomorrow? Let me come say good-bye. Bring you some takeout?”

“Well, actually, I have a meeting at the Delano for cocktails, but I'll be home about eight o'clock. Is that too late?”

“No, it's fine.”

“Wear something sexy.”

He hung up before she could say anything more. She put the car into gear. The transmission clunked, and the power steering groaned, but not loudly enough to drown out the chimes from her BlackBerry.

It was Judy. C.J. put the car back in park. Judy told her that she had just found Kylie's address, both the apartment and her work address, a shop called Shiva Sun on Washington Avenue.

“Wait,” C.J. said. “Let me get my memo book. I'll write it down. I'm going over to the Beach anyway later on. Maybe I'll drop in and buy something.”

“Kylie may not be there. She took the day off. Her boss isn't happy about it. She suspects a party. That's why most of her employees don't last. They're always skipping work to party. It's South Beach, and you're only young once.”

C.J. wrote down the addresses and put the memo book away. “If they fired her, she might learn something.”

“So, did you look at Milo's car?”

She described her search of the limousine. “Even you, Judy, wouldn't have found so much as a hair. Alana wasn't in that car. If Milo had wanted her out of the way, he would have simply paid her. She needed money to move to L.A., and she would have kept her mouth shut. Everyone said she was discreet.”

“But she wouldn't have left without getting her audition tapes,” Judy pointed out.

“Milo had nothing to do with the tapes,” C.J. replied. “Milo had no motive at all.”

“Well, Harold Vincent didn't kill her.”

“I'm not saying he did.” C.J. watched the German and American flags on top of the upholstery shop move in a sudden gust of wind, sink, and lift once more, curling around the poles. The clouds were ragged pieces of a sodden gray blanket.

C.J. said, “Let me run something by you.” She angled the AC vent toward her face. “Alana told Kylie she had to meet someone, that she'd be right back. What if she was going to see Paul Shelby? They wouldn't have met in the house. They could have gone next door. That house is vacant, and you just step around the wall and you're there. I don't think Shelby would have planned to kill her. It just happened. They argued, and he grabbed her. He shook her too hard, or she screamed, and he had to stop her. She was a small woman. Fragile.” C.J. paused. “Of course, I could be wrong.”

There was some silence from Judy's end before she said, “Hate to point this out, hon, but how did he get Alana, dead or alive, off the island? He took a taxi home.”

“Yes, that's what he told Rick he would do, but I remember something Jason Wright told me. Taxis are hard to get on Star Island that time of night. You can wait an hour. I've been to parties at Billy's, and people complain about it all the time. So how did Shelby leave? I don't think he used Milo's car. He couldn't catch a ride with a friend. They just wouldn't have understood why he had a body over his shoulder. So what did he do? He had to call someone to rescue him. Who would do that? Who could he trust that far?”

A quick intake of breath told her that Judy got it. “Noreen Finch. She saved his ass from an arrest for statutory rape in college.”

“This is a very wild guess,” C.J. admitted.

“Noreen could've been there in fifteen minutes.” Then Judy said, “You have no evidence. You can make all the guesses you like, and it won't get you anywhere. They're too wealthy, too connected. Who's going to believe it?”

C.J. laughed as Paul Shelby's words came back to her:
No one will believe you.
“All you have to do, Judy, is drop a few suggestions into the right ears. You can't make it all up, of course, but if it's about people who matter in this world, or seem to, then you've suddenly got this ball rolling downhill, and you just get out of the way and let it roll. I do despise the tabloid media, but they can be useful sometimes. Even the mainstream media, like the story Rick is doing. He's going to reveal that Paul Shelby is hot for little girls. It's not a big jump to assume that Shelby strangled a girl who could play the part so very well.”

The flags on the building were snapping toward the east. The afternoon sunlight had dimmed. It seemed much later than five o'clock.

“Why don't you go talk to Rick about this?” Judy asked.

“Not yet. I'm going over to Billy's house. I have to be there at eight o'clock.”

“I wish you wouldn't,” Judy said.

“Not for
that,
” C.J. said. “You'll be happy to know that Billy and I are sort of finished.”

“Sort of?”

“Definitely finished. I have a hard time saying it. A hard time believing it. Billy Medina was habit-forming.”

“Then why are you going over there?”

“To ask him how Paul Shelby left the party. It wasn't in a taxi. Did someone pick him up? What did Shelby say about it, if anything? You don't leave a party without thanking the host, especially if he's one of your biggest campaign donors. I need to ask Billy about it. He's leaving for Antigua tomorrow, and he won't be back for two weeks.”

“Be careful. Old habits die hard.”

“Not to worry. Do me a favor: don't tell Rick where I am. He doesn't like Billy, and it would be hard to explain.”

“Hon, if you want to lie to him, do it yourself,” Judy said.

“You're right. He isn't Billy. I was never completely truthful with Billy, and . . . and I think I could be with Rick. He's that kind of man. So if he asks about me, tell him—you know, in an offhand way—that it's over with me and Billy. And that he really ought to overlook what happened last night. Tell him I'm a lot more down-to-earth than I seem. That isn't a lie, is it?”

rick sat in a corner of the booth, Carlos across from him. It was the same Cuban diner that he'd taken C.J. to that first day. Rick wasn't hungry, but Carlos ordered a
media noche
to hold him until dinner. They talked about this and that and had some espresso, and finally Judy Mazzio came in about a quarter to six. Carlos scooted over and made room for her.

After Carlos signed the original and two copies of his statement, Judy signed as notary and stamped the papers with her seal. Carlos looked at his watch and said he had to get home. Rick stood up and gave him a quick hug. “Thanks, man. I'll let you know if it works.”

Judy Mazzio was about to leave too, but Rick said, “Can you stay a few minutes? I'd like to ask you something.”

“I need to get this faxed to the Beach . . . sure, I have time. Fuentes will be there a while.” She sat back down, watching him. Her black hair was held in place on top of her head with a purple ribbon.

He asked her, “How's C.J.? I haven't heard from her.”

“She's fine. We took her car to the shop and had lunch.”

“Maybe I'll go over later and check on her.”

Like a lot of older women, the ones who knew what was what, Judy had eyes that could look farther into you than the front of your face. She said, “C.J. is a good person. She might have some issues, but she's my best friend. If you mess her up, I will come after you.”

He might have smiled, but the brown eyes were pinning him. “I'm not going to mess her up. I hope not to.”

Judy Mazzio studied him for a minute before she crossed her arms and sat back against the booth. “Don't go over there now. She's getting ready to go out. Call her mobile at eight-fifteen. She'll be at Billy Medina's house at eight o'clock to ask him some questions about your case. I think it would be neat if Billy knew you were on the phone.” Judy made a smile he couldn't read. “It's over between her and Billy.”