After the mourners broke into small groups and headed for their cars, Yancy approached the two cop types and said, “Friends of the deceased?”
No response except barracuda stares. Both of the men had brown hair, light eyebrows and cinder-block chins.
“You must be feds,” Yancy remarked.
“Don’t be an asshole,” said one.
“That’s bad luck, swearing in a cemetery. Like a Gypsy curse.”
The men turned to leave.
“Or maybe it’s blowing each other in a cemetery,” Yancy said. “I forget which.”
He found himself dodging Eve Stripling, although she probably wouldn’t have recognized him in a suit and a tie. While waiting for her limousine to depart, Yancy drifted off among the sun-bleached headstones. Almost immediately he came across some unlucky bastard who’d been born on Yancy’s very own birthday and now lay six feet under. Yancy’s respiration shallowed and his palms moistened and his skin felt like it was crawling with centipedes. He stumbled a few plots farther, dropped to one knee and upchucked on the final resting site of one Marlene Suzanne Moody, who by Yancy’s quick calculation had passed away at age ninety-nine and was now safe from indignity.
After wiping his cheeks and smoothing the wrinkles from his pants, Yancy made his way back to the funeral canopy. Only Caitlin Cox and her husband remained at the grave. They stood shoulder to shoulder, saying nothing.
Yancy walked up and offered his condolences.
“Were you a friend of Dad’s?” she asked.
“I’m Inspector Yancy, from the Keys. I was in charge of your father’s remains.”
He presented one of his old detective cards. He figured what the hell—his cell number hadn’t changed. Caitlin’s husband asked Yancy why he’d come to the burial.
“Sometimes, in these cases, the family has questions. I just wanted to be available.”
It was a smooth response, caring yet professional. Yancy had polished the wording while waiting for the funeral procession to arrive.
Caitlin put his card in her handbag. A pair of cemetery attendants hung back on the edge of the shade. They weren’t allowed to start shoveling the dirt over Nick Stripling’s coffin until all the mourners were gone.
His daughter said, “I do have a question, Inspector.” Yancy liked the Scotland Yard-ish ring of his new title. “I’ll do my best,” he said.
“We peeked at it in the funeral home—Dad’s arm.”
Jesus, Yancy thought. Don’t tell me they were too lazy to fix the finger.
“It happened during rigor mortis,” he said.
Caitlin Stripling Cox seemed puzzled. “What on earth are you talking about?”
Her husband spoke up. “She means the wedding ring. Tell him, sweetheart.”
“Eve switched it out,” she said.
“The one I saw on your father’s hand looked like platinum,” Yancy said.
“That’s right. And the one he’s wearing now is yellow gold. Fourteen karat, maybe.” The downgrade was reported with somber disdain.
“Is it possible Eve decided to keep the original ring for sentimental reasons?”
“Lots of stuff is possible.” Caitlin frowned down at the casket. Yancy hoped she wasn’t expecting him to pry open the lid and appraise the substitute wedding band.
“Why don’t you ask Eve about it?”
“Because she hates me and I hate her. She’s a vicious cunt, by the way.”
Caitlin’s husband said, “Sweetheart, please.” His shirt collar was soaked, and a crystal droplet of perspiration clung to one of his ear-lobes. Yancy didn’t stare.
“A vicious greedy lying cunt,” elaborated Stripling’s daughter.
“It’s a rough time for everyone,” Yancy said.
“Is that legal—taking his ring?”
“As his wife, she’s entitled.”
“She probably stole his goddamn watch, too!”
Caitlin Cox was in her early twenties. Yancy figured she must have been a baby when her old man was staging auto accidents to rip off insurance companies.
He said, “The watch was already gone when they found your father’s arm.”
“Are you still on the case, or what?”
“I was in charge of delivering the remains. Unless some new information turns up, there’s not much else to be done.”
Caitlin laughed acidly. “I told you so, Simon,” she muttered sideways to her husband. “Nobody wants to investigate.”
“Investigate what exactly?” Yancy asked.
“Eve killed him, Inspector. She murdered my father.”
Simon Cox put an arm around his wife. “Okay, that’s the Xanax talking. Let’s go home, baby.”
Yancy offered to meet with them later in private. Caitlin said there was no point. “Don’t you see? She already got away with it!”
Her husband steered her away from the grave, Yancy following.
“What makes you think she killed him, Caitlin?”
“Oh, please.”
“Did your dad say something about Eve? Was he unhappy in the marriage?”
Caitlin pulled free of Simon and spun around. “How the hell would I know if he was happy or not? I haven’t talked to the sonofabitch in years.”
The captain of the Misty Momma IV was Keith Fitzpatrick, a fourth-generation Conch. His father had smuggled ganja from Jamaica, his grandfather had shipped rum from Havana and his great-grandfather had salvaged wrecked schooners that had been lured by deviously placed torches to the unforgiving reefs of Key West. Keith Fitzpatrick himself was a renowned fish hawk, booked years in advance, and therefore satisfied to abide the law. He made good money because he ran a thirty-eight-footer with only one mate.
Yancy met him for a beer at the Half Shell Raw Bar on the harbor. The motto of the place was “Eat It Raw!” Tourists went berserk for the T-shirts.
Fitzpatrick said, “Andrew, I heard Sonny canned your ass.”
“Temporarily.”
“That sucks.” Fitzpatrick’s face was boot brown except for a white goggle stripe from his sunglasses. His forearms were like glazed cudgels, his hands scarred and scaly.
“They got me doing restaurant inspections,” Yancy said.
“No way. You aren’t the one that shut down Stoney’s?”
“Listen, man, that kitchen—it was crawling with everything. So gross.”
“I love that place,” said Fitzpatrick.
Yancy placed the small gray shark tooth on the bar.
Fitzpatrick picked it up between a thumb and forefinger and turned it in the light. “Nuthin’ special,” he said.
“What kind is it?”
“Looks like a bonnethead. Maybe a baby lemon.”
“But not a bull shark or a tiger, right?”
Fitzpatrick shook his head and chuckled. “Not this little runt, no.”
“That’s what I think, too,” said Yancy.
Bonnetheads, the smallest species of hammerheads, averaged only about three feet in length. It was unlikely that any shark so small would be far offshore feeding on a human body, competing with the monsters.
“Where’d the tooth come from, Andrew?”
“That arm you snagged.”
“No shit?” Fitzpatrick examined it once more. “Don’t make sense, unless the dead guy’s boat sunk in the shallows. Which I heard he went down off Sombrero Light.”
“Let’s say he drowned in deep water and the body washed up on a flat.”
“What flat?”
“Let’s just say.”
“Still don’t explain how his whole arm got twisted off the way it did,” said Fitzpatrick. “I never seen a bonnethead could do that. You?”
“Nope. I don’t believe it’s possible.”
“So what is it you think happened? Tell me.”
“I’m not sure.”
“But Sonny’s keepin’ you on the case.”