“Sign me up.”
Somebody was knocking on Yancy’s door. It was Miguel, the bee guy. He was wearing a full-on beekeeper suit, including a hooded veil.
He winked behind the mesh at Yancy and said, “Excuse me, sir. Tonight we will be removing a serious motherfucking honeybee hive from the structure next door. Until then perhaps you should stay inside. Unfortunately, the bees have been disturbed.”
“I appreciate the warning.”
Miguel winked again and cut his eyes toward the construction site. Evan Shook was watching from his Suburban, in which he had sealed himself against the ruthless swarm.
“A risky situation,” Miguel said, “but we are utmostly professionals.”
“That I can see.”
“Your neighbor, Señor Shook, he was stung many times. Lucky for him he is not allergic.”
“Nor am I,” Yancy said.
“Still, I would not take chances. Do you have any pets? Smallish children? You understand I must ask these questions. Would you be owning a pacemaker?”
Yancy was happy to play along. “No, sir. And I live here all by myself.”
“Excellent. We will be done by midnight.” Miguel went through the motions of handing Yancy a business card. “In case you are ever likewise troubled with bees. You can phone day or night. Also I am on Skype.”
“Good luck with that hive,” said Yancy.
“Vaya con Dios.”
“Seriously?”
Miguel smiled. “Shut your fucking windows, Andrew.”
Yancy buttoned up the house and headed down to Key West, where he’d set up lunch at a terrific Cuban place on Flagler with an ex–Border Patrol agent now working for Homeland Security. The man owed Yancy a favor and he stepped up big-time, bringing a printout that detailed the recent foreign travels of Mrs. Eve Stripling.
Caitlin Cox had said her stepmother was in the Bahamas, not Paris, at the time her father’s boat went down off Marathon. Caitlin’s proof was Eve’s phone bill, which showed numerous roaming charges from a wireless company based in Nassau. To Yancy, Caitlin had admitted stealing the bill from the mailbox at her father’s home in the hope of establishing the identity of Eve’s secret lover. Caitlin was certain such a man existed because she’d spotted her stepmother buying a swimsuit and designer flip-flops at a Bal Harbour boutique, two days before Nick Stripling’s funeral. Caitlin was there shopping for a black dress.
Mindful of her motive, which was gaining access to her late father’s wealth, Yancy nonetheless found the tip intriguing. Caitlin’s suspicions seemed to be partially confirmed in the records provided by his Homeland Security connection—Eve Stripling had in fact gone to Paris, although for only a week. Then she flew back to the United States, clearing Customs at JFK before taking a nonstop to Nassau. It was nineteen days later that she returned to South Florida on a private seaplane that landed at Watson Island. There she paid duty on thirty-four hundred dollars of women’s clothes and a ten-karat-gold men’s wedding band, which, according to her declaration documents, had cost a whopping one hundred and ninety-nine bucks. Yancy assumed it was the same gold band Eve had switched out for Nick Stripling’s expensive platinum one before burying his abbreviated remains.
Interestingly, she’d bought the replacement ring in the Bahamas before returning to Florida and reporting her husband missing at sea. The purchase made no sense unless she’d already known that Nick was dead and that his ring finger had been recovered, attached to his floating arm.
Yancy felt so energized by this disclosure that he picked up the twenty-eight-dollar meal tab, even though he’d barely touched his picadillo due to a suspicious-looking olive. Of late he was subsisting mostly on Popsicles and so-called energy bars, which came hygienically machine-sealed in foil although they settled in his stomach like bricks of industrial glue.
His friend from Homeland Security got up and said, “Thanks for lunch, Andrew. But anybody asks, we never talked.”
Yancy grinned. “Hell, I don’t even know your name.”
A squall blew across the island and Yancy drove around Old Town waiting for the rain to quit. On Fleming Street he passed Fausto’s grocery and thought of Bonnie, a.k.a. Plover Chase. With improbable ease he rejected the impulse to dial her number. Perhaps he was finally, at age forty-two, growing up.
He parked on Eaton Street and made his way to Duval. Even in the dead of summer it was crawling with overfed tourists courtesy of the cruise ships, which Yancy considered a vile and ruinous presence in the harbor. After grabbing a beer at the Margaritaville café he began searching the T-shirt shops for Madeline, girlfriend of the late Charles Phinney. He found her at a place called Chest Candy, which aggressively catered to strippers, transvestites and aspiring nymphomaniacs. The display window featured a blond-wigged mannequin wearing a diaphanous tank top with sequined lettering that said: CUM TOGETHER.
Again Madeline spooked when she saw Yancy, only this time there was no place to run. She yelled for the store manager, a sallow twit named Pestov who vanished as soon as Yancy inquired about his immigration status.
After locking the front door behind himself, Yancy cornered Madeline and asked what the hell was going on.
“I got a lawyer! So watch it.”
“Why do you need a lawyer?”
She said, “You told me you weren’t a cop.”
“I said not at the moment.”
Some dork wearing Teva sandals and black socks started rattling the doorknob. Yancy shooed her away. “Tell me what’s going on,” he said to Madeline.
“The cops think I set Charlie up to get ripped off.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Three times they had me in for questioning. What’d you tell them? Jesus, I need a smoke.”
Yancy said, “The police never even interviewed me.”
Madeline’s hands were trembling as she lighted up. “I’m gonna lose my damn job.”
“They’d be doing you a favor.”
She said, “I wouldn’t never hurt Charlie. He treated me good.”
“I believe you, Madeline. But I can’t help unless you tell me the truth. So let’s start over, okay?”
“Not here,” she whispered, glancing behind her. “The Russians, man!”
“Screw the Russians.” Yancy poked his face into the back room and said, “Yo, Madeline’s taking the afternoon off.”
“Is fine,” Pestov muttered sullenly from a closet.
“Thank you, comrade. And God bless America!”
Yancy drove Madeline out to Stoney’s, which naturally had been her and Phinney’s all-time favorite restaurant. They took a two-top in a corner and from the unkempt server Yancy was pleased to learn Brennan was away in Homestead, probably stocking up on frozen tilapia that would later be promoted to fresh swordfish on the menu.
Madeline asked for a vodka tonic and Yancy ordered a Coke.
She said, “I lied. I don’t really have a lawyer.”
“They tend to charge a fee.”
“Which I have about forty bucks to my name.”
“What have the cops told you?” Yancy asked.
“I got a record is the problem. Grand theft a long time ago, shoplifting, whatever. Plus they found out I’m way behind on my Visa card and also my rent, so I guess they think I lined up someone to shoot Charlie and take a cut of the cash. But I didn’t!”
Yancy believed Madeline, for he knew more about the murder investigation than she did. One of his fishing pals was a city police lieutenant who’d told him that the rented moped used in the robbery had been wiped totally clean of prints, even the gas cap and side mirrors, demonstrating an attention to detail not common among the local dirtbag element. The killer’s weapon hadn’t been found but the .357 shell casings and bullet fragments belonged to 158-grain Winchester hollow points, a premium load for a low-rent street crime.
Yancy said, “Tell me again how much cash Phinney was carrying.”
Madeline paused before answering. “Maybe twelve hundred bucks?”