Yancy thought it was fortunate that Phinney and Madeline hadn’t pooled their genes. He said: “Who got Charlie to do this thing? Didn’t he mention the guy’s name?”
“Wasn’t a guy,” Madeline said. “It was a chick that brought him the cut-off arm, Charlie said. He didn’t know her name but she’s the one who paid him, too. A white chick in tight white jeans. Is that wild or what? Like she was on her way to the damn mall.”
Yancy patted her hand. “You need to get out of town.”
Nine
They didn’t call ahead, just showed up one evening at the door. Shark-gray suits, flat expressions. They told Simon Cox they needed to speak alone with Caitlin. Simon, who practically got a boner when he saw their federal shields, obediently disappeared into the small bedroom he used as a gym.
The interview only lasted twenty minutes—the agents could plainly see Caitlin wasn’t living like a Kardashian, or even like the daughter of a wealthy dead medical-supply executive. She was creeped out because they knew the humiliating balance of her checking account, down to the penny. They knew Simon’s car was paid off, and hers wasn’t. They knew the amount on her American Express card. They even knew about one of her rehabs.
And now they knew what her house looked like, all fourteen-hundred square feet. Lebron James had closets that were bigger.
“What’re you guys after?” she asked.
“Money,” said one of the agents.
“Dad didn’t pay his taxes again? That figures.”
“It’s more complicated than that. Did he ever discuss his business with you?”
“We weren’t speaking for a long time. So no is the answer.”
The other agent said, “Did he give you any instructions, in the event of his death?”
“What did I just say? The two of us weren’t talking. He didn’t even put me in his will is what I heard.”
“Looks like his wife gets everything,” the first agent said, “all twelve thousand dollars.”
Caitlin laughed in disbelief. “Twelve grand?”
The second agent said, “Now you understand our interest.”
“Dad had a shitload of money.”
“That’s our information, as well. However, the only American bank account with his name on it held twelve thousand and change when he passed away—basically enough for the funeral. So, we were hoping you might know what happened to the rest.”
Caitlin glared at the agents. “Eve’s the one you should be talking to about the money. Ask her if she killed my father, while you’re at it. Because she did! Don’t you guys do murders?”
“If you have hard evidence, you should call the police right away.”
“Done deal,” Caitlin declared. “I got a detective in the Keys working the case full-time. Yancy is his name.”
The FBI men showed no reaction, no interest.
One of them said: “We tried to interview Mrs. Stripling about your father’s finances, including his life insurance policy. She asked to be left alone.”
“And that’s what you did?” Caitlin asked incredulously.
“She’s not under subpoena, Mrs. Cox.”
“Good, then leave me alone, too!”
As soon as the agents were gone, Simon came out and asked Caitlin what they’d wanted. She told him it looked like Eve had ripped off her dad’s estate.
“Big surprise, right?” she said. “All Dad’s money is missing—who knows how much.”
“They’ll find it,” said Simon confidently. The feds were absolutely the best.
“He was a fool to marry that greedy whore.” Caitlin was still livid. “I hope they throw her ass in jail for a hundred years.”
“Did they leave a card?” Simon asked, meaning the agents. He was thinking he would ask them out for a beer. Bring along his résumé.
The phone rang and Caitlin picked it up. She looked surprised by the caller. Lowering her voice, she turned her back on Simon, which he didn’t appreciate.
The moment she hung up, he said, “Who was that, sweetheart?”
“You won’t believe it—my former stepmother, all sweet and friendly.”
“Eve?”
“Swear to God.” Caitlin wore an odd smile. “She wants to get together, just her and me. A girls’ day.”
“That’s messed up. What did you say?”
“I said, Are you paying?”
For once Yancy didn’t mind driving to Miami. Dr. Rosa Campesino had agreed to meet for lunch. On the Eighteen-Mile Stretch he got stuck behind a minivan with a CHOOSE LIFE bumper sticker.
“Choose the accelerator! How’s that for starters?” Yancy was shouting, pounding the horn.
He didn’t mind if people advertised their religious views on their cars, but those who did invariably were the slowest, most faint-hearted drivers. It was uncanny, and all road cops knew it to be true. If God was my co-pilot, Yancy once groused to Burton, I’d have the fucking pedal to the metal soon as I left the garage.
Rosa arrived in her morgue scrubs at the restaurant, and she looked fabulous.
“What happened? You’re so skinny,” she said. “I’ll order for both of us.”
They were seated at a café on Miracle Mile in Coral Gables. The menu was promising, but the night before Yancy had dreamed about Stoney’s Crab Palace—mouse tracks on a Key lime tart.
“I’ve been fighting a stomach flu,” he said.
Undaunted, Rosa ordered them veal with penne pasta. She wore a fresh touch of lipstick but no other makeup, which Yancy found wildly beguiling. This he recognized as the onset of infatuation.
“Did you get fired? Tell the truth,” she said.
He felt his neck get hot. “It’s more like a probation.”
“No, I’ve been checking up. You’re quite the renegade, Andrew.” She was smiling, thank God. “I’ve heard of Sergeant Johnny Mendez, by the way. Not a good guy.”
“A congenital crook,” Yancy said. “Disgrace to the uniform, et cetera.”
“Still, you could have handled it better. Now, what happened down in the Keys?”
“That I’d rather not discuss.”
“Too bad,” Rosa said. “My life coach told me not to sleep with anybody who harbors a murky past.”
“What about a murky present?”
“I don’t really have a life coach, Andrew. However, I do believe in full disclosure.”
He coughed up the whole story with a facsimile of contrition. His crude assault on Dr. Clifford Witt didn’t seem to shock Rosa, but then again she was a coroner in an urban combat zone.
“Last week I did a post on a man who had a clarinet up his colon,” she reported. “That’s not what killed him, by the way. It was a single gunshot to the head from a jealous lover. She played the oboe.”
“Shakespeare was born too soon.”
“So you lost your detective job and now you’re inspecting restaurants for rat poop and bacteria. Not exactly a lateral career move.”
Yancy said, “I’m righting the ship, even as we speak.”
The pasta and veal arrived. It was delicious, but he backed off after a couple of bites. Rosa asked for an update on the severed arm, and he told her what he’d found out. She was intrigued by the dead-sailfish scam.
“That’s a classic,” she said.
“I’m thinking the wife and her boyfriend killed Stripling, or had him killed.”
“Before or after they sunk the boat?”
“Doesn’t matter. They chop off one arm and take the expensive wristwatch, but they leave the platinum wedding band as part of the act, so that Eve can make a show of identifying it later. Then they put the arm in the shallows off some secluded beach so the bonnet sharks can gnaw on it, purely for appearance.”
“How’d she pick this Phinney character to smuggle that nasty thing onto a boat?” Rosa asked.
“You hang around the docks, it’s not hard to find somebody who’d sell their own mother’s kidney for three thousand bucks. Once that tourist on the Misty reeled in Stripling’s arm, Eve was golden.”