“Feared for her life. Courtney was about to be raped. She told me that she took the money owed to her after Tony Bandini tried to force himself on her. They wrestled for the gun. It went off and he was killed.”
“Did you tell that to the police?”
“Yes, but I’m not sure they’re buying the story. I’m just a carny, in their eyes not very credible. Since there was no eye-witness, it looks to me like they believe she stole money from Bandini and killed him.”
“Did they tell you that?”
“No, but I overheard the cops talking right outside my trailer.”
“Speak with Detective Dan Grant. He’s African-American, probably the lead detective. Tell him what Courtney told you.”
“I did. He’s a better listener than the others, but I can tell he’s just as skeptical. Mr. O’Brien, Courtney said if you called to give you a message.”
“What message?”
“She wants to know if you have a birthmark on your left shoulder.”
I said nothing. I knew I was wearing a shirt each time I spoke with Courtney, the night I found her, and then on Jupiter. My heart beat faster.
“Are you there, Mr. O’Brien?”
“Yes.”
“She said she believes you might have a small birthmark on your left shoulder that resembles a four-leaf clover, or an Irish shamrock. Do you, Mr. O’Brien?”
For a long moment I didn’t want to answer, the question too invasive. My personal space in some way now violated. I knew the girl hadn’t seen my shoulder. How did she know? Who’d she know that knew me that well? Think.
“Mr. O’Brien, are you there?”
“Yes.”
“I assume Courtney was right, you have a small birthmark resembling the shamrock?”
“Yes.”
“She said one other thing … if you do have this mark on your left shoulder, you are related to her. She didn’t say how. Could you be her father?”
16
After I disconnected from the man with the falsetto voice, I turned to Dave. He said, “You look like someone just said that you have three months to live.”
I said nothing, my thoughts racing.
“Who was on the line, Sean? What happened?”
“A man who goes by the name of Isaac Solminski. He works at the carnival. It was his phone that Courtney used when she called me.”
“What’d he say?”
“He told me that Courtney said I might have a small birthmark in the shape of an Irish shamrock on my left shoulder. Dave, there is no way that she could have seen it. I didn’t mention it, and very few people even know it’s there.”
“I’ve known you for five years, see you working on your boat many times in nothing but your swim trunks, and without my glasses I’d never see it.”
“It’s not much larger than a postage stamp. But the birthmark looks like a clover or a shamrock. Sherri used to call it God’s perfect little tattoo on my shoulder. How in the hell did Courtney know it was there? Solminski said she told him it meant that she was related to me.”
“Did she say how, as in a niece or a long lost daughter?” Dave grinned.
“For Christ sakes. You sound like the guy on the phone. I have no living family. Sherri was an only child. My parents died when I was in my last year of high school. I had no siblings. I lived with my uncle until age eighteen when I left for college and then joined the military. My uncle had no children when he and my aunt died. So I’m it — the last of the bunch. It’s just Max and me.” I reached in the topside cooler and lifted out a Corona, popped the top, and took a long pull from the bottle. “Now I know what Courtney meant in her voice message when she said there was ‘something else.’”
Dave nodded. “It’s a hell of a something else. What if she’d been stalking you from the beginning?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if all of this is some kind of an elaborate ploy to get you involved in her bizarre world, a place where the Mad Hatter holds the keys to her Wonderland?”
“But why? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s not supposed to make sense in the playground of a psychopath.”
“But we don’t know that’s what she is, do we?”
Dave grunted and sipped his drink. “My friend, Sean O’Brien, the timeless optimist, the man who sees good where evil hides in the shadows.”
“Evil couldn’t exist without the presence of good. I like to believe that good is a little more predominant and a lot more appreciated because of evil.”
Dave laughed and lifted Max onto his lap. “Maxine and the other critters don’t operate in either camp, it’s just us free-willed, vertical-walking mortals. So now that Courtney Burke has laid a bomb under your mental hood, what are you going to do?”
“I want to know how she knew about the birthmark.”
“Maybe some things in life should remain a mystery. Once the genie’s out of the bottle, it might become Pandora’s Wonderland.”
“Dave, at this point, I can’t think of anyone alive who knows that I have a tiny birthmark on my shoulder. Someone would have to get close to me without my shirt on, and then be looking for it. Otherwise it’s not that obvious. Who knows it’s there? Who could have told Courtney and why? Since Sherri’s death, I’ve only been with a few women. Two of them are dead, too.”
“Maybe a look at your birthmark is like looking into the face of Medusa, fatal, or dangerously rocky at best. Perhaps you’ll recall that Medusa was a mere mortal, too. I’ll remind you to keep your shirt on.” Dave smiled and sipped his drink.
“Something’s very strange here. I want to pay a visit to the guy who was just on the phone, the man with the falsetto voice.”
“Why?”
“He may know where Courtney can be found.”
Dave shook his head. “Let Detective Grant, the FBI, and whoever the hell else might be following this young woman, let them track her down.”
“You and Grant both mentioned Bandini’s brother, Carlos. What if he finds her before the police do? If he’s the real bad ass in the bunch, what would he do to her? If she vanishes, I may never know how she was aware of my birthmark.”
“Then let it go. Plan A is hoping the cops find her first.”
“What’s Plan B?”
Dave sipped his drink, watched the rotation of the light from the lighthouse sweep high above the tops of the sailboat masts and challenge the dark over the Atlantic Ocean. He lowered his eyes to meet to mine. “Plan B, unfortunately, Sean, is when somebody’s Plan A didn’t work out for them and you get involved.”
“Too bad I can’t design Plan B, only answer it. Maybe I’ll have a better answer when they arrest Courtney.”
17
A taxi pulled up to the curb in front of the Greyhound Bus station in Daytona Beach and slowed to a stop. The dark-skinned driver wore a Cardinals’ baseball cap and a diamond stud in one ear, the earring winking from the passing headlights on Ridgewood Avenue. He cut his black eyes up to the rearview mirror and looked at Courtney Burke in the back seat. “This is the place. Do you know what time you catch your bus?”
She didn’t answer, her eyes following a police car that entered the parking lot from a road behind the building. “Drive on, please.”
“What?”
“Now! Just go.”
The taxi driver nodded, put the car in gear, and pulled back into the night traffic. “So where’d you want to go?”
“Where’s the closest truck stop?”
“Less than three miles.”
“Take me there.”
The driver sighed, accelerated and changed lanes. He glanced back in the mirror at the girl. “You in some kind of trouble?”
“No.”
“When you saw that cop car, you got an instant case of the hee-bee-jee-bees. Know what I’m sayin’? Hey, I’ve been there. Why are the cops lookin’ for you?”