“Got it.”
“Charlie’s been called?”
Charlie was a local mortician whose funeral parlor housed bodies until the medical examiner, who serviced all the keys and was located on Marathon Key, could pick them up.
She answered that he had and followed Val back out to the bedroom.
She watched as he moved his gaze assessingly over the room. Valentine Lopez was one of the smartest people she had ever known. She loved to watch him work. The truth was, he awed her.
“The pieces don’t fit,” he murmured, looking at her. “This is the home of a millionaire.”
“He could have family money,” Carla offered. “Or he could have been dealing.”
“Could have,” Val agreed. “When we finish up here, I want you to head over to Island National. Talk to Bernhardt’s boss. Find out the man’s salary, if he comes from money, if he recently came into some sort of windfall-an inheritance, big bonus, winning lottery ticket, anything like that.”
Carla took out her spiral and carefully noted Val’s requests, word for word. She had no illusions about being a super sleuth. She was a meat-and-potatoes kind of cop: dependable, conscientious and loyal, both to Val and the department. Those were all good qualities. Admirable. She was proud of them.
But a whiz kid she would never be. She would never be the one who broke the big case, never be the one who uncovered the missing piece of the puzzle or made the front page of the Key West Citizen.
Valentine Lopez was. Rick Wells was.
At the thought of Rick, her chest tightened. They had been partners and friends. Then she had made the mistake of falling in love with him. A mistake because he had been a man incapable of loving her back-first because he had been reeling over the loss of his wife, then his son.
As if loving him from afar was stupid enough, she had allowed him to use her for physical solace.
Use her? She had thrown herself at him, had all but begged him to become her lover. She had been certain he would fall in love with her. He had been in so much pain. He would be grateful. Gratitude would become need, love would follow.
She had been blinded by love. Had allowed wishful thinking to pass for logic. The moment he began emerging from his grief-induced fog, he had felt guilty. Because he didn’t love her. Because he felt like a heel, an opportunist. And because only then had he realized how much she cared for him.
It had been over almost before it started.
It still hurt sometimes more than she could stand.
“Speak with the housekeeper before you leave,” Val continued, cocking his head. From downstairs came the sound of the other officers arriving. “Ask about Bernhardt’s mood of late, his social life, if he was dating anyone.” He glanced at his watch and started for the door. “We need to contact next of kin. I heard he was divorced. Has a couple grown kids. Keep me informed.”
“I will,” Carla murmured, not lifting her gaze from the spiral. “You want me to take another look around here?”
“You can, but I checked it out pretty well. The evidence guys will go over the place with a fine-tooth comb.”
“Gotcha.” She flipped the spiral shut. “After you, Lieutenant.”
They made their way down the stairs to the central foyer. There they parted company. Carla found the housekeeper in the kitchen, sitting at the table, staring blankly at the doorway. She blinked when Carla spoke.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“Are you all right?”
“I don’t know what to do. There’s laundry. And shopping and…”
Her voice trailed off and again Carla felt pity for the woman. “I think you can go home,” she murmured, tone gentle. “Before you do, I need to ask you a few questions.”
The woman nodded, and Carla opened her spiral. “Your name?”
“Maria Charez.”
“How long have you been in Mr. Bernhardt’s employ?”
“A year last month.”
“Did Mr. Bernhardt seem upset about anything?”
She shook her head.
“Was he depressed at all? Moody?”
“No, no, he seemed happy. He was good to me. Never a cross word. Generous.”
“Generous? In what way?”
“When my daughter was sick, he let me stay with her. He still pay me my full wage.”
“Go on.”
“He always say please. And thank-you.” She paused, eyes filling with tears. “He look at me when I speak. Most don’t.”
Carla understood. The wealthy often treated their domestics like nonentities, wanting them to be seen but not heard, to take orders but not be acknowledged.
The housekeeper looked down at her hands, then back up at Carla, expression anguished. “Why would he do this thing?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out. But I need your help.” The woman nodded and Carla went on. “I understand he was divorced. When was that?”
“Last year, before Christmas.” The woman’s expression puckered with disapproval. “That one, she was very young. Very spoiled.”
Carla cocked an eyebrow. “That one? There were other Mrs. Bernhardts?”
“Yes, a long time ago. The woman he had children with. The children, they are grown now.”
Carla made a note in the spiral. “How about a girlfriend? Was he dating anyone in particular?”
She shook her head. “He had parties. He invite many girls.”
Girls. A bitter taste settled on Carla’s tongue. It seemed the older and richer guys got, the younger the woman they dated became. To them, thirty was over the hill. “You were here for these parties?”
“No, but I-Never mind.”
Carla frowned. “What?”
The woman folded her hands in her lap; Carla saw that they trembled. “Twice I came to work, and the girls, they were still here. And once I saw…pictures.”
“Pictures?” Carla repeated, straightening. “Of the girls?”
The woman shifted her gaze. “I am ashamed…I shouldn’t have…Mr. Bernhardt, he would be very angry-”
“Mr. Bernhardt is dead. And anything you can tell me will help me figure out why. Where did you see these photos?”
“I can show you.”
The woman led Carla back up to Bernhardt’s bedroom and the highboy to the right of the bed. The evidence guys didn’t even glance up. She opened the top drawer, reached inside and pushed aside the neatly arranged rows of folded handkerchiefs. “I found by accident,” she explained. “I was putting away his things and…there it was.”
“It” was a false-bottom drawer. And now its compartment was empty.
Carla frowned. “Did Mr. Bernhardt know you’d found this?”
“No…I was too ashamed and…what I saw-” Her face went red; she glanced at the officer kneeling beside the bed, examining it. “I prayed for him. I ask the Lord to forgive him his sins.”
Carla could get little else out of her. Apparently, the girls in the photographs had been very young, naked and performing various sexual acts. The housekeeper had been unable to say if they had been underage. She had been unaware of any illegal activities occurring on the premises.
Some sins, Carla thought, glancing back at Bernhardt’s home as she boarded the ferry back to the main island, even death couldn’t erase.
CHAPTER 7
Monday, November 5
10:15 a.m.
The Key West Police Department was located in Old Town on Angela Street. The pink, stuccoed building, the color so typical of south Florida, also housed City Hall. The unexceptional, aging two-story building, surrounded by a riot of trees, flowering shrubs and runaway weeds, hardly seemed a modern law enforcement hub.
But like everything else Liz had seen so far on this island, it possessed a casual, sometimes dilapidated, charm.
She had spent the weekend unpacking, planning and familiarizing herself with the key. She had done the latter on foot and with the motor scooter she had rented from a kiosk just up the block from her office.