“Maybe the pain got worse and he took your advice and went up there to make a buy. That’s why he didn’t take Anne or tell her why he was going.”
“And somebody cheated him and killed him? Possible. I can tell you that if he did buy something, he would take it secretly, and if it helped, he would never have told Anne or me. It would have been his private solution. It would leave his macho image unimpaired.”
“Lovely guy.”
“Prince of a fellow,” Mullen said, grinning. “McGee, I like your reconstruction. It seems to fit what I read about the circumstances of his death. The news accounts implied he was keeping some kind of appointment at a highway rest stop.”
“Did you recommend any particular substance?”
“I think I told him that hashish would be easiest to manage, and probably reasonably available in the Miami area.”
“Everything you ever heard of is available in Dade County. But he couldn’t get much with two hundred dollars.”
“That’s all he had?”
“Anne gave out that figure, and she kept the accounts.”
“I have the feeling that Ellis Esterland could put his hands on money in one form or another without Anne knowing about it.”
“Okay, suppose he was carrying five thousand dollars. If Anne had known that and reported it, the local authorities would have been thinking about a buy that went wrong. There could have been contacts they could have developed. In his condition, at that point in the progression of the disease, how much pain do you think he should have been feeling?”
He thought it over. “Enough to send me running for the needle, whimpering all the way.”
The big bride rolled over, clawing the towel off her head, looking blankly and stupidly at the two of us. One nipple showed above the edge of her white bikini top. Prescott Mullen, smiling, reached down and tugged the fabric up to cover her. A few tendrils of russet hair curled out from under the bikini bottom.
“Whassa time, sweetie?” she asked in a small sweet voice.
“Three fifteen, lambikin. This is Travis McGee. My wife, Marcie Jean Mullen.”
“Oh, hi,” she said. She prodded her pink thigh with an index finger as she sat up, watching how long the white mark lasted. “Honeybun, I better get the hell off the beach. I think the sun kind of reflects in under the umbrella from the sand and sun and stuff.” She stood up, yawned, swayed, and then lost her balance when she bent to pick up her towel. She yawned again. “Marcie Jean Mullen. Still sounds strange, huh?” She beamed sleepily at me. “Used to be Marcie Jean Sensabaugh. Hated every minute of it. Be a rotten world if you had to keep the name you were born with.” She picked up her canvas bag and looked inside. “I got a key, honeybun. See ya in the room.”
“Pretty lady,” I said when she was out of earshot. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks. She’s a great girl. Absolutely perfect disposition. No neuroses. Healthy as the Green Bay Packers. And an absolutely fantastic pelvic structure. She was a delivery-room nurse.”
“That’s interesting.”
“We’ve talked it over. We want as many kids as we can have. She’s twenty-three and I’m thirty-six, and as near as we can tell, she’s two months pregnant right now. We agreed not to get married until we were sure we could have kids. I don’t want her to have them too close together. It wears a woman out too much. They should be two years apart. Okay, she’ll be twenty-four when our first one is born. Her mother had her last baby when she was forty-four. So, with a two-year spacing, we could have nine or ten. Of course, her mother had one set of twins.”
“It’s nice to see people get their lives all worked out.”
“I always wanted a big family. It was a case of finding the right girl before I got too old to enjoy the kids. As it is, if we stay on schedule, the last kid won’t get out of college until I’m about seventy-eight.”
“That’s cutting it pretty close, doctor.”
“I guess it is. But I come of long-lived stock. Both of my grandfathers and one of my grandmothers are still living. Late seventies and early eighties.”
“It’s something to look forward to, all right.”
“I think of it as a very precious responsibility. It’s really the only immortality we have. Did you ever think of that?”
“I guess I think of it all the time.”
“Are you married?”
“No.”
“Then you better find a healthy woman right away, Mr. McGee. Or you won’t be young enough to enjoy your kids.”
I stood up and shook hands with him. “Thanks a lot. That’s probably a very good idea. Nice to have had this chat with you, doctor.”
“If I can be of any help, please call on me. Funny thing. Ellis was dying and I didn’t particularly like the man, but it made me furious that somebody had the gall to kill him. My patient!”
That night in Annie’s cabana, she had thrown a pale green towel over the lampshade. It gave the room an underwater look.
The fan overhead made a small ticking sound. The waves were louder. A mockingbird tried silvery improvisations. She was saying, “And so, of course, Sam couldn’t believe that any of his people were stealing. It had to be my people. He acted as if he was doing me a big favor, checking that big order item by item. But then the discrepancies began to show up. Short cases, opened and resealed. And his face sagged and his voice got tired. I felt so sorry for him. All his people have been with him for years and years, and he has been so good to them. And it did look as if one person couldn’t have done it. It had. to be two working together. I got credits on the other shortages we had picked up. He was really depressed when we left. I found myself wishing I wasn’t a boss. But not for long. Not for long. You talked with Dr. Mullen, I hear.”
“Had a nice chat. Have you got a fantastic pelvic structure?”
“My God! I don’t know. You mean for babies. Well, I’d have a little problem, I guess. I always heard I would. My mother had two Cesarian deliveries. Why?”
“Would you be prepared to watch your final child graduate from college when you are sixty-five?”
“Hell, no! He can carry his diploma home to his poor old mom. What is this about, darling?”
So I told her the conversation with Prescott Mullen. At first she was incredulous. Was I sure he wasn’t joshing? When I convinced her that he was totally serious, deadly serious, in fact, she went into something close to hysteria. That then subsided into a giggling fit, and that turned into hiccups.
“Poor big old brood mare-hic-can hear him saying-hic-roll over, Marcie Jean-hic-time to start number six-hic. And I wanted to get myself into a deal like that?-hic. Oh, God.”
I poured her more wine, and she sat on the edge of the bed to drink it out of the far side of the glass, holding it in two hands like a child. There was a pale narrow stripe across her back matching the pallor of her buttocks.
She lay back again, saying, “All gone. Thanks.”
“Were you there when he gave Ellis the argument about maybe he should try hash or LSD for pain?”
“Oh, yes. The last time he saw him. In June.”
“Did you know Ellis was in pain?”
“I didn’t know how much. He’d get up in the night and go up on deck. Sometimes he would get up from a meal and go walking. His face would twist. But he wouldn’t let it twist if he knew you were watching. Prescott told me Ellis was probably in a lot of pain. After Prescott had gone back north, I tried to get Ellis to do what he had suggested. But he got angry with me. He wouldn’t listen. He said he wasn’t going to baby himself. He said he was not going to turn into a junky at the very end of his life. He said it was demeaning.”
“After talking it over, both Dr. Mullen and I have the feeling he went up there to Citrus City to make a buy. We think that was what the long-distance phone call was about.”
“But wouldn’t it take more money than he had?”
“What makes you think he had only two hundred dollars, more or less?”