There was an argument, which Charlene won by dangling the possibility that she’d let Kathy Zaden talk to him. I don’t think Nance bought it, but he took us inside.
My wet sneakers chirped on the marble floor and fell silent on the Oriental rug. A crowd at a door on the opposite side of the living room meant I’d find Dr. Zaden and his guest over there, but Charlene said to come with her.
Nance led us through a dining room overlooking the canal where the Zadens’s boat was docked, then to a kitchen done in stainless steel, cherry wood, and black granite. Either nobody cooked in here, or they had a better staff than I did.
Kathy Zaden was sitting at the counter with her head in her hands and a wad of tissue in her fist. She saw us and stood up, and her crop pants and sleeveless yellow top showed splashes of red. Her knees were bloody, and her forearms, like she’d crawled in it.
“Oh... Charlene!”
Making shushing noises, Charlene patted her on the shoulder. She didn’t bother setting down her purse. She wasn’t staying long enough to chat. “You need to put something else on, darling. We’re leaving. Pack your jammies and a toothbrush.”
“Will they let me go?”
“They will unless you have confessed to something extremely naughty.”
“I didn’t! I had to... oh. Oh—” She sobbed. “He’s dead. Oh, God. The blood. It was so terrible. I was sick. I threw up.”
“Let’s just run upstairs and get you into some clean clothes, shall we?”
“The detective said to give him these.”
“Oh, really.” Charlene looked darkly in toward the door, where Sergeant Nance lingered. “Well, if and when a warrant is issued, he can have them.”
“Why are they acting like I did something wrong? They swabbed my hands like I was a criminal. Why?”
“It’s routine. Come on, let’s go.”
Kathy blew her nose. A weak smile came my way. “Hi, Sara.”
I put an arm around her. “Don’t worry. It’s going to be all right.”
She lowered her head to mine and made another little sob.
Kathy Zaden and I are the same age, thirty-three. That’s as far as the similarity extends. I’m short and dark, thanks to my mulatta grandmother. Kathy Zaden is a sexy blonde with long, tanned legs. She had a realtor’s license, and she’d met Dr. Zaden four years ago showing him an apartment on South Beach. He had just dumped his first wife and was looking for something more exciting — in both real estate and women, I suppose. Howard had made a fortune doing plastic surgery. He had a good build, an easy smile, a Mercedes CL500 coupe, a forty-two-foot Bertram sport fisher, a condo in Vail, and a tax attorney who showed him how to shelter his assets. For her birthday, he’d done Kathy’s boobs.
You want to hate men like Howard Zaden. I’d wanted to hate Kathy, but I couldn’t. She’d been born poor in Valdosta, Georgia, and fought her way out. She sent money home; she organized charity events; she took in stray cats. But she finally got it: She believed Howard when he said that two kids from his previous marriage were enough. She believed that one day he would dump her too.
Kathy had gone to Charlene to see about breaking the twenty-page prenuptial agreement he’d made her sign. Needless to say, Charlene had not been Kathy’s lawyer for the prenup. I’d been shadowing Dr. Zaden for a couple of weeks to see if we could find anything useful, and I was getting nowhere. Now it didn’t matter.
We went upstairs. When I was finished taking shots of Kathy Zaden and the blood stains, Charlene shooed her into the bathroom, and I found my way to the study.
The cool stares I got from the crime scene technicians meant that Bill Nance had told them who I was. He gave me a pair of blue paper booties and said, “Don’t touch anything, and don’t get in the way. You’ve got five minutes.”
It was more a media room than a study, with a huge flat-screen television facing a leather sofa, rows of DVDs on the mahogany built-ins, and audio equipment behind glass doors. Hitting the shutter of my digital SLR, I maneuvered toward the other side of the room, where a desk and a clot of detectives hid my view. When they moved I saw two bodies in a puddle of dark red seeping into the ivory-colored carpet.
Howard Zaden lay on his back in a blue dress shirt, arms out like he was soaring, gold on his cuffs. A heavyset woman in black pants and a white knit top lay facedown across his lower legs. I barely saw her; my eyes were on Dr. Zaden.
His head had rolled to the side, and his neck looked like a piece of fresh steak. I could see something paler red protruding: bone, cartilage. His tie was gone just below the knot. Sweat prickled my scalp. This had not been the first cut; he’d survived long enough to scream and hold up his hands. Half his left hand was missing, and a long gash had opened his shoulder. More cuts went through his left bicep, his chest, his abdomen, as though she’d kept chopping after he hit the floor.
I forced myself to concentrate on what I saw through the viewfinder. Carmen Sánchez was black, or Afro-Cuban or Afro-something. Her hair was medium length, processed straight. I squatted to see her face, but her hair covered it. There were two red holes in her back, another in her neck. One shoe had come off, and I saw a brown foot, a tan sole. It reminded me of Nena’s feet, the calluses, her cheap plastic sandals. I didn’t see a purse.
If Kathy Zaden had said Carmen Sánchez was stalking her husband, then Charlene had to know about it. Charlene hadn’t told me, but then, I hadn’t been hired for that.
The machete lay near the bodies, a shiny curve about three feet long. Wood handle, blood drying to brown on the steel. I waited for a female officer to walk by, then zoomed in for a closeup. The edge had been honed till it shimmered. Something odd on the trailing edge: black smudges, like soot. Like she’d tried to burn it.
Why had Howard let her in? Most sane people would have slammed the door on a woman carrying a machete. Then I noticed a raincoat on the floor and pressed the shutter.
Sergeant Nance stood beside me. “What did she want with Dr. Zaden?”
“I have no idea.” My viewfinder showed the desk, the stuff on it. A checkbook lying open, the big kind with a leather-bound cover.
He said, “She doesn’t look like a disgruntled plastic surgery patient.”
“No, she’s a poor black Dominicana.”
“Take it easy, Morales.”
I shot images of the blood spatter up the side of the desk, over the bookshelves behind it, across the ceiling.
He asked, “Who was it answered the door? Mrs. Zaden?”
“I don’t know.”
“Somebody let this woman in.”
I looked at him. “You think?”
Nance made a little smile, showing his teeth. He was still smoking, I noticed. “This lady came to do harm to Dr. Zaden, and we don’t know why. His wife could shed some light. We’re not out to get her. We just want to clear things up.”
“Okay. I’ll be sure to tell her.”
“You’re done here,” Nance said. “Put it away.”
I shot one more for the principle of it. At the door I took off the booties and balled them into my pants pocket.
Nance leaned closer. “Lucky thing you tripped down those steps, Morales. Know why?”
I turned away, but his voice followed me.
“Because they gave you disability instead of firing your ass. You weren’t cutting it.”
I kept my reply to myself. You don’t get anywhere arguing with a cop.
The clouds had rumbled off, dragging the heat with them, leaving a gray overcast and a few stray drops of rain. Beyond the crime tape, the crowd of onlookers had grown. Two local satellite news trucks had set up operations on the street, and another was moving into position. The murder of a prominent Miami plastic surgeon would be breaking news at 6 o’clock.