Among the assorted police vehicles in the driveway, I spotted a red Toyota with a missing hubcap and a cracked side window. A Florida tag. I went over and took a picture of it, then the vehicle ID through the windshield. Whoever owned it would know Carmen Sánchez.
Nance would do the same thing. This case would be all over the front page, and Nance would work it. Somebody — hair stylist, personal trainer — would eventually tell him that Kathy had wanted out, and that she’d get more from a dead husband than an ex-husband. Nance knew that Carmen Sánchez had been stalking Dr. Zaden. He was wondering who let her in. Had Kathy waited until her husband was dead to fire the pistol into Mrs. Sánchez’s back?
A movement on the street caught my eye. A monster Hummer painted bright yellow turned into the front yard, tires digging into the wet grass, chrome snout pressing on the crime scene tape. The door opened, and a guy slid off the seat. Short brown hair, average build, a Hawaiian shirt. He shouted something to a uniformed officer and ran full speed toward the house.
I’d seen him before: Richard Zaden, age thirty-one. He owned an overpriced pizza restaurant in the Grove that his father had bought for him. People came and went that I thought the DEA would’ve liked to interview.
Maybe I still look like a cop. Rick Zaden saw me and veered in my direction. He said he was Dr. Zaden’s son, and a neighbor had called him. What the hell was going on here? Where was his father?
I should have turned him toward the door and suggested he find Sergeant Nance, but instead I told him the truth as gently as I could, then said I was sorry. I told him he probably didn’t want to go in there right now.
He broke down, hands over his face, wailing. Then he looked at me with tortured eyes and whispered, “My father. He’s gone? Oh my God, no. Dad.”
Call me hard-hearted, but it seemed overdone. I knew that Rick and his father had been at odds. But this didn’t mean anything. Lose your father, feelings can change.
He sagged against the front fender of the Toyota. “She shot the bitch. Jesus Christ. I can’t believe it. Kathy shot her. Where is she? I want to talk to her.”
“Not now. She’s on her way out. Her lawyer won’t let her talk to anyone.”
That got me a blank stare. “Her lawyer?”
“When the police get involved, people call lawyers.”
“Is she... under suspicion?”
“Not that I know of.”
He took a long, slow breath. “I want to go in.”
“Just a second.” I held onto his arm. “Who was Carmen Sánchez?”
“She wanted money from my father. It was a lawsuit or something. An accident when he was on vacation in the Dominican Republic. Some guy — her son — walked right in front of his car. It wasn’t Dad’s fault, but she wouldn’t leave him alone. He said he was going to pay her off.” Rick wiped his hands down his face. “What am I supposed to do now?”
“Somebody will be out to speak to you. Excuse me, but did this person, Mrs. Sánchez’s son, did he die?” Rick nodded. “And then what? She came here on a tourist visa?”
“Yeah. That’s what they do, then they don’t leave.” Rick Zaden gave me a closer inspection. “Are you a police officer or what?”
I had to tell him. “I’m a private investigator. I work for Kathy Zaden’s attorney.”
He stared at me, turned his back, and walked under the portico, leaving me with the answer to at least one of Sergeant Nance’s questions: Carmen Sánchez had come here to collect money from the man who had killed her son. Had Dr. Zaden planned to write her a check? If the death had been an accident, why would he pay her? And if she’d thought he would, why did she want him dead?
I scanned the faces across the street, wondering if anybody had seen a middle-aged Latina getting out of her car in a raincoat. I noticed the house next door. It wasn’t much of a house, but it had a terrace on the roof, and a man leaned on the metal railing with a long-neck beer. A chickee hut with a palm-frond roof had been built up there, and the flag of Great Britain hung from one end of it like a curtain.
My pant legs got soaked as I cut through his overgrown yard. He was around forty, with bright blue eyes and spiked, sandy hair. He wore old khaki shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt that revealed a pair of nicely muscled arms. I asked if I could talk to him. He said to come up.
Circular metal stairs took me to a teak deck on the roof. He had a view of the houses along the canal, sailboats and sport fishers at the docks, and a slice of Biscayne Bay at the end of the canal. The water repeated the dull gray of the sky. He’d installed a bar, a hot tub, and a sunning area. The reed privacy screen made me think he liked an all-over tan.
His name was Ian Morris. After I’d told him what had happened, he asked if Kathy was all right. “Is she, really? Poor baby. She must be in shock.”
“Are you English?”
“Born in Newcastle. That’s on the North Sea. I came here ten years ago. Love the weather, most of the time.” He finished his beer, went to a small fridge under the chickee hut, and took out another, lifting it toward me inquiringly. I sat on a stool and he opened a bottle for each of us.
He told me he was a metal sculptor, which explained the big arms. I asked if he’d made the piece on the sea wall, a rusted oval that swung and groaned from an arch of polished aluminum.
“Not your style, is it?” He grinned. “I sold one similar for twenty thousand dollars to a collector in Mexico. Oh, but Howard told me it sucked, and he wanted it gone. That and my little roof garden too. He promised to sue me into the ground, and I said fine, give it a go. Horrible man. Am I speaking ill of the dead?” He took a swallow of beer.
I asked him if he’d seen Carmen Sánchez arrive.
Ian Morris said that at about 4 o’clock he’d been taking down his umbrella before the storm broke, and he’d noticed a little red car pull into the Zadens’s driveway, a black woman at the wheel. Then the car went out of sight.
“I didn’t know who she was. I certainly didn’t see her get out with a machete. Howard had come home early, so I thought she might be his voodoo lady making a house call.”
“His...?”
“Psychic. Spiritual advisor? Tarot card reader?”
“No. Dr. Zaden had a psychic?”
With a grin, Ian said, “This is Miami, love. With a name like Morales, you must have an altar to Chango or Eleggua in your bedroom.”
I smiled and shook my head. “Most of us are smarter than that.”
“Well, Howard went for his reading at least once a month. He said his voodoo lady guaranteed the code-enforcement people would be on my ass. I told him I was shaking in my boots.”
I nudged him back to the point. “What about Carmen Sánchez?”
“Yes. Kathy told me about her, although, as I said, I didn’t recognize her.” Ian Morris shuddered. “My God. What a hideous thing to do! Even to Howard. And poor Kathy. I have to call her. Would that be all right?”
“She’ll be with friends for a few days.”
“I have her mobile number.”
Did he, now?
From the roof I could see the windows of the Zadens’s master suite. Their balcony overlooked the pool. Kathy had said she knew it was time to leave Howard when she started watching him do his hundred laps every morning and think about heart attacks. I could also imagine that Ian Morris had watched Kathy standing on the balcony in her nightie.
I said, “I met Rick Zaden a little while ago. I told him his father had been murdered and he seemed... like he had to convince me he cared.”
Ian laughed. “He doesn’t care. He’s probably ecstatic. You see, Rickie had borrowed, or conned, his father out of so much money that Howard finally decided to shut him down. Howard had a mortgage on a restaurant Rick owned, and he was going to collect.”