“Coffee?” asked Tenns.
“Yes,” I said, sitting.
“Anything in it?”
“Sugar, milk,” I said.
He nodded, got me a cup of coffee and one for himself. He sat down and looked at me.
“Her story’s a crock of shit,” he said calmly.
“Janice Severtson’s?”
“No, Madonna’s autobiography,” he answered. “Mrs. Severtson says she went to you for help because she knew you from Sarasota.”
“That’s right. We both work out at the Y.”
“You do any other kind of working out with Janice Severtson?” he asked.
“What?”
“She was here with a man who wasn’t her husband,” Tenns said. “Coincidentally, you, a friend, happened to be here, too.”
“You’re saying maybe Janice Severtson and I…?”
“Stranger things have happened,” Tenns said, working on his coffee.
I tried mine. It wasn’t bad. Wasn’t good either.
“I had a case two years back,” Tenns said. “Little dwarf, half-black, half-who knows what the hell else, ugly as a possum. He and this full-size stripper were lovers, killed her husband. Little guy had to stand on a chair behind the husband to hit him with a bat.”
“What was her name?” I asked.
“Stripper? Elaine Boulenbar. Why?”
“Conversation,” I said. “I’m not a dwarf. I’m not rich. I’m not good-looking.”
“She could have hired you,” he said. “I checked. You’re a process server.”
“I thought that was considered honest work,” I said.
“It means you deal sometimes with some bad people,” Tenns said. “Sometimes it rubs off a little.”
“You deal with bad people more than I do,” I said.
“Which is why I’m going down this street.”
“Why would she hire me to kill a man she ran away with?”
“Don’t know. Conversation. Did she hire you?”
“No, I was here because her husband asked me to find her. I found her. She spotted me, remembered me from Sarasota. What I told the officer was the truth. I went back to Sarasota and told her husband. He’s here someplace trying to get his kids.”
“I know,” said Tenns, turning his cup in circles. “He’s in another room. We’re bringing the kids. You don’t have a private investigator’s license, Fonesca.”
“I don’t want one. Severtson came to me, asked me to help him find his wife and children. I said I would.”
“He pay you?”
“Yes. Where’s Mrs. Severtson?”
“Medical examiner says Stark stabbed himself downward, not straight in,” Tenns said, demonstrating the thrust with his right hand. “Odd. Awkward.”
“I didn’t know the man,” I said.
“Nothing else you want to tell me?”
“No.”
“I talked to the kids,” he said. “Girl was asleep. Boy can’t remember anything.”
“We’re not talking about murder here,” I said.
“Doesn’t look like we’ve got a case there, does it?” he said. “But she did run away with the kids, did shack up with a man with a record, probably screwed him in front of the kids. Husband wants to take the kids and leave her here. And…”
“And?”
“Why did Stark want to kill himself?” Tenns asked.
“Drunk, depressed, suddenly saddled with responsibility, guilty about running away with his partner’s wife. Maybe the ME can do some exploratory and find out he was dying of something.”
“Maybe,” Tenns said. “I checked. Stark was single. Wife divorced him twenty years ago and moved to San Diego. Business he was in with Severtson is booming. No confirmation so far that he was alcoholic. Some evidence from people the Sarasota police checked with that he wasn’t. Some evidence from the same people that Stark wasn’t the kind to feel guilty about running away with his partner’s wife. People he worked with say Janice Severtson wasn’t the first wife to spend a weekend with Andrew Stark. But with two kids along, it looks like Stark was in for a lot more than a weekend.”
“And what does Mrs. Severtson say?”
“Dialogue right out of one of the soaps my wife watches when she isn’t selling costume jewelry,” he said with a sigh. “Janice Severtson says she thought she loved Stark, but then again maybe she was just running away with him to get away from her husband.”
“You’ve been busy.”
“Very,” he said. “I’m faxing a report to the Sarasota sheriff’s office. I’m sending the Severtsons home. I’m telling them not to think about moving out of the state. I’m signing off on this as a probable suicide but I’m keeping the file open. My board’s full. I’ve got a bruised thigh. I couldn’t sleep last night and there’s a drooling drug dealer with an attitude in another room waiting to tell me lies. I’ll get back to Stark’s death when I get a chance, and I will get a chance.”
Tenns got up, scrunched his empty coffee cup, and threw it in the wastebasket near the Coke machine.
“I checked a little deeper on you, Fonesca,” he said, turning and looking at me over the tops of his glasses. “Lost your wife, went a little nuts, quit your job with the state attorney’s office, wound up in Sarasota.”
I sat. There was still some coffee in my cup. I was getting hungry.
“So anyway, your story checks out with hers. I’m letting her go.”
“I’d like to see her,” I said.
“Go back to the waiting room. She’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Sergeant, know any jokes?”
“Cop jokes,” he said. “Why?”
A few minutes after I was in the waiting room, looking at wanted posters, Janice Severtson came through a metal door. Her hair had been brushed but not well. Her makeup had been applied but not well. Her clothes had been put on but not neatly.
She spotted me and I got up as she moved quickly in front of me.
“They told me Kenneth took Sydney and Kenny,” she said. “Where are they?”
“Probably on the way back to Sarasota. You hungry?”
“I don’t know,” she said, running her fingers through her hair.
“Let’s get something to eat,” I said.
“I’ve got to get back to Sarasota,” she said. “Talk to Kenneth. Oh, those poor babies. What’ve I done to those poor babies?”
Everyone in the waiting room was listening to us. Most were looking. Some probably had tales a lot worse than Janice Severtson’s. I guided her out the door, down the steps, and to my car, which had about two minutes left on the meter.
We stopped at a nearby Shoney’s. She had a salad and a reasonably well-controlled cry. I had a chicken sandwich and a strong desire to be alone.
“You want me to talk to your husband?” I asked while we ate.
“Yes.”
“I will,” I said, reaching for a sagging fry.
I found a phone near the cash register and called Kenneth Severtson’s cell phone.
“You have the kids?”
“Yes, I’m on I-75 just passing exit 42. We’re going home. What about Janice?”
“You know the First Watch on Main Street?”
“Yes.”
“Can you be there at ten Saturday morning, without the kids?”
“I can get a sitter, but…Yes.”
“I want your wife with you.”
I thought I heard the voice of a small boy over the phone but the words weren’t clear. I hung up and went back to Janice. She had finished her salad and was shredding a napkin.
“I talked to him. I think you can go home, at least for now.”
I drove her back to her car where it was still parked at the hotel. I waited for her to get out of my car, but she just sat.
“I killed a man,” she said.
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t feel real.”
“I know.”
“My God, can you really just kill people and get away with it?” she said.
“Happens every day,” I said.
I told her to be at the First Watch Saturday. I watched her get into her car, start it, and pull out of the hotel lot. She held up a good-bye hand to me. I returned the gesture and headed for the highway.