“Well, I wasn’t about to suggest…”
“Skip the ball entirely.”
“Matthew…”
“Stay home and sip martinis, stare out at the rain. Maybe you could join me. We could try out my new waterbed.”
“You didn’t really buy a waterbed, did you?”
“Come find out, Susan.”
“Don’t tempt me,” she said, and hung up.
“I love you, too,” he said to the dead phone, and put it back on the cradle. It buzzed while his hand was still on the receiver. He picked up again.
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Summerville on five,” Cynthia said.
“For me?”
“That’s who she asked for.”
“All right, I’ll take it.”
He punched the 5-button.
“Hello, Leona.”
“Matthew, I’m sorry to bother you, I know you must be busy…”
“Not at all. What is it?”
“I was wondering if I could see you later today.”
There was a long silence on the line.
“Matthew?”
“Yes. What’s wrong, Leona?”
“I’d rather not discuss it on the phone. I don’t want to come to the office, either. I don’t want Frank to know about this.”
“What is it, Leona?”
He knew what it was. You don’t get a call from a woman you’ve known all these years, your partner’s wife, no less, asking to see you but not at the office because she didn’t want her husband to know about the meeting. Divorce was what it was.
“Can you meet me at Marina Lou’s?” she said.
“Sure.”
“Five o’clock?”
“Sure.”
“We’ll talk then.”
“All right, Leona.”
“Thank you, Matthew,” she said, and hung up.
He put the receiver back on the cradle.
He suddenly felt like crying.
The phone buzzed again.
He picked up the receiver.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Hope, this is Andrew.”
“Yes, Andrew.”
“We’ve got him, Mr. Hope.”
The problem was manifold.
There was no way Matthew could go to the police with this. He could not call Morris Bloom to say he had a man in black staying at a motel here in Calusa, which was no crime, and this man in black had been watching the Parrish house most of the day Saturday, which was also no crime, and this man in black might be the man who’d run away from the Parrish house on the morning of the murder — which was also no crime unless this man in black had actually committed the murder before taking his little run up the beach.
Ho-ho-ho, Bloom would say.
So Matthew called Warren’s office instead, and got his answering machine, and told the machine they’d located Arthur Nelson Hurley, and asked Warren to get back to him as soon as possible, the idea being that he and Warren — an experienced law-enforcement officer — would together visit the motel, thereby lessening the risk inherent in a confrontation with a possible murderer. Warren carried a pistol and he knew how to use it, witness the dead raccoon.
By two-fifteen, Matthew began to get itchy.
He did not want to lose Hurley.
Well, the possibility still existed that he might try breaking into the Parrish house, and they’d get him that way, violation of Section 810.08, Trespass in Structure or Conveyance, a second-degree misdemeanor. In which case Bloom could ask him all sorts of questions, including where he’d been at SEVEN a.m. on the morning of January thirtieth.
But suppose Hurley never went back to that house again. Suppose he’d tipped to the fact that the house was under surveillance…
Well, they still had his address in St. Petersburg, the address supplied by Motor Vehicles. So they could track him down there, Matthew guessed, unless the man was a murderer who might be thinking of leaving the country the day after tomorrow.
Matthew did not want to go to that motel alone.
But he did.
The motel called itself the Calais Beach Castle, though it was twelve miles from the nearest beach.
Despite the continuing rain, the No Vacancy sign was on out front; snowbirds never looked at the weather reports for Florida, they only read them for Michigan or Indiana or Illinois or Ohio or Toronto. If it was snowing up there, they automatically figured the sun was shining down here. There were a dozen or so occupied units in the motel, all set back from the road, all with cars parked in front of them, all with window air-conditioners and little wooden front stoops. A tiny pool sat forlornly in the rain, an inflated rubber dragon floating in it.
The place had a Forties look about it.
Matthew figured it for a Mom-and-Pop dream gone sour — come on, Maude, let’s move to Florida, buy ourselves a little motel down there, live like a king and queen, whattya say? Back then, you couldn’t build hotels or motels on any of Calusa’s beaches, the local zoning regulations were that strict. All the motels — some ten or twenty of them in all — were strung out on U.S. 41, the Tamiami Trail. The few infrequent souls who happened onto the Gulf Coast didn’t mind driving the five, ten, fifteen miles to the beach, depending on location. The beaches were wild and virtually unpopulated in those days; you could swim naked and alone at high noon. The town itself was nothing more than a sleepy little fishing village.
All of that changed in the late Fifties, early Sixties, when Calusa and the West Coast of Florida got discovered. The minute the builders and contractors sniffed money on the prevailing winds, they set about convincing the politicians that tourism would be a good thing. So the zoning regulations changed and the hotels and motels began sprouting like mushrooms on the white sands. Goodbye to the aspirations of all those Mom-and-Pop motels along the Trail. Except for the very height of the season — like now, in February, in the rain — the motels on the mainland were empty, and you couldn’t build a dream on vacant rooms.
Matthew got out of the Karmann Ghia, opened his umbrella, and walked over the muddy driveway to the office. A woman in her late thirties was behind the counter. A little black plastic plaque with the words IRENE McCAULEY, MGR., stamped onto it in white was on the counter alongside a clear plastic holder containing American Express application forms. A newspaper was spread open on the counter. Irene McCauley, if that’s who she was, stood leaning over the newspaper, elbows on the counter, reading the newspaper. She looked up when Matthew came in. She watched him as he closed the umbrella.
“Is the sign busted again?” she asked.
“What?” he said.
“The ‘No Vacancy’ sign,” she said. “It’s sometimes on the blink. If you’re looking for a room, we’re booked solid through the rest of the month.”
“Are you Miss McCauley?” he asked.
“Mrs. McCauley,” she said.
Pity, he thought. She was an extremely good-looking woman. Solemn blue eyes. Shiny brown hair worn almost to her shoulders, bangs on her forehead. Black short shorts and a black halter top. Slender nose, generous mouth. Good breasts. Good legs, too, what he could see of them behind the counter. She realized he was checking her out. Raised her eyebrows. So? her expression said. Everything in the right places? He felt suddenly embarrassed.
“Mr. Hurley is expecting me,” he said. He was lying. “Can you tell me what unit he’s in?”
“Eleven,” she said. “Next to the last one on your right.”
“Thanks,” he said, and opened the door, and opened his umbrella, and stepped out into the rain.
The approach he’d worked out was a simple one:
Mr. Hurley?
Yes?
Matthew Hope. I’m an attorney. Summerville and Hope. I’m representing Ralph Parrish, who’s been charged with the murder of his brother, Jonathan Parrish.