“Until day after tomorrow.”
“How long has she been working for her?”
“A year. A little more than a year.”
“What’s the Harkinson woman’s background?”
“I wouldn’t know. Francisca wouldn’t know either.”
“Where’s she from?”
“She said something to Francisca once about living in Atlanta.”
“She’s in the house now?” Kindler asked. Raoul nodded.
“Look her over?” Scheff asked Kindler.
“She’ll keep, Barney. The kid might not.”
“Can I ask a question?” Raoul said.
“Sure, Kelly.”
“Why are you looking for Staniker?”
“Routine. Just routine,” Kindler said.
As they walked toward the car, Francisca came timidly out to the railing of the shallow porch and looked down. They all looked up at her. Her eyes were huge and her mouth was sucked into a small bloodless button.
Kindler called up, in wretched but understandable Spanish, “Señorita, you are a very beautiful lady. We do not take you away. This man of yours is a good man.”
She looked startled and then beamed down upon them happily. “Kaylee is beauty-ful fella!” she cried.
Raoul felt heat in his cheeks. Both officers laughed and ’Cisca waved busily to them as they drove off. “Sotch nice!” she said to Kelly.
Ten minutes north of the Harkinson turnoff, Scheff and Kindler stopped at a shopping center and phoned Lobwohl’s outside-line number.
“This is Bert,” Kindler said. “Did Harv get...”
“Better come on in,” Lobwohl said. “A flippy kid did it and then shot himself. Had a note on him saying he was afraid he was going to do some crazy thing. Had a map and a floor plan of number ten. Even had the wrappings off the blade in his pocket. Coast Guard spotted him dead in a sailboat grounded off Eliott Key.”
“Named Oliver maybe?” Kindler said.
After a long silence Lobwohl said wearily, “All right. All right. Come on in and show off, you smart-ass.”
“Is it all going to break now? The ID on Staniker?”
“Yes. Why?”
“When it breaks wide open and the news people get a look at the motive, we’re going to get swarmed worse than anything since the Mossler thing. Look, the broad that Staniker and the kid got to is a Mrs. Cristen Harkinson, late thirties, blonde, a swinger. The late Senator Ferris Fontaine had her stashed in a very lush bay house down here a little southeast of Goulds, all very private. He probably built it for her and deeded it to her. And she had a cruiser...”
“And up to the time she sold it, Staniker worked for her, running the boat. I’ve been reading the clippings, Bert.”
“She broke off with Staniker. He gets the job running the Kayd boat. She lines up the kid to give her sailing lessons. So she takes one kind of lessons and gives another kind. Staniker comes back from the islands. He wants to start making it again with Harkinson. This bugs the kid. He gets so hairy about it she tosses him out too. What I’d guess, the kid thinks he gets cut loose because she’s going to pick up with Staniker again. A green kid would be way out of his league with a live one like that. So how did the kid know where Staniker was? You see what kind of can of worms that opens up?”
“They’d both become nuisances. She could aim one at the other and either way it came out, Bert, she’d be rid of both of them. Two rejected suitors taking it out on each other. But she would have to be pretty cold to set them up like that, wouldn’t she?”
“She was home in bed, and I think that will check out. And I think that even if she conned the kid into killing Staniker, she’ll deny it up down and sideways, and nothing we can do. I am just saying that the hints in the papers are going to stop just short of actionable, and it is going to be dirty laundry week, and a mob scene at her house, guys in trees with telephoto lenses, the whole treatment.”
“So?”
“Protective custody? She’ll have to make a statement anyway. She’s the link between Staniker and the kid. We’ve got to go through the routine of the murder one indictment anyway and...”
“I try to keep from telling you your end of the business, Bert.”
“Sorry about that.”
“So you want to bring her in. And you happily married and all that. Or maybe you collect autographs.”
“Well, I like to see Barney have a little fun on the job too, but I was thinking that if we have her before she knows who did what to who, and make it a long slow ride, and fake her out a little, there might be something we could make stick later on, because there will be all kinds of pressure we should do something about her. The exposure is going to heat up every weird and rapo in the files, and with a full moon coming up, the cronkies are going to line up three deep, breathing through their mouths anyplace they think she might show.”
After a silence, Lobwohl said, “All right, but we don’t know how much clout she might have, so go very, very easy.”
“We have this little roll of red carpet we carry, and...”
“Somehow, Kindler, when you make those little funnies I keep thinking of all the kicks Mercer and Tuck are having bringing the Akards in to make a positive on the only son they’re ever going to have. The kid was born and raised here and there is no j.d. record on him at all, so the mother is going to keep telling Mercer and Tuck that he was always a good boy.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“No apology necessary. I shouldn’t chew you. And by now I’ve been around long enough so I should stop bleeding.”
“When you do, it’s time to get into another line of work.”
“Before you unroll your little red carpet, the lady will be apprised of her right to have an attorney present while her statement is being taken, and she will be permitted to phone and arrange to have said attorney either meet her here or meet her at her house and drive in with her while you follow along.”
“So what do I tell her about why we’re bringing her in?”
“Hey! There’s no next of kin on Staniker. Central records hasn’t sent back a match on the prints yet.”
“Oh I like that! Duty of a citizen. Ex-employer, et cetera. Voluntary all the way. And a good jolt for her that ought to knock loose something useful — if there is anything. Meanwhile, maybe somebody could start backtracking her, develop a line to somebody who knew Fontaine well enough. And there’s a chance she lived in Atlanta. While we’re in the place I can let light-fingered Scheff see if he can pick up anything with a chance of enough prints on it to get a principal registration.”
“Pretty remote.”
“Let me get Harv to tell you how it worked a couple times where we knew a single print registration wouldn’t do us any good at all.”
Halfway along the shell road to the Harkinson place they met Raoul Kelly trudging toward the highway.
When they stopped, Raoul came over to the car, wearing a troubled frown.
“Kelly,” Barney Scheff said, “we’re taking the Harkinson woman in. With any luck we’ll keep her around awhile. And you maybe better clear your little gal out of there today instead of waiting until Wednesday. You got a car?”
“I left it parked down the highway, in a grove.”
“If nobody clouted the wheels and the engine, after we leave she should lock the place up and pack and leave with you, because if we scared her that bad, she’s going to get a lot worse time from the spooks who’ll come swarming around the place.”
“What’s the matter? What are you talking about?”
“When we were here before, we knew somebody faked Staniker for a suicide. Stuck him in a bath tub and cut his wrists. From what we got from you, it looked like Oliver might fit, and they found him floating around in his sailboat. After he fixed Staniker, he killed himself. The woman is the motive. You have no idea how miserable the newspaper guys and the rest of them can get when they get a sniff of a story like this. Those bastards will really shake up that Francisca. What you do, Kelly, you stash her someplace where they can’t get at her. Then if we have to get a statement or anything, we’ll keep it as quiet as we can. What we’ll do, we’ll get in touch with you if we need her. Where do you work?”