Swann took the lead, slipping into the chair. “How you doing, Reg?” he asked.
Reggie wiped a hand under his nose. “I’m okay,” he whispered. His voice was rusty with a cold. “I need money.”
“Money?” Louis asked. “You mean you need to buy things at the commissary?”
“Not things,” Reggie said. “I need cash to buy protection. They want money.”
Reggie put his hands over his face. His knuckles were raw, his nails dirty. Through the tinny speaker embedded in the glass, Reggie’s breaths sounded like a rattling of his rib cage.
“We’ll take care of the money,” Louis said. “But right now, I need to ask you some questions. Can you pull yourself together for me?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“What do you know about Bianca Lee?”
“The flower lady?” Reggie asked. “She… she does nice parties.”
“Did Mark Durand ever mention her name?”
Reggie closed his eyes, coughing softly. “Not that I can remember.”
“Did you ever see a red orchid in Durand’s possession?” Louis asked. “Or in your home?”
For a long time, Reggie just sat there, eyes closed, fingers laced at his forehead. It was so quiet all they could hear was the hum of the fluorescent light. Then the white noise of the jail started again-hollow male voices and the buzz and clang of steel doors.
“The night Mark met me at Testa’s,” Reggie said, “he had a red orchid with him. He dropped it during our fight.”
Reggie closed his eyes again, grimacing as if in pain.
“What else happened?” Louis asked.
“I was upset about him seeing those women,” Reggie said. “I asked him if he had a date that night and if the flower was for her.”
“What did he say?”
“He said yes, and I got mad.”
He went silent again, eyes closed.
“Reg, tell us everything,” Swann said. “We need to know everything you said that night.”
“I told Mark he didn’t understand,” Reggie said. “I told him that no matter what those women told him when he was with them, no matter how many gifts they gave him, he was no better than anyone else who provided a service to them.”
“What about the orchid?” Louis pressed.
“That’s when he got mad, and he told me I was wrong, that he was part of their world in a way I would never be. He said he was a member of the Orchid Society.”
“The Orchid Society? That’s how he described it?”
Reggie nodded again. “I thought he was lying, like people do when they tell you they belong to the Bath and Tennis.”
“But he never mentioned Bianca Lee as part of that society?”
“No.”
“Did he ever mention any other women we haven’t talked about yet?”
“No.”
“Did he ever mention the name Byrne Kavanagh?”
Reggie coughed and shook his head.
Louis looked at Swann. What else was left?
Swann leaned forward. “Reggie, remember the last time we were here, we talked about the expensive things in Durand’s bedroom?”
Reggie nodded.
“We believe Durand stole those things from the women he was with.”
Reggie sighed. “I’m not surprised.”
“You need to think, Reggie,” Swann said. “What else showed up around your house that didn’t seem like something Durand would buy himself?”
Reggie shut his eyes again. He was listing to the right, and Louis hoped he wasn’t going to fall off the chair.
“Come on, Reggie,” Swann said. “We don’t have much time here.”
“There was a Hawaiian shirt once, but I think he ended up using that for a… oh, wait.” Reggie rubbed his face. “There was that god-awful painting.”
“Painting? What kind?”
“This horrible landscape,” Reggie said. “I found it in the back of his closet.”
“Do you think he could have stolen it from one of the women?”
Reggie shook his head slowly. “I doubt it. It was very amateurish, not anything the women I know would own. I thought maybe he bought it for me as a gift. So I stuck it back in the closet and prayed I’d never have to look at it again.”
Louis remembered seeing a Haitian painting in Durand’s room, once right after the search and again when he and Mel moved in.
“We need to know exactly what this painting looked like,” Louis said. “Was it Haitian?”
“I told you, it was an amateur thing,” Reggie said. “It was this vulgar cowboy painting with dogs and horses…”
“Cowboys?” Louis leaned in closer. “You need to think hard here. Did Durand ever tell you where he got that painting?”
“No, but I can tell you the name of the artist,” Reggie said. “It was signed in the corner. Archer.”
Louis looked at Swann. He looked like someone had just given him a kick in the gut, but the intensity in his eyes told Louis that Swann’s mind was already racing toward the cattle pen in Devil’s Garden.
“We need to go,” Louis said. “You hang in there, you hear me? I promise you, it’ll be over soon.”
“One way or another,” Reggie whispered.
Chapter Thirty-four
A single yellow floodlight was the beacon that led them through the driving rain to Aubry’s bungalow. His old Jeep was parked next to a small stable.
Louis and Swann hurried up to the porch. Louis knocked, the sound drowned out in the clamor of the rain beating on the tin roof. Finally, the door opened.
Aubry stood there, holding a beer. “What the hell?”
“Mr. Aubry, we need to talk to you,” Louis said.
“Must be pretty damn important for you to come all the way here on a night like this.”
“It is, believe me.”
“Well, get in here, then.”
They stepped into a dimly lit room, warm from a blazing fireplace and pungent with the scent of fresh pine. Next to the coral-rock fireplace was a Christmas tree decorated with carved wood ornaments and old-fashioned bulb lights.
Louis stayed by the door, dripping on the plank wood floor, Swann shivering behind.
“Come on in and sit down,” Aubry said. “You aren’t going to get anything wet that I care about.”
Louis sat on the edge of a lumpy sofa covered with a blanket. A small yellow mutt with large pointed ears and a long snout looked up at them from its place in front of the fire, then laid its head back down.
Aubry came out of the kitchen and tossed each of them a towel. “I’d offer you a beer, but this is the last one,” he said, holding up his bottle. “I was thinking of going up the road to Mary Lou’s for a six-pack.”
Louis dried his face with the towel. “We’re fine.”
Aubry sat down in a beat-up lounger by the fire. “So, what’s this about?”
“We have another missing man,” Louis said.
“Dead?”
“We don’t know. We’re hoping he’s still alive.”
“Well, you’re not going to find anyone out there in that rain tonight,” Aubry said. “So, I don’t know what help I can be.”
“Louis?”
Louis looked over at Swann. He first saw the gun rack with two rifles, but then his eyes found the spot of color on the wall next to the rack.
It was a framed painting of men on horses roping a red steer, with yellow dogs running in the green grass.
Louis turned back to Aubry. “You said David sketched. Did he do paintings, too?”
Aubry nodded toward the painting. “That’s one of his over there. I’ve got others. Why you asking?”
“One of his paintings turned up in Palm Beach,” Louis said. “And we have to find out how it got there.”
Aubry was silent.
“The last time I was here, we talked about David’s friends,” Louis said. “Could David have given one of his paintings to a friend?”
Aubry shook his head slowly. “David was pretty private about his art stuff. He never thought they were much good, and I told you Jim was funny about it.”
“Is there any chance some of his paintings could have been left in the house and his father or mother gave them away?” Louis asked.
“No,” Aubry said. “David was getting ready to go off to University of Florida, and he asked me to keep his art stuff. He wouldn’t have left any paintings inside the house for his father to find.”