“I have something for you fellows,” Sean announced. “A present.”
“What kind of present?” Rush asked suspiciously.
“A small one representing a very large one.” Sean leaned back and opened a drawer in the Stickley sideboard and removed a thin, gift-wrapped package. She handed it to Rush. “Open it.”
Rush tugged the ribbon off and removed the paper. It was a small silver frame.
“A picture frame?” Rush sounded disappointed. “So what's in it?”
“Nothing,” Winter said.
“Why is it empty?” Rush asked. “What's it for?”
“That's where we'll put the very first picture.”
“You bought a new camera?” Winter asked. Sean had told them it was a small something representing a larger something.
“Nope. The first picture of the new baby,” she said softly.
“A new baby? Holy shit!” Rush said.
“Rush!” Winter snapped. “Don't say that. Whose new baby?”
“Holy crapoly,” Rush said.
Winter finally got his mind around what his wife had said. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” Sean replied.
“The doctor said so? That's why you've been sick?”
“You don't just guess at something like that,” Sean said, laughing.
He stood and pulled Sean up out of her chair and hugged her to him.
“Winter, are you crying?” she asked.
“Of course I'm not. I'm happy!” He knew, of course, that he was crying. But they were tears of joy. “We need champagne!”
“We have champagne,” Sean said. “In the fridge.”
“Holy-” Rush started.
“Rush,” Winter said warningly.
“Sorry! Do I get champagne too?”
It was a big deal for all of them. Winter didn't believe he could be any happier. He wished he could freeze that moment so he could have it to take out and relive over and over for the rest of his life.
The telephone started to ring.
“Let it ring,” Winter said.
“Might be Lydia,” Sean said.
“Gram is gonna freak out!” Rush said gleefully.
“I'll get it. I need to get some soap to wash out Rush's mouth with anyway,” Winter joked. He rushed into the kitchen to answer the phone, certain that he was going to be able to share the news with Lydia.
“Hello,” he said cheerfully.
“Is this Mr. Winter Massey?” The unfamiliar voice was heavily accented.
“Yes,” he answered, still thinking of Sean and her news. A baby. “I'm Winter Massey.”
Of course it would be a salesman, but for once he didn't care. From where he was standing, he could see into the dining room where Rush and Sean were actually dancing arm in arm. He wished he had a camera so he could capture the image. “So friend, what is it you're selling on this fine evening?”
“I'm Nicky Green.”
“I'm sure you are,” Winter said distractedly. “What's the pitch?”
“I'm a friend of Hank and Millie's.”
Winter's mind downshifted and he started paying closer attention. Why would he be calling? Maybe Hank put him up to something. “Sure, I know who you are. Sorry, what can I do for you, Mr. Green?”
“Well, I hate worse than anything to have to call you, but I'm afraid I have some god-awful news. It's bad… I… I…”
The smile had left Winter's face, and ice-cold fear froze his mind. Hank's old friend couldn't continue because he was crying.
22
In the open pool cabana, behind the sleekly modern concrete-and-glass house, a fire dancing in the small metal-mesh wastebasket positioned on a slate bar top was mirrored orange-red in the lap pool's crystal-clear water. Marta Ruiz, who sat on a stool at the outdoor bar before a cassette player, was at the end of an hour spent going through the stack of audiocassettes she had taken from the Porter house.
“Not here,” she announced.
Frustrated, she jerked the final audiotape out and tossed it into the wastebasket inferno. Arturo, standing outside the cabana biting his fingernails, uttered a long string of obscenities, then stomped around in the wet grass beside the rain-slick patio. Before listening to the cassettes, Marta had inspected each of the strips of negatives he'd taken from the dead lawyer and thrown them all into the same fire.
“I'm fucking cooked!” Arturo yelled.
“It isn't good,” Marta agreed. “Let's stay calm. We don't know that she has them either. The negatives could be anywhere Amber was during the days she was missing.”
“The tape…”
“If such a tape even exists,” Marta said, trying to calm him.
“All the police saw was an open machine, right? Probably there was no tape inside it. But if there was, it has my voice on it, Amber said my name a couple of times! It has my voice! I think I said Mr. Bennett's name! It has the fucking hits recorded on it!”
“Unfreak, Turo,” Marta said calmly. “There probably isn't a tape.”
“That's easy for you to say! Your balls aren't in the vise.”
“It's always counterproductive to freak. You are a professional. Anyway, Mr. Bennett doesn't know what might be on the tape, and the cops didn't find one.”
“Oh, so now there is a tape,” he said sourly.
“Whether there is a tape is not yet relevant to the situation,” she told him. “What Bennett is most worried about is the negatives-”
“Negatives which he didn't mention,” Arturo interrupted. “How dare that strutting rooster be angry with me, when he didn't bother to mention them in the first place!”
“Which also is beside the point. The tape can't prove anything against Bennett.”
“Is that right? Oh, sometimes I forget you know everything.”
“Insult me all you like, but I am the one by your side, Turo,” she said. “Bennett is all right because what people say to each other about him isn't proof. Without those negatives to give those statements credibility and provide a motive for him sending you to kill them…”
“Well, if he had told me about the negatives, I would have made that stupid bitch tell me where they were before I killed her.”
“Unfortunately Bennett won't be concerned with that,” Marta said.
“But it isn't my fault!” Arturo yelled. “He didn't say a fucking thing about any fucking negatives.”
“Watch your mouth,” she scolded. “Foul language is the crutch of the ignorant.”
“I'm sorry,” Arturo said. “Mr. Bennett only said she stole eight pictures. Never once did he mention anything about any negatives. If he had-well, he didn't.”
“Here is the problem as I see it.” Marta's eyes were on the flames consuming the tapes. “The negatives tie Mr. Bennett to a crime for which he can be prosecuted and perhaps executed.”
“Executed for sure. Anybody sees what he was doing to those people, he's a dead man.”
“That is his main concern, which for the moment overrides any others. I don't care about the negatives. It's a consideration, because one of Bennett's alternatives is to think that you have them and that you might use them to blackmail him. Another thought he is going to have is that you can tie him to the hits today and all of the jobs you've done for him in the past. And maybe he is going to worry because you saw his dirty little pictures.
“He will start thinking about cutting his exposure and punishing others for his mistakes. After this settles down, he's going to feel the need to clean up. I expect his police pals will help him do it. Or he might bring someone in. There's nobody local with the ability.”
“He was stupid to make the pictures and to keep them. How can he blame me? Stupid… whore-painted face… potbelly… wig head!”
“Men like him don't ever think anything is their fault,” Marta said. “We have to get the girl, because even if she doesn't have tape or negatives she saw you. And she certainly heard your name.”
“Nobody saw anything. I didn't see her, and the place was small with nowhere to hide. I looked everywhere in those rooms, and I made sure nobody was there. I always check. The kid wasn't in the bathroom down the hall or anything. There were not any schoolbooks or book bag, which means she came in after. If she saw me from a distance outside the office, so what?”