“My guess is early this morning, very early.”
“I was home with the kids.”
“When did they get up?”
“About eight,” she said.
“You could have gone out, killed Handford and gotten back before they got up.”
“I could have, but I didn’t. Lewis, are you trying to back away from me, from-for want of a better word at the moment-our friendship?”
“No. I’m asking you questions the police might ask you, maybe today, maybe tomorrow. There’s a smart detective named Vivaise who-”
I stopped in midsentence. I had another suspect. Ed Vivaise had a daughter. He had said something about the benefit to the world of Dwight Handford’s death.
“Too many suspects,” I said, leaning back. “The only way I’m ahead of the police is that I can eliminate me from the list. Are we still going out Saturday?”
“We’re still going out,” she said, touching my arm. “You pick a place to eat. I pick the movie.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“For what? Being honest with me? Now the hard part of my day,” she said. “The downside of Dwight Handford’s death. I’m the one who’ll have to tell Adele her father’s dead and I have no idea how she’ll react.
I think I’ll do it now. I don’t want to carry it around all day.”
“Let me know how she takes it,” I said.
“I will. Saturday. That was interesting,” she said. “Being a suspect. Am I clear now?”
“Yes,” I said, but I lied.
Flo had to stay with Edna, get papers filled out. Edna would drive her home. She came out of the supervisor’s office and told me this. She was nervous and glowing. They were hurrying the process.
I told Sally what Harvey had told me about the Buga-Buga-Boo virus. She made a note to E-mail everyone in her computer address-book to warn them. I left.
I was sure Handford had murdered Beryl, but I wasn’t too sure about who had killed Tony Spiltz and Dwight Handford. The loss mankind would suffer due to their deaths was nonexistent.
My vote went to John Pirannes. Had a fight with Spiltz, who was doing his part to train Adele. Pirannes wanted Handford out of the way because he was probably a witness to the Spiltz murder and because he was a loose blunderbuss, ready to explode, dangerous. Pirannes probably knew Dwight had killed Beryl. My vote definitely went to John Pirannes.
That should have closed the file for me, but it didn’t.
I had to know for sure. I knew why I had to know.
My wife had been killed by a drunken hit-and-run driver. The driver hadn’t been found. There was no closure. I needed closure, certainty, in my life. I’d talk about it with Ann Horowitz as soon as I could.
The blue Buick followed me back to the DQ parking lot. I went to see Dave, who leaned out the window.
“How’s business?” I asked.
“Slow,” he said. “Rain always makes it slow. I don’t mind. You went to see Pirannes?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You survived. Congratulations. The Fair Maiden pulled out this morning, headed who knows where,” said Dave.
“Doesn’t surprise me.”
“You want a burger, Blizzard?”
“Had a big salad for lunch. Diet Coke.”
Dave nodded over my left shoulder. I turned and found myself facing two policemen. Their car was in the lot a few feet away.
“Lewis Fonesca?” one cop said.
Both cops were young. There was a thin one with a smooth face and a heavyset one with an amber mustache.
“Yes,” I said.
“Would you come with us, please? Detective Vivaise would like to talk to you.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No, sir,” said the thin cop.
I knew better than to ask if I could drive my rented Geo. I climbed into the backseat of the police car. Until recently, the Sarasota police car insignia on the door was a picture of the statue of Michelangelo’s David. A copy of the statue stood in the courtyard gardens of the Ringling Museums. A copy of a copy had graced the doors and hallways and official vehicles of the city. Many of these tributes to distant art still remained. I don’t know much about art but, I liked the Ringling, the polished dark wood floors, the old-worldliness of the galleries of ornately framed paintings Ringling had collected in his European travels. I had been told by someone who should know that the paintings on display were the worst of the great masters-Rembrandt, Titian, that whole gang.
“You ever go to the Ringling Museum?” I asked the young thin cop at my side as we drove.
“When I was a kid, once,” he said.
“You?” I asked the driver.
“No,” he said. “My wife has.”
“She like it?”
“Said she did.”
I considered asking Vivaise about the Ringling Museum, but when I stepped into his office he was seated and patting his desk with his left hand.
“Dwight Handford is dead,” he said.
I sat across from him.
“Not sorry to hear that,” I said.
“I’m not either, but it’s my problem.”
“Where did he die?” I asked.
“You know damn well he died in his house in Palmetto.”
“Why would I know?”
“Don’t wear me out,” he said.
He had stopped drumming.
“A neighbor saw two men going into Handford’s house this morning. Tall man with a yellow raincoat and a short bald man. They came in a little white car and left in it a few minutes after they went in. Sound familiar?”
“Anything else?”
“Manatee medical examiner is looking at the body. At this point all he’s sure of is that Handford is dead and that he died sometime last night or early this morning, very early, before you and your friend were there.”
“And?”
“You’re going to play games with me, aren’t you, Fonesca? Handford was murdered. Shot. Between you, me and the painters out there if they’re listening at the door, I say the world’s a little better place today. Fonesca, did you kill him?”
“You mean did I drive out to Palmetto in the middle of the night, kill him and then drive back in the morning, discover the body and not report it?”
“Did you kill him?” Vivaise repeated.
“No, did you?”
“Not funny,” he said.
“Not meant to be. You have the weapons, the reason. The same reason I’d have. You’re happy he’s dead.”
“My guess is a lot of people are happy he’s dead,” Vivaise said.
“Why is it your case if it happened in Palmetto?”
“Because I think Handford murdered his wife and probably murdered Tony Spiltz, who died within the jurisdiction of the Sarasota Police Department, died in my county. And the Palmetto police are happy to give it to me as long as I keep them informed.”
“Pirannes’s boat pulled out this morning,” I said.
“I know. We’re looking for him.”
“What now?”
“You feel like confessing?”
“To what?” I said.
He threw up his hands.
“To anything. A plot to kill the President. Crossing Proctor against the lights. I’ll take what I can get. Have you been to confession recently?”
“I’m not a Catholic,” I said. “Episcopalian, very lapsed.”
“Do you know who killed Handford or Spiltz?” he asked.
“I’m working on it. Let’s pin it on Pirannes. If he didn’t do the murders, I’m sure he did others we know not of. He gave me reason to believe.”
“That the way the police think in Chicago?” he asked.
“That’s the way,” I said. “But I’m not a cop.”
“You’re not even a private investigator,” he said, beginning to steam. “You’re are a goddamn little process server with a big nose that gets into places where it shouldn’t be.”
“I agree,” I said.
“Get out, Fonesca,” he said, both hands on the table. “I know where to find you.”
“What happened to those two guys last night? The black guys in handcuffs?”
“You are a piece of work, Fonesca,” he said with a grin almost as sad as mine.
“I can’t help it,” I said.
“They got off,” he said. “They’re car thieves, but we didn’t have enough to keep them without a confession. They didn’t confess. They went home. That’s the way it usually is.”