When he was out of sight, I went back to the Metro and got out of the lot before he came back. When I was reasonably sure I had lost him, I drove behind the Southgate Mall to the large Dumpsters. I took the gun out of the plastic bag, removed the remaining bullets, wiped the weapon clean, dropped it in my McDonald’s bag and, when I was sure I wasn’t being watched, dropped the bag into the nearest Dumpster, acting as if I were simply a good citizen getting rid of his lunch garbage.
Eventually, I took the bridge across to St. Armand’s, drove straight up. Longboat Key, up Gulf of Mexico Drive and past both Pirannes’s high-rise on my left and the Sunnyside Condos on my right, where he docked the Fair Maiden. I drove on, hoping I had put John Pirannes out of my life.
I drove over the short bridge at the end of the key and went through the far less upscale and often ramshackle small hotels and rental houses along the water in Bradenton Beach. Ten minutes later, I spotted the sign for Barrington House and pulled into the shaded driveway. I parked on the white-crushed-shell-and-white-pebble lot, which held only tow other cars.
Barrington House was a white three-floor 1920s stucco-over-cement-block building with green wooden shutters. There were flowers behind a low picket fence and a sign to the right of the house pointing toward the entrance. I walked up the brick path for about a dozen steps and came to a door. I found myself inside a very large lodge-style living room with a carpeted, dark wooden staircase leading up to a small landing and, I assumed, rooms. There were bookcases whose shelves were filled and a chess table with checkers lined up and ready to go. The big fireplace was probably used no more than a few days during the central Florida winter.
I hit the bell on a desk by the corner next to a basket of wrapped bars of soap with a sketch of the house on the wrapper. I smelled a bar and was doing so when a blond woman came bouncing in with a smile. She was about fifty and seemed to be full of an energy I didn’t feel. I put down the soap.
“Yes, sir?” she asked. “You have a reservation?”
“No,” I said. “I’m looking for Melanie Sebastian, a guest here.”
Some of the bounce left the woman but there was still a smile when she said,
“No guest by that name is registered.”
I pulled out the photograph Carl Sebastian had given me and showed it to her, the one of Carl and Melanie happy on the beach. She took it and looked long and hard.
“Are you a friend of hers?”
“I’m not an enemy.”
She looked hard at the photograph again.
“I suppose you’ll hang around even if I tell you I’ve never seen her?”
“Beach is public,” I said. “And I like to look at birds and waves.”
“That picture was taken three or four years ago, right out on the beach behind the house,” she said. “You’ll recognize some of the houses in the background if you go out there.”
I went out there. There was a small, clear-blue swimming pool behind the house and a chest-high picket fence just beyond it. The waves were coming in low on the beach about thirty yards away, hitting the white sand with a moan, bringing in a new crop of broken shells and an occasional fossilized shark’s tooth or dead fish.
I went through the gate to the beach and looked around. A toddler was chasing gulls and not even coming close, which was in the kid’s best interest. A couple, probably the kid’s parents, sat on a brightly colored beach towel watching the child and talking. Individuals, duos and quartets of all ages walked along the shoreline in bare feet or floppy sandals. Melanie Sebastian was easy to find. There were five aluminum beach loungers covered in strips of white vinyl. Melanie Sebastian sat in the middle lounger. The other four were empty.
She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, dark sunglasses and a two-piece solid white bathing suit. She glistened from the bottle of lotion that sat next to her atop a fluffy towel. She was reading a book or acting as if she was, knowing I was on the way. I stood in front of her.
“ War and Peace, ” she said, holding up the thick paperback. “Always wanted to read it, never did. I plan to read as many of the so-called classics as I can. It’s my impression that few people have really read them, though they claim to have. Please have a seat, Mr. Fonesca.”
I sat on the lounger to her right and she moved a bookmark and laid War and Peace on her lap. She took off her sunglasses. Her face was beautiful, somber. Her body was lean and taut. Normally, I would have enjoyed looking at her. Normally.
“We spent two nights here after our honeymoon in Spain,” she said. “You would think Carl might remember and at least call on the chance that I might return here, but…”
“I’ve been paid to find you and deliver a message,” I said. “Will you talk to him?”
She sat for about thirty seconds and simply looked at me. I was decidedly uncomfortable and wished I had the sunglasses. I looked at the kid still chasing gulls. He was getting no closer.
“You’re not here to kill me,” she said conversationally. “You could have done that in your office, or at least tried. But that would have been awkward.”
“Kill you?”
“I think Carl is planning to have me killed,” she said, turning slightly toward me. “In fact, I’m sure he is. Considering that it’s Carl, he doesn’t have much choice. But I can see that you’re not the one who’s going to do it.”
“Why does your husband want to kill you?”
“Money,” she said, and then she smiled. “People thought I married Carl for his money. I didn’t. Mr. Fonesca, I loved him. I would have gone on loving him. He was worth only about a hundred thousand when we married, give or take a percentage point or two in either direction. I, however, was worth close to eleven million dollars from an annuity, the sale of my father’s business when he died, and a very high-yield insurance policy on both my parents.”
“When you left, you cleared out all your joint bank accounts, credit cards. I checked. Your husband has almost nothing. I checked that too. His business is in debt and he’s on the edge of bankrupt.”
“How did you find out?”
“Computers are frightening things. Almost as frightening as people.”
“I hope Carl paid you in cash.”
“This morning. After I found out about his situation. It still doesn’t make sense, Mrs. Sebastian.”
“Call me Melanie. Your first name is…?”
“Lewis. Lew.”
“It makes perfect sense,” she said. “I know Carl has been telling people I’m having an affair with Dr. Green. Lew, I’ve been faithful to my husband from the day we met. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about him. I have ample evidence, including almost interrupting a session between Carl and Caroline Wilkerson in the buff in our bed five weeks ago. I was supposed to be out of town. I came back a day early to surprise him. It seems the man almost old enough to be my grandfather married me for my money. After I carefully closed the door without Carl or Caroline seeing me, I went out, stayed in at the Hyatt, did a lot of thinking. On the way out, I took Caroline’s driver’s license. I wanted to give her something to think about.”
“You have reasons for divorce,” I said. “But…”
“My word against theirs,” she said. “He’d drag it on, find a way to hold up my assets. I haven’t the time, Lew. So I did a little digging and discovered that Caroline was far from the first. I don’t know if he is an old man afraid of accepting his age or if he simply craves the chase and the sex. I know he had no great interest in me in that department for the past year.”
“You waited five weeks after you knew all this and then suddenly walked out?”
“It took me five weeks to convert all my stocks and my life-insurance policy to cash and to withdraw almost every penny I have in bank accounts. I didn’t want a scene and I didn’t want Carl to know what I was doing, but, obviously, he has known for several days.”
“And you think he wants to kill you?”
“Yes. I don’t think he knows the extent of what I have done, nor that I’ve cashed in the insurance policy,” she said. “Carl claims to be a real estate dealer. He has averaged a little over twenty thousand dollars on his real estate deals each of the years we’ve been married. As for his investments, he has consistently lost money. He thinks that when I’m dead he’ll have millions when, in fact, he’ll have only a few thousand dollars in his bank account, an apartment he won’t be able to maintain, and a 1995 paid-for Lincoln Town Car. Not much for a nearly seventy-year-old man with an image to maintain.”