“Do forgive me — I’m not used to being leashed.” Pendergast took another sip of his julep. “Ah, well, it was simply a suggestion. Perhaps you should call him and get his refusal immediately. Any later and it might interfere with my dinner appetite.”
Coldmoon looked around the cabana exterior for a moment. Then he took out his phone, dialed, and put it on low-volume speaker.
The call was answered on the third ring. “Pickett.”
“Sir, this is SA Coldmoon. I have SA Pendergast listening in.”
“Very well. Progress?”
Coldmoon wasted no time on preliminaries. “Sir, Agent Pendergast believes we should go to Maine.”
“Maine? What the hell for?”
In one lithe movement, Pendergast’s loafers were off the deck chair and on the tiles. “Sir,” he said, leaning toward the phone, “I believe the local authorities have the investigation well in hand, and I’d like to investigate the link between the two women.”
“Link? From what I’ve seen, the killer chose that grave site at random.”
“How can we be certain of that?”
“What link could there possibly be?” Pickett asked impatiently.
“We don’t know yet. I put in a request to have Ms. Baxter’s body exhumed, but her parents are objecting. And—”
“And I’m not surprised. What are you implying: that she wasn’t a suicide? That she was murdered? Is this your ‘link’?”
“As I said, there’s no way to know — not without an exhumation.”
“All you need to know would be in the pathologist’s report and the original autopsy. Stop focusing on this suicide and forget the idea of a second autopsy. What you’re supposed to be investigating is a murder that took place in Miami. Have you spoken to the family of the dead girl, what’s her name, Montoya?”
“Montera. No, we have not. However, Agent Coldmoon and I have both read the transcripts of their interviews with the Miami Beach police, and they are—”
“Frankly, Agent Pendergast, this is precisely the kind of out-of-left-field move coming from you I worried about. Like chartering a private jet to get down to Miami twelve hours early.”
A pause. Pendergast said nothing.
“Even assuming you’re right, your first priority is clearly with a fresh homicide — not a suicide that happened a decade ago and fifteen hundred miles away. I can’t sign off on this. You can get whatever files you need from Maine shipped down. If you find something — then go.”
“The Maine files are likely to be useless—”
“Agent Pendergast, this is one investigation that’s going to be run by the book. Now—”
“Sir,” Coldmoon interrupted. “I agree with Agent Pendergast.”
There was a long moment of dead silence. And then the voice from New York said: “You do?”
“The MBPD appears to be doing a thorough job, with great backup from the Miami PD. There’s a window of opportunity. I think we should take it to check out this avenue of investigation.”
“But I told you — the selection of victim and grave site could well be random.”
“I agree one of them is most likely random, sir,” Coldmoon said. “But I don’t think we should assume both are random. The letter seems specifically addressed to Baxter.”
The next silence was even longer. “You’ll leave first thing in the morning,” Pickett said crisply. “And you’ll use commercial transportation. But before you leave, you are to interview the Montera family, in person.”
“Understood, sir.”
“And Agent Coldmoon? I don’t want boots on the ground in Maine any longer than twenty-four hours before you head back to Florida.” There was a click and the phone went still.
Slowly, Pendergast looked over at Coldmoon. “I didn’t think you agreed with my suggestion.”
“Who says I do?”
“Then why—?”
“I go with my partner.”
“Agent Coldmoon, I do believe you have unexpected depth.”
The agent shrugged. Then he put his hand out to stop a passing waiter. “Bring me a bottle of Grain Belt, please. Room temperature, not chilled.” And he sat back in the deck chair and laced his fingers together. “Since we’re supposedly off duty, I guess I’m thirsty, after all.”
8
No puedo dormir,” Mrs. Montera said, dabbing at her eyes with a ragged handkerchief. She had been dabbing, virtually nonstop, since Coldmoon arrived at the little apartment on Southwest Eleventh Terrace an hour before, as the sun was sinking into a pink atmosphere. Now everyone was sitting around the well-used kitchen table: Coldmoon, heavyset Mrs. Montera, and her two surviving children, Nicolás and Aracela.
Although Coldmoon had been mistaken for Hispanic on a few occasions, he knew no Spanish and even less about Miami’s Cuban culture. He was relieved when, despite the stream of detectives that had come through the apartment earlier in the day, the Monteras had welcomed him in, patiently answered his questions, and offered him dinner. He’d refused once, twice, then finally allowed himself to be served congri and tamales.
He had never been in a residence painted so many bright colors, or with so many crucifixes and statuettes in evidence. It made his own childhood home seem monochromatic by comparison. The place was compact but neat, and he sensed pride in the smallest details: the way the frying pans were carefully stacked on a shelf above the counter, the spotless collection of faded photographs of family now long dead. Mrs. Montera’s parents, old and frail, were both asleep in a back bedroom, exhausted from grief, and Coldmoon had not asked to speak with them: he’d grown up with the Oglala tradition of tiospaye and did not wish to intrude himself on Felice Montera’s extended family. He knew there was nothing they could tell him, anyway.
Unfortunately, there was little anyone could tell him. The family had already answered the same questions for the Miami PD, but they patiently went over the facts again. Nicolás worked as a mechanic in a nearby auto shop, and Aracela, who had lost her bookkeeping job when a neighborhood bodega closed, supplemented the family income by babysitting. Felice, the most ambitious of the children, had been an LPN, already well into the coursework necessary to become a registered nurse. While she had friends both here in Miami and back in Cuba, most of her time was taken up either at the hospital or with coursework. The few free hours she had were spent with family or, until they broke up, with her boyfriend, Lance.
When the subject of Lance came up, the atmosphere around the table darkened. Nicolás muttered something in Spanish under his breath.
Despite the family’s obvious animosity toward Lance, they knew little about him. Apparently, Felice had been guarded about the details of their relationship and had brought him to the apartment only once: the chemistry had been bad enough that she hadn’t tried a second time. She’d met Lance six months earlier, not far from Mount Sinai, at a club where he’d worked as “door staff” — in other words, a bouncer. He’d been fired from the club two months ago, and Felice broke up with him a couple of weeks after that. Again, she’d been vague with specifics — she’d mentioned money problems, but Nicolás believed it was Lance’s temper that ultimately scared her off.
“He would call,” Nicolás said as he washed dishes. “Money — always money. Sometimes he wanted to borrow some. Other times, he wanted some back. Even after they broke up, this comemierda would call.” He spat into the sink.
“Do you know when they last met?” Coldmoon asked.
“She told me, maybe three, four weeks ago. He stopped her outside the hospital.”
“Why?”
“Same thing. Claimed she owed him money. They argued, she threatened to call the cops.” Nicolás shook his head.