“So no one did,” he said. “You’re fishing. Look, Detective, I’m going to do you and your husband a favor. I’m not going to call the mayor and have you fired for storming in here tonight, although we both know I could. You can just leave and not come back. But we’re done. You and the lieutenant and your whole team are done. I don’t want you in this house again. I don’t want you talking to me again. I don’t want you anywhere near the filming. Do you understand?”
Serena didn’t say anything. She just stared at him. After a few seconds passed, he stepped aside and waited. She marched out of the room and headed back downstairs. She heard Casperson closing and locking the upstairs room behind her. On the lower level, she found Guppo and directed him and the team out of the house.
“You didn’t find anything?” she said.
Guppo’s round head swung back and forth. “No. Sorry.”
“Who was in the house?”
“Some people from a catering company. A maid. A chef. They were all deaf, dumb, and blind, and I get the feeling they’re well paid to stay that way. I showed them Rochelle’s photo. Nobody remembered her.”
Serena exhaled steam into the frigid air. “That son of a bitch is going to get away with this. According to Maggie, he’s been at it for thirty years. And nobody has breathed a word about it in public.”
“So what do we do?”
“Leave someone here to talk to Jungle Jack when he gets back,” Serena said. “Let’s go find Aimee Bowe and make sure she’s okay.”
*
Maggie’s phone rang at one in the morning in Florida, waking her up. She could see the screen glowing and hear the phone vibrating on the nightstand. She reached across the bare torso of Cab Bolton in his bed and grabbed it. It was Stride, which meant it was an emergency. As she talked to him, Cab used a remote control to switch on the light and then sat up next to her.
They were both naked.
Cab listened curiously to her end of the conversation, which didn’t take long.
“Dean Casperson got interrupted in midassault,” Maggie explained when she hung up the phone. “They think he drugged Aimee Bowe and was planning to rape her.”
“Can they prove it?” Cab asked.
“No. There was no evidence of anything by the time the police got there. Even if Aimee talks, Casperson laid the groundwork to blame it on her.”
Cab shook his head. “The man is Teflon.”
He got out of the four-poster bed, and she watched him walk over to the full-length mirror on the back of his bathroom door. It wasn’t a large bedroom, and Maggie wasn’t a fan of the lime-green paint, but she wasn’t here for the decor. The air-conditioning kept it cold, and the overhead ceiling blew a constant breeze over her bare skin.
In the mirror, Cab examined his upper arm, which was mottled with red-and-purple bruises. As he moved it, his face twisted with a stab of pain.
“How’s the arm?” she asked.
“Feels like someone hit it with a baseball bat.”
“Weird,” she said.
“Yeah, I can’t figure it out. How about you? How’s the neck?”
“Pretty loose now, actually. Intense physical activity must be good for it.”
“I hope you mean the sex,” Cab said. “Or did you get up while I was sleeping and use my in-home gym?”
“You have an in-home gym?”
“Oh, please. Not a chance.”
Cab wandered over to the glass doors that led to the balcony and then went outside. Maggie got out of bed and joined him. They didn’t bother with clothes. Cab’s house was small, but it was in a secluded location on the sandy peninsula ten miles south of Naples. The balcony looked right out on the Gulf, where moonlight made the calm water glow. Steps led down to the beach. Palm trees guarded the house like soldiers.
“This is one hell of a place,” Maggie said.
“I bought it earlier this year. If you’re going to live in Florida, you might as well live on the water.”
“Any bugs?”
“The size of Cadillacs. If they unionize, I’m doomed.”
“So it’s not entirely paradise?” Maggie asked.
“Oh, no. It is. It definitely is. Do you want to go for a naked swim? Sex in the water isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but you get bragging rights when you tell your friends you did it.”
“I wish I could,” Maggie said unhappily.
“Ah. All good things come to an end?”
“I need to get back to the Ritz. I have to catch an early-morning flight. Stride wants me back in Duluth.”
“Plus, we’re at a standstill here,” Cab said. “So go.”
“I hate to leave you stranded,” Maggie said. “You don’t have a car.”
“Don’t worry, my Corvette dealer delivers.”
Maggie crooked a finger for a kiss, and Cab bent down to deliver it. Then she went back into the bedroom, leaving him alone on the balcony. She retrieved her clothes, which were strewn across the gray ceramic tiles on the floor, and got dressed. In the bathroom, she studied herself in the mirror. She looked like someone who’d had sex that night. She decided it was a look that worked for her.
She really didn’t want to leave.
The balcony doors were still open, letting the sticky air in. She went back to the doorway, and Cab turned around and smiled. The trees and the water framed his tall, skinny body in the moonlight like a portrait. His spiky hair was even messier than usual, which was her doing. He leaned against the balcony, utterly relaxed and utterly naked. He flicked a small lizard off his wrist.
“Come with me,” Maggie told him.
“What?”
“You know Dean Casperson and this case better than anyone,” she said. “And you know what Peach was doing, so you can help us figure out what happened to her. Come back and work with us. Just for a couple days. You can stay at my place.”
Cab tilted his face to the sky as if pondering the idea. He looked back over his shoulder at the perfect water of the Gulf, and then a grin crept across his face. “Duluth in January,” he said. “Well, who could resist an invitation like that?”
27
Serena recognized the red Toyota Yaris that was parked outside Aimee’s rental house on Thirteenth Street. Lori Fulkerson was there.
The woman stood at Aimee’s front door, where she’d tramped across the beaten-down snow. She turned around in surprise when she saw Serena and Guppo marching toward her, and her surprise turned to wide-eyed fear when several other police cars arrived at the same time. She looked like a rabbit, ready to run.
“What’s going on?” Lori asked.
“We’re looking for Aimee Bowe, Ms. Fulkerson. Have you seen her?”
“No, I just knocked on the door. There was no answer.”
“Have you been here long?” Serena asked.
“Just a couple of minutes.”
Serena checked her watch and studied the empty street around them. “It’s pretty late to be paying a visit, Ms. Fulkerson. Why are you here?”
“I couldn’t sleep. I needed to talk to her.”
“About what?”
“To be honest, Aimee seems like the only person who has ever understood me. It’s the strangest sensation, like I can feel her inside my head. Like we’re connected.” Lori crossed her arms over her chest in the cold. “I don’t like it.”
“Did you tell her you were coming over?”
Lori shook her head. “No. I just got in my car and drove.”
“Did you see anyone coming or going as you arrived?”
“Nobody.”
“Okay, why don’t you go back home now,” Serena told her.
“Is everything all right? Did something happen?”
“It’s nothing for you to be concerned about.”
Lori looked at the faces of the police officers. Then she wandered into the snow and headed back toward her car. She got into the Yaris, but Serena noticed that she didn’t drive away. Lori stayed there, watching the activity outside the house.
Serena pounded on the front door. “Aimee! Aimee, are you there?”
There was no answer.
“She could be unconscious,” Guppo said. “If she was drugged, she might not hear us.”
Serena was about to put her shoulder to the flimsy door when she remembered Aimee’s comment that half the locks in the old house didn’t work. She turned the doorknob, and the front door opened with a squeal of its hinges. The interior was dark and cold.
“Aimee,” she called again. “It’s Serena.”
Still no answer.