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Just in case Hurst watched me leave, we arranged for me to drive my car to Winn-Dixie. We met there and stood between our parked cars.
“You did what?” Baker asked in a surly tone.
“I got you a pickle,” I said, handing the napkin-wrapped item to Ortega. “You can run it against Michelangelo’s bite pattern. Maybe you can get his DNA off of it.”
“Can’t you just do what we ask and stop improvising?” Baker said.
Control freak, I thought, trying to figure out Baker’s unappealing disposition. Misogynist maybe? Why did it piss him off that I snagged the pickle? It’s not like Hurst would notice. If he did, he would probably think he’d already finished eating it. And who cared if he knew I took it? Maybe I had a craving for a big dill and couldn’t help myself.
I turned to Ortega. “What do you think? Will it work?”
Ortega unwrapped the pickle and looked at the bit end. “I think so. But we can’t use it as evidence if there’s a match.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Remember that little issue about not having a warrant?” Baker said.
“Ah, crap.”
“Too late now,” Ortega said.
“I’m so sorry.”
Baker chewed on his lower lip, looking at me. “Remember Busby?”
“Yeah, the crime scene tech.”
“He’s a good guy. He’ll compare the bite pattern on the pickle with those on the victims. At least we’ll know if we’re barking up the right tree.”
“So I did good?” I asked.
“Don’t get cocky. You did okay.”
“You’re welcome,” I said to Baker then got in my car.
My Barry White ringtone sounded as I drove off. Ignoring safe-driving etiquette, I answered. “Hi, Nick.”
“Hello, Lise. I had a wonderful time last night.”
“Me too.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“Then we better get together again tonight.”
“I concur. How about an early dinner and then we retire to my place and make enough love to last us the five months I’ll be gone?”
“Five months’ worth?” I whistled. “We better do some stretching first.”
“Agreed. I’ve selected tonight’s fare from the Kama Sutra.”
“Kama Sutra,” I said dismissively. “Rank amateurs compared to what I have planned.”
“Where would you like to eat?”
“How about Razorback’s?” As I said the name of the restaurant, I realized I picked it because it was near De Leon Park. Normally, for a romantic dinner, I wouldn’t want to put myself close to a crime scene like Angela Lopez’s murder. But I was thinking I might be able to combine business and pleasure.
“Good call, we’ll need all the protein we can get. See you there at five?”
“Let’s make it six. I have to follow my client’s husband home. If he ends up heading elsewhere, I’ll text you.”
We ended the call, but before I could put the phone down, it rang again.
Elliot said, “Lise, he’s on the move. He and that blond bimbo who works there went out and got in his car. I think they’re leaving.”
Ricky and yet another woman. “Damn. I just pulled out of the Winn-Dixie near Old Town. It’ll take a few minutes. Stay on the line.”
I wished I had a bogus police light to get the lackadaisical traffic out of my way. Retirees took their time, tourists never knew where they were going, and apparently, there were a lot of people who were clueless as to why the left lane was called the passing lane.
“He’s heading south on US 1,” Elliot said.
“And I’m just turning onto North US 1. Is he driving his Mustang?”
“Yeah.”
Thank God. As if that car didn’t stand out enough on its own, it was painted traffic-cone orange. “Why don’t you go ahead and call it a day, Elliot.”
“See you tomorrow, Lise.”
I was half a block from San Pelayo Boulevard when I spotted the bright-orange Mustang. He turned left and was headed toward the beach.
“Gotcha now, playboy,” I muttered, and after making a right, I settled in a few cars behind him.
After crossing the Pelayo Bridge, a high structure to allow vessels with tall masts to pass underneath, the Mustang made a right turn onto a dirt road that would take them down to the Lazy Sandbar, a tiny honky-tonk with a beachy vibe hidden under the east side of the bridge. I didn’t want to pull in right behind him into the parking lot, so I blew by, made a U-turn about a mile down the road, and came back. There were only a handful of cars in the parking lot, and I parked a few spaces down from Ricky’s Mustang.
I got out and stretched, taking in the Lazy Sandbar. Made from tabby, a rough concrete-like material, it was painted a faded teal. The place had been around since the fifties, and when I entered, it smelled of decades’ worth of spilled beer. I blinked several times, trying to get my eyes adjusted to the dark. Finally able to see, I scanned the place, and it was dead. A few of the cars in the parking lot must have belonged to fishermen getting their lines wet in the Intracoastal. One old fellow sat at the bar, a bartender bent over and tinkered with the cash register, and Ricky and his friend sat in a booth to the left. I was behind and to the right of the woman, so I couldn’t see her, but Ricky saw me and was giving me the up-and-down. He didn’t know me or that his wife had hired me, but I still wished he hadn’t seen me.
I had a choice to make. I could either sit in a nearby booth and attempt to eavesdrop on what they said, or I could sit at the bar and keep an eye on them. Opting for visual, I walked across the room to the bar and sat. The barkeep asked what I wanted. The trouble with little dives like the Lazy Sandbar was they didn’t serve up craft beers. According to the taps, it was either Bud, Miller, or Coors.
“Coors,” I told the bartender and got out my phone, pretending to pay attention to it while watching the booth. A minute later, he set down the beer. I gave him three bills and took a sip of barely cool brew.
Now I was at an angle where I could see only Ricky’s left arm and leg, but I could see his midday date. Elliot the Slim had nailed the description with “blond bimbo.” Her hair was full and bouncy, and coincidentally, so were her breasts. I’d seen her before at Jack Todd Ford. She wasn’t a salesperson or a receptionist; they all worked at desks visible through the dealership’s plate glass windows. She spent most of her time deeper in the building, and my guess was that she was in accounting. Ricky said something. Then she laughed, batting her eyes, and licked her lips. Oh my, cheesy, sleazy romance at the Lazy Sandbar.
Ricky went around the table to sit next to Blondie. A turn of his head, and he would know I was watching. I kept my focus on the phone and my thumbs moving like I was texting someone. I also hit the photo function and zoomed in enough so I could watch them on my phone’s screen. After reaching into the inside pocket of his sport coat, he brought out a small box, maybe six inches long and two inches wide. A thin red ribbon was twisted around it and tied off in a bow. With a theatrical gasp, Blondie put a hand to her chest in mock surprise, then she snatched the box out of Ricky’s hands. Making quick work of the ribbon, she pulled off the top.
“Oh, Ricky,” I heard from clear across the room. The translation was clear, Ricky would be gettin’ some.
She pulled out a necklace. I zoomed in further and saw a pendant with a ruby centerpiece about as big as the tip of my little finger ringed by a half-dozen smaller sapphires. It was one of the pieces of jewelry Shari listed as stolen in the burglary. Realizing my mouth was hanging open, I forced it closed. Shari’s suspicions were right. Her lowlife husband had faked the robbery and taken everything of value. I heard Blondie squeal, and Ricky put the jewelry around her neck. Judging by the fact that he’d given that necklace to Blondie, he didn’t realize the value of what he’d taken. Dear God, please don’t let him give The Floating Ballerina to some eager beaver he picks up on Tinder.
Time to do some private-eye stuff. I zoomed out and rested my hands on the bar for stability and a decent picture. Feeling confident, like I could give gumshoe lessons to Sam Spade, I pressed the screen for the photo, and the dark bar was briefly illuminated by a flash of incandescence. Shit! Instinctively, I moved the phone enough that it appeared to be aimed at the bartender, and a second later, I looked up to see the old man at the bar, the bartender, Ricky, and his date all looking at me.
I spoke like I had a couple dozen fewer IQ points. “What? I like to post where I am on Facebook.” To the bartender, I said, “You don’t mind that I took your picture, right?” Before he could respond, I held my phone out to him. “Could you take my picture?”
He grumbled but took it anyway. By the time I’d primped, preened, and posed, the old man was staring down at his beer, and Ricky and Blondie were once again huddled together exchanging pheromones.
Acting like I was the queen of social media, I worked my thumbs over the phone. Instead of making vapid Facebook posts, I turned off the flash and got a few shots of the lovebirds admiring Shari’s pendant. I took another sip of my beer and stood. When I said goodbye to the barkeep, he only grunted.
Back in my MINI Cooper, I brought up the photos. They were dark, but good enough. A second later, Ricky and Blondie left the Lazy Sandbar. Not paying any attention to me in my car, Ricky leaned her against his Mustang, and they locked lips and hips. After a minute, they sped off. My best guess was the happy couple would stop at her place or a nearby no-tell motel and have a quick taste of afternoon delight. Ricky would be too busy to unload The Floating Ballerina for the time being. I texted Shari and told her we needed to meet the following day.
Once home, I prepared for my date with Nick, as well as an evening romp that would prove a whole lot classier than what those two were getting into. I took a long shower. One should be squeaky clean for the kind of evening Nick and I had planned. Getting ready for our dates was always a kind of foreplay before the foreplay. I found myself mildly aroused as I dressed, selecting a pair of lacy pink panties. Tight jeans followed. While I didn’t have huge boobs, I’d seen Nick’s eyes when I went braless in a form-fitting blouse, so I knew my sleeveless silk white shirt should drive him bananas. I put on a pair of nice sandals, set my hair in a ponytail, and applied minimal makeup.
All during my preparation, I thought about that lover man of mine. Such a gentle and generous soul. His sense of humor rivaled a comedian’s, and he had a skill for lovemaking that made temples of pleasure out of our beds. His intellect, particularly for his field of study and instruction, was off the charts, though he never bragged about it. He’d had so much going against him as a child that it was amazing he’d become the man he was. And it was no wonder that he’d focused on art. Growing up in the loveless house provided by his alcoholic aunt, he’d spent as much time away as possible. That was when he discovered the San Marco Public Library downtown.
Nick had relayed the tale of his savior librarian many times, and I enjoyed hearing it each time. Within that vast collection of books, he’d discovered classic art. One of the librarians had taken an interest in him and given him a library card. One night, a terrible thing happened. His aunt came home after a particularly long bender. For some reason, she took offense at his library books. He had checked out six books on art, and she tore the pages from each. With one drunken onslaught, his aunt had taken away his one happiness because he believed he could never return to the library again. The librarian had noticed his absence, and after several weeks, she had gone to his aunt’s mobile home—luckily, when Aunt Pen wasn’t there. The librarian had brought a gift for Nick—a one-year pass to the Benjamin Museum a few blocks from the library. He’d tearfully told her what his aunt had done, and she’d told him it didn’t matter. What did matter, she’d said, was that he come back to the library because his smile lit up the place.
Ready for the date, I drove to De Leon Park and got there a little before five thirty, which would leave time to poke around and think about the Michelangelo case. I was a lowly consultant at best, and Baker had warned me not to stick my nose too far in to where it wasn’t wanted, but I was too intrigued to stop. I hoped that if I spent enough time working it through my head before meeting Nick, then I wouldn’t think about it at all during our date. I wanted to concentrate on my boyfriend and send him off to Vienna properly sated.
I parked where I’d parked the morning that Angela’s body had been discovered. It seemed like a different place now. There were no cop cars, no men in blue, and no lookie-loos. There were cars in the parking lot, and a group of joggers trotted by, taking the trail that would lead down to the fountain meadow. I followed at a leisurely pace, wondering how the killer had gotten Angela without any witnesses.
When I got to the meadow, I stopped. Baker was standing before the fountain. He looked rough, and his clothes appeared as if he’d worn them for several days straight. He stared at the fountain, transfixed, and I wondered if, in his mind’s eye, he was seeing Angela Lopez. I was tempted to call out to him, but his lips moved like he was having a conversation with an invisible person. Unnerved, I headed back up the trail.
After a couple dozen steps, I heard Baker’s voice. “What are you doing here?”
I stopped, waited a beat, and turned. “Came to think. How about you?”
As bad as he’d appeared at a distance, he was doubly so up close. He displayed none of the usual antagonism; he didn’t seem to have the energy. “Same. I was on my way home and stopped in before I realized it.”
“You live near here?” I asked.
He pointed west. “A couple of blocks over. By the way, sorry I yelled at you about the pickle.” I smiled, and he gave a grin himself. There was something about the word pickle. In even the most serious conversation, it lightened the mood. “You saved us a lot of man hours.”
“Not his bite pattern?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“That sucks.” I realized I was feeling frustration that my clandestine work was for naught. “So that’s what it feels like for you cops to follow a lead, only to hit a brick wall.”
Baker gave me a tired grin. “Welcome to the world of homicide. But you know what? Follow enough leads, and pretty soon, one of them is gonna stick. Anyway, we’re still going to test the DNA against Michelangelo’s.” We started up the trail together. “We’re getting pressure from the DA’s office. Since Angela was one of their own, they’re sticking their noses into all aspects of the case.”
“Understandable.”
“Commendable even, but it’d be a lot easier finding this creep without them buttin’ in, demanding files, and trying to point us in a thousand different directions.”
“Sorry to hear. Hey, since you live nearby, did you ever see Angela jogging in the park?”
“Nah. I’m a morning runner, and she jogged in the evening.”
“You jog?” I asked.
“Gotta do something to stave off the middle-age spread,” he said, patting his belly.
“So how did Michelangelo get her without anyone witnessing anything?” I asked.
“Looks like he got her at dusk, dragged her into the overgrowth, the Brazilian pepper tree, bound her, and gagged her with duct tape. We think he waited until it was good and dark before he started in on her. She died around two to three in the morning after briefly escaping him, or he let her run off for the sport of chasing her. Then he set to work mounting her on the fountain.”
We got to the parking lot, and I stopped by my car and said, “This must be rougher than usual, a jogger killed in a park a couple of blocks from your home.”
He didn’t answer right away but continued to his car. He opened the door, and before he got in, he said, “I have a wife, a daughter. This going down in my backyard doesn’t sit right with me. And it really gets me that I was at home, two blocks away, as he took his time raping and killing her.” He slid into the driver’s seat, closed the door, and sat for a moment, gazing straight ahead with a blank expression. After blinking several times, he glanced at me, started the car, and drove off.
As I drove to Razorback’s, the last thing Baker had said replayed over and over in my mind. I understood his frustration and anger. I wasn’t being egotistical in thinking I had brought a lot to the case with identifying the art that inspired the killer. But knowing Kristin was left as The Dying Niobid and Angela as The Little Mermaid didn’t automatically lead to Michelangelo’s identity. I wondered what more I could do to bring the murders to an end. I sat in my car after parking at Razorback’s, trying to shift my mental state from the crimes to my lover and his pending departure. Putting on a smile that I hoped looked more sincere that it felt, I started for the restaurant.
I found Nick in the bar, and he was so sincerely happy to see me that the negativity I’d been carrying with me dissipated. With a couple of beers and a plate of smoked meat in front of me, I felt great.
“What can I do to make this a romantic bon voyage?” Nick asked as he cut into his beef brisket.
Razorback’s Smokehouse was large, and I hated its cavernous dining room because of the echoing acoustics, so we always sat at one of the high-tops in the bar area. The bar had over twenty taps with mostly craft beers and an amazing selection of liquors.
Holding a baby back rib, I said, “You know that feeding me is the first step to making me a satisfied woman.”
He waggled his eyebrows in Groucho Marx fashion. “It’s the second step I’m most interested in.”
“What can I say? I’m a simple woman.” We laughed, and it hit me then that Nick was leaving for a long time. “Your raging libido is one of many things I’ll miss.”
Nick reached across the table and gave me a sad smile. “I will miss you. You do understand why I’m going?”
“Of course. But what’re a few months in the grand scheme of things, right?”
“Normally, I’d agree, but being apart from you means time is going to slow down.”
I took a sip of beer. “Yeah.”
“And you can always visit me.”
“Oh, that’s definitely going to happen.”
Nick grinned then gave me a serious look. “I ran into Gabe today. He said you told him about your cousin.”
“I’d been thinking about her when he showed up. I did some research on that girl who’d been posed as The Dying Niobid. The newspaper had a photo of her. Kind of reminded me of Gracie.”
Nick reached to put his hand over mine and give me a consoling smile.
After dinner, we went to his home, a late-nineteenth-century white-and-green Florida cracker house that had big windows and doors to allow the breeze through, a tin roof, and covered porches for shade. Once a farm, the surrounding land had been sold, though Nick still had five acres that mostly grew wild. It was private, with access by one gate barring the gravel driveway. Nick opened the door, and we stepped in, stopping to kiss next to his umbrella stand with his collection of antique canes and walking sticks. Nick took my hand, and we started up the stairs, my other hand grasping the bannister, which still wobbled even though Nick had worked on it several times. His home improvement skills were lackluster, at best, but a hardwood floor that buckled in places and a few visible drywall seams didn’t lessen the pride he felt in the old house he was attempting to restore to its glory days. Nor did it diminish the love I had for the place.
We didn’t come close to cramming five months of sex into one night, but it was fun to try. A creative and inventive lover, Nick sometimes planned extravagant scenarios, which I was surprised to learn I enjoyed. He was also masterful at dirty talk. Whenever other guys had talked dirty, it’d come across as silly. Not so with Nick—he could get me ready to roll with a few hot words whispered in my ear. That night, however, started with real romance that bloomed from the sadness that we would soon be parted. We took our time, holding one another tight, kissing and caressing, slowly working off each other’s clothes. He kept on the skintight, long-sleeve black T-shirt I’d purchased for him at a Jeff Beck concert we’d seen at the San Marco Concert Hall.
“It was a gift from you. I want to wear it as we make love,” he explained. It was such a sweet sentiment that I cried a little.
After our lovemaking, I lay still. He sat up and took in my nakedness. “You’re so lovely, you could be a masterpiece.”
I smiled and shut my eyes, but then I felt him get out of bed. “Where are you going?”
“I need to do a few things before the trip, not to mention packing. You go to sleep.”
I opened my eyes to glance at the bedside clock. It was only a little after eleven. I thought to get up and help him, but our strenuous workout had worn me down. I went to sleep.