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Nick had only been gone a couple of days, but it felt like weeks. I opened my bedside table and pulled out his beautiful note. He was so damn sweet. Perhaps he’d learned that kindness from the librarian of his childhood.
My thoughts went from the lovelorn to my work. I hadn’t heard back from Baker or Ortega and figured my part in the Michelangelo case was done, which was frustrating but expected. A little before noon, I drove over to the stretch of US 1 where most of the new car dealerships were located. I passed Jack Todd Ford then made a U-turn into the strip mall parking lot. I parked at the end, under the shade of a tree, and walked to the overgrown lot next door, where Elliot the Slim was sitting on his blanket under a couple of live oaks and assorted foliage. He had a bottle of blue Gatorade in one hand and a humongous pair of military surplus binoculars in the other.
“How’s the stakeout, Elliot?”
“It’s going, man.” Elliot the Slim was dressed in a dirty pair of gold corduroy britches and a faded T-shirt featuring a cartoon character I wasn’t familiar with—a bug-eyed girl with a bow on her head. His old work boots were three sizes too big, but he’d taken them off and was giving his feet some air. Looking at his feral toenails, I understood why he needed oversized boots.
“Here.” Elliot held out a scrap of paper with numbers and letters scribbled on it. “A couple of people came to talk to Stephens. I wrote down their plate numbers, though I think it was mainly car business.”
“Thanks. He go anywhere?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Take a lunch break.” I handed him a ten and pointed back at the strip mall. “Sammy’s has good lasagna, a good eggplant parm sandwich too.”
I left him as he slid his feet back into his boots, and I crossed the parking lot to my car. I rolled down my windows to catch the cross breeze so I didn’t have to run the car for AC. I opened the glove compartment and pulled out a pair of binoculars, which were much smaller than Elliot’s. Judging from past surveillance, there was a fifty-fifty chance as to whether Stephens would go out to lunch or order something to be delivered. A few minutes later, one of the junior salespeople drove up and pulled a stack of pizza boxes from the passenger seat. Guess ol’ Ricky’s eating in today.
I’d been hoping to follow him to another licentious rendezvous. Oh well. I used my binoculars to look through the glass walls of the dealership and saw Stephens stroll into the break room and snag a slice. He flipped his tie up over his shoulder. Apparently, if there was a spill he preferred staining his shirt.
My phone rang, and I took a minute to sing along with Barry before I answered, “Hey, Nick, how’s Vienna?”
“I find it very Austrian. What are you up to?”
“You caught me working.”
“Work’s good, brings in the bucks. Which case?”
“The Floating Ballerina, also known as the Case of the Asshole Thieving Husband.”
Nick laughed, and good sensations ran through my body. Nick was quiet then said, “I miss you.”
“I miss you too. So what’s it like there?”
“Well, it’s late afternoon. I’m at a café across from the Danube. It’s really beautiful, Lise. I swear the sky is bluer here.”
“Sounds romantic,” I said.
“Anywhere is romantic as long as I can at least hear your voice,” Nick said.
“That’s smarmy, but I like it anyway.”
“Where are you?” Nick asked.
“I’m sitting in my car, in the shade of a tree, across US 1 from Jack Todd Ford. Vienna sounds a lot nicer.”
“What else is going on?” Nick asked.
“Not much. I don’t think I’ll hear from Baker and Ortega again on that murder case. Baker and I go together like caviar and feces. And for the record, I’m the caviar.”
“Too bad,” Nick said. “It was interesting.”
Talking to Nick left me with a mishmash of emotions. There was love, melancholy, longing, and lust. Wait, is lust an emotion? It should be. I remembered one night that was spicier than most. Though not a great artist, Nick was a good one, and we’d played a little game where he was the master artist and I was the model posing nude for his sketch. It’d taken him forty-five minutes to finish, and the second he put down the pencil, we’d gotten right to it.
The rest of Elliot’s lunch break passed with a feeling of immense loneliness. Phone calls to faraway loved ones were supposed to make people feel better, but in reality, it accentuated the distance and deepened the solitude. I cracked open a bottle of water and took a slug as I watched Ricky Stephens in the break room. He was telling a joke to a group of his salesmen.
Wait for it... Wait for it... and there it is. A brief pause before the punch line was followed up with forced laughter. Since he’d finished gracing his troops with his presence, he crossed the room like a hunter after prey and stopped to talk to a pretty brunette in business wear. The way he leaned on the table and smiled as they talked indicated some heavy flirtation. I doubted Blondie knew he was sniffing around another coworker. I focused in on the woman and snickered—her expression said he wasn’t getting any. Ricky must have picked up on that, because he returned to the pizza, laid a slice on a paper plate, and disappeared through a door. My guess was he was taking it to someone who would be more receptive to his brand of sleaze, someone like Blondie.
Having seen enough of Stephens’s charm, I lowered the binoculars and turned my deliberations to The Floating Ballerina. It seemed there should be some way to proceed besides watching Stephens and waiting for him to make a move. I got an idea, though I wasn’t sure how good it was. Considering Adolph Hurst’s past, there was a potential for danger. On the other hand, the pickle proved he had a different bite pattern than the killer. I decided it was worth the risk.
After another twenty minutes, Elliot the Slim leaned into my window. “I’ll take it from here, Lise.”
“I’ll be back at five. Call me if it looks like he’s leaving earlier.”
Elliot tromped back to his observation post, and I drove to Cadiz Street, first stopping at Zayda’s Deli to make a special purchase. Once on Cadiz, I had to circle around a couple of times to get a parking spot close to Delve Gallery. When I entered, Adolph Hurst was sitting at the counter, writing in an account book.
Without looking up, he said, “I’ll be right with you.”
I stood at the door and waited. He finally finished the entry, closed the book, and looked up with a smile. “Hello. It’s you again. I’m sorry; I forgot your name.”
“I told you my name was Margaret Atwood.”
“Right. Like the writer.”
“It’s really Analise Norwood. Call me Lise.”
He stared at me, lines showing on his brow. “You gave me a fake name?”
“If it makes it any better, Margaret Atwood is one of my favorite novelists.” I walked to the counter and put a big jar of Kosher dills on it. “For you.”
He glanced at it, to me, and back to the pickles. “Thank you? Why pickles?”
I was right—he hadn’t even noticed the missing pickle. I sat on a stool at the counter and took a breath. “I was an art history major at San Marco University.”
“Yes, I seem to remember you mentioning something about that.”
“But now I’m a private investigator.”
“Really? Like Mike Hammer?”
“But not as macho.”
At this point his eyes had morphed from welcoming, to friendly, to confused, then to severe. He leapt from his stool and slammed one of his massive hands on the counter, causing everything on that flat surface to jump an inch. “If this has anything to do with Miami, I will lose my temper.” He pointed his finger at me like a gun barrel. “And believe me, that is something you do not wish to experience.”
Oh boy. I rushed the rest of the explanation. “Mr. Hurst, I came in under a false name as a consultant for the San Marco Police Department.”
His body tensed.
“You were a person of interest in a case that they’re working. And yes, you came to their attention because of your past as well as your art and the line of work you’re in.” I waited for a response, but all I got was silence and intense eyeballs. Oh well, full disclosure. “And you came to their attention because I told them about you.” I glanced at his beefy hands, thinking they could sure make massive fists, and I readied myself to depart the premises.
“You brought me to the attention of the local police?” He said it in a soft monotone that I found more intimidating than if he’d shouted it.
I nodded.
His hands clenched into fists, he grunted and kept his gaze on me. I felt relief when he unclenched his big hands, grasped the pickle jar, and opened it.
The aroma got my mouth watering, so I had to swallow before saying, “Okay, I can’t go into detail concerning the case I was consulting, other than to say there was an artistic quality to it. In fact, they refer to the criminal as Michelangelo. And they needed someone with knowledge of art history.”
Adolph nodded, pulled out a pickle, and sniffed it like a cigar aficionado with a Cuban stogie.
I cleared my throat. “I came across one of your paintings, and there was a possibility that it was somehow tied to the crime committed.” I paused as he bit into the pickle because I didn’t want the crunch to drown me out. “Looking into your background, I learned about Miami. What happened down there kind of fit into what happened here, which made you, for a time, a person of interest.”
I expected him to shout, rant, or threaten bodily harm. Instead, he pushed the big jar toward me. “Pickle?”
“God yes...” I dipped my fingers in and pulling out the daintiest near the top, which was still large enough to have come from the big-and-tall cucumber shop. I bit into it, and the crunch sounded like a firecracker in my head. The flavor was wonderfully Kosher and marvelously dill. I called to my chosen deity yet again. “God, that’s good.”
“Isn’t it?” Adolph said. “Where’d you get them?”
“Zayda’s Deli,” I answered. “A couple of blocks up Minorca Avenue.”
“I’ve seen it but never stopped in. Now I’ll have to.” We were chatting away like a couple of members of the local gardening club. “But you were explaining why you were invading my privacy and spying on me?”
I wished he hadn’t put it that way. After taking another bite, I said, “So before the police questioned you, and thereby alerted you to the fact that you were a suspect, they wanted me to chat you up, get a feel for you, see if there was anything I could learn.”
“Was this a violent crime?” he asked.
It wouldn’t hurt to admit that much. “Yes, very much so.”
“And they let you come in on your own? That’s irresponsible—I mean, seeing as I was a suspect.”
I pointed outside. “They were right out there. They could hear what was going on.”
“You were wired?” A hoarseness colored his soft monotone, and I hoped that wasn’t a bad sign.
“In the loosest sense. Anyway, you were eating lunch when I came in. I saw a pickle spear—well, it was actually a pickle half. You had taken a bite out of it and—”
Adolph gasped. “You took it for DNA matching!”
“Well, they might have done that, but I really took it to compare bite patterns.”
“Bite?”
“I can’t go into that. But your dental pattern is not a match, and since I stole your pickle, I brought you a gift,” I said, indicating the jar. “You know? That’s a phrase I never thought I’d use: since I stole your pickle.”
“It’s a term I never thought I’d hear.” He gazed past me as he finished the rest of his pickle. “I should be furious with you.”
“And I’d totally understand.”
“But it’s also understandable how my past life might put me in a suspicious light. And I find you...” He seemed to be searching for an appropriate word. “Endearing.” And with that, his eyes reset to friendly. “So I’m no longer a suspect?”
“As far as I know,” I said. “I was only brought in short-term.”
“Being a suspect is stressful. I learned in Miami how horrific it is to be under the microscope.” He screwed the lid onto the pickle jar. “Since you’ve been honest with me, I’d like to return the favor and tell you what happened in Miami.”
“You don’t have to.” Still, I was curious.
“But I will.” Adolph came around the counter and sat on a stool next to mine. “I was an art dealer, quite successful. I was pompous, full of myself. I think the term arrogant prick is an apt description. I made a lot of money, which I spent on marketing, and by marketing, I mean parties where I could entertain wealthy clients. Looking at it in hindsight, I realize that though it was a PR move, I did it even more because I loved booze, women, and cocaine.” He sighed. “Even though I’m not what you could call a studly man, I found women attracted to me, which, once again in hindsight, I now know they were attracted to my drugs, money, and spending habits. One of my new employees—”
“Belinda Vasquez,” I said.
He nodded. “She was gorgeous and voluptuous, and I learned early on that her love for cocaine surpassed mine. Get a few lines in her, and she was up for anything. Well, you know where that led.”
“Passing out and choking on her own vomit.”
Adolph gazed past me with vacant eyes. “In my bed.” He shook his head. “She was only twenty-one. Some twenty-one-year-olds are women; others are still girls.” His voice remained calm and steady, yet I noted he was getting teary-eyed. “I told you she was gorgeous. With a couple of years of sobriety under my belt, an honest description would be that she was a pretty girl.” Adolph blinked, and a tear started down his cheek until he brushed it away absentmindedly. “Voluptuous? She still had baby fat.” He looked at me. “Did you know her father was a well-known attorney in Miami?”
“No.”
“Yes. With one of the big firms. Several of his clients are violent men who make a living with criminal undertakings. He’s the one who got the DA to go after me so intensely. When that failed, he brought his lawsuit. I settled, thinking it was over. Then one of his clients paid me a visit. This man is about as high up as you can get in organized crime. He told me I could leave Miami, or I could die. He’d leave the decision up to me.”
“I think you made the right choice.”
Adolph gazed at the floor. “I was a broken man, all injuries self-inflicted. I couldn’t think straight. Was doing more coke and drinking more. I was a mess. One night, I was so messed up, I blacked out. This wasn’t even a week after the mobster’s visit. The first thing I remember was sitting in a pew at the Cathedral of Saint Mary in downtown Miami. I have no idea how I got there. There were only a couple of other people there praying. It was so quiet and peaceful.” He smiled at me. “I wasn’t raised in a religious family. Quite the opposite. As an atheist, I used to think I was smarter than anyone who was foolish enough to cross a church threshold. But that day, I got on my knees and said, ‘God? Can you help me?’” He smiled, and his eyes sparkled. “All at once, it felt like the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders.”
“Everything was all right after that?” I asked.
Adolph blew air through his lips. “Hardly. It’s like this: I was a drunk addicted to cocaine and sex, and my excesses led me to ruin. But even worse, they led to poor Belinda’s death. I can’t forgive myself for what happened to her, but God has.”
Those words hung in the air between us. I’d known people who’d turned their lives around through church and God. In this instance, however, it seemed like a minor miracle, and I felt inspired.
I took in his gallery and said, “Adolph, your excesses may have led you to ruin, but your resilience has led you to rebirth.”
He smiled at me. “That’s nice of you to say. This incarnation is certainly not as flashy, but I find that I’m happier than I’ve been in years. I no longer drink, except for wine with good meals. The thought of snorting up another line of cocaine makes me gag, and I no longer pursue women with the hunger I once did. All said and done, I hope we can be friends.”
“To friends.” I held out my hand. His massive mitt swallowed my hand as we shook. “Now that we got that out of the way, let me tell you why I’m here.”
“There’s more?”
I grinned. “Get us a couple of pickles while I find out if you’re interested in helping me with another case I’m working.”
While he opened the jar, I told him about The Floating Ballerina. When I told him who’d sketched it, he dropped his pickle.