JOE TEXTED HER AS HE was leaving the pizza place.
Dinner?
He waited a few minutes, tempted by the smell of hot yeasty crust, tomato sauce, and garlic. Instead of opening the box, he drove over to the Murmuring Surf and parked in the lot.
It was after nine, but he could see lights shining from inside her unit.
His phone finally pinged.
Can’t. Maya’s asleep.
Perfect. Be there in five. Bringing wine.
They ate the pizza on paper plates on the patio and Letty poured the red wine into juice glasses. She left the sliding glass door open in case Maya called out for her.
By unspoken mutual agreement neither of them discussed the day’s earlier events.
Letty refilled her wineglass and sipped appreciatively. She plucked a blossom from the vine covering the patio fence and inhaled the scent. “You know, I’m gonna miss this place.”
Joe reached for her hand. “Then why leave? Wingfield’s headed back to New York as soon as the extradition papers come through. Rooney’s locked up. You’re safe now. Maya’s happy. You’ve got a job. My mom loves you. Everybody here loves you.”
She raised one eyebrow. “Everybody?”
“Well, maybe not Merwin. He hates everyone.”
Joe tugged at her hand and patted his lap. “C’mere.”
Letty put her glass of wine on the table and obliged, curling up on his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck, and resting her head on his chest.
“See?” He kissed the top of her head. “It’s nice here. You should stay.”
She yawned. “Could get awkward when you have to go to work.”
“I don’t mean right here, exactly. I get why you don’t want to raise a kid in a motel room. But you could live with me…”
“Joe…”
“Just let me finish, please. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. My place is no palace, okay? I’m a single guy. But it’s got two bedrooms and two baths. Maya could have her own bedroom. Okay, so the second bathroom is only a sink and a toilet, but I’ve been thinking I could put a shower in there, so she’d have her own bathroom. I know how to do plumbing. I had to learn it all, growing up here. I can do plumbing, electrical, tile, you name it. We could even add a second story if you want. The kitchen at my place sucks, I admit. But we could fix it up. You can design it, and I’ll do whatever you want in there. New counters, floors, appliances.”
“Joe,” she tried again, but his enthusiasm was unstoppable.
“The best thing about my place is where it’s at. I’ve got a fenced yard. There’s a big old oak tree out there—at least I think it’s an oak. I’m not so good on garden stuff. We could put a swing set under there for Maya, in the shade. And maybe a playhouse. She likes pillow forts, I bet I could build her a playhouse. And we’d get a dog. I always wanted one, but never felt good about having one before, because I’m at work all day, but with you and Maya there, we could get a dog. Hell, if she insists, she can even keep one of Midnight’s kittens too. And did I mention it’s waterfront? Just a canal, but it’s deep water and I’ve got a dock with davits where I keep the boat. We’d go for boat rides. Dolphin-watching. Remember, we talked about that? And I’d teach Maya how to fish. And water-ski, when she’s older…”
Letty touched her fingers to his lips.
“That is the loveliest offer anyone has ever made me. Truly. But Joe, we can’t stay.”
“Why not?”
Letty slid off his lap and stood looking out at the sky. “I talked to Tanya’s lawyer today. I’ve got to go back to New York. There’s so much stuff to settle with her estate. The most important thing is, we’ve got to get a judge to name me as Maya’s legal guardian.”
“But Wingfield isn’t even her biological father,” Joe protested. “He’s going to prison, and if I have anything to do with it, he’ll spend the rest of his life there. And besides, your sister left a will naming you as Maya’s guardian. What is there to fight?”
“Tanya represented to Evan that he was Maya’s father. His name is on her birth certificate. So right now, as far as the law is concerned, he is, in fact, her father. I’ll probably have to get a DNA test to eliminate Evan as Maya’s father.”
“How long can all that take?”
“I don’t know. Sammi says there’ll be hearings, so I’ll have to be there for that. And a judge may want to interview me, and Maya.”
“Sammi?”
“Tanya’s lawyer. She’s the one who drew up the will for Tanya. And of course, Tanya didn’t bother to tell Sammi that Evan wasn’t Maya’s biological father.”
“Fine. So you guys live here, but you fly back up there for the legal stuff.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” she said. “I can’t keep ping-ponging Maya from place to place. She’ll start kindergarten in the fall. I told you before, I need some stability in our lives. Especially now that we know she actually saw Evan kill her mom. I need to find her a good child therapist.”
“We’ve got kindergartens right here in Treasure Island,” Joe said. “And therapists. Letty, do you really want to raise Maya in a place like New York? C’mon? Where would you live? You told me before your old apartment was the size of the efficiency. Can you honestly tell me you want to go back to that?”
“I’ll have to find a new place,” she said.
“And what’ll you do about a job? How are you gonna afford living in New York with a kid?”
A breeze had kicked up, and she suddenly felt chilly. Maybe it was the thought of spending another winter in the city. Of bundling Maya into a snowsuit, mittens, socks, and boots. Or maybe it was just the wind blowing off the Gulf. She had to keep reminding herself that it was technically still winter, even in Florida, in late March, when the nighttime temperatures dropped into the low sixties.
Letty crossed her arms and rubbed them to keep them warm.
“Tanya had a pretty big life insurance policy,” she said slowly. “Of course, Maya is the primary beneficiary, but I’m the secondary. Sammi says the money will go into a trust to provide for Maya, but it’ll be more than enough to provide for her housing and education and welfare. She says it’ll also be enough to hire lawyers to make sure Evan never gets near Maya again.”
“What about us?” The question hung there in the jasmine-scented air.
Letty wouldn’t allow herself to go to him. If she did that, he’d pull her into his lap again, draw her into his plans for their future. She wasn’t sure she was strong enough to resist the temptation.
“I don’t know. I can’t think about us right now. I want to, Joe. I want to want all the things you’re offering. But the timing is all wrong.”
She couldn’t see his face in the dim light, but from the tone of his voice, which dripped icicles, Letty knew he was hurt.
“So that’s it? You’re leaving? How soon?”
“I’ve already told your mom about my plans.”
“You told her, but not me?”
“Earlier today, while you and Vikki were at the hospital. I felt like I owed her. Fortunately, I don’t have that much stuff here to pack up. I’ll find an apartment for Maya and me, someplace that’s month-to-month, no lease, so I don’t have to make a long-term commitment.”
“Yeah, wouldn’t want to make a commitment now, would you?”
His words sliced right through to the bone, but she wouldn’t let on to him that she was hurt.
Joe stood up abruptly. “I’d better go. I’m meeting with the district attorney in the morning, and we’ve got a conference call with that sheriff down in Immokalee, and there’s a shit ton of paperwork to do.”
Letty pressed her lips together to keep from begging him to stay. Instead, she gathered up the pizza box and the glasses and followed him inside. He picked up his keys and opened the apartment door to leave.
Vikki Hill stood there, her hand raised to knock. Her hair was mussed and her gym shorts and T-shirt looked like they’d been rescued from the dirty-clothes hamper. “You gotta come see this,” she announced.
They followed her over to the efficiency. She unlocked the door, and pointed inside, where glittering heaps of gold and silver jewelry, sterling candlesticks and candy dishes and flatware, and gold and silver coins were scattered across the unmade bed and the floor, like a modern-day pirate’s treasure chest had been dumped in the middle of a run-down motel room. Necklaces and watches dripped from the nightstand, where a nearly empty tequila bottle stood beside a pair of juice glasses.
“What the hell?” Joe asked incredulously.
“This is what Rooney was looking for when he broke in here,” Vikki said. She held out her wrist, around which was draped a heavy gold men’s wristwatch. “Is this the watch you said one of your regulars sold him?”
Joe slid it off her wrist and examined it. “It’s a Rolex Daytona, kinda like the one Paul Newman owned, and it’s monogrammed. Gotta be Trudi Maples’s watch. How did you even find this stuff?”
With her index finger, Vikki pointed upward, at the ugly water-stained dropped acoustic-tile ceiling. One of the square tiles was missing, exposing part of the aluminum framework, and shards of it were scattered among the pieces of jewelry on the bed.
“It’s the damnedest thing,” Vikki said. “I was in bed reading and out of the corner of my eye, I looked up at the ceiling, and I noticed one of those square things up there was sort of bulging. I was afraid maybe there was a leak in the roof and the whole thing might cave in on me. I stood on the bed and tried to move the tile, but I couldn’t reach it, so I went outside to look for a pole or something. I found one of those shuffleboard stick things, poked around, and dislodged the tile. When I did, all this stuff just rained down on me.”
Joe was kneeling on the floor, examining the treasure. He stood up and held out an iPhone. “Did this fall out of the ceiling?” He tapped the phone’s screen. “It’s locked.”
Vikki reached for the phone. There was a short knock on the door, and then it opened. “Hey Vikk, I think I left…” Alex Garcia, the FBI agent from Tampa, stopped short when he saw the other occupants in the room. His face reddened. “Well … shit.”
Joe DeCurtis struggled to keep a poker face. He held out the phone. “Is this is what you’re looking for?”
Garcia shoved the phone in the pocket of his jeans. “This is awkward as hell, so I am going to back out of here now, and we are all going to act like this never happened. Agreed?”
“Absolutely,” Joe said affably. “See you around.”
Garcia nodded at Vikki and left.
Joe waited until the threesome was alone again. “Not that it’s any of my business, but that cockamamie story of yours was never going to work anyway.” He pointed at the bottle of tequila, and the used glasses. With his toe, he nudged a torn foil condom wrapper that had been tossed on the floor beside the bed. “You forget I’m a trained law enforcement officer.”
“You’re a horse’s ass is what you are,” Vikki said. “Okay, it doesn’t matter who else was here at the time, or how it happened. I noticed the ceiling tile looked weird. We, I mean, I found the shuffleboard stick, poked it around, and all that jewelry and stuff fell out.”
Letty was peering up at the ceiling. “You know, when I was cleaning this place out so that Maya and I could move in, along with all the old television sets and mattresses and crap, I found an aluminum ladder. I didn’t question it much at the time, but it makes sense now.”
The door opened again and Garcia strode over to the nightstand, picked up a pair of Oakley aviators, nodded to the others, and started to leave. He paused at the door. “See you around.”
Vikki Hill waited until she heard his footsteps echoing in the breezeway outside. “Not one word from either of you,” she warned.
“Chuck was staying here, in the efficiency, after Mom kicked him out of her place,” Joe said. “I’m guessing he hid the stuff in the ceiling, where he figured his ‘partners’ Tanya and Rooney would never find it, because he was probably planning on ripping them off.”
“But he didn’t get the chance,” Vikki told Letty. “Joe and the other authorities raided the place while the boys were over in Tampa drinking and gambling and whoring around. Tanya texted Rooney to warn him that the cops were here. Being the selfless, noble thieves they were, they left her holding the bag—although not the loot. Rooney told us today that he and Chuck planned to come back here the next night, after the heat was off, to retrieve the goods. But instead, Chuck got busted and hauled off to jail. And Rooney had no idea where Chuck hid the stuff.”
Letty picked up a delicate gold necklace with a dangling gold scallop-shell pendant. A large diamond was mounted in the center of the seashell. “All this stuff was up in the ceiling, this whole time.” She leaned over and picked up a yellowing pillowcase. “Looks like this was what he kept it in.”
Joe took out his phone and began photographing the evidence, but stopped after he’d clicked off a few frames. He pointed to a lacy black bra draped over a blade of the ceiling fan. “Uh, Vikk, you might want to remove that before I continue inventory of the crime scene.”
The FBI agent calmly hopped onto the bed and removed the incriminating evidence.
“This could take all night,” he finally concluded. “Let’s just put everything in the pillowcase. I think I’ve still got a partial list in my files at the office of all the stuff we knew was sold to Rooney. But I’m telling you right now, this is a lot of merchandise. A lot more than they probably bought during the two weeks they were here.”
“Rooney said they’d been operating in other parts of the state before they wound up here,” Vikki agreed. “I bet there’s easily a couple hundred thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry here. Maybe more.”
“It must have been driving Rooney crazy for the past five years,” Joe said. “He knew it was here somewhere, but Chuck was in prison. That’s why he tracked Tanya down in New York. And when she denied knowing where the stash was hidden, he went looking for Chuck.”
“You can check the Florida Department of Corrections database online, which is probably what Rooney did,” Joe said. “He saw Chuck was due to be released from prison, maybe even contacted him and offered to help him get set up again once he was out. We’ll never get the truth out of Rooney, but the DOC will have a record of who visited Chuck, and who sent him mail.”
“Poor dumb Chuck,” Vikki said. “Talk about a fatal error in judgment.”
Letty took a last look around the efficiency and shuddered. “It creeps me out, knowing all that jewelry and stuff was right here, right over the bed Maya and I were sleeping in. Which reminds me, I need to get back to her.”
Joe went back to loading the goods into the pillowcase. “See ya,” he said, not bothering to look up from his task.