Cold Around the Heart, Page 3

  Bonnie braced herself. Here it came. How could a young girl like her get mixed up in such bad business? Why didn’t she find a more respectable line of work, or settle down with a husband? Didn’t she know she was throwing her life away?

  “Go ahead,” she said warily.

  “For the life of me, I can’t figure out why you don’t just pop this guy. He sure as hell sounds like he’s got it coming.”

  Bonnie laughed. “Well, it would help if I knew who he was.”

  “Oh, I see. But once you identify him, then—bang?”

  “No comment. Take care, Gloria. And if that creep calls again, tell him to get lost.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t do that. But I will tell him to fuck off!”

  She went back to watering her rose beds. Bonnie walked on, but not quickly. She was thinking.

  Mrs. Biggs was right, of course. If she ever did identify the guy, there would be only one way to handle him, and it ended with a bang. Kill or be killed was the oldest rule of the animal kingdom, and the one most strictly enforced. You could bitch about it, but you couldn’t get around it.

  The guy had been calling Gloria Biggs once or twice a week for the past month. He knew things about Jacob Hart. The extent of his knowledge became clearer with every call. Sometimes she thought it might be Dan Maguire, playing some kind of weirdo mind game, calling Mrs. Biggs because he was afraid Bonnie would recognize his voice. And Dan would have read the autopsy report, of course, so he’d know about the .38. But there was no way he could know about the girl.

  No one knew about her, no one who was still alive.

  Except ...

  Bonnie shook her head slowly. She didn’t like the explanation she’d come up with, but it was the only one she had.

  She had reached her front door, but it no longer interested her. She wasn’t going inside, not yet. She had another stop to make in town.

  Moving swiftly now, she retraced her steps to the garage, climbed back into her Jeep, and aimed it toward the beach, heading for 1212 Ocean Drive, the residence of Mrs. Gillian Hart.

  CHAPTER 4

   

  The Hart house was the most expensive property in town, a rambling Edwardian pile known as a “cottage” in the local lingo. A century old, it dated back to the days when Brighton Cove was the getaway of choice for wealthy Philadelphia merchants who built feudal manors to celebrate their own awesomeness.

  Bonnie parked across the street by the boardwalk, where her aging puke-green Wrangler was less likely to draw attention. She crossed Ocean Drive. The sun was brushing the horizon, and the weather was turning. Gray clouds boiled in the northern sky. She never paid any attention to weather reports; she liked surprises. It looked like tonight would be stormy. Probably the rain wouldn’t come soon enough to prevent the fireworks down at Point Clement, a Tuesday night tradition in the summer. She never attended anyway. The only fireworks she liked were the Hollywood orgasm kind.

  A pair of recumbent stone lions guarded the front steps of the Hart residence. They looked surly. No doubt they served as an effective deterrent to Girl Scouts hawking Thin Mints. Near the lions stood a bronze jockey holding a lantern. He had been a little black guy once, but at some point in the property’s history someone had repainted him as a little white guy, making him a hair less politically incorrect.

  She rang the doorbell and waited. It was time she and Gillian Hart had it out.

  The door opened on a squat, squarish housekeeper with a round Aztec face and suspicious eyes. “Yes, I can help you?”

  “Is Mrs. Hart at home?”

  “Who I say calls?”

  “Bonnie Parker.”

  “You wait please.”

  The door shut. Bonnie waited. At least the lady had said please.

  She passed the time adjusting her hat.

  The door opened again, and the housekeeper was back. “She have guest.”

  “Sure she does.”

  “Is true.”

  “I don’t care if she’s entertaining the Queen of Sheba.”

  “She does not see you,” the woman said firmly. “You go away.”

  “I not go away,” she said, slipping into the housekeeper’s speech pattern. “You tell her I’m not leaving until we talk.”

  “She say you no go, she call policeman.”

  That was a poor bluff. Gillian Hart couldn’t afford to bring the police into this.

  “Listen. You tell Mrs. Rich Bitch if she doesn’t let me in, I’m gonna cool my heels on her front porch till the neighbors start to talk. Tell her she’s got an appointment with me whether she likes it or not. And tell her she’d better like it. Comprende?”

  The housekeeper looked scared. “You wait.”

  “I wait,” Bonnie told the closed door. She figured if the gatekeeper still refused to budge, she would muscle her way inside and track down Mrs. Hart on her own. The house was big, but not that damn big, and there couldn’t be that many places for a grown woman to hide.

  The housekeeper returned in forty-six seconds. “She see you. Five minutes. Then you go.”

  “Whatever.” Bonnie figured she and Gillian had more than five minutes’ worth of conversation to get through, but she wasn’t going to quibble over details.

  The housekeeper led her through the foyer. Bonnie had never been inside this house. She had expected dusty heirlooms and faded oil paintings of disapproving ancestors. Instead, there were angular chairs, glass coffee tables, and soft music, something mellow and New Agey, playing through an unseen speaker system. Down one of the hallways she heard a murmur of voices—a man and a woman. Maybe Gillian really did have company, not that Bonnie gave a crap.

  She was escorted to a glassed-in sun room at the rear of the house, looking out on a landscaped yard where croquet matches were sometimes played. The view through the glass walls was dimming, the sun edging toward the horizon.

  “She come,” the housekeeper said, leaving. She seemed glad to get away.

  Bonnie circled the room, taking in its details. A recliner, a pair of rattan straight-back chairs, a bowl of fruit—real, not wax. A housefly batting its tiny brains out against the glass panes. And on the wall, a photographer’s portrait of the late Jacob Hart.

  She had enough self-control not to flinch from the photo. It startled her, though. In the portrait he looked exactly as he had on the day he’d visited her office. She remembered how he’d made a comment about the agency name on the door.

  “Last Resort? Is that what you are?”

  She couldn’t tell if he was puzzled or pissed off. “For some of my clients, I’m afraid it is.”

  “You’re not my last resort, Miss Parker. I have unlimited resources. I can go anywhere I choose.”

  “And yet you came here. I’m flattered.”

  “I came here because you’re convenient. You’re the only private investigator in town.”

  But she knew he was lying. He hadn’t picked her for convenience. He was aware of the full range of services she offered, and he thought he would have need of them. She could tell. She could see it in his eyes—that desperate, cornered look.

  He wasn’t a fat man, which was too bad, because he really should have been. He would have worked well as a bad guy in an old movie, the obese malevolent crime lord with his fingers tented on his belly. He might not have the jowls and the belly fat, but he had the rest of the act down pat—the sly smile, the half closed eyes, the phony courtesy, the bored demeanor.

  His wife had come with him, the two of them starchily dignified, looking out of place in her shabby digs. She knew them by reputation, two of the wealthiest locals, and in Brighton Cove that was saying something. They were in their late sixties, childless, known for their charity work in New York. He had expanded a family-owned grocery store into a chain of upscale bodegas, Hart & Hawthorn; the name persisted, though Mr. Hawthorn, the father’s partner, had long ago sold out his share. The stores offered a variety of exotic produce imported from Latin America. Bonnie had bought some s
tuff there. The cherimoyas were pretty tasty.

  Jacob did nearly all the talking. He made a pretense of being calm, almost bored, as he explained his predicament. Months ago he fired one of his top people, a certain Kurt Land, for embezzlement. Land denied everything, and the parting was ugly. Now Land had found a way to get even. He’d held on to some company documents pertaining to a financial indiscretion, a matter that wasn’t necessarily illegal but couldn’t be made public—Jacob didn’t go into details—and he was blackmailing his former employer. Jacob had paid him off once already, but predictably Land had come back for more. It was now apparent to Jacob that he would never be rid of the pest—that was what he called him, “the pest”—unless other arrangements could be made.

  Bonnie had no love for blackmailers; they ranked only slightly above rapists, kidnappers, and email spammers on her list of undesirables. A greedy blackmailer who didn’t know when to quit was the worst kind. “I can talk to him,” she said.

  “I’m not hiring you to talk, Miss Parker. Kurt Land won’t be satisfied with any amount of money. That’s obvious. He’ll go on milking me until he’s drained me dry. We need to make him go away.”

  And there it was. The kind of statement that always made its way into these conversations when her special skills were in demand.

  Even so, she took no action until she had satisfied herself that Jacob’s story was true. She insisted that he make the next payoff, which she observed from a distance, watching through binoculars. She saw the satchel of money change hands. A week later Jacob came to her with a recorded phone conversation in which Land demanded yet another payment.

  “You see? The man is insatiable. He cannot be reasoned with. He hates me for firing him. He’s found a way to get revenge, and now he won’t stop—until he is stopped. You know what I mean, Miss Parker. We are both worldly people. You know what I require you to do.”

  Gillian wasn’t with him that time, and he seemed to feel more free to speak. Bonnie in turn felt freer to answer. “I’ll take care of it,” she said quietly. “But my services don’t come cheap.”

  “Nothing worth buying ever does.”

  It took her ten days to find an opportunity to make her move. Her chance came on a weekend when her quarry left his home and hiked into the Pine Barrens, toting a crossbow. She nicked him from a distance, then hunted him through the fresh-fallen snow until he could run no more.

  And then everything had gone to shit, and now she was keeping more secrets than usual while Mrs. Biggs fielded telephone calls from a creep who knew things he shouldn’t know.

  This line of thought was making her edgy. She took out a cigarette and lit it. Yeah, she was a smoker. Parliament Whites. Cancer might kill her someday, but she was betting some random member of the criminal population would get the job done first.

  “Put it out.”

  The voice was Gillian Hart’s, and it came from the doorway.

  Bonnie turned. “Excuse me?”

  “Smoking is not permitted in this house.”

  “Hey, if I can smoke people, I can smoke cigarettes.”

  Gillian pursed her lips. “You’re most uncouth.”

  “Wrong. I’m plenty couth, except when I’m being jerked around.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I think you know. I’m on to you, Mrs. Hart.”

  Gillian turned away, seeming more annoyed than rattled. “You’ll have to leave now.”

  “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen. Sorry to interrupt your hostessing duties, but you and me are about to enjoy some quality time.”

  “Do you know what kind of risk you’ve taken by coming here? A patrol car could cruise past at any moment and see your car parked outside.”

  “I parked by the beach.”

  “You’ve still taken an unnecessary chance. There can’t be anything you need to say to me.”

  “Wrong again.”

  “You want to talk? All right, then. Convince me you didn’t kill my husband.”

  Bonnie took a long drag on the cig before answering. “I did kill your husband.”

  “You admit it? Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  Gillian gave a delicate shudder. Bonnie ignored it. She knew an acting job when she saw one. In her taxonomy, the human species was divided into sheep and wolves. Gillian wasn’t one of the sheep.

  “You’re a monster,” Gillian said. “We never should have hired you.”

  “No, probably not. I have this way of getting to the bottom of things. I’m sort of a nosy Parker, pardon the expression. If your husband didn’t want his dirty little secret to come out—”

  “Who are you to talk about dirty secrets? Your whole life is a dirty secret.”

  “I’m not the one who was being blackmailed. Though I’m guessing that’s about to change.”

  “Change, how?”

  “I can’t help thinking that’s your ultimate objective in setting up those phone calls.”

  “What phone calls?”

  “Come off it, Mrs. H. I know you’re behind them.”

  “I’m not behind anything. You’re saying someone else knows about—about Jacob’s indiscretion?”

  “His indiscretion and a whole lot more. Which means it’s gotta be you. Unless you blabbed to somebody else.”

  “I’ve never spoken with anyone about this matter. Not once.”

  She didn’t appear to be lying. “Hmm. Well, that’s a pickle. ’Cause if it’s not you, then who the hell is it?”

  “There’s no one else. No one.” Her eyes narrowed. “Not if you did your job.”

  “I always do my job.”

  “Kurt Land went missing in the Pine Barrens, but the search parties didn’t find his body.”

  “That’s because they didn’t look in the right place.”

  “Or possibly you made a deal with him. Spared his life in exchange for a payoff.”

  “What payoff? Your husband got his cash.”

  “There was ten thousand dollars missing.”

  “Land must’ve spent it or socked it away somewhere.”

  “Or did it end up in your pocket?”

  “You think I can be bought that cheap?”

  “I think everything about you is cheap.”

  “Cut the crap. I played it straight down the line. It’s your hubby who didn’t go by the rules. He hid in the alley behind my office—”

  “Nonsense.”

  “He hid in the alley,” Bonnie repeated. Gillian had never heard her side of the story, and she was going to hear it now. “I’d been working late on this really boring case where I had to go through approximately a million emails. That night I didn’t leave till after ten. Must’ve been bleary-eyed from reading all that crap. I didn’t see his car parked at the end of the alley.”

  “This is a fantasy.”

  “He waited till I opened up my Jeep. When the dome light came on, he had a clear target and he fired. He was a good shot. He didn’t miss by much. But I was better. I didn’t miss at all.”

  “Absurd. My husband didn’t even own a firearm.”

  “Yeah, he did. A Sig Sauer forty-five. Nice one, too. Maybe you didn’t know about it. There were other things about him you didn’t know, remember?”

  “No gun was found on his body.”

  “I took it off him. Couldn’t let the police find it. They’d know it had been fired. Then we’re talking about a gunfight, and what we want it to look like is a mugging gone wrong. Otherwise it raises too many questions.”

  “The police found only one bullet at the scene. The one that killed him.”

  “That’s because his shot went into my Jeep. It lodged in the headrest. I dug it out later and dropped it in the Crab River inlet, along with his gun.”

  “Well, I don’t believe Jacob ever had a gun. I believe he was unarmed and defenseless, and you killed him—murdered him—because he’d violated your sense of propriety, if vigilantes have such a thing. You lured him to your
office that night and gunned him down in cold blood. And you counted on me to say nothing because—well, because ...”

  “We both know why you can’t talk. But you’re wrong about me. I thought maybe you’d listen to reason, but I guess not.”

  “How dare you take that tone with me.”

  “Take a tone? What, you’re my mother now?”

  “Get out.”

  Bonnie finished her cigarette and stubbed it out on an end table. “No point blaming me for what went down. It was his play, not mine. He started it. I only finished it.”

  She started to leave. Gillian’s voice stopped her.

  “You have a great deal of confidence in yourself, don’t you? It will be the death of you. One of these days you’ll come up against somebody more formidable than my husband. Somebody who’s better than you are.”

  Bonnie met her eyes. “Bring it on.”

  “Have you ever visited Jacob’s grave?”

  “No.”

  “When that day comes, Miss Parker, I’ll make it a point to visit yours.”

  The words pursued Bonnie as she left the house. She was thinking of the wreath Gillian Hart had purchased today and wondering, for the first time, if it was meant for Jacob—or for her.

  CHAPTER 5

   

  Pascal chose to dine in elegance tonight. It was a caprice, prompted by the certainty that the job was nearly done, the prize almost his. He wished to salute his good fortune and to meditate on a storied career now drawing to a close. Perhaps such congratulations were premature, but he was in an expansive mood. He felt light and almost happy, a state of mind rare for him.

  And so he left the shabby motel and took the Lexus into town, searching for a suitable place to eat.

  The black SUV had been his for less than twelve hours. Previously he had driven a rented Lincoln. After taking care of the woman in Manhattan, he had found it prudent to change vehicles. The switch was probably unnecessary; he had no reason to believe anyone had seen his car parked in the woman’s neighborhood; but such precautions were second nature to him now.

  He abandoned the Lincoln in a different part of town, then stole the Lexus by the simple expedient of ambushing its owner in a parking garage. The victim never saw his face, and except for a gash in his scalp he would be none the worse for the experience. Later, Pascal exchanged the vehicle’s license plates for those of another Lexus, reducing the risk of being pulled over by an alert patrol officer with a BOLO list. His policy was to leave nothing to chance.