Both Ends of the Night Page 11

  “And there are no other living relatives?”

  “If there are, I wouldn’t know how to go about contacting them.”

  “And you’re actively trying to locate the father?”

  “Yes.”

  “How optimistic are you about your chances?”

  I hesitated, wanting to pour out the whole story to Hank. I could trust him; he’d been a close friend since the days when we were housemates at U.C. Berkeley, and I often confided in him things I would tell few others. But even though he was my personal attorney, I wasn’t sure whether the details of this conversation were protected by attorney-client privilege. Given how far over the line Hy and I had already strayed, I didn’t want to place Hank in a position where he could be forced to testify against either of us.

  He saw the conflict on my face. “Okay, I have every confidence in your abilities, so I’ll assume your answer to my question is in the affirmative. And it’s my opinion that Zach’s best interests will be served by his remaining here until you can either locate the father or determine he’s not locatable, or dead.”

  “It’s a good call, Hank.”

  “I hope so; the legal situation is clouded at best. Did you say you’re going to Florida tonight?”

  “Yes, red-eye.” It was the only flight on which I’d been able to get a reservation.

  “May I ask who’s financing the investigation now that your client’s dead?”

  I’d worked out the details of my plan on the way back from Touchstone; now was a good time to run them by Hank. “Tell me what you think of this: I didn’t have a contract form with me when Matty—the client—hired me, but she did give me a check, which I cashed at her bank, and she wrote on it that it was a retainer. That constitutes an implied contract, right?”

  He nodded.

  “So I can assume that it’s binding on me to carry out the terms of that contract—locate John Seabrook—so long as the retainer lasts. And it’s possible that I could bill her estate for any excess fees.”

  “If there is an estate, yes.”

  “There is, in a way. The account that she drew the check on contains a sizable amount deposited there by John Seabrook by wire transfer the day Matty hired me. There’s documentation in the letter I mentioned to prove the money was for the purpose of her taking care of and protecting Zach.”

  “Then any claim you make on a portion of it would probably be valid and recognized as such.”

  “Okay, my fee and expenses are covered. But let’s take it a step further: Suppose Zach retains you as his attorney? Kids can do that, as I recall from Habiba’s situation last spring. Then, acting in his best interests, you could hire me to locate Seabrook.”

  “Shar, what’s the difference? I’m glad to advise Zach free of charge.”

  “But if you hired me to investigate, your attorney-client privilege would extend to me. And I couldn’t be forced to answer questions about the investigation.”

  Hank’s eyes grew concerned, and he regarded me silently. The seconds stretched out till I turned away and began fiddling with a snapshot of Rae and Ricky that hung crooked from a magnet on the fridge. “So say something!” I finally exclaimed.

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “… No.”

  “Are you anticipating being in trouble?”

  “Maybe.”

  “My advice to you is to stay out of it. But when have you ever taken my advice?”

  “Uh, last year, when you told me to get my downspouts and gutters cleaned?”

  “You see? A chance comment during a dinner party on a rainy night you paid attention to. The costly legal advice I’ve been giving you, you ignore.”

  “Hank—”

  “I know—don’t start. Okay, I’ll need to see that letter about the money and Seabrook’s reason for depositing it.”

  “Can’t you just take my word that it exists?”

  “No, I can’t. Is there something in the letter that you don’t want me to see?”

  I was silent, trying to remember its exact wording.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, just make me a copy and black out whatever it is!”

  I smiled and nodded.

  “And now, before you drive me completely crazy, I suggest we go ask Zach if he even wants me as his attorney.”

  “He will. Rae tells me Habiba’s been singing your praises all weekend.”

  Ten

  Monday morning: Gulf Haven, Florida

  “Normally I’d tell you to get the hell out of my office and my jurisdiction,” Lieutenant Mack Gifford of the Gulf Haven PD said. “I don’t like private operators, and your California license doesn’t mean squat here.”

  Framing a reply, I watched the lieutenant shake a cigarette out of a pack on his desk and fumble in his shirt pocket for a Bic. He was lean and wiry, with a narrow face and a thin-lipped mouth bracketed with deep lines of discontent. His soft southern accent—from one of the border states, perhaps?—blunted the impact of his words but not the force of what I took to be controlled anger in his dark eyes.

  “You say ‘normally.’”

  “Yeah.” He exhaled a stream of smoke toward the ceiling of his small office. “But you say you’re interested in the Marie Fuller case, and that gives us something in common. Let me see if I’ve got this straight: you’re looking for a man who you think is Ron Fuller, who’s been living in your state under an assumed name. Routine skip trace.”

  “Right.”

  “He must’ve skipped owing a lot, for you to come all this way.”

  “My client’s a well-financed attorney, and I’ve got to admit that I became intrigued when I turned up this former identity. Particularly since the man’s wife was murdered.”

  Gifford’s expression was noncommittal; I couldn’t tell if he had bought my story or not. When he didn’t speak, I prompted him. “You were the investigating officer…”

  “My bad luck to catch the call. Case has been a thorn in my side for over ten years now—enough of a pain to make me break my rules and talk with you.” He pushed away from the desk and swiveled slightly, looking at a No Smoking sign posted on the wall. “Of course,” he added with a wry twist of his lips, “I break my rules a lot.”

  I smiled faintly, waiting.

  “We got a lot of rules, laws, whatever around here,” Gifford went on. “Most don’t need too much enforcing. We got the usual problems with drugs and disappointment, but on the whole, that’s about it.”

  “Drugs I understand; they’re everywhere. But what’s this about disappointment?”

  “Ms. McCone, what d’you know about our community?”

  “Only what I observed driving in.”

  “Then maybe this’ll help you put the Fuller business in perspective. Gulf Haven is one of those places nobody’s from; it barely existed thirty years ago. Wasn’t much here to recommend the area; it’s not even on the Gulf, just the river. But then a developer came along, bought the land cheap, dredged the canals, put houses with private docks along them. Folks sick of the winters up north snapped them up: retirees, of course, but young people and families as well.

  “The retirees, they come here and find that everyday Florida life ain’t like it was on their vacations, sipping fancy rum drinks around the hotel pools in Miami or Lauderdale. Instead, it’s heat and boredom and waiting around for the monthly visit from the cockroach exterminator. A lot of them take to hanging out at the air-conditioned mall; others die out of sheer discouragement, and a fair number kill themselves one way or another. The younger ones, they find the job market’s bad in this part of the state; they’ve got to take low-end positions they wouldn’t’ve even considered up north. The smart ones cut their losses, pack up, go home. The dumb ones—it’s drink and drugs and domestic violence, all of which lead to too many homicides.”

  “More than in other places?”

  “Eight, nine percent higher than the average. Suicide pacts. Wives killing husbands. Husbands killing wives. Parents killing their kids. Dru
nken shootings at parties.” He paused, looking squarely at me. “What we do not have, however, is shootings that look like contract hits.”

  “You mean the Marie Fuller homicide?”

  “Yes, ma’am. One bullet, a twenty-two, placed right in the heart. A clean, cold kill. Nobody saw the shooter; he was methodical and cool, disappeared into a panicky crowd. By the time I got to the scene, he was probably clear of the area. I knew we’d never make a collar, but I started going through the motions. And then Ron Fuller and his son turned up missing.”

  “How soon after the murder?”

  “Immediately. I never got to question him. Didn’t even know he was on the scene till one of my men interviewed a neighbor of the Fullers who’d talked with Marie in the store. Mrs. Fuller said she was in a hurry because it was hot and her husband and son were waiting outside in a car with a busted air conditioner.”

  “Fuller just drove away and left his wife lying there?”

  “Apparently. Pretty callous, wouldn’t you say?”

  On the surface, yes, but he’d probably known there was nothing he could do for his wife and had opted to save his son and himself. “Did Fuller go home or leave town straight from the store?”

  “Don’t know. None of their neighbors saw him. Doesn’t prove anything one way or the other.”

  “What happened to their house and possessions?”

  “House was a rental. After my team went through the personal effects, I told the landlord to store them. Guess by now they’ve been disposed of.”

  “You find anything significant?”

  “No. Their stuff was cheap and relatively new. There weren’t any personal papers, keepsakes, letters—nothing. The Fullers were people without much of a present or a past.”

  “And you say you canvassed the neighbors?”

  “Yeah. Nobody knew anything about the family. They didn’t socialize, didn’t have any more contact than the usual polite greetings and talk about the weather.”

  “What did Fuller do for a living?”

  “He claimed to be a freelance writer.”

  “Claimed?”

  “Have you ever heard of a writer who doesn’t own a computer or a typewriter?”

  “He paid his bills, though?”

  “On time, on an account at a local bank. Except for the house rental; his brother rented the place before the family moved here and continued to send a check the first of each month.”

  So Seabrook had a brother. “You recall his name?”

  “Sure—Dave Fuller. But when we tried to locate him, it turned out he’d never lived at the address printed on the checks. The credit report the landlord pulled on him belonged to somebody else.” Gifford laughed humorlessly. “That Dave Fuller worked for the U.S. Marshals Service and was not amused at somebody else benefiting from his good record.”

  Another dead end. “And you never came up with a suspect?”

  “No, and I never will. It’s my opinion that Ron Fuller ordered the hit on his wife—had been planning it for some time, whatever his reasons. Now that you tell me he’s been living in California under an assumed name, it makes me wonder: has any other woman died because of him?”

  I stepped out of the police station into a glaring noon sun and reached for my dark glasses. The day was balmy, in the mid-seventies—a far cry from the weather during my last visit to Florida. Then it had been hot and muggy, adding to my irritation as I tried to get out of the state while eluding another private investigator who was bound and determined to stick close to me.

  Why was it, I thought, that Floridians conspired to annoy me? For the past thirty minutes Mack Gifford had peppered me with questions about my investigation. I’d sidestepped them, claiming an extension of attorney-client privilege, and that had prompted him to issue an ultimatum: tell him everything I knew about Ron Fuller’s present whereabouts or leave his jurisdiction immediately. I replied—quite truthfully—that I hadn’t the faintest idea where Fuller was. Gifford chose not to believe me and showed me out.

  As I pulled out of the station parking lot in my rented Ford, a squad car started up and followed. Apparently I was being escorted out of town. I drove a few blocks, watching it in the rearview mirror, then made a series of turns that took me to the highway leading to the airport at Fort Myers. A sleek white bridge rose over the river; when I reached its crest I saw the squad car pull onto the shoulder and make a U-turn. Gifford might not have taken my statements at face value, but my actions had satisfied his officer. I continued across the bridge, found a place to make a turn of my own, and headed back to Gulf Haven.

  The main street resembled a strip mall rather than a town. Its buildings were low concrete rectangles painted in pastel colors, none more than three stories high except for a bank that towered above the rest and looked out of place. Sandy vacant lots indicated a lack of planning or perhaps cash-flow difficulties on the part of the developer, and the spindly palm trees on the sidewalks were yellow- and dry-leafed, as though they had a disease. On the drive in from the airport the flatness of the terrain and the sparseness of the vegetation had depressed me; now the town made my spirits plunge lower. Keeping an eye out for police cars, I pulled into a parking space and consulted the map the rental-car company had provided; then I set out for the Fullers’ former neighborhood.

  The residents of Gulf Breeze Drive appeared to be losing a battle against browning lawns and sickly plants. The one-story pastel homes backed up on a narrow canal, and sail- and powerboats were moored at many of their docks. The Fullers’ former house—number 318—had an entryway flanked by orange trees; most of the fruit lay rotting on the ground, a cloying odor rising from it. I rang the bell, but nobody answered.

  At the house to its right a young woman responded to my knock on her screen door. No, she told me, she hadn’t known the Fullers; she and her husband had moved down from Brooklyn only the year before. “You could try Mr. Simmons,” she added. “Number three-sixteen. He’s retired and has been here forever.”

  Mr. Simmons didn’t look old enough to be retired, much less to have lived anyplace “forever.” Trim and tanned, wearing only shorts and boat shoes, he wasn’t a day over fifty. When I showed him John Seabrook’s photograph, he said he remembered the Fullers well and invited me into an airy green-and-white living room where, in spite of the day’s coolness, a ceiling fan turned briskly. Outside the patio door a swimming pool sparkled in the sunlight, and in the canal beyond it a cabin cruiser rode on the wake generated by a passing speedboat.

  Simmons said, “I was about to have a beer. Will you join me?”

  “Yes, thanks.” I followed him into the adjoining kitchen and watched him open cans and pour into pilsner glasses. A pot of something that smelled like marinara sauce simmered on the stove; a portable radio was playing classical music. Simmons motioned for me to be seated at the white rattan dinette table and set a glass in front of me.

  “So why are you looking for Ron and Billy?” he asked.

  His tone had been warm when he said he remembered them; the skip-trace story would destroy our rapport. I gave him an abbreviated version of the truth: Fuller had disappeared, abandoning his son, and I’d been hired to locate him. “Very often,” I added, “the key to a person’s present lies in his past. What can you tell me about the family?”

  “Well, you know how Marie died?”

  Of course that was what he’d remember most clearly. “Yes.”

  “Terrible tragedy. She was such a nice woman. When they moved in next door, I was in the middle of a very bad period; my wife had left me, and I was taking it hard—going a little crazy, actually. Marie Fuller went out of her way to do things for me: a casserole when she noticed I wasn’t eating properly, the occasional dinner invitation. Ron helped me repair my dock when a storm damaged it. And the little boy was a delight; they adored him. I can’t imagine Ron abandoning Billy.”

  “He may not have done it voluntarily. Did the Fullers socialize with any of the other neighbors?”
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  “No, I was the only one they made an exception for. I suppose they felt safe with me. On the whole, I’m a pretty innocuous fellow, and they sensed I was wounded too.”

  “What do you mean, wounded? In their case, that is.”

  “I never did find out the details, but there was something in their past that made them extremely fearful. They stuck close to the house, except to run the necessary errands. The blinds were always closed; the doors, too. They even put up shades on their screened porch. Frankly, I was surprised when Ron offered to help me with the dock, and I noticed that he kept glancing at the boats that passed, as if he was afraid someone on board might harm him.”

  “Did he ever discuss his fears with you?”

  “No. I’d finally made up my mind to broach the subject when Marie was killed and Ron and Billy disappeared.”

  “Did you see Ron after the shooting? Speak with him?”

  “I tried. That afternoon I was watching an old movie on TV when they broke in with a news bulletin. Naturally I went over to Ron’s house to see if there was anything I could do. A man came to the door; he said he was Ron’s brother and that he had the situation in hand.”

  “Odd way of phrasing it. Can you describe him?”

  “About my age now—forty-nine. Short blond hair, cleanshaven, wearing a tan business suit. There wasn’t anything particularly memorable about his appearance or speech, but he made me uneasy. Ron had never mentioned having a brother in the area, and the man didn’t look enough like him to be closely related.”

  “So you didn’t even get inside the house?”

  “No, I didn’t. There was a gray Buick, this county’s plates, in the driveway. I came home and watched. A few minutes later the blond and a dark-haired man came out with suitcases and loaded them into the Buick. Then Ron and the boy drove away in it with the blond. They didn’t seem to be under duress, but still, I wondered. The dark-haired man went back inside; fifteen minutes later he hauled some cartons out to Ron’s car and drove away in it. And that was the last I saw or heard of the Fullers.”

  I thought over the scenario he’d described. “Mr. Simmons, did the police come around to question you about the Fullers?”