Sea Change

Jesse shrugged.

“Do you have any idea,” Je

“The men, too,” Jesse said.

Je

“Yes,” she said. “I suppose that’s right. It doesn’t glamor-ize them, either.”

Jesse nodded.

“Most women I know don’t like that,” Je

“No,” Jesse said.

“But men do,” Je

“More than women, probably,” Jesse said. “Most men will look. Most men wouldn’t want to spend too much time looking. And almost all men know that it gets old really quick.”

“Why would you want to look at something that turns you into a thing?” Je

Jesse was quiet. They were veering into Dix territory again.

“You’re a man,” Je

This was about more than pornography, and in some vis-ceral way Jesse realized that it was about him. He took in some air.

“This could turn quickly into psychobabble,” Jesse said.

7 6

S E A C H A N G E

“But you’ve had enough shrink time to know what some of the reasons might be.”

“Objectification is control,” Je

Jesse nodded.

“Of what?” Je

Jesse shook his head and shrugged.

“Of the object,” he said.

“Are you still talking to Dix?” Je

“Some.”

“Well, you better keep it up,” Je

7 7

17

J esse sat in his car on the tip of Paradise Neck, at Lighthouse Point. The car windows were down. The sea air was coming in gently,

and he was looking at the Lady Jane with a pair of good binoculars. The sailboat races were under way east of Stiles Island, and several of the yachts anchored at the harbor mouth had moved out to watch. Lady Jane stayed at anchor.

They hadn’t come for the races. They’d come for the cocktails. Jesse could count six people and three crew from where he sat, though he couldn’t see well enough to pick out Darnell or the mouthy blonde. He couldn’t see the brass monkey, either.

S E A C H A N G E

Molly called him on his cell phone.

“Why don’t you ever take your official chief car?” Molly said. “I keep trying to raise you on the radio.”

“I like mine better,” Jesse said.

“Christ,” Molly said. “You don’t drive the car, you hardly ever wear your uniform, you don’t use the department issue gun. What’s wrong with you anyway?”

“More than we have time to examine,” Jesse said.

“What’s up?”

“Two things,” Molly said. “One, the Lady Jane is in fact out of Miami, owned by Harrison Darnell.”

“Un-huh.”

“And, two, Detective Kelly Cruz of Fort Lauderdale PD

wants you to call her on her cell phone. If you’d been in the company car I could have patched her through to the radio.”

“How many kids you got, Molly?” Jesse said.

“Four, you know that.”

“And am I one of them?” Jesse said.

“Oh go fuck yourself . . . sir.”

“Give me Cruz’s cell phone number,” Jesse said.

Molly told him, Jesse wrote it down and smiled as he broke the co

“Couple things,” Jesse said. “You guys got that tape dated yet?”

“No,” Kelly Cruz said. “Don’t have the budget for it.”

“Okay, you owed me,” Jesse said. “You got a date?”

“Lab found a date and time stamp,” she said. “March seventh, this year, at three-oh-nine in the afternoon.”

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R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“And I think I know where,” Jesse said.

“Really?”

“Cockpit of a yacht named Lady Jane out of Miami,” Jesse said.

“Cockpit’s appropriate,” Kelly said. “You know who owns the boat?”

“Harrison Darnell,” Jesse said.

“Address?”

“I’ll have Molly Crane call you as soon as we stop talking,”

Jesse said. “She’s got it.”

“Okay. You know where the yacht is now?”

“Here,” Jesse said.

“Mr. Darnell aboard?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll check on him,” Kelly Cruz said. “I got people I can call in Miami.”

“Appreciate it,” Jesse said. “Got anything else?”

“Talked to the parents,” she said.

“Mr. and Mrs. Plum?”

“Yes. They live in Miami.”

“Close at hand,” Jesse said.

“Sure, ’bout twenty miles from me. They didn’t know even where she was living, they said. They had no commu-nication with her, and hadn’t for a couple years.”

“Any, ah, precipitating incident?” Jesse said.

“Wow,” Kelly Cruz said. “Precipitating incident. Not really, they just, they said, were at the end of their tether. Her grandfather, guy that founded Plum and Partridge, left her a 8 0

S E A C H A N G E

ton of money in trust until she turned twenty-five. When she got it, they told me, she was pretty smart with the money.”

“So she got richer,” Jesse said.

“Yeah. She lived high up on the hog,” Kelly Cruz said,

“off the invested principal.”

“That an issue?”

“Yeah. She drank too much, did too much dope, fucked whoever stopped by. They think she’s some kind of bad seed.

But whenever she’d get drunk or strung out or pregnant, or divorced, she’d come home until she straightened out. Then she’d fight with her parents and her two younger sisters and disappear again.”

“How old are the sisters?”

“Twenty,” Kelly Cruz said. “They’re twins.”

“Our ME says she was mid-thirties.”

“Thirty-four,” she said.

“Fourteen years,” Jesse said.

“I know. They didn’t comment,” Kelly Cruz said. “But they felt she was a bad influence on her sisters and last time she left they told her not to come back.”

“Talk to the sisters?”

“Nope. They’re spending the summer in Europe.”

“Plum and Partridge doing okay?”

“Very well,” Kelly Cruz said. “You should see where they live.”

“They got any theories on Florence’s death?” Jesse said.

“No,” Kelly Cruz said. “But I think they feel she deserved it.”

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R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“Home is where the heart is,” Jesse said.

“You got kids?” she said.

“No.”

“I got two,” she said. “No matter what they did or what they turned into, they could never deserve it.”

“What are the twins’ names?” Jesse said.

“You’ll love this,” Kelly Cruz said, “wait a minute, I got it in my notes. . . . Corliss and Claudia. Isn’t that sweet?

Corliss and Claudia Plum.”

“When are they coming back from Europe?”

“Don’t know. Probably in time for senior year at school.”

“What school?”

“Emory,” Kelly Cruz said.

“When you talk with Molly about Darnell’s address, could you leave her the Plums’ address, and phone?”

“Sure,” she said. “You coming down?”

“Maybe if the case runs into winter,” Jesse said.

“Lemme know,” Kelly Cruz said. “You’ll be on expenses and I can get us into Joe’s Stone Crab.”

“Sure,” Jesse said. “You tell the parents about the sex tape?”

“No.”

“You didn’t have the heart.”

“That’s right.”

“Show them head shots from the tape?” Jesse said. “The two guys?”

“Yes. They didn’t recognize either one.”

“Thanks, Kelly,” Jesse said. “I know you got other cases, but anything comes across your desk . . .”

8 2

S E A C H A N G E

“I’m a curious girl,” Kelly Cruz said. “And sometimes it’s slow around here. I get time I’ll look up Harrison Darnell, and I’ll sniff around when I can.”

They hung up. Jesse sat looking at the Lady Jane without the binoculars.

“I wouldn’t have told them about the video, either,” he said aloud to no one.

8 3

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