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“You . . . loved her so . . . much . . . you killed her?”
“I killed her to keep her from becoming worse than she had become,” Mr. Plum said. “I really had no choice.”
He picked up the silver shaker, found that it was empty, put it down and rang the little bell for the maid.
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K elly Cruz turned her drink slowly on the bar in front of her. She was drinking Jack Daniels on the rocks.
“So what about Darnell and Ralston?” she said to Jesse.
They were sitting at the bar in Jesse’s hotel. Jesse was drinking a Virgin Mary. Kelly Cruz had on a black dress with spaghetti straps and a skirt that stopped above her knees. She had a nice tan. A small black purse lay on the bar beside her drink.
“We busted them yesterday, for statutory rape.”
“Will it hold in court?”
“We got Darnell on videotape.”
R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
“Righteous tape?”
“Absolutely.”
“How about Ralston?”
“If our witness holds,” Jesse said.
“She might not?”
Jesse shrugged.
“She’s a kid,” he said.
“Think they’ll do time?”
“Not my area,” Jesse said.
“What do you think?” Kelly Cruz said. “Cop to cop.”
Jesse smiled.
“I don’t think about that,” he said. “Too many variables.
How good is their lawyer? How good is the prosecutor? Will their sexual history be admitted? Will they plead out?”
“Probably,” Kelly Cruz said.
Jesse nodded.
“No jail time,” Kelly Cruz said.
Jesse shrugged.
“I arrest, they prosecute,” he said.
Kelly Cruz looked at Jesse’s Virgin Mary.
“Drinking problem?” she said.
“Yes.”
“How long you been sober?”
“I haven’t had a drink going onto a year,” Jesse said.
“Miss it?”
“Yes.”
“My husband was a drunk,” Kelly Cruz said.
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S E A C H A N G E
“You divorced?”
Kelly Cruz nodded.
“Know where he is now?”
“No,” Kelly Cruz said.
“How are the kids?”
“Good,” she said. “Two boys. We live with my parents.
My father’s a good father for all of us.”
Jesse finished his Virgin Mary and gestured for another one.
“No wonder you got a problem,” Kelly Cruz said. “You’ll drink a lot of anything.”
“Vitamin C,” Jesse said as the bartender set the new drink in front of him.
“Why do you suppose Willis Plum sent the videotape of his daughter to Darnell?”
Jesse shook his head.
“He’s way past anything I understand,” Jesse said.
“Maybe he thought it would embarrass her,” Kelly Cruz said.
Jesse nodded.
“Maybe he was sending it to her, you know, dismissing it by returning it,” Kelly Cruz said.
“Blondie Martin says it was addressed to Darnell.”
“Maybe he did it because he’s a whack job,” Kelly Cruz said.
“Not such a whack job that he flew up there and left a paper trail with the airlines,” Jesse said.
Kelly Cruz drank some bourbon.
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“You going home tomorrow?” Kelly Cruz said.
“Yeah. Paperwork’s done. I’m supposed to take him back with me.”
“Got anyone waiting?” Kelly Cruz said.
“My ex-wife,” Jesse said.
“You have an ex-wife waiting for you?”
“We’re trying to rework things,” Jesse said.
“How’s that going?”
“So far,” Jesse said, “so good.”
“Plum girls are home, staying with their mother,” Kelly Cruz said.
“Good,” Jesse said.
“Think anything good will happen to them?” Kelly Cruz said.
“Probably not,” Jesse said.
“Father’s gone,” Kelly Cruz said. “They’re with their mother.”
“Who is not a real lot better than their father,” Jesse said.
“No,” Kelly Cruz said.
“You did a hell of a job on this,” Jesse said.
“I know.”
“A lot of it on your own time, I suspect.”
“Some,” Kelly Cruz said. “On the other hand, I met a nice marina manager, and a very fine private pilot.”
“Good,” Jesse said. “I’m glad you profited from the experience.”
Kelly Cruz finished her drink and stood.
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“Got a date with the pilot,” she said. “It’s his turn. The marina manager has already profited from the experience.”
Jesse stood. He left his Virgin Mary half consumed on the bar.
“Thanks, Kell,” he said. “You’re a hell of a cop.”
She turned toward him and gave him a light kiss on the mouth.
“You’re pretty good at the job yourself,” she said. “Good luck with the ex-wife.”
“And you with the pilot,” Jesse said.
Kelly Cruz stiffened her upper lip over her teeth and did an imitation of somebody. Bogart, Jesse thought. Maybe.
“Ain’t a matter of luck, blue eyes,” she said, and picked up her purse.
With her left hand she patted his cheek. He put his hand over hers for a moment. She was wearing a really nice perfume. They stood for a moment like that, then she took her hand away and he stood and watched her walk out of the bar.
If there’s luck involved, it’ll be the pilot’s.
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I t was cool and rainy in Paradise. The boats were gone. The harbor was back to its normal maritime clutter. Je
“Aren’t you supposed to have red wine with meatloaf ?”
Jesse said.
“I think with meatloaf you can have what you want,” Je
“That’s one of the good things about meatloaf,” Jesse said.
“Another being that I know how to make it,” Je
S E A C H A N G E
The apartment was quiet. Through the open door to the balcony they could hear the rain fall.
“I think we’re doing good,” Je
“Yes.”
“How are you?” Je
“Good.”
“And that hideous case is over,” Je
“For me,” Jesse said.
Je
“Do you actually know what happened?”
“Sort of,” Jesse said.
“One thing I wondered ever since you told me,” Je
“Why did the twins tell you it was what’s her name? Kimmy something?”
“Kimmy Young,” Jesse said.
“If they had made up a name, or told the truth, you might never have figured it out.”
“That’s right,” Jesse said.
“You think at some level they did it on purpose?”
“Probably.”
“Because they wanted you to figure it out?”
“Probably.”
“And stop it,” Je
“Which I did,” Jesse said.
“Do you know how Florence died?”
“Sort of,” Jesse said.
Je
“For whatever reason, after all this time,” Jesse said, “Flor-2 9 3
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ence decided to stop being Daddy’s girl. They had some kind of confrontation about it. The old man never quite says. And she went off and made the video with her sisters and sent it to him.”
“Some kind of perverted kiss-off,” Je
“I guess,” Jesse said. “He sent it on to Darnell. Plum never quite told me why. Then, he says, he drove up here to recon-cile. They always liked sailing, the mother says. So Florence rented a boat, packed a picnic, and they went off for a ro-mantic sail, during which time they argued, and he threw her in the water, and sailed off.”
“And he didn’t know where she’d gotten the boat so he just put it the first place he saw.”
“Probably,” Jesse said.
“God, it’s like a lovers’ quarrel,” Je
“Except he was careful to give himself a cover story and drive all the way so there’d be no record of him with the airlines.”