The Death Box(29)

I sighed. “Calm down, Jeremy. Take a few deep breaths.”

“HOW CAN I BREATHE WHEN I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE YOU ARE?”

“I’ve experienced a few changes, brother. I’m in Florida. I live in Florida.”

“CHANGES? WHAT? WHERE?”

“Easy, Jeremy. There’s no shift in emphasis, only in location. I’m renting a house on Matecumbe Key.”

A pause as my words sank in.

“You’re still a cop?”

“Long story short: A person I knew with the Florida Bureau of Law Enforcement called and offered me a job as an investigative specialist in a new section at the FCLE. The politics at the MPD were wearing me down. Plus I called the Chief of Police some names on television, which didn’t enhance my prospects for advancement.”

“What of your old partner, Harry Nautilus? Did he finally turn on you?”

Jeremy had an odd jealousy of Harry, probably because he was my prime confidant. “Leaving him was the hardest part, but Harry is nearing retirement and in love with a woman named Sally Hargreaves. I expect to see them here any day, fishing rods in hand.”

“And the woman you were diddling … Holliday?”

“Um, that’s kind of …”

Up in the air? Put on pause? I’d wanted Wendy to come with me, she’d wanted to come with me. But she was into her first year as a Mobile cop and leaving wasn’t a smart move.

“You ran through another one, right?” my brother snickered. “Some things haven’t changed. You still have that ridiculous animal thing?”

“Mr Mix-up is staying in Mobile until I find a permanent place.” The new house seemed quiet without my rambunctious, multi-variety canine companion.

“So tell me about where you’re living,” Jeremy said. “Paint me a picture.”

Jeremy was calming down. He knew my new position on the planet and was programming it into his mind. I spent several minutes detailing the land and my immediate neighborhood, ending with a description of Dubois Burnside.

“It sounds like your dream home, Carson. Right down to having a corpse-dresser next door. You’re intending to buy the place?”

“Too expensive. Especially since I’m keeping the Dauphin Island house. I rent to tourists for a grand a week in season, eight in the off. The firm handling the rentals thinks I can keep it occupied two-thirds of the year.”

A pause as Jeremy absorbed the information and processed it through his fiscal mechanisms. “An income stream, then? Yes … that works. But it’s not enough to buy your little Eden in the Keys?”

“Not by a long shot.”

My brother understood finances, as he had turned to making money as a new endeavor. Three years ago, after a period of intense study of the stock market, he claimed the market had but two true states, blustering drunkard or scared child. Jeremy claimed gobbets of profit from this insight and I believed him, money too trivial for my brother’s lies. The stock market was simply a hobby at which his brilliant but unconventional mind excelled.

He leaned close to his camera, his face filling my screen. “I’ve got more goddamn lucre than I know what to do with, Carson. I can’t buy a Maserati, I can’t build a distinctive abode, I can’t do anything fun without calling attention to myself, which I mustn’t do, lest the constabulary take an interest in my existence. I’ll give you the money.”

“I thank you for your offer, Jeremy. But I prefer to make my own money, just like you do. Secondly, you can’t simply give me money. It would have to be reported.”

He stared at me for a long moment. “This event has been hard on me, Carson. Not knowing where you were. I realize I should see you more.” There was a strange flicker of mirth in his voice.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He touched his mouse and disappeared.





16





Monday morning I met Gershwin at a Mexican restaurant on the southern edge of Miami, anxious to brainstorm more on the Carosso connection, our only solid lead.

“You figure Carosso did something weird with the concrete load?” Gershwin said, ladling salsa verde over huevos rancheros. “That was why he was so hinky-dinky?”

“He might have actually done as he said, dumped it. Or diverted the concrete to some site where he got paid for the load. He was afraid of being fired for stealing ’crete. He might not have a thing to do with the murders.”

“How about we add pressure anyway?”

A Redi-flow dispatcher told us today was Carosso’s off day and we were at his door in twenty minutes. “I hope the guy’s taken a shower since Friday,” Gershwin said. “It was like standing beside a rotting mule.”