“I don’t know. He had money. He owned a yacht. That was enough for Florence.”
“How did he get his money?”
“Wise choice of parents,” Mrs. Plum said. “Or, more likely, grandparents.”
She glanced briefly at her husband. Perhaps he wasn’t a self-made man, either, Kelly Cruz thought. He smiled hap-pily at his wife.
“How well do you know him.”
“I’ve met him once or twice.”
“So you don’t know him well?”
“To know him at all is to know him too well.”
“He doesn’t seem like a bad sort, Mommy,” Mr. Plum said.
“I thought you didn’t know him,” Kelly Cruz said.
“Mommy, Mrs. Plum, reminded me,” he said.
Kelly Cruz nodded.
1 3 2
S E A C H A N G E
“Any thoughts?” Kelly Cruz said.
“Me?” Mr. Plum said. “No. As I said, he seemed nice.”
“Where did you meet him.”
Mr. Plum looked blank. Mrs. Plum said, “Tennis club luau. Florence brought a bunch of people. We didn’t even know she’d be there.”
“Would you have gone if you’d known?”
“No.”
“Do you know where I could find Mr. Ralston?”
“I believe he lives aboard his boat,” Mrs. Plum said.
“In Fort Lauderdale?”
“He never said.”
Kelly Cruz nodded. She knew that Mr. Ralston’s boat was currently in Paradise, Massachusetts.
“We have in our possession,” Kelly Cruz said, “a videotape of Florence having sex with two men.”
Mrs. Plum squeezed her eyes tight shut and dropped her head. Mr. Plum looked faintly quizzical. Neither of them spoke.
“I’m sorry,” Kelly Cruz said. “Do you know anything about that?”
“Well,” Mr. Plum said, with a pleasant smile, “Florence was sort of wild, I guess.”
“Mrs. Plum?” Kelly Cruz said.
Mrs. Plum hadn’t moved. She appeared to be staring at her knees.
“I’m not surprised,” she said without looking up.
“Would you know what the circumstances would be that would . . .” Kelly Cruz stopped.
1 3 3
R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
“Cause her to do something like that?” Mrs. Plum said.
“Too much money, too much freedom, too little super-vision . . . too little love.”
“But you don’t know of any, ah, commercial enterprise that she might have been involved with?”
“Oh my God, no,” Mrs. Plum said. “Nothing that smacked of work. She would have done it because it was shocking, or depraved, or unconventional. Maybe because she thought it was fun. But never work. Never anything as worthwhile as commercial enterprise.”
Mr. Plum seemed to have lost interest.
“It’s not an investigative question, Mrs. Plum, but I have two children, and . . .”
“And you can’t imagine giving up on them so completely.”
“Did you love her?”
“Yes, I did. God save me, I do. But I had to make choices.
I have two other daughters, much younger. I couldn’t let her corrupt them as she had been corrupted.”
“By whom,” Kelly Cruz said.
Still staring down at her knees with her eyes shut, Mrs.
Plum said, “See above.”
“Too much freedom, too little love?” Kelly Cruz said.
