‘But you’re going to have to,’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘No, I’
‘I mean, you’re going to have to now,’ he said.
She stared at him, panic leaching through. ‘I can’t I thought you’
‘Lesley,’ he said, ‘I have to know if you’re wearing a wire.’
She gaped, trying to make sense of the words. ‘What?’
‘A wire. I have to know. One way or another, Lesley, I have to know.’
‘You mean’ She was blinking a lot, catching up with the situation. ‘You mean you think I could be taping you?’
‘Come on, Lesley.’
‘But I wouldn’t, I don’t honestly, no.’
‘Now, Lesley. You stand up over there, and I’ll sit here, and you’ll show me whether or not you’re wearing a wire.’
‘I’m not,’ she said, her voice fainter.
‘Good. Show.’
‘And then what?’
‘If you’re not wired, I leave here and walk back to my car, while you turn the lights off and lock the place. Tomorrow, you bring Linda another bottle of wine, and I’ll be in touch. Now, Lesley.’
She wasn’t wearing a wire.
5
Her last name was Mackenzie. The phone book gave her a listing on Utica Street in West Palm Beach. The reverse phone book also gave a listing for Laurel Simons at the same address.
Parker left the phone company building and drove the Jag across Flagler Bridge out of Palm Beach and through West Palm to the airport, where he left it in long-term parking and walked around the lot until he found a red Subaru Outback station wagon, a much less noticeable car than a yellow Jaguar convertible, in any neighborhood except Palm Beach. It had almost no dust on it, so it hadn’t been here long. Breaking into it, he hotwired the ignition and drove to the exit, where he turned in the ticket he’d just picked up.
The tollbooth clerk, a Hispanic who looked or tried to look like Pancho Villa, frowned at the ticket: ‘You don’t stay long.’
‘I forgot my passport,’ Parker told him. ‘I’ve gotta go back and get it, screwed up my whole day.’
‘Tough,’ the clerk said, gave Parker his change, and Parker drove to Utica Street.
It was a neat but inexpensive neighborhood of single-family homes on small plots, most with an attached garage. Basketball hoops over the garage doors, neatly maintained lawns, tricycles and toys around some front doors. A lot of aluminum siding in shades of off-white or pastels.
Number 417 was ranch-style, two stories on the left with the garage below and most likely bedrooms above, one story on the right. The garage door was closed, with a green Honda Accord parked at the edge of the blacktop driveway, out of the way of access to the garage. So Lesley’s Lexus, being more important to their livelihood, got the garage, and the mother’s car got the weather.
Parker circled the block once, then stopped in front of a house half a block short of 417. There was a Florida map in the driver’s door pouch; he opened it on the steering wheel.
This was a working-class neighborhood, and everybody was away working. Very few cars drove down Utica Street, and no pedestrians appeared at all. It was now eleven-thirty in the morning; Parker was ready to wait until school children started to return this afternoon.
But he didn’t have to. At twenty to one, the front door at 417 opened and two women came out. One was an older, bulkier version of Lesley, with a harsher blond in her short hair and an angry thrust to her head and a similar conservative taste in clothing. The other was gross; she wore a many-colored muumuu and she waddled. Her black hair was fixed in a bad home permanent, a thousand tight ringlets like fiddlehead ferns, as though in a lunatic attempt to distract from the body. She tripped on the driveway, over nothing at all, and her mother snapped at her. The daughter cringed and lumbered on.
The two women got into the car, the mother at the wheel, and drove away. After lunch, they go out and shop for dinner. Parker drove the Subaru closer, stopping in front of the house next door, then got out of the car, walked around to the back of the house, and forced the kitchen door.
There wasn’t much he needed to know Lesley was hardly a mystery woman and he found it all in fifteen minutes. Her former husband was named Gerald Mackenzie, he lived in Miami, and there was cold, correct, formal communication between them if something like old taxes caused them to make contact with one another.
Lesley kept small debts going in several credit card and department store accounts. She didn’t seem to have a man in her life, and maybe hadn’t since the no-fault divorce from Gerald eight years earlier. She had occasional correspondence with a woman friend in New Jersey.
She had not written anything anywhere about her discoveries concerning Daniel Parmitt. She didn’t seem to own a gun, unless it was in the glove compartment of the Lexus.
She was the alpha member of the family. Her room, facing the backyard from above the garage, was larger than the other two bedrooms up here, and had its own bath. She’d made an office out of a corner of the room, with a small desk and a low filing cabinet and a computer hooked to the Internet. She had done her best to make herself comfortable and at home here, and her mother and sister had done what they could to help, but it hadn’t worked. Her room was impersonal, and she was willing to take a leap into the unknown rather than stay in this life.
What she had said last night, about him needing somebody local to smooth the way, made sense. The question was, did shemake sense? The move she’d made was a strange one; did it mean more strange moves ahead?
