his feet. It was a beautiful turquoise shell without a nick, worn clean and smooth.
Lonsberg picked it up and turned it over. The shell was white inside. He handed it to me.
“A gift from me and Jefferson,” he said. “A bonus. I didn’t kill any old man. If you talk to Adele, tell her that… tell her you told me what she was doing and I said nothing. You can tell her I’m sorry. No, she wouldn’t care. Just tell her I said nothing.”
“Sorry? About what?” I asked.
“Just tell her I said nothing,” he said, looking toward the horizon.
“I’ll tell her,” I said. It would be the truth.
I put the shell in my pocket. We started away from the beach slowly, Jefferson at Lonsberg’s side.
“I met your daughter and son,” I said.
“Did you?” he asked but it wasn’t really a question. “A lost generation, at least in my family. My grandchildren show some promise even if Laura, my daughter, does teach them to hate me as much as she does.”
“I don’t think she hates you,” I said.
“You don’t?” he said, again as if I had made a faulty observation.
“Dislike, maybe. And still…” I couldn’t bring myself to say it so he did for me.
“Love,” he said. “Dislike and love. Almost a good title. Probably also true. And Bradley the C.P.A.?”
“You’re not the warmest man in the world,” I said.
“Not quite a nonsequitur,” he said. “But your point is taken. Bradley wants to be everything I’m not. Warm, outgoing, friendly, uncreative, goes fishing with his son, has a good smile. Likable. That the way you found him?”
“Pretty much,” I agreed.
“I don’t think about my children much or my grandchildren as far as that goes,” he said as we approached the gate. “I think about my wife. I treated her the way I treated my children. She saw something inside me that kept her coming back for more. She gave up trying to make me into something else and accepted what I was. She was a good listener and a more than decent poet. She used a pseudonym. Won’t tell you what it was. No one’s found that out yet. Some avid graduate student will probably make the discovery someday taking weeks or months he could be living to do it. She wanted to make it on her own and she did. New Yorker, Atlantic, little magazines.”
We were at the gate now.
“I just talked to you more than I have to anyone except Jefferson in the last six or seven years,” he said. “You’re a good listener, Fonesca. Now, go be a good detective.”
He put his hand out and we shook. Strong, firm, but there was a tremble, slight but real, early Parkinson’s? I doubted it. Something I had told him? Possibly, but what?
I got in my rented Taurus and pulled out Jefferson and Lonsberg’s gift shell. I laid it on the dashboard and looked at it for a few seconds, hoping it held some secret that would come out as if it were a magical gift from the sea. It told me nothing. I wasn’t surprised. When my wife was alive I used to watch the skies with a telescope we kept on our small balcony. From time to time I thought I spotted a U.F.O. I was always wrong. She humored me. I wanted to find something out in the skies, something that would alter the world and open eternity. When she died, I left the telescope behind. Whoever has the apartment now is either using it, letting it sit in a corner, or has donated it to Goodwill.
On the way back to my office home I stopped at Flo’s. Her car was parked in the driveway. I rang the bell. It chimed back the music from the ten notes of “If You Loved Me Half as Much As I Love You.” I didn’t want to press the bell again. I didn’t have to.
“Who?” Flo called from inside.
“Lew,” I said.
“Alone?”
“Alone,” I answered.
She opened the door, the barrel of a rifle aimed at my stomach.
Her hands weren’t steady, but steady enough. Her mouth was slightly open. Tex Ritter sang “High Noon” behind her, one of Flo’s all-time favorites.
“Where’ve you been?” she asked. “I’ve been calling you. Left a message.”
“Out looking for Adele,” I said.
“Asshole tried to kill me,” she said. “I was out driving in the Ford, pulled into the driveway, and he blasted away from the bushes.”
“Someone tried to kill you?”
“I just said that, Lewis.”
“You saw him?”
“No. I heard him. Heard the bullets hit the side of the car. One went through the window not far from my head. I ran in, got the gun, and took a few shots in his direction. Scared him away. While I went for the gun, he had the balls to open the car trunk. Went back inside and found whoever it was had gone through the house didn’t leave much mess but the broken window he came through. Just opened doors, closets, crawl space, didn’t find what he was looking for, and then waited for me to show up.”
“He was looking for some manuscripts Adele took,” I said. “He was looking for Adele. He or she. I don’t think whoever it was will come back.”
I didn’t think this was a good time to tell her that Bernard Corsello had probably been gunned down for the same reason she had been attacked and that she was lucky to be alive.
“You call the police?” I asked.
“I called you,” she said, backing away so I could get inside and she could close and bolt the door. “I don’t want cops here asking about Adele and asking why I was out driving when my license is goddamn suspended.”
“Whoever broke in took nothing?”
“Not that I can tell, but things were moved, drawers were open in Adele’s room, her closet. I’ve got it all cleaned up now. Guy’s coming to fix the window tomorrow.”
“He won’t come back, Flo,” I assured her as Tex sang, “Vowed it would be my life or his’n.”
“You got it wrong, Lewis,” she said. “I want him back. I’m ready now. I want him back so I can blow his legs off and get him to tell me where Adele is.”
“I don’t think whoever shot at you knows where Adele is,” I said. “They’re looking for her.”
She leaned the rifle against the wall.
“I can use that thing,” she said. “Gus taught me when we were just married. He could shoot a hole through a half dollar thrown into the air. Saw him do it. Did it myself a few times, but I was cold sober then. You want a drink?”
“You made a promise as a bride,” Tex sang.
“No, thanks,” I said.
She moved across the large living room to the liquor cabinet next to the CD and record player and poured herself a hefty glass of something white.
“You promised to stay sober, Flo,” I reminded her.
“That was because I had Adele,” she said, taking a drink. “Now I’ve got nothing again but old songs and lots of bottles and, I almost forgot, someone who’s trying to kill me.”
“I’ll find Adele,” I said. “I’ll bring her back. Get sober. Make a deal with yourself, a bet. You’re a gambler.”
She looked old, her sequined green skirt and blowsy white blouse and dark boots belonged on Catherine Zeta-Jones or Charlize Theron or Salma Hayak, but not Flo Zink.
“Okay, I put the bottles away,” she said. “Stay sober, wait for that bastard who tried to kill me to show up, and you deliver Adele with no charges against her by Wednesday. Wednesday at high noon,” she said as Tex sang, “Do not forsake me, oh, my darling.”
“Wednesday, high noon,” I said.
Flo looked at her still half-full glass for an answer and said, “Deal.”
She dumped the remainder of her gin or vodka into a cactus plant next to the sofa and sat looking up at me.
“Lewis, you brought that girl into my life,” she said. “Bring her back. I don’t know how much she needs me, but I sure as hell need her.”
