the hospital if he is ill? Is he too ill to come to the Friday-night meeting if he is, indeed, that ill? It does not have the odor of honest concern on the part of Mr. Hoffmann. Hoffmann wants Midnight Pass open.”
“I know. He told me,” I said. “He also not very tactfully told me that he’d break my head with a genuine Babe Ruth bat or have a man named Stanley shoot me if I didn’t stop bothering him.”
“Is it essential that you go to Orlando? We are running out of time.”
“It is essential,” I said. “I’ll call you when I have more.”
Three hours later I was back in Orlando and with a few questions found the detective who was handling Stark’s death. His name was Tenns, Sergeant Jacob Tenns. He came out to meet me in the waiting room at the station, where people sat with their heads in their hands, their briefcases on their laps, their eyes open and looking at nothing or their eyes shut and looking at too much.
Tenns was a throwback. Lean, dark slacks, suspenders, white shirt, and a tie. His glasses were perched on the end of his narrow nose. His hair was dark, combed straight back. He wore broad suspenders. He was trying out for a part in Inherit the Wind.
“You Fonesca?” he said approaching me.
“Yes.”
“You made a statement the other day about Andrew Stark’s death,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Officer who took your statement was given a reprimand,” Tenns said. “You should have been held as a material witness till a detective talked to you. Follow me.”
I did, through a wooden door, down a narrow corridor to a small room with a table surrounded by six chairs. There was a humming refrigerator on one side of the room and two vending machines on the other: one gave out Cokes and Sprite if you inserted seventy-five cents or a dollar bill, the other gave out candy if you put in a dollar or correct change. Along the wall facing us as we entered was a counter and sink with closed cupboards over it. A half-full Mr. Coffee pot sat in one corner of the counter with Styrofoam cups nestling inside each other.
“Coffee?” asked Tenns.
“Yes,” I said, sitting.
“Anything in it?”
“Sugar, milk,” I said.
He nodded, got me a cup of coffee and one for himself. He sat down and looked at me.
“Her story’s a crock of shit,” he said calmly.
“Janice Severtson’s?”
“No, Madonna’s autobiography,” he answered. “Mrs. Severtson says she went to you for help because she knew you from Sarasota.”
“That’s right. We both work out at the Y.”
“You do any other kind of working out with Janice Severtson?” he asked.
“What?”
“She was here with a man who wasn’t her husband,” Tenns said. “Coincidentally, you, a friend, happened to be here, too.”
“You’re saying maybe Janice Severtson and I…?”
“Stranger things have happened,” Tenns said, working on his coffee.
I tried mine. It wasn’t bad. Wasn’t good either.
“I had a case two years back,” Tenns said. “Little dwarf, half-black, half-who knows what the hell else, ugly as a possum. He and this full-size stripper were lovers, killed her husband. Little guy had to stand on a chair behind the husband to hit him with a bat.”
“What was her name?” I asked.
“Stripper? Elaine Boulenbar. Why?”
“Conversation,” I said. “I’m not a dwarf. I’m not rich. I’m not good-looking.”
“She could have hired you,” he said. “I checked. You’re a process server.”
“I thought that was considered honest work,” I said.
“It means you deal sometimes with some bad people,” Tenns said. “Sometimes it rubs off a little.”
“You deal with bad people more than I do,” I said.
“Which is why I’m going down this street.”
“Why would she hire me to kill a man she ran away with?”
“Don’t know. Conversation. Did she hire you?”
“No, I was here because her husband asked me to find her. I found her. She spotted me, remembered me from Sarasota. What I told the officer was the truth. I went back to Sarasota and told her husband. He’s here someplace trying to get his kids.”
“I know,” said Tenns, turning his cup in circles. “He’s in another room. We’re bringing the kids. You don’t have a private investigator’s license, Fonesca.”
“I don’t want one. Severtson came to me, asked me to help him find his wife and children. I said I would.”
“He pay you?”
“Yes. Where’s Mrs. Severtson?”
“Medical examiner says Stark stabbed himself downward, not straight in,” Tenns said, demonstrating the thrust with his right hand. “Odd. Awkward.”
“I didn’t know the man,” I said.
“Nothing else you want to tell me?”
“No.”
“I talked to the kids,” he said. “Girl was asleep. Boy can’t remember anything.”
“We’re not talking about murder here,” I said.
“Doesn’t look like we’ve got a case there, does it?” he said. “But she did run away with the kids, did shack up with a man with a record, probably screwed him in front of the kids. Husband wants to take the kids and leave her here. And…”
“And?”
“Why did Stark want to kill himself?” Tenns asked.
“Drunk, depressed, suddenly saddled with responsibility, guilty about running away with his partner’s wife. Maybe the ME can do some exploratory and find out he was dying of something.”
“Maybe,” Tenns said. “I checked. Stark was single. Wife divorced him twenty years ago and moved to San Diego. Business he was in with Severtson is booming. No confirmation so far that he was alcoholic. Some evidence from people the Sarasota police checked with that he wasn’t. Some evidence from the same people that Stark wasn’t the kind to feel guilty about running away with his partner’s wife. People he worked with say Janice Severtson wasn’t the first wife to spend a weekend with Andrew Stark. But with two kids along, it looks like Stark was in for a lot more than a weekend.”
“And what does Mrs. Severtson say?”
“Dialogue right out of one of the soaps my wife watches when she isn’t selling costume jewelry,” he said with a sigh. “Janice Severtson says she thought she loved Stark, but then again maybe she was just running away with him to get away from her husband.”
“You’ve been busy.”
“Very,” he said. “I’m faxing a report to the Sarasota sheriff’s office. I’m sending the Severtsons home. I’m telling them not to think about moving out of the state. I’m signing off on this as a probable suicide but I’m keeping the file open. My board’s full. I’ve got a bruised thigh. I couldn’t sleep last night and there’s a drooling drug dealer with an attitude in another room waiting to tell me lies. I’ll get back to Stark’s death when I get a chance, and I will get a chance.”
Tenns got up, scrunched his empty coffee cup, and threw it in the wastebasket near the Coke machine.
“I checked a little deeper on you, Fonesca,” he said, turning and looking at me over the tops of his glasses. “Lost your wife, went a little nuts, quit your job with the state attorney’s office, wound up in Sarasota.”
I sat. There was still some coffee in my cup. I was getting hungry.
“So anyway, your story checks out with hers. I’m letting her go.”
“I’d like to see her,” I said.
