“Spanish omelet here is great,” said Kenneth Severtson Sr., digging into the Saturday morning special at First Watch.
The place was bright, crowded, and noisy.
I had bacon and eggs. Janice Severtson, sitting next to her husband, was working on a ham-and-cheese omelet. All three of us had coffee.
Janice’s hand rested on the table. Her husband touched it.
“How are the kids?” I asked, pouring myself a second cup of coffee.
“Fine,” Janice said with a solemn smile. “My sister flew down from Charleston yesterday to help out. She’s watching them.”
“How do we thank you, Mr. Fonesca?” Severtson asked.
“You said you had a bonus,” I said.
“Name it,” said Severtson.
“One thousand, cash,” I said. “You have it with you?”
“One thou-No, but I think I have about four hundred. I stopped at the bank yesterday. Janice, you have any cash?”
She reached for her purse on the bench next to her, found her wallet, and came up with almost two hundred. Between the two of them they came up with a little over six hundred dollars.
“I’ll settle for that,” I said, accepting Ken and Janice’s money across the table.
“I can get the rest on Monday or from an ATM if you really need it soon,” Severtson said.
“No,” I said, pocketing the cash. “This will do it.”
“Is there anything else we can do for you? We owe you so much,” Janice said, squeezing her husband’s hand.
“Three things,” I said, drinking some more coffee.
“Name them,” said Ken.
“First, stop shooting at me.”
No one spoke. A woman at the table behind us said to whoever was sitting with her, “Who knows about Virginia? She blows hot and cold. Today’s a cold day. Don’t ask.”
“What?” asked Severtson.
“Stop shooting at me,” I said. “Trying to kill me. You know. Midnight Pass. The Laundromat.”
“You’re crazy,” said Severtson.
“Extremely depressed,” I said. “Close to suicidal a few times, but my therapist assures me I’m not psychotic. Dealing with people like you can bring me close to the line, but then there are people who can pull me back.”
“Why would I want to kill you?” asked Ken Severtson with a laugh, looking at his wife, who wasn’t laughing.
“Because you know I’ve been asking questions about you and Stark, that I’d found out he has a two-million- dollar insurance policy with you as beneficiary and that the business, which grossed over a million and a half last year, is all yours now. It wasn’t hard to find.”
“This is crazy,” Severtson said.
I wasn’t looking at him anymore. I was looking at his wife. She wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“When you knocked at my door in Orlando,” I said. “You told me you knew who I was because you called some friends in Sarasota who knew me. Then you said your husband must have hired me.”
Janice Severtson didn’t look up.
“Who did you call at three in the morning who knows me?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
“And I told you I was in Orlando with my wife and kids,” I went on. “When you came into my room you didn’t look around for anyone else. You didn’t ask where my wife and kids were.”
“I was…I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“You did know,” I said. “You knew.”
I turned to her husband.
“There was a little girl in that Laundromat,” I told him. “She was standing a few feet away from me. Her name is Alaska Dreamer. She’s got a toy monster with a big eye that lights up. She could have been killed.”
Janice Severtson’s eyes looked at her unfinished omelet.
“Wait, I don’t get anything if Stark committed suicide,” Kenneth Severtson said.
“No, but you do when your wife admits to killing him to protect your daughter from being molested. You set me up, Severtson. You both did. Stark didn’t seduce your wife. She seduced him. He never touched your kids, did he?”
Neither of them answered this time.
“How long were you going to wait before Janice supposedly got conscience-stricken and called the Orlando police? Monday? Then they’d call me and you’d tell me to tell the truth. It wouldn’t take much of a lawyer to get her to walk, but you can afford a good lawyer now.”
“But why kill you?” he asked. “You’re our witness.”
“You found out I had checked on your business and Stark’s insurance. It wasn’t hard. You just called your office and they told you about my coming there. Once I knew about the insurance and your getting control of the business, you’d be better off without me testifying to anything. Maybe you even wondered how long it would take me to ask myself who your wife had called at three in the morning from Orlando and she’d remember that she hadn’t asked about the family I supposedly had on vacation. In fact, you couldn’t afford to have me tell the Orlando police what I know.”
“This is crazy,” he said.
“You already said that twice. You didn’t miss me on purpose. You’re just a lousy shot. The only other person who might have wanted me dead was a man named Stanley who wouldn’t have missed.”
“You haven’t any proof,” Janice said.
“I know. That’s why I wrote a letter last night and mailed it to a cop in Orlando. If I get killed now, I don’t think he’s going to buy your story and I don’t think you’ll stand a chance in hell or on earth of collecting your money. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe a good lawyer can make me look bad on the stand. Probably can. Maybe you can get away with it. Probably not. The insurance company won’t give up. They’ll take you to civil court and your business is going to go to hell fast. Great headline: ‘Wife Seduces and Murders Husband’s Partner in Insurance Plot.’”
“You broke the law,” Janice reminded me. “You advised me to say it was suicide.”
“And you made the mistake of going along with it,” I said. “You thought fast. You’d go along with my suicide story and then break down and tell the police you had killed Stark to protect your children.”
“It was self-defense,” she said, her voice shaking. “He hit me, said he was going to kill me and the children. I believed him.”
Ken Severtson was shaking his head yes. That was going to be their story.
“It’s got big holes, especially me, but stick with that. It’s probably the best you can do.
“I think my testimony will keep me from being charged for obstruction. I may be wrong. I’ve got a good law firm to represent me. You know Tycinker, Oliver, and Schwartz?”
They didn’t answer.
The waitress brought the bill.
“I’ll take it,” I said.
“Don’t do this to our children,” Janice pleaded.
“With parents like you? I think I’m doing it for them.”
“Look, Fonesca,” Severtson said, leaning toward me. “We can-”
“No,” I said. “We can’t.”
They got up and left without another word. I hoped Janice’s sister was a decent human being. I hoped she’d take Kenny Jr. and Sydney. I hoped they wouldn’t wind up on the desk of Sally Porovsky or someone in her office.
“Hey, Lew,” someone said, as I played with a strip of bacon.
I looked up.
Dave from the Dairy Queen sat down across from me with a mug of coffee in his hand.
“Got the kids over there,” he said, nodding toward a table across the room where his two children sat across
