Last to Know: A Novel(41)

Rossetti shrugged. “Why not?”

“Because he’s a simple, quiet kid and she’s an experienced ‘woman of the world,’ and I mean the kind of world he knows nothing about.”

“Sounds like temptation, to me,” Rossetti said. And Harry had to agree maybe it did.

“Yeah. Well. Roman. He’s kind of a ghost kid around there, don’t y’think. Like, he’s there, but he’s not there at the same time, if you see what I mean.”

Harry did. “A teenager,” he said, trying to come up with an explanation and coming up instead with the same tired cliché.

Rossetti gave him a long disbelieving stare. “Were you like that when you were a teenager?”

Harry thought about it for a while. “I think I was into wine, women, and song, as the saying goes.”

Rossetti laughed. “As the saying goes, so did you. Myself I was all for hanging with the guys, looking at the girls and hoping…”

“Hope springs eternal,” Harry added, another cliché, and they both grinned. “Still, I know exactly what you mean. What gives with this kid? He’s got the world on a plate, an adoring mother, a great family, a good future.”

“It’s got to be a woman,” Rossetti said.

Harry gave him another of those searching glances. “That’s why I work with you, Rossetti. You always come up with the answer.”

“Wanna bet this is the right answer?”

“Who do you have in mind?”

“There’s only one woman round the lake who fits the bill…”

“Jesus, you think he was romancing Bea?”

“They don’t call it ‘romancing’ these days, my friend. And let’s also not forget Bea’s mother, the lovely Lacey. Older woman, all that young guy temptation stuff. A woman who is now well and truly dead. Murdered, if you recall.”

“Jesus!” Harry was truly stunned, and, thinking of Lacey, repelled. “If you’re right, we have another problem on our hands,” he said.

“And another suspect,” Rossetti said.

Harry didn’t want to believe it, but he knew Rossetti was right and he had better look further into young Roman Osborne’s life. And who would know more about that than his mother.

Harry put that on the back burner for now, though. He thought Roman Osborne was only an also-ran in this case.

“And before that I have something else I want us to think about. Ask yourself, Rossetti,” he said, “do we really know who Lacey Havnel is? Do we know for sure the woman in the morgue is in fact the woman she claimed to be? Let me tell you,” he added, “I have it on good authority”—he thought Jemima would have enjoyed the definition—“that Lacey Havnel of Miami, Florida, died some years ago. Childless.”

Rossetti drew in a deep breath. “Then who the f*ck is she?”

“That’s exactly what we have to find out. And also, let’s not forget, buddy, who exactly is Bea Havnel.”

“The daughter.”

“The young woman who calls herself her ‘daughter.’”

They were on the lake road now. Squeeze scrambled to his feet as they approached Harry’s house, thinking he was going home. He gave an annoyed little whine when they did not stop.

“Okay, dog,” Rossetti called over his shoulder. “We have work to do first.”

Harry saw the fairy lights strung across the Osbornes’ terrace, the lamplit room behind. It looked so peaceful, so welcoming. He hated to do what he was going to have to do, but Lacey Havnel had been murdered and it was his job to find out who had killed her, and why. Even a man like Wally Osborne would have to take his chances in the court and the justice system, like any other citizen.

The charming image of Bea Havnel came into his mind. He wondered how involved she was, whether it was true that the real Lacey Havnel was already dead and buried and the body in the morgue was an impostor? Or was Jemima wrong and this really was her daughter? Thinking of Bea, of her quiet demeanor, her simplicity, he could not see how she could be party to such a fraud. And then, thinking of Rose Osborne, he said, “I’m praying I got it wrong, Rossetti.”

Approaching the Osbornes’ turnoff, he spotted a car pulled over to the side. A small silver Honda Accord. “Looks like we’re not the first here,” he commented, opening the back door for Squeeze, then walking with Rossetti up to the house.

*

Jemima had gotten there before them, just as the dinner guests were leaving. Now, she crouched behind her car, watching the two detectives. She had no idea what was going to happen, if anything, but at least she was there. If somebody got arrested she could report what happened on her crime blog. She was right on the scene of the action.

Skulking after the detectives, through the birch trees, she saw the front door open, saw the kid who opened it stare bug-eyed at the two men, then disappear quickly inside, heard him yelling “Mom.” Then the detectives followed him inside and closed the door.

Something rustled the leaves in back of her. A footstep. She half turned, with an “oh” of recognition, saw the hand holding the bloody knife as the weapon came at her.





30


Rose saw the two detectives in the hall, heard them ask Diz where his father was.

Pretty in her silky caftan, her cloud of hair tamped in a bow at the back of her long neck, as she came toward them her eyes were a golden-brown question mark.