Sunset Beach(127)

“I’m trying, Jimmy,” she said plaintively. “But my mind’s not right. Everything’s all mixed up. Oh, wait. She left her train case on the floor of the front seat of my car. She said it’s full of money.”

“I’ll deal with that too.”

The lights flickered back on again, revealing an upended chair, a broken glass and a wet spot on the wall-to-wall carpet.

“You need to get the place straightened up,” he said.

“I will. I’m sorry, Jimmy, that I got you mixed up in this. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“It’s okay. That’s what friends are for, right?” He touched her face, and she flinched. There was a nasty gash across her nose. She had a black eye and a huge bruise on her right cheek.

She caught his hand in hers and released it a second later. “What am I going to tell Brice about my face when he asks?”

He thought about it. “I know. There’s a big tree limb out front that must have snapped off one of the pine trees in the storm. Tell him you went outside to roll up the windows of the car, and the branch hit you as it was coming down.”

“Good thinking. You’re a smart guy, Jimmy. You know that?”

“You’re smart too. Just do what I told you. And then forget any of this happened.”

She had her arms wrapped tightly around her torso, chilled from the dampness. “How do I do that? I killed her. How do I live with that?”

“You’ll figure it out. Anyway, you didn’t kill her. The bullet barely grazed her shoulder. That riprap out there is covered in slimy seaweed. When she fell, she hit her head on one of those rocks and cracked her skull. That’s what killed her. Not you.”

“But what will you do with the body?” she asked. “What if you get caught with it?”

“I’m not gonna get caught,” he repeated. “I’m a smart guy, remember?”





60


“I’m gonna call your dad and let him know you’re okay,” Zee told Drue, holding up his cell phone. “And then, I guess we’d better buzz your pal Rae Hernandez, so she can call out the cavalry for this piece of shit.”

He poked Ben in the side with the toe of his black motorcycle boot, then looked up expectantly at Drue. “You got any coffee?”

“If you’ll show me where the coffeemaker is, I’ll make it,” Jonah offered.

“In the kitchen,” Drue said. “Come on. I’ll help.”

“We can all go,” Zee said. He prodded Ben’s ribs again with his boot. “This asshole isn’t going anywhere.” He gave Jonah an admiring salute. “Good work, my man. I think you managed to break his jaw. But you’re probably going to need some ice on that hand of yours.”

“What about me?” Drue demanded. “I’m the one who sprayed him with the Mace.”

“Which I gave you,” Zee reminded her. “Like they say, team workmakes the dream work.”



* * *



They were sitting on the deck at dawn, sipping their coffee, when they heard the police sirens approach.

“How did you even know Ben was here?” Drue asked Zee, who’d just returned from walking out to look at the water.

“Your dad called and woke me up when he couldn’t reach you,” Zee said. “Which reminds me. You need to recharge your phone. He asked me to do a drive-by, just to make sure things were okay here.”

“Why didn’t he just come himself?” Drue asked.

“He couldn’t leave Wendy, because she was spotting again. He said she was having a rough night.”

“She had a rough night!” Drue exclaimed, rolling her eyes. “In the past forty-eight hours I’ve been arrested, interrogated, poisoned and shot at.”

Zee punched her shoulder lightly. “You’re a tough kid. I mean, woman. Like your mom.”

Before she could ask him what he meant by that, they heard cars pulling up at the front of the house.



* * *



It was after eight Sunday morning by the time Brice met them at the Treasure Island police station, with three Mocha Grandes and three toasted bagels. Drue and Jonah sipped coffee and devoured the bagels while they waited for Hernandez to join them in the cramped conference room.

“Okay,” she said, bustling in and closing the door behind them. “Just so you know, Ben Fentress was admitted to St. Anthony’s. He’s having surgery to wire his jaw back together, which is kind of a shame, but while he was waiting in a treatment room he declined to chat with me without counsel present anyway, so it’s kind of a moot point.”

Hernandez was dressed in mom jeans and a Red Wings baseball jersey, with a blue blazer thrown on top of it.

“Has he been charged?” Brice asked, his yellow legal pad at the ready.

“Yes. Two counts of attempted murder, two counts aggravated assault and…” She opened a steno notebook and flipped through the scribbled pages. “Trespassing.”

She sat down at the table. “Sorry you had to wait, but I wanted to be able to tell you what we discovered after we got the warrant to search his apartment in Woodlawn. The main thing is his laptop. And a bunch of files. And of course, we’ve got his cell phone.