In a Heartbeat (14 page)

32

Early the next morning, Camelia was breakfasting alone in the perkily decorated dining room, surrounded by potted plants and piped music, and a young blonde waitress in a wide, rustling red skirt and a white organdy apron. She had the same bland look and perfect white smile that seemed to be the norm in Hainsville. He wondered where they recruited them from.

“You from around here?” he asked as she took his order.

“I sure am, sir. My family has lived here for three generations.”

He nodded. “Then maybe you’ve heard of this guy, Ed Vincent?”

“Vincent? No, I don’t think so, sir. It’s not a local name, and believe me, I know them all.” She laughed, showing her pretty white-on-white teeth, reminding him again, uncomfortably, of Stepford Wives.

“Well, everyone’s real nice here,” he said, accepting a copy of the local newspaper she handed him.
The Hainsville Gazette.
What else would it be called? he thought with a wry grin.

He glanced through it while he ate the perfectly cooked, perfectly bland eggs and bacon and a boring Stepford bagel that bore no resemblance to the hard chewy New York type he was addicted to. He washed it down with unbitter coffee, sadly lacking in caffeine and slightly too cool for his taste, and thought again about the newspaper.

He checked the masthead. FIFTY YEARS OF BRINGING HAINSVILLE ITS NEWS, it boasted, and gave an address on Third Street.

He got to his feet as Mel appeared, looking refreshed and energetic and totally out of place among the potted palms, in her black leather and her short skirt and her high-heeled ankle boots.

“At least I know where we start this morning,” he said by way of greeting.

“You do?” Mel gave him that grin. “Okay, honey, let’s go.” And she linked her arm in his and they were on their way. One more time.

The Hainsville Gazette
occupied what must be the oldest premises in town and, in fact, looked as though no speck of dust had been disturbed in its entire fifty years of business.

Camelia explained his quest to the gray-haired woman behind the counter, who was definitely not a member of the Disneyland cast assembled to greet the tourists. This one was sharp, and sour, too.

“Ain’t never heard of the fella,” she said briskly, shuffling papers on the counter.

How small fame was, Mel thought sadly. No one here had even heard of Ed. Nobody knew what he had accomplished, nobody knew how good he was. And nobody cared.

And even though Camelia insisted they search the records, going back forty years, they found that the woman was right. There was no mention of a Vincent family.

“Ah told ya so” was her parting shot as they departed, sneezing from the dust and stung by her venom.

“Seems to me that if Ed really did live here, the best thing he did was get out,” Camelia commented as they stepped across the street to the Explorer. There was a pink parking ticket stuck under the windshield and he snatched it up, irate. “So much for love and goodwill toward tourists.”

Mel giggled. “You’re a cop, you can fix it.”

“I’m a law-abiding cop,” he said in a steely voice. “I pay my tickets.”

Her eyebrows rose and she pursed her lips to stop from smiling. “Where do we go next?”

“Follow me,” he said, climbing back into the car.

The town hall had a parking lot, so at least he wouldn’t run the risk of another ticket. Inside was as elaborate as out: pale oak paneling, black-and-white-checkered marble floor, Doric columns, and a wash of gold leaf. The receptionist told them where the Land Registry Department was, and they strode down the endless corridors of small-town power until they found it.

As Camelia now expected, a brief look revealed no “Vincent.” But then he got down to business in earnest. He searched the names of all the previous landowners in the area, and the dates on which they had sold their parcels to Michael Hains.

“It seems like every single person in this town sold out to Hains,” Mel finally said, exhausted.

“Except one. Farrar Rogan. His tract of farmland—five acres—was picked up by default, for the sum of one dollar. Now, don’t you think that’s a tad strange, when everybody else got a couple of thou’?”

“So what d’you think happened to Farrar Rogan?” she asked, not hoping for much of an answer.

“Let’s ask around and find out” was what he said.

Back at the
Gazette,
the gray-haired woman did not look pleased to see them. No bland, warm, white-toothed smile there, Mel thought, glancing at her watch, longing to call the hospital again, though she had spoken to them early that morning. And she wanted to hear Riley’s voice so bad. And Harriet . . . God, she was missing out on her life. What was she doing there, chasing wild geese, when she should be with the ones she loved, even if it meant being bicoastal.

The woman flinched when Camelia flashed her his badge. “I didn’t know you was cops,” she whined. “Sure, I remember the name Rogan. There was an accident, I don’t recall what. Yes, sir,” she added with new respect, “I’ll show you where to look in the archives.”

It didn’t take her long to find the relevant newspaper. And there it was, in big, bold headlines.

Farrar Rogan and his family were front-page news.

33

The blurred photo in
The Hainsville Gazette
showed a pile of smoldering ruins with the caption “ROGAN FAMILY PERISHES IN TRAGIC FIRE.” Underneath, it read:

Fire destroyed the log cabin of Farrar Rogan, killing him and his entire family, wife Ellin, daughters Honor and Grace, sons, Jared, Jesse, and Theo. Only one son, Mitchell, was saved, due to the fact that he was at the Hainsville Saloon at the time.

How the cabin caught fire remains a mystery, though the sheriff says it might have had something to do with the old stove, since Mitch says his mother was in the habit of stoking it up on such cold nights. The cabin burned so well that not even the torrential downpour could extinguish the flames.

Services for the Rogan family will be held at the Memorial Chapel on Saturday morning at 10 A.M. Mitch has invited all who knew his family to pay their last respects.

Michael Hains has stepped into the breach to offer the only surviving Rogan son, Mitch, a job in his company.

The Saturday newspaper had another photograph, this one of a crowd standing respectfully bareheaded next to a row of seven plain pine coffins. A huge bouquet of calla lilies rested atop each one, and the caption said that the flowers were courtesy of Michael Hains.

“Where are we heading now?” Mel asked, back once more in the Explorer. The rain had started again, long slashing drops that careened across the windshield, hard as buckshot. She shivered, remembering the night of the hurricane.

“To the Hainsville cemetery,” Camelia said. “Just to make sure they are all still there and Hains didn’t dig ’em up so he could resell the plot.”

“You think he was that bad?”

“Rotten to the core, I’d bet my life on it.”

“So what happened to Mitch? You think he had something to do with the deaths in his family?” Her eyes widened as a thought suddenly occurred to her. “Oh, God, you don’t think that Mitch is really Ed, and that he changed his name because . . .”

“Because he killed them?” Camelia lifted his shoulder in a shrug as he swung the Explorer through the ornate iron gates of the cemetery— or The Hainsville Resting Place, as it was euphemistically inscribed, in large gilt letters, on the twin stone pillars beside the gates. “What can I tell ya, baby? What do you want to hear? What I think might be the truth?”

Mel stared blankly in front of her. Ed? Her Ed, a possible killer? She slumped back in her seat. Her stomach churned at the thought; her mind pushed it away; her whole being resisted the concept. “No,” she cried, “dammit, Marco Camelia, you’ll never convince me of that.”

He nodded. “Okay, okay. Let’s just wait and see which way the cards fall.”

She was silent as she stood next to him, staring through the downpour at the plain black marble headstone. The names were engraved into the stone, but the gold had worn off long ago and now it was hardly possible to make them out. Only the ROGAN stood out boldly at the top.

“Seven names,” Mel said, sniffing back a tear and mopping her runny nose. “And not one of them is an Ed.” She felt terrible: cold, wet, hopeless. She wished she were anywhere but there. And anywhere but with Camelia, who was telling her things she didn’t want to know.
The truth,
her brain insisted, but again she denied it.
No, no, no,
never. My Ed is not a killer.

Back at the sheriff’s station, Duxbury was not thrilled to see them. However, he nodded when they asked about the Rogan family tragedy, and about the surviving son, Mitch.

“Everybody knew the Rogans. Nice family,” he said thoughtfully. “ ’Ceptin’ that son, Mitch. Quite a character he turned out to be. There was rumors around town he had some’n to do with it.”

“With his family’s deaths, y’mean?” Camelia was all ears.

“They was just rumors, y’know, but some said it had been murder. Nothin’ came of it and he went to work for Michael Hains. He was quite a boy, that Mitch. Ripped off Mr. Hains but good. Stole everything he could get his hands on. Lit out of here leaving Hains with the creditors. Served time, too, when they finally caught up to him, though I did hear he was soon back in business. And with money in his pocket. Yeah, quite a boy, that Mitch Rogan,” he repeated, half admiringly.

They were silent on the drive back to the Hainsville Inn, each busy with their own thoughts.

“I’m sorry,” Camelia said, as the inn’s lights loomed through the murk. “I didn’t mean to malign Ed. It’s just that right now, events are pointing in that direction. It’s only circumstantial, it could all be wrong.” He flung his arms wide with another shrug. “Then it’s my mistake, and I’ll apologize all over again.”

“That’s okay,” Mel said stiffly. But he knew it wasn’t and he sighed.

“Have a drink with me,” he said abruptly. “We need to talk.”

They headed for the bar, frozen, wet, miserable, and apprehensive. They ordered the same drinks as before, a beer and a cosmopolitan. Again, the young ever-smiling bartender got the cosmo right. Again, Mel got on the phone, called the hospital. Status quo. Again, Camelia got on the phone, called “the office” to check what was doing. This time, quite a bit, it seemed.

He listened intently while Mel sipped the cosmo and nibbled on peanuts. Somewhere along the way they had forgotten all about lunch and she was starving.

She heard Camelia give them the information on Mitch Rogan and ask them to run it through the computer. She watched him, trying to guess the other end of the conversation, but his face was impassive and his responses were noncommittal. Finally, he finished. He turned back to the bar, took a good sip of his Bud, and ordered a single malt.

“Ever hear of a George Artenski?” She shook her head. “The national computer came up with a reasonable match for your composite picture. We think he’s our man.”

Color flooded her face, she clutched a hand to her heart. “You’ve caught him.”

“Not yet. But we have a pretty good idea of who he is. Of course, by now he’ll be using a different ID, living somewhere else, probably have created a whole new life for himself. But Artenski was a hit man and this was a contract, I’d bet on that now.”

“But why?
Why
would anyone want Ed dead?”

She still didn’t get it, didn’t want to know that Ed might not be the nice, kind, loving guy he seemed to be. Camelia let her off lightly, though, this time. “That’s what we still have to find out. Meanwhile, we don’t want to scare our hit man underground, we want him to think he’s gotten away with it.”

“Well, he has,” she retorted.

“So far, he has,” Camelia admitted. “But not for much longer. We’re not gonna show his picture on TV yet, but it’s on every police computer in the country, and someone, somewhere, is bound to recognize him. It won’t be much longer, you can count on that.”

“Can I really, Marco?”

She reached for his hand. A thrill shot like a warm arrow into his groin. He glanced away and took a good slug of the single malt.

“
Really
count on it?” she added, pleadingly, thinking of how much safer she would feel with the hit man behind bars. How much safer Ed would be, despite his bodyguards around the clock.

“You can bet on it.” He squeezed her hand, then deftly removed his own without making it look too obvious. “And we want him alive and kicking.” He didn’t add, So we can get to know the truth about what happened—but then, he didn’t have to.

She was sharp as a tack and so goddamn beautiful, even with her long neck tilted, her head drooping, her skin so pale and cold-looking. He wanted desperately to reach out, stroke the nape of her neck where the soft golden hair grew into a little downward point; he wanted to inhale her scent. . . . Jesus, he was a cop on duty, what the hell was he thinking? . . . Yet, why else had he brought her here? He pushed the thought to the back of his mind. Like her, he didn’t want to know the truth.

“Ever hear of a Mamzelle Dorothea Jefferson Duval?” he asked. She shook her head again. “Me either. Apparently there was a call from her, from a nursing home near Charleston. She said it was urgent, that she wanted to talk to me about Ed Vincent. Wouldn’t talk to anyone else.”

“How did she know about you?”

“Saw me on TV, perhaps. Or read about the case in the newspapers. Anyway, it’s worth a shot. We’ll go to Charleston tomorrow, check out the beach house and speak with the sheriff there. And also pay Mamzelle Dorothea a visit. See what she has to say.”

“Okay.” It was getting late. Mel’s head was throbbing, her nose was raw from the wind, and she was sniffling with a cold. All she wanted to do right now was go to bed, or go back to New York and Ed.
Oh, Ed, honey, I’ll find out who did
this, trust me. . . . All I know is, it wasn’t you. . . .

She said, “Sorry, Marco, but I can’t make dinner. I’m sending for room service. Chicken soup and cheese grits. Exactly what my mother used to give me when I was a kid and felt bad.”

“That’s okay. Good night, baby, sleep well.” Again she dropped a light kiss on his cheek, but there was no smile tonight. Camelia sighed. He had smashed her dreams.

And this scenario was so far from his own dreams of starlit nights and warm tumbled beds that he grinned. He was in a one-horse pseudo-tourist town; it was pitch-dark and raining like hell; and the woman he was enamored of had gone off, sniffling and clutching a box of Kleenex, with a room-service order for one.

Chicken soup and grits. Camelia wished that were all it would take to make him feel better.