James Patterson - Cross Justice

Pinkie said that simply wasn’t true, that Bell owned all sorts of property in Stark County, beginning with an estate on Pleasant Lake. When they looked up the lakefront property, they found it was owned by one of Marvin Bell’s Delaware companies and carried an assessed value of $3.1 million, which made Bree want to see the place.

Alex had told her to hang back, to stay to the outside, but Bree wasn’t planning to climb over the fence Marvin Bell had around his compound. She just wanted to look over it, get a sense of how the man lived.

Pinkie motioned to Bree to stop. She did, next to a young, fat pine tree that smelled of sap and blocked her view of the lake.

Looking over his shoulder, Pinkie whispered, “If you get low, slide around in front of me, and stay in the shadows, you should get a good look at it without being seen.”

Bree got down on her hands and knees. Pinkie pressed into the wall of pines there and let her pass. She twisted into a sitting position and used her feet to scoot herself sideways out into a shadowy slot in the trees.

A hundred vertical feet below Bree and one hundred yards closer to the lake was the gravel lane and the gate, which was tall, ten feet, anyway, and the chain-link fence was shrink-wrapped in green vinyl. Bree swept the binoculars along the top of the fence, making out coiled razor wire that had also been shrink-wrapped green.

Tiny cameras were mounted on posts to either side of the gate. There were other cameras on posts every forty yards or so before the fence was swallowed by dense vegetation. She assumed the cameras continued on around the six-acre perimeter and turned her attention to the compound.

Rhododendrons had been planted along the interior of the fence, no doubt to block the view from the gravel lane. But this high above the fence and the bushes, Bree had close to a bird’s-eye view of Marvin Bell’s domain, which featured a small lagoon at her left and a blunt point of flat land that jutted out into the main lake. Set back from the point on a knoll to the right of the lagoon and facing the lake stood the main house, a ten-thousand-square-foot log mansion with a red steel roof and matching shutters.

A beautiful stone terrace with gardens above the lagoon complemented the house. Three stone walkways flared out from a second terrace in front of the mansion, one going to the point, one to a boathouse to the left of the point, and one to a six-bay dock system to the right with lifts that held a fleet of Sea-Doos, motorboats, canoes, and sailboats. There was a bar and a huge barbecue built right into the dock along with lounge chairs and umbrellas.

Out on the point itself stood a miniature version of the main house from which, Bree imagined, the views must be incredible. She could see through several of the large and dramatic windows into the main building and could tell no expense had been spared on the interior. And there was art everywhere — paintings, sculptures, and mobiles.

The place looked like it was worth $3.1 million, no doubt, which raised her suspicions even further. In Bree’s mind, owning some small businesses in Starksville, North Carolina, did not get you a home worth upwards of three million dollars. She supposed Bell could have been successful in the stock market, or maybe one of those Delaware real estate investment companies had gone large.

But if so, why would Marvin Bell stay here? The property looked like a little piece of heaven, she admitted, but didn’t people who hit big money like to show it off in more trendy places?

Maybe Marvin Bell was just a homebody, like Warren Buffett. Or maybe he had a reason to stay here despite the wealth. Maybe he had crucial business to attend to.

Before she could weigh those options, Bree caught motion and swung the binoculars to see Finn Davis exiting the mansion. The rest of the estate was quiet and empty. The only sounds — kids laughing, a distant outboard motor — came from well down the shore.

Wearing dark sunglasses, a dirty ball cap, a green work shirt, jeans, and heavy boots, Finn Davis moved in an easy saunter around the circular driveway to a five-bay log garage. He pressed a remote control. A door raised, revealing an old orange-and-white Ford Bronco.

Where was he going in that heap? Looked totally out of place on...

Bree rolled out of her sitting position, scooted back behind the pines, and jumped up.

“We have to get back to the car,” she whispered to Pinkie. “Fast!”

Lake Worth, Florida

Detective Sergeant Drummond parked outside the Kersmon Caribbean Restaurant, and the three of us went in. Althea, the owner and cook, saw Drummond and rushed out from behind a counter to hug him, laughing.

“You leave your old lady for me yet, Drummond?” Althea asked in a Jamaican accent.

“You know she’s one in a million,” the sergeant replied.

“I do,” Althea said. “Just checking to see if you’d lost your mind since I last saw you.”

Drummond introduced us, and she found us a seat in the small restaurant.

“Something to drink?” Althea asked. “Red Stripe?”

Johnson looked at Drummond, who said, “You’re off duty. Don’t mind me.”

“Red Stripe,” Johnson said.

“Make it two,” I said.

Drummond said, “Don’t bother with menus, Althea. Just bring us what you think we should be eating. Some of it should be fish.”

That seemed to make her happy, and she went off.

“You’ll be ruined for Jamaican food for life,” Drummond said. “I’m not kidding. Half the customers are from the Caribbean.”

“I won’t be able to tell my wife,” I said. “She loves Jamaica. Me too.”

“Yeah?” Drummond said. “I’m fond of it myself.”

I looked at Johnson, wanting to include him. “You ready to be a dad, Detective?”

“I don’t know.”

“Were you?” Drummond asked me. “Ready?”

“No,” I said. “All I knew was I didn’t want to be like my father.”

“That work out?”

“Pretty much,” I said, and turned back to Johnson. “Don’t worry. You just sort of grow into the job, day by day.”

The beers came. So did small bowls of what Althea called fish tea, which was delicious, along with a basket of fresh zucchini bread, which was also delicious. No way I was telling Bree about this place.

“So, did you see anything we missed, Dr. Cross?” Johnson asked.

“Call me Alex,” I said. “And I don’t think you missed anything, but there are a few things I’m not clear on and a few things you might consider.”

“Okay...” Drummond said.

“Just to make sure we’re all on the same page,” I said. “You’ve got Lisa Martin and Ruth Abrams, wealthy socialites killed within a week of each other and made to look like suicides.”

“That’s right,” Johnson said.

“Friends?”

“Apparently so,” the sergeant said.

“Beyond that, they shared the same maid, Francie Letourneau, who stole jewelry from both women before being murdered herself.”

“Correct,” Johnson said. “We got confirmation from the husbands on pictures we showed them of several jewelry pieces found at Francie’s apartment.”

“Francie told the bar owner in Belle Glade—”

Althea returned with a tray. Fried plantains. Rice and black beans. Oxtail stew. And a whole steamed and spiced grouper. Definitely not telling Bree.

We dug in. The oxtail was simply incredible. So was the grouper. So were the second and third Red Stripes. I’d forgotten how easily they go down.

Once we were into second helpings, I said, “Francie told the bar owner in the Glade she was coming to Palm Beach for a job interview the day she died.”

“That’s right,” Drummond said. “Only we haven’t found a damn thing to say she ever made it to Palm. She just disappears.”