P. Parrish - Thicker Than Water

“No.”

“You don’t work with Brian either, do you?”

“No.”

“What are you doing here then?”

“I’m a private investigator.”

She nodded, pursing her lips. “Working for who?”

“Jack Cade.”

She stared blankly at him for a moment, then leaned forward and snuffed her cigarette out. When she sat back again, her eyes weren’t so puppy-like anymore. “You work for the man who killed my husband and you come to my home expecting me to talk to you? What, are you nuts or just stupid?”

Okay. Fun and games were obviously over.

“I’m just trying to get to the bottom of some things, Mrs. Duvall,” he said. “I’d like to just ask you a few questions-”

“I’m sure you would.”

“Did you know your husband was divorcing you?”

He waited, watching Candace Duvall’s face. Damn. Nothing. No surprise, no flinch, no nothing. If the woman knew anything, she was a hell of an actress.

A flash of color caught Louis’s eye and he looked to the large windows over Candace Duvall’s shoulder. Someone had come onto the patio. A young man in a red Speedo. Tall, tanned, lithe as an Olympic swimmer, with flowing dark hair. He stood at the pool for a moment, then dove in, slicing the water as cleanly as a dolphin.

“I think you should go.”

Louis looked back at Candace Duvall. There wasn’t a trace of warmth left in those brown eyes now.

“Mrs. Duvall-”

She jumped to her feet. “Luisa!” she bellowed.

“Hey, calm down-”

“I gave my statement to the police,” she said. “I don’t have to talk to you. Now get out. Luisa!”

Louis put up his hands. “All right, I’m going.”

The maid appeared.

“Show this man out,” Candace said. “If he won’t go, call the police.”

Louis went quickly to the door, the little maid at his heels.

“You better go,” she whispered, opening the bronze door.

Louis put up a hand to prop the door open over the maid’s head. He glanced back at the foyer. Candace Duvall had disappeared.

“Who else is staying here?” he asked the maid.

“What?” she said.

“Who was that guy out at the pool?”

The maid frowned. “There is no one else here.” She pushed on the door.

“Is that your car?” Louis pointed at the blue Toyota.

The maid looked like he had asked her if that was her hearse. “No! Is not mine. Now, please leave! Or I will-”

“Okay, okay.”

The door closed. Louis stood for a moment on the tiled portico. With a glance up at the security camera, he went back to his Mustang. He got in, sitting there without starting the engine. He looked back at the huge white house.

He hadn’t expected the place to be draped with black cloth or anything. But Spencer Duvall had been killed just before filing for divorce and his widow wasn’t exactly putting out grief vibes.

Hell, what kind of vibes had Candace Duvall been putting out? She hadn’t been flirting; he knew when a woman was coming on to him, and she certainly wasn’t. But there had been something clearly sexual about her.

The guy out at the pool. Did Candace have a lover?

Louis stared up at the white house, his mind and senses working. Her look, her hair, her smell-damn, that was it-her smell. Shit, he knew that smell. Candace Duvall had just been clearly, unquestionably, royally, laid.

Louis pulled out a notebook and jotted down the license number of the blue Toyota, noting it was from Dade, not Lee County. He started the Mustang and threw it into reverse. But then he paused.

Something was bugging him. His senses were clicking back, trying to recall what he had seen. What he had smelled.

The slender figure in the red bathing suit came into his head again.

Oh geez. .

Candace Duvall had a lover all right. But it wasn’t a man.

Louis leaned back against the headboard and put on his glasses. He was going through the newspaper clips again and he focused now on the feature about Spencer Duvall, the one with the local-boy-makes-good angle. He had only skimmed it before, but now, after what Ellie Silvestri had told him and what he had seen at the Duvall mansion, he wanted to try to get a better picture of the man himself.

Spencer Duvall, the article said, was from Matlacha, a tiny island north of Fort Myers. Matlacha was barely bigger than the two-lane causeway road that connected it to Pine Island on the west and the mainland on the east. Matlacha-it was pronounced Mat-la-SHAY, for some reason-was home to some old motels, a few downtrodden marinas, a number of psychics and more than a few colorful watering holes, including the infamous Lob Lolly and Mulletville. Louis only knew Matlacha because Dodie was always dragging him out there to his favorite restaurant, the Snook Inn.

Duvall’s mother had been a waitress and his father a charter boat worker and fishing guide. Duvall’s older brother had served time for armed robbery and died in a car accident when he was just twenty-three. Duvall, on the other hand, had gone to Florida State on scholarships and come home to open his law practice in downtown Fort Myers.

Duvall had married his college sweetheart, Candace Kolke, from Quincy, a small town up near Tallahassee. They had lived in Fort Myers until 1969, when they moved to a home on Bayview Lane on Sanibel Island. Two years ago, they had razed the old house, bought the lot next door and built the white monster. It had recently been on the cover of Florida Design magazine. The Duvalls also had a ski lodge in Aspen and a “small villa” overlooking Baie de Saint Jean on St. Barts.

Louis took off his glasses. Baloney sandwiches and sand in the shoes, Ellie Silvestri had said. Why was he getting the feeling he was the one being fed a bunch of baloney?

It was starting to rain again, just as it had almost every night this week. He tossed the article aside and got up off the bed. In the kitchen, he exchanged the empty Dr Pepper for a Heineken and shut the refrigerator, leaning against it.

Spencer Duvall might have started out humble, but it looked like he got used to living the good life pretty easily, no matter what Ellie Silvestri chose to believe.

He took a drink of beer. Rich people. He had dealt with them before-many of his PI clients had more money than God. And then there were the Lillihouses back in Mississippi, putting on a facade as fancy as the one on their antebellum mansion. The rich he had known went around making their messes and then hiring other people-people like him-to clean them up.

He took another drink of the beer. Why was he in such a sour mood? He knew the answer. The deeper he got into the case, the more disgusted he was getting with the players in it.

Spencer Duvall, the warrior lawyer who made a bundle getting killers and rapists off. Candace, his bitchy-itchy wife. Lyle Bernhardt, the squirrely partner, and Brian Brenner, the weasel house-wrecker. And the Cades. . pathetic Ronnie and his creepo father.

God, what a bunch of losers.

The rain was beating on the roof. Palmetto pounders, that’s what they called big storms here. He looked back at his hand, flexed it and started back to the bedroom.

He heard the slam of the screen door and quickly after, a woman’s voice.

“Kincaid?”

Louis squinted, seeing a shadow in the gloom out on the porch.

“Kincaid? It’s me, Susan Outlaw.”

He moved to the open front door. She was standing on the porch, soaked, her hair matted to head, water running down her face.

“Mrs. Outlaw,” he said, stepping back to let her enter.

She didn’t move. “Just what the hell are you and Jack Cade trying to pull?” she said.

“What?”