Мэри Эндрюс - The Newcomer

“That’s right. How’d you know?”

“Like I said, I know everybody here, and we all always stay in the same place. Until somebody dies or quits coming. I figure you’re here because Harry Bronson had a heart attack. Him and the wife headed home Monday, which meant their unit was available. It’s one of the nicest ones here, got a great little patio with a Gulf view. Merwin, he thought he and Trudi would move over there, but Ava went and gave it to Letty. So she moved out of the efficiency, which meant that was vacant. See?”

Vikki tried not to act too eager. “Who’s Letty?”

“Oh, she’s the newcomer. Been here two, three weeks. Her and the little girl. Just showed up out of the blue, looking for a place to stay, so Ava moved her into the efficiency, even gave her a job working in the office.”

“Where’d she come from?” Vikki asked.

“I think maybe she said New Jersey? She’s all right. Mostly keeps to herself. But it caused kind of a stir, like I said, because it wasn’t really fair, Ava giving her that room when it should have been Merwin’s. I think Ava felt sorry for her, what with the little kid and everything.”

“I see.” Vikki nodded. “Well, nice to meet you. Guess I’ll go up to the room now.”

The pizza at the joint from down the street, she begrudgingly admitted to herself, was half decent. Nice crisp crust, definitely homemade sauce. Who knew they had good pizza in Florida? She was eating a slice, sitting in the chair by the window, watching the happy hour under the palm tree. She figured the median age of the congregants at seventy-five. No sign of anyone who could be Letty Carnahan, or of the kid.

At seven thirty, her phone rang. She smiled and answered.

“Officer DeCurtis. Thanks for getting back to me.”

“Sorry for the delay. What’s this about?”

“A woman named Scarlett Carnahan. She calls herself Letty. Do you know her?”

There was an extended silence on the other end of the line. While she waited, Vikki picked a pepperoni off the last slice and nibbled at it.

“Why are you asking?”

“She’s a fugitive. Wanted for questioning in the murder of a woman in New York, and the abduction of her child. The victim was her own sister.”

Another long silence. “You flew down here from New York today and checked into my mother’s motel a couple hours ago, right?”

It was Vikki’s turn to be surprised. She didn’t much like the sensation.

“How’d you know that?”

“I make it my business to know who’s staying at the Murmuring Surf. Ever since the incident with Declan Rooney. Your message didn’t mention the fact that you were coming down here.”

“It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. So, when can we talk?”

“There’s a bar just down the beach from the Surf. Called the Ka-Tiki.”

“For real?” Vikki asked. “Is the bartender named Don Ho?”

“I can meet you there in an hour,” DeCurtis said. “I’m wearing a red Atlanta Braves T-shirt and blue board shorts. How will I know you?”

“I’ll be the one not in a Hawaiian shirt,” Vikki said. “See you then.”

Maya held out a handful of tiny red cherry tomatoes. “Look, Letty!” She crammed one in her mouth, the juice oozing down her chin. “I picked them!”

“They’re yummy, right?” her aunt asked.

Their new routine was to sit in the courtyard garden after dinner, watching squadrons of pelicans soar past on the darkening horizon. A wind-down time.

“Where they goin’?” Maya had asked, pointing to the birds in flight.

“I guess they’re going home,” Letty said.

“Where’s home?”

“Good question,” her aunt said. She’d been pondering that for weeks now. Living day to day as she had could not continue, but what was the alternative?

Maya picked up her worksheet. She loved playing school. Writing names was her new passion.

“Spell Letty,” she commanded.

“L-E-T-T-Y,” her aunt said, and Maya laboriously used a red crayon to form her idea of what the letters should be.

“How you spell Ellie?” Maya asked, holding up her stuffed toy.

Letty looked over and smiled. She’d done a sloppy job of stitching the elephant’s wound back together, but Maya didn’t seem to care.

“E-L-L-I-E.” As soon as she’d spelled the word, the light bulb switched on.

“Ellie!” Letty said, sitting upright. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? It was so simple. So obvious.

Ellie. It had to be the password for Tanya’s nanny cam. She reached for her phone and texted Isabelle’s teenage hacker friend, Sierra.

I think I figured out the password!!! Plz call me ASAP.

28

THE KA-TIKI WAS AN OPEN-SIDED, palm-thatched throwback. Kinda like the Murmuring Surf, Vikki Hill thought. She walked into the bar and spotted the cop instantly. He was sitting at a high-top table, sipping a draft beer.

“Joe?” she asked, walking up.

He nodded. “That’s me. You’re Vikki Hill?”

“Agent Hill,” she said, sitting down.

“No offense,” he said, “but could I see some ID? This is kind of a sensitive matter we’re here to discuss, and I’m not comfortable telling a stranger who walks in off the beach anything about Letty Carnahan.”

She pulled a leather badge holder from her purse and handed it across to him. “Satisfied?”

He shrugged.

The server, dressed in skintight shorts and a violently patterned tropical shirt showing off plenty of cleavage, appeared, and Vikki Hill ordered a Michelob Ultra. Joe grimaced and held up his plastic cup. “Try one of the local beers. They’re pretty good.”

“No thanks,” she said. “I know what I like. Now, let’s get down to it, shall we? First off, I don’t want to have to point out that you’re knowingly harboring a fugitive at that motel of yours. I’m meeting with you as a courtesy, but if I want, I can arrest Scarlett Carnahan tonight and turn the kid over to child welfare authorities.”

“What the fuck?” Joe leaned forward, his jaw muscles tensed. “I only agreed to talk to you because you said that was not your intention.”

“It’s still not my intention,” Vikki said.

“Then … what?”

“Let me talk please,” she interrupted. “You know about Scarlett’s connection to a man named Evan Wingfield, correct?”

“Correct,” Joe said tersely. “Letty worked for him, when she first arrived in New York, right? It wasn’t clear to me what her job was.”

“Wingfield owns dozens of Airbnb units all over the city. Mostly Manhattan and Brooklyn, and most of them illegal. From what we can tell, he hired Scarlett as a sort of concierge. He put her up in an apartment in a building where he owns several units. Her duties included making sure the Airbnb guests got into his units quietly, without raising attention from the other tenants in the building. At some point, it appears they began a romantic relationship. But after Tanya moved to the city, Wingfield dumped Letty and took up with the younger sister. She moved in with Wingfield and had his kid.”

“Maya,” Joe said.

“Right. The sisters, naturally, were estranged for a couple years after the kid was born, but then they reconciled—right around the time Wingfield and Tanya broke up. Tanya Carnahan, by all accounts, had some serious substance-abuse issues, a fact that Wingfield tried to use against her when he sued for custody.”

“Wingfield and Tanya weren’t married, right?” Joe asked.

“Correct. But they were domestic partners, and he was listed as father on the kid’s birth certificate.”

“Maya,” Joe interrupted. “Her name is Maya. I still don’t understand how the FBI got involved in all this.”