Карл Хайасен - Squeeze Me

The chief smiled. “Greed makes people stupid. We like that.”

He was looking at Angie in a way that usually would have triggered her letch radar, but he seemed like a decent guy. Nonetheless, she made a point of eyeing his wedding band long enough for him to notice her noticing.

“What happened to your arm?” he asked.

“Didelphis virginiana,” she said. “Possum nailed me.”

“Know what? If I could trade this homicide case for an infected opossum bite, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

“Once Uric Burns is locked up, you need to call a press conference and let Diego off the hook. Because you know he’s innocent. Right, Jerry?”

In the breast pocket of Crosby’s uniform was the little pink pearl he’d found on the railroad tracks. He took it out and held it up for Angie to see.

“Ah ha! Now it’s your turn to tell me a story,” she said.

“When the time’s right.”

Lady Gaga interrupted—Angie’s phone ringing. This time the spoofed caller ID showed a South Dakota area code. She said, “That’s my six o’clock stalker. Wanna say hi?”

The chief reached for her phone. “Sure, why not.”

—

Mockingbird had never heard of conch pearls until her husband mentioned them during his press conference, which she was forced to watch while on a treadmill at Casa Bellicosa. The gym had been cleared out for security before the First Lady arrived, but every muted television in the place was tuned to Mastodon’s golf-course monologue about Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons, complete with word captioning. Having dodged the haughty Potussies as a group, Mockingbird couldn’t recall if she’d ever met the dead woman. She was, however, intrigued by her husband’s depiction of the stolen jewels.

After finishing her workout, Mockingbird hurried upstairs and went online to research the pearls; they looked delicate and sensuous, glistening in the dark wet palms of Bahamian boatmen. The First Lady wondered why at least one of the Hadids or even Gwyneth hadn’t tweeted about these trendy tropical gems. Fluidly she scrolled through the websites of Tiffany and other high-end jewelry stores, most of which offered small selections of handmade pieces. However, in the advertisements, the individual pearls appeared puny and pallid.

An aide dispatched by Mockingbird to scour Worth Avenue located a pair of conch-pearl earrings styled by Mikimoto. The sales clerk couldn’t say for certain where in the Caribbean the mother shells had been harvested, so Mockingbird passed without even asking the price. She wanted only wild island specimens.

There was a light triple-knock on the door, and Agent Keith Josephson appeared. He was escorting a server who bore a silver tray holding a plate of avocado slices, a modest wedge of Belgian cheese, seven fried kale chips and a tall glass of room-temperature papaya juice. The name pin on the young man’s uniform said “Spalding” and, beneath that in smaller letters, “Cape Town.” It was a practice at Casa Bellicosa to include the hometowns of the employees—not to honor their diverse backgrounds so much as to reassure club members that the staff was being recruited from cultures that were educated, tidy, and unthreatening.

When Mockingbird spotted the young man’s name pin, she said, “Spalding, do you have conch shells down in Cape Town?”

The First Lady had never before spoken to him, so Spalding’s response betrayed a touch of the jitters. He said, “Actually, South Africa is world-famous for its sea shells. The beaches are covered with them. People come from everywhere—”

“Yes, but only queen conchs make pearls this color.” She repositioned her laptop to show him the pictures.

“I can follow up on that for you,” he said. “My little brother dives at Jeffreys Bay.”

“That’s so kind of you. Let me know what he says, please.” Mockingbird gave him the smile that she saved for men who’d been led to believe she was icy and stuck-up.

Spalding was appropriately charmed. He took his time laying out the First Lady’s lunch selections on the coffee table.

“Keith, I need to speak to you,” she said to the Secret Service man, “after you take Spalding wherever he needs to go now.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

Mockingbird closed her laptop, popped a kale chip in her mouth and, while chewing, said, “My afternoon schedule has changed. I told Leena to push the disabled Girl Scout awards back an hour because I need some personal time.”

“I’m on it,” said the Secret Service man, who didn’t look like a “Keith” to Spalding. He looked Middle Eastern, though he spoke with an American accent.

He led Spalding down the hall and waited beside him until the elevator arrived. Spalding stepped inside, pressed the button for the first floor, and nodded goodbye. Before the doors began to close, Agent Keith turned away and strode briskly back toward the First Lady’s private quarters.

Spalding peeked out of the elevator. From behind, it appeared that the Secret Service man was loosening his necktie.

TWELVE

Winter residents of Palm Beach inevitably return north forever, either in caskets or urns. Funeral services for Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons were held at her Cape Cod estate, where she’d wanted her ashes scattered.

The Potussies chipped in to charter a mid-sized Citation with a well-stocked minibar. They were plastered by the time the jet touched down, though Fay Alex Riptoad pulled herself together enough to speak movingly at the podium under the lawn tent. Chance and Chase Cornbright were up next, dressed in matching cashmere top coats. They stood side-by-side reading alternate paragraphs from a eulogy that scrolled on a teleprompter laced with black crepe. The Potussies agreed that Kiki Pew would have been embarrassed by her sons’ torpid performance.

Mastodon didn’t attend the chilly seaside event but he sent the Vice President, who’d never met Katherine Fitzsimmons but warmly praised her as a martyred patriot. The VP then launched into seven-and-a-half minutes of stock diatribe about the immigration crisis, citing Kiki Pew’s death as worst-case proof of the dark menace lurking on the edge of America’s borders. If the other mourners were bothered by the naked political exploitation of their friend’s funeral, they didn’t let on. Several chased down Sean Hannity to have their prayer cards autographed before he boarded a Fox helicopter back to Manhattan.

The town of Palm Beach sent an elaborate flower wreath but no official representative. Council members feared setting a costly precedent; scores of prominent part-time residents died every season, and the municipality’s modest travel budget would be sapped by April if the mayor and his wife flew north for every funeral.

As the last crumbs of Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons were being sprinkled from a New England bluff into the Atlantic Ocean, Palm Beach Police Chief Jerry Crosby sat twelve hundred miles away watching videotapes of the back street leading to the service entrance of Lipid House. The footage had been recorded by a security camera at a neighboring generic mansion, but the owner had been vacationing in Bali when Mrs. Fitzsimmons vanished. Once he returned to town, he voluntarily turned over digital files holding a week’s worth of surveillance loops.

The images were of better-than-average quality, and Crosby immediately advanced the time-stamped sequence to the night of the White Ibis Ball. Angela Armstrong’s python hypothesis could be dismissed if Kiki Pew had been recorded alive and well, departing the Lipid House grounds through the rear gates. The videos showed a flurry of party trucks, florist vans, and catering vehicles, but no lone person could be seen leaving on foot from the service driveway from sunset until dawn. Crosby clicked on fast-forward to the end of the file, speeding through the herky-jerky frames until he noticed one particular car turning into the back entrance: