A Garden of Vipers

CHAPTER 15

Harry and I studied records until our eyes crossed, about four hours. I ran home, grabbed some sleep, was back at it in the morning, coffee replacing the beer. After two hours Harry tossed a pile of pages on the floor.

“I can’t take shrink-jarg for four hours at a stretch. Let’s go beat the streets.”

I rubbed my eyes, stretched my back.

“How about we divide up what’s left, work on it solo every day. Half hour minimum. We’ll get through it in a week to ten days.”

We beat the streets, reinterviewing everyone in Taneesha’s phone book, talking to her family, tracking down our snitches to offer money for anything they could dig up. At five we headed home. My path took me a few miles out of my way, passing by Dani’s place on the edge of downtown.

Her car wasn’t in the driveway. I walked to her porch and rang the bell. There was no response, and I considered letting myself in with my key and waiting.

“Carson?” I heard my name called in a quavering female voice. I turned to see Leanna Place, Dani’s elderly next-door neighbor. She gestured me over like I was a servant.

“Come over, Carson. Look what’s here.”

I sighed, not in the mood for Ms. Place. She thought dating a cop was too coarse for Dani, below her station. Ms. Place always pretended to be solicitous of my health and welfare, all the while launching small, backhanded missiles.

I followed her inside her tidy home. Beside the threshold was a huge vase of flowers. At least I assumed a vase was beneath the explosion of color and scent. Roses and tulips and carnations reached to my waist.

“It’s for DeeDee,” Ms. Place said. Like most, she used Dani’s television name. “The flowers came an hour ago. DeeDee wasn’t home so I took the delivery. Aren’t they gorgeous?” She gave me a wry eyebrow. “I wonder who they’re from.”

It rankled that the old shrew thought me incapable of sending flowers.

“Me, maybe?”

She fluffed the blooms like a pillow, then tapped the small envelope wagging from the vase. “The flowers are from Jon-Ella’s, Carson. I’d guess three hundred dollars’ worth. Not something one gets on a policeman’s salary.”

Jon-Ella’s was Mobile’s most hoity-toity florist, over in Spring Hill. I once priced a half dozen roses at Jon-Ella’s, gasped, got them at Winn-Dixie for a quarter of the price.

I avoided telling Ms. Place that euthanasia’s not such a bad idea and toted the flowers back to Dani’s. I let myself in, set the massive arrangement on her dining room table. The sender’s card fluttered before my eyes, a small dot of tape holding it closed.

I left it untouched.

I made it all the way to the bottom of the porch steps before turning back. The tape peeled loose with ease and I slid the card from the envelope to my sweating palm.

Dearest DeeDee…

The beauty of these flowers pales beside your beauty.

Love and Hot Kisses,

Buck

I left the flowers in the small vestibule outside the front door, where a delivery person would set them. I don’t remember driving home.

I was sitting on my deck in the dark, clothing optional this time of night, nearing midnight. The wind had picked up, a hot breath keeping the mosquitoes at bay. Far across the water a drill rig flamed off gas, orange fire pressing indigo sky. There was a high whine in the back of my head.

My dining room table was filled with my half of Rudolnick’s files. I’d put in a half hour of reviewing, pushed them away, come outside to think about nothing, Dani included.

My cell phone rang from the table beside me. Dani, her voice a tight whisper.

“Carson, I think someone’s been in my house.”

“A break-in? Are the cops there?”

A hesitation. “I didn’t call them.”

“Why not?”

“It’s that there’s no…that is, the alarm didn’t go off.”

“Where’d they get in? Door? Window?”

“It’s not that there’s actually, uh…I’m scared, Carson. That much I know. Can you come over?”

When I pulled to the curb in front of Dani’s house, I saw her at the window, backlit, the curtain pushed aside. Her outline was hauntingly beautiful, and I felt an ache simultaneously within me and far away. She opened the door as I stepped to the porch.

“Thanks for coming so fast.”

I brushed past and left her hug hanging in the air. Her front closet held the alarm center. No lights were flashing to indicate a breach.

“You haven’t reset anything, have you?” I asked. “Moved the parameters higher?” The detection modes were set to thresholds so the system didn’t dial cops every time mail dropped through the door slot.

She shook her head. “Haven’t touched it.”

“No windows open, doors unlatched?”

“No.”

“Might I ask why you think someone’s been inside?”

She beckoned me to follow her upstairs. Passing her bedroom, I glanced inside. An unmade bed, the covers a tangle, a big tangle.

It seemed I could smell flowers coming from the room.

Dani led me to her office, shelves of books and magazines, a couple of billowing ferns beside the window, a ceiling fan. The space was centered by a large teakwood desk. There was a credenza behind it, a chair between them. She pointed an accusatory finger at the chair.

“Someone was at my desk.”

“How do you know?”

She sat, turned to the computer monitor. “I touch-type about seventy-five words a minute. I focus on the screen, watch the words. Because I never take my eyes away, everything’s set up to grab it efficiently. Like a blind person, maybe. Watch.”

She opened a blank screen, began typing, her eyes riveted to the monitor. I stood beside her and watched the words race across the screen.

I’m writing a story, Carson, but now I’ve decided I want to make a note, so I reach for a pencil…

Her hand reached out to a mug of pencils. Two inches past her fingertips. She drew her hand back, kept typing.

See? Too far away. I’m back writing my story. Uh-oh, I need to confirm some facts with a source. So I reach for the phone…

She reached. This time her hand was an inch or so to the right.

Suddenly I decide I need a telephone number. It’s in my PDA. Still banging away, I reach behind me to its usual place, right on the corner edge of the credenza, but…

Her hand swung behind her, fingernails tapping the edge of the credenza, the PDA a book’s-width away. She turned to me.

“See?”

“Maybe you were having an off day. About an inch off. I’m not trying to be funny.”

“I’ve been working like this for eight years. My office at the station is set up the same way. Someone was here, moving things.”

“You’ve checked your files? Anything missing?”

She opened the bottom desk drawer. A few hanging folders, scant pages in them. “Nothing I can see. No active stories. No names of people or companies being investigated, no secret meetings, no incriminating papers. All I have are outdated notes. What should I do?”

I cleared my throat. “There’s no evidence someone’s been in here. It’s based on…ergonomics.”

Her pink nails clacked on the credenza. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“I’m not sure what I believe anymore, Dani.”

She frowned. “That’s a strange thing to say, Carson.”

“Where are the flowers, Dani?”

A pause. “What flowers?”

“You haven’t seen Ms. Place, I take it? I stopped by earlier. She accepted a few hundred dollars’ worth of posies. I brought them over here.”

“Uh, they’re in my bedroom. They were from the station. Uh, because of me being made an anch-”

“Save yourself some lying. I read the card.”

All color drained from her face. “Carson…”

“I heard your phone message the other night, too. When did you start fucking Buck Kincannon? Recently? Or all along?”

She closed her eyes. Swayed. At that moment I would have let her fall.

“We, Buck and me…were dating before you and I met. It was over a year ago, obviously. What you’re thinking, it’s not…”

I mimed pulling a card from an envelope, like at an awards show. Or from a florist’s delivery.

“And my final question is…”

“Please don’t, Carson.”

“Have you been to bed with Buck Kincannon recently? The past month?”

Her fists balled into knots. Tears streamed down her face. “Carson,” she whispered.

“Answer me!” I screamed.

She closed her eyes. Took a deep breath.

Said, “Yes.”

“You’ve got some items at my house, Ms. Danbury,” I said. “I’ll leave them on your porch in a day or two.”