The Best American Mystery Stories 1998

Stuart M. Kaminsky Find Miriam from New Mystery

“How old would you say I am?”

I looked at the dark handsome man standing next to the railing of his penthouse balcony overlooking Sarasota Bay. He was just a bit bigger than I am, about six feet and somewhere in the range of one hundred and ninety pounds. His open blue shirt, which may have been silk, showed a well-muscled body with a chest of gray-brown hair. The hair on his head was the same color, plentiful, neat. And he was carefully and gently tanned. He had a glass of V-8 in his hand. He had offered me the same. I had settled for water. There was a slight accent, very slight when he spoke and I realized he reminded me of Ricardo Montalban.

I’m forty-four, on the thin side, losing my hair and usually broke or close to it. I’d come to Sarasota two years earlier, just drove till my car gave out and I felt safely in the sunshine after spending my life in the gray of Chicago. I had driven away from a wife who had dumped me and a dead-end investigator’s job with the State’s Attorney’s Office.

Now, I made my living finding people, asking questions, answering to nobody. I had a growing number of Sarasota lawyers using me to deliver a summons or find a local resident who hadn’t turned up for a court or divorce hearing. Occasionally, I would turn up some street trade, a referral from a bartender or Dave the owner of the Dairy Queen next door to the run-down two-story office building where I had my office and where I lived. I had a deal with the building manager. The landlord lived in Seattle. By giving the manager a few extra dollars a month beyond the reasonable rent for a seedy two-room suite, he ignored the fact that I was living in the second room of a two-room office. The outer room was designed as a reception room. I had turned it into an office. The room behind it was a small windowed office which I had turned into a living space. I had fixed it up to my satisfaction and the clothes I had brought with me from Chicago would hold out for another year or two. I had a bed, an old dresser, a sink in the corner, a television set and an aging green sofa and matching armchair. The only real inconvenience was that the office, like all the others, opened onto a balcony with a rusting railing facing a parking lot shared with the Dairy Queen and, beyond it, the heavy traffic of Route 301. To get to the bathroom, which had no bath, I had to walk past five offices and take whatever the weather had to offer. I showered every morning after I worked out at the downtown YMCA.

There was nothing but my name printed on the white-on-black plastic plate that slid into the slot on my door. I wasn’t a private detective, didn’t want to be. I did what I know how to do, ask questions, find people.

“Just a guess,” Raymond Sebastian asked again, looking away from the beautiful sight of the boats bobbing in the bay and the busy bridge going over to Bird Key.

Answering a question like that could lose me a job, but I hadn’t come to this town to go back to saying “yes, boss” to people I liked and didn’t like.

“Sixty,” I guessed, standing a few feet away from him and looking him in the eyes.

“Closer to seventy,” he said with some satisfaction. “I was blessed by the Lord in many ways. My genes are excellent. My mother is ninety-two and still lives in good health. My father died when he was ninety-four. I have uncles, aunts… you wouldn’t believe.”

“Not without seeing them,” I said.

Sebastian laughed. There wasn’t much joy in his laugh. He looked at his now-empty V-8 glass and set it on a glass-top table on the balcony.

“Lawrence told you my problem?” he asked facing me, his gray-blue eyes unblinking, sincere.

“Your wife left. You want to find her. That’s all.”

Lawrence Werring was a lawyer, civil cases, injury law suits primarily, an ambulance chaser and proud of it. It had bought him a beautiful wife, a leather-appointed office and a four bedroom house on the water on Longboat Key. If I knew which one it was, I could probably see it from where Sebastian and I were standing.

“My wife’s name is Miriam,” Sebastian said handing me a folder that lay next to the now-empty V-8 glass. “She is considerably younger than I, thirty-six, but I believed she loved me. I was vain enough to think it was true and for some time it seemed true. And then one afternoon…”

He looked around as if she might suddenly rematerialize.

“…She was gone. I came home and her clothes, jewelry, gone. No note, nothing. That was, let me see, last Thursday. I kept expecting to hear from her or a kidnapper or something, but…”

I opened the folder. There were a few neatly typed pages of biography. I skimmed them. Miriam Latham Sebastian was born in Utah, earned an undergraduate degree in social science at the University of Florida and moved with her parents, now both dead, to Sarasota where she worked for a Catholic services agency as a case worker till she married Sebastian four years earlier. There was also a photograph of Miriam Sebastian. She was wearing red shorts, a white blouse and a great smile. Her dark hair was long and blowing in the breeze. She had her arm lovingly around her husband who stood tall, tan and shirtless in a pair of white trunks looking at the camera. They were standing on the wide sands of a Florida Gulf Coast beach, a few apartments or condos behind them.

“Pretty,” I said closing the folder.

“Beautiful,” he corrected. “Exquisite. Charming.”

“Any guesses?” I said. “About what happened?”

He shrugged and moved from the balcony back into the penthouse apartment. I followed as he talked. We stopped in front of a painting of his wife on the wall over a big white sofa. The whole room was white, but not a modern white. There was a look of tasteful antique about the place. Not my kind of home, but I could appreciate it.

“Another man perhaps, but I doubt it,” he said. “We have had no major quarrels. I denied her nothing, nothing. I am far from a poor man, Mr. Fonesca and…”

He paused and sighed deeply.

“And,” he continued composing himself, “I have checked our joint checking and savings accounts. Most of the money has been removed. A little is left. I have my corporate attorney checking other holdings which Miriam might have had access to. I find it impossible to believe she would simply take as much money as she could and just walk out on me.”

“You had a little hitch in your voice when you mentioned another man,” I said having decided the chairs in the room were too white for me to sit on.

“She has had a good friend,” he said gently. “This is very difficult for me. I am a proud man from a proud family.”

“A good friend?” I repeated.

“For about the last year,” he said, “Miriam has been seeing a psychiatrist, nothing major, problems to be worked out about her childhood, her relationship to her parents. The psychiatrist’s name is Gerald Bermeister. He’s got a practice over one of those antique stores on Palm Avenue. I’m not a young man. I am not immune to jealousy. Gerald Bermeister is both young and good looking. There were times when I could not determine whether my suspicions were simply that of an older man afraid of losing his beautiful young wife or were valid concerns.”

“I’ll check it out,” I said.

“Miriam was a bit of a loner,” he went on. “But because of business connections we belong to a wide variety of organizations, Selby Gardens, Asolo Angels, charity groups, and we’re seen at balls and dances. Miriam said that in three years we had been on the Herald-Tribunes society page eleven times. In spite of this, Miriam had no really close friends with one possible exception, Caroline Wilkerson, the widow of my late partner.”

“And what do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Find her, of course,” Sebastian said turning from the painting to look at me.

“Has she committed a crime?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” he said.

“So, she’s free to go where she wants to go, even to leave her husband, take money out of your joint accounts and wander away. It may be a boyfriend. It may be a lot of things.”

“I just want you to find her,” he said. “I just want to talk to her. I just want to find out what happened and if there is anything I can do to get her back.”

“She could be half way to Singapore by now,” I said.

“Your expense account is unlimited,” he answered. “I will want you to keep me informed if you leave town in search of Miriam and I would expect you would, as a professional, keep expenses to a minimum and give me a full accounting of all such expenses when you find her.”

“If I find her,” I said. “I’ll do my best to find out why she left. I’ll have to ask her if she’s willing to talk to you. I’ll tell you where she is if she gives me permission to tell you.”

“I understand,” he said.

He moved again. I followed into an office where he moved to a desk and picked something up next to a computer.

“Here’s a check in advance,” he said. “Larry said your fee was negotiable. Consider this expenses and, if anything is left, part of your payment. I propose one hundred and twenty dollars a day plus expenses.”

I nodded to show it was fair and took the check. It was made out to me for five hundred dollars. He had been ready and expecting that I’d take the job.

“How long?” I asked.

“How long?”

“Do I keep looking before I give up? I expect to find her, but it may be hard or easy. It may, if she’s really smart, be impossible.”

“Let’s say we re-evaluate after two week’s if it goes that long,” he said. “But I want her back if it’s at all possible. I’m too old to start again and I love Miriam. Do you understand?”

I nodded, tucked the folder under my arm after dropping the check into it and asked him for the numbers of any credit cards they shared, the tag number and make of her car and various other things that would make my job easier.

While he found what I asked for he admitted, “I tried going to the police first, but they said they really had no reason to look for Miriam unless I thought she might be dangerous to herself or had been taken against her will. They also said I could file a missing persons report but there was little they could do even if they found her other than inform me that she was alive and well, unless she had committed a crime, which she hadn’t. I’m talking too much.”

“It’s understandable,” I said as he ushered me to the door and handed me an embossed business card, tasteful, easily readable black script: Raymond Sebastian, Investments, Real Estate. There was an office address and phone number in the lower left-hand corner. He had written his home phone number on the back of the card but I already had that.

“Keep me informed,” he said taking my hand. “Call any time. As often as you like.”

He waited with me at the elevator. His was the only apartment on the floor, but he was on the twelfth floor and the elevator took a few minutes.

“Anything else I can tell you?” he asked.

“She have any living relatives?”

“No, it’s all in the material I’ve given you,” he said. “Just me. I don’t think she’s gone far. We’ve traveled all around the world, but she considers the Gulf Coast her home. I could be wrong.”

“I’m going to start with her friend Mrs. Wilkerson,” I said.

“Good idea though I don’t know what Caroline can tell you that I haven’t. Yet, maybe there was something said, some… I don’t know.”

The elevator bell rang and the doors opened. I stepped in and smiled confidently at Raymond Sebastian who now looked a little older than he had on his balcony.

When I’m not working, I bike. Not a motorcycle. A bike. Sarasota isn’t that big and it has a good cheap bus system that not enough people use. When I’m on a case, I rent a car and charge it to my client. I had left my bike, an old one-speed, chained to a tree. No one had taken my battered bike pack. It wasn’t worth the effort and besides, we were a little off the regular haunts of Sarasota’s downtown homeless. I put the folder in the bike pack, took off the chain and dropped it into the second pouch of the pack. I biked. It was summer, the day was hot. I pedaled to my place behind the Dairy Queen on 301. I pedaled slowly. I was wearing my best clothes — sport jacket, pressed pants, white shirt — and I didn’t want to get them sweat drenched if I could help it.

When I got back to my office, I made three calls. First, I called the little independent car rental company I used and we agreed on our usual deal. I said I’d be over to pick up a Toyota Tercel within the hour. Then I called Caroline Wilkerson, who was in the phone book, and made an appointment with her that afternoon. She said she was worried about Miriam and Raymond and would be happy to talk to me. I called Dr. Gerald Bermeister, got a typical he’ll-call-you-back. I told her it was urgent, about Miriam Sebastian. The woman put me on hold for a minute so I could listen to the Beach Boys and then came back on to say Dr. Bermeister could see me for fifteen minutes at four-forty-five. I said I’d be there.

I put on my jeans and a black pull-over tee shirt, washed my face and went down to the DQ where I had a burger and a Blizzard and talked to Dave who owned the place. Dave was probably about my age but years of working in the sun on his boat had turned his skin to dark leather. I’m a sucker for junk food and I’ve got no one to tell me to eat well. Dave doesn’t eat his own food, but I knew he kept the place clean. I worked out every day at the YMCA where I biked every day and told myself that covered the burgers, fried chicken, ribs and hot dogs. I could tell myself lies. Who was there to contradict me?

I walked to the car rental office about a mile and a half north on 301, past antique shops, a girlie bar, a pawn shop, some offices and restaurants, a rebuilt and new tire garage and a Popeye’s chicken. I had worked up a sweat when I got the car. I turned on the air conditioning and headed for Sebastian’s bank where I cashed the check for five hundred. Then I drove back to my office and my room to wash and change into my good clothes.

Caroline Wilkerson met me at the Cafe Kaldi on Main Street. I had no trouble finding her even though the coffee house tables were almost full in spite of the absence of the winter tourists. She sat alone, an open notebook in front of her, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. She was writing. A cup of coffee rested nearby. I recognized her from the society pages of the Herald-Tribune. When I sat across from her, she looked at me over her glasses, took them off, folded her hands on the table and gave me her attention.

The widow Caroline was a beauty, better in person than in the papers. She was probably in her late forties, short, straight silver hair, a seemingly wrinkle-free face with full red lips that reminded me of Joan Fontaine. She wore a pink silky blouse with a pearl necklace and pearl earrings and a light-weight white jacket.

“Would you like to order a coffee?” she asked.

“No, thanks,” I said. “I’ve had my quota for the day.”

She nodded, understanding, and took a sip of her coffee.

“Miriam Sebastian,” I said. “You know she’s apparently left her husband?”

“Raymond told me,” she said. “Called. Frantic. Almost in tears. I couldn’t help him. She hasn’t contacted me. I would have thought, as Raymond did, that if Miriam did something like this, she’d get in touch with me, but…”

Caroline Wilkerson shrugged.

“Did they have a fight?”

A trio of young women suddenly laughed loudly a few tables behind me. When they stopped, Caroline Wilkerson closed her notebook.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I can’t be certain. But Raymond said nothing about a fight and I don’t recall ever seeing them fight or hearing from Miriam that they had fought. Frankly, I’m worried about her.”

“Any idea of where she might have gone?” I asked.

The pause was long. She bit her lower lip, made up her mind, sighed. “Gerry Bermeister,” she said softly meeting my eyes. “He’s her analyst and… I think that’s all I can say.”

“Mr. Sebastian thinks his wife and Dr. Bermeister might have had an affair, that she may have left to be with him.”

She shrugged again. I handed her one of my cards, asked her to get in touch with me if she heard from Miriam Sebastian, and said that she should tell her friend that her husband simply wanted to know what happened and if he could talk to her.

She took the card and I stood up.

“I hope you find her,” she said. “Miriam has had problems recently, depression. One of her relatives, her only close relative, a cousin I think, recently died. That’s hardly a reason for what she’s done, but… I frankly don’t know what to make of it.”

At the moment, that made two of us.

“Are you permitted to let me know if you find out anything about where Miriam is and why she’s…”

I must have been shaking my head “no” because she stopped. “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’ll have to get that from her or from Mr. Sebastian. Whatever I find is between me and my client.”

“I understand,” she said with a sad smile showing perfect white teeth. “That’s what I would expect if you were working for me.” When I got to the coffee house door, I looked back at Caroline Wilkerson. Her half glasses were back on and her notebook was open.

One of the criminal attorneys I did some work for had access to computer networks, very sophisticated access. An individual in his office did the computer work and was well paid. Since some of what he did on the network was on the borderline of illegal, the attorney never acknowledged his access to information the police, credit agencies, banks and almost every major corporation had. I had some time before I saw Bermeister so I dropped by the attorney’s office. He was with a client but he gave me permission through his secretary to talk to Harvey, the computer whiz. I found Harvey in his small windowless office in front of his computer. Harvey looked more like an ex-movie star than a computer hacker. He was tall, dark, wearing a suit and sporting shot hair of gold. Harvey was MIT. Harvey was also a convicted cocaine user and former alcoholic.

It took Harvey ten minutes to determine that Miriam Sebastian had not used any of her credit cards during the past four days. Nor had she, at least under her own name, rented a car or taken a plane out of Sarasota, Clearwater, St. Petersburg, Tampa or Fort Meyers.

“You want me to keep checking every day to see if I can find her?” he said.

“I’ll bill my client,” I said.

“Suit yourself,” said Harvey showing capped teeth. “I like a challenge like this, pay or no pay. Me against her. She hides. I find her.”

“You want her Social Security number?” I asked.

Harvey smiled.

“That I can get and access to bank accounts and credit cards. You want that?”

“Sure. I’ll call you later.”

I made it to Dr. Bermeister’s office with ten minutes to spare. The matronly receptionist took my name and asked me to have a seat. The only other person in the waiting area was a nervous young woman, about twenty, who hadn’t done much to look her best. Her hair was short and dark. Her brown skirt didn’t really go with her gray blouse. She ruffled through a magazine.

I was reading an article about Clint Eastwood in People magazine when Bermeister’s door opened. He was in his thirties, dark suit, dark hair and ruggedly good looking.

“I’ll be with you in a few minutes, Audrey,” he said to the nervous Audrey who nodded frowning.

“Mr. Fonesca?” he said looking at me. “Please come in.”

I followed him into his office. He opened his drapes and let in the sun and a view of Ringling Boulevard. The office wasn’t overly large, room for a desk and chair, a small sofa and two armchairs. The colors were all subdued blues. A painting on the wall showed a woman standing on a hill looking into a valley beyond at the ruins of a castle. Her face wasn’t visible.

“Like it?” Bermeister said sitting behind his desk and offering me the couch or one of the chairs. I took a chair so I could face him. “The painting? Yes,” I said.

“One of my patients did it,” he said. “An artist. A man. We spent a lot of time talking about that painting.”

“Haunting,” I said.

“Gothic,” he said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Fonesca, but I’m going to have to get right to your questions.”

“I understand. Miriam Latham Sebastian,” I said.

“I can’t give you any information about why she was seeing me, what was said.”

“I know,” I said feeling comfortable in the chair. “Do you know where Mrs. Sebastian is?”

“No,” he said.

The answer had come slowly.

“Any ideas?”

“Maybe,” he said.

“Want to share them?” I asked.

He didn’t answer.

“This one will probably get me kicked out, but you’re in a hurry. Mr. Sebastian, and he’s not the only one, thinks you and Miriam Sebastian were having an affair.”

Bermeister cocked his head and looked interested.

“And if we were?”

“Or are,” I amended. “Well, it might suggest that she would come to you. Her husband just wants to talk to her.”

“And you just want to find her for him?” he asked.

“That’s it,” I said.

“First,” he said getting up from his desk chair. “I am not and have not been having an affair with Miriam Sebastian. In fact, Mr. Fonesca, I can offer more than ample proof that I am gay. It is a relatively open secret which, in fact, hasn’t hurt my practice at all. I get the gay clients, men and women, and I get women who feel more comfortable talking to me. What I don’t get are many straight men.”

“Mrs. Sebastian,” I said.

“She doesn’t want to see her husband,” he said sitting on the sofa and crossing his legs. “She doesn’t want him to know where she is.”

“I told Sebastian that I planned to talk to her if I found her and that I wouldn’t tell her husband where she was if she told me she wouldn’t talk to him under any circumstances.”

“Which,” said Bermeister, “is what she would say.”

“I want to hear it from her,” I said. “Until I do, she can’t use a credit card, can’t cash a check in her own name, can’t use her Social Security number without my finding her. My job is finding people, doctor. I do a good job. If you want references…”

His right hand was up indicating that I should stop. He looked up at the painting of the woman looking down at the ruins.

“I made some calls about you after I scheduled this appointment,” he said. “Actually, Doreen, my secretary, made the calls. You haven’t been here long, but your reputation is very good.”

“Small city,” I said.

“Big enough,” he said taking a pad out of his pocket and writing something. He tore the page out and looked at it.

“I have your word,” he said.

“I talk to her. Try to talk her into at least a phone call and then I drop it if she wants to be left alone.”

He handed me the sheet of paper. It had two words on it: Harrington House. I folded the sheet and put it in my jacket pocket.

“I don’t want people hounding Miriam,” he said. “She… she can tell you why if she wants to. By the way, I plan to call her the instant you leave. She may choose to pack and leave before you get there.”

“I think it would be a good idea if she just talked to me.”

“I think you may be right,” he said. “I’ll suggest that she do so.” He ushered me to the door and shook my hand.

“I’m trusting you,” he said.

I nodded and he turned to the nervous young woman.

“I have to make one quick call, Audrey,” he said smiling at her. She had no response and he disappeared back into his office.

I was parked in front of the hardware store on Main. I stopped at an outdoor phone booth where there was a complete phone book and had no trouble finding Harrington House. It was in Holmes Beach, a Bed and Breakfast. That was on Anna Maria Island. I’d been there to try to find the house where Georges Simenon had lived for a while. The house was gone. I called Harvey the computer whiz.

“Miriam Latham Sebastian has been turning her investments into cash and emptying her joint bank accounts,” he said happily. “I’ve got a feeling there’s more.”

“Keep at it,” I said.

I hung up and wondered why Dr. Gerald Bermeister had been so cooperative. I considered calling Harvey back and asking him to check on the good doctor, but decided that could wait.

I got into my rented car, flipped on the air conditioner and eased back through a break in traffic. I made a left and then another left and then another which brought me right back to Bermeister’s office building. I got out fast, ran into the office building, rode the elevator up to Bermeister’s floor and then rode back down again and got into my car.

The blue Buick was idling half way down the block near the curb. He had followed me around the block and was waiting for me now. I hoped I had given the impression of someone who had left something in the doctor’s office.

I had noticed the blue Buick when I picked up my rental car, but it hadn’t really registered. I hadn’t been looking for someone who might be following me. But I had spotted what I thought was the same car when I came out of the Cafe Kaldi. Now I was sure. I eased past the Buick, looking both ways at the intersection and catching a glimpse of the man behind the wheel. This guy was short, wore a blue short-sleeve shirt and looked, from the color of his hair and sag of his tough face, about fifty.

There must have been lots of reasons for someone to follow me, but I couldn’t think of any good ones other than that the guy in the Buick was hoping I would lead him to Miriam Sebastian. I could have been dead wrong, but I didn’t take chances.

He was a good driver, a very good driver, and he kept up with me as I headed for Tamiami Trail. I pulled into the carry-out lane at the McDonald’s across from the airport hoping he would follow me in line. I even timed it so a car would be behind me other than the Buick which was the way the guy who was following me would want it, too. My plan was to order a sandwich and pull away while the Buick was stuck behind the car behind me. If I was lucky, there would also be a car behind him so he couldn’t back up.

He was too smart. He simply drove around and parked between a van and a pick-up truck in the parking lot.

Hell. I decided it was all-out now. He had almost certainly figured I had spotted him by now, and I didn’t have time to keep playing tag. Miriam Sebastian might be gone by the time I got to Harrington House which was still at least forty minutes from where I took my cheeseburger, put it on the seat next to me and peeled off fast to the right, away from the direction I wanted to go. In the rear-view, I watched the Buick back out as I sailed at sixty down Route 41. He was good, but there’s a definite advantage in being the one who is followed. It took me ten minutes to lose him. By then I guessed he knew I wasn’t going to lead him to Miriam Sebastian. I ate the burger while I drove.

I took the bridge across to St. Armand’s, the same bridge you could see from Raymond Sebastian’s apartment, and then drove straight up Longboat Key through the canyon of high-rise resorts and past streets that held some of the most expensive houses, mansions and estates in the county.

I went over the short bridge at the end of the Key and drove through the far less up-scale and often ramshackle hotels and rental houses along the water in Bradenton Beach. Ten minutes later, I spotted the sign for Harrington House and pulled into the shaded driveway. I parked on the white crushed shell and white pebble lot which held only two other cars.

Harrington House was a white three-floor 1920s stucco over cement block with green wooden shutters. There were flowers behind a low picket fence and a sign to the right of the house pointing toward the entrance. I walked up the brick path for about a dozen steps and came to a door. I found myself inside a very large lodge-style living room with a carpeted dark wooden stairway leading up to a small landing and, I assumed, rooms. There were book cases whose shelves were filled and a chess table with checkers lined up and ready to go. The big fireplace was probably original and used no more than a few days during the Central Florida winter.

I hit the bell on a desk by the corner next to a basket of wrapped bars of soap with a sketch of the house on the wrapper. I smelled a bar and was doing so when a blonde woman came bouncing in with a smile. She was about fifty and seemed to be full of an energy I didn’t feel. I put down the soap.

“Yes sir?” she said. “You have a reservation.”

“No,” I said. “I’m looking for Miriam Sebastian, a guest here.” Some of the bounce left the woman but there was still a smile when she said, “No guest by that name registered.”

I pulled out the photograph Raymond Sebastian had given me and showed it to her. She took it and looked long and hard.

“Are you a friend of hers?”

“I’m not an enemy.”

She looked hard at the photograph again.

“I suppose you’ll hang around even if I tell you I don’t know these people.”

“Beach is public,” I said. “And I like to look at birds and waves.”

“That picture was taken three or four years ago, right out on the beach behind the house,” she said. “You’ll recognize some of the houses in the background if you go out there.”

I went out there. There was a small, clear-blue swimming pool behind the house and a chest-high picket fence just beyond it. The waves were coming in low on the beach about thirty yards away, but still moaned as they hit the white sand and brought in a new crop of broken shells and an occasional fossilized shark’s tooth or dead fish.

I went through the gate to the beach and looked around. A toddler was chasing gulls and not even coming close, which was in the kid’s best interest. A couple, probably the kid’s parents, sat on a brightly painted beach cloth watching the child and talking. Individuals, duos, trios and quartets of all ages walked along the shoreline in bare feet or floppy sandals. Miriam Sebastian was easy to find. There were five aluminum beach loungers covered in strips of white vinyl. Miriam Sebastian sat in the middle lounger. The others were empty.

She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, dark sunglasses and a two-piece solid white bathing suit. She glistened from the bottle of lotion that sat on the lounger next to her along with a fluffy towel. She was reading a book or acting as if she was knowing I was on the way. I stood in front of her.

“War and Peace,” she said holding up the heavy book. “Always wanted to read it, never did. I plan to read as many of the so-called classics as I can. It’s my impression that few people have really read them though they claim to have. Please have a seat, Mr. Fonesca.”

I sat on the lounger to her right, the one that didn’t have lotion and a towel, and she moved a book mark and laid the book on her lap. She took off her sunglasses. She was definitely the woman in the picture, still beautiful, naturally beautiful though the woman looking at me seemed older than the one in the picture. I showed her the picture.

“Mr. Sebastian would like to talk to you,” I said.

She looked at the photograph and shook her head before handing it back.

“We spent two nights here after our honeymoon in Spain,” she said. “You would think Raymond might remember and at least call on the chance that I might return. But…”

“Will you talk to him?” I asked.

She sat for about thirty seconds and simply looked at me. I was decidedly uncomfortable and wished I had sunglasses. I looked at the kid still chasing gulls. He was getting no closer.

“You’re not here to kill me,” she said conversationally.

“Kill you?”

“I think Raymond is planning to have me killed,” she said turning slightly toward me. “But I think you’re not the one.”

“Why does your husband want to kill you?” I asked.

“Money,” she said and then she smiled. “People thought I married Raymond for his money. I didn’t, Mr. Fonesca. I loved him. I would have gone on loving him. He was worth about one hundred thousand when we married, give or take a percentage or two in either direction. I, however, was worth close to eleven million dollars from an annuity, the sale of my father’s business when he died, and a very high yield insurance policy on both my parents.”

“It doesn’t make sense, Mrs. Sebastian,” I said.

“Miriam,” she said. “Call me Miriam. Your first name?”

“Lewis,” I said. “Lew.”

“It makes perfect sense to me,” she said. “I know that Raymond has been telling people that I am having an affair with Dr. Bermeister. Lew, I’ve been faithful to my husband from the day we met. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about him. I have ample evidence, including almost interrupting a session between Raymond and Caroline Wilkerson in the buff in our bed about five weeks ago.

It seems the man almost old enough to be my grandfather married me for my money. After I carefully closed the door without Raymond or Caroline seeing me, I went out, stayed in a hotel and returned the day I was supposed to.”

“Reason for divorce,” I said.

“My word against theirs,” she said. “He’d drag it on, hold up my assets. I haven’t the time, Lew.”

“So…?”

“So,” she said, “I did a little digging and discovered that Caroline was far from the first. I don’t know if he is just an old man afraid of accepting his age or if he simply craves the chase and the sex. I know he had no great interest in me in that department for the past year.”

“You waited five weeks after you knew all this and then suddenly walked out?” I asked.

“It took me five weeks to convert all my stocks and my life insurance policy to cash and to withdraw every penny I have in bank accounts. I didn’t want a scene and I didn’t want Raymond to know what I was doing, but by now he knows.”

“And you think he wants to kill you?”

“Yes. I don’t think he knows the extent of what I’ve done, nor that I’ve cashed in the insurance policy,” she said. “Raymond claims to be a real estate dealer. He has averaged a little over twenty-thousand dollars on his real estate deals each of the years we’ve been married. As for his investments, he has consistently lost money. I’d say that at the moment my husband, who is nearing seventy, thinks he’ll have millions when, in fact, he has what’s left on his credit cards, ten thousand dollars in his own bank account and a 1995 paid-for Lincoln Town Car.”

“And he’s trying to kill you before you get rid of your money?”

“Yes. But it’s too late. I’ve put all the money, but the thirty thousand I’ve kept with me in cash, into boxes and sent the boxes anonymously to various charities including the National Negro College Fund, the Salvation Army and many others.”

“Why don’t you just tell him?” I asked. “Or I can tell him.”

The toddler’s mother screamed at the boy who had wandered too far in pursuit of the gulls. The kid’s name was Harry.

“Then he wouldn’t try to have me killed,” she said.

“That’s the picture,” I said. “You know a short bulldog of a man, drives a blue Buick? He’s probably about ten years younger than your husband.”

“Zito,” she said. “Irving Zito.”

“He was following me today. I lost him.”

She shrugged.

“Irving is Raymond’s ‘personal’ assistant,” she said. “He has a record including a conviction for Murder Two. Don’t ask me how he and Raymond came together. The story I was told didn’t make much sense. So Irving Zito is the designated killer.”

“If you don’t tell your husband your money is gone and you just stay here, he’ll find you even if I don’t tell him.”

“And you don’t plan to tell him?” she asked.

“Not if you say ‘no,’” I said.

“Good. I say ‘no.’ Did he pay you by check?”

“Yes.”

“Cash it fast.”

“I did,” I said, “I thought it was too easy.”

“Too easy?”

“Finding you. Talk to Caroline Wilkerson at your husband’s suggestion. She sends me to Dr. Bermeister. He sends me to you and you wait for me. You wanted me to find you.”

“I wanted whoever was going to kill me to find me,” she said. “I’ll just have to wait till Zito and Raymond figure it out. If they don’t, Raymond will probably find another private detective with fewer scruples than you who will find me right here. I hope I have time to finish Tolstoy before he does.”

“You want to die?”

“I’ve left a letter with my lawyer, with documents, proving my husband’s infidelity, misuse of my money which I knew about but chose to ignore, and the statement that if I am found dead under suspicious circumstances, a full investigation of the likelihood of my husband’s being responsible is almost a certainty. Now that I know Irving Zito is involved, I’ll drive into Sarasota with a new letter including Zito’s name and add it to the statement I’ve given my lawyer.”

“You want to die,” I repeated though this time it wasn’t a question.

“No,” she said. “I don’t. But I’m going to within a few months even if Raymond doesn’t get the job done. I’m dying, Lew. Dr. Bermeister knows it. I started seeing him as a therapist when I first learned about the tumor more than a year ago. I didn’t want my husband to know. I arranged for treatment and surgery in New York and told my husband I simply wanted six weeks or so with old school friends, one of whom was getting married. He had no objections. I caught him and Caroline in bed the day I returned. I had hurried home a day early Obviously I wasn’t expected. Treatment and surgery proved relatively ineffective. The tumor is in a vital part of my brain and getting bigger. Raymond has never even noticed that I was ill. I don’t wish to die slowly in the hospital.”

“So you set your husband up,” I said.

Harry the toddler was back with his mother who was standing and brushing sand from the boy who was trying to pull away There were gulls to chase and water to wade in.

“Yes,” she said. “You disapprove?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “It’s your life.”