Turning off the engine, I got out of the car, the door shutting with a muffled solid thud.
He looked speculatively at me.
“A couple of questions,” I said.
“Shoot.”
“Westwood is an exclusive club. Was she a member?”
A nod.
“You checked out when she last reserved a court?”
“Friday, July twelfth, at nine in the morning. She had a lesson with the pro. Took a lesson once a week, that was about the extent of her playing.”
“As I recall, she flew out of Richmond early Saturday morning, July thirteenth, arriving in Miami shortly after noon.”
Another nod.
“So she took her lesson, then went straight to the grocery store. After that, she may have gone to the bank. Whatever the case, at some point after she did her shopping, she suddenly decided to leave town. If she’d known she was leaving town the next day, she wouldn’t have bothered going to the grocery store. She didn’t have time to eat everything she bought, and she didn’t leave the food in the refrigerator. Apparently she threw away everything except the ground beef, the cheese and possibly the mints.”
“Sounds reasonable,” he said un-emphatically.
“She left her glasses case and other items on the seat,” I continued. “Plus, the radio and air conditioning were left on, the sunroof partially open. Looks like she drove into the garage, cut the
engine, and hurried into the house with her sunglasses on. Makes me wonder if something happened while she was out in the car driving home from tennis and her errands …”
“Oh yeah. I’m pretty damn sure it did. Walk around, take a look at the other side–specifically at the passenger’s door.”
I did.
What I saw scattered my thoughts like marbles. Gouged into the glossy black paint right below the door handle was the name BERYL enclosed in a heart.
“Kind of gives you the creeps, don’t it?” he said.
“If he did this while her car was parked at the club or the grocery store,” I reasoned, “it seems someone would have seen him.”
“Yo. So maybe he did it earlier.” He paused, casually perusing the graffiti. “When’s the last time you looked at your passenger’s door?”
It could have been days. It could have been a week.
“She went grocery shopping.” He finally lit the damn cigarette. “Didn’t buy much.” He took a deep, hungry drag. “And it probably all fit inside one bag, right? When my wife’s got just one or two bags, she always sticks them up front, on the floor mat, maybe on the seat. So maybe Beryl went around to the passenger’s side to put the groceries in the car. That’s when she noticed what was scratched into the paint. Maybe she knew it had to have been done that day. Maybe she didn’t.
Don’t matter. Freaked her right out, pushed her over the edge. She makes tracks home or maybe to the bank for cash. Books the next flight out of Richmond and runs to Florida.”
I followed him out of the garage and back to his car. Night was falling fast, a chill in the air. He cranked the engine while I stared mutely out the side window at Beryl’s house. Its sharp angles were deteriorating in the shadows, the windows dark. Suddenly the porch and living room lights blinked on.
“Geez,” Marino muttered. “Trick or treat.”
“A timer,” I said.
“No kidding.”
2
There was a full moon over Richmond as I followed the long road home. Only the most tenacious trick-or-treaters were still making the rounds, their ghastly masks and menacing child-size silhouettes lit up by my headlights. I wondered how many times my doorbell had gone unanswered.
My house was a favorite because I was excessively generous with candy, not having children of my own to indulge. I would have four unopened bags of chocolate bars to dole out to my staff in the morning.
The phone started ringing as I was climbing the stairs. Just before my answering machine intervened, I snatched up the receiver. The voice was unfamiliar at first, then recognition grasped my heart. “Kay? It’s Mark. Thank God you’re home …”
Mark James sounded as if he were talking from the bottom of an oil drum, and I could hear cars passing in the background.