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Bree thought and then said, “We’ll start with two.”
Chapter
66
West Palm Beach, Florida
Burning cane filled the air with smoke again as I drove toward Belle Glade, wanting to be there and in Palm Beach and in Starksville all at once.
It was five twenty in the evening. I’d spent the day with Drummond and Johnson, who’d quickly reached staff at both the Abrams and Martin residences and confirmed that Coco had painted the women’s portraits. None of the staff knew who Coco was, however, much less where she lived.
Maggie Crawford’s estranged husband, John, was fishing in Alaska. The Boob King had been in surgery all day and was unreachable. So was Elliot Martin, Lisa Martin’s billionaire husband, who was in Shanghai on business.
They’d left messages with all their aides. On the way to Mize Fine Arts on Worth Avenue, Johnson called up the Internet on his phone and ran a search for a Coco in Palm Beach and the surrounding areas. There was no such listing.
Then we’d found Mize Fine Arts closed during prime shopping hours, and no one answered our knocking.
“I’d like to go in there and look around,” Johnson said as we turned away.
“I’m sure you would,” Drummond said. “But I don’t think a name on three paintings gives us a search warrant. And that looks like a serious alarm system. You wouldn’t be able to explain yourself if you were somehow caught inside.”
When I looked at Drummond, he winked at me.
We went to Mize’s home. It must have been a grand place once, not huge like the megamansions out on Ocean Boulevard, but an impressive structure. The front yard and gardens were nicely maintained. But the manor itself needed painting. And up close, you could see the front door required varnishing, and the stucco siding was in minor disrepair.
Drummond rang the bell. There was no answer. He rang it again.
I wandered around the side and into the shadows between the house and a bamboo hedge that separated it from the place next door. The walkway was busted concrete overgrown with weeds. The backyard was worse, looked like it hadn’t been tended in months. A gutter downspout was disconnected halfway down from the roof. The lower part hung by a bracket.
“If he’s in there, he’s not answering,” Drummond said when I returned.
“I’d check the tax rolls on this guy,” I said.
“Why’s that?”
“He’s not taking care of his property, which means he’s under financial stress of some sort.”
Drummond called in a request for all information on Jeffrey Mize as we returned to the car.
“We’ll have to sit on the place,” Johnson said.
“And the art gallery,” I said. “Sooner or later, Mize or Coco will show up.”
Because Johnson was the only one who had seen Coco in person, he went to watch the shop. Drummond and I sat on the house until it was time for me to go learn what had become of my father.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for,” the sergeant said before I left.
Driving north out of Belle Glade an hour later, there was a bug hatch, and so many insects smashed into the windshield that it stayed smeared no matter how much wiper fluid I used. Near the Pahokee city limits, I stopped to fill up with gas and clean off the windshield, then I drove into town, seeing signs about the high school football team.
Drummond said the high school teams at Pahokee and Belle Glade always ranked among the top teams in the state and together had put almost sixty players in the NFL. Pretty impressive when you consider the economic devastation. There were fewer businesses in Pahokee than there’d been in Belle Glade.
But the Cozy Corner Café on Lake Street was still open. I parked in front. The humidity this close to Lake Okeechobee was stupefying. In the ten steps I took between the rental and the front door of the café, I was drenched, though maybe that also had to do with the sudden nervousness that swept through me. What had happened to my father all those years ago?
There were six customers in the café, though only one was female and alone. She smiled at me, waved me over. A pretty, plump older Latina woman with a beaming smile, she got up out of her booth, pushing back her long ponytail of black hair flecked with gray, and adjusted an attractive purple batik dress. A small, simple wooden cross hung on a chain about her neck.
“Dr. Cross?” she said, smiling as she took my hand in both of hers and peered kindly up at me through wire-rimmed glasses. “I’m Reverend Alicia Maya. I understand you’re interested in Paul Brown?”
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