But he was staring at her with what seemed to be sincere apology and complete honesty.
“I see,” she said smoothly. “The mannequin just appeared in your cottage.”
“I swear to you, it’s the truth. We can go to church and I’ll swear to you right before the altar, I didn’t do it.”
Was she an idiot to even consider believing him? While he was standing there with a head in his hands?
“Okay, okay. I thought it would be funny to put a mannequin on your porch. But not to hurt you. You’re like my best friend forever. I would never hurt you. Ever. I thought it might smack you back into reality, that’s all. But I didn’t do it. Honest.”
“Then who did?” she asked softly. “And how did it wind up back in your cottage?”
He shook his head. He’d either gotten pretty damn good at acting, she thought, or he was telling the truth. “I don’t know.”
“Why are you holding the head?”
He flushed, looking away for a moment before turning back to her once again, eyes steady, cheeks flushed. “I didn’t want to be caught with it. I was dismantling it so I could take it to some Dumpster piece by piece.”
“I see.”
“Genevieve, you can ask at every store on the street. I never went to anyone trying to borrow or buy a mannequin.”
“I will check on it, you know,” she told him.
“I didn’t do it,” he repeated pleadingly.
Glancing down the beach, Genevieve saw that Alex was out, walking toward the tiki bar. She hadn’t noticed them arrive, but Liz and Zach were seated there, as well.
“Maybe you’d better hide the evidence then,” she said softly.
He swallowed, following her glance toward the tiki bar, and nodded. “Gen, I swear…”
“All right, I believe you. But if I ever find out you’re lying to me…well, friends don’t do stuff like this to friends. A joke is one thing—even if it wouldn’t have been funny to me in the least. Lying about it…”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“Then hide that head. Especially under the circumstances.”
“Yeah.” He headed back toward his cottage, trying to nonchalantly tuck the head under his arm. He looked back at her. “Are you coming?” he asked hesitantly.
“Yeah,” she told him. And followed.
It looked like a strangely bloodless massacre had taken place inside. Arms lay atop his bed, legs were strewn on the floor. The torso had been tossed on the futon. The white gown lay crumpled and ruined beside it.
“My God,” Genevieve breathed.
“Hey, it was a mannequin. Not real,” he reminded her.
She shook her head. He had a box of heavy-duty garbage bags by the coffeemaker. Standing by the door, Genevieve watched as he bagged an arm.
“Are you going to help?” he demanded.
“Victor, you shouldn’t be getting rid of it. We need to find out who did this,” she said.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why? So that we know!”
He shook his head. “If I showed this to anyone, I’d be blamed. You know that.”
“I’m the one the trick was played on. If I’m not mad, what does it matter?”
“You believe me, but who else will? Not your new Romeo, that’s for certain!”
“But, Victor—”
“Are you going to help or not?”
“No. You’re my friend, Victor, and I believe you. So it’s important to find out who did this.”
Again, he stubbornly shook his head. “It was a prank. It was put in here afterward just so I’d be blamed. We need to make it disappear. Whoever did it will eventually start to get nervous and want to know what happened. He—or she—will start asking questions.”
Genevieve folded her arms across her chest. “She? What woman could have done this? Not Bethany, I can assure you.”
“I put that in for political correctness,” he said indignantly. “But what do we really know about Lizzie or her husband?”
“Oh, please!”
“Okay, so forget the she. And Zach. I don’t think he’d have done this. They don’t seem to have a sense of humor.”
“Right, because this was so funny.”
“Will you please just help me, before someone else shows up?”
She stared at Victor. Was she a fool to believe him? “All right. But like I said, if I ever find that you did this…”
“You won’t,” he said flatly.
“Okay, once the body parts are bagged, what next?”
“Then we take a little walk and start to get rid of them. I’ll even buy you a drink along the way.”
“What a deal,” she murmured. She was surprised to feel queasy when she picked up a disconnected leg.
It wasn’t real, she thought to herself.
Then again, were ghosts?
Jay got Thor started on the computer, showing him how to run the program. There hadn’t been a problem. Jay’s superiors seemed to believe that Thor had government connections, and that as head of the current salvage project, Thor should have access to information regarding criminal activity in the area.
Thor wasn’t exactly sure why, but he found himself looking back over the last twenty years.
Some of the files contained crimes that had spanned both Miami-Dade and Monroe counties. The frequency of violent crime in the big city was frightening; but heading south, into Jimmy Buffett-ville, violence decreased. Live and let live. But there were still a number of murders on the books, most of them solved. Husbands who had killed wives. Wives who had killed husbands. Drug deals gone bad. Accidental killings. There were also files that contained crimes that hadn’t been solved, or where the solutions were questionable. A two-year-old, drowned in a swimming pool. The child had suffered from severe birth defects. Had the agonized mother decided death was better than life? The police had been suspicious, but they had found no proof, and she had never gone to trial, with the death officially ruled accidental.
After a while, Jay excused himself, explaining he had paperwork to do.
After Jay left, Thor began to wonder what he was doing, just what he was looking for.
He moved on to missing persons reports.
Many of the missing had been found. Children were not always abducted; sometimes, they were runaways, and the Keys were a nice place to run away to. Warm weather, easy work, tourists willing to give handouts. Dina Massey, a blue-eyed blond sixteen-year-old from Ohio had made it down on a bus. After two months of panhandling, she had been questioned by a police officer. She had broken down, eager to go home but afraid of how her father would react. A picture showed tearful parents who had come for her, forgiving all. Donald Leto, of Fort Lauderdale, hadn’t been so lucky. He, too, had run away. He, too, had been sent home. A notation at the bottom of the file noted that he had died back in Fort Lauderdale, a victim of vehicular homicide.
His father had been driving the car that killed him.
Thor decided he was looking for victims over twenty-one.
Right before he switched screens, however, he found a missing persons case that hadn’t been solved. The bulletin had been sent from Miami. The girl in the picture, Maria Rico, was a beautiful blonde. She had disappeared just the year before. Friends suspected that either her abusive stepfather had killed her—though police had found no evidence to support such a scenario—or that she had run south. A “friend” she had met on the Internet had suggested he could give her a haven from her abusive stepfather if she afforded him the opportunity.
No one knew the identity of the friend. And she hadn’t been seen in Key West, though her photo had been plastered across the island.
Thor stared at the girl’s picture. She had been seventeen at the time of her disappearance. Every inch a woman. He wondered why no one had suspected the woman found on the beach that morning might have been this runaway. He needed to ask Jay. Filing away the mental note, he went on.
The first unsolved disappearance he could find that was directly linked to Key West had occurred almost eight years ago. The woman’s name had been Shea Alexandria. She’d been born Mary Brown, but since she had intended to be the world’s next supermodel, she had changed her name accordingly. She was blond and beautiful. Her picture seemed to jump off the page with attitude and humor.
Work in New York had led her to bathing suit jobs on the South Florida beaches. A promotion with a liquor company had brought her to Key West. After a party at which the attendees had imbibed heavily, she had vanished. She had left the party alone and never returned to her hotel room. There had been no signs of violence along her route.
She had left the party alone.
Somewhere, in a five-block area, she had simply disappeared. The case remained unsolved.
Thor flipped back through the files. There were two other still-unsolved missing persons cases that had been flagged by the locals, but there was no specific information that the women had been heading for the Keys. Both cases, however, were definitely on the curious side—especially in light of the morning’s findings.
He started searching the murder files again, looking for cases that specifically referred to Key West.
Then he stopped.
Hope Gonzalez.
Dead at thirty-two. Survived by her husband, Jay Taft Gonzalez.
Jay’s wife?
Because of the suspicious nature of her death, Hope Gonzalez had been autopsied. The final verdict had been accidental drowning.
Thor sat back, still staring at the particulars. Hope and her husband had been out on their boat. While they’d been snorkeling on one of the reefs, she had suddenly disappeared beneath the waves, according to Jay. He’d dragged her up and performed CPR after calling in desperately for help.
The death had raised flags. But Jay Gonzalez had never faced trial, an internal investigation, or any repercussions from her death. Not according to the case file.
Thor had a creeping feeling that he wasn’t alone. He looked up. Jay was standing by the desk. “You knew that I’d find this,” Thor said.
