Cold Case Squad (7 page)

"But if this guy is repeating his pattern," Stone protested, "he
might be back. He could be in Miami now."

"Pure speculation on your part. Humor me," Riley said.

Nazario left with Stone, still smoldering but silent.

Burch remained seated.

"How's it going on the home front?" Riley asked.

He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "It's not, at the moment."

"Too bad. Guess it's an occupational hazard." She tried to muster up
an encouraging smile but failed. "Hope you work it out."

"Me, too. You okay?"

"Sure."

"Through with that?"

She gave him the Terrell file without meeting his eyes.

The temperature was ninety-six degrees as Nazario gingerly lifted
the hood of Burch's Chevy Blazer. "Well, there's your problem, Sarge."

"What the hell is that shit?"

The aroma from a gooey, molten mass atop the engine made them step
back.

"I'd say Limburger." Nazario crossed his arms. "Sarge," he said
after a long pause, "it's none of my business, but you gotta make
things right with the little woman."

The new city directory listed the Walkers, who first called 911 in
the Terrell case, still at the same address on Mariposa Lane. A
surprise in Miami, where the wandering population moves on the average
of once every three years.

Nazario squinted across shaded Mariposa Lane at a towering behemoth
of a house painted in the latest decorator color, a distressed mustard
yellow. "That's gotta be the Terrell house, but it doesn't look right."

Burch agreed. "It's nothing like the crime scene photos. Where the
hell's the garage? Should be right there, where those two thick columns
are. Sure we got the right address?"

"Probably remodeled after the fire," Stone said.

They rang the Walkers' bell. A yapping Jack Russell terrier bounced
as though on a trampoline around the feet of the fortyish woman who
answered the door. Of course she remembered that day.

"Who could forget it?" she said cheerfully, and let them in. She
expertly caught the Jack Russell on a particularly high bounce and
tucked him under her arm. "I'll call my husband."

She pressed a button on a wall-mounted intercom. "I told you I was
busy, I have to finish this today," an edgy voice responded.

"But the police are here, sweetheart. Detectives."

She flipped off the switch and smiled at the detectives. "Betcha
that got his attention."

It did. Stan Walker bounded into the room moments later. He'd been
working on an annual report from his home office at the back of the
house, he said.

"Detectives?" He looked concerned. "What's wrong? Where are the
kids?"

"Fine. Vanessa is at Gillian's. I think Ryan's in his room."

Burch explained.

"Is that the Terrell house across the street?" Nazario asked. "It
doesn't look the same."

"Don't get us started on that," Stan said in disgust. "Just look at
that eyesore."

"Natasha had the place repaired after the fire," Joan said. "But I
don't think she ever spent another night there. Who could blame her?
She—"

"—rented it out," Stan said. "It wasn't so bad at first. A young
couple, good tenants. They took care of the place, but then he got
transferred back to—"

"—California, I think," Joan said. "It was an absolute nightmare
after that. She listed it as a short-term rental, and we never had a
real neighbor there again. They'd come and go, sometimes every week.
European tourists who partied in South Beach all night, then came back
to continue the party. Music would blast us right out of our beds at
four a.m. Sometimes two dozen people were living there, some—"

"—for only a weekend," Stan said. "That's illegal. The city doesn't
allow short-term rentals in a residential neighborhood. But she was a
widow—"

"—with a baby," Joan said. "Nobody wanted to turn her in. But her
tenants were speeding up and down our street where children play. It
wasn't their neighborhood. They didn't care."

"She put the place on the market back in 2000, after real estate
prices skyrocketed," Stan said. "We were relieved."

"We looked forward to real neighbors again," Joan said.

"But it got worse," Stan said. "She sold the place for a huge profit
to a contractor who builds those damn McMansions on spec. That should
be against the law. Look at that monstrosity." He pulled the drapes
back and stared in disgust across the street.

"Dwarfs everything around it. Completely out of scale and out of
place. Destroys the character of the neighborhood. More than seven
thousand square feet of house on a nine-thousand-square-foot lot! Eight
bedrooms, eight baths, plus maids' quarters. The next-door neighbors
feel like bugs under a microscope. All those tall windows looking down
at them in their traditional, typical one-story South Florida
twenty-two-hundred-square-foot house. The ceilings in that eyesore are
so high that—"

"—it must be like living in a post office," Joan said.

"They build lot line to lot line," Stan complained. "The politicians
sold us out to builders and developers whose sole purpose is to pave
over as much green space as possible."

"I cried when they cut down the shade trees," Joan said. "Two
magnificent live oaks, a kapok tree, and a baobob. You should have seen
their gorgeous canopies."

"Isn't there an ordinance against that?" Burch peered out at the
offending structure. "I thought they were protected."

"They are," Stan said. "You need a permit and a good reason to
remove them. We reported them to the tree police, you know, DERM, the
Department of Environmental Resource Management. They took action, but
the penalties are a joke. They bought after-the-fact permits and paid
small fines." He shrugged. "The penalties aren't stiff enough to be a
deterrent. The builders are too rich to care. They consider it the
price of doing business."

"Meanwhile Miami has fewer trees than ninety percent of American
cities," Stan said. "That's the reason it's so damn hot. All the
concrete and asphalt."

"They may regret cutting those trees down," Nazario said. "Santeria
worshipers believe that the kapok and baobobs house spirits who will
bring harm to those who destroy them."

"Hope so," Stan said. "That same builder's putting up another
concrete monster around the corner."

"Did you notice the color of this one?" Joan wrinkled her nose. "I
don't know if any of you detectives ever changed a diaper, but it's the
same color as baby poop. Who on earth would paint a house that shade?"

"People with more money than sense." Her husband let go of the
drape, which fell gracefully back into place.

"Who lives there now?" Stone asked.

"Good question," Stan said. "Latinos bought it two years ago, and to
tell you the truth, I couldn't even tell you their names or what they
look like. They drive in. They drive out. Their SUVs all have
dark-tinted windows. In a neighborhood where we all used to know each
other and all the kids, dogs, cats, and kissing cousins by first name."

"You ever hear from Terrell's widow?" Burch inquired.

Joan shook her head. "Natasha remarried, I think, a man who was in
business with her late husband. Terrell was a pharmacist, you know,
owned that big corner drugstore on Coral Way. The place had been there
forever, a landmark. They had the best soda fountain."

"It's gone, too," Stan said.

"Natasha sold the business as well," Joan said. "They put up a
high-rise bank building on the site."

"That second husband," Stone said, "that would be a Martin Asher?"

"Sounds familiar," Joan said. "Hope you don't mind me asking, but
why are you looking into the fire again after all these years?"

"We're checking out a report that it might not have been an
accident," Burch said.

"Oh my God! Murder? Stan, did you hear that?" She turned to her
husband, excited. "Honey, imagine. A murder mystery right on our block!"

"It's only a routine inquiry," Stone said quickly.

"How did the Terrells get along?" Nazario asked. "How well did you
know them?"

"They hadn't been here long," Joan said, her voice animated as she
led them into the comfortable living room. "They were newlyweds, she
was pregnant when they moved in. It was his second marriage. He had an
ex-wife—and kids. The children sometimes came for a weekend. Poor
things. One was about Vanessa's age. They came over here to play a few
times."

"I got the impression that their stepmother wasn't too crazy about
them. Natasha was young. The most gorgeous thing you ever saw."

Stan nodded solemnly.

"She liked to be the center of attention," Joan went on. "Didn't
want to share the spotlight. The two of them had a couple of big
blow-ups."

"Whoops
." She clapped her hand over her mouth. "Sorry.
Wrong choice of words. But you couldn't help but hear the arguments.
Once when he tried to leave during a fight, she ran out after him and
threw herself across the hood of his car."

"The day he died," Stan said solemnly, "the fellow came over here
and asked to borrow a line wrench. Never did get the thing back. Part
of a matching set. Said he was working on his Thunderbird. I'd never
seen him work on the car before. I told him to bring his kids over to
Ryan's party later, but he said it wasn't his weekend for visitation."

"See anybody else over there that day?" Stone asked.

Joan shook her head. "I was way involved in the party. I mean, it
was absolute bedlam here, two dozen kids and not much help."

"Where was the party?" Stone asked. "Here inside the house, your
backyard… ?"

"No, out front in the shade under the trees. The kids saw it all,"
Joan said.

"Traumatized." Stan nodded grimly. "For life."

"Take any snapshots?" Nazario asked.

Joan shook her head. "Who had time?"

Nazario tucked his notebook back into his jacket pocket. Stone
checked his watch. Burch got to his feet, hoping to wrap this up today.
How much more would it take to convince Riley that there was nothing to
find?

"I was too busy shooting the video."

The detectives exchanged glances.

"You have a tape?" they chorused.

She cocked her head. "Probably in Ryan's room with all the
others—unless he taped a rock music concert over it. I'll see if I can
find it, and him. He won't want to miss this. He always says it was the
biggest birthday blast he ever had. I'll be right back."

Burch sat down again. "How long have you two been married?"

Stan paused for a moment. "Our twenty-second is coming up."

"Nice," the detective said. "What's your secret?"

Stan hitched his shoulders. "Dumb luck, I guess. We were young,
stayed the course, and that was it. You know how it is."

"Yeah," Burch said. "But—"

"I found it! I found it." Joan danced down the stairs, waving a
video cassette. Her son loomed behind her.

Taller than his parents, he wore an oversized red T-shirt emblazoned
with
LINKIN PARK
, blue jeans, and a silver stud in one
ear.

"He starts his junior year at FSU this fall," his mother said
proudly.

"That day was so cool," Ryan told the detectives. "My friends never
forgot it. So weird. I wanted fireworks, so when it happened, I thought
at first that they got them for me, that it was all part of the
birthday trip."

"I'll make popcorn." Joan backed toward the kitchen. "It'll just
take a sec in the microwave. Don't start the tape without me. We
haven't seen it in years. What does everybody want to drink?"

They gathered around the blond wood entertainment center. Bowls of
popcorn and half a dozen soft drinks on the coffee table. Nazario and
Burch on the couch, Stone slouched in a leather chair. Stan, Joan, and
Nipsy, the Jack Russell, shared the love seat. Ryan inserted the tape
into the VCR and sprawled on the floor.

The detectives watched silently.

"Ohhhhh," Joan crooned, as a golden retriever loped through a gaggle
of children. "There's Sookie. How I loved that dog. And look, look at
Vanessa, she was only five then."

"Consuela looks so young," Ryan said.

"We all do," Stan said. "I had more hair and less stomach."

"We have to show this to Consuela on Tuesday," Joan said. "Look at
you, honey!" She patted Stan's knee. "Whatever happened to your chef's
hat?"

"There's HoHo!" Ryan said.

"And the cake!" Joan laughed aloud. "The racquet, not the rocket! I
forgot about that!"

Stone leaned forward in his chair, wondering on some vague level why
people were laughing. He slid onto the thick carpet next to Ryan. "Can
you stop it? Back it up. There. More, more."

Ryan handed the remote to the detective.

"Okay, what is that?" Stone asked.

"What?" the Walkers chorused.

"Passing on the street, in the background."

"That reddish blur?" Stan asked.

"Right."

"Traffic of some sort. A car, I guess." Stan chewed his popcorn
thoughtfully. "We didn't have much traffic on our street back then.
What do you think, Joanie?"

"Remember the Camachos? You know. Four doors down, in the old Tate
house? Sissy, their teenager, had a red Mustang back then. That might
have been her coming home." She shrugged. "It could be anybody."

Stone flicked the remote and the tape resumed.

"Look, look," she cried. "There's Lionel!"

"Where?" Burch squinted at the tape. "Who's Lionel?"

"Right there. That's him." Joan gasped. "What's he doing to Sookie?
Look at Consuela trying to stop him!"

"That boy grew up right on this block," Stan said proudly. "We
should save this footage, Joanie. I always knew that kid would go
places. This tape might be of historic value someday."

"Who is he?" Stone asked.