Free Bright Futures: A Lew Fonesca Mystery (Lew Fonesca Novels) by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page A

people who have sons or daughters who might be mad enough to do some killing. Phil the Pill had a restraining order against two such offspring who threatened to kill him.”
    “You know their names?”
    “No,” he said. “I’ve been dreaming about my wife. Bad dreams.”
    I moved toward the door.
    “Ever meet Horvecki’s daughter?” I asked.
    “Once,” he said. “She stopped by the bowling alley and just sat there watching. Skinny thing. Big scared eyes. I didn’t talk to her. Horvecki didn’t even introduce her, just said, ‘My daughter,’ once when he saw me looking.”
    “How did he say it?”
    “Say what? ‘My daughter’? I don’t know. Almost as if he were apologizing or something.”
    I had no response, so he continued as I opened the door.
    “I’ve been thinking about killing Vezquez, but there are too many damned Vesquezes out there and too much killing.”
    “The phone book probably has a couple of columns of Vezquezes,” I said.
    “I don’t mean people named . . . forget it. Leave me with my thoughts of Roberto Clemente.”
    I offered to help him clean up the mess, but Zo just looked at it and said, “I’ll take care of it.”
    “Can I . . . ?”
    “No one can,” he said.
    I left him. I had another appointment, maybe another client.
    I sat on my bike and called Dixie Cruise at the coffee bar on Main Street where she served espresso and kept the Internet-connected patrons happy and their electronics running. Dixie was slim and trim, with very black hair in a short style. Dixie lived in a two-room apartment in a slightly run-down twelve-flat apartment building on Ringling Boulevard, a block from the main post office. The apartment was almost laboratory clean, neat, and filled with computers and electronic gear.
    “Working on it, Mr. L.F.,” Dixie said in her down-home Florida accent. “Lady knows her stuff. Horvecki’s daughter Rachel seems to have migrated to an alternate universe. Since her father’s murder, she hasn’t used a credit card, written a check, flown on an airplane, booked a room at a motel or hotel, or rented a car, at least not in her own name. She’s running on cash and another name. Every Sarasota business, from dry cleaners to Red Lobster, has no record of her having been there.”
    “Keep looking,” I said.
    “You keep paying in cash, I keep looking. I’ve got bills to pay and things to buy for my wedding.”
    “You’re getting married?”
    “Didn’t I tell you?”
    “No.”
    “Wedding’ll be in June. First Baptist. Reception after at Cafe Bacci. You and the cowboy are invited. You’ll get an invitation.”
    “New address,” I said, and gave her the address.
    “My beau’s name is Dan Rosenfeld. He’s an airplane mechanic at Dolphin.”
    “Congratulations,” I said.
    “Thanks. I’ll keep looking for her. Today, I check on unidentified bodies found from North Carolina to Key West.”

 
     
     
     
     
6
----
     
     
    I WOULD HAVE FORGOTTEN about the appointment if I hadn’t written it on one of the three-by-five index cards I carried in my back pocket. The call had come in early the day before. With everything going on, I had almost forgotten about it. The index cards got dog-eared quickly from my sitting on them, but I wrote my notes to myself in clear block letters and had no trouble reading them.
    At the age of forty-three, I was having trouble remembering simple things like why I was going to the refrigerator or what I was planning to do when I opened the medicine cabinet in my bathroom.
    The card read:
     
    Bee Ridge Park softball field. 11 a.m.
    Monday. Ferris Berrigan
     
    The bike ride to Bee Ridge Park was long. It was made longer by my expecting that someone might pull alongside me, roll downa window, and take a few shots, or that someone would run me into oncoming traffic on Beneva Road. It would be fitting, to die the same way Catherine had, but I wasn’t really ready for that. Progress, Ann would say. I no longer welcomed