“No, I don’t.”

  “Sitting there at the kitchen table, having a nice chat, when all of a sudden he grabs a knife and chases her in the bedroom. Can’t give a reason for it.” Ehrenberg shook his head, “That sounds peculiar to me, doesn’t it to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “At the same time, he starts stammering and stuttering about why he’s afraid to go to the police, afraid of what they might think. Well, that makes me wonder did he sexually abuse that woman, and those two girls. Which might explain why he killed them. He’s got no explanation for why he did it, you see. Now, there’s plenty of cases where somebody blanks out, they just kill in a rage, they don’t know why afterwards. But I still think this is peculiar, I really do. Unless he, you know, raped them. Or tried to rape them. He says he embraced the woman and the older daughter both, I just don’t know what that means in terms of this case. You got any ideas?”

  “No, I haven’t,” I said. I did not tell him that Michael had received a phone call at eleven-thirty last night, just before he’d gone to his father’s house. That was what I was here to talk to Michael about.

  “Because if he didn’t sexually abuse them, why was he afraid the police would think so? I mean, if he’d killed somebody, for Christ’s sake, why would he be worried about hugging them? You think he’d be more worried the police would say he’d done murder, am I right? I just don’t understand it.” Ehrenberg sighed heavily. “I’m going to have a talk with this Brenet woman—she owns and operates a flower shop here on South Bayview. See if the doctor really was with her last night. If he was, I can understand why he lied to me. Be some can of worms to open, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, it would.”

  “But it still wouldn’t explain why the boy is lying. Well, I don’t mean lying, I mean withholding the complete truth. There’s a difference. Don’t you get the feeling he’s not telling the whole truth?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yeah,” Ehrenberg said, and looked at his watch. “They’re doing the autopsies now at Calusa Memorial, we’ll know in a little while whether there was any injury to the genital organs, or any sperm inside the woman or the girls. The clothes we sent to Tallahassee’ll be checked for vaginal stains might’ve come from the woman, I just don’t know about this damn case. There’re too many things—”

  The jailer reappeared just then, apologizing for having kept us waiting so long. As he went down the corridor, he explained that his wife had called with a washing-machine problem. When we got to the steel door at the end of the corridor, he lifted a ring of keys from his belt, and fitted a key that was color-coded red into the keyway. He twisted it, and swung open the heavy door. There were suddenly bars. Bars multiplying one beyond the next, as in the mirrors of a funhouse. I was looking at a large cage with dividing bars that formed a series of cages within, each equipped with cots, sinks, and toilets.

  “This’s the bull pen,” the jailer said. “For the trusties.”

  We walked parallel to the bars, down a narrow corridor, made an abrupt right turn and came into a cul-de-sac at the end of which was a pair of cells. Michael was in the cell closest to the bend in the hallway. The jailer used the same color-coded key to open the door, red into red the color of blood. Michael was wearing prison clothing. Dark blue trousers, pale blue denim shirt, black shoes and socks. He was sitting on the single cot in the cell, his hands between his knees, just as he’d been sitting when first I saw him in his blood-stained garments in the captain’s office. On the wall just inside the barred door, there was a white porcelain sink with two push-button faucets. Just beyond that was the toilet bowl, no seat on it, just the white porcelain bowl and a roll of toilet paper sitting on the neck of the bowl where it was fastened to the wall. On the mustard-colored wall to the right, a prisoner had penciled the words I NEED MENTAL REHABILATATION, misspelling the last word. Another prisoner had scratched his name onto the wall and alongside it had drawn a rectangle divided down the middle with a single line, perhaps as an intended replica of the twin cells here at the end of the hall. There was only an uncovered and extremely dirty foam rubber mattress on the wall-fastened cot. I stepped into the cell and felt immediately confined when the jailer locked the door behind me.

  “Just yell when you want out,” he said, and he and Ehrenberg went down the corridor, turned the corner of the L, and vanished. I heard the tumblers falling in the heavy steel door. The door squeaked open and clanged shut. The sound of the tumblers again. And then silence.

  “How are you doing, Michael?” I said.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Are they treating you all right?”

  “Fine. They cut off some of my hair, are they allowed to do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “From around my cock, too. Why’d they do that?”

  “Why do you think, Michael?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They’ll be making comparison tests.”

  “Of what?”

  “Any hairs found on the bodies. They’ll compare your hair against whatever they found.”

  “Why?”

  “Michael, they want to know whether rape was a part of this.”

  “I told them it wasn’t. I told them exactly what happened last night. What more do they—”

  “You didn’t tell them about the phone call.”

  “What phone call?”

  “I went to the boat this afternoon. I spoke to Lisa Schellmann, she told me—”

  “Lisa’s a birdbrain.”

  “She said there was a phone call last night.”

  “There wasn’t.”

  “Michael, the dockmaster took the call, he’s already confirmed it. He went down to the boat to get you, and you went back with him to the office, and talked to the woman who—”

  “I didn’t talk to any woman.”

  “Are you telling me you did not get a phone call from a woman at eleven-thirty last night?”

  “I didn’t get a call from anybody anytime last night.”

  “Michael, that’s a lie,” I said.

  He turned his head away.

  “Why are you lying?”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “A woman called you last night, the dockmaster’ll swear to it. Now who was she?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Michael, the dockmaster heard you saying you’d be right there. Where was right there, can you tell me that?”

  “No place. The dockmaster heard wrong. Are you talking about Mr. Wicherly?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s deaf. He’s a deaf old man. How would he know what—”

  “He’s not deaf, Michael, he hears perfectly well. Where was right there?”

  He hesitated.

  “Michael?”

  “The house,” he said.

  “Your father’s house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who called you, Michael?”

  He hesitated again.

  “Michael, who…?”

  “Maureen. Maureen called me.”

  “What did she want?”

  “She said she wanted to see me.”

  “What about?”

  “She said to come over.”

  “Why?”

  “She wanted to talk.”

  “Did she tell you your father was out?”

  “She said there was…she said…the three of them were there.”

  “Maureen and your sisters?”

  “The little girls.”

  “And she wanted you to come over?”

  “Yes. She said she was…she was…she’d be waiting for me.”

  “All right, Michael, what happened when you got there? What did you talk about? You told Detective Ehrenberg you went into the kitchen—”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Try to remember. Did she tell you why she wanted to see you?”

  “She was scared.”

  “Why?”

  “Of…she didn’t know what to do.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But she told you she was scared?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Did Maureen say something to anger you?”

  “No, we…we always…we always got along fine. We…no.”

  “You just suddenly reached up for the knife and began chasing her through the house, is that it?”

  “In the bedroom, I…”

  “Yes, what happened in the bedroom?”

  “I took her in my arms,” he said. “I kissed her on the mouth.”

  “Yes, then what?”

  “I didn’t want the police to know I’d…I didn’t want them to know I’d kissed…my father’s wife. She was my father’s wife, I’d kissed her.”

  “And you didn’t want the police to know that?”

  “No, I…they’d tell my father.”

  “Is that why you stabbed her?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “That was afterwards.”

  “Michael, I’m not following you.”

  “After she was dead.”

  “You kissed her after she was dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that what you didn’t want the police to know?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Did you kiss Emily, too?”

  “No, just my mother.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Maureen.”

  It was a little past five when I parked outside the flower shop. Ehrenberg hadn’t given me the name of the place, but there was only one on South Bayview, and I had to assume this was the one Catherine Brenet owned and operated. I was aware of the fact that Susan and I were supposed to attend a gallery opening sometime between five and seven, but it seemed to me more important to talk to Mrs. Brenet before Ehrenberg got to her.

  The shop was in a row of stores on the same side of the street as the Royal Palms Hotel. Turreted and balconied, shuttered and terraced, the hotel created for the entire street an aura of graciousness, reminiscent of what Calusa must have been like in the 1920s. All was quiet in the late afternoon sunlight. I could visualize horses and buggies coming down a palm-shaded esplanade, could imagine luxurious gardens stretching clear to the bay. The sidewalk in front of the flower shop was a miniature garden in itself. A potted umbrella tree stood side by side with a dragon tree and a corn plant, all arranged around a flower cart massed with purple, white and pink gloxinias, mums in yellow and lavender, spinning wheels with bright yellow centers and white petals. The plate glass window of the shop was lettered with the words LE FLEUR DE LIS over a heraldic crest showing a pair of stylized three-petaled irises. The name of the shop, coupled with the knowledge that it was owned by Jamie’s mistress, whose name in turn was Catherine Brenet, somehow conspired to create the expectation of a French poule licking her lips seductively and asking, “Desirez, monsieur?”

  There was only one person in the shop, a somewhat dumpy, middle-aged woman, blonde hair pulled into a severe bun at the back of her head, wearing oversized glasses with tortoise-shell frames, soil-stained green smock, the handles of a pruning shears sticking out of her pocket, scuffed sandals. She was holding an asparagus fern she had probably just brought in from the sidewalk outside; it was past closing time. She turned to look at me. Behind her was a display-cooler riotously packed with red long-stemmed roses and bright purple tulips, baby’s breath and orchids, marguerite daisies and irises that echoed again the words LE FLEUR DE LIS elongated at the woman’s feet in sunlit silhouette on the floor of the shop. To her left and right on shelves and hanging from the ceiling were kangaroo vines and snakeskin plants, cactus and Boston ivy, spider plants, flame violets, angel-wing begonias. A calico-cat flowerpot stood empty beside an arrangement of dried flowers.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m looking for Mrs. Brenet.”

  “I’m Mrs. Brenet,” she said. The blonde eyebrows arched a trifle, the brown eyes widened expectantly in the plump face.

  “Catherine Brenet?” I said. I could not believe this was the woman Jamie had described as “startlingly beautiful.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m Catherine Brenet.”

  “How do you do?” I said. “I’m Matthew Hope.” I paused. “Jamie Purchase’s attorney.”

  “Yes?” she said. She put down the asparagus fern, and made a small puzzled gesture with head and hands.

  “I’d like to ask you some questions about last night,” I said.

  “I beg your pardon?” The look of bewilderment was turning to something else.

  “Mrs. Brenet, I’m Jamie’s attorney. I’m sure you know what happened last night—”

  “Yes?” Again the single word as a question. But the eyebrows were no longer arched. They were puckering into a frown above the thick-rimmed glasses.

  “Jamie says he was with you last night between—”

  “With me?” she said.

  “Yes, between eleven and—”

  “Me? Are you sure you’ve got the right person?”

  “You are Catherine Brenet?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you do know Jamie Purchase?”

  “Yes. But I don’t know what you mean about last night.”

  “His wife and children were—”

  “Yes, I heard that on the radio. But when you say Dr. Purchase—”

  “Mrs. Brenet, he told us that—”

  “Was with me—”

  “Between eleven and—”

  “I don’t understand.”

  We both stopped talking at the same time. She looked at me, waiting for an explanation. I looked at her, waiting for the same thing.

  “Mr. Hope,” she said at last, “my husband and I knew the Purchases only casually. I was, of course, distressed to learn of the terrible tragedy that had—”

  “Mrs. Brenet, you’re going to be visited shortly by a Detective Ehrenberg of the Calusa Pol—”

  “What on earth for?”

  “Because Jamie Purchase says he was with you last night between the hours of eleven and twelve-thirty.”

  “He wasn’t.”

  “You didn’t see him last night?”

  “I haven’t seen him since…I can’t even remember. I believe I met him and his wife at a charity ball, oh, more than a year ago. And I think we saw each other once after that, at a dinner party someplace.”

  “Jamie said—”

  “I don’t care what—”

  “He said you’ve been lovers for—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I’m repeating what he told us this morning.”

  “Told who?”

  “My partner and me. In our offices this morning.”

  “Well, he was obviously…I can’t imagine why he said anything like that. I don’t know whether to be offended or flattered. I’m hardly the type of woman—”

  “Mrs. Brenet, if Jamie wasn’t with you last night, then he was somewhere else. And the police will want to know where.”

  “I’m sure that’s his problem, not mine.”

  “I don’t think you understand me.”

  “I understand you completely. You’re asking me to provide an alibi for Dr. Purchase.”

  “I’m asking you to verify his story.”

  “How can I possibly do that?”

  “Mrs. Brenet, Jamie told us that you and he have been renting a cottage on Whisper…”

  “This is really too ridiculous.”

  “That you’d decided to seek divorces…”

  “I’m a happily married woman. I would no more consider divorcing my husband than…I simply would never consider it.”

  “Then Jamie was lying.”

  “If he said he was with me last night, why yes. Of course he was lying.”

  “Where were you last night, Mrs. Brenet?”

  “I don’t think that’s any of your business.” She looked up at the wall clock. “I was just closing the shop when you got here. My husband and I have a dinner date, so if you don’t mind—”

  “Was your husband home last night?”

  “Again, that’s none of—”

  “Are you asking me to believe that Jamie picked your name out of the air? Made up a long story about you on the spur of the moment—”

  “I don’t know why he told you what he did. If, indeed, he told you anything at all.”

  “He did.”

  “I’ll accept your word for that. In which case, all I can say—again, and for the last time—is that he was lying.”

  “Will you tell that to the police when they get here?”

  “What have you told them, Mr. Hope?”

  “Nothing. They found out about you on their own.”

  “There was nothing to find out, so I can’t imagine—”

  “They talked to one of Jamie’s nurses this afternoon. They know all about your frequent phone calls to his office.”

  “I’m sure I’m being confused with someone else.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “When the police get here, if they get here, I’ll tell them I went to a movie last night. My husband, as it happens, was in Tampa visiting his mother—he goes to see her two or three times a month. She doesn’t particularly like me, we try to avoid each other. When I got back to the house, my husband was already home. I asked him how his mother was. He said she was fine. We both went to sleep.”