The Bone House - Brian Freeman [11]
'See, this is why I hate beach bodies,' Cab repeated.
Lala opened her mouth as if she had more to tell him, but he held up a hand to stop her as he let the details soak into his mind. His way of approaching an investigation was to add layers of fact to his brain like coats of paint. He liked to let one coat dry before slapping on the next one. Lala was different. She preferred to blurt out her whole report at once and sort through the puzzle pieces.
Lala was dressed all in black. Black T-shirt, black jeans, black sandals, all of it matching her shoulder-length black hair. She was in her mid- thirties, like Cab, and had spent her entire career with the Naples Police. She was intense about everything that Cab wasn't. Her Cuban family. Her Cuban politics. Her Catholic heritage. Her job. Her temper. She was fire; he was water, always flowing downhill, always running away. Still, she was about the only cop in Florida he considered a friend.
Not that he would ever say so to her face.
'Cab?' Lala asked impatiently.
'Yeah, OK, keep going. Do we know who this girl is?'
'We got lucky about that. Her name's Glory Fischer. Sixteen years old.'
Cab exhaled in dismay. 'She's just a kid.'
'Sixteen's older than you think these days.'
'Yeah, yeah, thirteen is the new eighteen, sixteen's the new twenty- one. How'd we make the ID?'
'Her sister and Glory's boyfriend were looking for her in the hotel grounds when we showed up. The sister said Glory wasn't in their room, and when they heard about the body, they both freaked. The sister confirmed Glory's ID from a photograph. We've got them with a policewoman now. A counselor's on the way.'
'What about a parent?'
Lala shook her head. 'The girls are from rural Wisconsin, an area called Door County. Mom's back home, Dad's deceased. The sister already called the mother and gave her the news. She's flying down here today.'
'Wisconsin,' Cab said. 'Remind me, that's north of Michigan, right?'
'No, the place north of Michigan is called Canada, Cab.'
'Same difference. What were these girls doing here anyway?'
'The hotel is crawling with college dancers,' Lala told him. 'There was some kind of competition this week with student teams from all over the country. The sister - her name is Tresa, T-r-e-s-a - she goes to school at the University of Wisconsin at River Falls. She came down here on a bus with her teammates. Her mother couldn't come, so it sounds like Glory and her boyfriend - his name's Troy Geier - drove down here separately to cheer for Tresa during the program. They were all supposed to be heading back home today.'
'The victim, Glory, she wasn't part of the competition?'
Lala shook her head. 'Nope.'
'Did you get any more info about Glory out of the sister or the boyfriend? Do they have any idea what she was doing on the beach last night?'
'They say no.'
'Do you believe them?' Cab asked.
'If one of them was involved, they put on a good act. Most of the time, you can see through kids if they're lying.'
'I pretty much assume everybody's lying,' Cab said.
That was part of his legacy growing up with a mother who worked as an actress. If someone was moving their lips in LA, they were probably lying. Being a cop had done nothing to change his conviction that people were dishonest at heart. He'd learned that lesson the hard way.
'How old is the sister Tresa?' he added.
'Nineteen. She's a freshman at River Falls.'
'How about the boyfriend? Did you pick up anything about his relationship with Glory?'
'Nothing about Glory,' Lala said. He saw a self-satisfied smirk on her golden face. She knew something. She'd been aching to tell him from the beginning.
'Spill it, Mosquito,' Cab said. 'What did the boyfriend tell you?'
Lala didn't blink at the nickname this time. 'Troy followed me so we could talk in private. He didn't want Tresa to hear what he had to say, because she wouldn't let him talk about it.'
'About what?'
'Apparently there's another couple from the same part of Wisconsin staying at the resort this week. Their names are Mark