Her Cop Protector. Sharon Hartley
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to do that,” June said softly.
“Yes, I do. Please, Junie. I know this will work.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not on the phone. Maybe Saturday night. Please, please come. It won’t be the same without you.”
June remained silent. She had nothing special planned that night, but wasn’t sure a costume ball at a swank club that was once her parents’ favorite haunt was the most ideal way to spend her free time.
“We’re all going in a limo,” Sandy added, as if that final detail would clinch the deal. “We’ll pick you up around eight.”
“Okay,” June said, not wanting to think how much tomorrow night would cost her friend. “Why not.”
“Don’t sound so glum. We’re going to have a blast.”
After receiving a few more details about the evening, including some gossip about their friends, June stepped back into the aviary. Lazarus gave a halfhearted squawk, but ignored her and kept eating as she sat in her own favorite perch, a sturdy cloth macramé chair suspended from the ceiling. From here she could either watch her patients or look out over the clear waters of Biscayne Bay and beyond Miami Beach to the Atlantic Ocean, a stunning vista that normally calmed her.
Unfortunately the view didn’t have its usual effect. She took deep breaths and tried to wrench herself out of a long-gone past. But too much had happened. Too much was swirling around in her brain, too easily distracting her.
Why in the world had she agreed to accompany Sandy to the Turf Club? She’d avoided the place for ten years. Would anyone be around tomorrow night who remembered her parents? Probably not. She really ought to get over herself.
Lazarus tested his wings with a few quick flaps, flew the short distance to grab a hold of the chain holding up the swing and gazed down. June looked up as he waddled down the chain closer to her.
A bubble of excitement replaced her foreboding. Was Lazarus going to willingly approach her? She reached for a towel and placed it over her shoulder, holding her breath to see what he’d do next.
He cocked his head, squawked and flew back to his favorite branch.
She sighed. Almost. Laz was definitely making progress.
She pushed her foot against the balcony wall, forcing the chair into a gentle sway, her thoughts drifting back to her conversation with Sandy. If she could get through tomorrow night at the club, maybe that would be a step toward recovery for her, too.
One thing for sure. At least she wasn’t obsessing about Detective Hammer and his murder investigation anymore.
* * *
DEAN STUDIED THE images of colorful tropical birds on the computer screen before him. He’d punched June Latham’s name into a search engine, and one of the first hits was the Facebook page of the Tropical Bird Society, one of her do-gooder groups.
Rescue groups, he corrected himself. She’d objected to his use of do-gooder.
The page listed pet shops and vendors the group suspected of selling birds captured from the wild, so he created a fake profile, claiming to be vehemently opposed to this practice, and asked to join the group. After acceptance, he posted a few times criticizing smugglers, receiving a lot of “likes.” Before long, he received a private message with future dates of planned visits. John Smith could easily have tracked June to the North Beach location by doing the same thing.
TBS, the acronym most members used on postings, also had a standard web page where Dean found a schedule of their numerous activities, such as weekly outings to search for rare birds or to clean up various sites around the county. They seemed more of an environmental group than just a protector of birds. If he hit a dead end with this search, he’d get a roster of members to investigate.
So this was one way John Smith could have found June. He also could have tracked her cell-phone signal. The real question was why. Smith had clearly known her name before he released the birds. So why had he followed her?
More important, was there any connection to his dead body on North Beach?
The autopsy hadn’t been much help. Forensics confirmed what he’d seen at the scene. Rocky had been in average health. The cause of death was one gunshot wound to the head. The ME found no obvious evidence that the vic had been gay, so John Smith’s invite up to his room didn’t appear to have sexual overtones. From the surveillance, the invite appeared to be a spur-of-the moment decision, so what had been behind it?
Something just didn’t add up.
Dean scrolled through his list of search-engine hits, searching for more information about June, but didn’t find anything pertinent. The woman definitely flew beneath the radar. Was that deliberate? Did she have something to hide? The name Latham kept popping up, though, Latham Imports, in connection with a fire and arson investigation from ten years ago.
Curious as to why the search engine kept linking June to the fire, Dean opened an old article from the Miami Herald entitled A Cautionary Tale About Greed, and read about a married couple, Carl and Eileen Latham. The Lathams operated a successful importing business, but the FBI, working in a joint task force with Fish and Wildlife, found cocaine in one of their shipments from Peru. The Lathams were wealthy and politically connected, and their photograph frequently appeared on the society page for having paid big bucks to attend this or that benefit, so the scandal created a huge sensation. Out on a bond, they of course insisted they were innocent and had no knowledge of the drugs hidden in their merchandise.
Friends rallied around them and their attorney promised a vigorous defense, but before the trial could begin, a suspicious fire destroyed the Latham Import Warehouse on the Miami River. The fire effectively ended the prosecution as the couple perished in the inferno.
Dean sat back, considering. This case was before his time as a detective, but he vaguely remembered hearing about it. Everyone wondered if the Lathams had set fire to their property to destroy evidence, but misjudged and caused their own death. Seemed too stupid to be true to him.
And why was Fish and Wildlife involved? He made a note to check that out, kept reading and found what he wanted at the end of the article.
“According to friends, the Lathams’ only child, June Marie Latham, a junior at Pinecrest Preparatory Academy, will live with her father’s brother, Michael Westbrook Latham, an investment banker in New York City.”
So there was the connection to June. She’d been seventeen when her parents died and had gone to live with an uncle. Sad story, but Dean didn’t see how the information helped his investigation. He needed to keep digging.
“Sanchez,” he called.
“Yeah?” His rookie partner looked up from his own internet search for information on Rocky, their vic.
“Go to the Tropical Bird Society Facebook page. Research the profile of any friend or member who has posted to their site. I need to know who they are.”
“You think maybe we’ll find our John Smith?”
Dean shrugged. “Probably not, but we have to check it out.”
“You got it,” Sanchez said, his fingers moving over his keyboard.
Dean entered the name Michael Westbrook Latham into the department’s search engine. If June’s parents were dirty, maybe her uncle was, too.
* * *
JUNE EXTENDED AN arm to the uniformed chauffeur, took a deep breath and exited the limousine into a warm summer night. Beneath the impressive portico of the Turf Club, lights and music blazed. She could hear the chatter of animated voices from inside the clubhouse.
“We’re here,” Carole squealed behind her in the stretch limo.
Less nervous than she expected, June stepped beside Sandy, the first of her friends out of the stretch, who looked regal in a light pink beaded