Scott’s mouth tipped up. “Let’s just say I’d be interested in seeing the evidence first.”

The beeper went off again.

“Sure you don’t want to use the phone?” Scott asked.

Louis switched the beeper off. He was eager to call Susan, but he didn’t want to do it here. He finally had something to take back to her. Lyle Bernhardt, Candace, Hayley Lieberman-any of them had something to lose if Jack Cade had sued. He also had something to take back to Ronnie-that one of the top malpractice lawyers in the state was willing to take a look at his father’s civil case.

“Thanks, Scott, I’ll keep you posted,” Louis said.

“We’ll be talking, detective,” Scott said.

Chapter Twenty-Three

He was on the road to Immokalee first thing the next morning. It was Saturday and traffic was light, so he opened the windows and pushed the Mustang up over seventy, heading east on Corkscrew Road.

It didn’t take long for the small subdivisions to fade away, and then he was out in the scrub lands that formed the northern border of the Corkscrew Swamp. As he passed through a preserve, the light grew dimmer and cooler, filtered through the canopy of slash pines and ancient live oaks. He was only about thirty miles east of Fort Myers. But out here, away from the coast and in the vast nothingness of Florida’s gut, it was another world. Or maybe just another time, before man had left his mark.

He slowed, seeing signs warning: PANTHER CROSSING: Only 60 Left.

He thought of Susan and how happy she had been with what he had found out about Hayley and Brian Brenner. He had called this morning, catching her and Benjamin just as they were going out the door to Benjamin’s Bible study group. She had been so pleased, she told him to take the day off.

Orange groves lining the road led him into town, where a Rotary sign declared “Welcome To Immokalee, ‘My Home’.” The air grew ripe with the smell of rotting fruit. He had never been to Immokalee before, and had heard only two things about it: It was a farming town of Mexican migrants who worked for big fruit cooperatives, and that you didn’t want to pick a fight in the bars on Friday nights.

The directory had listed Stan Novick’s address on Armadillo Drive. A guy at the Sunoco station directed Louis west of town toward Lake Trafford. Louis found the house, a small but well-kept ranch house, its yard facing the entrance to a cemetery. He went to the door and rang the bell.

Someone was screaming. Louis could hear it through the closed front door. He rang the bell a second time, then opened the screen and knocked hard.

Finally, the door jerked open and a woman peered out at him.

“What?” she demanded.

She was in her mid-thirties, a shag of flaming red hair around a pale freckled face. Except for the lines around the eyes and thirty extra pounds, Joyce Novick looked pretty much the way she had in Kitty’s old snapshot.

“Mrs. Novick?”

“Yes?” she said warily.

“I’m Louis Kincaid, a private investigator.”

She used her forearm to brush her hair back from her face. “Is this about Sean?” Her voice sounded tired.

Louis shook his head. “No, Kitty Jagger.”

Her pale blue eyes widened slightly, then she blinked rapidly several times. “Kitty. . good God,” she said quietly.

“Do you have time to talk?”

She hesitated. “I. . Christ. . Kitty.”

Joyce Novick had gone even paler, if that was possible, as if a ghost had just knocked on her door. Maybe it had, Louis thought.

“I’m working,” Joyce Novick said finally, gesturing weakly behind her.

“I’d appreciate it if you could take a few minutes,” Louis said.

Joyce wavered. It was obvious she didn’t want to talk.

“Please, Mrs. Novick. I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t important.”

She hesitated, then nodded. She opened the door wider so Louis could come in. “I have to finish up,” she said. “Do you mind waiting?”

“No problem.”

Louis followed her through a small living room decorated in the country style that mandated plaid sofas, stuffed roosters and the cloying smell of cinnamon potpourri. In the tiny kitchen, two boys were sitting at the table, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The smaller one’s face was tear-streaked; he must have been the one screaming. They eyed Louis as he followed Joyce out a door and into the garage.

Off in one corner was a teenage girl, sitting in a swivel chair in front of a big mirror. Her body was covered with a green smock and she had big rollers in her hair.

Joyce Novick saw Louis staring at her. “I do hair,” she said.

The makeshift beauty salon was stuffed in one corner of the dark garage. An old a/c wall unit wheezed away above the mirror, trying to defuse the garage’s odor of mildew and car oil.

Joyce Novick moved in behind the girl and picked up a brush and a big pink foam roller. “How did you find me?” she asked cautiously.

“Ray Faulk told me about you,” he said.

“Ray. . I haven’t thought about him in years,” she said softly, winding a strand of hair.

“It took me a while to track down your address.”

Joyce smiled wryly. “Immokalee isn’t exactly the center of the universe.”

“You moved out here after high school?” Louis asked.

She shook her head. “I dropped out before senior year. Moved out here right after I got married. My husband Stan’s a foreman over at one of the cooperatives.”

Louis looked into the mirror and caught the eyes of the girl in the chair. She was looking between Louis and Joyce, trying to figure out what he was doing here.

“Time for the dryer, Rachel,” Joyce said.

The girl let Joyce deposit her under the dryer, wedged next to a tool bench. It was only when Joyce was sure the girl couldn’t hear anything that she turned back to Louis.

“I’m sorry I acted so weird at the door,” Joyce said. “I thought you were here about my oldest kid, Sean. He’s eighteen and been in some trouble. I haven’t heard from him in a while.”

“Can we talk about Kitty?” Louis asked.

She began to pile the pink rollers back in a box. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything you can remember.”

Joyce nodded. “I used to think about her all the time, even though I didn’t want to. Then the years went by and it got easier to forget.”

“I’m sorry I have to bring it all back.”

She looked at him. “Oh, it wasn’t just you. It was that man, seeing him on TV after all this time.”

She was talking about Jack Cade, but Louis knew she didn’t want to say his name. He slipped a notebook out of his pocket. “I just have a few questions, Mrs. Novick. What can you tell me about the night Kitty disappeared?”

She sat down in the swivel chair, holding a hairbrush. “God, I can still remember that night like it was yesterday.”

Joyce’s pale blue eyes grew distant. “It was April 9th. And it was hot and sticky, like summer was coming early that year. All the kids were out cruising. We were very busy, I remember.”

“Do you recall anything out of the ordinary?”

Joyce shook her head. “Kitty punched out at eleven, just like always. I waved to her as she walked toward the bus stop. She turned and waved back. That’s the last time I saw her.”

“She didn’t leave with anyone?”

Joyce shook her head slowly.

Louis pulled up a stool and sat down opposite the swivel chair. “How long did you know Kitty?” he asked.

Joyce was staring at something on the opposite wall. Louis followed her gaze, but all he saw was a bunch of tools hanging on a pegboard.

“Mrs. Novick?”

She looked back at him.

“How long did you know Kitty?”

“We met in sixth grade. I remember the first time I saw her.” For the first time, Joyce smiled. It transformed her, made her look younger. “Kitty was in the girl’s john ratting her hair and making spit curls. I was in awe of her. None of the other girls ratted their hair in sixth grade.”