Midnight Pass: A Lew Fonesca Novel (Lew Fonesca Novels) by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page A

always came back to moments with my wife, little moments. A laugh shared across the table at the Bok Choy Restaurant, our buttery fingers meeting in a box of popcorn while we watched a movie I couldn’t remember. Her holding my face in her cool hands and looking into my eyes after we had an argument until I grinned and conceded her victory. Picking out the car in which she was killed.
    There was an endless supply of pain. I savored every image, my depression fed on it. It wasn’t simply self-pity. There was some of that, but it was that deep sense of void, loss that I wanted to hold onto and lose at the same time.
    I fell asleep before I could insert a videotape. I dreamed of nothing and was awakened by the ringing of the telephone. It was still light outside. I checked my watch. It was almost seven at night. The sun was going down. I went into the office and picked up the phone a ring before the machine kicked in to take the message.
    “Fonesca,” I said.
    “What happened?”
    It was Kenneth Severtson asking a reasonable question.
    “I left a message on your machine.”
    I looked at the battered metal box I had picked up in a pawnshop on Main Street.
    “So?” he asked anxiously.
    I told him the story and ended with “They should be home soon. Your wife had to answer a few questions for the police.”
    Long, long pause.
    “He killed himself in front of Kenny and Sydney? She was in bed with him in front of Kenny and Sydney.”
    “They were in another room. They’re young,” I said. “I don’t think the sex part sunk in.”
    I didn’t believe that and I wasn’t sure he would either, but it was a lie he could pretend to hang onto if he really wanted it.
    “I’m thinking about a divorce and asking for custody of the children,” he said.
    “Talk to Sally.”
    “I don’t know. I want things the way they were,” he said, thinking out loud.
    “I know, but it won’t happen. You take her back, you take the pain. There are things harder to take. Talk to Sally.”
    “If there’s ever anything I can do,” he said.
    I thought of asking him if he knew any jokes, but decided to say, “Thanks, you owe me some money. You can send it to me or drop it off.”
    “How much?”
    “Three hundred,” I said. “I’ve got to go.”
    I played the messages, erased Severtson’s and two from Dixie to call her. I dialed Dixie at home.
    “It’s me, Lew,” I said before she could cough or say hello in her fake hoarse voice.
    “Roberta Goulding had a brother and a sister,” she said. “Brother, seven years younger, Charles. Sister, six years younger, now Mrs. Antony Diedrich living with her husband in Fort Worth. He’s got a Toyota and a Buick dealership. Don’t know where the brother is.”
    “Thanks, Dixie,” I said.
    “That’s not why I called mainly,” she said. “Kevin Hoffmann, member of the board of just about everything in Sarasota, major contributor to the Ringling Museum, Asolo Theater, Sarasota Ballet, Sarasota Opera, Pine View School and Booker School Scholarship funds, Committee to Open Midnight Pass. Goes on and on.”
    “He’s bought lots of friends.”
    “One might conclude,” said Dixie. “Makes lots of money, like lots .”
    “Like?”
    “Taxes on income over the past six years show over a million and half a year, some years over two million,” she said.
    “Thanks,” I said.
    “You haven’t heard the best,” she said. “He’s going to have a birthday Sunday.”
    “I’m happy for him,” I said.
    “You might want to give him a present,” she said, and told me why.
    When I hung up with Dixie, I called Roberta Trasker. She answered after three rings.
    “It’s Lew Fonesca,” I said.
    “You found William?”
    “You know Kevin Hoffmann?”
    The pause was long. I opened the phone book and searched the pages for Hoffmann’s number while I waited. He wasn’t listed.
    “Yes,” she said. “Socially. He and his wife, Sharon, and William had business with him. Sharon left him