Roses Are Red

for the night. Dr. Francis stayed out on the deck, sipping a snifter of brandy, watching the moon ride high over the Atlantic.
    “Ahh, the good life,” Betsey said. “Moon over Miami and all that neat stuff.”
    “He only had to kill about a dozen people to get his place in the sun,” I said.
    Francis’s cell phone rang around midnight. We listened to the call from the surveillance van. The call definitely got our attention. Betsey and I exchanged glances.
    The caller sounded nervous. “Bernie, they’re all over this place again. They’re looking at staff now. They —”
    Francis cut in. “It’s late. I’ll call you in the morning.
I’ll call you.
Don’t call me here. I’ve told you that. Please, don’t do it again.”
    Dr. Francis hung up angrily. He drained the rest of his brandy.
    Betsey elbowed me. She was smiling for the first time since we’d been watching Francis. “Alex, you recognize the voice on the other end?” she asked.
    I sure did. “The lovely and talented Kathleen McGuigan. Nurse McGuigan is part of this. It’s all starting to come together, isn’t it?”

Chapter 119
    IT WAS REALLY EASY to loathe Dr. Bernard Francis. He was human scum, the worst of the worst, a killer who liked to make his victims suffer. It made the late-night-surveillance job easier, almost bearable. So did the idea that Francis was the Mastermind, and that we were close to nailing him to the walls of his pink stucco, Mediterranean-style condo.
    Kathleen McGuigan didn’t try to call Francis back that night. And he didn’t call her. Around one o’clock, he went inside to bed and turned on his alarm system.
    “Sweet dreams, you bastard,” Betsey said as the house lights went off.
    “We know where he lives. We know he did it — if not exactly how. But we can’t bring him down?” one of the agents complained once Francis had turned in for the night.
    “Patience, patience,” I said. “We just got here. We’ll get Dr. Francis. We just want to watch him a little longer. We need to be absolutely sure this time. And, we want the money he stole.”
    Betsey and I finally left the surveillance van around two in the morning. We took one of the Bureau’s sedans. She drove off Singer Island. Everyone else was staying at a Holiday Inn in West Palm. We headed north on I-95.
    “Is this okay?” she asked once we were on the interstate. She looked more vulnerable than I was used to seeing her. “There’s a Hyatt Regency a few exits north.”
    “I like being with you, Betsey. Right from the first time we met,” I told her.
    “Yeah. I can tell, Alex. But not enough, huh?”
    I looked over at her. I liked Betsey even more when she was a little unsure of herself. “You want candor and honesty at two-fifteen in the morning?” I joked.
    “Absolutely, relentlessly.”
    “I know this is a little crazy, but —”
    She finally smiled. “I can handle crazy.”
    “I don’t know exactly what’s going on in my life right now. I’m floating with the tide a little bit. This isn’t like me. Maybe that’s a good thing.”
    “You’re also still trying to get over Christine,” she said. “I think you’re doing it the right way. You’re being brave.”
    “Or very foolish,” I said, and smiled.
    “Probably a little of both. But proactive. You’re untroubled and simple on the surface — in a good way. But you’re complex — in a good way. You’re probably thinking ‘I could say the same about you.’”
    “Not really. Actually, I was thinking that I’m lucky to have met you.”
    “This doesn’t have to go anywhere special, Alex. It’s already special to me,” she said. Her eyes were so beautiful, incandescent. “Anyway, will you come home with me tonight? Home away from home. My humble room at the Hyatt?”
    “I’d love to, more than anything.”
    When we parked outside the hotel entrance, Betsey leaned in close and kissed me. I pulled her against my chest and held her tight. We stayed like that for a couple of minutes.
    “I’m going to miss you so much,” she whispered.

Chapter 120
    THE REST OF THE NIGHT flew by, and I think both of us hated to see it go. I kept thinking about what Betsey had said —
that she was going to miss me.
She and I were back inside the FBI surveillance van by nine the following morning. The van already smelled bad. Dry ice sat in twin buckets in the corner, throwing off a vapor and making the cramped space almost livable.
    “What’s happening, gentlemen?”