“Seriously?” Jeb Bernstein asks.
“Why put off until tomorrow when you can kill today?” Robby Sassoon says.
Bernstein probably thinks it is a gesture of camaraderie, or even friendship, when Robby reaches over and pats him on the head. He has no idea that it’s Robby’s calling card, but then no one does, until it’s too late.
FORTY
HE WAITS UNTIL HE sees her hang theCLOSEDsign in the window a little after six thirty.
The Uncommon Florist is tucked into a far corner at Bridgehampton Commons, directly across from Staples and down the row from Dunkin’ and Barnes & Noble and The Gap. Most of the other places in this part of the big outdoor mall, with the exception of the huge King Kullen grocery store, are already closed.
Robby Sassoon has parked his car a few hundred yards away on the far side of the parking lot and walked to the flower shop from there.
He has listened to the entire cast recording ofLes Misérableson the way out from Manhattan.
“Look down, look down,” he sings softly to himself as he makes the long walk from where he’s left the car in front of TJ Maxx. “You’re standing in your own grave.”
It’s fitting that she’ll be surrounded by flowers,he tells himself.
By now he knows when she likes to close up for the day and, better yet, knows how easy it will be for him to pick the lock on the back door without being heard and simply walk into the store from there.
He has done his due diligence on the owner, Beth Lassiter, knows that she was once a softball pitcher at the University ofFlorida, and that she moved up here after a divorce five years ago and started her own small business.
But there is more to her story than that. Much more.
Beth has a secret.
She has a gambling problem. An even bigger problem is that she likes to bet on baseball, which Jeb Bernstein says is even riskier than betting on other pro sports, just because to be successful—which few are, he says—you have to follow the sport even more closely than all the bean counters who pretty much run baseball teams now. It means, Jeb says, that even the savviest baseball bettors don’t know nearly as much about the sport as they think they do. Or need to.
Sadly, Beth Lassiter isn’t smart or savvy about who she’s betting on or how much she’s betting, which is why the adorable little place where she sells her flowers and plants is about to go under, and why she is planning to disappear, something else Robby has learned in researching the pathetic state of her life.
Beth Lassiter just plans to close up one night and leave Long Island for good, having already told the owner of the house she’s been renting in Sag Harbor that she won’t be renewing her lease.
Details,Robby thinks.
The devil is always in the details.
The devil in this case being me.
Beth isn’t about to run from the back rent she owes on the Uncommon Florist, although that would be bad enough. She’s also about to run out on the $200,000 she owes to Jeb Bernstein, which means the big money she owes to Sonny Blum.
Robby walks around behind the grocery store and quietly lets himself in the back door she hasn’t even had time to lock yet. Beth Lassiter never hears him as he walks up to where she’s standing at her counter, her back to him, and puts his hand over her mouth.
“Hush,” he says softly into her ear.
He wants to feel badly for her, he really does, all the beauty around her, the roses and lilies and bouquets she’s already arranged in vases; and all the orchids, purple and white, big and small, on the long table that stretches along one of the walls in the front room.
But he doesn’t feel badly for her.
She did this to herself.
They all do, none of them ever considering that actions will have consequences.
Robby has tied her to a chair in the back room, knowing he will untie her later and leave her on the floor in the front room, as if this is some kind of smash-and-grab robbery gone wrong, the cops will never know how little cash there actually was in her register.
His Beretta is in his hand now.
There is tape over her mouth, but at least she has finally stopped struggling.
