Squeeze Me - Carl Hiaasen Page 0,8
are going to get trashed big-time. A python that size shits like a fire hose.”
As he eyed the immense silent presence up in the banyan, Teabull reconsidered his position. Trying to take the beast alive would turn into a spectacle. The wrangler was right—an inconspicuous removal would be possible only if the snake was limp and unresisting. In other words: dead.
Teabull sought assurances from Angie that the act could be carried out quietly, and with a minimum of gore.
She said, “I’ll try not to bloody your landscaping.”
Her tone rankled the caretaker, whose priority was to prevent guests from learning of the reptile’s presence on the property. The fallout would be devastating.
Hosting parties, weddings and fundraising galas such as the White Ibis and “Stars for SARS” was a lucrative industry in Palm Beach. Competition among mansions had always been intense, but it had turned cutthroat after the social drought inflicted by Covid-19. This was supposed to be the season of the big rebound. Owners of old island estates were counting on event revenue to offset their overhead—parabolic property taxes, criminally priced hurricane insurance and six-figure landscaping fees. Half the fucking pool boys drove Audis.
Sponsors of charity balls were seldom fazed to learn that the one-night rental fee for Lipid House was a quarter of a million dollars, not including custom catering. However, rumors of goliath pythons could wipe out a season’s worth of bookings. The five grand that Teabull had offered the female wildlife wrangler was a bargain; the trust that owned the estate had been prepared to pay ten.
Still, the machete and all its messy possibilities made Teabull nervous. In particular he was fretting about that dowager-sized lump in the snake.
“So, you’ll be cutting off its head,” he pressed Angie Armstrong, “and that’s all, correct? No further chopping.”
“Sir, I’m not fixing cutlets. I’m neutralizing an invasive.”
Angie hated to kill anything, but the magnificent python had signed its own warrant. Dead or alive, it would be delivered to wildlife officers. The next stop was a biologist’s dissection table. Angie expected to collect no bounty for the specimen because Palm Beach was outside the state’s hunt-for-pay zone.
“We’ve moved your vehicle to our rear gate,” Teabull informed her, “to expedite the departure phase. Is there anything else you need?”
“A backhoe would be swell,” Angie said.
Teabull hoped she was joking. “I’ll leave you to your work,” he said, receding into the cover of the topiary.
“Wait—what about my money?”
“Your fee will be in the console of your vehicle, Ms. Armstrong.”
“Just call it a pickup truck, sir. That’s what it is.”
But Teabull had already slipped out of earshot. Mauricio steadied the ladder while Angie climbed.
The machete was sharp. It worked fine.
THREE
The Cornbright spawn arrived the following morning at their missing mother’s house. They were met by Fay Alex Riptoad towing the police chief, whose presentation was brief: The statewide Missing Persons alert had generated a dozen false sightings and one random marriage proposal, in the event Kiki Pew was found alive. Other tips, none especially promising, were being pursued.
At Mrs. Riptoad’s instruction, the chief didn’t tell the two Cornbrights about the half-eaten Ecstasy tab found by the pond. He likewise avoided the subject of the tennis pro, who’d been interviewed and cleared of suspicion. (At the time of Kiki Pew’s disappearance, young Constantin was entertaining one of the other Potussies aboard a chartered Falcon, somewhere in the skies between Jackson Hole and Lantana.)
“We’re doing everything possible to locate your mom,” Jerry Crosby said to the Cornbright sons. “Did either of you speak with her that day?”
The answer was no, although each claimed to have left voicemails on her cell phone. That was bullshit, as the chief well knew, for Kiki Pew’s Samsung had been found in her purse. The device held no messages from Chance or Chase.
Both had distanced themselves from their mother after she married Mott Fitzsimmons, who perceptively viewed his stepsons as lazy trust-fund sucklings. Following Mott’s death they and their families began turning up in Palm Beach more frequently, usually on short notice. Their wives were gratingly deferential, their children unremarkable in every aspect. Kiki Pew feigned a doting attitude though she never embraced the role of grandmother. As for her sons, she remained wary of—and occasionally amused by—their competitive campaigns to re-connect.
On some level, Chance and Chase cared about their mother and were alarmed by her disappearance. However, their emotions were also steered by the knowledge that their deceased stepfather had left no lineal descendants. That meant his wealth had