Skinny Dip - Страница 28

"You betcha."

"Then I'd have to reconsider. Sure I would," Gallo said. "But it'd better be fucking brilliant."

"Maybe I'll get lucky." Rolvaag sounded far more confident than he felt, having no theory, no hunch, not even a wild guess as to why Chaz Perrone had so casually murdered his wife.

The generator broke down before Stranahan could start breakfast. He was still working on it when Joey Perrone awoke and came outside.

"The joys of island living," she said.

"Old Neil was right. Rust never sleeps."

Stranahan was wearing cutoff jeans and no shirt; dripping sweat, grease smeared like war paint on his face and chest. Joey asked if he wanted some help, and he said what he really needed was dynamite.

"That bad, huh?"

"I'll fix it eventually," he said, twirling a mallet. "In the meantime there are some delectable bran flakes in the cupboard."

Joey asked to borrow his cellular. He pointed to the boat, where the phone was recharging on the battery plug, and went back to banging on the generator. Twenty minutes later, Joey returned with a pitcher of tea and a bowl of fruit from the kitchen. They walked down to the dock and sat down, Joey tickling the water with her toes. Strom blinked at them from the shade of his favorite palm.

"I'm getting worried about using my credit card," Joey said.

Stranahan assured her that American Express didn't know that she was missing, and didn't care as long as the payments got made. "They don't read the newspapers. Unless somebody calls up and cancels the card, it stays active," he explained.

"The balance is automatically deducted from a private money-market account, but the monthly statement is mailed to the house. What if Chaz gets nosy?"

"Another reason we should work fast," said Stranahan, "before the billing cycle ends. He'll probably just toss the statement into the trash, but if he opens it, then we've got a problem. He'll see that you're continuing to spend money."

"Yeah. Neat trick for a corpse." Joey turned her face upward and squeezed her eyes closed. "The sun still hurts."

"It hasn't even been a week. Next time we go to the mainland, we'll find you some cool shades."

She said, "I dreamed about Chaz again last night."

"Killing him?"

"Worse." Joey rolled her eyes. "Can you believe it, Mick? Even after what he's done, I'm still having sex with the guy in my sleep."

"It's emotional withdrawal, that's all. Like when you try to kick caffeine, suddenly the whole damn world smells like Folger's."

Joey worked her lower lip. "Maybe I actually loved that creep up until the end. Maybe it was more than physical, and I can't admit it."

Stranahan shrugged. "Don't look at me, I'm the crown prince of dysfunctional. What's important is figuring out how you feel about him here and now, before we make another move."

The dog ambled over and stretched out on the warm planks beside Joey. "That was my brother I called earlier," she said. "The people who take care of my money contacted him because someone saw in the paper that I was lost at sea. Corbett told them to sit tight. They can't do anything without a death certificate anyway."

"Chaz hadn't called to snoop around about the trust?"

"Nope. My brother was surprised, too." Joey smiled ruefully. "In a weird way, I wish Chaz had done it for my money. Then I could almost understand," she said. "But killing somebody just to be rid of them- man, it's hard not to take it personally."

"That's not why he did this, Joey. You'll see." Stranahan put an arm around her, and she let her head drop lightly against his shoulder. "What does Corbett think you should do?"

"He likes the idea of me driving Chaz clinically insane," she said. "Float around like a ghost, he says, until the bastard loses his marbles."

"It could happen."

"Oh, guess what else?" Joey lifted her head. "This detective keeps calling Corbett to talk about Chaz-the same guy Corbett spoke with on Monday, and now he's calling back, leaving messages."

Stranahan said, "So the heat's on, just like you wanted."

"It would be fun to think so."

And one more reason to be careful, thought Stranahan. The trick would be putting the cop into play without exposing themselves. "Did your brother tell you the detective's name?" he asked.

"Rolvaag. Karl Rolvaag," she said, "with a K, not a C."

"I'll be damned."

"I even wrote down the phone number," she added, "in lipstick, unfortunately, on the deck of your boat."

"No problem," Stranahan said cheerfully.

"What's so funny?"

"Chaz. He thinks the cop is the blackmailer. On the phone this morning he even called me Rolvaag."

Joey was delighted. Then: "Hey, wait a minute. You talked to Chaz and you didn't even tell me?"

"You were sleeping," Stranahan said.

"So what!"

"In a languid state of undress. Frankly, I was intimidated."

"Mick."

"That's a compliment, by the way."

"Was I snoring?"

"Moaning, actually. If I'd known you were dreaming about Chaz, I would have thrown you under a cold shower."

Joey took a playful swing and he caught her fist with the palm of his hand. "Go wash up. I got you all grimy."

She said, "Buddy, if you're not careful…"

Giving Stranahan a look that reminded him of Andrea Krumholtz, his very first girlfriend, on the night she'd slipped off her bra and tossed it out a window of Stranahan's father's car. For Mick, sixteen at the time, it had been a sublimely instructive moment.

To Joey he said, "Guess I'd better get back to work."

"You sure about that?"

"There's five pounds of lobster in the freezer. It would be a mortal sin to let it spoil."

She said, "Okay. Go fix your stupid generator."

Stranahan finished the job two hours later, arms aching, knuckles raw. He went looking for Joey to give her the news, but she wasn't reading in bed, or sunning on the seawall, or roughhousing on the dock with the dog. In fact, she wasn't anywhere on the island.

Strom wagged his nub but offered up no information. The Whaler was still tied to the pilings, so Stranahan wasn't completely shocked to throw open the doors of the shed and find the yellow kayak missing. By then Joey was so far gone that the hunting scope was useless in spotting her. He climbed the roof to better scan the water, but all the bright specks turned into sailboats and Windsurfers and water bikes. He thought about taking the skiff and hunting her down, but he also thought about how bone-tired and grungy he was, and how good a cold beer would taste.

As soon as he hopped off the roof, the Doberman started yipping and whining reproachfully, nipping at his heels all the way to the kitchen.

"Oh, shut up," Stranahan said. "She'll be back."

Fourteen

Mick Stranahan's sister was married to a lawyer named Kipper Garth, inept in all aspects of the profession except self-promotion. He had been one of the first personal-injury hustlers in Florida to advertise on television and billboards, attracting a stampede of impressionable clients whose cases he dealt out like pinochle cards to legitimate attorneys in exchange for a slice of the take. As even his rivals conceded, Kipper Garth helped to pioneer the preposterous notion that finding a good lawyer was as easy as dialing up a plumber in the Yellow Pages.

It pained Stranahan that his sister Katie had fallen for such a shyster, and that she'd stayed with him despite serial philanderings, scalding IRS audits and a ruinous gambling addiction. A cranial injury inflicted by a jealous husband had forced Kipper Garth into an early retirement, and in short order he'd burned up the family savings wagering on British cricket, a sport he never bothered to understand. In the face of bankruptcy he had reopened his practice, inspired by advanced pain medication and a fresh marketing angle. A new series of TV commercials featured him tooling around a law library in the same wheelchair to which he had been confined during his homebound rehabilitation. The aim was to present himself as both lawyer and victim, qualified by empathy (if not expertise) to specialize in disability litigation.

Always a trend hound, Kipper Garth had come across a newspaper article about a pair of lawyers who drove around South Florida scouting restaurants, shops and office buildings for wheelchair accessibility. If a place didn't have the required ramps or lifts, the lawyers would recruit a disabled person-often a friend or relative-to sue. Typically the case would settle before trial, the owners of the building eager to avoid headlines implying they were callous toward the handicapped. The scheme was perfectly suited to Kipper Garth's singular talent and soon he was back in tall cotton, overseeing half a dozen runners who scoured the tricounty area for wheelchair-ramp violations.

Throughout good times and bad, Mick Stranahan contrived to avoid his sister's husband, and timed his visits to Kate's house on days when Kipper Garth was gone. Kate was always happy to see Mick, though she maintained a long-standing ban against discussing Kipper's multiple character flaws. Theirs was one of those marriages that Stranahan couldn't hope to understand, but he had come to accept it as unbreakable. He saw no reason to inform Kate that he now required her husband's slithering assistance.

"Sorry, Mick," Kipper Garth told him. "No can do."

Stranahan was skeptically inspecting the wheelchair slanted in a corner of his brother-in-law's spacious bayfront office.

"I still need it on occasion," Kipper Garth said preemptively. "I get spells."