Rising Moon: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 19)

by Wayne Stinnett

  “Great little puddle jumper,” he said. “I know a lot of people who’d be glad to take it off your hands.”

  “Maybe upgrade was the wrong word,” I told him. “‘Add to’ might be better. Do you know of any Grummans for sale? Flying boats, specifically.”

  “I might,” he replied. “That’s a very small community. Any preference on size?”

  “My Beaver and your Widgeon are comparable in range and passengers. I’m looking for something with greater range and room.”

  “I’ll check with a few people and see what’s out there. Do you care about what condition it’s in?”

  “Airworthy would be a plus,” I said with a chuckle. “But dismantled and on a trailer would work if it’s all there. Or fully restored. I just don’t want to have to hunt for a specific wingnut on a strut.”

  “I can get back to you at this number?”

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  “Give me a couple of days,” Buck said. “I’ll call you after Christmas.”

  There was a click and when I looked at my phone, the call had ended.

  I stood by the door, admiring the King Air as it taxied into position. There were usually only a handful of people on these shuttle flights from Miami or Daytona. Tank was the first to deplane, a single small bag in his hand.

  Though it had been fifteen years since he’d helped me and Deuce overturn a Marine’s dishonorable discharge, he looked exactly the same. Well, except for the beard. He was sporting a neatly trimmed—and completely gray—goatee.

  Tank strode confidently across the tarmac. He wasn’t an overly large man—about six feet tall with a slim build—but there was a presence about him that commanded respect. To look at him, you’d never guess he was seventy years old.

  “How the hell are you?” he asked, as I opened the door for him.

  “Right as rain, Master Guns,” I replied. “Are you ever going to grow old?”

  “Maybe after I die,” he said with a hearty handshake. “But to be honest, I’m feeling the years a little these days.”

  “That’s not your only bag, is it?”

  “Nah, I had to check my sea bag.”

  We went over to the small carousel, which was already turning as others filed in from the plane.

  “How was the flight?” I asked.

  “This last leg was great. I flew American Airlines out of Wilmington and had to change planes in Charlotte. Both were cramped.” He glanced around the small terminal. “I figured Thurman would be here with you,” he said, lifting a full sea bag easily to his shoulder.

  “He’s working,” I said. “But we have to go there to take my boat out to the island.”

  “Someone’s gotta work,” he said with a grin. “My pension ain’t gonna pay for itself. What’ve you been doing in your retirement?”

  “Hah,” I scoffed. “I keep busy. I doubt I’m ever going to fully retire.”

  “Looks like you’ve taken pretty good care of yourself.”

  “Thanks,” I said, as we reached The Beast and I opened the back door. “This is me.”

  “I take that back,” he said, looking over the truck. “Apparently, charter fishing doesn’t pay quite so well.”

  I laughed and tossed his carryon in the back. “Around here, nobody owns expensive cars. The fenders will rust off before you make the last payment.”

  We got in and I started the engine as he looked around at the interior of The Beast.

  “This thing’s a good forty years old on the outside,” he noted. “But I see you’ve made some upgrades on the inside, and I don’t think these thirteen-letter shit spreaders ever came with a diesel engine.”

  I laughed at his reference to International having its roots in the farm tractor industry.

  “Bought it the day I arrived here,” I said. “Some friends did the restoration and installed a new engine. It gets me around.”

  “How far’s Thurman’s bar?” he asked. “They didn’t serve anything on the plane and I’m as dry as a powder house.”

  It’d been years since I’d last walked into a bunker at an ammo dump, but I remembered the feeling of the air inside—absolutely devoid of even a single molecule of moisture. It was something that flashed back into my mind quite easily from my days as a range coach.

  “Just a few minutes,” I said. “But if you don’t mind, I have a stop I’d like to make first.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m investigating the disappearance of a young woman.”

  “That what you do these days? You’re a PI?”

  “Not exactly,” I replied, putting the truck in gear. “Though I do have a license. You remember Deuce Livingston, right?”

  “Yeah, Russ Livingston’s kid. You and he came up to Lejeune, what, fifteen years ago?”

  “He and I own a security agency, but it’s more him than me. I just put the money up to get things going.”

  “So, who’s the low-life you need to shake up? He got a name?”

  I grinned over at him. “Who said it was a man or that I was going to shake anyone up?”

  “Young girl disappears—it’s always a man. A PI is called in after the cops don’t get anywhere but there’s a suspect. So, the punk-ass turd-fondler needs to be made uncomfortable.”

  I just stared at him a moment.

  He shrugged. “Been watching a lot of Law and Order.”

  It couldn’t be helped. I laughed deep from my gut. I’d forgotten how straight to the point and pragmatic Master Gunnery Sergeant Owen Tankersley was. Or was it all Marines? Had my attitude dulled?

  “Yeah, he’s got a name—Ty Sampson. The guy’s been cleared by the police. I just want to stop and see if there’s anything he might remember now. She disappeared a month ago.”

  A few minutes later, I pulled into a driveway behind a Volkswagen van and shut off the engine. We got out and walked to the front door.

  “Let me do the talking, okay?”

  Tank nodded and I knocked on the door. After a moment I knocked again. Then I remembered that Donna had told me over lunch that the guy had a workshop behind the house.

  “Let’s try out back,” I said. “That’s where he works.”

  The two of us walked around the house to the right. There wasn’t much grass in the yard and none at all in a very visible trail around that side.

  “First day of winter was two days ago,” Tank said. “Almost as hot here as in the Sandbox.”

  “Not really,” I said, noticing a sheen of sweat drops on Tank’s forehead. “It’s the humidity here. Over there it was a dry heat.”

  “Dry heat, humid heat—hot’s just hot and it ain’t supposed to be hot at Christmastime.”

  “Welcome to the Conch Republic,” I said.

  Rounding the back corner, I saw a building about fifteen feet wide and twice as long, with double doors at one end, a man-door at the front and a box air conditioner hanging from a window beside it.

  The AC was chugging.

  I knocked on the door, leaning over to look through the window above the rattling air conditioner. I couldn’t see much, just some shelves with supplies.

  There was the sound of movement inside, as if someone had set something down. Then I heard footsteps and the door opened.

  “Can I help you?” a young man asked.

  He looked to be in his twenties or early thirties, longish hair, and a scraggly little beard. He was dressed in long pants and a long-sleeved shirt, typical for anyone who worked with fiberglass.

  I handed him a business card from my pocket. “My name’s Jesse McDermitt,” I said, as he glanced at the card. “We’re looking into the disappearance of a friend of yours, Cobie Murphy. That is, if you’re Ty Sampson?”

  His pupils dilated slightly, but he stepped back and waved a hand toward the inside. “Yeah, I’m Ty. Come on in out of the heat. I’m glad to see Cobie’s mom finally hired someone. The cops here are a joke.” He glanced at the card again, then at Tank, and finally back to me. “You’re from up in
Key Largo?”

  It wouldn’t hurt to let him think what he wanted. Deuce’s office was there and that’s what it said on the card. I’d never seen this guy around, but Marathon was a big, growing city.

  I nodded. “I understand she was supposed to stop here after work to pick up a new wakeboard.”

  “Yeah,” he said, plopping down in a swivel chair by a desk. “Everyone at the park misses her.”

  “The Cable Park?”

  “Yeah. There’s about ten of us who are regulars. Most ride my boards.”

  He motioned toward a stool set up next to a work bench.

  I remained standing.

  “I’d just finished her board the day before,” he said. “She’d paid in advance and I texted her the next morning to tell her she could pick it up when I got back from Miami, later that afternoon.”

  That wasn’t exactly the way Donna said it, I thought. He was mixing his alibi and message.

  Donna Murphy had told me that Cobie had received a text the morning she disappeared telling her she could pick up her board in the afternoon, but she never mentioned the text saying he wasn’t there or where he’d be. Detective Andersen had told her that Ty had a Miami alibi.

  “Do you remember what time you got back?” I asked, looking around the shop.

  The place was messy but appeared to be organized. A mess would be expected in a shop that worked with fiberglass.

  Ty looked up, thinking. “I’m pretty sure it was around noon,” he said. “I left early that morning, before sunrise. The sun was coming up when I hit traffic in Key Largo. My business there only took a half hour—picking up some special glass mat and carbon fiber material. So, yeah, no later than twelve-thirty.”

  “Was that when you told her she could pick up the board?”

  “No, I’m fairly sure I just told her after twelve, just in case. And she had to work that day and didn’t get off until three, anyway.”

  “How well did you know Cobie?” I asked, wondering how he knew her work schedule.

  “Not real well,” he said. “Some of the local kids hang out here sometimes, and I’m a regular at the Cable Park. That’s where I met her, I think.”

  Leaning over, I looked at a board he was apparently working on. I didn’t know a thing about wakeboarding, but I surfed every once in a while, and any boat owner could tell you a thing or two about fiberglass.

  “Nice work,” I said, without looking up. “You use a polyresin, right?”

  “Yeah, man. It’s lighter than epoxy.”

  I turned and faced him again. “Did you call or text Cobie after she didn’t show up to get her board that afternoon?”

  Again, his pupils flared slightly larger.

  “I don’t think so,” he replied. “I guess she was too busy after work.”

  Donna had told me about how excited Cobie had been to try out her new board, and even though the park closed at sunset, which was about 1800, she would’ve had at least a couple of hours at the park. If she’d conveyed her excitement to her mother, her friends were sure to know.

  “When did you call?” I asked.

  Ty glanced over at Tank, who had his back turned, examining a bunch of bottles and cans on a shelf. “Be careful there, man. Some of those solvents are dangerous.”

  Tank looked back at him with what could only be described as a smirk but said nothing. He’d carried three wounded Marines, one after another, through a minefield in Vietnam, with walking wounded following him, stepping in his footsteps. And he’d risked his life many times since then.

  When Ty looked back at me, he fidgeted in his chair a little, much like Donna had, worried that she couldn’t afford to hire an investigator.

  “I didn’t,” he said. “I found out she was missing the next day, when the cops came here asking the same questions.”

  I bet they didn’t ask that one, I thought. Ty Sampson was lying or hiding something.

  I pretended to examine the board on the work bench again and tried another question that they might not have asked. “Can I see Cobie’s board?”

  “Her board?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Is it as smoothly faired as this one?”

  I turned to look at him again.

  Bingo! Another question the cops didn’t ask. I could see it in his expression.

  “It’s not here anymore,” he replied. Now his eyes were darting from one of mine to the other, trying to maintain eye contact, but wanting to look away.

  “You gave it to her mother?” I asked. “Or did the police take it?”

  “I…I sold it,” he said.

  I could sense Tank tensing up. He had strong notions of what’s right and what’s wrong. “You sold something the girl already paid you for?” he growled, his eyes cold and unsympathetic.

  “It’s been a tough year, man,” he practically whined. “I, uh, really need to get back to work. A customer’s picking that board up in a couple of hours.”

  I glanced down at the workbench again. The board would need a final coat of resin, which would take twenty-four hours to fully cure.

  “We won’t keep you,” I said, smiling at him. “Thanks for the help.”

  Tank turned as I did and led the way through the door. Neither of us spoke until we were around the corner of the house. Then I pulled my phone out and called Chyrel, holding a finger up to Tank.

  “Chyrel,” I said. “Get a fix on my cell location and check for any outgoing calls from a nearby phone.”

  She recognized the urgency in my tone. “On it, Jesse.”

  “You can do that?” Tank asked.

  “I can’t,” I replied. “But she can.”

  “No active calls within several hundred yards, Jesse.” Chyrel said.

  “Watch this location,” I told her as we reached The Beast. “Let me know the first call that’s placed from a phone within a hundred feet.”

  “Will do,” she replied and ended the call.

  I put my phone in my pocket and started the engine.

  “I meant the technology,” Tank said. “I know dumb grunts like us couldn’t do something like that.”

  “It’s a big new world,” I said with a grin. “All full of bright, shiny things.”

  “By the way, that guy was lying.”

  I backed out of the driveway and headed toward the Overseas Highway. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Did you know he has a bottle of chloroform on the shelf?”

  On the way back to the Rusty Anchor, Chyrel called. Someone had made a cell phone call from within a hundred feet of the side of Ty Sampson’s house. The house was situated on a corner lot with a wooded lot next door. Behind it was a canal and the house across the canal was way farther than a hundred feet. I put her on speaker.

  “It has to be a prepaid phone,” Chyrel said. “In Miami.”

  “That’s a start,” I said. “You got both numbers, right?”

  “Yeah, and I’ll track each and see who they come in contact with and who they call or text.”

  “I don’t suppose you can listen in or read the texts.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, if given enough time and advance notice.”

  I thought about it for a moment. It was against the law, and she and I both knew it. “For now, just keep track of the numbers either of those phones call or spends more than a few minutes close to. Try to get a name if they aren’t all using burners.”

  “Will do,” Chyrel said. “I just emailed you the case file from Marathon Police Department concerning the missing girl. It includes the video surveillance footage from the parking lot, which is good. Most stores only hang onto security footage for a month.”

  “Good work,” I said, turning into the shadowed driveway to the Anchor. “I’m almost to Salty Dog. I can access it there.”

  When I ended the call, Tank asked, “Who was that?”

  “Her name’s Chyrel Koshinski,” I replied. “She works for Deuce and used to be a computer analyst with the CIA.”

  “And she can tell when t
wo cell phones are close together or call one another?”

  I put the truck in reverse and backed it in under the buttonwood again. “That, and a lot more. She’s hacked into the FBI computers to get information for us, and even accessed the Kremlin once, just for fun.”

  “The world’s changing,” Tank said, as we climbed out of the truck.

  “Just leave your gear,” I said. “We’ll grab Rusty and a few beers and head down to the boat. I have a laptop on board.”

  “Thurman’s part of your crew, too?”

  “No,” I replied. “But he knows just about everyone between Key West and Miami, so he’s always good to have around. And those he doesn’t know, his wife does.”

  I pulled the door open and allowed Tank to walk in first. We paused at the door, removing sunglasses, and allowing our eyes to adjust from the bright sunlight.

  “Tank!” Rusty called from behind the bar. He moved quickly around it and came toward us, with a big grin. “Man, I haven’t seen you in forever.”

  Rusty was a hugger, but for whatever reason, he extended a hand to Tank, who shook it.

  “Fifteen years,” Tank said. “Good to see you again.”

  “Come on up to the bar,” Rusty said. “Sid!” he called back to the little office. “Get out here.”

  The place was nearly empty, most of the guides now out on the water with clients.

  Sidney stepped out of the office and smiled at us. “This must be the famous Tank,” she said, coming around the bar.

  “Tank,” Rusty said, “this here’s my wife, Sidney.”

  “My friends all just call me Sid,” she said, wrapping Tank in an embrace like an anaconda. “I hope you will, as well.”

  Tank stepped back and looked at the two of them. Rusty wore flip flops, which he did most of the time. And Sid wore four-inch heels, as she usually did. Even flat-footed, she was a good five or six inches taller than Rusty. She stood an even six feet tall and she was taller than me in those heels.

  “Pleasure’s mine, ma’am,” Tank said nervously.

  “I need to go out to the Dog and fire up the laptop,” I told Rusty. “How about putting a few cold ones in a cooler and joining us?” I leaned in closer. “I have a lead on Cobie’s disappearance.”

  “Y’all go,” Sid said, shooing us with both hands. “I’ll bring it out.”