Double Dog Dare (The Raine Stockton Dog Mystery Series)

by Ball, Donna

  “It’s my screen-saver,” he said.

  I stared at him. “I hate you.”

  He winked and kissed my hair, then put the phone away. “I want you to be the girl you were when you won that ribbon. You had a black eye and a bloody nose, but you were laughing. I haven’t seen you laugh like that since that day.”

  My step faltered a bit as I looked up at him. I wanted to deny it, but I thought he might be right. And what kind of man would take a woman—and her dog— on a Caribbean vacation just because he wanted to see her laugh? My voice was a little subdued when I said, after a moment, “I know why you really invited your mother here.”

  “Oh?” His tone was cautious.

  “So that I would have someone to talk to.”

  His smile was gentle as he caressed the back of my neck. “Family is important,” he said. “Everybody needs one.”

  My throat got suddenly, ridiculously tight, and my voice was husky as I looked up at him. I probably should have said something profound, but all I could manage was, “You know something? You’re a really good boyfriend.”

  “A fact I sometimes think you don’t fully appreciate,” he agreed.

  I slipped my arm around his waist and pressed my head against his shoulder, and the moment might have turned really sloppy except that I happened to glance up just then and I noticed the deck of the boat we were passing. My step slowed. A man was sitting there at a small table with a bottle of scotch and a glass in front of him, staring, not at the ocean or the gorgeous sunset that was beginning to glow overhead, but at the dock where we were. “Miles… isn’t that Alex Barry?”

  The reason I was unsure was because he seemed to have aged ten years in the few hours since we had seen him. The glow of the sun etched unflattering lines on his face and his eyes looked blank, glazed over. Except for rhythmically lifting the glass to drink, he was motionless.

  Miles glanced in the direction of my gaze. “Quite possibly. That’s his boat.”

  I started to wave and call out, but Miles caught my hand. “Whoa, baby, this isn’t downtown Mayberry. Leave the man alone.”

  I pulled my hand away, a little annoyed about the Mayberry remark, although I shouldn’t have been. I was a small town girl with small town values and small town curiosity; that was supposed to be one of the things Miles liked about me. “I think he’s drunk,” I said.

  “I think so too, which is why we’re going to leave him alone.”

  He urged me forward, and I took a few steps before looking back. “He doesn’t even see us,” I observed.

  “Good.”

  “I wonder why he’s not at home, celebrating with Rachelle.”

  “I’ve never known why Alex does anything.”

  I watched as Alex Barry refilled his glass. To the brim. Of course this shouldn’t have concerned me, particularly after the stunt Alex and Rachelle had pulled that afternoon. But one of the most inconvenient things about having small town values is that in a small town, we don’t leave the wounded behind—even when they’re on the other team.

  “Miles,” I said, a little worried, “I don’t think anyone else is on the boat. He’s been drinking all day. You should go see if he’s okay.”

  A flash of impatience crossed his face. “I don’t even like the man. And I particularly don’t like him right now.”

  “What if he tries to drive home?” I insisted. “Or take the boat out?”

  His lips tightened, but I could see a wavering in his eyes. I managed to put just the right mix of plea, charm and promise into my own expression. I had been around Cisco long enough to get it right. “It will only take a minute,” I persuaded, caressing his arm.

  He muttered an oath under his breath and turned back to the boat. “Good evening, Alex,” he called. “Everything okay?” His tone, to the passing observer, might even have been construed as pleasant.

  Alex did not answer for the longest moment. He just stared at us. Then he lifted his arm in a sloppy beckoning motion and called back, “Come aboard.”

  Miles gave me an annoyed look. “Great,” he said. “My dinner is waiting four slips down.”

  I responded with a shrug and an apologetic smile, and followed him across the ramp onto Alex Barry’s boat.

  Alex lifted his glass to us as we approached. “You brought your pretty lady. Welcome, pretty lady.” Alex’s voice was clear, his enunciation precise, and his gaze stone hard, expressionless. “Can I get you a drink?”

  Before I could answer, Miles said, “I doubt you could stand up long enough to get anything.”

  Alex laughed. “I believe you may be right. Why don’t you sit down, then?”

  Miles glanced around. “Is anyone here with you?”

  A tight little smile. “Besides yourself?”

  Miles took out his phone. “I’m calling a car for you. You shouldn’t be on the water.”

  Alex sipped his drink with movements that were as controlled and precise as his voice. “Where, pray tell, should I be?”

  Miles started to dial. “How about at home with your wife?”

  “That woman,” said Alex, lifting his glass again, “is not my wife.”

  Miles didn’t bother to respond, but Alex seemed just serious enough to arouse my curiosity. “What?”

  “You heard correctly, my dear,” replied Alex. He took another sip of his drink. “The woman you saw this afternoon is not the woman I married. She is not Rachelle Denison.”

  I sat down at the table across from Alex, intrigued. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because it’s true.” Another sip. “The woman is an imposter.”

  I glanced at Miles, but he didn’t even look up from his phone. I said, “Why would someone pretend to be your wife when she’s not?”

  He lifted his glass to me again in a slight toast. “That, my lovely, is the question of the hour.”

  I tried again. “What makes you think she’s not your wife?”

  One of the lines beside his mouth deepened, that was the only indication of what was supposed to be a smile. “Because she told me so.”

  Even Miles glanced up from his text at that.

  I looked at him closely, but how could I read anything on a face like that? His eyes were so glassy that I could actually see the colors of the clouds reflected in them. “She told you that she was not Rachelle Denison,” I said, just to be clear.

  He waved a hand in a slight dismissive gesture. Unfortunately it was the hand that held his glass, and some of the scotch splattered on the table. “I accused her,” he said. He swallowed more scotch. “She just laughed and said, ‘prove it’. That’s what she said. Prove it.” He drank again. “But without the real Rachelle, I can hardly do that, can I?” He shrugged. “Then Susan came back in the room and she was back in the role again, hanging on me, playing out her story, talking about the press conference she was going to give in the morning, calling her agent… I couldn’t stay. Couldn’t watch it.” Another drink. “So here I am.”

  I glanced at Miles. He was checking the screen on his phone. I said, “What do you think happened to the real Rachelle?”

  “I know damn well what happened to her.” His tone was harsh. “I told you. I told everyone. She drowned. But without a body I can’t prove that. Do you know why burials at sea are so efficient, Miss Pretty Lady?” He drank again. “Marine life and salt water can strip a carcass bare in a matter of hours. That’s the truth.”

  I said, “Have you told the police about your suspicions?”

  “Of course he hasn’t told the police.” Miles put his phone away, his expression impatient. “The next time he sets foot in a police station it will be because he’s under arrest for fraud. Alex, you’re drunk and I’ve had enough of your drama for one day. A car is on its way for you, and if you take my advice, you’ll get in it and go home, where you will at least pretend to be glad to see the wife you supposedly thought was dead for the past two days. Because after the stunt you pulled, she may be the only friend you’ve got left.�
�

  A vague and rather tragic smile touched Alex Barry’s lips. He drank again. “He’s right, you know,” he told me. “I can’t go to the police. She made sure of that. It really is the perfect crime.”

  Miles said, “Raine, let’s go. I want to get the boat out of the slip while we still have daylight.”

  I stood reluctantly, mostly because I suspected he was about to pull me to my feet and drag me off the boat, and that would have been a mistake neither one of us wanted him to make. I followed him to the ramp.

  “He didn’t come back,” Alex said.

  I looked back at him. “What?”

  “The dog,” he said, gazing out at nothing at all. “He didn’t come back.”

  I started to say something, but felt the pressure of Miles’s hand on my back and held my tongue until we were off the boat. “Miles,” I said, “that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Of course it doesn’t.” It seemed to me he was walking faster, and the weight of his hand against my shoulder blade forced me to keep up.

  “I mean, Rachelle Denison is a well-known person. People would know if it wasn’t her.”

  “Of course they would.”

  “Susan thought it was her. Everyone at the press conference thought it was her.”

  “That’s because it was her.”

  “But why would he say—”

  “Raine, I don’t know.” He voice was tense and hard. “What I do know is that he’s got some other scheme going on and he’s trying to pull you into it and that’s not going to happen. Now, I did the Christian thing, I called a car for him, and unless he falls off the boat in the next five minutes, he’s going to be someone else’s problem, at least for tonight. So can we just go?”

  I said, “Wow. You really don’t like him.”

  “Let’s just say this is not the way I pictured spending my vacation.”

  “Still,” I murmured thoughtfully, “it really would be the perfect crime.”

  Miles stopped, turned to me, and took both my shoulders. He said, very distinctly, “There has been no crime. And even if there had been, it has nothing to do with you, or me, or this glorious sunset we are missing because of some deranged megalomaniac and his drunken fantasies. Agreed?”

  “But—”

  He kissed me. I am not the kind of woman who can be distracted by a kiss, which Miles knows perfectly well, even though he is awfully good at it. But when he said again, “Agreed?” I felt some measure of conciliation on my part was in order. After all, he had gone to some trouble to arrange this evening, and I did appreciate it.

  So I smiled and said, “Agreed. The sunset is gorgeous. It’s just that… ”

  He blew out an exasperated breath and let his head fall back briefly in a gesture of surrender. I might have gone on; in fact, I’m sure I would have, but suddenly there was a blast of light, a whooshing sound, and a muffled boom that seemed simultaneous with the flash of shock and terror that streaked across Miles’s face, and all of that seemed instantaneous with my knees and palms hitting the concrete when Miles pushed me down, sheltering me while embers of the sunset rained down around us in fiery shards.

  Dogs barked; people came to the rails of their boats and whipped out their phones; others shouted and ran toward us. Somewhere in the distance there was the whooping sound of an alarm. The acrid smell of black smoke filled the air and blotted the sky. Miles and I knelt together on the pavement, holding on to each other, unable to speak or even move; watching in abject astonishment as his boat went up in flames.

  ~*~

  TEN

  Three other boats were damaged, fortunately with no one onboard, before the flames were extinguished. Sightseers and boat owners were pushed back to the far end of the dock or into the parking lot, but even from that distance I could tell Miles’s boat was unsalvageable. Spotlights and emergency lights gleamed in the puddles on the concrete as darkness fell, and everyone with a cell phone was taking pictures. Fortunately, as someone had observed, the marina was not very crowded this time of year, otherwise the damage could have been much more extensive.

  To me the marina seemed plenty crowded as people poured off their expensive yachts and returned from their expensive dinners to gape and point and jostle and shove. That was probably why I noticed the one figure who was still and quiet while the excitement whirled around him, leaning against a dark limousine with no expression whatsoever on his face and eyes that were cold and dead. It was Alex Barry, and he did not look nearly as drunk as he had appeared when we last met. After a time, he got into the car and the driver took him away. He never once walked the few dozen steps to see if we were okay, or to express his concern to Miles over the boat. He didn’t even acknowledge that I was looking at him.

  He was, as Miles had indicated more than once, a bastard.

  The fire chief—or was it the harbor master?—did not speak English, or he pretended not to, and it took awhile before Miles found someone in authority who did. By this time his frustration was palpable. “I’ve already told you,” he said to the official-looking man in the button-down blue shirt with the clipboard in his hand, “we hadn’t even boarded the boat. It had been docked since noon. It was a sail-boat, for God’s sake. They don’t just explode.”

  The man nodded importantly. “Indeed, monsieur. But you do store fuel on board?”

  Miles looked as though the other man was still speaking French. He said, “Do you mean for the outboard?”

  I remembered that Miles had used an outboard engine to maneuver the boat out of the harbor that morning before raising the sails, and again to maneuver it into position before approaching the shallows where we had snorkeled. It made navigating much easier, he’d explained, and was good for an emergency. But how much gasoline could one of those things use?

  The important man went on, “Oui, c’est ca, but also for cooking, for your food heater, yes?”

  Miles frowned. “No. There’s no galley onboard, it’s a sailboat for the love of—”

  “Mais non.” He consulted his clipboard. “It would appear that the propane food warmer malfunctioned and ignited the container of gasoline which was kept nearby. You are fortunate, monsieur,” he added sternly, “such a malfunction did not occur while you were at sea.”

  “Food warmer,” Miles repeated, and as the angry confusion on his face slowly cleared, I understood as well.

  “Dinner was waiting,” I said, remembering his complaint when I had insisted we stop to check on Alex. “The concierge service must have used a portable propane stove to keep it warm.”

  He nodded absently, still frowning. “I’ve never used them to cater dinner on the boat before.”

  “Why would they leave an open flame unattended?” I wondered out loud.

  His frown only deepened. “A question for the insurance company.” He looked at the official. “When can I go onboard and check out the damage for myself?”

  “I am afraid that will not be possible, monsieur. The craft is not safe for boarding.” The official-looking man handed Miles a paper from his clipboard. “This is an order to have your vessel removed from the marina within five days. Failure to do so will result in significant fines and charges against you. You will also please visit the office of the harbor master at your earliest possible convenience, to review other paperwork.” He paused and looked back in the direction of the charred remains of the sailboat. “I am very sorry for your loss, monsieur.” His regret sounded genuine. “She must have been a beautiful boat.”

  Miles agreed heavily, “She was.”

  The man nodded his head, reminded Miles of the five-day deadline, and departed. I wrapped my hands around Miles’s arm and leaned in close in a gesture of comfort, pointing out, “It could have been worse. We could have been onboard.”

  “We should have been onboard.” He looked at me, his expression haunted. “If you hadn’t insisted we stop and talk to Alex, we would have been onboard. We might have even been out of the harbor.”

  “Or,” I poin
ted out, “you might have noticed whatever was wrong with the propane stove and turned it off.” I gave a short sharp shake of my head, refusing to go there. “That’s the thing about accidents. Second-guessing never makes them any better.”

  He said, almost to himself, “The reserve fuel was in the storage bench. I can’t figure out how…”

  He let the sentence trail off but I knew what he was thinking. There were a lot of unanswered questions. And how much gasoline would it have taken to produce an explosion and flash fire like that one, anyway?

  Abruptly, almost fiercely, Miles drew me close and kissed my hair. I knew I smelled like smoke and charred gasoline, and so did he. He said, “Let’s get you some first aid. And dinner.”

  The first aid referred to my scraped knee; the cinder-holes in his silk shirt— the one that was the exact shade of his eyes—were much more painful to me. As for dinner… I was really wishing I had stayed home for spaghetti from Embargo.

  I mustered a smile. “Maybe a rain check on dinner. Any chance we could call it a night?”

  He responded by squeezing my waist, and I leaned into the strong muscles of his chest. “Baby, two great minds with but a single thought.”

  His phone rang. I knew Miles had blocked all calls for the length of this trip from anyone except his mother, Melanie, or me. I guessed one of them had seen something on the news about the fire at the marina and so, from the expression on his face, did Miles. He answered with a casual, “Hi, Mom. Everything’s fine. I was going to call.”

  But then he was quiet, listening. I saw the tiny muscles in his face go slack, and in the glare of the phosphorescent lights, his lips seemed to lose color. He said hoarsely, “When?”

  I stared at him, trying to hear what was being said on the other end of the connection, trying to read his expression. Except for the clatter of voices and the grind of engines and the mutter of equipment all around us, there was silence. It was a silence of the mind, and it seemed to go straight to my heart.

  After forever, Miles said, “We’re on our way.”