by Robert Lane
His dad was a drunk, too, but I didn’t say that. Instead I added, “I liked you better when you were a thousand miles away.”
He countered in a lively tone, as if another speaker had kicked in. “What time’s dinner?”
“Seven?”
“Works for me.”
He stood and slipped out through the screen door that refused to latch, gently shutting it behind him, and headed around the fence to his house. I hustled out of the house; I had a full agenda for the day. Twenty minutes later I parked my truck in Donald Lambert’s driveway. I started to get out but involuntarily collapsed back into my seat.
Brief, bold, and she was gone.
I forced myself out of the truck, but it was hard.
CHAPTER 10
“What’s the deal, Poppins—different day, same story?”
Lambert threw out when I came up behind him on his dock.
The great white egret moved a few paces to accommodate me. Considering my weight advantage, it did an admirable job of holding its ground. Lambert had two poles stuck into PVC pipes drilled into his pilings. Lines from the poles floated in the breeze and eventually threaded into the water. As I approached, he quickly dropped his bait bucket back into the water and took a seat in a cloth tailgate chair. It had a cup holder on the right arm that held a plastic travel mug. Coffee, I assumed.
“No.” I sat down on his dock, arms on propped knees, and angled myself so that I partially faced Knotty Girl and Lambert. “Just trying to sell myself today.”
He let out a huff. “I don’t give you much chance of that, although I admire your directness. She said you’re a bona fide hero around here. Dropped a pair of drug runners a couple years back.” While recovering a stolen boat for an insurance company, I had killed two men who tried to outrun me in a Donzi. The affair got unpleasant when they hit a sandbar, and it had brought unwanted notoriety. “Said you were straight up, but to stick to your good side.”
“Who said?”
He cut me a look. “Your girl, Peggy. Down at Sea Breeze.”
“You checked me out.”
“I did.” He took a sip from his mug, but the lid must have been closed. He pulled it away from his lips, slid open the flap, and made another pass. “Used to have a second chair out here, but I don’t need it much anymore.”
“I’m good. Your daughter might be in trouble.”
“There’s a hell of a s-statement. You just wake up?”
He had stuttered on his closing comment to me yesterday. I wondered if it was always there or brought upon by stress. Or me. Or if they were one and the same.
I got up, took a step toward him, and lowered myself into a knee bend so my face was level with his. My left knee emitted a ripple of cracks. He hadn’t shaved. The great white egret took a step back. It was about four feet behind Lambert and, despite the two lines in the water and the bait bucket off to the side, the bird kept its eyes on the man.
“The six-shooter. Try to recall his every word.”
“Said that he’d be back.”
“Why? What does he gain?”
“That’s what I told him.” His voice was strong. “I told him he could stick his gun up my ass, but I wouldn’t tell him nothing about Renée and didn’t know anything about…”
“About what?”
He hesitated. “Nothing. That’s just it. I don’t know anything about where she is.”
I let it go. “What did he say to that?”
“Said—said I’d be lucky. That’s what he said. Said I’d be lucky if all he did was s-stick a gun up…” Lambert spit on his dock. I didn’t take him to be someone who spit on his or anybody else’s dock. “Said he’d give me some time to think about it, and when he came back I’d better have…information for him. Said she was in danger, and the sooner I cooperated the better off she would be. I didn’t believe him, and he knew I didn’t believe him. Said he was her guardian. He laughed at that like it was some kind of joke. Said his job was to protect Renée.”
“Guardian?” Hadn’t Antinori muttered that word?
“Something like that. Trying to get me to buy in that he was protecting her.”
“And what did you say?”
“Well, Jake, I told him…”
His body shuddered, and he looked away from me. I reached out and touched his arm. It was awkward. It’s not a move that comes naturally to me, and I can’t help but think that when I do it the recipients realize that. The great white egret took a bird step toward us. “She’ll be OK,” I said. “I’ll—”
“She’s a good woman,” he asserted, as if someone had challenged his daughter. He brought his eyes back to me. “She told me when she was jus—said she was thinking of going back to school, wanted to do counseling for kids. She was real adamant about helping children who are bullied, especially young girls. That’s a great thing for a person to be involved in. I suppose she gets her interest on account of her mother never being right. Always saying it went back to her childhood. Verbal abuse when she was young.” He gave a shake of his head, as if trying to rid himself for the thousandth time of something that he could never comprehend and he’d grown weary of the effort.
“Help me, Donald,” I urged him. “He have a way of speech? A tattoo? Give me something.”
“Cleared his throat. You know, like a smoker, but he didn’t smell.”
“Cleared his throat?”
“Yeah. Habitual…no, more than that. Like a reflex, and he couldn’t help it. And he smelled—”
“I thought you said he didn’t s—”
“Like Hall’s. You know, a throat lozenge.”
“Maybe he had a cold.”
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah.” He gave a dismissive shrug and shifted his gaze out to the water. He changed tack. “Just got that bait bucket about a year ago.” He glanced back at me. “Got some good blues in it, some other gems as well. It’ll hold about anything you want.”
I stood and thanked him for his time. “Call me,” I said. “Anytime. You understand that?”
He remained silent.
“You under—”
“I got it.”
I turned to leave and remembered a comment he had made. “You said he wanted information from you. What information?”
“You know…where Renée was.”
That didn’t seem to fit with how he had said it, but I couldn’t—
“Don’t worry, Poppins. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”
I left Lambert on the dock and climbed into my truck. I hit PC’s number and confirmed that he and Boyd were to start surveillance on Lambert that afternoon—told him to make it twenty-four seven.
“No sleep?” PC asked as I navigated the new bridge that was still being constructed.
“It’s overrated. One off, one on. Get a rental so you’re not in the same wheels. Play chess. Don’t get spotted.” I didn’t want to put PC and Boyd in harm’s way, and being scruffy teenagers helped their cause. It was difficult, at face value, to take them seriously. “Anyone approaches the house, give me a call. Do not get caught. Do not take—”
“I’m not old enough to rent a car. I can use my fake—”
“Don’t. Use a friend’s.”
“Sure. Or we can—”
“Don’t wire one, either.”
“We’re good. Any new books?”
He meant chess books. “Try Terekhin’s new book.”
“Any relation to Tartakower, or do you just like the Ts?”
“Coincidental. But you can read Savielly repeatedly. He goes beyond chess.”
“‘No game was ever won by resigning.’” PC quoted Savielly Tartakower, my favorite chess master. God as my witness, I swelled with pride.
“Keep me posted.” I disconnected.
No game is ever won by resigning. If Kathleen thought she could walk out of my life, that lady was in for a surprise.
From 275 North, I took 375 to Beach Drive
and swung into a parking spot facing Straub Park. I lifted the center armrest and pilfered through dry cleaning and ATM receipts for quarters. My efforts yielded five. I fed the meter and headed across the street to the Valencia. In my leather shoulder bag, I had the folder the colonel had left me. It contained the pictures of Renée Lambert with Paretsky and with the mystery man taken at the Valencia. I also had the picture of Paretsky on the boat with the unidentified blonde. They were much easier to view than the copies in my phone.
A cavalry of bicyclists, intent on taking the corner as a solitary mass, swooshed by me. They all leaned to their port side at the exact same degree. I strode across the street, skipped past the valet stand, and hopped up the stairs to the front porch. I was glad the steakhouse was in the dungeon. That was where it belonged. I’d been there twice with Kathleen, and she’d cried both times. No one wins when a woman cries.
I took the wide stairs, two at a time, from the end of the grand hall up to the mezzanine level. The outdoor mezzanine was deserted. It was used primarily for large functions in the evening and an occasional lunch. It ran the length of the hotel and had an expansive view of the park and Beach Drive. I went to the space where the background matched the one in the picture. Renée Lambert had stood…here. Her companion stood…like this, head down, shoulders turned. He was certainly aware of the picture being taken and wanted no part of it.
I returned through the double French doors and took a seat at the bar in the upstairs lobby. I took the photograph from the Valencia out of my bag and laid it flat on the counter. I pulled out another sheet from the colonel’s packet. It was a list of all corporate functions the hotel had held on the mezzanine level over the last ninety days. Forty-one events. I focused on the last twenty-one days, during which, Lambert told me, Renée was in town but neglected to drop by. Even odds that he was lying, but not much I could do about it.
“Are you sailing?”
A brunette with her hair imprisoned tightly behind her complemented the other side of the bar. She wore a bartender’s black vest and a white shirt buttoned one button short of the hotel’s employee manual requirements. Her eyes were Spanish black. Her body poised and relaxed. Orange nails. No ring. No pale skin or indentation where a ring might have been.
“I am,” I replied.
“What pleasure’s your port of call?”
“A Bloody Mary would fluff my sails.”
“Got your mast up this early?”
“I do. Never know when a blow comes.”
“Suppose not. Want to feel her?”
“I want to eat her.”
She smiled in approval. “I like mine with a steak knife.”
She started constructing my drink. If she had been a he, I would have stuck with an iced tea, as last evening wasn’t yet flushed out of my body. But it seemed a wimpy drink, and who knew, maybe I was single again. I sank my head back into the list.
The colonel, with the cooperation of the hotel, had done admirable legwork. The events were subdivided into corporate functions, weddings, and “other.” It was difficult to imagine that she’d be in town for a wedding and not mention that to her father. Maybe she had, and Lambert had lied to me. I skimmed over the weddings and concentrated on the past month. The National Association of the Self-Storage Association of America. That’s NASSAA to the members. Southeast Trial Lawyers. Award trips for insurance brokers, all with impressive names: Chairman’s Group, Director’s Circle, Owner’s Club.
“Give that a try for me.”
My Bloody Mary appeared off to the side, placed squarely on a hotel napkin. A celery branch poked high out of its side.
A skewer with a cherry tomato squeezed between two alpha green olives—all the same size—leaned against the other side of the glass. A thick cut of summer sausage rested on the edge of the glass, supported by a toothpick that vanished into the murky red. I stuck the sausage in my mouth and placed the toothpick on the bar.
The nametag said Vicki, but, with those eyes, I’d go with Spanish. As attractive as she was, I was suddenly overcome with distaste for her entire line of the species, but I needed her. I took a sip of the red sludge. Horseradish, Tabasco, Worcestershire, salt, pepper, tomato juice, and lemon jockeyed for position on my overstimulated and outmatched taste buds. The vodka was like a liquid conductor keeping everything in line. It was a kick-ass Bloody Mary. Classical guitar came through the speakers. I caught a whiff of sweet perfume.
It’s not easy being depressed in paradise.
“She your girlfriend?” Spanish said with a nod toward the picture.
“No.” I got out my PI license and laid it on the table. “I’m being retained by her father. She’s missing. We know this picture was taken here.”
She picked up my license, gave it a studious look, and placed it back exactly where I had put it. “A real private dick,” she said, and I couldn’t tell whether she was toying with me or not. “Shouldn’t you be nursing an iced tea instead of drinking on the job?”
“I wanted to see what you were capable of, and an iced tea hardly seemed a challenging measure of your talents.”
“I see.” She picked up the photograph as if she were considering buying it. “Stunning,” she said to the photograph.
“Love those eyes.” She lifted her eyes over the picture to me. “Who is she?”
“Name is Renée Lambert. Mean anything to you?”
“No.” She put it down.
“You work functions?”
“I do.”
“If I found out what function this picture was taken at, could you point me in the direction of who worked that evening?”
“I really don’t do that many.” I’d come on too fast. Too late now to change gears.
“I don’t care about many. I need to talk to someone who worked the one that Renée attended. Two weeks back, give or take.” I hoped that by dropping Renée’s name, I made myself less threatening.
“We get a lot.” She instinctively lowered her head and started washing glasses. I couldn’t imagine any being dirty this time of the day. I decided to give her time. I scanned the list again.
What did Lambert say Renée’s interest had migrated to? Working with bullied kids? Children’s psychology? I didn’t think much of it, but the incongruity hit me now. Jet-setting around Europe, a sometime model, and suddenly her interest turned to child psychology? But what did I know? Recent events would indicate precious little. I scanned the list again. Florida Teachers Association. Twelve days ago.
Spanish said, “She in trouble?”
“No. Her father’s worried. She’s not answering her cell.” I was going to pad that but decided to let it go. Less was best. “She’s interested in kids. Maybe she attended the teachers’ conference.”
“That’s a biggie, all right. But I didn’t work it.”
“Who did?”
“I don’t know—”
“They can decide themselves what to tell me.”
She stepped back, tilted her head, and placed her hands on her hips. “You didn’t tie up here looking for a drink, did you?”
“Does anybody?”
“Go see Adam. Front porch bar.”
“He work that evening?” I had no evidence that Renée Lambert had attended the teachers’ conference, but it beat starting with the Mortgage Association of Florida’s Annual Symposium on Underwriting and Liability Practices. Hard to believe that as children we all had dreams.
“If not, he would know who did. Adam—how shall I say this? Not much escapes him.” She gave a crooked smile, the right side of her face scrunching up. “That’s tired,” she came back in, “and doesn’t do his passion justice. It’s genetic with him. He has to know everything that happens and, naturally, offer his opinion on it. Anyways,” she gave a shrug, “I’d be surprised if he didn’t work it. He lobbies for every event. Needs it to pay for his wardrobe.”
I pushed away from the counter.
“You sailing solo?” she said.
“Right n
ow…I don’t know.”
“Too bad. That’s the only answer I stay away from.”
I left a twenty on the bar. I grabbed the hurricane glass and went searching for Adam.
CHAPTER 11
The bar was in the Atlantic Time Zone of the front porch.
A couple that had walked out of a Fitzgerald novel occupied the side that looked back over the porch.
I claimed a stool on the opposite end and parked my Bloody Mary in front of me. My phone buzzed an incoming text. I retrieved it from my pocket. Binelli said her lunch date was shoved back a day. I texted back OK, even though that in no way conveyed my frustration. I tried to squash my irritation over the delay. Waiting and I don’t get along.
Lady Fitzgerald laughed and placed her hand on the man’s shoulder. She was ten to twenty years older than her male companion. Her wispy black hair was shoulder length, and she sported a pair of pronounced Germanic cheekbones. A narrow, braided orange headband circled her head. I liked it. She looked good. Vicki’s nails were orange. Must be the new color, although I bet it was called something different. Her companion couldn’t keep his hand off his drink.
The bartender approached me. “I see you’ve met Vicki.”
I fast-forwarded from the 1920s to the man in front of me. “What gave me away?”
“A lone cherry tomato with two olives. That’s her signature. We all put a different twist on our Bloody Marys that identify us. Management’s clueless. It’s just a little fun we have.”
“She also gave me a chunk of sausage.”
“You can thank me for that. I initiated that carnivorous addition.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, my friend.”
“Are you Adam?”
“Adam, I am.”
Adam sported the identical uniform that Spanish wore, but he was buttoned all the way up. A light-blue bow tie balanced perfectly between the collar points. His buzzed hair served to accentuate his angled face. He was as gay as the tie was blue.
“Spanish,” I told him.