by Jayne Castle
Hastily Guinevere went forward. “What is it? Is that Vandyke on the line?”
Holding his palm over the receiver, the clerk shook his head. He looked anxious. “Mrs. Vandyke. She insists on speaking to her husband. I’ve told her he’s gone, but she says—”
“I’ll talk to her.” Guinevere took the phone. “Mrs. Vandyke? This is Guinevere Jones, the temporary secretary your husband hired this past week. I spoke to you briefly on the phone on a couple of occasions.”
“Yes, Miss Jones, I remember. Where is my husband?” The woman’s voice was laced with concern. She sounded tired and more than a little scared.
“I’m trying to locate him myself. The front desk says he hired a plane this morning to take him back to Seattle.”
Catherine Vandyke jumped on that announcement. “A plane? What sort of plane?”
Guinevere took a breath, her eyes meeting Zac’s intent gaze. “A small plane, we think. Perhaps a Cessna One Eighty-five.”
“That’s impossible. My husband would never set foot in such a small plane. He hates them. Used to fly them, you know.”
“I believe he did say something about it once.”
“Well, he doesn’t fly in them anymore. He must be around there someplace, Miss Jones. Please find him. Besides, he couldn’t want to fly back to Seattle. What would he do with the Mercedes? He told me he was taking the ferry to the San Juans.”
“Yes, Mrs. Vandyke, he did. Listen, I wonder if you could tell me—” Guinevere broke off in surprise as the phone was deftly removed from her hand.
Zac held the receiver to his ear, one hand braced against the desk. “Mrs. Vandyke, this is Zachariah Justis. I’ve been employed by your husband for the past few days. He hired me to do some security consultation. . . . Yes, that’s right. . . . No, I don’t know why he would need someone like me. I do have a few hunches. I thought maybe you could tell me. . . . Are you absolutely certain your husband wouldn’t willingly fly in a small plane?” There was another pause while he got the short, apparently affirmative response. Zac drew a breath. “Okay, I’ve got a couple of questions. They’re going to seem a little off the wall, but if you’ll answer them I might have a shot at locating Vandyke.”
Guinevere stirred restlessly, frowning. She should probably be dealing with the woman, she decided. Zac could be so heavy-handed at times.
“Were you married to your husband when he had that charter operation down in the Caribbean, Mrs. Vandyke? . . . I see. Do you remember his partner, a man named Gannon?” Zac listened for a moment and then held the phone away from his ear. Helplessly he held it out to Guinevere. “She’s gone hysterical on me.”
Guinevere took the phone. On the other end Catherine Vandyke was in pieces. There were tears and fury in her voice. “What are you talking about? How do you know about Gannon? This is ridiculous. I insist you put my husband on the phone, or I’ll call the police. Do you hear me?”
“Mrs. Vandyke, this is Guinevere again. Please listen to me. Zac is only trying to help. We know your husband is in trouble, but we don’t know what kind.”
“But he can’t be in trouble,” the other woman wailed. “Gannon’s dead. He’s been dead all these years.”
“We have reason to think he might be alive. If he were alive, Mrs. Vandyke, would he be a threat to your husband?” Guinevere looked at Zac to see if she was asking the right questions. Zac was furiously scribbling a note on a pad of hotel paper.
“Oh, God, I don’t even want to think about it.” Mrs. Vandyke sounded terrified now.
“Listen to me, Mrs. Vandyke. You’ve got to think about it. You’ve got to help us, or your husband might wind up in real trouble. Zac can help him. It’s his business. But he needs some answers. Please tell me about Gannon.”
There was a sob on the other end of the line, and then Mrs. Vandyke caught her breath. Guinevere could almost see her pulling herself together, rallying to meet the crisis.
“Gannon was my husband’s partner.”
“We know that much.”
“He . . . he used to claim he loved me.”
Guinevere said nothing, listening to her strengthening voice.
“That was a long time ago,” Mrs. Vandyke whispered. “We were all much younger then. More reckless. More adventurous. But Gannon was more than that. He was—well, wild in some ways. Always living an adventure. Bigger than life. He thrived on danger and excitement. And he thought he was irresistible where women were concerned.”
“I understand,” Guinevere said softly.
“He never could see why I preferred Edward. Edward was the businessman of the two. The one who kept the records, got the contracts, met the schedules. Gannon took the chances. Edward was quieter. And I knew Edward loved me. A woman could never be first in Gannon’s life. Do you know what I mean, Miss Jones? Gannon would always put himself and his need for adventure first. And he could be vicious.”
Guinevere felt herself grow suddenly cold. “Vicious?”
“I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anyone else, Miss Jones. The truth is, the day I learned Gannon had gone down I felt an indescribable relief. He had been so angry the day he left. Edward and I had just decided to get married, and we made the announcement the night before Gannon’s last flight. I’ll never forget the way Gannon stormed out of the little restaurant where we’d all gone for dinner. Early the next morning before he left he found me. I worked in a little boutique there on Saint Thomas. He walked into the shop, dragged me out from behind the counter, and told me that when he got back things were going to be different. He swore I was going to marry him, not Edward, and he’d make sure of it, regardless of who got in the way. I was scared, Miss Jones. There was something in his eyes that morning. I knew he wasn’t really so madly in love with me that he couldn’t bear to think of me marrying another man. It was his damn pride that was hurt. Gannon was so . . . so supremely . . . what do they call it these days?”
“Macho.” Guinevere shuddered. The picture forming in her mind was not at all reassuring. She knew another man who fit Mrs. Vandyke’s image of the mysterious Gannon.
“Yes, macho. He frightened me that morning, Miss Jones. I began to worry about what he might do to Edward when he returned. But he never returned.”
“Mrs. Vandyke, how old would Gannon be now?” Guinevere read the question off of the notepad Zac was holding up in front of her. But she was very much afraid she already knew the answer.
“A few years younger than Edward. Midforties. Miss Jones, do you really think he—”
“Do you remember anything else about him? The color of his hair? His eyes?” Guinevere quickly scanned the other questions on the notepad. Zac was getting impatient but he didn’t try to yank the receiver away from her. “Did he have a limp?” she asked, reading the last scrawled question wonderingly.
“No limp,” Mrs. Vandyke said with certainty. “His hair was dark. Do you know something? I can’t remember the color of his eyes. It was a long time ago, Miss Jones. Mostly I remember my impression of him, a certain daredevil quality. A kind of boyish wickedness, except that I think it went deeper. He used to carry a gun. Claimed you never knew what you were going to get into. He kept it under the front seat of his plane—said it was his emergency backup. I sometimes wondered if he wasn’t carrying something else besides the regular cargo and passengers. But I was always afraid to ask.” Mrs. Vandyke hesitated before summing up Gannon. “He could have stepped out of a film. Do you know the type?”
“I think so, Mrs. Vandyke.” I’m very much afraid I know exactly the type, she thought as she glanced at the last note Zac had written.
Cassidy?
Mutely, Guinevere looked up at him. She nodded.
Chapter Eight
“Except for the limp.”
Guinevere trotted after Zac as he made his way to a quiet corner of
the lobby. He came to a halt, staring at the floor, lost in thought. “Mrs. Vandyke’s description does sort of fit Cassidy except for that limp of his,” Guinevere repeated.
“A lot of time has gone by since she last saw him. Hell, he might have injured that leg when his plane went down.”
“True.” Guinevere thought for a moment. “Too bad we don’t have a sample of Cassidy’s handwriting. We could compare it to that page out of the logbook, the way we did Washburn’s.”
“We might be able to find something at the boathouse.” But Zac sounded vague, his mind obviously on something else.
“Zac, what do we do next? This is your area of expertise. I want to hear something brilliant from you. It’s beginning to look as if our client may have been kidnapped.”
“I don’t know about that. It’s possible Cassidy really is with the DEA. He might have decided that a career catching dope smugglers was as exciting as running dope himself. It’s still possible this whole thing is a legitimate agency action.”
“Hah!”
Something suspiciously close to amusement flashed in his eyes. “Oh ye of little faith.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a businessperson, remember? I operate on facts, not faith. And one clear fact in this whole mess is that Mrs. Vandyke is scared of the man she knew as Gannon. She implied he was just this side of crazy. Zac, what are you chewing to pieces there in your mind? I know I don’t have your full attention.”
“The car.”
Guinevere wrinkled her nose. “Vandyke’s car?”
“This is a small island, Gwen. They can’t just leave the Mercedes sitting around on a back road. Someone would be sure to notice it. And once the cops find Vandyke’s car abandoned they’ll start asking questions—assuming that the cops don’t already have Vandyke.”
“I think we should assume they don’t,” Guinevere said staunchly. “I think we should assume foul play. Very foul play.”
Zac let a minute of intense concentration pass before saying, “I think you’re right.” He sighed.
“So what do we do?”
“Go back to the marina. We might be able to find someone who saw the plane leave. If we get lucky, that someone can tell us if our client was a passenger. We can also check to see if Cassidy conveniently left anything floating around with his signature on it. It would be nice to verify that he really is Gannon.”
“Right.” Guinevere spun around, but Zac clamped a hand on her shoulder, halting her abruptly.
“There’s one more thing I want to check here before we go racing off.”
“What’s that?”
“I’d like to see if one of the grounds keepers or a maid or even a guest noticed who drove off in Vandyke’s Mercedes. It’s not in the parking lot.” Zac released her and started purposefully back to the front desk. The desk clerk saw him coming and tried to retreat.
It didn’t work. Zac cornered him and told him what he wanted. Making no attempt whatsoever to hide his disgust at having to oblige, the desk clerk checked with the manager, who agreed to summon some of the gardeners and maintenance people.
They got lucky with the man who trimmed the hedges. He’d noticed the Mercedes being driven off about forty-five minutes earlier.
“A yuppie dude,” he told Zac with the disdainful air of a man who has a degree in philosophy but who has deliberately chosen to work with his hands. “A dressed-for-success type. Know what I mean? Italian sunglasses. I remember thinking the glasses were a bit much, considering that there’s no sun today.”
Guinevere caught her breath. “Toby Springer.”
Zac nodded his thanks to the gardener. He reached out and tugged Guinevere’s arm, but she didn’t budge.
“Come on, Gwen. We’ve got to get moving.”
She leaned close and hissed in his ear. “You’re supposed to tip your informants.”
Zac stared at her. “Where the hell did you get that idea?”
“I’ve read detective fiction. I go to films. I know about this sort of thing.”
“Yeah? Then you tip him.”
“You should consider tips part of your business expenses.”
The gardener appeared oblivious of the low conversation, but he kept within sight.
“Damn it to hell,” Zac muttered, dragging out his wallet. “Do I tell you how to run Camelot Services?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but walked briskly over to the gardener and thrust a couple of bills into the man’s hand. The ex-philosophy student apparently had read a lot of detective fiction and seen some films himself. He thanked Zac but he didn’t seem terribly surprised.
“Satisfied?” Zac grabbed Guinevere’s arm and led her toward the Buick. “If I can’t get reimbursed for that by our client I may take it out of your hide.”
Guinevere didn’t deign to respond. “So what about the Mercedes,” she demanded as she slipped into the front seat of Zac’s car.
“They’ve got to get it off the island, and if Springer just drove it away from the resort forty-five minutes ago he can’t have gone very far with it. My guess is he’ll be waiting patiently in line for the next ferry.”
“Which leaves when?”
“Not for another hour. We’ve got time.”
“To check out the boathouse?”
“Right.” Zac swung the Buick out of the parking lot and headed back toward the marina.
The first thing Guinevere noticed when she and Zac parked the car and approached the deserted dock where the Cessna had been tethered was that someone had dug up a lock for the boathouse door. “There was no lock when I came down here yesterday,” she said, disappointed.
“Maybe Cassidy figured there was no reason to lock it while he was in the vicinity.” Zac glanced around, but spotting no one nearby he went to work on the padlock with a small wire. Guinevere watched in admiration as the lock gave in his hands.
“Incredible,” she murmured, pushing on the door.
“It’s nice to be loved for my mind.” He followed her inside, flipping on the light.
Guinevere let the remark pass. The cruiser was still tied up at the dock. “I found the wallet on board.”
Zac stepped onto the boat and systematically went through all the drawers and cupboards. He found nothing. The wallet with Cassidy’s DEA identification was gone.
“It was right there in that little drawer by the pilot’s chair,” Guinevere insisted, peering into the cabin.
“Well, it’s gone now. And there’s nothing else here that has a sample of his handwriting. Come on.”
“Where to now?”
He led the way outside and started toward the old public rest rooms.
“Zac, do you really have to use the facilities now? We’re in a hurry, in case you haven’t noticed. You should have gone before we left the resort.” Guinevere watched him stride up the small incline.
“The real nuts and bolts of investigative work,” Zac began in a lecturing tone, “consists of going through garbage. A lot of garbage. Why do you think I label myself a consultant? I’m trying to stay out of the lower end of this kind of work. I’d like to perfect a more sophisticated image.” He lifted the lid off the trash can that stood in front of the rest rooms. “But thanks to you I’m stuck with going through garbage on this job. Come here and give me a hand.”
Guinevere inhaled sharply as she viewed the contents of the trash can. “Yuk.”
“Mustn’t be squeamish.”
“What are we looking for?” She leaned over fastidiously to remove a fairly clean-looking scrap of paper.
“This is the nearest trash can to Cassidy’s dock. He may have tossed all kinds of junk in here. And it sure doesn’t look as if it’s been emptied for a while. Our best bet would be a receipt for fuel. Nobody pays cash when they fill up an airplane. Costs too much.”
; They found the receipt stuck to a gum wrapper. There was grease on it and something sticky, and a smear of gum in the middle. There was also a scrawled signature: Cassidy. Zac pulled out the logbook page, and there was no doubt about the similarity between the two samples of handwriting.
“Okay, so now we know we’re right. Where does that get us? We’re wasting time, Zac.”
“Gwen, you’ve worked with me before. You know I’m not the fastest thing on two feet.”
She grinned briefly. “But you’re thorough.” And when the chips were down, she had learned, Zachariah Justis could be very fast and very thorough indeed. She shuddered at the memory of the conclusion of the StarrTech case. She would never forget the sight of blood seeping from a dying man onto a cold concrete floor.
“I try to compensate.” Zac dropped the lid back on the trash can. “Let’s go talk to some locals who might have seen Cassidy’s plane leave.”
Zac moved slowly along the docks, asking casual questions of the boat-owners and maintenance people. Yes, they’d heard the plane leave a while ago, but no one had paid much attention. Cassidy always came and went at odd hours; charter pilots operated that way. No, no one had noticed whether or not he had a passenger. Time passed and Guinevere began to glance more and more frequently at her watch. Finally she tugged at Zac’s sleeve.
“What about the ferry? It’ll be leaving soon.”
“Fifteen more minutes.”
“But Zac, what are we going to do if we find Toby Springer sitting in the Mercedes, waiting to drive on board?”
Zac shrugged. “We’ll be assertive.”
But when it came to it Guinevere decided “assertive” didn’t quite cover it. Walking casually along the line of cars, they saw Vandyke’s Mercedes sitting between a Toyota and an Audi. She watched completely astonished as Zac walked around to the driver’s side, opened the door, and without any warning shoved a startled Toby Springer across the seat.
“Hey! What the hell—?” Springer’s mouth fell open as his head bounced against the upholstered door. “Justis! What are you doing here?” He struggled upright, rubbing his head, and his gaze flew to Guinevere, who was standing in the aisle between parked cars. No one seemed to notice Zac’s actions.