King Tide

by A. J. Stewart

  “How are they?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s possible that one begat the other. Like the second might not have happened if the first didn’t happen. But I think we need to get prints from everyone. Pronto. You’ve got the kit.”

  “I don’t have enough to do everyone. And if I can’t do them all at the same time it creates an issue with evidential continuity. Better to do them all at one time. Plus, whether it’s one killer or two, I don’t want to tip them off that we’re on to them. Not at night and in the middle of a hurricane.”

  “You might not get backup for ages. Your boys are going to be super busy tomorrow. What if you can’t get word to them? What if the killer slips away?”

  “How will they slip away? By boat?”

  “Stranger things,” I said.

  “No, we need to do it the right way. We don’t have to tip anyone off just yet. Let’s get this evidence secured and get back to the bar.”

  “All right, you’re the detective, Detective. But let’s do one thing on the way.”

  Which he let me do. I wandered back via the north corridor and slipped into the kitchen with Emery’s card. I used one of Ronzoni’s collection of latex gloves and took a champagne glass from the crate, which I slipped into the boxwood hedge outside the emergency exit.

  We got back in the bar as folks were stirring. Despite the lack of sleep there was something in the group’s circadian rhythms that had them restless. There was rubbing of eyes and confusion as brains processed exactly where they were and why. Ron waved me over. Cassandra was awake but still laying her head on Ron’s lap.

  She said, “Miami, could you ask the detective about the bathroom situation? I’m sure he doesn’t mean for us to stay in the room quite literally. ”

  It was a good point, and it gave me an idea. I told Ronzoni what Cassandra had said. Her being Palm Beach royalty gave it extra credibility, and then I added my own thoughts to it. He decided it was fine, certainly better than fingerprinting everyone.

  Ronzoni cleared his throat and spoke clearly but not loudly. He told them all that they would be free to use the bathroom. Each person who needed to go would be allowed a few minutes to do so. He told them to use the lobby bathroom only, don’t wander, come straight back to the bar. Andrew Neville reminded him that it was called a lounge, and then suggested that someone stand sentry at the lounge door to watch the people as they crossed the lobby. Ronzoni suggested in the circumstances, given the hurricane and all, that such a precaution wasn’t necessary.

  Rex Bonatelli bounded over to Ronzoni like he was incontinent and desperately needed to be first cab off the rank.

  “Detective, this is ridiculous. I’m going nuts here. There’s this great storm going on outside, and I, a meteorological correspondent, am stuck in here hiding from it rather than reporting on it. It’s an outrage, sir!”

  I wasn’t sure where the outrage bit had come from but it was a nice touch.

  “Mr. Bona— ”

  “I know what you’re going to say, Detective. But we have to be reasonable. You’re letting people wander around the hotel.”

  “We’re letting people go to the bathroom, Mr. Bona— ”

  “Whatever, Detective. But the point is, this is a free country.” He was pacing back and forth in front of Ronzoni, and I could smell the animal scent radiating from him. He looked like a beast about to explode .

  Ron appeared beside me. “He’s been like this for some time. He is literally driving everyone else crazy, and I’m not sure given one of these people has killed someone tonight that we want to be aggravating them like that.”

  I nodded and glanced at the cameraman, Ken, who was sitting back in a club chair with a look of horror on his face. He didn’t share Bonatelli’s enthusiasm for standing outside in a hurricane. I’m sure he would have preferred filming the whole thing with a green screen in the Weather Network studios. I stepped over to Ronzoni.

  “Ronzoni. Let’s remember we have a killer in the room and this guy is like a live electrical wire. We don’t want to set anyone off. Perhaps if you let him shoot something from where we just were on the front steps. It’s not too dangerous, and they can get some good footage.”

  Ronzoni took it in and said to Bonatelli, “Okay. You can shoot some footage from the hotel entrance.”

  “Hotel entrance?” Bonatelli exclaimed. “A shot of the parking lot? Are you kidding?”

  “It could be all right,” said cameraman Ken.

  “All right? I don’t do all right. CNN does all right. WPEC does all right. We are the Weather Network, Ken. The Weather Network.”

  “It’s that or nothing,” said Ronzoni.

  I said, “There are cars floating around out there like a demolition derby on water.”

  Bonatelli cocked an eye. “Demolition derby?”

  I nodded. “There’s even one with a palm tree right through the windshield. Be great footage.”

  “A palm tree. Like a little potted palm or what?”

  “No, a big one. Pulled from the earth and slammed through the windshield like an Exocet missile. ”

  “That could be something. All right, Detective, you’re on. Let’s go.”

  Bonatelli nodded at Ken to lug their stuff and he took off at pace toward the door. Ken the cameraman strapped on his backpack and his camera equipment and headed after. He stopped next to me.

  “Thanks, man,” he said.

  “You’re welcome. But I need a favor.”

  “Name it.”

  “You got any other cameras in that pack?”

  “Of course. Got a couple of GoPros.”

  “They waterproof?”

  “We’re the weather channel,” he smiled.

  I told him what I wanted and where I wanted it and he said no problem, he’d take care of it.

  “When you get out to the front, stay by the storm door,” I said. “Send him down into the lot. You won’t even have to get wet.”

  Ken smiled again.

  “But it’s still pretty dark out there. Not sure how much you’ll actually get on film.”

  Ken tapped the spotlight mounted to his camera. “My spot’s pretty good. It lit up the back of the damned hotel from the beach. I reckon it’ll get a car anywhere in that parking lot.”

  He nodded and strode after his so-called talent. Ronzoni made to follow them to let them out the locked hurricane-proof door. He hesitated.

  “There’s a car out there with a palm tree through the windshield?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll get a shot of it. Ask them about it later.”

  He frowned, nodded and then marched away .

  I waited. Ronzoni was gone a few minutes and then came back. He assigned people one at a time to use the facilities. Cassandra went first. She came back looking tired but relieved. Then Ron deferred to Shania, but she found his deferment sexist and refused to go. The detente occurred only after Ronzoni told Shania she would go next or she wouldn’t go again that day. I got the feeling Ronzoni needed some sleep. But Shania went next, returning looking like she had enjoyed a shower and eight hours sleep. She was followed by Ron, who wet his hair but dried his face, Sam, who also wet down his face and hair, and Deshawn, whose bald head made it hard to know if he’d done anything at all. The staff all waited until the guests went, and then Rosaria, Emery and Neville all went. Anton, Leon and Chef Dean all declined. Ronzoni prompted me but I told him to go first because I didn’t need the bathroom. I wanted to do something else, and I wanted to do it last.

  When Ronzoni got back he nodded to me and I wandered out. I angled toward the bathroom but then banked away and moved north into the corridor behind the kitchen. I pushed open the north emergency exit and stepped outside. The rain was abating. Or perhaps it was the wind, because it was still raining but it was coming down vertically now. In the distance across the heavy gray ocean I saw the first faint glimpse of daybreak. Not so much light as a line of less dark along the horizon.

  I pulled the
glove from my pocket and stretched it onto my hand. It was limp at the tips of my fingers but it would do the job. I shoved my hand into the hedge right where I had placed the champagne glass. And I found exactly what I was looking for.

  Nothing. The glass was gone. It confirmed what I thought, that it had not gotten there by accident. That it had been in the hot tub hut with its twin that we found there. Someone in the group had used their bathroom leave to retrieve it. I didn’t expect to burst back into the bar and find it on their person. Whoever it was had more than enough time to think through what to do about it. They had stuffed it in there in panic. But they had collected it with a plan. I suspected that plan was to throw it into the ocean. That felt like the best play given the circumstances.

  As I stood there sheltered from the rain and the wind the conversations played back in my mind, like an audiobook on high speed. Before, I thought I knew who had killed Carly Pastinak. Now I knew I knew. But more importantly, I now knew why. And the why was the important bit. Because the why told me everything I needed to know about Paul Zidane’s death.

  I looked out at the pounding ocean to where a glass might have been swallowed. Then I looked at the seawall, waves crashing over where Ken the cameraman had been standing, strapped to a rope. On top of which a lunatic weatherman had been standing lit up like Christ the Redeemer. And I glanced along the hotel, at the walkway I stood on, along the concourse to the south end of the hotel, in the darkness beyond which lay the pool deck and hot tub hut and Carly Pastinak’s body.

  And then I looked again at the angry sky and I decided I needed a weatherman.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Ken the camera guy was standing on the front steps of the hotel. He was staying close to the hurricane-proof door and under the overhang of the building. The rain was coming down nice and straight, which kept Ken nice and dry. Rex Bonatelli was another matter altogether. Not that Bonatelli wanted to keep dry. Keeping dry was not on his bucket list. He had donned his heavy blue poncho and had waded down into the water. He was down there getting nice and wet, the rain cascading off his bald head. His poncho had a hood, and it was collecting fresh rainwater behind his head in case the whole thing turned to drought before our eyes. He was talking into a microphone but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. And the guy was loud. But he was pointing at the parking lot and the motor vehicles doing a steel and aluminum version of Swan Lake. I didn’t see Ronzoni’s car with the palm tree in it, but my SUV was still stuck high on the berm up to the hotel as if it were waiting for me to make a fast getaway.

  There were cars slowly spinning and floating around as they had before, but with Ken’s spotlight I saw more of them at once. It was a lot brighter than my flashlight had been. Six or seven vehicles were doing a slow-motion waltz. I knew from my limited music lessons with sax player Buzz Weeks that a waltz was in fact defined not by the steps but by the three-four time of the music. I was pretty confident some segment editor down at the Weather Network would have a library of Mozart or Beethoven to drop in over the visuals Ken was taking. At least in the places Bonatelli wasn’t bellowing his prognostications about the hurricane.

  Ken saw me coming and nodded. His camera was attached to him with a rig that put the weight into his hips, which was good for his back and meant he didn’t have to stare through a viewfinder to keep his eye on Bonatelli.

  I nodded. I wasn’t sure if I could talk or if that would get caught on the mic. Ken confirmed the status on that by speaking.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Good shots.”

  “That’s a bright light you got there.”

  “Told ya. Haven’t seen that palm tree car yet.”

  I pointed to the north end of the hotel where I had encountered Ronzoni’s car. Ken turned his camera in that direction and I heard Bonatelli for the first time yelling through the headphones on Ken’s head. He had been plunged into darkness and apparently wasn’t all that impressed by the notion that someone other than him should be under the watchful gaze of the camera.

  “Hold your water, Rex,” said Ken. “I’ve got the car with the palm tree.”

  Ken listened and then asked me, “How does he get over there?”

  “He doesn’t. Not right now. Tell him the sun’s breaking. Tell him he’ll get his shot in a half hour. But right now, I need you. ”

  Ken repeated what I said, more or less, to Bonatelli. “He says he needs you now.”

  Bonatelli trudged in from the pond in the parking lot and up the steps. He looked like a whale in a slicker. He didn’t brush the water off his head, preferring to allow the excess to run down around his eyes and ears.

  “What do you need from me?” Bonatelli asked me.

  “You? Nothing.” I looked at Ken. “I need you.”

  “Him? Why do you need him?”

  “Because I don’t need anyone to tell me the weather. It’s usually pretty self-evident.”

  “You think you’re taking my cameraman?”

  “I am.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  I thought on it. “The sun’s about to break, and you’re all wet. You could go out and get some diesel and get that generator going on the roof.”

  I was surprised to see his face light up. He really was an interesting piece of work. Perhaps he saw power as the key to filing some of that footage Ken had taken. I think it was killing him that the hurricane was passing us by and he hadn’t had a second of screen time.

  Bonatelli strode off in the direction of the utility exit at the north end of the hotel. Ken the camera guy and I went to the manager’s office.

  “I saw you looking at an iPad earlier.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Can you connect that to a TV?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you were viewing the footage you took?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Show me.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I gathered everyone in the bar. It wasn’t a big job, since everyone except me, Bonatelli and Ken the camera guy were there already. I left Bonatelli to his diesel run. I didn’t need him, and his rampant energy would be a distraction. Ronzoni gave me the floor and a short leash. He wasn’t sure where I was going but he sure didn’t want me to solve his case. He liked getting the credit.

  Everyone but Ronzoni was seated. Chef Dean was sitting on a stool at the end of the bar. Neville was in a club chair for the first time all night. He didn’t look comfortable. I don’t think he liked to relax among the guests, and the act of sitting was surely an act of relaxation. He was perched next to his assistant general manager, Emery, and Rosaria in a cluster of chairs. Leon Lezac sat on the love seat next along, beside Sam Venturi. Then in another cluster of chairs Deshawn Maxwell sat alone. The sofa beside and forward of him saw Anton and Shania, the wedding couple, sitting side by side. Toward the right side as I faced them were Cassandra and Ron. I paced slowly before the room. Detective Ronzoni stood at the back of the room. Ken the camera guy was on the floor at the front, connecting iPads to cameras and the silent flat-screen television on the wall.

  I didn’t look like me, and I didn’t feel like me. I generally favor the direct approach, and this didn’t feel like it. It felt like a roundabout way to the end. But I couldn’t figure the direct route. Ronzoni’s route was to wait for the storm to abate and to call in backup. Not only did I have no idea when that backup might actually appear through the flooded streets, but I also wasn’t confident that the evidence that backup confirmed would solve the case. It was possible, as it had been every time so far, that the evidence came to another dead end. I needed to set a cat among the pigeons. But first the pigeons needed a little agitating.

  My linen suit looked the part even if I didn’t feel it. I put my hands behind my back and paced back and forth. I looked each person in the eye. They all looked tired or wary or annoyed or all three, except Cassandra, who wore a grin. She was old-school. She liked linen suits. I stopped and turned to the room.
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br />   I couldn’t think of how to begin so I said, “I’m sure you’re wondering why you’re here.”

  I got some frowns.

  “No, not really.”

  “We’ve been here all night.”

  “You’re going to tell us who killed Carly.”

  I nodded. “Okay, so maybe you do know. One of us has been taken, and I for one would like to know who. And why.”

  I didn’t get the great nods of agreement that I expected. They were tired and aloof, not a cooperative combination.

  “Do you know who did it?” asked Shania, finally.

  “It could have been anyone,” I said .

  “That’s not exactly genius, is it?” She was right. It wasn’t. But I too was tired. I had gotten thirty minutes sleep in twenty-four hours and four hours in forty-eight. I had sandbagged two properties, dived into a raging Intracoastal after a woman in a car that had delusions of being a submarine, waded out to a police-issue vehicle that had become a palm tree habitat, and wandered out into a hurricane more times than a person really ought to do. I decided to hit the ball straight back from where it came.

  “How did you feel about Carly Pastinak, Shania?”

  “Feel? She was okay. She did her job.”

  “The rumor was that she was having an affair with your husband-to-be. How do you feel about that?”

  “Like you say, rumors. Not fact.”

  “You’d be surprised how often rumors that are not fact end up with someone dead.”

  “Mr. Jones, are you saying I killed Carly? Because I didn’t think you were that crazy.”

  “That’s because you don’t know me that well. I’m plenty crazy. And the number one suspect in the death of a person involved in an affair is the third party to the affair.”

  “There was no affair.”

  “You know who police look at after the third party to the affair?”

  “Dazzle me.”

  “One of the people involved in the affair.”

  I moved my eyes just a touch, just enough to lay them on Anton.