Desire on Deadline

by Lucy Lakestone

  “Right,” she said, turning onto Terrace Avenue.

  “So maybe they had a fishing net out there,” Alden said.

  “And didn’t tell their own guide about it?”

  “Shit happens,” he said. “Why don’t we check them out? I mean really check them out. You’re not busy this afternoon, are you?”

  Roz pondered the idea as they neared the restaurant. “If this means figuring out why someone is shooting at us, then this is the priority. Besides, I’m going to have a lot more energy after I mainstream some tacos and soda.”

  Alden laughed. “You sure you don’t want a margarita?”

  “You trying to get me drunk?”

  “Of course.”

  Roz couldn’t help grinning. “Ask again at dinner.”

  ≈≈≈

  Alden and Roz each discreetly left the table during lunch to make phone calls to their respective papers, and together they agreed to wait a day before publishing anything new online about the Bellamy case. Besides, Alden thought, they didn’t have anything new anyway, not really. His own attempts to get a comment from Mysty Wellington had been rebuffed, as he knew they would, but he could be a persistent asshole when he wanted to be, and he’d keep trying. Or maybe get Julia to take a crack at it. Celebrities practically vied to talk to her after her kid-glove treatment of Nate Ivory.

  After last night’s heat, Roz was all cool business this morning. He’d tried to mirror her attitude for the sake of his own sanity, but to his alarm, the more she resisted his charms, the more fired up he was to break through the ice.

  She seemed to warm up to him through lunch and into the afternoon, when they worked together to get as much information as they could on Consummate Catch and its president, Peter Verret. Some of the information they found online, using Roz’s laptop and the wi-fi at the courthouse. Others they had to request, and by the end of the day, when they’d moved on to the library, they had compiled an interesting dossier.

  For one thing, Peter Verret was making serious money. While they couldn’t find records that spoke to how much his company pulled in, they saw how he lived. Property records showed he had large, lavishly expensive homes in Naples, Fort Myers, Marathon in the Keys, and even the Pleasure Pointe neighborhood of Mimosa Key. Locally, he was frequently seen at charity events presenting large checks.

  More interesting to Alden was that Verret had a criminal record. In his early twenties, he’d spent time in prison for being caught with drugs aboard a boat. Since then, he’d expanded his fishing business and kept his nose clean, except for a few speeding tickets — presumably in his Porsche 911 Turbo S (another indicator of his wealth); they’d found a photo of him with it on someone else’s Facebook page. Verret had no accounts on social media at all. Alden couldn’t decide if he was being secretive or simply wise.

  They learned from news searches that he was active in promoting green fishing techniques and had volunteered to serve as a consultant to a state law enforcement task force dedicated to eliminating illegal offshore fishing.

  The company’s website gave them more background, citing, in addition to Consummate Catch’s three charters (two now, Alden thought), a commercial fishing fleet of six boats. A photo showed the vessels docked in a marina in Naples, their cobalt-blue hulls sharp and distinctive.

  “It’d be hard to miss a boat like that. And it doesn’t look anything like the one in your photo,” Alden said quietly as they huddled over the laptop in the Collier County Public Library late in the afternoon.

  “That’s true,” Roz said. “It’s hard to come up with a good theory when we essentially have nothing on this guy. He’s Mr. Charity and Mr. Eco. Maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  “Maybe. But I’m still a little puzzled as to why owning a fishing fleet would make him so much damn money. The guy lives like a movie star.”

  “You would know,” Roz teased. “It is puzzling. Maybe he’s just brilliant at investing?”

  Alden shook his head. “Do you think that drug charge from way back means anything? Could drugs be involved after all?”

  “Why don’t we get an eye on his operation and see what we see?”

  “Spy on him?” A nearby librarian shushed him.

  “Well, we could find the harbor where his boats are docked, where they unload the fish, and see if there’s any unusual activity. Maybe go at night. If I were going to do something naughty, that’s when I’d do it.”

  “Oh, if you’re going to do something naughty at night, I definitely want to be there,” Alden whispered.

  “Alden!” she said.

  The librarian hushed them again.

  Alden smiled. “Let’s get out of here and grab some dinner.”

  After consulting their respective restaurant apps, they ended up at a trendy spot decorated in lots of wood with big white drum lights and a burlap mural lining one wall.

  “Hmm, Duck Two Way,” Alden said, reading the menu. “Have you ever tried the three-way?”

  Roz shot him a wry look. “I have not.”

  “Neither have I, alas,” he said, and she couldn’t stifle a chuckle.

  When the server, a slim woman wearing black and a full sleeve of tattoos, arrived at the table, Alden ordered a glass of pinot noir. To his disappointment, Roz said no to alcohol, with the excuse that they were still working.

  “One glass of wine never hurt anybody,” Alden said after the server left.

  “I want to stay crispy if we’re going to play detective this evening,” she said. “Besides, I have to drive.”

  “Promise me you’ll drink later.”

  “When later?”

  “After you’re done working for the evening.”

  “I’m always up for wine after I’m done working,” she said. “But it could be a long night.”

  “I hope so,” he said softly, and something in her eyes gave him irrational hope that they could pick up where they’d left off last night. Except that getting more involved with her seemed almost cruel, to both of them. She wouldn’t want to be with him once she knew just how badly he’d messed up his life. And not just his.

  Besides, she was too straight-arrow to put up with his nonsense, no matter how much he tried to do the right thing. Her standards were too high, and he’d given up hope of ever being the kind of person she’d want to spend time with in any meaningful way.

  So maybe it wouldn’t be meaningful, but he still hoped they could be together again. Roz had become more intoxicating than the wine.

  The server returned, and Alden ordered the duck; Roz, the snapper. They tried each other’s entrees and chatted and laughed, and for a few minutes, he almost forgot his misgivings, forgot that they were working, forgot that much more was at stake. They had to figure out this story before it killed them.

  ≈ Part 3 ≈

  Roz sipped her double espresso, now thick and sweet with a couple of packets of raw sugar, and eyed Alden. She felt nervous about how the evening would go — not the stakeout, so much, though that should make her nervous. No, she thought about more. About whether she wanted more from this man, so cool and funny on the surface, so — something else beneath. Conflicted. Tense and protective and passionate. It seemed like everything he did was about hiding who he really was.

  “It felt weird today, doing old-fashioned journalism again,” Alden said over his end-of-the-meal coffee, which had followed a second glass of wine.

  “I thought you said what you do is journalism.”

  “It is, but I play a little fast and loose with the rules sometimes to get what I want.”

  “That’s fine, until someone gets hurt,” she said.

  Alden didn’t say anything, just blew on his steaming coffee.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He met her gaze. His gray eyes were cloudy. “Sometimes the rules get you into trouble, too.”

  “If you follow the rules, you never have regrets,” Roz said. “I’ve missed some stories because of ethical choices, and I don
’t regret it.”

  “Then you’re a better man than I,” he said.

  “Don’t be cryptic, Alden.”

  “I thought women liked men to be cryptic.”

  “I don’t.” He looked as if he was in pain. She wanted to know why. “You told me you screwed up once. Is that what you’re talking about?”

  “I’ve screwed up many, many times. And then there was the big fuck-up to fuck up all screw-ups.”

  She couldn’t help but smile. “Sounds like a story.”

  “To us, isn’t everything?” He put down the coffee. “I suppose I need to tell you.”

  “You need to?”

  “So I can see whether you ever want to talk to me again.”

  God, it couldn’t be that bad, could it? But he had a haunted look, and it gave her chills.

  “I’ll talk to you,” Roz said. “Tell me.”

  Alden shook his head, and she thought that was it. Then, after a full minute had ticked by, he stared into his coffee and started talking.

  “Once upon a time, a boy lived an enchanted existence in upstate New York. He was an annoying little rich kid, as you’d once surmised, but he wanted to prove he was more than his private school education, so he went to college to study journalism and change the world.” Alden took a sip of coffee and resumed staring into his cup. “He got a job at a small-town paper. It was an idyllic town, really, until the Toyman came. The Toyman wore a clown costume and kidnapped little kids and did things to them, and exactly three hours later, he let them go.”

  “Really?” Roz was horrified. “Is this that novel you’re writing?”

  “Sounds like a horror movie, doesn’t it? Only it was real. It happened to three kids before the whole town was basically on lockdown. And then I started getting the emails.”

  “You? How?”

  “I was a reporter at the local paper, ambitious, dying to get into a big city, really get into the game. And here, this insane crime story fell into my lap. A man wrote me an email saying he had inside information on the bad guy. My source, let’s call him Nut Job, and his wife had a day-care. Nut Job’s brother was a beloved city councilman who used to help them with maintenance and such. Nut Job pointed out that all of the children who were assaulted attended that day care. And Nut Job said he had evidence that his brother, the councilman, was the guy. He’d give it all to me if I protected his identity. He started feeding me information about the councilman. The fact that my chosen suspect had a sex-crime conviction looked really bad on paper, but the crime was a teen prank, mooning a rival team in college. Then Nut Job told me about his brother’s contact with the kids, about the toys he bought — because every abused child was released with a new toy — ” Alden paused again, and his desolate expression almost broke Roz’s heart.

  “I was willing to protect my source,” he said. “I assured my editor that I knew what I was doing, that I trusted Nut Job. I started to write stories that reiterated the scary crimes, with a dollop of circumstantial evidence and coincidence based on what Nut Job told me. Fed by fear and innuendo, the public used those stories to make the councilman’s life a living hell.”

  “But if he was guilty — ” Roz said.

  “That’s just it. After weeks of these stories, the councilman was shouted out of a town meeting. He lost his business. He tried to kill himself, which probably made him look even more guilty. His wife filed for divorce. One of the victims even said she recognized the councilman’s voice when she saw him on TV. At the same time, I started to wonder how Nut Job knew so much about the crimes. I had promised to protect his identity as my anonymous source — ”

  “Which we do.”

  “ — and I was so reluctant to give up the gravy train. These stories were making bank for the paper. For my reputation. But as much as the councilman was brought in for questioning, as much as his life was ripped apart, the cops never had enough evidence to arrest him. Meanwhile, Nut Job told me he thought the Toyman would act again soon.

  “I finally realized that something didn’t feel right about his information,” Alden continued, “and after agonizing over my promise to keep him anonymous, I went to the police with my suspicions. Based on what I told them, they did a stakeout and caught the perp trying to take another kid. Surprise, surprise. It was the councilman’s brother — Nut Job — who’d borrowed the councilman’s car to further implicate him.”

  “Oh, shit.” Roz’s stomach clenched, imagining what Alden had gone through. What the councilman and the parents and the children had suffered, too.

  Alden’s smile was brittle. “I think he wanted to get caught, partly to show how he’d fooled everybody, including me. We published a huge front-page story — it was essentially the biggest fucking retraction you’ve ever seen, underscoring the councilman’s innocence. But it was really too late. Any whisper of that kind of crime around anyone, and you’re tainted for life. Some people wondered if the councilman had conspired with his Nut Job brother. But Nut Job was the sicko, and the councilman paid the price. He’s probably still paying the price.”

  Alden swirled his cup. “I was dressed down by my editor, too,” he continued. “He questioned my judgment — as if I weren’t questioning my own judgment. I had done what I thought I was supposed to do. You make a promise to an anonymous source, you keep that promise. Only in this case, keeping that promise meant misery and injustice. It almost meant more victims.” Alden stopped talking, his face contorted with anguish. In a moment, she saw him get ahold of himself, saw the cool facade return.

  “You couldn’t have known,” Roz said.

  “If I’d been less fucking ambitious, if I’d questioned this guy even a little, I would have been more cautious. You don’t take an anonymous source’s dish just because they’re offering. You have to figure out their agenda. If I’d thought about it, I wouldn’t have made any promises. And I wouldn’t have ruined a life.”

  “You did what you could to fix it. You did the right thing. You even got him caught.”

  “But with so much wreckage,” Alden said, smiling as if it were a joke. “There was a libel suit, but because the paper proved it didn’t act with malice, and because we’d carefully worded the stories, the newspaper won.”

  Roz offered him an ironic smile. “So you never got the punishment you thought you deserved?”

  His laugh was bitter. “That’s one way to put it.”

  “And you left newspapers.”

  “And went to the tabloids, where what we were writing about didn’t really matter, and how I got the information didn’t matter, either. I stayed away from stories that would really hurt anybody, but I got good at digging up the details people loved to read. Some of them were hurtful, I guess, but those were all a matter of public record, well-hidden arrest reports, surveillance video, that kind of thing. No one got called out who didn’t deserve it. That’s what I told myself.”

  Roz wanted to reach for him but sensed that the slightest touch might crack the fragile shell that was holding him together right now.

  “And then you came to Mimosa Key?” she asked.

  “The tabloid owner started the Times and thought I’d be a great asset for its mission: amusing gossip. Small-town news. Nothing heavy. I was ready to get out of the dirt business, so I came here.”

  “And now we’re looking into a heavy, dirty story about an exploding movie star.”

  “Exactly.” His smile seemed more real this time, only half a mask. And she did reach out and grasp his hand. He looked down for a moment as if he didn’t know how to process her touch, and then he flipped his hand over and clasped her fingers and squeezed them tight.

  They sat for a minute or two like that, not talking, drinking their coffee, until the cups were empty and he let go.

  “Ready to play ‘Dragnet’?” Alden asked, his mocking smile back in place.

  “This is the city,” she intoned. “Naples, Florida . . . ”

  “Come on, Girl Friday,” he said, and they paid and lef
t the restaurant.

  ≈≈≈

  So maybe he shouldn’t have had the second glass of wine. It made him maudlin and confessional, and at the advanced age of thirty-one, he should know better. But Alden felt a strange, exhausted relief at having told Roz about the story that would always haunt him.

  He watched her as she drove them toward the harbor home of Consummate Catch. It was dark, now, and the town’s lights played in her hair, sculpting the soft angles of her face with shadows. God, he wanted to touch her.

  Instead, he stayed in his seat, helping navigate with the GPS on his phone. She’d taken his hand at the table, but that was just sympathy, he was sure. Pity. He hated pity. He’d almost prefer that she despise him.

  He wanted her to want him, not pity him. To want him in spite of everything.

  “Where do you think we should park?” Roz asked, oblivious to his thoughts.

  “Maybe in the tourist area near this restaurant complex,” he said, pointing to the map. “We can walk down to Consummate Catch’s location, hopefully observe from a reasonable distance. There should be somewhere we can make ourselves invisible.”

  She took his advice and parked. Roz locked her bag in the car and gave her keys to Alden (“No pockets,” she said apologetically). They walked along the marina’s edge, away from the buzz of tourists and restaurants and toward a cluster of duller-looking buildings that faced the water.

  An office near the dock had a sign over the door that said “Consummate Catch Fishing Charters.” It was attached to an industrial building that backed up to the docks. Beyond it, a few of Consummate’s fishing boats were docked, their distinctive blue color notable even in the patchy artificial light. Alongside them were a couple of smaller vessels that must have been the charter boats.

  “We shouldn’t stay here,” Roz said. They were standing dockside, right outside the industrial building. “We’ll be seen.”

  “Farther down, then. There’s a bunch of sailboats down there. We can sit on the dock next to one of them and pretend we’re tourists or sailors.”