03-Keeping Mum

by Alyse Carlson

  “Elle has a boat?”

  “She does. Registered to her maiden name, with no connection at all to her husband.”

  “Well, that’s curious,” Cam said. “I guess maybe she’s a ‘mine and ours’ girl. I know she’d pitch a fit if Senator Schulz had something she didn’t know about.”

  “We don’t know he doesn’t know about it.”

  “Oh, stop being all technical. I want to be mad at her.”

  Rob ignored her. “From what I could tell, they lease slots in Newport News, Virginia Beach, and Baltimore.”

  “Baltimore?”

  “I really doubt that’s quite as sleepy, even this time of year, so we’ll put that last on our list.”

  “Geez. Both of the others are more than four hours away.”

  “Which is probably why Sully flew. Good thing tomorrow’s Friday, I guess. If we have weekend plans, I need to figure out how to cover Saturday’s football games. Then we’ll get a good night’s sleep and go.”

  Cam looked at her watch. It was past midnight, so she wasn’t sure what he meant by “good night’s sleep,” but she agreed. It seemed like something they couldn’t pass up.

  “And what about Jake?” she asked.

  “He should come, too. If they do have Annie’s dad, we’ll need a real cop.”

  • • •

  • • •

  They could have just taken one car to Newport News, but when they looked at the distance and the possibility there would be some hustling to do, they decided two was wiser. It was a bit of a wonder that Cam and Annie each convinced their partners she should drive, but there was no way Cam was riding that far in Rob’s uncomfortable Jeep. She thought Jake had given in to Annie on a gas mileage argument.

  They finally got on the road just before two. They couldn’t leave earlier because Jake had to scramble a bit to come up with something to do that was legitimate work. He figured he could pretend it was the murder he was looking at, rather than the kidnapping, for about two hours of his shift.

  • • •

  • • •

  Newport News was on a peninsula, so there were a dozen marinas, but Rob, using a smartphone mapping device, found the one they were looking for while Cam drove, rain pelting the car. When he showed her how private the marina was, she understood why the Sullivan family had chosen it.

  It was dark when they reached Newport News, and the rain hadn’t let up. They were eager to get on with their investigation, but felt it might be wiser to get hotel rooms and have dinner, then get an early start the next morning. Cam could see the charm of Newport News, though with everyone’s nerves so frayed, the evening wasn’t the great time it might have been under other circumstances.

  • • •

  • • •

  In the morning, they found the smaller sub-peninsula, though Cam doubted that was the technical term. It was surrounded by park preserves and a handful of marinas that looked a lot more private than those on the other side of the peninsula. Most of the other marinas looked either high-end or else very public. The cluster in the park looked like it would draw privacy seekers.

  Finding the boat was another matter. There was a man in a little shop at the entry to the marina who came out to watch them pass, flagging the cars to stop. He clearly kept an eye on things. They parked across the street at a small lot to discuss their options.

  “Wonder if he’s always there,” Cam said.

  “I don’t know. This doesn’t look like a high-end place necessarily, but you’d think the risk at night of somebody doing something sneaky would be worse, so I bet he is,” Rob said.

  “He doesn’t look above bribery,” Annie said.

  “You think we should bribe him?” Cam asked.

  “No. I think if Sully wanted him away for an hour, he would make himself scarce. He could figure what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Especially as Sully keeps a boat here.”

  “I thought it was Elle who kept her boat here,” Cam said.

  “Does it matter? Legitimate person gives someone some cash to take a break. Did he look above that?”

  Cam had to admit he didn’t. “So what do we do?”

  “You two,” Jake said, pointing at Cam and Rob, “go in and ask if he’s got any rentals. Keep him occupied for a long time, and Annie and I will walk back there. Then you two come out and get in separate cars and drive a little ways down the road, find parking spots, and head back on foot to meet us, but stay in the trees.”

  “You’ve been taking your Annie lessons, haven’t you?” Cam said.

  “I’m a trained cop,” Jake argued.

  “Who just came up with a brilliantly sneaky, non-cop plan,” Rob said. “Busted.”

  Annie grinned proudly.

  “So we’re in,” Rob said. “Annie, gimme your keys.”

  Her grin disappeared but she cooperated. Cam took Rob’s hand and they headed for the shack while Annie and Jake waited until they’d rounded the front of the little building.

  The inside of the shack didn’t have much to it, thankfully, including an absence of windows overlooking the direction they’d parked. Cam let Rob do the talking, since she was a bad liar. She could spin the heck out of something, but to do that, there had to be a seed of truth. While Rob didn’t lie a lot, either, he was a reporter who’d had some experience in telling stories to get the cooperation of a source, though admittedly it wasn’t much practice, given that sports reporting rarely called for deep-cover investigation.

  “Hey there. We’re here for the weekend and wanted to rent a boat. We wondered if anyone around here . . .” Rob said.

  “Mister, this is a private marina. There isn’t anyone here who does that unless you find it through an advertisement, and then the owner lets me know.”

  “So you don’t have a listing of anyone willing?”

  “I don’t have the time to act like a rental clerk. People just check in with me to pick up keys if they do it.”

  “And you don’t have any keys?” Cam asked.

  She knew how it would sound. It would give him the idea they were joy riders wanting to make a deal.

  “No! This isn’t really the season for it.”

  Cam leaned in and tried to give him a flirty smile. “Don’t you have any names we could call or something? Just to see?”

  “Miss, the ocean is choppy, storms all the time. I assure you, you don’t want to go out there right now.”

  Rob rubbed Cam’s back as if she were actually getting upset. “Listen, man. My girl really had her heart set on a boat ride.”

  “Well, you’ll have to go around the peninsula and see if the public places have anything. Because I don’t.”

  Cam crossed her arms and pouted, but Rob put his arm around her and led her back out.

  “Nicely played,” he whispered as they crossed the lot to the two cars.

  Cam led Rob up the road and found a parking lot for hiking trails through the preserve. They were supposed to have gotten a sticker, but she wondered how widely patrolled it was this time of year. Whatever the case, they didn’t have time to deal with that. She just hoped they wouldn’t get caught. They hurried back up the road on foot and then used the cover of trees to pass the man’s little shack so they could track down Annie and Jake.

  The lot looked fairly deserted. Cam figured November was indeed a bad season for sailing. Or maybe it was just that it was the weekend before Thanksgiving.

  “Do you see them?” Cam asked.

  “Not yet. I’m not sure if we should be obvious so they call us over or if they’ll figure out a way to flag us.”

  “Well, we are closer to this guy’s line of vision, aren’t we?”

  Rob frowned and looked around. “Depends how far out they are. That shack had a seaside window, so if they aren’t right near shore, he can see their part of the dock. In fact maybe we should have distracted him longer.”

  “It’s done now. I guess we walk the shoreline in his blind spot.”

  “Goo
d thinking.” Rob draped his arm over her and they walked.

  Cam thought it would have actually been sort of a romantic place, had they wound up here under different circumstances. It didn’t take long before they saw Annie frantically waving her arms. Jake was down the dock talking on his cell phone.

  “Uh-oh,” Cam said before she grabbed Rob’s hand and hurried toward Annie.

  • • •

  • • •

  “What happened?” Cam said.

  “Sully. Dead!”

  “Dead on the boat?”

  Annie looked like she might throw up, and it occurred to Cam that in spite of the seeming murder flurry they’d dealt with in the last year, this was the first body Annie had found. In fact, Cam didn’t think she’d even seen any of the others. She hugged her friend. The first body she’d seen had disturbed her a lot. And she definitely wasn’t going to go aboard the boat to look at this one. They had Jake with them. It was a police matter now.

  Unfortunately, as a police matter, it involved a lot of sitting and waiting once Cam had reassured Annie that there was no sign of her dad and that Sully’s death wasn’t necessarily related to the kidnapping. Jake directed Cam and Rob back to the hotel. They hadn’t seen anything and Jake pretended that he and Annie had been on a romantic weekend when he heard a rumor about a case he’d been working on and decided to follow it up. Rob was strangely at peace with the arrangement, as it allowed him to watch a pair of football games on television and write an article on the Virginia Tech one.

  Cam didn’t know how the local police hadn’t been suspicious about their presence, but they seemed just as happy to pass the murder on to another jurisdiction. Cam knew it made for better press to say it was part of some out-of-town investigation that just happened to drift their way than to worry the locals that one of their own was up to murder, especially in a town with a lot of tourism.

  “So another favorite suspect down the drain,” Cam complained when the four of them were sitting in a pub in Newport later eating fish-and-chips.

  “And a delay in the next stop,” Annie grumbled. Cam could tell she was more worried than ever.

  The local police had insisted the scene couldn’t be completely secured and processed for at least twenty-four hours, and Jake’s captain had insisted he stay there until the Roanoke team arrived to work with the locals and ensure there was indeed no local connection.

  “So what did you tell him about why you were here?” Cam asked.

  “Well after the romantic weekend bit, I mentioned that we learned Sully, a suspect for Windermere’s murder, had a boat here, so I thought I should look. The captain knew there was evidence of bad blood and that Sully had disappeared before we could even question him, so since we were here anyway, I couldn’t not check it out.”

  “Did he buy it?” Rob asked.

  “Don’t know, but it seems pretty obviously related, so he’s not griping about it.”

  “So have you guys heard anything in your investigation that would point toward why Sullivan was killed?” Cam asked.

  Jake looked really uncomfortable, so Annie spoke up.

  “He was hit in the head with a sort of anchor—something from the boat. It’s possible my dad hit him when he escaped.”

  Cam felt her stomach drop. “You really think he was there?”

  “They’re checking for DNA. He might have been. I mean, that’s why we were there, right? And Dad did call.”

  “But then he got cut off.”

  “So maybe Sully’s partner caught him.”

  “Somebody here?” Cam asked.

  “We’re checking to see if he had local friends,” Jake said. “It’s possible. Or maybe there was more muscle involved and they took him in one of the other family boats.”

  “So Elle might have him?” Annie asked.

  “We don’t know, Annie. I’ve told you everything as I’ve learned it. Maybe,” Jake said.

  Annie pushed her food away, and Cam understood why she wasn’t hungry.

  “Wait a minute,” Cam said. “Could you tell how long ago he died?”

  “A day or less, I’d say,” Jake said. “He still had rigor mortis, which works its way out after about twenty-four hours.”

  “So Annie, it couldn’t have been when your dad called. That was longer ago. He escaped before this happened.”

  Annie threw herself across the vinyl seat at Cam. “Thank you!”

  “He still might have been here,” Jake said.

  “But someone else killed Sully. That’s the big thing,” Annie said.

  “But who else would kill Sully?” Rob asked.

  “If it isn’t related to the kidnapping,” Cam said, “maybe it’s related to the murder and I have an idea there, too. Let me out.”

  Rob frowned at her as she left the table, but she didn’t want to let this thought get cold. She found Dylan on her speed dial.

  “Bad timing, Cam. What do you need?”

  “Mike Sullivan is dead.”

  “What?”

  It sounded like Dylan changed locations as suddenly the clamor quieted.

  “He was found in Newport News, dead on a boat. Have you seen any arguments he was involved in or do you know of any enemies he might have?”

  “He was sort of out of my . . . wait a minute . . . yeah. I actually saw him punch somebody last week. The guy in the newspaper when I was at your place. It was the same night, actually. Maybe I should have thought to call you.”

  Cam wasn’t sure that would have been a good idea. “Chad Phillips? Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. They shouted a little and then Sully decked him.”

  “Do you know what about?”

  “Wasn’t cards. They’d been talking nicely earlier, then Mike played cards with some other guys. Chad was doing the televised horse race thing. Then Sully hauled off and clocked him.”

  “So somebody in the card game told him something that made him angry with Chad?”

  “You’re good at this. Makes total sense.”

  “Do you remember anybody else in that card game?”

  “You going to send the cops to talk to them?”

  “Just Jake. He can be subtle if they need him to.”

  “That’s not how I remember it,” Dylan said.

  “You were a suspect. These guys aren’t. He’ll meet them for a beer out of uniform or something.”

  “Okay. You just make sure that’s it.”

  “Promise.”

  He shared two names and described two more people he didn’t know.

  “Thanks, Dylan! That helps a ton.”

  “Yeah, that’s me. Mr. Police Helper.”

  Cam snorted and closed her phone.

  • • •

  • • •

  When she reported back to the gang what she’d learned, she wished she could avoid Rob’s gaze. He knew about the mutual attraction between her and Dylan. Rob also knew she had chosen him, but he obviously didn’t like that she still knew how to reach Dylan if she needed to. Annie knew, too, but was too good a friend to be obvious about it. Only Jake was oblivious.

  “A pretty serious argument, it sounds like. I definitely want to get back and talk to them. But we have Virginia Beach to check, and I can’t leave here until probably late tomorrow,” Jake said.

  “Let Rob and me go to Virginia Beach,” Cam said. She wanted to check it out, but also wanted a chance to make things right with Rob.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jake said.

  “Please,” Annie said. “I don’t want them to get too far ahead of us.”

  Jake sighed and shrugged, and Cam and Rob went to pack their things into Cam’s car. It was an awkward silence, but Cam could tell Rob wanted to set things right as badly as she did. He was just waiting for her to explain away what she’d done. If only it were that easy.

  CHAPTER 13

  Cam let Rob drive. She hadn’t done that in her car very often. She loved her Mustang and hated gender stereotypes about d
riving, but she wanted to be able to concentrate on how she explained things. And honestly, if Rob was paying attention to the road, he had less spare brain to focus on his next argument as she made her point. They were both wordsmiths for a living, but Cam didn’t care for confrontation. Rob didn’t savor it, but he was better at it than she was.

  “I wouldn’t have called him if it weren’t Annie’s dad, Rob. This isn’t a normal situation.”

  “Why couldn’t you just tell Jake to call him?”

  “Because I know him well enough to know he wouldn’t talk to Jake without some smoothing first.”

  “And see, that’s what I hate about it. My girlfriend is smoothing things with some guy.”

  “It’s not like that. Not even a little bit. Before this search started, I hadn’t talked to him since July.”

  “But you didn’t delete his number either.”

  “No. And I’m glad I didn’t. We needed it.”

  “And today wasn’t the first time you talked to him about it.”

  She could tell he knew. Not that she wanted lies between them, but the fact that she hadn’t told him would be an additional problem.

  “Second. But same issue. He’s the only person I know in that gambling circle.”

  “Besides Benny.”

  It was sort of true. Benny Larsson, who worked as a gardener—assistant to his father—for much of the Roanoke Garden Society was connected to this same group. But Benny had only ever dealt with the small-money crowd as far as Cam could tell. Dylan knew a larger variety. Part of her debated whether to claim she’d tried Benny first, but she respected Rob too much. She tried to explain the different circles to Rob, but he was too annoyed at the moment, so she tried another tactic.

  “Rob, I’ve known Senator Schulz since I was in high school. And Annie has been my best friend longer than that. I get that you’re mad I called Dylan, but I called him for the very best reason and I swear to you I won’t call him for any lesser reason. I just had some instinct after those summer murders that I might need a friend in low places at some point in the future, and I’m glad I had the contact. It helped.”

  Rob let out a loud sigh. He was nothing if not fair. He knew the truth of what she said, at least that it was important. He might or might not believe the “no other contact” piece, but Cam thought he would get past that if their time in Virginia Beach was either productive or romantic. Both would give them the shot of adrenaline needed to change the mood.